|
Hi all,
One of our own has a novel in the Geek and Sundry contest. Take a look. There are sample chapters on the site. If you love it, let's help a fellow gamer out and pre-order the book.
Click to preview the book: The Fairy Stepmother, Inc..
Search Posts
Hi all, I'm running Reign of Winter and decided to build a chicken hut since I couldn't find a good miniature anywhere. I built it a little larger scale wise, but I wanted it to be larger for my campaign. I just wanted to share the finished product. To see pictures, go to Baba Yaga's hut.
My preparation really depends on what kind of adventure I plan to run. A sandbox adventure is tough because you can't completely anticipate what your players will choose, so you have to prepare for any eventuality. I usually prepare a flowchart of information that contains page references to important information about the settings, history, etc. I use Kyle Olson's combat manager to run the game which makes it easy to look up a spell reference or item reference. To run NPCs, I choose one overall quality that I think of as my touchstone for that character. It might be a mannerism, a figure of speech, and so on. I note it in my adventure so that if the players go back to that NPC far in the future, I will be able to remember how I played it. If you are going to develop your own adventures from scratch, you might want to try something like Realm Works from Lone Wolf (Hero Lab). It can help you organize information and find it quickly. It's unlikely that you can memorize everything that could come up, so the key is to be organized and to have a system.
I love all the fluff. It inspires me to create... well, more fluff. I've been extremely blessed to game with the same creative people for 20 years. They get the rules, totally understand the mechanics (except for this one guy who is never going to get it), and also love the fluff. Best examples of fluffery from my games: In Kingmaker, our Queen going up on my balcony and delivering a speech to the citizens of Tuskhaven. (Yes, I have a balcony in the house that overlooks the gaming room.) During Legacy of Fire, the deep sadness at the noble sacrifice of a wonderful cleric (only 5th level) to consecrate land to her deity. She chose to remain dead as she felt her character had accomplished her life's goal. Our Cayden Cailean worshipper who donated all his gold to establish shrines to Cayden through the land of Grand Racklands (our kingdom in Kingmaker). The party killing a queen of the giants and then crashing her funeral in disguise. I could go on, but I know better. Anyway, long live the fluff and the crunch that makes it possible.
Hi Everybody, Sadly, my dad has had a heart attack and instead of boarding a plane to Seattle, I am rushing home. I had a spot in Secrets of the Sphinx, (Friday 1-6) run by Rob McCreary
We both also had spots in Old School Game Theory on Sat at 8 to 1. Since we can't trade anymore, perhaps you could show up and find an open seat. So Rob and Stephen, you have no idea how sad we are to be missing this. Cathy and Maggie Hoyt
Because I have a large gaming group, I had an event occur where more than one player were in the same body. There was a mechanic to tag in and out so both players had to work together to decide who would be best to tackle the next obstacle. It worked pretty well to get a few people talking and working together who tend to ignore each other at the gaming table and it was a fun gimmick which only went on for a short time. It also helped players get to know each others' abilities better.
Add the XP for each together and then compare that total to the Experience Points Awards Table. 2 Shambling Mounds @ 2400 XP = 4800
At 6400 it becomes CR 9. To make it all easier, try Kyle Olsen's Combat Manager. You can add the monsters to the combat and it calculates the CR automatically.
I usually adjust everything (number of monsters, AC, hp) because I GM for a 7-person group with a 20-point buy. Until you are comfortable doing all this on the fly, I would use Kyle Olson's Combat Manager and prepare the encounters in advance. To preserve the intent of the Adventure Path, take the number of experience points that would have been awarded for an encounter and divide by 4. You need to create an encounter that gives that many points (roughly) to each person so multiply by the number of players you have. You can make the encounters tougher by advancing the main monsters, which is easy to do from the monster tab in Combat Manager. You advance them and then click to add them to the encounter. If an encounter has multiple monsters already, you need to increase the number by 1 or 2 so that everyone has something they can do in the battle. Because you used an epic point-buy, you want to raise the CR of each battle by 1 or 2. This will be calculated for you in Combat Manager. Keep adding or adjusting monsters until you have the correct CR rating. The one thing you don't want is for your PCs to get ahead of the experience point curve in the AP, so no matter how tough you make it, don't give more points than each member of a party of 4 would have earned for the CR in the original encounter. This keeps everything on track. Anyway, this is how I would approach it. Good luck!
