Lets Talk Pen & Paper RPGs (All systems welcome!)

[Claus]

Just to make sure, you want your new players to realize that the world has consequences, but would you still enjoy the game if they decide that they don't care about those consequences?

I ask this because one of my first rules of RPG is that "OOC problems should be dealt with OOC".

For example, my last game: Our current campaign is basically "you are MP in power armor". We were assigned to patrol a slum at border area, just to make a show of force. As we arrive, I make a perception roll and notice that the local gangs are keeping an eye on our movements. I radio the rest of the squad: "we're being watched, be ready if the scum decides to try anything funny". At that point the newbie in the table declares that her character starts panicking. I tell her that there is nothing to worry about, probably just some bums with sticks, and she declares that her character is running for cover.

We stop the game. We explain to her that her actions don't really make sense in-world, and she explains to us that her character is a coward. After talking a bit, we reach a compromise in that she wants to play a character "on edge", but that poor anger control would be more appropriate for that particular game. Crisis averted.

I mention this because the GM could instead have role played the consequences for her cowardly behaviour, but in this case, that would derail the game and detract about the role-playing that we were actually interested in doing that night. Just because it is an RPG, doesn't mean that you can't have some base rules.

OK, all this aside, if you would enjoy torturing your wannabe murder-hobos as they try to loot their way into a comfy retirement, this is what I would do:

At first, nothing. Give them MORE chances to savor that sweet, sweet murdering-hobo power fantasy. Have them demand more reward from the village chief, or keep an artefact that by all rights should have been returned to the temple. Have guards step out of their way in the beginning.

But make sure that the NPCs are suffering unjustly at the player's hands. The hear that the village's crop failed without the artefact they kept. They see the merchant they stole begging on the street, furiously staring at them. The guards of the mayor they short-changed now wear weak armor, and complain about successful bandit raids.

They might not care, but at every step make sure that the NPCs give the characters an earful. Let the players laugh at the NPC impotent rage or sorrow. And make sure someone survives to tell the tale. And keep notes.

When the party is back at the inn, having the ales and the wenches, the guy at the table complains about how dangerous the roads are, and why doesn't the king do something about all this violence? And their quest giver will tell them to be careful about a group of evil adventurers roaming about. By the way, this merchant wants a group to do a very important mission and ... what? This is the merchant you met in your very fist mission?

And them you go full Chrono Trigger on them.

The guards surround the quest giver's abode, the captain of the guard, the king's mage, and even the high cleric. Hell, have a good adventuring party there as well. The players are outmatched. They can surrender, fight and be captured, or flee. If they are captured/surrender, they now face a trial where every evil deed from their campaign is thrown back at them. They are found guilty, and to be executed, but because of their possible utility to the world, they are offered an out: accept a "mark of justice", and from now on kept on a very tight leash by the clergy, sent mostly on monster cleaning missions.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0295.html
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0568.html

Now, fair warning: Some players might see any "in-game" challenge to their murder-hobo tendencies as "part of the game". In other words, they might find it fun that the world does not like being robbed, and try to push the envelope as far as they can, like if they were trying to see how many stars they can survive in GTA. You need to decide whether you are OK if they decide to go that way.

That is why I asked you the first question in the post. If you want to play "this" game, it could be fun. But it is SM-kinda fun, the GM and the players need to keep tabs on each other to make sure that they still enjoy the abuse.

But if muder-hoboing is not what you want for your D&D campaign, the most effective way to deal with it is to have a frank talk with your PLAYERS about what you want for your game night.

Let us know how it goes, Oman!

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I like you, Claus.

[Claus]

Awww <3 Pokemon Avatars Unite!

[Oman]

Claus thanks, you're a real peach

[Oman]

Playing in about 12 hours. I've got a lot of shit prepped. Starting to invoke the horror elements and give them their first glimpse of the big bad. Getting poker chips for better tracking of Inspiration. Getting literal biscuits to give out when people do interesting shit.

