Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

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Judge Dredd said:
TL:DR: How could I run a megadungeon in a modern day setting without turning it into Stalker or SCP?
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My two initial thoughts were inspired by the movies Sorcerer and Southern Comfort. The first would see your group doing a transport through some shirt part of the world and shenanigans and hijinks ensue from any manner of things, weather, nature, rebels, the man etc. The other would be a sort of escape or hunting down of someone(s) through their own home turf and the locals are just as inhospitable as the locale.
 
Judge Dredd said:
TL:DR: How could I run a megadungeon in a modern day setting without turning it into Stalker or SCP?


I've been putting some thought into turning my occasional spy themed one shots into a megadungeon, or at least a multi session dungeon, perhaps with some overland travel as well. But I've been having problems figuring out the specifics of it. I have a few ideas but none I'm 100% happy with.

The most obvious is something like SCP, Stalker, or the backrooms. A facility or zone where monsters are everywhere and it's up to the player characters to deal with it. This it also explains magical loot since they're weird artifacts from the zone. But I want to avoid an apocalyptic horror scenario if I can, as well as side step questions like why they don't send in the military.

My second idea is an Indiana Jones style adventure where there is some kind of treasure or VIP in a remote location people are trying to get. The main problem here is creative. What kind of worthwhile monsters and loot could I include without turning it into a horror game?

My third idea is to go full fantasy. Make something like Rifts where there's fantasy creatures in our modern day, make a fantasy setting where technology is on par with today, or run an isekai plot where a whole bunch of modern equipment has made the jump as well.
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Half-Life. The players are in or get sent to help fix a situation that's not yet under control. So the military is there but either they already got their asses kicked and had to pull back, or they're waiting outside keeping anything from escaping and someone up high is giving them orders to stay put.
 
Judge Dredd said:
TL:DR: How could I run a megadungeon in a modern day setting without turning it into Stalker or SCP?


I've been putting some thought into turning my occasional spy themed one shots into a megadungeon, or at least a multi session dungeon, perhaps with some overland travel as well. But I've been having problems figuring out the specifics of it. I have a few ideas but none I'm 100% happy with.

The most obvious is something like SCP, Stalker, or the backrooms. A facility or zone where monsters are everywhere and it's up to the player characters to deal with it. This it also explains magical loot since they're weird artifacts from the zone. But I want to avoid an apocalyptic horror scenario if I can, as well as side step questions like why they don't send in the military.

My second idea is an Indiana Jones style adventure where there is some kind of treasure or VIP in a remote location people are trying to get. The main problem here is creative. What kind of worthwhile monsters and loot could I include without turning it into a horror game?

My third idea is to go full fantasy. Make something like Rifts where there's fantasy creatures in our modern day, make a fantasy setting where technology is on par with today, or run an isekai plot where a whole bunch of modern equipment has made the jump as well.
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I think a good idea that I've been mulling over is an Escape From Tarkov style situation, where your characters are mercs stuck in the middle of an effective war zone, law and order has broken down, and the international community have basically cordoned off the area because it would be an international clusterfuck to get involved. But its more than that. There was a company involved, and they were doing various unethical experiments. They've got a secret facility under the city where the action is taking place. They've got mercs on the ground trying to gather or destroy evidence of their actions. Another government (to use the Tarkov example, lets say Russia), has sent their own deniable government paid mercs to try to gather evidence of the Company's wrongdoing. But both merc companies have effectively become cutoff from their masters, so its every man for himself as each side tries to get out of the city. Except, this company wasn't just doing any old unethical experiments, but the type that bring in monsters and magic and shit. This justifies why there are magical items and monsters. Other than the mercs, most civilians have evacuated, but those who are left are either in one of the few safe zones (where the vendors are located) or have become scavs (scavengers) who work in small groups and will shoot anyone not themselves, or cultists, that worship the evil things unleashed by the company.

