What are you playing? (games)

[Willybomb]

Recently, the party's ranger stole my bagpipes, painted "I love halflings" on it, rubbed hot peppers on the mouthpiece, and wrapped the bag with wires to make it hold less air. Guess who's not getting inspired any time soon ...

That is all perfectly reasonable where bagpipes are concerned.

[sonnyboy27]

That's awesome. When a DM can flush all of that out it makes for an awesome adventure. As a DM, I had an idea of what I wanted the players to do but had trouble creating enticing hooks to pull them in that direction.

First thing is avoid too many choices, and always drop hints with the rule of three. Players don't necessarily pick up on stuff, but if it's mentioned three times, they will always notice. This is a general story telling thing, in fact -- notice that folk tales use the rule of three fairly often. It's an ancient memory aid.

I think one of the secrets is not to try to entice the players to do what you want. If you give them a bunch of adventure hooks and they pick one, they might still feel railroaded. One of the best ways to handle it is to just let the players do stuff and have a pile of maleable encounters that you can pick from at a moment's notice. The players write the story that way, and you simply provide the obstacles for them to overcome. Sometimes you can railroad them in a way that's not obvious, or pull them in from the most unlikely of circumstances.

Say you want the players to explore the sewers under the city. Well, no matter how much you talk about treasures, I'm not voluntarily going in a sewer, it's dangerous down there. But I might go shopping. And the shop keeper might be missing and I might be intrigued enough to go looking for them in the back room, at which point the floor collapses and at least a couple players fail their saves to avoid falling down the hole. The party's not just going to abandon them, and now they're in the sewers where you wanted them. Here the players got railroaded, but there was a possibility that they didn't (all of them save), and even if they didn't, maybe now they're concerned about about other places collapsing and they go do the thing anyway.

The last campaign I ran, my gimmick was "What's the worst possible outcome from the PCs doing something they think is helpful?" The way to run that one is that you find one absolutely irresistible adventure hook (or railroad them at a point where they're okay with it in the beginning), and then you let them "win" but with dire consequences. If they run away from responsibility, then you can have them hounded for that. If they try to fix the bad situation, that's more opportunities to have things go south, and more opportunities for them to feel like they need to fix it. This also gives you plenty of time to prepare for the next session, because you can pretty much always end on a cliffhanger.

This is super useful, especially the rule of threes part. I'll definitely have to keep that in mind the next time I step up to run a session. Also, thanks for the example scenario; that makes things a lot clearer. I want to provide players with choices and the ability to run around in a story of their making and this definitely cleared up some thinking for me.

Do you have any resources you like to pull from when world building, creating encounters and such?

[midwayfair]

Do you have any resources you like to pull from when world building, creating encounters and such?

I mean, books and movies and such always work, as well as heavily story-based video games like the Ultima Series (within reason, don't lift a campaign obviously, just the tropes used). I read a lot of folk tales -- a big tome like Calvino's Italian Folk Tales can give a lot of ideas that aren't the typical Grimm and Perault stories everyone knows. Victorian literaturized folk tales can also be good, because it's the material on which the fantasy genre is based. And published adventures can make a great supplement -- you don't have to use them literally, you can warp them to your world.

Sometimes I'll just gauge the players' reactions to NPCs just mentioning a type of monster, say "faeries," and if they have a strong reaction either way, that's a good indicator that it will make a good adventure. Just know the difference between "I hate fighting against that because it's miserable" and "I hate those and would like to fight them." Shadows and Bodaks bad. Clever faeries that grind the players' gears with puzzles and madness good.

I've mentioned fae twice, and it's because it works. My wife also used it recently with a completely different set of people, and the reaction is always fantastic.

[juansolo]

My lot hate oozes and mimics. I throw one in there every now and then to keep them on their toes

[midwayfair]

My lot hate oozes and mimics. I throw one in there every now and then to keep them on their toes

Mimics might be my favorite monster.

[flanagan0718]

Soon...Very VERY soon there will only be...

