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- Jun 16, 2019
PTSD flashbacks to when my party elected a coin as leader. "Which way do we want to go? Consult the Coin!"
Repeat ad infinitum.
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)
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- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
Honestly, the best tricks to "speed" up a dungeon is to limit the scale.
One of my biggest vices when it comes to DMing is I absolutely love designing dungeons and experimenting with them. I love especially the ones that are designed as ancient ruins and lost cities; and can go crazy with size due to that. I also learned very early that any dungeon larger than say a 30 x 30 map will take at least two sessions to clean out, and any one that has more than one level will take way longer.
So yeah, limit how big your dungeons are if you don't want them to be multisession explorations.
The next thing you do is you actually have to limit encounters, since encounters always suck up at least a half hour even with experienced players depending on the size. I often find that traps and environmental hazards tend to have the same effect but flow better. Throw in monsters when they make sense for the location, or if they are dawdling and arguing too much in an area.
Last thing I'd argue is if you use puzzles; as long as the party shows a decent logic to their solution, then accept it. If you're going to be persnickety over how they solve it, they're going to be stuck there for a while.
But yeah, unless the dungeon's small, it's going to be at least a couple sessions dude.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
My group has found a good way to make a dungeon feel densely populated without having a billion encounters: if the "encounter" would be of trivial difficulty, don't even tell the players to roll for initiative. Just roll one attack against each and declare they quickly dispatched that group of monsters.
The undead-infested catacomb goes ever deeper. The stairs deposit you at the entrance to a large hall with a handful of decrepit skeletons milling about in a mockery of their duties in life. Some sweep, some tend to the magical torches affixed to the walls, others still move ruined holy symbols from one side to the other. As your presence is noticed, their empty eye sockets turn towards you in unison and they stagger and clatter towards you. Disorganized and weak, the skeletons are no match for you. (Roll attacks.) Ragnar the Barbarian takes a small scratch to the arm while sending bones flying across the hall (that's 3 damage to you, Jeff), and Mara the Priestess has a quick scare as a previously unseen skeleton manages to grab onto her robes and claw at her before her holy mace reduces its skull to dust (that's 2 damage, Dave).
With the room secured, you find that it has exits on both sides and a heavy-lidded sarcophagus in an alcove in the far wall, behind an altar. What do you do?
Obviously, this works better when the party is already powerful enough that those threats are suitably small. It's also a trick that then demands the actual encounters to be more interesting than just "X monsters (type A), Y monsters (type B)" and no additional mechanics, because it implies trash-clearing to be not worth the players' time.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
@BlazikenLover
Another thing I forgot is to try to instill your dungeon with a sense of urgency. Have a steadily ticking clock with escalating bad things.
Maybe its a lava dungeon and the heat is slowly killing the players. Maybe its a sunken ruin that is flooding. Have the big-bad completing a ritual. You probably don't want them constantly under the gun, but make sure they understand that sitting around arguing is wasting valuable time.
One of my favorite things to do is have in-game things, like heat exhaustion from the lava heat, or how much longer till the BBG completes summoning the demons, tick up not based on game time but real world time. Every hour of real-life time, they need to make an a progressively more difficult endurance check; every two hours the BBG gets a couple more HP. stuff like that.
When I look at most puzzles I make sure there are three solutions - The right way, an alternate way, and a brute force way.
Unimportant puzzles, like opening a small treasure box I probably won't go this far, but anything required for progression; and if its a hardcore meatgrinder, approved solution (or related) or get fucked.
The right way is the the officially approved way. The alternate way is another way of getting through the puzzle that more-or-less meets the conditions. And finally there should be a way for the party to throw in the towel because they just aren't getting it.
For the right way, make sure the party has sufficient information about how to play the game. You don't have to literally spell it out (but you sort of do) but if the statues need to rotate, make sure there is something like scratches around their bases that show that they are supposed to rotate. If they need to pull levers, make sure there is something they've encountered that lets them tie lever colors = squence. IF there is danger, put a corpse somewhere.
