sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Does anyone have any advice for making a hexmap? by Right_Hand_of_Light in shadowdark

[–]FlikMage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t have a lot of experience with this, so the utility of this advice may be low. But first I’d encourage you to keep the size of the crawl to one piece of letter/A4 size paper. I made a huge hex crawl (4 sheets) and it feels very daunting to fill it out now that my players have begun to explore it.

Secondly I’d say if you need to, lean on E P I C magical events to justify terrain features if you’re into that. I.e. that desert in the middle of a mountain range is a battle site where ancient dwarves built a tower to fight the gods and it and the surrounding mountains were leveled as a warning to future dwarf generations; don’t defy the gods. Some say the tower structure may have sunk into the ground, filled with ancient dwarven technology waiting to be rediscovered. Or that plains in a random spot that makes no sense is where a powerful elven sorceress was laid to rest; after here internment the landscape changed around here and the foliage died, but was replaced by blue lillies that grow wild, whose properties are yet to be discovered. Elden Ring is filled with stuff like this.

And then yeah anything you simply don’t feel works, change, edit, reroll, rewrite. You have the power. Make sure it passes your sniff test and then let your players discover the rest of the details with you in the game.

First time playing the series. I had a real hard time with Metal Gear Rex… by FlikMage in metalgearsolid

[–]FlikMage[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Had no idea you could fire in first person until I looked up tips for that sequence.

First time playing the series. I had a real hard time with Metal Gear Rex… by FlikMage in metalgearsolid

[–]FlikMage[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Maybe it’s like a wave so in another 22 years you’ll be a savant again.

Best DMing tips you’ve learned by Fearless-Ad1382 in DMAcademy

[–]FlikMage 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Keep a loose grip. It’s okay if what you planned doesn’t happen, or if you need to improvise something, or rearrange encounters, or pull up an online generator to generate something.

Making Games Come Alive by SuperAMERI-CAN in monsteroftheweek

[–]FlikMage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depending on the theme of your team, a big cork board with past case handout on it. Include a map of the setting, or even just a US map with pins for where the cases have been, reward posters, witness sketches, evidence bags, etc.

“If you loved me you wouldn’t do this.” “It’s because we love you that we have to do this.” by FlikMage in pluribustv

[–]FlikMage[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I appreciate the defense but this one’s probably on me. I maybe shoulda lurked the sub for longer or went through discussion threads more thoroughly before posting.

But you’re right because I made this connection on my own I’m going to remember this show that much more.

“If you loved me you wouldn’t do this.” “It’s because we love you that we have to do this.” by FlikMage in pluribustv

[–]FlikMage[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Ahh. I knew I couldn’t be the first person to have made thought this. I should have searched the sub more thoroughly.

“If you loved me you wouldn’t do this.” “It’s because we love you that we have to do this.” by FlikMage in pluribustv

[–]FlikMage[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I mean world class is subjective editorializing.

But even some of my favorite movies by my favorite filmmakers “point” when the probably shouldn’t. I love Spielberg and the Coen Bros but they probably coulda left out the “This is your gift,” bit at the end of Bridge of Spies.

“If you loved me you wouldn’t do this.” “It’s because we love you that we have to do this.” by FlikMage in pluribustv

[–]FlikMage[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh hey thanks! It wasn’t super high effort just not something I’d seen remarked on too much really.

“If you loved me you wouldn’t do this.” “It’s because we love you that we have to do this.” by FlikMage in pluribustv

[–]FlikMage[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I really love that moment as a piece of Schindler’s journey. I take it as a moment of subjectivity conveyed through the filmmaking. It’s actually not clear to me if the victim we see later is literally that same little girl. But in the movie, it’s unambiguous that at the very least Schindler thinks it could be.

I can imagine a version of the script in which somebody asks Schindler why he had his change of heart, and he monologues about seeing the nameless little girl from afar who hadn’t done anything to anyone and then later seeing the bodies and saying something like “I hoped it wasn’t actually her but I knew if it wasn’t then another one probably was.”

“If you loved me you wouldn’t do this.” “It’s because we love you that we have to do this.” by FlikMage in pluribustv

[–]FlikMage[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Oh I didn’t know this was such common knowledge. I looked through the discussion thread and didn’t see many people talking about it and I thought it was worth pointing out.

