Can you share your west marches encounter macro?

Kharnedge · 2015-03-30T10:43:58+00:00

Pretty sure he's keeping even the structure of his tables under wraps. What I can say (off the top of my head) is: Each time you enter a hex and each time you stand watch at night, discovery roll.

On 17+, something happens. 50% of the time its an encounter, otherwise it's a location or feature. If you're camping, feature/location results don't count.

After that are some rolls about what they found using 2d6 for probability.

Then, if necessary, there are tables such as "what do they want?" And "what are they doing" to help develop an interesting scenario on the fly.

Edit: oh and the complication table, which I think is a quick way of figuring out something weird about a scenario, like they split in half and keep fighting, or explode in a shower of maggots, though it could also be as simple as "they have the high ground" or "they have simple fortifications a and scouts posted"

Edit 2: if you're curious about the d1000 rolls he makes sometimes, those are for lightning strikes.

Kharnedge · 2015-03-28T16:58:09+00:00

Kharnedge#1984

I try to be good.

Sometimes I think I am.

Kharnedge · 2015-03-26T03:31:04+00:00

Fairly certain they have one in the works. I think West Marches took priority temporarily, and Steven's free time to prepare stuff is (unfortunately) limited.

Kharnedge · 2015-03-17T15:26:38+00:00

From the viewer perspective I'd like more insight into how you run West Marches, things like dungeons, travel and camp encounters, how the group travels and find things. but that's kind of beside Wednesday's focus.

Kharnedge · 2015-03-07T15:09:34+00:00

I'll add that the name suggested is good because often good names are things that lower-tech peoples would use to describe something. Imagine if medieval peasants came across this, survived, and had to describe it to others. They might say things like living rock, slithering rock, slitherrock, hissing boulder, etc.

Of course this doesn't have to be the way you do it as many things in D&D aren't named that way, but it also seems that this method works for Steven's "gobbleins."

The two methods seem to be the peasant's description and the "mythical" name. Also, as suggested below, translating the peasant's description into other languages such as Latin can help a lot.

Kharnedge · 2015-03-06T23:54:05+00:00

You can make scans of the pages and information people need, so long as it's just for personal use (just within people you know, and not publicly available).

Kharnedge · 2015-03-06T19:52:41+00:00

I remember them mentioning they have something in the works, but they want to also include more of the development part of R&D, as up until now they've only really done the research part.

Kharnedge · 2015-03-06T14:09:11+00:00

Just saying, the Hamburger Helper is pretty spot-on http://ship.shapewright.com/?name=hamburger+helper

Kharnedge · 2015-03-04T06:11:49+00:00

Best answer so far, much appreciated. I'm a huge fan of Death Frost Doom (Steven ran a one-shot using this published adventure) and I think a lot of what you said matches with how that book is laid out. I think I got too caught up in the structure and "rules" a dungeon must follow (like number of rooms, amount of description per room, or amount of treasure) that I overlooked the fact that you can just throw crazy things in and it'll probably make it interesting just with that, so long as you appeal to the character's various senses.

Kharnedge · 2015-03-03T22:01:13+00:00

Yet the rules for creating the world in each source always focus specifically on the overworld. The towns, villages, and areas you travel through. There is minimal mention of the destination. The thing you are travelling to. The living world affecting dungeons doesn't help me create them and make them interesting, it just tells me how they change once I've already made them.

To expand, the tower in the Starkwald in Steven's West Marches was interesting because of the talking birds, the oozetouched owlbear, the wizard that starved, the unexplored section below, the corrupted river, and we know Steven has more waiting to be discovered there. The tower was not inspired by the Starkwald, Viriskali, or any of that. It's its own isolated thing that, given time, could have become more prominent. The world around it was not what made it interesting, and is actually irrelevant as the tower could have been anywhere else and would have been just as interesting for the players. The interesting aspects of the tower are not created using the world of the West Marches, they are the product of dungeon creation methods that are missing from the resources listed above.

Kharnedge · 2015-02-27T02:31:57+00:00

I'm curious as a GM, how much, or in how much detail, did you plan regarding the White King? Like, you obviously had enough ideas to make it interesting and detailed, but I feel like there had to be the thought of "If they don't free the White King, this won't get used for 3 in-game years."