The alternate way is another way the players can solve or get around the puzzle. This can be as simple as "They take their axe to both magic doors and ask them 'Did that hurt'?" or maybe earlier they found a key in the Guard Captain's secret stash that unlocks the door. Or maybe one of the doors is able to be flattered into giving up the solution. If the alternate solution requires equipment, put that equipment near by.
Thinking up an alternate solution/work around to the puzzle doesn't just give the players another way to get through, but it gets you thinking about other things the party might try and lets you be ready to either counter munchkins trying to exploit the game rules, or be ready if the players do try something similar.
Finally, have a cost ready for the players just being completely stumped.
And, again this is really only for puzzles that are needed to progress through the dungeon. Don't feel a need to let them eventually guess the gold vault combination.
But Figure out a time/HP/Resource cost for just "We're stuck and want to move on" - they take all the consequences for wrong answers, maybe get the unoptimal path, but they can move forward to something less frustrating.
That's a good idea, I'll have to steal that. I've been doing something similar with converting encounters into traps/hazards and just having the trap roll an attack, but I like the idea of just a one-roll random combat.
Another thing I forgot is to try to instill your dungeon with a sense of urgency. Have a steadily ticking clock with escalating bad things.
Maybe its a lava dungeon and the heat is slowly killing the players. Maybe its a sunken ruin that is flooding. Have the big-bad completing a ritual. You probably don't want them constantly under the gun, but make sure they understand that sitting around arguing is wasting valuable time.
One of my favorite things to do is have in-game things, like heat exhaustion from the lava heat, or how much longer till the BBG completes summoning the demons, tick up not based on game time but real world time. Every hour of real-life time, they need to make an a progressively more difficult endurance check; every two hours the BBG gets a couple more HP. stuff like that.
When I look at most puzzles I make sure there are three solutions - The right way, an alternate way, and a brute force way.
Unimportant puzzles, like opening a small treasure box I probably won't go this far, but anything required for progression; and if its a hardcore meatgrinder, approved solution (or related) or get fucked.
The right way is the the officially approved way. The alternate way is another way of getting through the puzzle that more-or-less meets the conditions. And finally there should be a way for the party to throw in the towel because they just aren't getting it.
For the right way, make sure the party has sufficient information about how to play the game. You don't have to literally spell it out (but you sort of do) but if the statues need to rotate, make sure there is something like scratches around their bases that show that they are supposed to rotate. If they need to pull levers, make sure there is something they've encountered that lets them tie lever colors = squence. IF there is danger, put a corpse somewhere.
The alternate way is another way the players can solve or get around the puzzle. This can be as simple as "They take their axe to both magic doors and ask them 'Did that hurt'?" or maybe earlier they found a key in the Guard Captain's secret stash that unlocks the door. Or maybe one of the doors is able to be flattered into giving up the solution. If the alternate solution requires equipment, put that equipment near by.
Thinking up an alternate solution/work around to the puzzle doesn't just give the players another way to get through, but it gets you thinking about other things the party might try and lets you be ready to either counter munchkins trying to exploit the game rules, or be ready if the players do try something similar.
Finally, have a cost ready for the players just being completely stumped.
And, again this is really only for puzzles that are needed to progress through the dungeon. Don't feel a need to let them eventually guess the gold vault combination.
But Figure out a time/HP/Resource cost for just "We're stuck and want to move on" - they take all the consequences for wrong answers, maybe get the unoptimal path, but they can move forward to something less frustrating.
That's a good idea, I'll have to steal that. I've been doing something similar with converting encounters into traps/hazards and just having the trap roll an attack, but I like the idea of just a one-roll random combat.
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2017
I hope you guys are ready for the next stage in pandering imagintion!
Fictional Character
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2020
Finally, an RPG city with no conflict or plot hooks. I was waiting for this.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2020
Has some stuff that looks interesting and usable, at least. As bad as 5e content is, there's usually at least one or two things that can be salvaged from even the lamest books. Not that I'm going to buy it, I haven't spent a dime on 5e content.
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
Another litter of purse puppies who will be ejected and ground under the boots of corporate apathy after being paid the minimum legal amount possible after all loopholes are used to cut back and force them to work till they break.