I'm gonna start incentivising behaviour.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

Playing in about 12 hours. I've got a lot of shit prepped. Starting to invoke the horror elements and give them their first glimpse of the big bad. Getting poker chips for better tracking of Inspiration. Getting literal biscuits to give out when people do interesting shit.

I'm gonna start incentivising behaviour.

I'm excited to hear how it goes!

Good luck!

[Oman]

Okay I don't know how much of this I'll get done on my phone while in line to vote but I started by deciding to give them some more information about who they're tracking. They were visited by dreams, which I'd printed out and given to them. One of them had an excellent reaction by being usure if she should confront the npc that she was given information on. It was beautiful to see that character and player hesitation. The sheets with the dreams on them I took off them after they read it, and so they were really struggling to recall details after an hour or so. Emulated dreams exactly how I wanted them to. Combat is starting to get more complex too.

Oh my inspiration points idea worked a treat. Using poker chips makes them all want them so much more! These guys are really getting themselves together. Character is starting to be developed, so hot.

We might not have everyone together for the next one so instead of running a finale or splitting the finale into two, I'm going to rub an event where they are going to build and define the big bad by interacting with the cursed residents of the village. I'm going to use seven deadly sins as a build point. More when I get home.

[Claus]

I really like your idea for handling dreams, and will try to use it in the future, Oman

[Oman]

So I want to build this Big Bad out of aspects, kind of in a fate style, because I think this will be an investigation session. As I was saying I think I'll write for 5 or 7 aspects, with them discovering them through...doing different things. I'm not really sure exactly what. I'm thinking cursed village at the foot of this manor, the people of the village will give them information (i.e. allow the players to write the aspects).

So I want them to know: Who the cult is, Who their big bad is, What they want, What happens if they do get what they want, What happens if they don't get what they want, how to defeat them, and maybe one or two cool other facts. Something else you'll tell me.

I'm thinking a mix of puzzles, maybe one fight (maybe not), some investigation stuff, some (mis)fortune cookie events. Maybe let them find a map or a blueprint to the manor. Does anyone know a good investigation adventure they can link me that I can canabilise? I don't mind the system at all.

I'll be back once I've fleshed out my plan to rave about how much I think it'll work.

[Glork]

Sounds great overall!

A small/easy fight is probably not a bad idea. You don't want it to take a lot of time, but a concrete reminder that the cult is *dangerous* can help drive home the Big Bas effect. Make them fight some minions or monsters. Like I said, nothing terribly difficult or time consuming, just something to round out the experience.

[Oman]

I'm thinking I might do it as a FATE or 4E style skill challenge. The complaint from my players so far is that they're not sure of how to combat outside of "I hit him with my sword". So I figure a skill challenge type of combat will be at least something interesting, but you're right, reinforcing the danger they face.

[GreyICE]

Just show them this clip:



They'll never want to stand there and hit things with swords again.

[Claus]

If you are not careful, "skill challenge thing" will not be very different from "I hit them with my (sword) skill".

It all depends if you are doing map battles or not, but I'd try to look for terrain effects that they can activate to shake up the combat. I usually shit on 4E, but that was one thing that was pretty easy to do with that system.

For 5E, you can look at the many special abilities/spells to see combinations that make the combat more interesting: For example, rogues can hide, and get advantages on attacks from hiding. This gives them a devastating hit-and-run strategy, and the players have to figure out how to neutralize that, you cant just stand and swing while the rogue only attacks you when he can crit.

If you have many "weak" enemies, you can have them bull rush and pin a player to the ground. They can help each other for bonuses in this check, and a grabbed, prone character will have disadvantage on attacks, and enemies attack him on advantage.

Terrain is always good: Remember, you can move, shoot/cast, and move again. So mages should stay behind walls at all times. Darkness followed by fireball is great.

Or you can have something as a combat in a maze, and the best way for the players would be to try and find a way to flank the enemies to "gank the mage".

Of course, the problem is that many times the players do not see all these possibilities, even if you prepare for them -- so it is useful to have a weak enemy try these tactics on the players first. Have the goblin throw the iron ball chained to the ceiling at the players, and when the players decide to turn the tables on the enemies, they will feel double smart.

