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- Jan 18, 2017
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)
- Thread starter Surtur
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- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
I have three.
This one I blame myself for. There is a locked door, a panel in the middle of the floor, and lots of enscriptions depicting a holy figure bathed in light. I forget the exact clue, but it something about about holy or magical light. The solution was to stand on the center platform and cast light or some other similar light or radiant spell and the door opens. The Paladin had decided to take this session (and the rest of the campaign) off, and the sorcerer didn't have the light spell.
After way too much time of refusing to allow me to give them a hint, they eventually asked the answer. I told them and they weren't happy. They argued after the fact that spells like prestidigitation don't technically create magical light, but can light a candle, etc. It was strange as the players were arguing why their powers wouldn't have worked.
The second and third were games I was a player in. The DM was a fan of riddles, but they'd often stump the party for way too long.
I forget the exact numbers, but there was a puzzle where you have 9 coins an a set of scales that works 3 times. How do you find the fake? You weigh half the coin vs the other half, take the lighter pile and weigh both halves of that, and then one more time gets you the fake. I had just done this puzzle recently in some other context so sat this one out. The smart but shy players would suggest the correct solution, but the louder, more extroverted players kept suggesting dumb solutions over the top.
The third was a puzzle that involved a rectangle of a certain size and a laser at a certain angle. How many bounces until it hits the opposite corner? It was too many to practically count, but there was some math you could use to calculate it. The problem was the DM had moved some of the numbers around and accidentally made the puzzle unwinnable, but no one (not even the DM) knew that. So we spent what felt like an hour and change trying to solve a problem that was literally impossible.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
usually people pick a class that fits the campaign (adventure etc), or what they want to play. not saying you can't bring an investigator on a hex crawl or a mounted class while climbing a mountain (and then you could always ride a goat), it really depends on the table and your DM.
one reason I don't even see a problem with that is that "better" is all relative, especially in tabletop where you can make up a lot of shit up on the fly. even if your table is full of munchkin wizards and you're the sole martial you can still have fun if the DM works with you (and "fun" is relative in itself). or if you run something low-magic and everyone's a martial suddenly it doesn't matter how much "better" a wizard is etc.
maybe it's just me, but especially after 5e you got a lot of powergaming faggotry (not saying that never existed before, but in different scales) where it's all about MUH DEEPS like it's some MMO, not a roleplaying game. worse when it's all some shitty theorycrafting that's not even realistic or applicable just for the sake of it, which then in turn gets regurgitated constantly as some form gospel.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
I don't like doing "uncertain narration"/"fucking with frame of reference" because its a cheap trick when you control the view on reality (It wasn't a mountain! *zooms out* it was an elephant you stupid fucks! God you are all so fucking retarded and I'm so smart & clever. Hold on, I need to sniff this one...I had french toast for breakfast and the cinnamon adds a nice spicy note to my farts), but I'll do things like that with the big bad if the players are on the road to fucking themselves, or are disconnected from the narrative.
The illusory battle is not a complete waste of the players time because if they keep their tits below the boiling point, they get a preview of (some) of what the bigbad will be laying down on them.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Yeah, if the party attempts to go through another portal they shouldn't, I may spring that on them. The apprentice isn't technically able to do any more than occasionally telepathically communicate with adventurers (she's hidden herself within Undermountain itself so Halaster can't find her), but hey, rules are made to be broken, or at least bent a little.
There's actually a built-in second chance for character deaths in DotMM that you can optionally use. Instead of killing them outright, you can instead have them fade to black and reawaken in the Yawning Portal, except it's actually a mind flayer simulation called Alterdeep and they're trapped in stasis pods on the 17th level. You can then play out a scenario where the party slowly comes to realize they're in a simulation and can attempt to bargain with the ulitharid in charge to let them escape, likely by agreeing to deal with the githyanki on another level. Or, if the party is more of the chaotic sort, they might get kicked out for messing up the simulation too much, though that could get them sent to prison instead.
But realistically, that's a one-time surprise you can pull. It can be neat to turn a TPK around and give players a second chance to keep the dungeon crawl going, but once you've done it, you can't use the same trick again, lest they get the idea that death is inconsequential. Although, it could be funny if a particularly chaotic party kept "dying" and ending up back in Alterdeep, only for the ulitharid to immediately kick them out because "oh no, you're not ruining my simulation again."
There's actually a built-in second chance for character deaths in DotMM that you can optionally use. Instead of killing them outright, you can instead have them fade to black and reawaken in the Yawning Portal, except it's actually a mind flayer simulation called Alterdeep and they're trapped in stasis pods on the 17th level. You can then play out a scenario where the party slowly comes to realize they're in a simulation and can attempt to bargain with the ulitharid in charge to let them escape, likely by agreeing to deal with the githyanki on another level. Or, if the party is more of the chaotic sort, they might get kicked out for messing up the simulation too much, though that could get them sent to prison instead.