YES!!! 8 hours left on the countdown.....
Then YOU DIED.

100% ACCURATE!
Are you a pc gamer or PS4? My PSN handle is flanagan424


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Ps4. nofomofo. My 9 year old has beat all the soulsborne games but this one. He is stoked and "praise the sun"-ing everyone.

Been playing here and there. Just beat the gaping dragon! The ground is literally littered with summon signs. It so awesome!


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[flanagan0718]

Soon...Very VERY soon there will only be...

YES!!! 8 hours left on the countdown.....
Then YOU DIED.

100% ACCURATE!
Are you a pc gamer or PS4? My PSN handle is flanagan424


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ps4. nofomofo. My 9 year old has beat all the soulsborne games but this one. He is stoked and "praise the sun"-ing everyone.

Been playing here and there. Just beat the gaping dragon! The ground is literally littered with summon signs. It so awesome!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[juansolo]

Played a bit of the new God of War. Taken me a while to get a grip with the combat, but once it clicked I'm liking it a lot. I'm not sure it's the 'Best Game Ever' as the hype would have you believe right now. I prefer Horizon in that respect. But it's very good.

[Betty Wont]

Soon...Very VERY soon there will only be...

YES!!! 8 hours left on the countdown.....
Then YOU DIED.

100% ACCURATE!
Are you a pc gamer or PS4? My PSN handle is flanagan424


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ps4. nofomofo. My 9 year old has beat all the soulsborne games but this one. He is stoked and "praise the sun"-ing everyone.

Been playing here and there. Just beat the gaping dragon! The ground is literally littered with summon signs. It so awesome!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I just got my SL1 pyro to NG+. Just have to run around a bit and gather the last few upgrades and I'll be invading full time from now on.

[oip]

i've regressed way back to old ways from PS3 days, sitting at SL50 and too lazy to finish the game, just sitting in anor londo rotating invasions, forest invasions and co-op

[stringsthings]

Passed a major hurdle today in Sniper Elite 4.  After you play thru the levels several times, you get to know where
the enemies are in a general sense.  So it's much easier to up the difficulty after some repetition.  So now I'm on the highest
difficulty and trying to get thru the campaign.  The trick is that you can't save.  So if you get killed, you have to start the current
level over again.  The 8 levels are pretty big so it's not an easy feat.  I just finished level 6 which was a real PITA.  It must've
took me 20+ tries.

Excellent game if you like a stealthy game where patience really pays off.  You don't have to play stealth, of course.
That's just my play-style.

[flanagan0718]

Soon...Very VERY soon there will only be...

YES!!! 8 hours left on the countdown.....
Then YOU DIED.

100% ACCURATE!
Are you a pc gamer or PS4? My PSN handle is flanagan424


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ps4. nofomofo. My 9 year old has beat all the soulsborne games but this one. He is stoked and "praise the sun"-ing everyone.

Been playing here and there. Just beat the gaping dragon! The ground is literally littered with summon signs. It so awesome!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I just got my SL1 pyro to NG+. Just have to run around a bit and gather the last few upgrades and I'll be invading full time from now on.

Nice I think you may have smoked me the other night!  Hahahaha!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[juansolo]

Had a bit of a re-org. It'll won't stay this tidy for long...

[selfdestroyer]

Looking good John!

My buddy and I just finished Rainbow Six Wildlands in Co-op last night.. we had a blast doing so. Definitely got our moneys worth out of that game. I keep forgetting to look at my stats and see how many hours I have clocked in that game. I would guess over 80 hours.

[nzCdog]

Looking good John!

My buddy and I just finished Rainbow Six Wildlands in Co-op last night.. we had a blast doing so. Definitely got our moneys worth out of that game. I keep forgetting to look at my stats and see how many hours I have clocked in that game. I would guess over 80 hours.

Nothing quite like those old school co-op missions!  We just got a Switch, first console since PS2.  I like Mario Kart and have bee playing a bit of FIFA leading up to the World Cup. 

Biggest time absorber is this one tho on Steam for PC