The player characters are members of one or the other mercenary companies, and are just one group of mercs trying to get out of the quarantined city. They have to trade with vendors for goods, or otherwise find whatever they need in the city, just like in Tarkov. Any mercs they meet, even if they are ostensibly from "their" faction, maybe hostile. Scavs will always be hostile if you meet them, while the cultists skulk in the shadows and actively kill anyone trying to mess with them.
 
The Demon Pimp of Razgriz said:
Other than the mercs, most civilians have evacuated, but those who are left are either in one of the few safe zones (where the vendors are located) or have become scavs (scavengers) who work in small groups and will shoot anyone not themselves, or cultists, that worship the evil things unleashed by the company.
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And if you want to stick with the dungeon thing, every level below is an earlier civilization, like the Roman baths below some current English cities.

But then if you go below that, there are even earlier civilizations. At first, they're human civilizations, although not previously known.

And then after that, after they go down several levels and encounter a sealed portal. . .well, you know where this goes.
 
Judge Dredd said:
TL:DR: How could I run a megadungeon in a modern day setting without turning it into Stalker or SCP?
Click to expand...
Favelacrawl
Can you find the hidden cash stash of gang boss Pedro "Liga Lendas Alimentador" Oliviera without ending up inside a stack of tires and on fire?

Or maybe set in Amerikwa if you want a more zombie apocalypse style ghettocrawl, who needs superatural or scifi elements when you have fent?
 
A different member of our group who hasn't done it before wants to try DMing after being inspired the other night, and now he wants to session zero us tomorrow for his homebrew campaign in place of our normal campaign. When we literally just finished the jungle hexcrawl last week and are about to start the second chapter of Tomb of Annihilation. Nobody else aside from my original DM apparently has a problem with this.

Pray for me.
 
I want to tell an adorable story tonight, about one of our party members. He's a shaman of Erastil, the Pathfinder god of bucolic ruralite comfiness. He's got a massive family back home since Erastil's teachings can best be summed up in two commandments: "plow your fields" and "plow your wife". Skipping over a lot of detail, he ended up doing the brave and entirely foolhardy thing of desecrating (well, technically it would be consecrating) a shrine to Apollyon with his bare hands. Unsurprisingly, this gave him the bubonic plague. Slightly less unsurprisingly, this gave him the Plagued corruption. (The corruption rules are a real piece of work, but that's another story.) Fortunately, he had a high-level cleric nearby who was able to diagnose the problem and smack him with a high-level Heal spell. This supressed the disease itself, but not its symptoms or the corruption. So, what does our dear shaman do, thinking that he's going to die? He locks himself in his quarters, dashes off a few Sendings to his wife and the Ranger order to which he belongs detailing the situation, and then burns a whole bunch of high-level spell slots casting Dream so that he can appear to his children in their sleep and read them bedtime stories from the Parables of Erastil. He continues to do this every night that we are in transit, which has been about two weeks so far. Here we have a man, empowered by a god and the spirits of nature to bend the laws of nature to his whim, and his first instinct is to use that power to set his affairs in order and give his children some last good memories of their father who left one day and never returned.
 
I'm probably going to raise my concerns and just be honest, that I'd rather just keep going on a campaign that actually has momentum than put it on hold to start our fourth one as a group. Granted, the second one stalling was partly my fault, but I'd like to get back to it eventually when I have a better setup for it (megadungeons are hard on paper). Hopefully my friend and original DM will back me up, and if not then I'll force him to by saying he has the same problem with this.

I'll clarify that this isn't entirely out of left field, the guy's been talking about wanting to DM for a while and I suppose has been working on ideas in his spare time. It doesn't sound awful, and at least it's not fully homebrew; it's set in the Forgotten Realms and starts off at level 1 with being hired as guards for a caravan. I'm just not in the mood to build another character and be forced to set yet another one aside (I'll get to play my wizard again one day, I'm sure). Even if this is just setting things up to play down the line if and when we finish ToA, I don't want to deal with it right now, we're right there at the city c'mon I wanna go kill some necromancer bastards already.
 
