"If you don't have the brains, you lose your gains - that's what Simon always used to say." Rio chuckles. "Usually before he whacked me upside the head for being a dunce."
Saffra looks out onto the sea longingly. "Sometimes I wonder how different life would be without Lynn." She adds quickly, "Not that I don't love him or anything, but I do wonder."
"Perhaps you can compromise." Rio closes the picnic basket to avoid attracting wasps. "You want a life of adventure, and he wants a secure life without his family breathing down his neck. Surely there is a middle ground."
"We should get home soon, I think - there is business we must attend to later." Rio looks wryly at Tifer. "Shall we head back and check on our wounded warrior?"
I accidentally submitted one of my table-fying edits when I was just starting, so when I got the ping I was frantically trying to finish the edit within the grace period
i have four "big sprawling sandbox" settings, two of which are currently in use for the Monday/Wednesday campaigns, and a bunch of smaller "mini" settings like the one for this campaign
mini settings are a lot of fun to make, but aren't as complex as the Big Settings
or maybe a setting kinda like Lost Omens in Pathfinder, where there are hundreds of prophecies that run the course of civilizations - but the guy who made the prophecies died before he could explain them
we played that for our first 2e campaign and it was really funny
and all the monsters are alien species native to different worlds
yeah, at that point i'm basically making Starfinder
the other idea i had was just to make your typical Urban Fantasy setting where the civilized fantasy races have achieved human-level modern advancement, because those are always fun to make. but the problem is that worldbuilding how that came to be is a nightmare
"ALL HAIL STEVIUS JOBBIUS, GOD OF APPLE, AND WE SHALL BURN THE ANDROID HEATHENS"
imagine it's like a post-apocalypse fantasy society and they dig up Apple products but mistake all the references to Steve Jobs as references to some kind of god, because of how Silicon Valley seems to worship him
maybe they figure out electricity so they can activate the devices, but they don't fully understand how to keep them on/charge the batteries. so whenever they manage to make a device briefly activate it's considered a sign from the gods
then they sneak into a worship ceremony where an ancient iPhone is briefly activated, and the worshippers prostrate themselves and rend their garments in amazement
it is declared a miracle
then there is a plot twist planned by me and another player where one of the PCs was secretly a time traveler from the past, and he walks calmly up, takes out a portable charger and plugs in the phone
The government figured out a time-travel machine, some politician pushed them to try it too early and sent the PCs forward in time; now the machine is broken and have to try to get parts to fix it
I have (tentatively) three sections: getting the mission at headquarters (allows for getting into character & exposition), sneaking around zoo to get information about Evil Plan, and then hopefully y'all figure out the Evil Plan and return later to sneak around and thwart it
usually i recommend making separate little pages for each NPC so you can grab their info when players bump into them, or are looking for people
players are heading to general store? -> go into general store folder -> here are relevant NPCs. players talk to this NPC? open their info to remember how to RP them
you can also have pages for each PC to store information as the player tells you info
there's the corn-dog stand seller who is a retired fighter and insists on elaborate demonstrations of how to stab people with corn dog sticks before he'll give you one
there's the extremely bored gift-shop clerk who wanted a summer job but can't be bothered to actually work, so they've set up an illusion to man the cash register and annoy people into leaving without buying anything
there's the gay dwarf couple who are bringing their two teens to the zoo, except both are manifesting powers: one a Druid who keeps shifting into animals and running away, one a Bard who keeps casting Vicious Mockery on everyone
"But Sarge, there were *lil baby puppies* that needed saving!" "Yes, inside a CLASSIFIED MILITARY BASE that you were supposed to be doing RECON for and not GO INTO."
