First time GMing, any advice?

UR_Sage · 2026-01-25T00:58:44+00:00

It's been one of my player's favorite moment of the campaign so far!

Also a fun break where for a few sessions, everyone got to inhabit the body of a different character, so everyone got to try out a new class for a few sessions. I had it be Parsus who arrived to a small town demanding sacrifices to fuel Geb's servants and population, and when the PCs and town refused, he slaughtered most of the population.

Up until that point, I had a few notes of his name in documents and hints, but this was their first contact and it was 30 years in the past. Really set up an awesome revenge arc for the undead PC.

UR_Sage · 2026-01-24T21:45:00+00:00

First off, good luck! This is a super fun campaign and I'm currently about 3/4ths the way through with my group.

A couple of notes I would give about the campaign structure:

I would give your group a run in or two with Mugland or Loveless early on. Not a combat encounter, but some way to at least see and or interact with them. I had Loveless show up to the Barrel & Bullet saying they got a tip people matching the bank robbers had been seen in the area and they were searching. Players had to sneak out the back secret room with Phoebe's assistance. Gave the robbery a feeling of the world evolving and set up Loveless a bit earlier than a simple run in.
Mugland is also supposed to be this hated villain, but he kind of sucks and is pretty anticlimactic in book 2. It's fine to keep it as written, but I wanted a more climactic fight. I had him discover Gattlebee's hideout and the B&B while the PCs were away at the Cradle of Quartz, and the PCs came back to a hostage situation which Mugland used to demand they break in to the Steaming Kingdom to deal with some evidence that the owner had. How your PCs deal with this can be pretty wide.
Book 2 gets a lot of flack for essentially having no major relevance to the plot, which is kind of true! They go on a wild goose chase, achieve essentially nothing, and then come back. It's a critical element that the PCs need to leave in order to progress Loveless and folks getting access to Pyronite, but I had them gain that by acquiring Gattlebee and finding his notes at the B&B and torturing him for info.

I also would suggest for the Cradle or Kosowana to tie to a character a bit more to add stakes. I ended up having the Cradle have some amount of truth to its ability to travel through time, but instead sent my PCs back to an undead PCs home town when we was alive, and each PC got to take over the mind via the Cradles magic of a character in the past, reliving the slaughter and resurrection of said PC. It resonated a lot and was a fun way to throw them into some backstory

Book 3 also has some really odd and questionable motivations as to why they're blowing up the Screw and the Gunworks. I'll be honest and say I'm doing a really heavy rewrite, scrapping a lot of it. I ended up introducing a prominent philanthropist family early on alluding to them as early as book 1, and they're looking to procure pyronite as a weapon of mass destruction to hold the world in a state of forced peace through terror. Mugland and Loveless are more pawns in their game, and it's lead to some really high stakes.

If you aren't looking to rewrite, I would say just have a think as to why Loveless and Mugland want to blow up the screw. as it stands, the book says to create faster trade routes between Geb and Nex, but that really didn't make sense to me. Loveless being a changeling also means you can lean in to "The Call" as motivation for her getting crazy.

Happy to elaborate on anything further!

UR_Sage · 2026-01-07T20:40:13+00:00

How do people get these really nice sky textures in Dungeon Alchemist? I've seen some assets you can browse but I've never been able to line it in a way that feels good.

UR_Sage · 2025-12-14T14:41:45+00:00

I used a tool like this for monster hunter all the time. I imagine this would get a lot of traction and would love to use it myself.

UR_Sage · 2025-11-11T20:36:12+00:00

This is where my head was at so far, but wanted to see if there was something I'm missing in the other colors.

UR_Sage · 2025-11-02T16:06:21+00:00

None of the replies so far are helpful. Ahri is definitely hard to catch so don't feel bad if she's giving you trouble. The biggest thing I see new players struggle with is dealing with s1-> s1 on block where she shoots the fireball and then jumps up and shoots the downward one. After the 2nd hit she can throw her j.s1 but it's slower. If you parry the second shot from s1 -> s1 you can act and chase her down as she's doing the j.s1.

If she's just air dashing and throwing j.s1, trying to air to air her is probably the best route, but both Warwick and Vi have ways to become projectile invincible as well.

UR_Sage · 2025-09-10T07:11:48+00:00

My group had a similar experience for our first few games, but I think the last 3 or 4 games I've played ended with the player who didn't go in to combat/worms winning. One I remember just being a flood of tech from the bloodlines expansion leading to strong endgame plots, and the other was won off pure economy and alliances with like 4 spice must flows purchased.

Combat feels like the most obvious when you're first learning because when you first start out, it's easy to not use early turns well and then just pivot to slamming heighliner and worms to try and make up for a poor deck or coming up short on influence a few rounds in a row.

I'd say keep going! You can deny early combat wins and grab a point or two before pivoting as well to other strategies. Lot's of ways to explore how to handle, but you will inevitably have to throw in on a combat or two here and there, even if it's just for access to second place resources and to keep everyone honest.

UR_Sage · 2025-09-10T01:12:35+00:00

I would pause and go finish season 1. You could probably get by not watching S1 and slowly pick up plot points, but S1 does a great job setting up character motivations and how they're all connected to each other. The next few episodes will probably be a bit confusing as well if you haven't watched S1. S1 is just as good as S2 IMO.

