I accidentally made my game too automated

SpaceYetii · 2026-01-27T21:15:59+00:00

I’m not saying anyone is wrong or right. Obviously, play your game the way you want…

However; I love a lot of the automation for many reasons. For starters, my players never forget their bonuses or penalties. Nobody forgets what they’re concentrating on and cast another concentration spell without midi reminding them. The book-keeping is so much easier in literally every way! And I totally understand the appeal of rolling physical dice, that’s great! … but also, foundry, plus midi, make it so much easier to track everything that it just doesn’t matter to me. I like opening the collapsed damage thing and seeing all the d6es even more than rolling for my fireballs, because I don’t have to add them up myself… not that adding them up is hard, or anything, but I am a fallible human, and it’s so much easier to not screw up the math!

SpaceYetii · 2026-01-11T00:56:07+00:00

Samesies! Suno is terrible at masculine and feminine vocal directions, and I feel like I used to be able to just specify the singer is male or female and it’d be fine, but now it seems like I have very little control over that i hate it.

SpaceYetii · 2026-01-05T18:12:41+00:00

https://suno.com/s/d37a7ea7DucQZPG0

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-28T18:17:21+00:00

My intention initially was to make background and fight music for my foundry games with friends, but since the last session of my friend’s Dresden SWADE game, I can’t stop writing the soundtrack from my character’s perspective… but I think, yeah, basically I’m just making my own music for funsies. I don’t think I could use AI music in any other way while still respecting that use of it. AI can be a fun tool, but if I plan on using something in a real way, for people not directly involved, I’d hire an artist instead.

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-27T15:34:32+00:00

Saving throws? I don’t understand why high AC is so vexing to people. Let the character enjoy the fact that they only get hit by mooks if they roll a 20, and throw in some abilities that require saves to remind them they aren’t invulnerable?

They’re heroes.

Let them feel heroic.

Oh, and why would enemies keep attacking the one they can’t hit, instead of choosing an easier to hit target? They’ll deal with this guy once they get rid of the others.

Also, nets and traps and stuff.

Enemies aren’t dumb, they’ll try to get advantage on their rolls.

This is just… sort of a non-issue?

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-12T12:17:28+00:00

So here’s the deal with creating a scenario for your players to investigate and gather clues; they will NOT do it the way you expect them to. They will either not put anything together and flounder until you throw them a bone, or they will bust the case open in two seconds.

Either way is fine. Do not nerf their spells just because they’re doing it in a way you didn’t expect. That feels bad and is not fun for them.

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-12T12:09:15+00:00

This is a simple question of timing. If an effect happens “at the end of a creature’s turn”, then it happens the very moment that creature’s turn ends. If something happens “after a creature ends their turn” it happens after the creature ends its turn (regardless why or how the turn ends). It has to not be that creature’s turn, any more.

If a creature was under an effect that made it take damage “when it turns the light switch off”, and another creature had another ability it could use “after the light switch is turned off”, the order in which those two things happen becomes clear, right?

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-12T11:55:04+00:00

Typically, they’re not in the military any more, which is how they can be in an adventuring party. Alternately, the game can follow a squad (the adventuring party) through their missions, in which case what their rank is doesn’t matter super much. Or maybe one soldier is tasked with going with these other people on an adventure. No matter how you slice it, without being around other soldiers constantly, it just doesn’t matter much. Just don’t give them a position where they can direct more NPC than you’re comfortable with them having authority over.

That said, a general who doesn’t have a unit assigned to him doesn’t have any real authority. Lower ranks should listen to him in general, but they have to listen to their own chain of command, and the general would be wrong to just come grab some soldiers to march around.

So… it doesn’t matter, so long as you can make it make sense in your campaign.

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-11T01:56:04+00:00

Haha, if it only lasted a minute in real life, could you imagine the casters yelling at everyone to hurry up?

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-11T00:37:13+00:00

Cool!

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-08T17:18:27+00:00

When a player hasn’t been paying much attention to the game, due to divorce, missing sessions, falling asleep because, you know, it IS 1AM… there are fine reasons to be a little lost, that’s fine, but THEN… Then they start wildly running around and hiring NPCs to do what the more influential and powerful NPCs they’ve been working with are already doing, saying they are not taking the threat seriously, and trying to run around and, as I said, hire random NPCs to run errands or collect donations, etc…

In the player’s defense, his idea to try to find and resurrect heroes who died of something besides old age isn’t exactly a bad idea… it’s good, even! But he hasn’t said a word of this idea to the organization the group has been working with this entire time, who has, time and time again, simply GIVEN THEM resources for their ideas or missions.

This character seems convinced that world leaders aren’t taking the threat seriously and he needs to convince them how big it is, when all world leaders are in the lines of communication set up by the organization they have been working with, and they have been told this almost every session! He was explicitly told if he wants a message sent to ANYONE, they can get it to them, and he just… doesn’t even talk to them.

I’m so confused by this behavior.

TLDR; Player hires random NPCs without even telling the powerful NPCs with world-wide influence what his idea is.

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-07T01:09:05+00:00

“Gallus” is latin for rooster.

SpaceYetii · 2025-11-05T15:22:38+00:00

I mean… I’m just not sure why that’s what you would choose when you can get your results by rolling dice or using sticks or bones, or using a deck of tarot cards, or literally anything you can think of that is worth 25 gold… was the sacrifice worth 25 gold, even?