Seriously, if all you have to brag about is your ethnicity, then it means you have no talent. And no, I'd say this to a wignat too by the by.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2021
Holy shit! Love that WoTC is tripling down on the Tumblr bullshit! No conflicts, no political back stabbing, no plot hooks, no dark grimy streets, emphasis on diversity and inclusion. Who is this made for? The toddlers who watch Coco Melon? Even fucking Steven Universe and Nu-She-Ra that all these Twitter and Tumblr troons love had conflict and plot hooks in them. WoTC really made D&D just a Mary-Sue simulator and therapy session for fragile genetic dead ends. No wonder the only income these people can get is e-begging on Twitter. They would honestly die if they had to work one hour in the service industry.
Also, when they say "The authors diverse background" do they really mean the upper middle class, gated community, American Blue State background that all these fucking writers grew up in because I doubt that even one of the writers grew up in fucking Uganda.
Also, this setting isn't unique. It is literally a discount Sigil but without everything that made Sigil cool and unique. Gone is the grim and grime, danger, intrigue and laws enforced by the Lady of Pain that forces travelers and residents to begrudgingly co-exist with each other. Instead everyone gets along and the world is a utopia despite having so many races who would conflict with each other because Tumblr and Twitter logic and wish fulfillment.
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ReturnedHermit
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2021
holy shit its literally a Steven Universe D&D setting.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2021
You got to love the stupid wish fulfillment that these fuckers at Wizards have. A world is a utopia because there are no white people in power and no cops. Hey, didn't CHAZ try to do this? How did that all end for that place? It couldn't have ended with two black kids getting shot dead by the utopian anarchist revolutionaries who killed them after they tried to take a car out for a joy ride because there was no cops around to enforce the law? And it happened just a short drive away from Wizards HQ. LMAO! 
From what I have heard, in the past year, every D&D campaign book (with the expectation of the Critical Role campaign book that did pretty well) have all dropped in sales and do worse then the last. Candlekeep and Wild Beyond The Shitlights didn't do too well in sales, as well as Strixhaven. The only campaign book that has done well in sales is the Critical Role campaign book that just came out. What the fuck does Wizards think they are going to do? That they can just keep releasing shit like Strixhaven and Radiant Citadel in order to get Woke cred from the Twitter and Tumblr crowd while piggy backing off Critical Role to make content that people actually want to buy? If I was Mercer I would be demanding a bigger paycheck.
From what I have heard, in the past year, every D&D campaign book (with the expectation of the Critical Role campaign book that did pretty well) have all dropped in sales and do worse then the last. Candlekeep and Wild Beyond The Shitlights didn't do too well in sales, as well as Strixhaven. The only campaign book that has done well in sales is the Critical Role campaign book that just came out. What the fuck does Wizards think they are going to do? That they can just keep releasing shit like Strixhaven and Radiant Citadel in order to get Woke cred from the Twitter and Tumblr crowd while piggy backing off Critical Role to make content that people actually want to buy? If I was Mercer I would be demanding a bigger paycheck.
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- Joined
- Apr 1, 2017
They just blame the consumer for not being woke enough and then claim they were sabotaged.You got to love the stupid wish fulfillment that these fuckers at Wizards have. A world is a utopia because there are no white people in power and no cops. Hey, didn't CHAZ try to do this? How did that all end for that place? It couldn't have ended with two black kids getting shot dead by the utopian anarchist revolutionaries who killed them after they tried to take a car out for a joy ride because there was no cops around to enforce the law? And it happened just a short drive away from Wizards HQ. LMAO!
From what I have heard, in the past year, every D&D campaign book (with the expectation of the Critical Role campaign book that did pretty well) have all dropped in sales and do worse then the last. Candlekeep and Wild Beyond The Shitlights didn't do too well in sales, as well as Strixhaven. The only campaign book that has done well in sales is the Critical Role campaign book that just came out. What the fuck does Wizards think they are going to do? That they can just keep releasing shit like Strixhaven and Radiant Citadel in order to get Woke cred from the Twitter and Tumblr crowd while piggy backing off Critical Role to make content that people actually want to buy? If I was Mercer I would be demanding a bigger paycheck.