But realistically, that's a one-time surprise you can pull. It can be neat to turn a TPK around and give players a second chance to keep the dungeon crawl going, but once you've done it, you can't use the same trick again, lest they get the idea that death is inconsequential. Although, it could be funny if a particularly chaotic party kept "dying" and ending up back in Alterdeep, only for the ulitharid to immediately kick them out because "oh no, you're not ruining my simulation again."
IridiumDragon06
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2022
Why not make the mirror illusion fully diagetic? That is to say, for a first-time user for the mirror, they get pulled into the mirror and outside observers can see them fighting. If they lose, they get kicked out and the mirror goes dormant for a liitle while. You can lean into the illusion being programmed and acting in response to certain stimuli (fixed spell order if players take the same actions), and have the mirror illusion say every time that those entering are clearly not ready for the deeper mysteries, etc.
That way, you've got a clear deal-with-the-GM's-bullshit path; if the players can, through repeated iteration, find a sequence of events to cheese the illusory simulacram, they can get early access to the lower levels, but they'll still need the bare minimum offence potential to do the assault, they will have been fully warned of what lies below in terms of harm potential, and if they play straight, then they get the joy of coming back through when they are much more powerful and stomping that miserable simulacram into illusory dust legitimately.
My own experience as GM is that I like to have no more than one "It was all a dream!" moment per campaign, with fair signposting before the break-with-reality point, and I wouldn't want to waste that on a warning like this. But making the experience part of the dungeon itself and thus gamable means its doing its job; it's stopping the players from casually stumbling into a dangerous area, and signposting the dangerous area as dangerous but potentially interesting, in a memorable way so the PCs will want to come back to it.
That way, you've got a clear deal-with-the-GM's-bullshit path; if the players can, through repeated iteration, find a sequence of events to cheese the illusory simulacram, they can get early access to the lower levels, but they'll still need the bare minimum offence potential to do the assault, they will have been fully warned of what lies below in terms of harm potential, and if they play straight, then they get the joy of coming back through when they are much more powerful and stomping that miserable simulacram into illusory dust legitimately.
My own experience as GM is that I like to have no more than one "It was all a dream!" moment per campaign, with fair signposting before the break-with-reality point, and I wouldn't want to waste that on a warning like this. But making the experience part of the dungeon itself and thus gamable means its doing its job; it's stopping the players from casually stumbling into a dangerous area, and signposting the dangerous area as dangerous but potentially interesting, in a memorable way so the PCs will want to come back to it.
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2017
So, are you loading up Halaster's Dungeon with shit from the Grimtooth's Traps books just for fun?
Packing Undermountain with those traps was always the highlight of everyone's adventuring career.
Packing Undermountain with those traps was always the highlight of everyone's adventuring career.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I might sneak some extra traps in there at some point just for shits and gigs, though the party is pretty capable of doing damage to themselves on their own. I'd really like to do a one-shot of Tomb of Horrors with them, just to see how long it would take them to get themselves killed. I have at least one player that likes to go and interact with anything obviously magical without thinking, sometimes good (free wand pops out of the ceiling!), sometimes bad (you're stuck with a cursed sword that you can't let go of!). I figure he'd last maybe five minutes before the first trap ganks him.
Čmarobnjak
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2020
https://dysonlogos.blog/2020/12/25/a-dungeon-of-elves/
I would have posted this earlier but the Farms was getting ddos'd.
My meager Christmas gift for you is this one map adventure I found on the web.
Courtesy of Crosshead Studios
anti SJW
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2016
Years ago I was in a campaign where the DM had us stop the big bad by saying "the only way to defeat him is do X." We researched in game and prepped. Gone through in game hardships, ect..It was a long process, over 2 years of weekly games.
Then when we finally did X, DM said it didn't work and we'd have to try something else.
We were all very pissed. DM thought it was brilliant.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
On one hand, there is a certain self-satisfaction in trolling your players for all the shit they have put you through.
On the other, you need to make the rug-pull worth it and that's a very boring result.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
was your DM rian johnson?
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2021
>West End Games
Is this using their D6 system?
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2021
Nope, got it's own D20 based.
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2017
You gotta have Twilight 2000 and then play the modules where you grab a sub and make it back to the USA.
Fuck, those 80's games were fucking badass.
Love the black due with an M16. He's just fucking stoked to be there.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2019
This reminds me of an adventure I wrote and ran for my players. It was a mystery / crime adventure that all hinged on a single false premise. They could check the truth of the situation at any time fairly easily. Everything came down to whether I, as a GM, could mislead them away from that. I genuinely didn't know at the start if this would be one of the most fun adventures ever or if it would last literally ten minutes with a player saying: "I want to check if that's true" at the start. Nerve-wracking adrenaline roller-coaster for me as GM thinking on my feet as the villain.