Cheers!

[Oman]

It all depends if you are doing map battles or not,

I am starting to do map battles as of this session, they're starting to get complicated enough.

Interesting terrain and interesting consequences will be the key. I think you're right there.

[Claus]

So in my table the Paladin (who now is playing a battle medic in our game), botched it really bad when trying to do some undercover questioning to find a missing person and almost got capped in his ass. I had to dive in and save his sorry hide while rest of the group was running around like headless chickens D-:

But the worst part is that the player is really bummed at not being able to express himself in the questioning scene. He has difficulty improvising, is being ESL does not improve things. And now I have to pick up the pieces *sigh*

[Oman]

Okay so last week we ran the intermission/stake building session and it worked *REALLY WELL!*

So they're approaching the Death House and I decided to build a small dilapidated village at the foot of the Death House based on the five stages of grieving (death, get it?).

The first house they enter is Denial, a woman in her prime tending to a flower shop. From the outside the flower shop is falling apart, inside it's pristine and bright. She gives them information about what the village used to be like (which is how she sees it now). She talks about the children coming to her for flowers for their father's funeral. She gives them a date to anchor all the events to (about 2000 years before - like seriously FUCK Forgotten Realms calendar systems, I'm going rogue!) They talk to her a bit, take her outside where she is hit with the realisations of her reality and collapses to the floor. She's walked back inside and perks right up again, denying anything being wrong. Our Sorc detects magic, notices a lot of illusions everywhere, specifically on her and in the pot of a nearby flower. One of our barbs steals the sunflower and when they walk outside with it, it dies, the clay crumbles, the dirt molds, and the 2000 years hit it at once. Inside is a small magical parchment.

At this point I pass a piece of paper and a pen over to the Dwarf Barb and tell her she finds some information on the big bad! She writes "The Hipster King, our overlord, is weakened by the ashes of burnt vintage objects." (oh by the way, for some reason they've decided that being 2000 years in the past means this cult is full of ultimate hipsters. It's great theme and gives a lot of levity to a dark setting).

The second house is Anger. There's a fire inside so hot that the rain is steaming from their cloaks 20 feet out. By the time they're at the door they're sweating (except the tiefling who reports the situation as "pleasant"). The open the door to find a mountain of a half-orc (the term I used in my Australian game is "Half Orc, Half Brick Shithouse"). He and the fire seem to be linked, with the fire roaring as he yells, ebbing and flowing with his deep breaths. The orc drinks from a clear glass that is covered by his enormous fist but is later revealed to be a green bubbling acid-like substance. If they perceived well (they didn't) they'd see the parchment they're looking for in the bottom of it. The Half-Orc wants to be helpful but demands reparations. He reveals these adventurers aren't the last and he's sick of being beguiled, fought, and stolen from. He'll give them the information, but he demands some suitable amount of gold, items, or blood in return. The PCs were given the option to throw these into the fire as an offering, but instead the Bard casts Friends, charms the fucking pants off this fellow Half-Orc (I love my half-orc bard, you honestly can't imagine how much I love him, the player is p cute too) and gets given what he needs. The Orc smashes the glass into the table, giving the bard the parchment. The Barbarian (who has been drinking roadies all this time) pisses on the fire, flushing it down to coals and putting the Half-Orc into a deep sleep (which was an alternative solution, I guess )

I give the Bard a piece of paper and pen and receive back "The King bears pink skin as strong as steel and armoured scales as brittle as autumn leaves." (Have I mentioned how much I love my Bard?!)

