TTRPGs & D&D

docsilence said:
Yep. And this is why my favorite rule in gaming isn't "rule of cool," it's the old Johnny Cash quote: I reserve the right to change my mind. Look let's try it this way in this moment, but if it's wrong or sucks, we're not committed to it forever. We can adjust as we go to find what is the most fun.
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It's been a long time since I read one cover to cover, but don't most versions of the DMG even say right in them 'these are just suggestions - do what you want?'

On a slightly different topic, I just heard about Brancalonia and I think I'm in love (at least with the setting, if not necessarily the specific rules they developed for it). I'll probably pick up at least the PDF copy of the main book and have a read.
 
Damien said:
It's been a long time since I read one cover to cover, but don't most versions of the DMG even say right in them 'these are just suggestions - do what you want?'

On a slightly different topic, I just heard about Brancalonia and I think I'm in love (at least with the setting, if not necessarily the specific rules they developed for it). I'll probably pick up at least the PDF copy of the main book and have a read.
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It's like, the first sentence in the PHB in 5e and 2024. The trick is getting people to believe it (and not abuse it).
 
I watched a review of Brancalonia a while back that had me really intrigued. Same with Dolmenwood which doesn't seem to be in any hurry to come out on pdf.

I'm basically just collecting settings at this point.
 
Fletch said:
I'm basically just collecting settings at this point.
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I'm very guilty of this. And always have been. As far back as around the mid-way point of 3.5, I had enough setting books to run a game in a different setting every day of the month with some to spare.
 
altcunningham said:
Anybody else messed with City of Mists?
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Another one I own but haven't played. I ran it by some players but the (fascinatingly) freeform character concepts turned out to be TOO much freedom for folks who are used to picking and then tailoring an archetype. I should pull it back off the shelf and re-look at it.
 
docsilence said:
Another one I own but haven't played. I ran it by some players but the (fascinatingly) freeform character concepts turned out to be TOO much freedom for folks who are used to picking and then tailoring an archetype. I should pull it back off the shelf and re-look at it.
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I enjoyed the campaign I played.

But.

Yes. Our group also had that freedom pain from the rules and the very Mythic concept. Our DM was very loose with it, too, in a fun way.

Spider-Man or Batman concepts could be Mythic because of Franchise Power. Elvis. Doc Savage. Snoopy.

It really locked a lot of peoples' brains. We even cycled through two players early on because they couldn't grasp it.

I had fun with my concept:

I based mine off of the Mexican revenge spirit, Xtabay, the ghost woman who murders cheating or abusive men. Did an Etrigan/Ghost Rider take on it where a college student record store clerk found out she was the host for this vengeance engine. During the day, a sleuthy Lois Lane activist type (our campaign was about gentrification and corporate greed). At night or when she holds her magic blade aloft and speaks the words, dark haired ghost woman Spawn vigilante.

My nemesis was Alexander the Great as a David Xanatos type.

My allies were Enter the Dragon Elvis, Satan as a Luchadore, and a Reddit conspiracy nut who was unknowingly Sam Spade.
 
Two players in my weekly game gave me an absolute GIFT of an interconnected, tragic backstory that informs the setting and really sets them up on a revenge arc and I let it simmer for a while, but tonight they got a big reveal and man, seeing six people recoil in surprise all at once is an unbeatable feeling.
 
I'm forcing my players to connect their backstories going forward. Easy money to make them care about each other + set up some badass sidequests.
 
TheSameIdiot said:
I'm forcing my players to connect their backstories going forward. Easy money to make them care about each other + set up some badass sidequests.
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This story arc began with a dhampir who had been imprisoned by his clan and thrown away for 20 years. One of the other players wanted to play an amnesiac puppet. I always ask (as you know) who is one person you have wronged, and the puppet player said: him. And so the reason the puppet, who is covered in nails, is a puppet, is because in life he betrayed the dhampir and that dhampir's lover had the betrayer's soul transferred into a doll so she could stick nails in it out of revenge.

Any time players can be interwoven like that and tied into the story... chef's kiss. Love it. That feeeeeeeds me as a DM. Especially if it's kept hidden for a bit.
 
TheSameIdiot said:
I'm forcing my players to connect their backstories going forward. Easy money to make them care about each other + set up some badass sidequests.
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I've always encouraged it.

I'm gonna nerdsplain my favorite method I used for Star Wars and a heist D&D one shot that shone because of it.

Break them into pairs. If you have a smaller table of just 3-4 people, I'd make them do it as the three, but still split off the four into 2-2. My above games had 6, but I run a Latverian iron fist on tangents and goofing off to keep momentum.

The pairs now have to figure out how they know each other. Whatever backstory and connections they want. That way they're coming in connected and invested in the other. It's like a social buy in.

Then establish how an individual from the set would know another from another set.

This improv exercise really brought up some collabs and ideas I know for a fact they wouldn't have done on their own individual pitches to me. And it worked great for the campaigns and stakes, because by social agreement, you at least have one other character validating or supporting another's wild choices, which leads to interesting social conflict, but not toxic table conflict.
 
The advice I've seen is to ask each player to connect to two others. It doesn't really matter how. Maybe they met at war, worked the same shitty job, or are siblings. In any case, it creates a spiderweb of connections between party members.

I did it for my Halloween one-shot last year and both my players and I loved it. Instead of stunted roleplay as players tried to figure one another out, it gave them license to be more creative.
Has anyone heard of Legend in the Mist? Different than the City in the Mist Alt mentioned above.

I don't know about running a whole game in a system like this, but I could see myself stealing the RP-based character traits and grafting them onto another system.

 
docsilence said:
I have three questions I ask before we play. I think I get lucky in that this has worked for me most of the time; if players dodge the questions I find that they tend to not be a good fit for my style. (These are modified from the questions Jerry Holkins asked his players at the start of Acquisitions Inc. the C Team, which might be the most underrated actual play kicking around out there.)
  • What is your secret purpose for becoming an adventurer, in this place/setting specifically? (Ground them in the setting)
  • Who is someone you have wronged? (Gives them a potential nemesis or redemption arc)
  • What is the thing you would cross your most uncrossable ethical line to learn? (Allows me to put things in front of them that build dramatic decision-making, and perhaps build in quests for them)
And then I ask them for 1-3 people who MATTER to them. Not who they care about or love or whatever, let the player decide who is important and why. Could be an enemies hit list. Their kids. A lost comrade.
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I found a version of this that I think will work for my game/players.

I'm stealing from Mossy Antler. It's pretty similar to doc's:
  • What is your ancestry/culture?
  • Do you have any obligations or loose ends?
  • What is your complication? (He specifically used Karlach from BG3 and Draw Steel as examples.)
  • To stop anything like [event] from happening again, I strive to [urge]. "I watched my family get cut down in front of me because I was too weak to stop it. Now I strive to be self-reliant to stop it from happening again."
 
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