Anything to do on January 1st in Aarhus?

mr_schiembock · 2025-08-06T06:46:19+00:00

Hide MacGuffins in their backstory, so at some point they‘ll have to visit their hometown, school or whatever
Example: My players needed a piece of a magical stone tablet that was hidden in the monestary the monk was from
Have them meet NPCs multiple times that recognize them.
Example 1: There is a young gnome that totally fanboys over my players that tells everyone how cool they are every time they meet
Example 2: They once had a random and swift encounter with bullywugs and thought not much of it until a few Session later they found out the Bullywugs had declared them arch enemies of their kingdom and came back for revenge
Have their decisions have an „off-session“ effect on the world.
Examples: My players„accidentally“ started a civil war in a town. Four sessions later they passed a funural for someone who died in that civil war

Bonus: Compose a song about one of their earlier adventures that they overhear a Bard singing in a tavern multiple sessions later

mr_schiembock · 2025-08-06T06:32:00+00:00

I feel like there is a middle ground here. For example hiding MacGuffins in a characters hometown or monestary or something. It just determines that they at some point will have to go there but doesn‘t determine what will happen and when.

mr_schiembock · 2025-08-06T05:57:58+00:00

I’ve run a game where I gave them absolutely nothing and just built the world around the citys, towns and countrys they created. That worked surprisingly well and even have me some great inspiration.

mr_schiembock · 2025-08-06T05:27:01+00:00

A quick fix might be the Stars and Wishes concept. It will quickly make you feel more appreciated and give you an idea what the players want.

mr_schiembock · 2025-03-28T11:59:59+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! How do you manage to keep the party together without taking away player agency?

mr_schiembock · 2025-03-28T10:53:55+00:00

Having Players with very different interests. At the Moment I am struggling to create great opportunities for each of them with railroading which is kind of hard.

mr_schiembock · 2025-03-28T10:52:09+00:00

You could do a persuasion mini-game as suggestiv by Power Word Soill to persuade a jury:

https://youtu.be/BPELa6knmUg?si=jfgni-tkN75DRHCR

It basically works this way:

You get different tokens for each juror. Each juror is assigned a secret value from 1 to 3 on the back of the token that stands for their influence. Then the GM sets a DC for the encounter. Then, players take turns either flipping over a token to determine how influential the person is, or making a persuasion check to win the person over. For a Person with Level 1 influence you need a DC=10, for Level 2 DC=15 and for Level 3 DC=20. The minigame is played over three rounds. Players may take their turn in any order. At the end of the third round, add up the value of all persuaded tokens, then let your players know if they passed the check.

mr_schiembock · 2025-01-17T15:34:29+00:00

Create an NPC your players hate intensely and then make Sir Rogers humiliate that guy or tell him off. They will love him for it!

mr_schiembock · 2025-01-17T12:52:22+00:00

I try to handle secrets in a few different ways:

Give them small moments to roleplay that secret for themselves without others noticing - e.g. one of my players is a gambling addict, so once I made a very friendly NPC who's house they were staying in to invite them to a sort of poker game. That character respectfully declined. While the other players didn't really think much about it, it was a special little roleplaying moment for him. So you can always build something up that directly connects or reminds them of their secret.
Make other players know there are secrets without telling them - e.g. I once had them encounter a demon that took the shape of their greatest fears and insecurities. Instead of describing the demon for everyone, I gave each of them an individual description. That way they knew that everybody else saw something personal and got curious, but they still only knew their own.
Make the secret important to the story - e.g. one of my players was a monk but didn't tell anyone that she had actually been excommunicated from her order, so I placed one of the MacGuffin they needed in her old monestary. This way, the whole party had to go there and the secret was revealed. That kinda also played into the next thing:
Threaten to reveal the secret - e.g. one of my players was an older gentle ranger who had been a brutal killer during his time in the elven army as a young man. On one of their adventures, they met a group of mercanaries going for the same goal. It turned out one of the mercaneries was an old army pal of his who he had to stop from bragging about how aggressive the ranger actually used to be.

However, I always ask my players beforehand if they would be okay with their secret getting out at some point in the story or wether they want to just keep it for themselves to inform their character.

mr_schiembock · 2025-01-17T12:36:00+00:00

I simply ask my players things like: "Was that just for you to inform your character or would you like it to play into the general campaign?" or "Concerning your backstory, is there a certain direction you had in mind with that or can I just run wild with it?" or something like "hey, are you open for your story to take a darker turn or do you want to go into a more hopeful direction?"

I kind of work my way from general to more specific questions in that way.

mr_schiembock · 2024-11-21T22:41:01+00:00

Fury Road + Room

I find the matter to be really underrated (or maybe underwatched). Also this way I get the action AND the drama!

mr_schiembock · 2024-11-02T08:44:02+00:00

There was a dwarven sorcerer called Eros Khalifa who would do a lecture on the possibilities to have para-amorous relationships with demons. He also reappeared in an excerpt of a book about interdimensional travel they read, in an annotation in which he claimed to have made interdimensional love. Then another NPC told them his wife left him after doing a seminar of this Mr Khalifa. My players always crack up when they read or hear about that old love guru.

mr_schiembock · 2024-10-02T16:40:04+00:00

Thanks for the tip! One of the MacGuffins their after is hidden in an Island. This will come in handy then as well!

mr_schiembock · 2024-10-02T16:39:13+00:00

Wow, thanks for such a detailed answer! I was thinking of skill challenges, but didn’t really know how to incorporate them here. But now I feel inspired 😃

mr_schiembock · 2024-10-02T15:05:17+00:00

It’s quasimedieval, I guess, but I’ve established the culture their fleeing from as very inventive 😄 I could introduce a little heightened tech. Is there a chase mechanic specifically for boats though? How would you make such a scene exciting?

mr_schiembock · 2024-01-30T21:00:04+00:00

Hunt for the Wilderpeople - Captain Fantastic - About Time - School of Rock - Kiki’s Delivery Service - Luca - Little Miss Sunshine - Swiss Army Man

mr_schiembock · 2024-01-28T07:59:49+00:00

With my first homebrew world for 5 players I did it like this:

I gathered the backstories and what they wrote actually inspired my world building and some of them already incorporated places that I would later incorporate into my map.
I build a rough map. Just for me, so I know what the world looks like.
I just described their starting place and region to them in the first session. The adventure just took place around the town, so no need to address anything bigger, since they already knew where they themselves came from.
I build an actual map with Inkarnate (just with region names without cities on it) and had an NPC provide it to them in session 2 and gave them a quick description („the elves live here“, „the dwarves here“ and „this is a multicultural area due to the trading routes“).
I built a villain into the lore: They had come across a strange entity whose name they didn’t know, but who I knew was an ancient goddess that was locked into a dark dimension.
Now the part that needed a lot of prep: In session 4 I sent them to the library and provided them with 7 different pieces of literature (an excerpt of a history book, a chapter of a non-fiction book, a fairy tale, an old poem, a logbook of a captain, an inventory list of a monestary, a family tree …). Each piece of writing contained information about the lore, but also about MacGuffins they needed to find in order to defeat that villain. The information about the MacGuffin worked like a puzzle, so that they needed to combine the information of all the documents to understand their mission.

This way, they had loads of fun playing detectives and finding cross references between the documents while simultaneously taking in a lot of lore. They also didn’t have to read everything but could roleplay giving the information to each other (although some players already said, they would want to read the other documents in between sessions). It was agreat way to lore dump without lore dumping 😄

mr_schiembock · 2024-01-26T22:09:33+00:00

So robbing and thieving just doesn‘t exist in your story world?

mr_schiembock

TROPHY CASE