The next is bargaining. They enter a guild hall and are given the option to one vs one duel a big dwarf blacksmith and a lithe half-elf rogue. This was played as a 4e-type Skill Challenge with the dueler's making strength checks to knock their opponent down, athletics to get higher ground, arcana checks to create illusions to distract, all that kind of stuff. Really cool to see them thinking of different ways to solve the combat problem ("Prestidigitation says I can soil an area of 1m^2. Does that mean I can soil the grip of her greatsword and make it so slippery she'll drop it?" "FUCK YES IT DOES ARCANA CHECK PLZ!"). Did it with 6 successes before 6 failures, and they ended up winning 6:5. I gave them all some weak magic items (One unreplenishable charge of a first level spell, or +1 to a specific check, or something like that) just putting 9 on the table and letting them each pick the one they wanted. Didn't get as much from this as I'd wanted. Maybe I needed to hype the items more. Hmmm.

Gave the rogue (who had spent her successes sneaking and climbing up on to the mantle to retrieve the parchment she spotted during the fight) the pen and paper and got "Just a real bad guy - Vegan, - Grew up in the dark." By the way the rogue and I are flirting and she's super cute.

Next was Depression. They find themselves in an empty library with a code scratched on a mirror. The code leads to the title of a book in which they'll find what they want. The mirror is partly the clue, but as they got a little stuck and started exploring they found the library was perfectly symmetrical, with mirrors on either side. Looking through they can line up the letters indicating the contents of the racks so that it shows a clear Atbash cypher (z=a y=b x=c etc). Half the group solved it without that clue! Very impressed. Gave the cleric and other barbarian (who were the first to solve it) the parchment that they found in the book it led to, received: "The Hipster King long ago abandoned his throne, taking his two beasts, Insta and Gram."

Finally acceptance. They walk into the non-descript guardhouse (defined entirely by being non-descript in a beautiful, though dilapidated town). The guy inside is what remains of the militia. He's a jolly round-faced guy. Think of the police in Sherlock Holmes stories but with more laughter. He's aware of everything that's going on. It's his job to prep the adventurers. That's what he does. He gives them supplies and, of course, a piece of parchment. After he gives them the envelope he opens another drawer, takes out another piece of parchment, puts it in another envelope and places it in the first drawer (for the next adventurers to arrive). I spoke a lot about how they weren't the first, and may not be the last, setting the stakes that failure is a very real possibility for them. My sorcerer writes the last one "I turn your darkest fears into reality. Also I'm, like, super fond of cats."

They spend the night in the cells of the guardhouse, looking up at the house, watching as the windows shift toward them, the door creaks open and the house eagerly inhales.



Overall a really good session, the cards-as-aspects thing is stolen from FATE and worked great to get involvement. They're all super ready to take down this horrible vegan hipster king, and I'm eager to watch them.

I've got an hour before my flight now, going through Death House and figuring out which rooms I want them to encounter and which are boring. Figuring out maps, and of course, doing the final designs of the Hipster King. This is the final sesh so I need a nice epilogue/satisfying conclusion, I've got some ideas about them coming out and seeing the residents of the town acknowledging what they've done, feeling their curses lifting from them, and then the town vanishing away.

TL;DR BIG LESSONS:

• I found a really good result telling players what the stakes were. "He is happy to work with you, but he want reparations." "They will fight you, not a fight to the death but a display of skill. You won't be killing these two, but you'll be displaying how much better you are at fighting than they are." And I'm going to start this one with "Don't be mistaken, these stakes are for the (world, region, collapse of an ultimate evil)."
  
• More player interaction is always better. Giving them the option to design their own baddie is something I'd like to do session one, but more collaboratively, so that the tone isn't as discordant as this one.
  
• Learning what to tell them at the start and what to hide. In this one I said "this is how the curse works. You'll all be getting cursed this session to allow you to enter the mists. You'll be visiting a series of people who will all give you information on the big bad and YOU'LL be the ones writing that information. Start thinking now." I hid that it was about the five stages of grief until we'd hit depression, then I challenged the psych student and she didn't piece it together. As soon as I told them I got this really satisfying "ooooh!" "YES! Denial, anger." and it made that last room really easy because when they asked questions I just said "he's acceptance. He accepts. This is his job and he does it. He doesn't care if you succeed or fail, that's out of his sphere of influence" and they just understood the character from the outset. Some stuff is good to hide, some stuff is necessary to tell them up front.