Each adventure path has its own difficulties. I would suggest picking the one that will best hold your players' attention. My players loved Rise of the Runelords although I bypassed books 2 and 3 because we had a few very young players at the time. I replaced those with some work of my own to make sure the PCs were at the right level for the 4th book. The beginning in Sandpoint was a real pleasure to run. The next few adventure paths would require you to do some converting from 3.5 to the Pathfinder rules. I have found Kingmaker to be very easy to run, although you will have to deal with the kingdom building aspect of the adventure (which you can minimize if you want to). Are you sure your group is committed to seeing an adventure path through to the end. If not, you may want to start with a few of the individual modules that can easily be tied together to create a short adventure path.
I agree with Adamantine Dragon and have used the same strategy. I have used push pins and a large map mounted on foam board to show how the battle was going in different areas. You can have the PCs play out segments of the battle and then update the other areas to indicate progress on other fronts. This really worked for us and I used a simple system to show how the skirmishes in other areas resolved, allowing decisions by the PCs to modify those results.
My biggest unconfessed oops: One time I accidentally used the same name for two very different NPCs. The players jumped all over it and were really involved in the "mystery." They were so into it that I couldn't just admit that I'd made a mistake, so my mind was racing trying to come up with a logical conspiracy theory that could explain the whole thing. Of course, the more they investigated, my weak explanations began to sound a bit fast and loose, so I began to hint at the idea that perhaps I had simply made a mistake, but I did it in such a way that I knew they would reject that idea, thinking that I was just trying to throw them off and keep them from uncovering the real mystery. It's been five years and they still discuss it from time to time. And I still haven't admitted my big oops. I plan to take the truth to my grave.
Seven players is definitely my limit. I won't go above that again and 7 can be frustrating. But I also understand how hard it is to split friends into two groups. I agree with Kolokotroni on every point. I also enforce this house rule quite frequently: If you need to look up how your spell, feat, etc. works in the middle of a combat, your character hasn't quite mastered that one yet and you don't get to use it. Absolutely make the players responsible for keeping track of buffs. There is no going back. "Wait, I forgot to add ___; I actually did 5 more points of damage." Sometimes I do help track buffs by displaying two large dice: one for attack and one for damage. The number displayed tells the party how many to add to each. One more thing: Use a large initiative board that everyone can see so that each knows the order of turns. I use a magnetic white board with magnets.
This is so very, very hard. I've had several campaigns fall apart completely when players got too frustrated at how slowly combat moved. Also, big groups are prone to side conversations because individuals have to wait so long for their turns to arise. If you are going to use miniatures, you will have to increase the size of every room so that players can manuever. Otherwise, you will have players standing in the line in the hallways hoping to get into the room with the monster. I've also experimented with having everyone say what they plan to do in initiative order and then have everyone roll dice at the same time and carry out their actions. This keeps everybody focused and listening although it makes it impossible for a player to react to a previous player's action since the outcome is unknown. Still, it really moves the game along. Use Kyle Olson's Combat Manager (combatmanager.com) to help keep it all straight. His software will also allow you advance monsters quickly. You will need to advance all the monsters and increase the number of monsters so that all the players will have something to fight. Just a few thoughts.
I like them. They definitely aid in my understanding of how the adventure fits into the world at large. And while I may not use them as an extension to an adventure path, I have sometimes gleaned ideas that I have used as side adventures. There are a lot of features in paizo adventure paths that I don't use, yet they make the book a lot more fun to read. In ROTRL and SD, there were whole paragraphs of backstory for NPCs and villians that I knew the players would never know, but having it there colored my view of the adventure and therefore affected my performance as GM. I think of these as an actor's subtext. In short, I'm for any feature that awakens and engages my own creativity.
