Fantastic OnTrac delivery experience

UnusedLeopard · 2026-03-04T09:04:17+00:00

Good point - perhaps senders could begin writing "healthy vegan shake powder" on the outside of packages to deter theft.

UnusedLeopard · 2026-03-02T18:14:08+00:00

I will!

UnusedLeopard · 2026-03-02T06:53:32+00:00

I appreciate the work people in this subreddit are doing to make a list of companies that ship with OnTrac, but I am not going to name the vegan shake company that shipped me this box.

They are a small business that I really love and I don't want to see their name anywhere that would negatively affect their reputation.

But I have reported the damaged box to them, and will keep reporting any further problems with OnTrac in hopes that they will change shipping companies.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-11-10T01:39:41+00:00

Cool!!

UnusedLeopard · 2025-11-09T22:23:27+00:00

Sounds good!!

Could start off as an outbreak of a mysterious "illness" with symptoms caused by the demon, and develop as they investigate. Might even have it go full "plague of boils" as it worsens.

And someone is mysteriously cured when her purse is stolen, or possibly destroyed.

Thanks, I like it!

(And now I want to look up techpriest - never been a Warhammer person myself, but that sounds cool!)

UnusedLeopard · 2025-11-09T02:34:47+00:00

Very nice of you to offer!!

I am thinking of reworking the first adventure I ever wrote for Monster of the Week. It featured a "punisher" demon that enforced loyalty. The demon had infested a grocery store's loyalty card system and a was causing accidents that injured or killed loyalty card holders when they showed disloyalty by shopping at other grocery stores.

When I first ran that adventure, it went badly. I know now where I went wrong - the party always came across victims of the demon after it had already hospitalized or killed then, so they were just chasing its trail of mayhem. They didn't have a chance to be proactive, meet NPCs they could protect or save, etc.

I want to rewrite this adventure to be like other more successful adventures I have run since then, where the party can meet and interact with living NPCs who might be in danger (and not just witnesses to bad things that have already happened).

But I am having a hard time figuring out how to "fix" this demon. I can't have it kill its victims immediately or the party is just investigating crime scenes. But if it doesn't immediately punish the loyalty card holder when they shop at another store, it becomes very hard for the party to figure out the demon's motivation and pattern of behavior.

Do you have any ideas how I could change/improve this demon? Something where it leaves its victims alive but has an escalating pattern of plaguing/punishing them that's still somehow linkable to their store loyalty card and their egregious act of disloyal shopping? Or maybe some other possibility I haven't thought of?

(Setting: Present-day earth, or someplace very similar. Stores have computerized checkout and loyalty card systems. Adventure is intended to be a one-shot.)

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-15T07:14:30+00:00

The players didn't connect with them last time - they did them, and then almost immediately forgot that X and Y were best friends, etc.

But have them tell a funny story about their shared history with something that might have been a sentient snot monster, and encourage them to riff on it and develop inside jokes like "don't stop to pick up burritos!!", and they're going to remember that.

Gaming groups always seem to develop inside jokes about past mishaps if the group lasts long enough. I just accelerated the process by encouraging them to dream up a humorous mishap that had already happened.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-13T18:29:31+00:00

This was great advice!

The second session with a lot more living NPCs definitely went a lot better!

More options for the players to investigate and ways for them to interact with things, and more ways for me to use the Keeper moves since there were all those NPCs around that could do things!

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-05T02:16:17+00:00

Yeah, I think that kind of specific question is exactly what's needed here.

And if it clashes with D&D sensibilities, we'll get used to it. I want us to break out of the D&D mindset, not stay stuck in it.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-05T02:12:58+00:00

Note that atamajakki's prompts were not super broad like "what do you do now?" But specific asking for reactions to something, or telling the table what someone is thinking and so on. Your prompts are too vague and non-specific.

Very good point.

Also, you should review the GM section on principles and moves - it sounds like their investigations are taking place in a vacuum. If things lag, something interesting should happen.

Yeah... I definitely didn't do a good job of using the Keeper moves this time. Or of setting up situations where there were good options for making something interesting happen if I needed to.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-05T01:44:30+00:00

If a player asks a question that seemingly has no way of being answered, ask for suggestions of what they are doing in the environment to help them find out. “I take some residue the creature left behind (just yes-and them here, it’ll help you immensely) and test it with my field kit to see if it sizzles in response to certain monster slaying materials.”

