I'm curious. How often has anyone here seen campaigns or adventures, for the big systems like D&D or WoD or GURPS, that are set in one place or one town, especially the characters' home or home town? I mean, the standard idea that everyone knows is for the party to go off on a journey somewhere, out over the mountains or down into a dungeon.
Have asked this before but am asking it again as I see the people here this time seem to be more into D&D.
Actually saw a thread about this on the GURPS forum the other day, coincidentally, or at least about "bottle adventures" generally, not necessarily in a familiar place.
@A.B. One common approach for that is the Diablo style campaign, where there's a big dungeon under the town, and the PCs gradually descend and explore it, returning to the surface when needed.
Many of the Pathfinder modules (i.e., the ones that aren't 6-book Adventure Paths) are set in a single town or location, and exploration is geared toward buildings in the town or its immediate surroundings.
I was interested because of the things BESW often says about community and all that and how it doesn't feature much in the standard type of RPG adventure, other than between the party members themselves to some extent. Not really quite the same thing, maybe, but I'd suspect that having it on that basis would at least allow you to get to know the central town a bit better. Going somewhere, smashing stuff up and leaving again is fun sometimes, but sometimes you want a change.
Read the blurb for it occasionally, so I know roughly what it's about. That sounds promising, then.
There might be possibilities for an adventure where you're in a town and have to defend it from someone, or something. Anyone ever seen this done? Actually, I did read a very funny account of an adventure along those lines recently. ravenswing59.blogspot.com/2013/09/… .
That's true, the power level a Level 20 D&D character has most towns would probably be hoping they'd move on before they blew the town to smithereens! :-D
@MikeQ Ptolus is like that. There's a mega dungeon under the city, and a mysterious spire rising above it. It originated as the setting for playtesting D&D 3e. They had a Kickstarter for the 5e version last year, and you can now preorder it.
@A.B. It's a big city rather than a small town, but Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (for D&D 5e) is entirely set within the city, and the characters could very well have grown up within the city too (though that's not required, as long as the players are willing to have them stay within the city for the duration of the adventure). There are some "dungeons" in the sewers under the city, though, so I'm not sure that's entirely meeting your spec.
The actual reason I popped in, though: Does anyone have handy a D&D 5e stat block for an ordinary duck? A major character in the campaign I'm DMing just got polymorphed into one near the end of last session, and it may end up being one for some time while in a combat situation, and while any specific stat is unlikely to really matter I think I may want to have some actual stats handy just in case.
I'm not sure it really should have flyby, keen hearing/sight, or that big of a fly speed, but the more I think of it the more I realize I don't actually know a whole lot about ducks (despite living in an area where they're around)
@A.B. Thunderspire Labyrinth tried to be about learning the complexities of a large and nuanced community, but it didn't really gel properly--partly because it was too beholden to the XP curve, so it had a lot of filler encounters which diluted the theme, but also because it needed to gate the power of the encounters in ways that artificially broke up the community effect.
The extra material in the magazines helped a little.
@Peter Cooper Jr. @BESW Those both sound fun. I suppose that might be a difficulty with doing that in D&D, specifically. D&D characters become such completely different animals as they level up, from bandits with knives fighting giant rats to things that might easily be mistaken for gods, that it would be difficult for the same settings and people to stay relevant to them for long.
It's possible, but it requires a dramatic re-envisioning of how the environment around the characters responds to their power increases.
I once designed (but never got to run all the way through) an entire 1-to-20 campaign that took place on a single small island; a character could leave, but they left the story if they did.
It worked by having layers of secrecy. The obvious things you could do early on, were lower level. As you learned more and gained more trust and influence in the community, you gained access to higher-level opportunities.
So your investment in the local community was the key to finding higher level encounters.
@Peter Cooper Jr. A duck would actually have a higher flight speed than an owl, they're among the fastest birds in the world! That's why they named an express train after them.
@BESW That sounds like it could work. Did it go OK as far as you got?
Yeah, it was pretty good. And it showed me that there's actually a lot of potential for making things fuzzy and overlapping.
Like, it's totally cool for the level 3 PCs to attend the big birthday party bash and maybe pick up on the fact that something's a bit weird about the nobles, but the nobles are all so high level that the PCs won't figure out this time that the weird thing is, most them are secretly yuan-ti.