The assassination attempt idea is a great one. During our Kingmaker campaign, I pulled off the following. (No spoiler tag needed.) I wanted to have an assassination attempt, but I had already built in a otherworld influence that seemed to take us in and out of a semi-dream, storybook world. So, I suddenly sent them into the future so that the assassination attempt had already occurred and succeeded. The queen was dead. They played through a bit of story I had concocted and then got back to their own time with very specific memories of what each of them had been doing when they heard about the assassination. (I gave each character his memories on paper.) Then as part of the running of their kingdom, I had each player create a randomized list of things they might be doing around the kingdom. As months went by, I would have them roll when there was a specific event and I needed to know their whereabouts. Sure enough, eventually the dice set up the exact (though somewhat vague) events that preceded the assassination. One of the players suddenly yelled, "This is it! The assassination is happening now!" And everybody kicked into high gear to try and save the queen. It was great fun.
Difficult terrain always makes things interesting, especially when different levels (height) come into play. A few memorable encounters from our group's past come to mind: -Fighting along a narrow cliff edge during a storm. (Don't forget the weather!)
It's also a nice change of pace to back the PCs into a corner from time to time without an easy exit. -A snow cave
Or, have the conditions of the battlefield neutralize one or two of the player's favorite fighting styles:
Just a few ideas.
We finished Rise of the Runelords although I made some cuts to Books 2 and 3. We played all of Second Darkness and my players loved it! We abandoned Legacy of Fire in Book 4. And we are now in Book 4 of Kingmaker with bits of the Margreve Forest thrown in. We will definitely finish Kingmaker. I've been the GM throughout, and I'm the one who just couldn't deal with Legacy of Fire any longer. They loved Kakishon but couldn't fully embrace the story.
I think you were completely fair. I would have said something about how magic is dangerous and you have to know what you are doing or it can blow up in your face. In fact, my general rule is that if you take a spell or feat and don't know how it works, then you either can't use it yet or you accept the consequences if you misuse it. On the other hand, I think you have to ask yourself if you have let other players off the hook in similar situations. In my experience, my players are usually most angry at me when I increase my expectations without telling them.
I don't think you should pull your punches here. The dragon warned them. They didn't take the hint. TPKs happen. If your players really care about these characters, they can try to recover their bodies at some future time. It's a great epic ending and a cautionary tale all in one. Clearly you have been fair. Don't contrive an escape for them.
I'm running Kingmaker and I had the same problem that you are having. Right or wrong, I solved it by advancing every monster, making terrain more interesting, and increasing the number of minions as needed. But when I award experience points, I just take the suggested number of XP for the encounter, divide by 4, and award that to each member of the party. This handles the problem that I am playing with more than 4 in a party and makes sure the party is advancing on schedule. I realized that many GMs advocate getting rid of XP in adventure paths, but my players love to get points.
Something else that I should have listed earlier is the need to adjust the space for encounters. Since GM regularly for 7, I almost always double the area. Remember, the encounter on the map was designed for 4 players, and there are times when it would be impossible to fit 7 in the room with the monsters. You also need to adjust the treasure the players find. In general, double the amount and make sure that over a couple of sessions, there will have been something special for everyone. Since I am often running an adventure path, I also adjust experience points. I take the XP for a suggested encounter and divide by 4 to find the amount each player was intended to get and then I give at least that amount to each player. Bear in mind that I've already upped the CR by adding a few minions or advancing the monsters so the increased XP makes sense. Overall, I think 7 is pushing it. We once had an 8th guy for a little while and it worked out okay because he was such an incredible team player and very entertaining. The point is that handling a big group isn't all your responsibility. The players have to be willing to cooperate and appreciate the potential synergy that comes from so many minds working on the same task. Even one selfish player can really doom a big group.
I've been GMing for a group of 7 for several years now and the biggest problems come up when one player just doesn't have enough to do. Plan ahead so that every player can shine at least once during the game session. The action in a battle will go slowly. I use an initiative board so that everyone can see when their turn comes. I try to remind players when they are up next so that they are prepared on their turn. Don't let people slow things down looking up feats or spells in the middle of a battle. They can delay if they need to look something up, or use it on the next turn. You will have to advance the monsters and use more minions to keep everyone busy in a fight. In addition, you need to have everyone's key stats at your fingertips so that you won't slow things down. To accomplish both of these, I use Kyle Olson's combat manager and Hero Lab. I can load the portfolio of my player characters into the combat manager right from Hero Lab, and combat manager has a easy way to advance monsters. Hero Lab also makes it easy for me to audit my player's character sheets.