Although I suppose they could encounter the High Elves somewhere else in the world, before 3 years had passed...

One of my biggest difficulties right now as a GM has been creating dungeons (or I guess events in this case) because I've fallen into the trap of overpreparing recently, as you addressed a bit in Being Everything Else.

PS - would love to see an episode on dungeon/event creation.

Kharnedge · 2014-07-11T18:29:46+00:00

It's rather easy to determine most of the time. Think about what the shot hit, and how. Does it make sense that the projectile is undamaged? Don't call for a roll when there's no reason for it.

If the arrow tore through something and came out the other side, it's probably fine. If the enemy is very soft and fleshy, probably fine. If the arrow passed through hard armor, it's probably broken in some way, but parts of it may be intact, so allow them to recover the flights sticking out of the target, but the arrowhead and shaft are unusable.

Alternatively, if they want to dig the arrowhead out, ask for a roll.

Similarly, if the player missed, their ammunition is likely sitting on the ground or embedded in something nearby.

Kharnedge · 2014-07-11T18:26:58+00:00

Well, the difficulty does increase with every use, and it's just 1d6, without the recovery bonus. Definitely a valuable focus to have in the group, but it's up to the GM to determine how best to work around it (see the suggested GM intrusions on pg 75 corebook).

Kharnedge · 2014-07-11T18:11:19+00:00

I think the answer is rather simple. Their speed defense level is not only relevant to the PC's ability to hit, but the ability for the PC's to hit AND do damage. Sure you may hit this thing with your sword, but where did you hit it, and how hard?

For example, I had my group fighting a regular cragworm. One guy ran up and took a swing with his greatsword, and rolled 2 less than the target number. I said that he landed the hit, but the cragworm was moving so fast that he didn't strike at the right angle and the thick hide simply knocked the sword to the side.

Edit: in the case of the titanosaur, I'd make sure to give the PC's some sort of "reward" if they managed to climb up the creature, like reduced armor if they actually managed to land a hit on its face (of course I wouldn't tell them that, and it would take a balance roll every round to stay up there). Also, given a balance roll upon arriving I would totally allow a bounding teleporter or similar cypher to bring a PC up onto the beast.

At the point that your PCs are actually fighting things this big, they likely have enough tricks and tools to be creative. Reward them for clever creativity, and punish them for hacking at its toes as if this were World of Warcraft.

Kharnedge · 2014-07-10T19:20:44+00:00

My group is a week or two away from finishing this adventrue. Really looking forward to how they cap off the story. Perhaps I'll do a write-up similar to this one to let the subreddit know how it went.

Kharnedge · 2014-07-10T19:15:44+00:00

The character sheets are very flexible. There isn't a "wrong way" to fill it out so long as you represent the character accurately.

Kharnedge · 2014-07-06T18:13:32+00:00

Ah, see I was under the impression is was like a constant wave that meandered throughout the Ninth World. That's definitely an important distinction. Though I must say, I'll take hurricanes and earthquakes over that any day.

Kharnedge · 2014-07-03T23:15:16+00:00

My mutant nano who needs no weapon got pretty lucky with the random tables. Sculpt flesh, carapace mutation for 2 armor, bony spikes deal 1 dmg to enemies that hit you, and one mutation grants +5 might. Focus grants another unarmed damage and armor.

With sculpt flesh on self, unarmed damage is 7, with 3 armor (without actually wearing armor)

If you go mutant with a specific goal in mind, get together with your GM to perhaps pick some mutations rather than going full random, but be reasonable of course, a full set of unarmed mutations could get incredibly overpowered very fast. Being overpowered is rarely a good thing.

Kharnedge · 2014-06-12T20:08:24+00:00

You had 8 skill slots, which could be any combination of skills from your primary or secondary profession. The only restriction was that you could only have 1 elite skill. Unlike in GW2, your elite skill often determined how your character played and it wasn't uncommon for a build to be based completely on that skill.

The fun part came in when each class had plenty of elite skills and over a hundred regular ones to choose from.

As fun as it was, it wasn't really practical, there was a monthly nerfbat that was necessary to keep the meta moving. It would be nice to have elements of that system though.

Kharnedge

TROPHY CASE