I know I just appear occasionally in this thread to vent / seek moral support but... Well it's time again. :(

I think, and I don't really want to vocalise this, I just don't like my group. Historically I've always run games for friends. Gaming with people I wasn't already friends with is a fairly new situation for me as being recent in the area I thought gaming might be a good way to meet some people and also keep a foot in the hobby. So I advertised a game and joined up with a semi-existing group. Don't really socialise with them outside the game. I'm currently GM'ing.

I mentioned this in a previous post that I'm the oldest in the group and two players in particular are noticeably younger. Previous session one of these was merrily torturing captives for information (unnecessarily, simple intimidation would have done it but they went straight for maiming). They steal everything no matter how petty. The campaign isn't focused around heroism but when a mission is to pull off some big score and players are trying to nail down things worth little cash it's just... Honestly it feels like someone running round a video game smashing open containers in the area they pass through to pack everything in their inventory. But it's the sadism and reckless disregard for consequence that mostly puts me off.

I can add consequences for their actions. But it's going to take the campaign down a path I didn't plan and wont enjoy. Sure, they can be arrested, sure I could run adventures set in prison, sure I could have revenge squads seek him out and run adventures where they're on the run or have to defend themselves, etc. But it's just going to make my campaign about endlessly circling the drain, never getting into the grand adventure and high stakes I have planned out. Just a treadmill of stupidity and consequence.

But I think it's the cruelty that bothers me the most. The pettiness and disregard for consequence close behind.
 
King Dead said:
I'm probably going to raise my concerns and just be honest, that I'd rather just keep going on a campaign that actually has momentum than put it on hold to start our fourth one as a group. Granted, the second one stalling was partly my fault, but I'd like to get back to it eventually when I have a better setup for it (megadungeons are hard on paper). Hopefully my friend and original DM will back me up, and if not then I'll force him to by saying he has the same problem with this.

I'll clarify that this isn't entirely out of left field, the guy's been talking about wanting to DM for a while and I suppose has been working on ideas in his spare time. It doesn't sound awful, and at least it's not fully homebrew; it's set in the Forgotten Realms and starts off at level 1 with being hired as guards for a caravan. I'm just not in the mood to build another character and be forced to set yet another one aside (I'll get to play my wizard again one day, I'm sure). Even if this is just setting things up to play down the line if and when we finish ToA, I don't want to deal with it right now, we're right there at the city c'mon I wanna go kill some necromancer bastards already.
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I would advise you suggest to the blossoming DM that he co-DM the next segment with your current DM.
And if he's dead set on doing his own thing, that he do a one-shot/megadungeon with his homebrew to see how badly it explodes.
 
Alabama Gamer said:
Here we have a man, empowered by a god and the spirits of nature to bend the laws of nature to his whim, and his first instinct is to use that power to set his affairs in order and give his children some last good memories of their father who left one day and never returned.
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“The first gift you ever receive is your family. A man grows from the seeds his parents plant.”
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Overly Serious said:
I know I just appear occasionally in this thread to vent / seek moral support but... Well it's time again. :(

I think, and I don't really want to vocalise this, I just don't like my group. Historically I've always run games for friends. Gaming with people I wasn't already friends with is a fairly new situation for me as being recent in the area I thought gaming might be a good way to meet some people and also keep a foot in the hobby. So I advertised a game and joined up with a semi-existing group. Don't really socialise with them outside the game. I'm currently GM'ing.

I mentioned this in a previous post that I'm the oldest in the group and two players in particular are noticeably younger. Previous session one of these was merrily torturing captives for information (unnecessarily, simple intimidation would have done it but they went straight for maiming). They steal everything no matter how petty. The campaign isn't focused around heroism but when a mission is to pull off some big score and players are trying to nail down things worth little cash it's just... Honestly it feels like someone running round a video game smashing open containers in the area they pass through to pack everything in their inventory. But it's the sadism and reckless disregard for consequence that mostly puts me off.

