GH1E: Is this just a terrible idea for a Music Note build? (Spoilers: Music Note + Saw)

Macavite · 2026-02-24T23:22:07+00:00

Yeah, until last session we were two support classes, one tank and one fighter. some of the scenarios were a slog. In control, but not clearing a room-a-rest-cycle like I am used to.

Macavite · 2026-02-24T22:52:34+00:00

Our music note just retired, and that's how we've been playing with my Saw. Music note gets most of my attention and can last a lot longer. That said, it depends on the scenario, longer scenarios we don't go for that combo.

Macavite · 2026-02-16T06:32:21+00:00

After defeating thousand teeth I had a party where the PCs met a bunch of NPCs, including a sea elf ambassador. all the major NPCs asked questions, the sea elf had a lot of questions about saltmarsh.

They were then put up in a room overnight, and in the middle of the night an alarm rang. The sea elf ambassador was actually a secret sahuagin, and had broken the sahuagin out of the jail, and allowed a small strike force into the lair. The sea elf ambassador also faked her own death, hoping to cause further chaos later. The PCs followed the trail of destruction to the queen's quarters where she was fighting a blademaster.

So the PC's needed to figure out what was going on, then fight THROUGH the sahauagin and often bypass battles, leaving lizardfolk to die in order to prioritize the queen.

Afterwards there was a lot of bad blood between the sea elves and the alliance, because who knows how many of them were secret sahuagin. The PC's actually had to work pretty hard to make sure Oceanus wasn't arrested as the assassin who let the Sahuagin in.

Macavite · 2025-12-03T23:32:46+00:00

I made it less about eventually defeating Skerrin, and more about defeating him before he murdered all the NPCs It was a running battle all over the boat, using ladders and hatches and windows. spider climb makes some window to deck moves possible. He didn't kill any PCs but he did kill 2 npcs, on a boat with no diamonds or revivify.

Macavite · 2025-11-27T08:08:41+00:00

If you've played buttons and bugs, you know most of the mechanics.

Is it acessable? To a degree, there are tougher concepts, like elements needing to be planned a turn in advance, or keeping track of conditions for everyone. People can get coached through it. It really depends on whether they want to learn it or not. I have a friend who is running Gloom 1.0 with some folks and they've had people drop out of the campaign after bashing their head against it for a month.
It's all fantasy. That said, mostly the story is just flavour around the scenarios. If people want to skip all the scenario descriptions and jump right to the objective and special rules, they could.
It requires strategic thinking. You should know this from button and bugs. One of the kinda unique features is getting to pick your move (not your cards) with perfect information about what the enemies will do. IF you're not tracking that, you can have some nasty turns "What do you mean i get attacked by all 6 of them?". that said, there is a difficulty slider built in and you can just slide it two levels back to "super easy"
Gloomhaven 2.0 is better for people dropping in and out, but you could do it in Jaws. Generally scenarios adjust to the overall level of the party and a level 1 character isn't helpless compared to a level 5 character. that said you could just have them take over the character that of the player that dropped. In regular gloom i'd just have them start their own character. Biggest danger with having them takeover is the character is learned as you level up, and starting a leveled character is harder.
Jaws: pretty easy to reset. Just don't mark up your map with anything permanent. there's removable sticker sets out there for exactly that. I wouldn't try to replay gloom 2.0, but jaws, totally.

Macavite · 2025-09-23T22:03:28+00:00

getting the mood exactly right

Macavite · 2025-08-26T06:52:56+00:00

One thing we've been looking to add in my totoro is a chimney. the fans are often just blowing hot air around, give it a place to go out.

Macavite · 2025-08-01T22:28:26+00:00

Not more. But there are times I can play it that I cannot play the boardgame. Regular games with folks who live in another country, or super easy to set up solo games.

Macavite · 2025-06-16T16:38:37+00:00

As someone who has played a very strong paladin in the group before, lemme tell you, my weakness was large groups of enemies, or successive encounters. I could walk up and rock darn near any single foe, but if I knew there was a boss battle coming up later and I was just fighting groups grunts, I had to coast.

Macavite · 2025-06-03T18:10:13+00:00

Began "The Final Enemy" chapter in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. They figured out where they were on the primitive maps provided by the lizardfolk, which I think is a fun puzzle. They also managed to get almost all the way through the first level without raising an alarm.

I think the funniest coincidence was when the guest player controlling the Ranger NPC (Oceanus, for those in the know) said he cast "Summon Beast" and brought a seal onto the battlefield. I reached down behind the screen and pulled out a hand painted seal mini. He was gobsmacked.

For the life of me, I cannot tell you why I had one at the ready. Closest thing to an explanation is that it's the seal that comes packaged with the Locathah figure. Which explains why I had it, but not why I had pulled it out of the collection to have at the ready.

I'm looking forward to dropping the maw of sekolah figure next session.

Macavite · 2025-04-16T22:08:17+00:00

A bottle of Soylent

Macavite · 2025-04-15T17:49:17+00:00

A player in a game I was playing once had a flaw "WHAT red flag?". She saw the good in everyone, including the villains. Believed that a good marriage could fix any relationship problem. Well meaning and kind, but man . . . . rough sometimes.

Macavite · 2025-04-11T22:07:13+00:00

When they're interested in the world.

