Just to take a lesson from my current GM - keep in mind when you hand out consumable magic items to the P Cs. Four adventures ago, I got a wand of Spectral Mount - which we used last night to completely bypass two set encounters and go straight to the Big Bad temple home. And the best part is, I still have charges left on it.
Me: Wait, what's the scale on this map? 100 miles to the inch? And we were going how fast? ... OK, we're here. *points at the other side of the map*
GM: *moment of silence* I fucking hate you guys right now, but not as much as I hate myself for giving that goddamn wand to you.
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - SilaswJacobs: Honestly, it's good that I wasn't there. Aisling would have gone "letting an ally die alone? FUCK THAT." and charged the mooks.
. . . Actually, that may have been a decent time for The Reveal.
Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-I'm the opposite, Tomu. I vastly enjoy both playing and G Ming the exploration part. And if my players manage to think of something I wasn't expecting? More power to them, it keeps me on my toes, so I don't stagnate as a GM.
:smug:I run very cinematic and action packed games. More to the point, I've generally found that if you give people a bit enough utility box, it doesn't require a lot of ingenuity to get around things. That's by big objection to rituals in 4E, for instance: you can just sort of do anything, rather than having to figure out a way to do it. Don't get me wrong, spells in previous editions were just as bad or worse, but some players (aka me) had the tendency of avoiding those spells, due to losing out on crucial spell slots for RAW AWFFENCE!!!!
I find that odd, because of the three spellcasters in our party, the one with the most offensive spells is the cleric - the sorcerer is about 50/50 offense/utility spells, and my bard is almost entirely utility spells. Unless you count Aura of Unremarkability as an offensive spell.
So, last night's session was ... pretty bad all around. Not my greatest work as a DM. The Long Fight was okay (dropping the monk with the minions was pretty badass-4E's easy healing rules of course allowed said monk to continue to participate in the encounter so no harm no foul), but the following encounter was just sluggish.
The party basically had to just survive five rounds to way for the Deus ex Machina (which was a bit more Dx Mier than I originally thought) to give them an escape path. In retrospect, I should have just cutscene'd the entire encounter. Oh well.
Kyle here zonked out in the middle of that fight anyway. I'm not sure what it is about my P Cs-two of em have this tendency of just sort of losing consciousness midsession :P
Question for other G Ms: how do you suppose to introduce new, original, homebrew, cool superpowers (as in, Exalted -level powers) to players in a game where they play characters destined for epic ness, without seemingly ass-pulling out extreme powerful NPC in a cheating manner and without spoiling the surprise?
edited 8th Jun '12 6:50:17 AM by IraTheSquire
If you really want something new and homebrewed you might have some difficulty introducing it to your P Cs. Otherwise, I suppose you could try something from a sourcebook the P Cs have never seen?
Hell, I dont know. I do know this, though: sourcebook or homebrewed, new rules or mechanics are something that inherently changes how things work. If you do not want to ass-pull something, I would suggest setting up a healthy dose of foreshadowing.
You cant just introduce it from the blue. Narrate that something in the air feels different, or have an NPC mention an NPC with those mechanics in passing. That is the sort of thing that should be built up to.
Well, those are my 2 cents on the matter.
edited 8th Jun '12 10:55:14 AM by Crinias
Yeah, I know. Which is part of the point: you've been monsters and predators and now you suddenly found out that your kind were used to have incredible powers, created to fight against Eldritch Abominations and were cursed as a result of the war, and now your enemies of old are back and ready for World Domination again while their enemies remain cursed.
Not quite sure if that's a good idea, but hey.
I'll keep the foreshadowing in mind though.
edited 8th Jun '12 6:55:49 PM by IraTheSquire
@Ira: the best way is the foreshadowing way. Especially if the group is taking the time to actually research that which they are up against (I know, I know, rare but it does happen). Give them some hints that this will not be a by-the-book fight.
If they Did Not Do The Research, maybe have the New Awesome Monster sputch a few Red Shirts with their new kewl powerz, just so the players get a clue that things aren't standard before such stuff is turned on them. Players do have this ability to get crafty under pressure, I've found.
edited 11th Jun '12 6:58:03 PM by drunkscriblerian
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~So, I'm game mastering for only the second time in the last decade. The only other time was about 5 years ago now, and it was a one-shot of Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot for a friend's bachelor party (in which the villain was a mad scientist out to get Hostess Fruit Pies, in a clean ripoff... er, I mean homage, to Something*Positive). This time, I'm running a tweaked version of Big Eyes, Small Mouth 2nd edition, with a setting of a Bear Apocalypse (like a zombie apocalypse, but applying Everything's Worse with Bears).
So far, it's in its early stages, and folks are responding positively so far as they've just escaped Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas (which was the starting point). I'm still brainstorming what to throw them against besides just bears, though. Their next destination has, little do they know, a doomsday cult waiting for them, but I don't want to rely too much on cults for this.
Slightly related, I'm also trying to think of what they might have to deal with in regards to bears more powerful than the basic mook bears (which, so far, they've only been able to handle when clearly outnumbering a given bear). I know that fire-breathing bears will be necessary soon enough, but I need more than just Bears From Hell.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.I need to figure out what I'm going to run after the current game I'm running ends. It's a pretty short term project (intended to run for only another half a year or so) after all.
Mecha bears sounds fun. A fellow DM is running a Phantasy Star Ripoff game of sorts that I'll be in, though that one only lasts through September, and doing something like that might be interesting.
Right now, the game I'm running is a bit like Asian Animey Pulp Fiction, in that there's not really that deep of a plot and at times it's just an excuse to use set piece encounters-which I'm a big fan of, but it's not something I want to do exclusively.
I was contemplating something a bit mysteryish-like the P Cs solving their own murders through crazy pseudo-time travel-but I'm not sure how that would work.
Well, I have to keep the flight limited to short ranges. Said Bear Apocalypse is confined solely to the Americas for now, and I want to make sure that any spread of said apocalypse is purely the players' fault.
I'm wondering if Super Speed might be a bit unfair for the players, considering that right now, they're already on pure defensive from the bears. Of course, that's probably the wisest for them.
Also, do you think I should have them deal with a group of inbred cannibals?
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.Plotting for tomorrow's session, aided by some Jack Daniel's on ice and the musical styling of Monster Magnet.
My players are going to HATE me. Hopefully in a good way.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

So... some interesting results in from this week's game. I'd planned to kill off our hilariously underpowered Paladin so that our new guy could bring in his own character. Said killing off would be due to a last stand against a horde of several hundred Vermin (ghouls, except not). Problem is, when the time came, one of my other players decided that he wanted to off his own character on account of having pretty much completed his personality arc. I ran with it, and the result was this
. I know I said I was going to let the P Cs go out in an epic blaze of glory, but I hadn't predicted it would be that awesome.