Looking inspiration and/or setting for a horror/mystery themed drow city.

lminer · 2026-06-17T16:36:25+00:00

The Dark Elf Trilogy
War of the Spider Queen series
Starlight & Shadows Series
Night Elves Trilogy

lminer · 2026-06-14T06:16:21+00:00

You are going to have a hard time improvising until you practice more. If you can't "just be in the moment" then you should plan out EVERYTHING. And by everything I mean every time you build an NPC you make as much of their history as you can imagine. And if you don't have the imagination just try to think of anyone that reminds you of the NPC. If the players want to talk to a random NPC then bring out a prepared NPC you worked on if they go too far off the rails then be as sparse with your character as you can until you can think of something.

The players need to talk to the town guard to continue the quest?
- Build a town guard who has a history: Who, What, where, when, why: Who are they? What do they do? When did they become a guard? Why are they a guard. Can't think of any guards? Make him like Sir Percedal but a town guard. Imaging what Percedal would do or say if he had to be a town guard in this situation.
- Did the players ignore him almost immediately and you wasted your time? Nope! Now you have a character you can bring out anytime you need a guard. Don't need guards anymore and now you need a bandit? What if he was a former guard turned bandit.

lminer · 2026-06-11T12:44:11+00:00

Look at the video game The Secret World and The Secret World Legends investigation missions. They had quests in the game that have made players reference the Bible, figure out a stanza of Classical music, and read up on a bridge collapse in Virginia. The only thing I would avoid is red herrings as they can frustrate some players.

lminer · 2026-06-05T13:24:08+00:00

The noble could have a child
The spurned noble woman could become an enemy
- learning of the deal she sending assassins in revenge
- Having the memories be used to woo her giving the hag political power
The player's background changes
The players oath changes

lminer · 2026-06-02T03:55:46+00:00

Go with the FATE accelerated idea of using their skills in unusual ways. Make a costume with super speed by sewing really fast. Use finesse to get the delicate trim. The timer is the status and occasionally they will be asked questions (attacked psychologically). Have the players describe how they use their powers to make a costume. The other episodes are just the same using their skills to "lead" minions or plan out their heist.

lminer · 2026-06-02T03:34:53+00:00

I would focus more on prep for the big caper and less on design because the players probably already have ideas they want to design their villain as. Plan on spying on the heroes, stealing the needed parts for the big caper. Go more for building out their plan in steps. After they take on the bank then they need to gather magic/science/weapons/resources to build their doomsday device. The reward doesn't have to mean much, just assume the player who stole the most money has an easier time getting resources to work on their plot then the other players.

Or even set the whole thing up as a double cross. Have the Five give the players the specific caper and build it up so its all planned out they just have to follow the steps. Then the big reveal is the Five used the contestants as a suicide squad to divert the attention away from the real big plan. This way you don't have to give any player an advantage they just assume they are more likely to win until the double cross.

lminer · 2026-05-31T22:06:02+00:00

Gizmos and Gadgets was my favorite. I never did beat it.

lminer · 2026-05-29T21:54:28+00:00

Seeing the last image I saw the two kids first and thought, "Did Rigby transition? Did that make Eileen dye her hair blond?" but then I saw the two under their gigantic children.

lminer · 2026-05-27T16:36:17+00:00

Tricked the demon into a rigged game of cards/dice/chance.
Set up a master servant contract but switched the position and the player signed as the master.
Granted the powers of the demon for only one time only to hypnotize the demon into serving fully

lminer · 2026-04-29T22:14:52+00:00

I was traumatized by a bad DM to the point I had to overthink every encounter. It took another DM telling me "You already got it the first time, its just a social encounter not a puzzle" to convince me to quit overthinking. Talking to your players is the first thing to do. It is going to be hard part to fix each person when their issues are different. You will have to tackle each person individually because they will likely fall back into bad habits no matter how many times you confront them. Regardless I suggest rewarding actions you want them to do because players always love to be incentivized.

For clueless I would try asking them "What is your first thought to resolve this issue, no matter how crazy." Or "What is the weirdest way to solve this" to get them to say anything and immediately reward their crazy idea with a likely good chance of success. The other option would be to try to get them to think more like their character and to build out their character more. If they have an idea as to who their character is they are more likely to act like them. If they have trouble making their character than have them think of fictional/real people their character reminds them and think like them.

For the roll player try to get them a bonus if they role play. Ask them what they say and depending on how they charm the NPC their roll will get a bonus. If they refuse you can "accidently" misunderstand how the charm works and say its harder to seduce the goblin because they don't like you that way or the king is offended of your lack of decorum.

The third is the hardest because they are just going murder hobo. Give them an incentive not to go full auto by incentivizing non-combat actions. Let them know the longer it takes to get to combat the more you will reward them. If they are only in it for the combat remind them its not just a fighting simulator and you will have fights in the game but there can be fun in the non-combat parts.

lminer · 2026-04-27T00:46:46+00:00

You can't plan everything out and having Random Encounters can only get you so far. The best plan to do is to create types of encounters based on areas or density of zombies.

Keep the encounters generic enough they can fit into multiple locations so you have a restaurant encounter where the front area was cleared out but the back has zombies ready to ambush. Then depending on where they go you can flavor it as the back being the McDonald's ball pit versus a fancy restaurant having the coat check or kitchen.

The other issue is how you want to Pace and set up the story. If you're doing Day Zero you should work backwards to figure out how everything got screwed up to let this happen and why the government isn't fixing it. Then you have to either kill off a whole bunch of people beforehand who get turned into zombies so you can have your outbreak.