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*****

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Claus I'm really interested in the ESL thing and the specific struggles that gives you. Players bummed at not being able to express themselves is rough, I've very interested in how that is going to affect how he works to express his goals in the future. Keep us updated on that

[Claus]

Oh man, Oman, that was a fantastic idea! I loved every second of it. Specially how you let your players build the final evil boss. Now I want to move this thread to the speakeasy so you can tell us how you are assembling the next session without risking spoiling it to your players.

As for my session, every week I write an In-character game summary to the group, and I was planning on writing one that tried to cast the events from last session in a better light, such as "what did we learn"? Unfortunately, I had some personal shit going on and didn't find the time. The session is in about 4 hours from now. Who knows? Maybe I can write something during the professor meeting.

Cheers!

[hasdgfas]

Does anyone have any experience with Paranoia?

I'll be running a short 1-2 session game of it soonish and want to try to learn a bit from others' experience. I'll be using the Playtest rules for the new Kickstarted version of the game, but my understanding is they borrowed heavily from the old version of the game, so while the mechanics may not be identical, I think the ideas are.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I do!

I run a lot of Paranoia games. What would you like to know/ask?

[GreyICE]

I do!

Remember, as much fun as it is to kill them like their lives are meaningless it's nothing like the feeling you get when you watch them all kill each other for pointless reasons. Then execute the survivors for getting blue paint on themselves because it turns out the commie cell they blew up with the listening device they were supposed to plant (remember, all gadgets have yields) was stockpiling blue paint.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I do!

Remember, as much fun as it is to kill them like their lives are meaningless it's nothing like the feeling you get when you watch them all kill each other for pointless reasons. Then execute the survivors for getting blue paint on themselves because it turns out the commie cell they blew up with the listening device they were supposed to plant (remember, all gadgets have yields) was stockpiling blue paint.

Also, I encourage you to do what I do with all new players in Paranoia:

Give them a blue pen to write their char. sheets on.

Then rip up the one they just finished, and tell them the friend computer didn't give them clearance, then hand them a red pen or a pencil.

[GreyICE]

But be nice to them since they're new. Tell them that you'll give them a special gadget that will help with the mission.

Make sure to describe everything, the blinking lights, the console, the red warning label, the green label and green button it takes to activate.

Kill them if they read the green text and press the green button like it tells them to, that's above their clearance level.

This helps weed out slow learners.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

Oh, and don't forget to make their first mission something very simple: Going to turn a generator back on.

Of course, the hallway to the generator is painted in Ultraviolet paint (the highest clearance level) so anyone who walks into it will instantly die.

So give them some cans of red paint!

Oh, and make sure to give one person arbitrarily at the start of the game a higher clearance level than the others. It won't have much effect in game, but it will make everyone want to kill them so they can rise in clearance level for catching commie mutant traitor scum!

[GreyICE]

You overlike the cans of red paint. It's a hack~ The players should feel clever for finding it and using it.

Then of course Friend Computer will tell them that due to abuse by commie mutant traitors paint has been restricted to people of Green clearance and above. Also that their next task is to go repaint all the hallways that the commie mutant traitors painted over.

[GreyICE]

But seriously, if you do get new players, don't give them the manual. Before the game tell them that there's a potential for a few players to be mutants or members of a secret society (but they could all be loyal troubleshooters). Make cards for the mutants and secret societies, shuffle them up, hand them out. Tell them they'll get a 5 minute session with the GM to discuss their secret objectives and powers if they have any, or you'll just discuss Pokémon Go or something if they don't have any.

Needless to say all new players will be mutant secret society traitors. Press your lips together. Ask them if they're up to the challenge, tell them if they really need to you can redeal but you'd prefer it to be luck based. Make them feel special for their secret betrayal mission, and clever when they're carrying it out.

Everyone's a mutant and a member of a secret society of course. But the longer they don't realize that the funnier it is. Oh remember they draw a new mutation every clone. See how many clones deep they have to get to figure it out.