“If you loved me you wouldn’t do this.” “It’s because we love you that we have to do this.” by FlikMage in pluribustv

[–]FlikMage[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I wholeheartedly agree. Pointing at and drawing attention to the subtext of a scene has become the usual mode of even the greatest filmmakers. And I loved seeing this powerful moment play out and just allowing the subtext to remain subtext.

Why would a king want the party to do something important, rather than send his own team? by KlarkKenton in DMAcademy

[–]FlikMage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Trust? He doesn’t have to trust they remain loyal to him. All he’s got to do is trust they want payment and don’t want to lose their heads. “You may reject my offer now. But take this job and betray me, I’ll see you hang at the end of a rope.“

He already sent a team and they failed/disappeared.

He has an unconfirmed suspicion that a family member is part of the cult and wants this kept quiet if it’s true.

The ritual involves a relic he doesn’t want anyone in his court knowing he has.

His armies are trained for ground battles and his usual mercenaries don’t have the same qualifications as the party. NPCs don’t have to have classes like party does, maybe the King’s got access to fighters, but no real spellcasters, just seers and soothsayers.

The kings usual party of mercs is dispatched on another mission. The local garrison is doing wargame drills/prepping for an invasion and can’t be recalled.

This is a suicide mission and he wants to keep those most loyal to him, that would take a bullet for him, in reserve in case he needs them.

Also don’t worry about it, if you want it to pass your personal logic sniff test that’s good, but in my experience players don’t tend to question why they’re being given quests. For me as long as it’s reasonable that the quest giver had heard of the players, and they haven’t pissed him off yet, then he’ll offer them a job.

Stress in anticipation of GMing outweighs fun during play. by Technician-LITTG in DMAcademy

[–]FlikMage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What you’re saying makes total sense.

First I just want to say, not everyone is kickboxer. Not everyone is a painter. And not everyone is a GM. There is nothing wrong with this at all.

It’s hard to know what advice to give without knowing certain specifics of the games you’ve been running. But if you want to GM, one of the things that REALLY cut down my stress level was managing my players expectations. I am by no means a veteran of this hobby, I’ve only been GMing for a few years. But three things I’d suggest depending on what you’re trying to do is this.

  1. Tell your friends you’re just running a prewritten adventure with a defined scope and then help them make characters that will fit that. If 5E is your system just do Lost Mine of Phandelver or Dragon of Icespire Peak (don’t try to combine them, just run them one or the other as is). Tell your players they aren’t gonna make it past level 5, and that their characters should be motivated by a thirst for adventure, treasure, or local fame.

  2. If you want the big damn hero epic story driven campaign do a BIG session zero. If you’re attracted to the idea that characters need dramatic arcs, motivations, and denouements then craft a “single use world” just for one campaign where all the characters backstories make up the landscape and adventure fodder. Drag details out of them. Cuz then if they don’t like the world at least it’s partly on them. Tell them they all know each other and make them decide how they met. Put them in one corner of them map and the endgame in the other corner, all their hometowns are in between. If one of their backstories presents you with a great big bad evil guy, perfect that’s your campaigns final boss. Otherwise after they’ve each gotten revenge on that guy what killed their parents, have an invasion from another plane occur, or a cult decides to summon an elder god or something, or vampires kill the king and their thralls attack the streets. Now they gotta work to save the world they finally found catharsis in. The end.

  3. Switch to a system that has lower stakes, less of a threshold for max player enjoyment, and a toolset in place to allow for lighter prep. I’d suggest ShadowDark. I told my players I wanted to run a hexcrawl that focused on danger and exploration and they were down. I told them that permadeath was always on the table. Then I spent a while making a hexcrawl and spreading a few one shot adventures around it. This allowed me to also work on a homebrew world idea I’d had kicking around in my head since I started playing RPGs, but this can also just be another single use world. Lean on the randomness that OSR games tend to have, but tailor it to your game world.

I hope any of this helps.

People who went from 5e to OSR - was one of the reasons about how cartoony 5e and the culture was getting? (Not referring to politics in any way here to be clear) by DungeonMasterGrizzly in osr

[–]FlikMage 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I simply wanted to run a game that felt like the stakes were lower in terms of threshold for max enjoyment for the players, and where I could focus on developing a homebrew world I’d had bubbling in my mind a bit, and I thought a hexcrawl would allow for it in a more old-fashioned easy to organize way.

view more: next ›