sammytheman666 @ sammytheman666 @ttrpg.network

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17

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488

Joined

2 yr. ago

RIGHT ?!?

You gotta live it. And make it progress. I also one time did Smokin Joe Rudeboy. If you do not know who that is, you are missing out. Try in in youtube and tell me this isn't an epic concept for a character.

Also comes with his teamsong : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0pELGUfj2Y

I know, snitties, but it's not funny ! I like funny

This is a nice reading. Thank you for taking the time to share it with us.

The funny, very funny thing in retrospect, is that I'm not sure if I'm well placed to answer that. Not only have my previous campaigns been using a magical moving merchand call Xoblub, but in the campaign that I've been heading for more than 2 years now, there is no money. They can find shinies, they certainly find items, but their tribe has a magical weapon, armor and item shop that is there to trade away and get rewards from their objectives. And since there is no civilisation to speak of, no money. It's Barter Town.

Last games, the players actually managed, as they say in John Wick, "an impossible task". After 4 encounters draining their resources away and no rest, they found a Lich wanting to rob the store from ALL of it. Meaning if they didn't somehow stopped it, they wouldn't be able to trade away or get rewards anymore.

They did it. They fucking did it.

There was even a harry potter moment, where a player used a magical item to reverse Power Word Kill on the Lich itself and was saved because of that.

Fucking amazing.

Sorry, I got taken over. But all this to say, like you said, it's all about what you want in your games and for your players.

Both as a DM and player, I'm into the generous type. I like magical items, and money, and means to buy magical shit. It's fun. Gold becomes a secondary XP meter that they can orient to a certain point. And if they are more challenging, then you get to use the 7 undead units I got to try in that last adventure.

So, I quite literally have an economy of magical items. And honor. And reputation. Making the numbers and economy behind it VERY fluctuent.

So fluctuent that, you know what their master will give them for saving the magical store and tens of citizens ? Any magical item. Anything. If it were a normal economy and world it might shatter from it, but mine ? Well, I'll tell you later. I don't know yet what they will pick :)

But yeah. Once this one is done, I might try a more down to earth campaign with lower starting point. See how it is when it's more survival-esq.

I get its a joke, but this die is actually really not scary since you have nothing but a single result possible.

Yeah. But if you start to think of it as part of a real world economy concept its not the same game anymore. But would you really prefer realistic conditions ? I mean maybe, everyone is different. But I dont think it would be fun for me personnally

Indeed. I think you are thinking it the wrong way. If it doesnt make sense in the economic aspect, do you know where it does make sense ? The gameplay aspect. The best armors of the game should be behind dungeons or paywalls to guarantee a level 1 or 2 doesnt go straight to it.

It doesnt make sense when you think of it as anything but a game. And its still a game. Its why in RE games you constantly find ammo and helpful items where there is no in universe reason to have them there at all.

Just like treasures in dungeons. How long would a world need to exist to have every dungeon ramsacked by elite warriors and mages ? A few years top. And most worlds are older, so it makes no sense to still have dungeons and loot in them does it ?

But its fun. Its a game and its fun to go and explore a fresh dungeon even if its very existence doesnt make sense in universe.

... okay ? What does this says about anything ?

I kinda get what you are saying, but... for me improv is a skill that is hard to train or to master and relies a lot on luck. Will I think of something cool now and then ? Will I get ideas ? How will my brain interact with this exploration ? Its hard to say that improvisation isnt highly reliable on what you get at that moment between neurones.

How many times have I thought of better, cooler or more adapted ways to do what I had to improv days or weeks later ? Time is a finite resource, and when improvising time is your enemy. The longer or shorter you have to think, the better or worse it might end up with.

Step 1 : ask a player if they have any ideas Step 2 : do a google search for about 30 seconds to see if you can find something easily Step 3 : Rule with your guts, take a note of it to check between session, and MOST IMPORTANT STEP say this : I’m going to rule this like that for now and I’ll check in between sessions for a correct ruling. Do not use this here today as a final conclusion in a later session please.

YOU MEAN YOU GAVE A MAGICAL PLATE TO THE HALFLING BEFIRE GIVING A DECENT WEAPON TO YOUR BARB ????

What is hilarious is that a normal plate is like 1500 gold. This should be enough for at least 2 magical base weapons

Noice. You got this.

Very good job. Got the necessary items and a bit of flair. A few things I'd suggest to think about. 1- What's on the other side of that tunnel's start ? 2- How high is the ceiling ?