Most of the "designers" are fucking terrible people. Sex pests, ultra-woke, slimy male feminists, dangerhairs.
Most of this shit doesn't go through playtesting, and what little does usually has the design team ignore the feedback because it hurts their feelings.
There's actually been designers who bragged they haven't played at a table with anyone in 10+ years, and those who do usually play Mother May I instead of actually having anything with any kind of risk or repercussions or anything more complex than "Yay! We win!"
The fact that Pathfinder has removed slavery from the setting because they might hurt the feelings of all ten of their Black customers and that Wizards spent an entire sidebar telling the GM to not let the players mock the retard in Ravenloft should tell you all you need to know.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2021
What is really funny is that on Wizards official product page they try to cover up the fact that the product is Woke.
The product page says little at all about the campaign or that the whole team is just a bunch of POC purse puppies. It is almost like the suits at Wizards know that Woke shit is hated by the masses but instead of not making Woke shit they instead try to trick people into buying their Woke products in order to please the mentally unstable danger hairs that they have working for them. This is what happens when you don't put your employees in line and show them their place. They end up destroying your company. I give it 5-7 years before Wizards is in the same boat as Marvel and DC comics.
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- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
Oh no; the brown people they hire for criminally low prices are put in line. In the sense they're worked as hard as possible and thrown out like trash since you can get some other brown person for even cheaper or for even less quasi-payments via clout or whatever. The difference is they don't give a shit what they spew out, since you can pay them in exposure and by playing their ego (alongside paying them the wages a brazillian nut sheller would earn).
Wizards is notorious about mulching their writers; the guy who did Order of the Stick was instantly dropped the moment his health issues inconvenienced their work schedule.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2021
And this is what is going to make Wizards fall all the more funny. Look at what is happening to Disney right now. I can't think of any company right now that has had a worse week than them. From accusations of racism, sexism, grooming, child sex trafficking, employees telling stories of being underpaid and abused, losing all their best writers and animators to Skydance Animation and Disney had all this coming. What makes Wizards think that they are immune? All it takes is for one disgruntled employee to start a chain reaction and have Wizards be on everyone's shit list like Disney. Maybe the Woke shit is a way to please their danger hair employees to not rat them out on Twitter.
"Sure, we'll let you put in LGBTQXYZLOMNOP+ shit in the game and in exchange you never rat us out on social media."
I can't think of who is worse in this case. Wizards higher ups or the employees who allow these shitty business practices to continue because they sold their souls for their activism.
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2019
What is a purse puppy in this context even?
And is it a surprise that mediocre adventures have been selling less and less? To begin with they sell far less than player option books and monster manuals and there isn't much buzz amongst the playerbase because the average player doesn't have an use for an adventure book while on the DM side you have people who can't be arsed to put up with the crap layout, the extra effort it takes to "fix" the adventure and all the other varying levels of annoyances that I always seem to hear about adventures. If anything I am astounded these are even selling because it's been eight years and I keep seeing the same complaints.
There are a few DMs who claim they read such books to "steal ideas and implement on my own campaigns/adventure" and there's nothing wrong with that, I do it too. The confusing part is buying a product that you know is largely mediocre and a pain to use to borrow a very small percentage of it (and yes I am aware a lot of people will pirate the PDFs but many of those will buy the books at full price).
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
@Ghostse Quote bug:
Another way to make a dungeon feel populated without running huge encounters is to group up weak monsters into a shared health pool. Not necessarily the group combat or swarm rules (because those feel really clunky to us). A 50-HP blob of 10 skeletons is much easier on the action economy than 10 individual skeletons that must either be killed one by one or waste a spellcaster's AoE spell. The Fighter getting a crit and destroying five of them with a single 28-damage hit also feels quite satisfying. In order to balance out their damage, make it so only 3 monsters out of a blob can attack a single target at a time since they'd be getting in each other's way all trying to attack at once.