If you were going to buy this no matter what, buy it from Amazon. Then go spend $13 at your FLGS. You know you want to. If you went to the FLGS to look at it first, buy it from them and consider the extra $ payment for providing you a place to game and preview books.
My gaming group tried this. They all wanted to be brothers and sisters. I think it could have worked, but they tended to focus on disagreeing instead of working together. The roleplaying at times was downright childish. We all agreed to abandon the whole thing very quickly and we still laugh about "our worst campaign ever" even today. So.... It could work, but wow! can it ever fail.
I'd love to see the ability to do either much like the game Demon's Souls. I loved that you could see the ghostly images of other players but you could only interact with them if you had chosen to play "online." I've always been a total carebear, but after I had the hang of the game and had come up with some decent equipment, I was willing to go online for a while. It was incredibly fun. But on occasions when I didn't have long to play, or when I really needed the safety of not being attacked constantly PvP, I'd just play offline. We need a way to do either one without being cut out of big portions of the world.
Our Kingmaker group:
Players
Note: The guy with the PhD still can't figure out the rules.
I decided to use the Plot Twist cards in my latest campaign. It's been fun, but nothing too dramatic until last Saturday. The party was fighting a BBEG and he magically suggested to the fighter that something was wrong with the cleric, that he might be possessed, dominated, or a doppleganger. After a flurry of note passing, the fighter then grappled the cleric and told everyone else to flee the area. The cleric then deduced that something was wrong with the fighter, suspecting that he might be a doppleganger. Meanwhile, the blind paladin (whose eyes had been gouged out in a previous fight) attempted to fight the BBEG with the assistance of a seeing-eye arcane archer. The paladin finally triumphed and we moved on. A few battles later, the party was attacked by an army of undead and the fighter was isolated from the rest of the party. He was then sadly killed by a friendly-fire fireball when he failed his reflex save, rolling a 1. Everyone was stunned and really felt bad. Then they went to the plot twist cards for a way out. In a genius move, our Gunslinger played the Plot Twist card of that very name. He took over the story and said that as the fighter died, his body transformed into the doppleganger that he had been all along. Suddenly, the fighter's earlier bizarre actions made sense. The group then backtracked to the point where some enemies had taken the fighter prisoner and allowed the doppleganger to take his place in the party. They rescued the fighter and on we went. Not only did the card save the evening, but it led to some really exciting play. Is anyone else having good luck with these cards? In an open-ended story, they seem like a great way to keep everyone involved.
I have to totally disagree with the Kingmaker suggestion. I'm running Kingmaker now and with both men and women in the party and this just doesn't have enough story to hold the women's interest. I've added quite a bit of the Tales of the Old Margreve and other bits from here and there to keep my players going. Legacy of Fire would be very appealing if you move the plot along once you get into the 4th book. Surprisingly, the women in my group loved Second Darkness.
I find this tricky as well and I'm looking forward to what other posters will have to say. At the beginning of an adventure path, I organize all the flavor that I'm willing to have the PCs know into bite-size chunks on index cards, sorting by local knowledge, knowledge nature, etc. Then I put a mark in small print on the back of each card for my convenience, not the players. The players never see these cards unless they receive one. Then when they make a knowledge check, I hand them an appropriate card. They can choose to share the information with fellow players or not. Some hang on to the cards and then share the information at an appropriate point as part of the role-playing. During the adventure as part of a specific plot point, I haven't really found a good way. One player says I make a knowledge religion check. Immediately, others say, "No, I do. I have more points than you." Then they all make the check and I end up telling them what I wanted them to know anyway. I find it disruptive to the role-playing as the game mechanics immediately overwhelm the story. So I'd love a good idea here.
|