Indeed. Glad we agree. Recently they were making their way into an undead-assieged town and I straight up asked them : ok, where exactly to you go next ? And I just draw a line following their saying and I knew exactly what to prep. If the next time they would tell me : hey, we changed our minds, then my answer would be : ok no probs but I have zero preps. Enjoy your theater of the mind.

To be fair, if I had a week of preps between them making the king agree to send his forces with them against the cult in the woods and the actually woods themselves, I would be more opened to allow it to happen than if the session STARTED with this and then straight to the woods.

It might be actually the deal breaker/maker. When do they do this in the session, as arbitrary as it sounds. Do they give me time to plan this ? My answer to them will probably follow the answer to this question.

Nah, I just stand there and admire the cinematography. If you're gonna fuck up the rules, then make it enjoyable. Aka, the rule of cool, but represented by a talented artist.

Kinda. It's kinda of a cop-out. Which is a nice pun since we're talking about talking to cops of the medieval world.

In the end, it's about preps. If I prepare an adventure, I will not prep it with and without guards just in case they go and convince a department to come down the sewers to stop the cult with them. I'll only prepare one of them. If they go for the other, then I have to refuse for some reason or to redoe my preps, sometimes in the middle of the session. That, or you make the contribution insignificant. If you go down the sewers with the guards, then I would make them fight some cultists in the background while they fight the encounters I prepared for this number of combattants of this level.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying : I refuse anything that wasn't prepped in advance. Because of course I don't do that, that would be railroading. But at the same time, we all mostly agree in the TTRPG circles that it's a douche move to not do what the DM prepared for that session. The classic example is having Dracula's castle right there, but the players decide to go in the forest instead for no ingame reason. Should the DM improvise an entire other adventure for them right there and then ? Should he tell them there's nothing in there ? Should he let them wander off for no reasons ?

I think the sweet spot is between these 2. Between the players wanting to go randomly in the forest and the DM refusing to budge from his preps. You should devide where you wanna go and why as the players AND respect the preps the DM actually did. If you go off the preps, don't expect anything of quality already good to go. And as a DM, you should allow players to do stuff outside your preps as long as it fits your improvising skill and enjoyment and (ideally) doesn't make you waste hours of work. Because that stings so bad it takes away my will to even begin those preps.

And for me, calling the guards to your help when the quest never mentionned them or even needed them in the first place is big. Really big. Should you make guards with shitty blockstats to let the players shine and be cool ? Should they be overpowered and deal with the situation without help ? Should they be as good as the players and put in question why they are even needed ?

Lots of questions that I don't really have fun answering live during a game.

I'm curious for your example thought : Guards finds who gave them their quest tells them to hire a better adventuring party because again why not go to guard in first place if not?

Well, why not go to the guards in the first place then ? The answer out of game is obvious : the fun is having a quest be done by the players. Ingame, it would be a reason that the person cannot go to the guards. Which sure, you can plan ahead in case your players have the very bad habit to go and get help everytime they have a challenge to do. But it's more work. More work for the DM already doing so much for everyone's fun, including his own.

So you are correct. It's a cop-out. But if I were to always plan everything all the time just in case my players went to the guards, I'd probably eventually just say fuck it, and tell my players guards will not help you solve quests because I do not want to keep doing this.

And I think calling upon the guards is like going into a forest randomly. And that how YOU deal with this at YOUR table with YOUR players are 3 things that will make the answer to : what do you do when this happen ? very differents. My players, at my table, will be dealt a certain way with these things that will not work elsewhere. Because it's tailored made for them.

In the end, remember. If you're not having fun doing something, don't do it. Even if that thing is always having to find a reason for why guards won't help you.

To be explicit, I never meant : never go talk to the guards, ever. What I mean is that using the authorities as a magic button to solve problems is bad.

What is GOOD is using authorities to create adventures. If for example, you want the guards to raid a bandit camp that is currently the objective of the quest, then convincing them to do so should be as hard and as fun as raiding the camp itself.

But decent guards wouldn't need convincing. They would at least check it out. Unless they suck as guards, or are bad guys's guards. So either they have no reason to refuse straight up "until you convince us tee hee hee", or they are incompetent, or they are the bad guys.

This is a blanket statement btw, I'm sure it's possible to do something that proves me wrong. But we're talking generalities here, not exceptions.

I'll end by saying that even thought players can always go talk to the guards and get help from them, there is an unwritten rule that if the DM gives a task to the players to do, they aren't really supposed to ship it to the guards and call it a day. There has to be something done by the players that makes the session fun and adventurous.

The fact that a dnd movie, nowadays, is pretty good is what is fucking amazing.