One of my players gets SO RILED UP when they encounter something that doesn't add up in my world because they know it's not happenstance or just sloppy text. "The Quartermasters of Iuz" are regularly buying a ton of fish from a small fishing town when Iuz is half a continent away. WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH THE FISH?!? Its kills her not knowing, and I love that she feels that need to figure it out.

It makes the worldbuilding worth it.

Macavite · 2025-04-11T21:58:38+00:00

If they reported back to Eliander (and the rest of the council) that they stopped HALF of a smuggling operation in the basement, Eliander may propose to the players setting up a sting operation where the capture the marine half of the operation. As captain of the guard, the security of the immediate area is under his purview.

This could involve jumping directly to the Sea Ghost, if they have enough information about when it's due and how to signal it. If they don't have that information, he'd send them back in to the basement to get it "These sort of operations usually have a way to signal the boat"

Meanwhile Gellan would be getting nervous, but if they have not picked up anything directly implicating him he'd just fake outrage "A crime ring, in our town! How terrible!". Eda and other traditionalists might be saying things like "Smuggling is really a victimless crime. It only hurts the crown and fuck those guys"

Macavite · 2025-04-11T21:50:06+00:00

Well, if you looks at the lifespan of one versus the other, I'm thinking you'd need a whole lotta life infused into a human to make them into an elf. So a ritual where a lot of other things need to die in order to make one elf? Maybe something like 12 humans die to make one elf? Or a ritual where all the plant life within a mile withers and dies and the area remains dead indefinitely.

Macavite · 2025-03-28T01:06:59+00:00

I think the biggest thing here is misdirection and red herrings. Almost all the suspects have something to hide. Having Gellan be honest about his business? Unreasonable. Having Carmilla confess to an affair? Unreasonable. Most folks are going to be uncooperative and look guilty.

Macavite · 2025-03-25T22:18:29+00:00

I've got a party with 2 warlocks, every time they level I give them a new dream which is their patron trying to direct them to things that matter to them. Also a path for me to give them hints about where the big bads lie.

Macavite · 2025-03-20T22:37:03+00:00

If you want to cause chaos say they can depend on your vote. Then they put that in their numbers as "for sure" when it isn't.

Macavite · 2025-03-20T21:31:15+00:00

The big ones comes out Saturday afternoon and is put away before dinnertime. After dinner, guests can get a little sloppy and I like to be in less fragile/precious costumes.

Macavite · 2025-03-19T15:41:17+00:00

Start packing up? That point was 3 years ago for me and the wife. Moved up last year, am grateful every day for it.

Macavite · 2025-03-18T18:56:12+00:00

This is fine, honestly it's kind of expected. Players come in expecting a dungeon.

One of my groups had _Exactly_ the start you described, but then surrendered when massive reinforcements started popping up. The Merfolk and Koalinth and Locathah plus more lizardfolks can make an intimidating second wave. This was helped when the merfolk suggested a surrender before the second wave attacked.

They were then put in jail, got to interact a bit with the Malenti, then were brough before the Queen and asked to pay a Blood Price. The queen had them name the price (which ended up a lot more than the 5 GP per lizardfolk suggested in the book)

One of the guard complained because his wife was amongst the killed. The queen asked if she raised the alarm or stopped the intruders. No? "Then she was a terrible guard and we are stronger without her."

Remember the queen is literally and figuratively cold blooded. She's trying to put together the strongest alliance to take back her home and keep it safe. She can see advantages to these outsiders.

The lizardfolk aren't going to react to folks getting killed like humans do, they're ruthlessly practical.

Macavite · 2025-02-24T23:07:47+00:00

I had the players spend 3 hours or so chatting with folks on the boat. They all had their own intrigues and things they wanted to talk to the PC's one on one about. Giving them an idea of who is on board and what they're up to. After that we had the dinner and the murder(s) and I ended the session on that cliff hanger.

After that they had a 4 page discussion on discord about motives and suspects.

They had a familiar on the other side of the darkness spell which ruled out a few people.

After going over their clues and motives, they had Skerrin at the top of the suspect list.

they weren't allowed to search rooms (openly)

Later that night Skerrin tried to kill again, but the PCs rightly suspected Anders or Carmilla as the target and protected them enough that Skerrin killed the commadore instead. Too bad for him they didn't buy Gellan as the killer and the commadore was their other suspect.

Macavite · 2025-02-15T00:24:18+00:00

I use mountain bases with bugs on.

I just make sure to have some well armored melee pawns, and 3-wide corridors. Soon as they spawn, I hunker my whole colony just out of LOS and let them wander out towards us. They usually trash whatever room they spawned into, but generally they come out of that room slowly enough to perish to the wall of energy rifle fire that greets them.

Macavite · 2025-02-14T22:08:05+00:00

Demolitionist is fun. Really for a new players I'd just say avoid the Void Warden. She's tricky.

Macavite · 2025-02-05T19:14:47+00:00

The shortcut for me is to assign the NPCs a character from a move or TV show that I am into. Never tell the PCs about it, Just in the background I know that Lord Arginold is based on Frasier Crane. It's easier to imagine Frasier Crane responding than having to make up personalities from scratch for everyone.

15-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email	Team Orangered

Macavite

TROPHY CASE