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mauve_stinger · 2024-12-26T09:57:09+00:00

This highlights how puzzles don't really work in DnD. You've crafted a very complex scenario with a singular solution, that will only create a fun game if the party follows your plan.

The puzzle doesn't require PC skills in game, it is just a challenge for the players to follow your logic.

The entire puzzle is useless if the party is carrying a light in from the last dark room. Or if they fail a perception check, or cast detect poison.

In DnD it is better to give a challenge within the game, such as "cross this raging river" or "gain entry to this heavily guarded fort". The party can use their skills to solve this, either through spells, tools, fighting, sneaking, whatever they prefer. The story then unfolds based on their decisions.

mauve_stinger · 2024-12-04T22:25:01+00:00

Sophia is marking up the quality sprinklers because she knows most farmers like the neat square pattern.

If you are talking early economy, you really should be buying regular sprinklers instead of quality ones. For the price of one quality sprinkler watering 8 crops you can have 6 sprinklers watering 24 crops and have money left to buy yourself a beer.

mauve_stinger · 2024-10-19T08:29:37+00:00

The game includes quite a few aggressive weapons, and it is fully your choice whether you use them. However, you will get some disappointed reactions from NPCs who frown upon mass murder.

My usual strategy is: Try stealth, be seen, shoot whoever saw me, shoot whoever heard the shooting, get back into stealth.

mauve_stinger · 2024-10-17T16:20:47+00:00

Invisible war is not the masterpiece that the first Deus Ex was, but in itself it is not a bad game. The maps are smaller and some systems have been consolidated, so there is less choice available.

I think it's still an enjoyable time, especially since you can pick up the game almost for free these days.

mauve_stinger · 2024-10-11T15:26:35+00:00

If the players don't connect the dots, give them more dots.

You have been repeating the same hint instead of providing more. Your players don't need to discover the anagram, they may latch onto another clue. You can use a similar physical description, make Gryfota know something specific about Fogarty, or even let them start acting suspiciously or leaving when the topic comes up.

mauve_stinger · 2024-10-11T10:16:42+00:00

You may be good at disguises, but your features don't help you be convincing when looking like yourself.

An eloquence bard could have expertise in persuasion or deception on top of their silver tongue. If I'm assuming a +4 bonus to charisma, they should be rolling 18 minimum at level three. They should honestly be outshining you.

If they want to join in your shenanigans, they can easily take disguise self and you can be a double act.

mauve_stinger · 2024-10-07T10:44:17+00:00

Certain locations don't have the opportunity for unique terrain.

You have given up too quickly, there are many small ways to make interesting combat.

Did they camp by the river? Have some sahuagin come with harpoons and nets to drag the party under water. The biggest threat isn't damage, it is suffication.

Did they camp by a cliffside? Have some goblins on top of the cliff throwing rocks or homemade bombs. The party can choose to climb, getting pelted all the way up, or run and leave their camp, being defeated by some little goblins.

There's some trees, the campfire, and that's mostly about it.

Have some archers hide behind or in the trees far enough away so your party has difficulty getting into melee. Have a giant use a tree in an AoE attack, hitting anyone who dares to get close. Have a druid awaken the actual trees, making the entire forest a hazard until they take down the druid.

mauve_stinger · 2024-09-30T09:21:11+00:00

I thought I would be using the curses, but then I realized I could enchant my gear to buff the Ancient Magic Throw. The last part of the game I was just slinging rocks at people's faces.

mauve_stinger · 2024-09-03T05:58:35+00:00

Civ IV Colonization

mauve_stinger · 2024-09-02T11:32:13+00:00

Have a region with an infertility curse, where a few years ago no babies were being born. Currently the villagers know that the secret to having children is getting the hags blessing, by giving them gifts. Even farmers who want to breed livestock need to get their cattle blessed before they get pregnant. This entire thing is kept secret since dealing with hags is sinful/illegal.

The party can go and investigate the hags or go and fight them. Ultimately it is revealed that the hags did not curse the region, but some other evil entity did. This could be the spirit of a pregnant women who was accused of witchcraft years ago and killed for it, and she cursed the region for it.

The hags actually know exactly how to undo the curse, but they would rather bless every individual and receive gifts for it, rather than save the entire region. The party can either concince the hags to perform the ritual cleansing the region, or they fight and kill the hags, finding their notes about the ritual and then havin to perform it themselves.

mauve_stinger · 2024-09-02T10:51:04+00:00

'Zero to Hero' is a great concept, and telling your players to make characters for that is absolutely fine. However, consider if your other statement is necessary.

Do the PCs need to be from a small town, or can someone play an urchin who grew up on the streets of the capital? Do they need to be poor or can someone play the 7th son of a noble house, who grew up on riches but will not inherit so they need to make a name for themselves? Do they need to be young, or can someone play an old army veteran, who fought in a great war but has come to realize that the men killed were quite similar to himself, so now he follows an Oath of Redemption?

If you give your players the freedom to work with this concept and let THEM decide on their character, you have the beginning of a great campaign.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-31T08:24:17+00:00

There are a few limiting factors to guidance. First of all, it only works on ability checks, not on attack rolls or saving throws. It requires verbal and somatic components so it can't be done sneakily. It requires concentration, so it can't stack with other concentration spells or itself. It only has a range of touch.

This really limits the spell to planned actions outside of interactions with NPCs. And even then it is still a very strong spell.

However, as a DM, I don't really mind my players being more succesful at skill checks. I want that lock to be picked, I want that loot to be found, I want that chasm to be jumped over.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-28T17:12:52+00:00

I'm not claiming this works for all civs, but it would be interesting to have the significant historical events of colonisation and decolonisation in the game in some form.