This obviously works better in theater of the mind, of course.
I was chatting with my GM about how he wanted to run his next campaign without grid combat, and something came up that I feel is relevant to this idea:
Another way to make a dungeon feel populated without running huge encounters is to group up weak monsters into a shared health pool. Not necessarily the group combat or swarm rules (because those feel really clunky to us). A 50-HP blob of 10 skeletons is much easier on the action economy than 10 individual skeletons that must either be killed one by one or waste a spellcaster's AoE spell. The Fighter getting a crit and destroying five of them with a single 28-damage hit also feels quite satisfying. In order to balance out their damage, make it so only 3 monsters out of a blob can attack a single target at a time since they'd be getting in each other's way all trying to attack at once.
This obviously works better in theater of the mind, of course.
Not just writers. One of my artist friends was pointing out to me that Magic: the Gathering used to have a pretty short list of artists that did most of the work, with additional contract work to pad out what the main artists couldn't do. John Avon, Kev Walker, Greg Staples, Mark Tedin, Mark Poole, Anson Maddocks, Therese Nielsen, etc. Artists with dozens if not hundreds of cards to their names. But for the past, oh... 10 or 15 years Wizards has been pulling in more and more no-name Latin American, Chinese and Eastern European artists (read: cheap labor), all with very similar styles, to do a dozen cards or so, work on one or two sets, and then never be heard from again. Their sped-up release schedule can't be doing good things to their art team.
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- Joined
- Jan 29, 2021
Every company does this when they get large and corrupt enough. Chevy's cars used to be the best in the market, for example. Gaming companies are no different. It doesn't help Wizards are finally as mainstream as they're ever going to get. In a healthy economy someone would have a better product come out and people would chase it. Unfortunately, the market is so bloated with woke "passion projects" by troons and dangerhairs who can't even be assed to design their own system and autists who only play the most well known thing because you can't be TOO nerdy so you get shit companies like WoTC and GW basically having a monopoly with no incentive to improve because they make bank whether they make something people want or not.
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2016
On the topic of dungeons and games being slogs, when I started doing more extensive homebrew there's a sort of fundamental truth I came to that has subtly but dramatically changed how I prep adventures: every encounter* is a tax on the players' resources that they can mitigate by being clever, but they can't afford to pay full price on all of them.
*anything that doesn't have stakes like this is more of a little roleplaying interlude, which are fun, necessary, and should be kept relatively concise.
Now "encounters exist to drain player resources" is pretty obvious, but take every single obstacle in your adventure and consider what the ultimate consequence of it is. Combats deal health damage, and this can be reduced by using abilities and features well. Traps can be evaded, but if they aren't then you take a bunch of damage or get a lasting debuff. So far, we're on a consistent pattern of "if you don't handle obstacles well, on average, you take too much damage and have to flee / die".
What about a social encounter? This is where a lot of GMs mess up, because they prepare a scene as "the party must talk their way past the bouncer", but if the party messes up the social roll suddenly the plot grinds to a halt. Do they just beat the guy up? Come up with an increasingly elaborate series of distractions to allow them additional rolls until one succeeds? Bribe him? Okay, we at least have some other options, some of them are more compelling as drains on the party resources, but this is the kind of situation where a simple scene burns up an hour or more of game time and it's a total surprise to the GM that it went so poorly.
Worst, maybe, are investigation scenes where the party needs to find clues or coax information out of someone. Unlike the bouncer, who you can in theory just blow up and move along, if the party misses a clue then the adventure might just stall. The GM might just find a way to slip them the clue anyway, and sometimes this works fine, but it does raise the question of why you bother to make them roll in the first place. "The party needs to find the secret entrance to the ritual chamber", but everyone botches their rolls to notice it, so now what? What's the cost of failing?
So ultimately, my rule is to think of everything in terms of costing health or money. You trigger a trap, you pay in health. You fail to convince someone, you probably have to bribe them to get the info you need. A lot of actions serve the basic purpose of avoiding combats, so use that. Don't pad the game out with a bunch of random encounters, but have the threat that if the party can't find a good way to sneak into the location, they're going to have to content with a lot of nasties (that will drain their resources). Don't make these interesting fights; like others have said, make them relatively vanilla glass cannons that get a few good shots in the party over the course of a ~20-30 minute fight, and force them to choose how they approach things better.