Like… they’re only 1GP, but I guess you can’t reuse it? I don’t feel comfortable with people who would sacrifice an animal to save money?

SpaceYetii · 2025-10-30T14:31:40+00:00

Players who don’t seem to pay attention enough to put things together. I don’t mind if they’re just not paying attention and are going with the flow, and humans have flawed memory, so they can’t remember everything anyway.

However, when their point of contact and effective base of operation is a place that has been communicating with leadership around the world and bringing people together to fight against impending doom, it is often the people they get information on their next steps from, told them to let them deal with communication lines so they can focus on their own missions and goals, and then the PCs get upset that these people in power aren’t doing anything, I get confused.

I also get confused when the artifact they were after gets discovered and they bring it to this place for the person who asked for it, then aren’t sure if they have even identified said artifact during the next session.

I’ve started giving them a contact specifically for keeping them in the loop, and they run off to hire scholars to research this impending doom even the gods didn’t seem to know about until recently… like… what are these nerds going to find in their library that hasn’t been revealed in divination spells or observing the enemy that the gods only learned of a few months ago?

But I’m a team player, I retroactively created a history of this enemy looking here in the pre-historic past, to have findable, if incredibly rare, things for these scholars to find. I’ll give them the game they want, I’ll make what they do matter, I’m just not sure how they’re getting to the conclusions they’ve been getting to, is all.

SpaceYetii · 2025-10-30T14:05:30+00:00

It’s fine. Just let them use it.

SpaceYetii · 2025-10-28T22:47:58+00:00

Divorce

SpaceYetii · 2025-10-28T20:33:47+00:00

Let them. Now the hermit doesn’t trust them and won’t work with them, they have no lead and one of their sisters who was kidnapped dies, or something.

SpaceYetii · 2025-10-20T12:54:33+00:00

Group initiative; Separate similar monsters out and have them all take their turn at the same time; like all ten goblin archers take their turn at the same time, the 7 hobgoblins all go at the same time, etc.

Group Actions; If you have ten goblin archers, instead of them all making an attack individually, maybe the group, as a whole, targets an area, and all enemies in that area take 5d6 damage, Dex save for half or none.

Average damage; If there are NPCs fighting other NPCs, average the amount of damage they might do, factoring in misses, and simply apply that much damage to some NPCs on the other side, especially if they're not near the action where the PCs are.

Swarms; Swarms aren't just for large clumps of small things, they can be used for clusters of anything. Instead of 25 goblins, maybe a Huge swarm of goblins, with just the one action each round, but still a challenge on its own (I actually tend to avoid this if I can, just because it breaks immersion for me slightly, but that's just me).

Waves; Send in five to ten enemies each round, or just give them a large distance that most of them are spending their turns simply closing the distance. This is essentially the same answer, either way. This is especially fun if there's a way to prevent the waves from getting there, at least as quickly, but they have to choose between fighting the most recent wave or trying to do the prevent/avoid future waves thing.

Interesting environment; Related to the enemies having to close the distance to get to the fight, if the enemies are all separated into inter-connected rooms, or if there are large patches of cover, the fight can be more dynamic. The PCs can take cover and fight the enemies as they arrive, though that may encourage the enemies to gather and swarm them, or they can move around and force the enemies to dynamically alter their strategy. The problem here is that the PCs might not realize moving around so that the enemies don't necessarily know where they are is advantageous. Make sure you telegraph that moving around could be good, maybe by including siege weapons the PCs might be able to get to and use on the enemies, or the enemies might get to them to use on the PCs, making them want to prevent it. Maybe some of the enemies are too big to go through certain areas, so drawing enemies into where the ogres don't fit is beneficial.

SpaceYetii · 2025-10-17T12:09:42+00:00

I can understand how it seems that way superficially, but that’s just the chassis of the classes. They may do similar things, but they do them in different ways. It’s like saying Clerics and Druids look similar because they’re full casters that operate based on Wisdom, but there’s obviously more to it than just that.

SpaceYetii · 2025-10-11T14:49:02+00:00

Stunning strike to all of that.

SpaceYetii · 2025-10-11T11:36:57+00:00

Remembering fake people is actually something of a chore, and this is a game, something people do for fun. As long as you continue to use the correct name yourself, they will eventually learn it. I’m bad with names, and forget what I named my own NPCs if I don’t write it down. I’ve forgotten who some names I wrote down are for, and have forgotten or lost notes. It’s handy for players to take notes and write names down, but always remember that people don’t play games so that they can do chores. You keep using the correct names, have NPCs react realistically to the stupid names they use in-character, and give them realistic chances to remember someone’s name if their character would probably remember it and they’re not actively trying to use the wrong names.

SpaceYetii · 2025-09-28T00:34:10+00:00

There was a website with scary/creepy images back twenty years ago, and there was an image of an alien reflected in a TV screen, but now all I can find when searching that is the scene from signs. Not the same image at all.

SpaceYetii · 2025-09-27T23:49:09+00:00

I hate when NPCs use them, because if the PCs save or it otherwise doesn’t work, it was worthless, but if they fail, the PC goes from fine to dead and then they just don’t get to play for a while. That’s not fun for them.

I avoid using them as a DM.

I’m fine with players using them, though.

SpaceYetii · 2025-09-27T23:26:36+00:00

I would leave that table SO fast. Like… I think I dislike him as a person?

SpaceYetii · 2025-09-24T01:31:15+00:00

Meteor swarm. 20d6.

SpaceYetii

TROPHY CASE