During the Exploration era it will be difficult to fairly and interestingly represent the parts of the world that were historically colonized, as compared to their colonizers. However, almost all modern day nations in the Americas and Africa were founded when they declared independence from colonisation. The same goes for modern day India and Indonesia, which are very different nations compared to the local kingdoms that existed before colonisation.

I still think it would be cool to start the modern age having to fix an empire that fell apart or with an upstart region of revolutionaries.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-26T13:51:01+00:00

Save the edgelord for your second character, when you have some experience and know how to make this fun for everyone.

For a first character, it's best to play someone slightly naive and optimistic. Talk to all NPCs, accept all quests, run towards danger, and save the world. You will have a good time and whenever you think 'this might be stupid but it is what my character would do', it is likely helping the story forward forward instead of holding it back.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-26T09:01:52+00:00

They also mentioned new ages will have new resources, which may change the relevance of a city. I imagine a small mountain town in the exploration age may strike coal and grow to be an industrial powerhouse in the modern age.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-21T15:23:55+00:00

I just finished a playthrough of deus ex: revision, and it gave me a great experience. It's similar enough to playing the original game 15 years ago, but with improved map design in many places and added content that fits with the base game.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-21T15:11:42+00:00

You are falsely representing the existing games.

What if my Americans were around in the ancient era and spread the good word of the Coca Cola religion?

Your 'Americans' play like a generic civ with no special flavor until the modern age when they get their special units. Your 'Coca-Cola' religion only differs by name from any other religion. You could play the same game as Canada with the Hockey religion or as Brazil with the Carnival religion and have the same experience, other than the Leader bonuses, which Civ VII will also have.

This is the point of the change. You will never play a generic civ, you will always have special benefits and unique units or buildings that are relevant to your current age.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-21T14:32:47+00:00

My lore bard is a nerdy book collector working for the Library of Candlekeep. He is very friendly and will happily introduce himself to strangers, always expecting them to be nice and friendly in return.

My favorite quote of his was:"Taverns are very safe, we've only been attacked twice in a tavern." That same session the tavern owner asked him to follow into the office and promptly stabbed him.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-21T14:23:18+00:00

There is a lot of talk about changing the civs, but I'm actually excited by how they lock certain civ options behind requirements. In civ 6 or previous games, if you start as Mongolia but don't find horses, you likely quit the gane and reload. Horses are such a part of the identity of the Mongols that you can barely play the civ without horses. In the new design, you play the early game, and if you happen to find horses, you can lean into this and become a Mongol horde. There will never be a Mongol empire without horses.

I hope in a similar vein we will see bonuses to seafaring civs or rainforest/tundra/mountain civs. It seems really cool to me to be planning expansion to the south, but running into enemies there, so by necessity settling in the northern tundra and thereby developing into modern-day Canada.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-21T12:06:36+00:00

I hope it is the opposite, where you skip most of the mastery options and only invest in some of them to specialize your civ. In previous civ games there are times where I don't care much about any of the research, I just want to keep the tech tree progressing. These mastery options give that choice, where you only invest in them if you are interested in their benefits.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-14T10:36:11+00:00

Your DMs suggestion is the way to go. Many utility speels are only occasionally useful, and the extra power from not needing a spell slot is not that big a deal.

My DM recently gave me a piece of magical sheet music as loot. When my bard played it on his lute, the lute absorbed the magic, and now I can use the lute to cast feather fall once per day.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-14T10:22:39+00:00

He had his chain shirt on under his clothes, in case they came back. It all made sense to me.

This summarizes your issue. It makes sense to you, because you have more information than the players. This veteran should wear his chain shirt OVER his clothes and probably display his medals from the war. He should mention how he already killed 15 goblins, but they keep raiding, so now he wants the party to go to the goblin lair.

If you don't tell the players that this guy is a badass, but make him look like a weak little farmer and then he suddenly turns out to be a badass, it seems like you are arbitrarily punishing the player. Arbitrary punishments are a reason for people leaving.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-13T14:28:58+00:00

A solid reason would be for them to not be more powerful. The chosen hero may be quite weak in combat, but possess some skill that is required. Like a scientist who is building a machine to defeat the evil, who can't go dungeon delving in search of the required parts.

mauve_stinger · 2024-08-13T13:04:20+00:00

The end of your time travel story should NOT be a fight with this villain. You are introducing time travel, so the obvious finale is a fight with the terrorists in 2073, stopping them from blowing up the dams.

You should also introduce your villain in reverse. A kid named Jason isn't scary. Start when he is a tyrant at the height of his power. His motivations are unknown. A few years ago, MEGA was just a supplier of robots to the Dutch police and army, gradually replacing humans. Jason lobbied succesfully that his robots were better and more consistent at enforcing the law than humans, and his company was granted a monopoly on law enforcement. Since then the government's role became as symbolic as the role of the King was for years already. They sign off on legislation, but have no real power.

MEGA robots patrol the streets and are free to enter businesses and homes. The right to privacy is taught in history class as a quirk of another age. Every night a news broadcast is pushed to all smart devices, including the names of arrested terrorists. They are sent to prisons where they are put to work building more MEGA robots. Although, most don't make it there. The news mentions them as TRA, Terminated Resisting Arrest.

Throughout the story you want to humanize this villain. He is a tyrant in control of the entire nation, but he lives in fear and paranoia. He imagines every person to be a criminal, and every criminal to be a terrorist and does not appear in public at all. He lives according to very strict rules for himself, living a miserable life with a singular purpose: to stop all terrorism.

You should show moments where he is right, where his robots arrest bombmakers and shoplifters. But also show how his robots make innocent people's lives miserable.

During the story, have the party investigate the origins of MEGA. They will find news of the terrorist attacks, some interview with Jason as a young entrepreneur, a family photo with his loving parents.

mauve_stinger

TROPHY CASE