I began by having the premise accepted as fact by everyone else when they arrived. The villain had fooled everyone else already and it's a bit like those con-artists who once they've been accepted by some individuals it's a lot easier to get accepted by the rest. So this helped establish the baseline and I backed that up by not immediately giving them time to check along the way. Though they could have been rude to NPCs and just gone off to make sure if they chose. But instead, more and more NPCs were introduced to them and more and more facts and opinions introduced based on the premise. I just needed to carry them down the road a little and once they were on it, they started exploring options within the premise rather than metaphorically back up the road to see if they actually wanted to go down it.
A player did say: "Do we want to check that for ourselves" fairly early on but I'd also taken care to make sure there were other things to check and some of those were a little more immediate, e.g. "NPC x will be leaving in an hour. If you want to question him it needs to be before that." Getting them to work under the basis of the premise for long enough for them to continue doing so was my aim and it more or less worked. The key to it being enjoyable was to let them do it to themselves, not force things in any way. And I feel I pulled that off. Lots of carrots, very little stick.
Ultimately such a big poppable balloon is going to be popped but that's okay. The goal was to make a fun puzzle and adventure for the PCs whilst still playing fair. There was no absurd Holmes-ian contrived hiding of information or wild coincidences. Just good old fashioned stage magician direction and showmanship. It helped that the adventure was populated by weird characters with lots of interesting stuff to unpack.
They had a good time and once one of them said decided to actually check what they'd been told when they arrived the whole thing wrapped up very quickly with a couple of action scenes and some cool dialogue. The villain actually got away but without his prize, which was a fun outcome as well. They actually liked/hated the villain and one of the PCs had actually slept with him during the adventure which I hadn't expected but made him even more memorable as a character. He was a large, personable and somewhat rotund character that I'd modelled partially on Gutman from The Maltese Falcon but much more superficially charming. In fact, The Maltese Falcon was my initial inspiration for the adventure though I expanded and changed it around a lot from there. And it was a Science Fiction setting so further changes again.
One of my best adventures I think, though I doubt I could pull it off today. Kept me on my toes like you wouldn't believe. I think it's fun for a GM to challenge themselves as well as players.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2021
I played a bit of it, (a scenario where someone got a working tank going and thought he was the Red Baron, terrorizing the countryside), but missed that module.
Also the "Totally not Bruce Springsteen/Kevin Bacon" vibes of the center character.
Cpt. Stud Beefpile
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2022
Here's an indie game that I actually wrote some content for waaay the fuck back in the day:
1d4chan.org
Engine Heart is set in a post-human world where the players are small service robots that survived and continue functioning after an unspecified apocalypse (vaguely implied to have been WW3). If you think "Brave Little Toaster" and cross it with "Fallout 4" you're pretty close.
Sadly despite the interesting premise, ease-of-play (you only need ONE kind of dice for all rolls), ease of making characters, some good reviews and getting kickstarted for print editions, EH fizzled into obscurity.
Part of the problem was that the settings included in the official books were too bare-bones - often a room had one or two short paragraphs and nothing had a map provided, which made it hard for rookie "Programmers" (DMs) or casual players.
Engine Heart is now abandonware; Viral Games' website has been offline and the print books unavailable for a decade.
Engine Heart - 1d4chan
Engine Heart is set in a post-human world where the players are small service robots that survived and continue functioning after an unspecified apocalypse (vaguely implied to have been WW3). If you think "Brave Little Toaster" and cross it with "Fallout 4" you're pretty close.
Sadly despite the interesting premise, ease-of-play (you only need ONE kind of dice for all rolls), ease of making characters, some good reviews and getting kickstarted for print editions, EH fizzled into obscurity.
Part of the problem was that the settings included in the official books were too bare-bones - often a room had one or two short paragraphs and nothing had a map provided, which made it hard for rookie "Programmers" (DMs) or casual players.
Engine Heart is now abandonware; Viral Games' website has been offline and the print books unavailable for a decade.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
Here's an indie game that I actually wrote some content for waaay the fuck back in the day:
Engine Heart - 1d4chan
Engine Heart is a role-playing game set in a post-human world. All the players are small service robots that have managed to survive and continue functioning after an unspecified apocalypse that's implied to been sudden large-scale warfare. If you think "Brave Little Toaster" and cross it with "Fallout 4" you're pretty close.
Sadly despite the interesting premise, ease-of-play (you only need ONE kind of dice for all rolls), ease of making characters, good reviews from critics and getting kickstarted enough to get print editions, EH fizzled out into utter obscurity.
Part of the problem was that the settings included in the official books were too bare-bones - often a room had one or two short paragraphs and nothing had a map provided. The "Programmer" (DM) was entirely on their own for all of that, which made it hard for rookie DM's or casual play.
Engine Heart can be considered abandonware at this point so feel free to pass around the PDF's and check it out. I may just dust off my old fan content if anyone wants to play.
Did this used to be called something else? Because sounds a lot like a game called "Power and Light"; definitely same premise.