I can add consequences for their actions. But it's going to take the campaign down a path I didn't plan and wont enjoy. Sure, they can be arrested, sure I could run adventures set in prison, sure I could have revenge squads seek him out and run adventures where they're on the run or have to defend themselves, etc. But it's just going to make my campaign about endlessly circling the drain, never getting into the grand adventure and high stakes I have planned out. Just a treadmill of stupidity and consequence.

But I think it's the cruelty that bothers me the most. The pettiness and disregard for consequence close behind.
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Sometimes its best to just walk away.

Gaming life has been so much better since I fired my problem players. Yes, it'd be nice to have more than two players, but trying to manage the problematic ones was just a constant waiting for one of them to flip out, and its been such a relief to not have have to keep waiting for that.

In my games, torture (beyond intimidation and a little smacking around) is always fatal - "the (usually injured) person you were torturing goes into shock and dies when you break their arm" "You go to cut off a finger, but they flinch, you nick an artery/cut off their hand and they bleed out in seconds" "the holy water burns of the necrotic spell animating the wight and it is now just a corpse". Homey don't play that shit.

I'm assuming you've already talked to your group.
Other than people being mature and playing along - which is hard when they aren't in the minority and everyone else is doing shit -
The only times I've seen needlessly sociopathic players get reformed is feeding them their own medicine. Prison is just more fun adventures, but suddenly having their shit stolen makes them realize how much having their shit stolen sucks. And that's an iffy problem, mostly the sociopaths just get bored and stop showing up when consequences happen and they don't get to live out their twisted power fantasy.

One guy I read about had his players get elevated to petty nobility, gave them a town and peasantry. He let them plan out and start building their keep, get involved in town business, basically got them to care about shit with tax income as the foot-in-the-door.
and then had a band of Orc adventurer-equivalents come through and raze the place while the players were away, killing nearly everyone in horrific ways. The players naturally went out for revenge and got it, but having cared about their own little town of NPCs made them stop being assholes to everyone they met in the game world because they would be reminded of one of the peasants they liked.

But to me, that's a lot of effort on something that might not work. I'd just drop the group and get the contact details from the one or two you said you liked, then try to find players who aren't weirdos.

That or just get them over to something OSR where characters get murked on the regular, so the guy they are torturing turns out to have had Blood Rot, and now their character has Blood Rot and is losing 1 max HP per day.
 
@Ghostse @Agent of Z.O.G. You're both right of course. But both solutions lead to exactly what I want to avoid - the circling of the drain that is the endless of spiral of gutter games played by gutter characters who never get out of the gutter. The game is supposed to be introduce some low-level adventures and challenges and opponents, cut your teeth on them and see the progression of characters and story to grander adventures, higher stakes, deadlier opponents. Instead it feels like it will just grind down to ever pettier and less pleasant stakes.

And I don't want to punish the players for not playing how I want to play. What we want out of the games is simply too different. I'd wish them every happiness playing with a GM that wanted to run that sort of game. But I don't think that's me. Feels like the only winning move is not to play.
 
Agent of Z.O.G. said:
It's easy to act like serial killer in a time with no police/detectives and where your victim isn't likely to be found.
One way to alleviate this is to Try Not Playing DnD™ so if the village turns against you it's an actual threat and not just a nuisance because you're magical superheroes.
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A pissed off village could be really fun to write. Every small town has weird characters in it and sitting to write up some enraged peasants could turn into something great. Maybe look at some weird medieval jobs for inspiration.

That pissed off gong farmer will ruin your life if he wants and the bone collector doesn't ask questions sort of thing.
 