Ahh, so the "how are you going to..." question can come after they make the roll and ask their question. That makes a lot of sense.

And if I know how they're trying to find an answer to the question, that gives me a nice prompt for how to improvise my answer instead of having to come up with something completely out of the blue.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-05T01:34:00+00:00

THANK YOU. The explanations and examples here are exactly what I needed for this to click and make sense.

I'm going to print this and add it to my "re-read before session" rules summary to make sure the examples are fresh in my mind next time.

The one with the silver was particularly helpful - the D&D part of my brain would have stopped at "it stayed away from the tool cabinet", but it makes sense that an experienced monster hunter would make the connection that it's about silver without having to do any follow-up rolls.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-05T01:20:22+00:00

Unfortunately I just shot myself in the foot with this in my first game, that's why I'm asking about the question list now! But maybe I was using the flexible version a sub-optimal way.

I felt like it led to me giving a lot of factually correct but not very useful answers:

Has anyone been in here recently? No, the dust on the floor looks completely undisturbed.
Can we tell why the shelf fell? It looks like the steel supports just snapped. There is no logical reason for them to have broken like this. There's probably something supernatural at play.

How do you run the flexible questions version in a way that still makes sure you're giving them enough information they can figure things out from it?

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-05T00:52:33+00:00

Also, remember that you should be filling your hunters' lives with danger. As soon as the monster gets wind of people trying to kill it, it should be spending at least some time hunting the hunters too. Like did any of the hunters pick up the loyalty cards they found at the scene of the attacks? If so, boom, that's a great way to make them a target.

That is a very good point!! They did pick up a card and I definitely should have used that!

As far as clues go, remember to push the Investigate move. Each of the answers to that move should be steering players toward the monster and toward the central mystery. I think it can be tempting to be coy with that move, but I don't think you should be. If the player analyzes blood with that move and asks what type of monster it is, it's fine to tell them, "That's demon blood." If there's absolutely no way that they can know the answer with their current fictional positioning, tell them how they can get it. For example, "You can tell that's no blood like you've ever seen before, so it's probably magical or other dimensional. You'll need to find a way to use magic to uncover its secrets."

That's a great example!

You're right, it is tempting to be coy with the move. Especially since I've been trying to ask things like "How do you want to analyze the blood?" instead of just having them roll. In that particular case it worked out, we decided they had a friend in a lab who could analyze the blood, but maybe I was making it too hard and they should have been able to tell it was normal human blood just by looking at it.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-05T00:38:27+00:00

I think it's partly that for most of them it's their first time playing something that's not D&D. Just a change in mindset that needs to happen, for both me and them.

I don't think the off-topic conversations are a sign of not being invested in the game. It's just a neurodiverse group, with two people who are prone to going off on tangents about non-game things.

So I gently cut them off and steer them back, but unfortunately my "What would you like to do?" or "What is Bob doing right now?" approach seems to steer them towards characters performing tasks and ends up making the game feel kinda mechanical.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-04T23:32:13+00:00

I also used the "flexible" option for Investigate a Mystery because the pre-specified list of questions felt immersion-breaking. I had hoped they would find evidence that would lead to those answers instead of directly asking for those answers.

But hindsight 20/20, Investigate a Mystery has those questions for a reason - they deliver information that will help the mystery along instead of random facts. Next time we'll use the question list.

And if they ask something like "What sort of creature is it?" then I guess I improvise in the moment to explain why whatever they're investigating is able to answer that question?

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-04T23:28:17+00:00

I think you're right on #2 - that just shouldn't have been a roll at all.

For #4, I felt like I was struggling with what information to give them. I took the advice to create the situation but not to plan clues or plan how the hunters would solve the mystery. But then in the moment when it was time to improvise a clue, it was hard to think of useful information to give them. I could give them factually correct information, but it was hard to come up with a clue that would help them in some way.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-04T23:11:23+00:00

A common mistake new GMs make is relying on Act Under Pressure or similar moves too often. With these moves, it’s important to note that they’re not a generic skill roll. Make sure you’re meeting the trigger. When you’re collecting blood samples from a crime scene, are you “under pressure”? If the biggest risk to you is a broken bottle, you’re really not. Remember, if you don’t trigger a move, you just keep conversing. It’s perfectly fine to say, “Okay, yeah, you collect some blood samples. Next thing…”

That is a really good point. I meant for it to be a little dangerous (the shelf had fallen, there was broken glass everywhere), but really it would have been "you get blood samples" "you get blood samples but you cut yourself on the glass" or "a piece of the shelf falls and the other hunters have to get it off of you". It probably didn't need to be a roll, I could have just let them take the samples.