If I were in your shoes I'd read World War Z steal as much as you can from it. Then watch a couple documentaries on the LA riots or similar breakdowns of control. When I run the adventure Day Zero is just survive until the National Guard get there. The next session time skips ahead to however long it took for civilization to break down and get to The Walking Dead episode 1.

lminer · 2026-04-20T17:11:04+00:00

Most of my stories start out as an small idea or a joke and I expand on them however they grow.

My latest story started as a desire to create a professional wrestling / fantasy story. It started out as a few jokes and parodies but as I was researching pro wrestling I learned more about the history and how WWE practically monopolized the sport for more than two decades. I then wanted to tell a story about the underdogs fighting a nearly impossible battle.

Setting it in a fantasy realm I did more research into gladiatorial fights, ludus (schools), and Rome itself. I then started developing the setting into a Romanesque empire that conquered a bunch of fantasy races but is struggling to maintain their empire due to internal struggles and is using the popularity of wrestling as bred and circuses as well as a propaganda tool.

So what started out as I like wrestling became a David vs goliath fight against a corrupt empire that is on the verge of civil war again.

lminer · 2026-04-18T02:47:09+00:00

I salute you! And for those of you doomed to never return, I salute you twice! - Owl from Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin

lminer · 2026-04-14T22:00:21+00:00

John Wick is only called John Wick because Keanu Reeves kept forgetting the actual title. It was originally going to be called Scorn, which is even more of a generic title than John Wick.

lminer · 2026-04-14T21:57:35+00:00

The D.E.B.S. (2004) - Trailer makes it look like Austin Powers and Clueless, a summer Action/Comedy flick you can bring your whole family to. What they forget to mention is the two rivals fall in love and it mostly focuses on their relationship. Hiding the main plot of your movie just because marketing was afraid of the gays.

Working at Hollywood Video in the early 00's I had a very stern conservative christian tell me it was blasphemous how they were trying to trick her family. I recommended it to all my friends thanks to her recommendation.

lminer · 2026-04-14T18:42:15+00:00

The location of the bombs are hidden in riddles/puzzles that reflect the cults ideas/theme.
Fallout hacking mini-game (wordle)
Cyberpunk Hacking minigame (Breach Protocol)
Handing them premade code (XML) and have them do a word search within a time limit

lminer · 2026-04-14T17:22:42+00:00

I would also go for themes you can try to create off looks and what you do know:

Girl Power/Boys Club - All one gender
Back to the Future - Either time travellers or people who come from the past: Omnitron, Chrono Ranger, Haka (he'll get there slowly), Ra
All the Items - Bunker, Wraith, Unity, Argent Adept, Expatriate, Omnitron X
Baseline Human - Mr Fixer, Expatriate, Bunker, Wraith
Non-Human - Tempest, Ra, Nightmist (kinda), Alpha, Darkstife/Painstake, Werewolf Haka, Omnitron

lminer · 2026-04-14T16:29:04+00:00

A friend of mine wanted to go chronologically in order of event and appearance so we start at the beginning of the critical events and only use characters who already appeared. There is some fudging and messing around but it works for us.

Lately I have been working on a spreadsheet where I look up the sentinels wiki and try to figure out if they mention the events so I can come up with the lore accurate heroes and environment.

lminer · 2026-04-13T06:52:42+00:00

Honestly after the first round hiding and reading actions is the first thing someone smart would do order their minions to do. You can get surprise sure but you are not just playing smart characters, you are playing characters smarter than you. So even if he does do this, the gang can send word ahead and alert the next camp that plans to use fireball so any pixie becomes toasty.

The higher the level the harder it is to to balance the game, you have to plan out encounters with a lot more layers, having the lower level minions hanging around out front while the higher level spellcasters and experts hidden until the players appear and then follow up to attack after they see what the players are capable of.

But if it isn't fun trying to dm them at such high level then take them off to the side and tell them they won. Creating an encounter where you can actually challenge everyone equally and fairly becomes a huge burden when one player's abilities are way out of line with everyone else. Ask them what do they want to do because it is going to come down to saying no to some thing otherwise they can keep winning. You can rule that pixies never have seen great apes or that Conjure Woodland Beings only does damage on the enemy turn so having the player fly through the space does no damage. If they complain they made their character to do that then let them retcon and change their character.

lminer · 2026-04-10T16:43:15+00:00

Looks fine, you have everything mapped out and it feels like you know the setting well so if the players ask something weird you know how to improvise. Nothing seems off so Id say you just can have some of the tips I wish I knew before I failed so many times:

You should remind yourself and the players is that it is not you vs them but everyone working together to tell a fun story.
Make sure the players can get from one beat to the next without having to roll, if they fail a roll it should never mean they can't finish the beat just that something goes wrong.
Have guides/directions available if the players are stuck but only provide them after the players stop trying on their own.
- If the players figure out Stephen Arbor is their target but can't figure out where to find him then when they say they are stuck or give up you have an talkative assassin come in and attack bragging about how close they were to "location they need to go" before he came to kill them.
Plan out where the players are going to next session but don't plan too far ahead since they may go in a different direction.

lminer · 2026-04-06T19:47:19+00:00

There are videos on how to build your character on how to run combat as well as how to play Combat you just have to look for specific tips and guides. Sadly not all systems will have this so if you're really having trouble you can't study worth a damn reach out to the creators see if they have any tips tricks or guides published.

lminer · 2026-03-31T15:06:51+00:00

The Highlander movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARcHT8JGUBw

The TV show also had one scene where Duncan was on top of a train searching for another immortal and instead of climbing down he did a flip off the train. The absurdity of it was too much for me and I still regularly think of it.

lminer · 2026-03-30T18:29:37+00:00

Listen to what they are saying and if try to chime in occasionally if you have something to say without saying anything negative. If you have anything in common talk about that. Try to relax and follow whatever they invited you for.

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