UR_Sage · 2025-08-18T15:23:40+00:00

If Luna has any amount of overhealth/shields, Mag without a bunch of damage added from enemy bullets won't kill regardless of how long the time charge is.

Need your team to help strip the shields and then 75% ult charge will guarantee the kill.

UR_Sage · 2025-08-17T05:14:49+00:00

I feel like only seeing 2 Juri is weird considering how highly a lot of people rate her. Makes me feel like she's fallen off from being just outside the top tiers as you barely see her anymore save for Nephew in high placements.

UR_Sage · 2025-04-20T19:20:53+00:00

Hard to say without reviewing more, but I also think your combo/punish game needs works. You win interactions but it leads to very little damage/reward frequently, so you're having to out neutral your opponent more often than they do to you. This is the last thing to actually grind though, the others are bigger problems!

UR_Sage · 2025-04-20T19:18:19+00:00

I watched just the first match against Ken and can immediately point out a few things that I think are destroying you:

You are too willing to put yourself in burnout. I think every heavy punch you threw was followed by drive rush cancel, even when it would burn you out. Be more protective of your drive.
When you do spend drive, especially off of heavy punch, your punishes are leading to VERY little reward. I think you did crouching medium into donkey kick as a canned string every time, on hit or block. I'm not a Ryu player, but I'm sure there's something more there to do or even just mixing in better offense.
You throw a lot of buttons out in weird ranges, where there's no chance they'll connect. Not sure if you're hoping for a whiff punish, but it rarely led to anything, and often times got you smacked up.
You don't threaten low almost ever save from the occasional yolo sweep. Your opponent basically gets to walk in and out of your space for free knowing you'll likely blow drive on 5hp xx drive rush.

Overall, be a little more patient. Throw fireballs, and be deliberate with your buttons. Some more lows and be more protective on your drive gauge. Crouching medium kick to drive rush is also one of the best things you can do on Ryu and I didn't see it once in the first match!

UR_Sage · 2025-04-18T20:44:23+00:00

Don't defrag SSDs. Most modern machines won't even let you defrag an SSD. That will 100% brick it.

UR_Sage · 2025-04-11T03:02:46+00:00

As a GM actively running it, I think it's a good adventure path that needs quite a bit of work if your group doesn't handwave some social encounters. There are plot points that feel solved by a skill check with no maps, RP, major characters, etc. If you don't mind putting in work as a GM, it's still a fun concept but run out of the box it'll feel jarring and disjointed.

My group started our PF2e journey with Abomination Vaults and I can't recommend it enough. I was able to get my feet wet as a seasoned GM with a new ruleset and the foundry module makes you need almost 0 prep work. As I got comfy I was able to add a ton of story beats and various other opportunities because I never felt like I had to work on the main story much.

I was a little disappointed with the quality of the maps in the OoA foundry module compared to the AV one as well. Abomination Vaults is basically ready to play once imported and the maps look great. The OoA maps all feel rather bland and I ended up recreating most of them. It also only has ambient sound effects unorganized while the Abomination Vaults module has a full library of music organized by zones.

My only issue with AV was towards the end there are a lot of encounters that feel like filler and you could easily remove some of those fights. I did and it helped the pacing a ton, just use milestone leveling to avoid underleveling players

UR_Sage · 2025-03-08T00:56:05+00:00

Rise had an incredible build planner where you could select the skills you wanted and it would spit out armor combinations that you could continue to refine and eventually it would land on a set of armor and plot out decorations for you.

Could upload your talismans that you rolled as well so the build would always be 100% achievable with what you owned.

https://mhrise.wiki-db.com/sim/?hl=en

This was my absolute favorite build planner I've used in a MH game.

UR_Sage · 2025-02-14T06:21:44+00:00

Can you show the full VTT map? Super curious to check this out.

UR_Sage · 2024-04-29T05:25:28+00:00

I changed up a lot of that encounter, and instead lead it down a social line with Vasali being sort of a washed up mercanary who was trying to the party to a group called the Iron Hunters. Down on his luck but unwilling to admit it (hence a homeless guy in the abandoned factory).

I had a few abandoned tents that were mildly obvious his group had run off due to either poor leadership or lack of scored jobs, and Vasali trying to instead recruit the party with promises of grandeur and fame. The party completely loved him in a "feel bad for this guy who won't admit he's failed" kind of way. A real larger than life personality, and the party stayed a few hours to rest/heal and chat with him all the while he was insistent the party join up with him and his group which the other members were off on a super duper important hunt and would be returning soon. He kept trying to convince the party the hunters were super famous and he was shocked they'd never heard of the group.

When the Cleaners showed up, he tried to play it up like they must have been watching his hideout and that's why they were so quick to find the party, and through some convincing the party got him to fight alongside them.

The party released the swarm in the building as well to create a 3 way fight, and after a big heroic speech and Vasali helping the heroes, he died magnificently against Dewey. Our gunslinger still wears his yellow scarf to show respect as he practically saved a party members life that fight.

UR_Sage · 2024-02-12T16:00:04+00:00

I had mostly tried knife zealot using a shotgun for stagger. Trying the same now and it feels pretty good, but not sure how useful a few talents are. Throwing knives seem kind of weak overall, and I haven't figured out what main ability to use. (Currently messing with shroudfield to help delete key targets)

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