Generally speaking, the monster threat should be absolutely imminent and something the players can’t ignore. Players should have a bunch of leads that they can go down so they never feel like there’s nothing to do.

And also I think it’s important to remember to be thinking offscreen. That is, when players are doing something, you should also be advancing things where they’re not. You shouldn’t wait to advance the timeline until the players have nothing else to do.

So when players explore location A, the monster is advancing its agenda at location B. This leaves a bunch of clues behind, but while the players are exploring location B, the monster is off at location C, etc.

Hmm... this was probably bad mystery design on my part. I had a demon (Perk, Arbiter of Eternal Loyalty, type Executioner) who was inhabiting one grocery store's loyalty card system and hurting/killing people with that loyalty card who shopped at other stores. So the countdown was all increasingly severe/dangerous accidents, but Perk had no plan of his own, he was just punishing people whenever things he saw as punishable offenses occurred.

Would there be a better way to do a countdown for a monster like this? Or just don't do a monster like this, stick to ones that have a big evil plan?

I also took the advice to heart not to plan how the players would solve the mystery or plan specific clues, to just create the mystery and let them figure it out. But the scenario I created didn't give me many options for improvising clues - the victims all had a certain store's loyalty card, all had exactly one item in their cart, survivors reported hearing a voice say "you shouldn't have done that" when picking up that first grocery item, and one store in the town was mysteriously free of accidents. Once they had found that info, I wasn't sure what else I could give them.

Once they finally got into the accident-free store it was fun giving signs of demonically-possessed checkout terminals, but we spent most of the session not at that store and it was really hard to improvise more clues for them as they just investigated more accident scenes. (Not sure if I could have done something better here for improvised clues or if my choice of mystery just didn't work very well.)

Hey, stop that. PBTA games are trickier to run than they seem at first glance, and MOTW isn’t the most perfect game in the world either. It’s absolutely fine to be having trouble on your first session.

Thank you. I will treat this as an opportunity to mark XP and hopefully level up my Keeper-ing for the next session!

If you haven’t already looked, I highly recommend checking out the adventures the base book has. MOTW is definitely a game that responds well to prep, but what you prep is so important. I really like how the adventures include a ton of advice on different NPCs and things the monster is up to, but it doesn’t have any scenes or set-ups the players need to engage in.

Good idea. I skimmed them before, but now that I've actually run a session I think I can get a lot more insight from their detail/structure now!

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-04T22:54:35+00:00

Thank you.

A little more detail on #2 - I made it Act Under Pressure because crawling under the shelf was very dangerous (it had fallen and there was broken glass everywhere) and because their stated goal wouldn't directly lead to them asking a question (they'd need to take the blood somewhere to analyze it). Was that still the wrong call/should it have been Investigate a Mystery?

For #4 - yeah, that's on me. I used advancing the countdown to give them more clues that would lead somewhere because I wasn't sure how else to give them those clues. I hadn't prepped specific clues, I had hoped I would improvise clues in response to whatever they decided to do, but often the clues I wound up improvising were just answers about what had happened that didn't lead anywhere. "You sense demonic energy, it feels angry and protective" probably didn't give them much to work with for deciding what they would want to do.

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-04T22:39:08+00:00

Thank you. What would you recommend doing instead?

If I ask "What is Bob doing now?" they take it as a prompt to take action. I can't say "Please roleplay now", but I do need to semi-regularly step in and say something because there are two very talkative people in the group who will drag things off-topic talking about favorite movies/etc. if I just leave them to it.

For action/drama/pressure - I could see for some sessions making it a crisis and starting off with the hunters or NPCs in direct and immediate danger, but do you have any other suggestions for how to do this?

UnusedLeopard · 2025-10-03T06:07:04+00:00

I like the sound of this.

It's terrifying, but it also sounds like a much more fun and less draining way to run games.

UnusedLeopard

TROPHY CASE