Overly Serious said:
I know I just appear occasionally in this thread to vent / seek moral support but... Well it's time again. :(

I think, and I don't really want to vocalise this, I just don't like my group. Historically I've always run games for friends. Gaming with people I wasn't already friends with is a fairly new situation for me as being recent in the area I thought gaming might be a good way to meet some people and also keep a foot in the hobby. So I advertised a game and joined up with a semi-existing group. Don't really socialise with them outside the game. I'm currently GM'ing.

I mentioned this in a previous post that I'm the oldest in the group and two players in particular are noticeably younger. Previous session one of these was merrily torturing captives for information (unnecessarily, simple intimidation would have done it but they went straight for maiming). They steal everything no matter how petty. The campaign isn't focused around heroism but when a mission is to pull off some big score and players are trying to nail down things worth little cash it's just... Honestly it feels like someone running round a video game smashing open containers in the area they pass through to pack everything in their inventory. But it's the sadism and reckless disregard for consequence that mostly puts me off.

I can add consequences for their actions. But it's going to take the campaign down a path I didn't plan and wont enjoy. Sure, they can be arrested, sure I could run adventures set in prison, sure I could have revenge squads seek him out and run adventures where they're on the run or have to defend themselves, etc. But it's just going to make my campaign about endlessly circling the drain, never getting into the grand adventure and high stakes I have planned out. Just a treadmill of stupidity and consequence.

But I think it's the cruelty that bothers me the most. The pettiness and disregard for consequence close behind.
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I strongly, strongly suggest you give them the consequences they deserve.

I feel for you, I do. And you might wish to approach the non-retard players and ask them first about your problem children before pulling the trigger. But make it clear that the hammer is going to have to fall if they want to play an actual RPG with a story as opposed to some paint-by-numbers video game with pencil and paper.

They might learn. They might not. My guess is there will be a whole lot of 'What? Why are we getting targeted by hit squads?!' initially. Whether they actually absorb the lesson, well, hard to say.
 
Capsaicin Addict said:
I strongly, strongly suggest you give them the consequences they deserve.
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Is it really better if you move from comic sociopathy to precise, calculated sociopathy? Is it a winning move when your players instantly zone in on the weaknesses in a community that you present and exploit them to get everyone in the community killed in a way that can't be traced back to them, and then can wait and pick off whoever comes for the community, claim whatever loot they wanted from the scavengers, and donate the rest back to families to look good and heroic for avenging the deaths they caused?

I think you are on the right track, though it will destroy the game and may break you up from the group; what you want from the game and what they want from the game are just too different. And while I generally disdain what pre-game session zero sessions have turned into, I really do think that talking with players about game expectations, themes, and sample encounters is a good way to come to consensus before you get too invested.

@Overly Serious, I hope you can find a group that fits your preferred style of gaming better.
 
Overly Serious said:
And I don't want to punish the players for not playing how I want to play. What we want out of the games is simply too different. I'd wish them every happiness playing with a GM that wanted to run that sort of game. But I don't think that's me. Feels like the only winning move is not to play.
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You don't really want a situation where you're fighting your own players. It's just not fun for anyone involved, outside of the occasional game (like Paranoia) where GM sadism is actively encouraged.

And if being a bunch of edgelords for its own sake is not what you're interested in, and what you want is something they're not interested in, that's how you will end up.

Really, though, I generally expect players to act like people in a world actually would. So, for instance, in a Stormbringer campaign, you're really looking at bad vs. evil. The two dominant nationalities are Melnibonean and Pan Tangian, both utterly warped and degenerate civilizations based on sadism and perversion. Also they hate and despise each other.

Part of the challenge (other than just descending into pure grimderp) is actually having characters that act like members of these civilizations but yet are capable of getting along well enough not to kill each other instead of their mutual enemies, or at least to hold off on the internecine backstabbing and bloodletting until they were done with the main goal.

(Nightmare mode is actually playing a party of ethical heroes who strictly adhere to moral standards, don't deal with demons, etc.)

A problem with RPGs is it really takes just one bad player who insists on acting out of character for the world to disrupt the entire atmosphere.

It's not really worth it.
 
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