Just put dangerous shit in the way of the goal, and make the party find ways around it. Don't have random hazards that serve no purpose, don't put in weird attractions that the party spends half an hour prodding at looking for secret levers. Hide a few narrative clues behind a couple that you do place, but make sure it's obvious to the party that they got what they needed. Don't have a bottomless chasm the party has to cross unless you're really ready to have anyone who falls in fucking die.
*anything that doesn't have stakes like this is more of a little roleplaying interlude, which are fun, necessary, and should be kept relatively concise.
Now "encounters exist to drain player resources" is pretty obvious, but take every single obstacle in your adventure and consider what the ultimate consequence of it is. Combats deal health damage, and this can be reduced by using abilities and features well. Traps can be evaded, but if they aren't then you take a bunch of damage or get a lasting debuff. So far, we're on a consistent pattern of "if you don't handle obstacles well, on average, you take too much damage and have to flee / die".
What about a social encounter? This is where a lot of GMs mess up, because they prepare a scene as "the party must talk their way past the bouncer", but if the party messes up the social roll suddenly the plot grinds to a halt. Do they just beat the guy up? Come up with an increasingly elaborate series of distractions to allow them additional rolls until one succeeds? Bribe him? Okay, we at least have some other options, some of them are more compelling as drains on the party resources, but this is the kind of situation where a simple scene burns up an hour or more of game time and it's a total surprise to the GM that it went so poorly.
Worst, maybe, are investigation scenes where the party needs to find clues or coax information out of someone. Unlike the bouncer, who you can in theory just blow up and move along, if the party misses a clue then the adventure might just stall. The GM might just find a way to slip them the clue anyway, and sometimes this works fine, but it does raise the question of why you bother to make them roll in the first place. "The party needs to find the secret entrance to the ritual chamber", but everyone botches their rolls to notice it, so now what? What's the cost of failing?
So ultimately, my rule is to think of everything in terms of costing health or money. You trigger a trap, you pay in health. You fail to convince someone, you probably have to bribe them to get the info you need. A lot of actions serve the basic purpose of avoiding combats, so use that. Don't pad the game out with a bunch of random encounters, but have the threat that if the party can't find a good way to sneak into the location, they're going to have to content with a lot of nasties (that will drain their resources). Don't make these interesting fights; like others have said, make them relatively vanilla glass cannons that get a few good shots in the party over the course of a ~20-30 minute fight, and force them to choose how they approach things better.
Just put dangerous shit in the way of the goal, and make the party find ways around it. Don't have random hazards that serve no purpose, don't put in weird attractions that the party spends half an hour prodding at looking for secret levers. Hide a few narrative clues behind a couple that you do place, but make sure it's obvious to the party that they got what they needed. Don't have a bottomless chasm the party has to cross unless you're really ready to have anyone who falls in fucking die.
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
It's hiring minorities and showing them off repeatedly to the news like a rich wine aunt might show off their toy breed off. Basically they're hired for looks and treated like animals.
Adventure modules tend to be easier to shit out than crunching out mechanics. Same with designing monsters. It's perfect for the underpaid staff they hire solely for melanin counts to avoid being outed for their horrid working conditions, since they don't actually need to *UGH* play this filthy gross game to make shit up with.
As for why it's selling? It's the same reason why Thirsty Sword Lesbians got a sequel; slacktivists tend to be shit with their money, and funnily enough TTRPGs are small enough they actually can be a market sadly.
Oh and for those wondering, yes we did another episode covering TSL. It ended with half the gang getting drunk enough to joke about channel yeeting things.
Sunk cost fallacy mixed with collector autism and the need to justify it to not sound like a brainless consoomer is my guess. It'd be smarter to just leap back into 3.5 or into ADnD and so on if you really are going to steal ideas for adventures.