Or they can go hang out in the level 10 underground bar and rub elbows with the rat bartender who they may eventually discover is a musteval who can be a great ally if they decide to tackle the blasphemous things going on in the Temple of Wee Jas.
Also, if you give them room to run away, it's okay to have well-telegraphed "This is too much for you" spaces they can technically access.
At one point the party was like "we shall delve into the deepest part of the swamp where all the zombies seem to be coming from!" and when the hills themselves started moving the party went "Noooope" and left.
So the text for the Nature's Mantle in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything states:
while wearing the cloak, you can use it as a focus for your druid and ranger spells." Other foci specify "while holding the focus.
So does mean that by wearing it you do not need a hand free to access mundane material...
Makes perfect sense to have the high-level things, or some of them, already be there before the party's supposed to tackle them, as long as you do make it clear that that's how it's going to work in this game, so that they don't think that the thigs being there means that they're supposed to tackle them. From what I've heard, a lot of parties have an ingrained idea that if something's visible, that means you're supposed to fight it now.
With some parties, you really would have to add all that, "formal dance" on its own would not make them not assume they're supposed to fight something :-D Mind you, if they're like that, they're probably not interested in a game like that anyway.
And some of the high-level things are known but not yet available (rumors that you have to track down, or high-ranking officials who don't meet with common folk); other high-level things are hidden until the party's actions make the high-level thing seek THEM out.
There's a ton of ways to use hard or soft gates on levels. Personally, I've come to prefer systems that don't have "you get more numbers" as a major advancement mechanism, so these tools have been gathering rust for me.
Black puddings are immune to slashing damage, and the Corrosive Form trait states:
... Any nonmagical weapon made of metal or wood that
hits the pudding corrodes. After dealing damage, the weapon takes a
permanent and cumulative-1 penalty to damage rolls. ...
The bit that confuses me is "after ...
I have extremely mixed feelings about that "social contract" thread. On one hand, I agree with a lot of the things Ms Visscher said (like about how "inflexible" often means "has specific requirements that aren't the ones that are no bother because they're our requirements"). But, on the other hand, I would not go anywhere near a game that had that "contract". The things in it are all so vague and unquantifiable.
So if I'm understanding it right it's basically laying out a list of vague unquantifiable things you can be kicked from the game for not guessing correctly, such as giving out information about your character in a sufficiently "cool and interesting" way (cool and interesting to the other players, who you don't know and therefore have no idea what style interests them).
I suppose the problem there is that the contract she shows as an example is actually failing to do what she says was the point of it, by making certain things mandatory but not spelling out what they are! Also, now I've thought about it some more, that does seem a particularly demanding GM. Everybody is required to be on their RP game all the time. Or. if they're not, they've made it look in their "contract" as if they are.
the point is literally just to make it visible and understandable to everyone
which I think personally is a good idea
I don't think everyone needs it but this is clearly in service to the people who do
also that example contract isn't even hers I think? it's tweeted by a different account I don't know if they are associated
her point is that people shy away from the written contract but don't think twice about the unspoken one
which is a problem if you don't already know the unspoken one
I'm admittedly also not a fan of everything in that particular example contract at the start either but I don't think it's intended as the be all end all of contracts in this thread
I'm particularly not a fan of having your turn skipped if you take longer than 15 seconds to decide
I realize the game can take a long time but taking time to choose your action is relaxing at least to me
I also think really as a social contract goes this is quite long and full of expected behavior in game and not much,.. expected behavior at the table as people
also assuming role playing at all times is,... not my personal jam either
if I say something out of character I don't want to be steamrolled by the whole group thinking I said it in character
XD
But yeah anyway I don't think her point is "oh this is a good contract" I think her point is "it's good to write the contract down"
Most specifically I think for people who are new to your particular group/contract and don't already know it and/or would have trouble figuring it out
Like even though I personally hate the 15sec to decide what you do on your turn thing
I think it's a good idea to make sure people know that up front and are ok with it before springing it on them
In essence writing it down actually helps you change it if you don't like it, or barring that at least knowing what you are getting into and possibly at least giving you a chance to back out or brace for it even if changing it isn't an option
I'd say that's not an "even though", it's an "especially". If you're going to have a rule like that, you should warn people straight away and not after play has started!
I'd hate that 15 second rule too. I think they must be aiming at really experienced players.
The problem with the contract is more that it's not doing what she said the advantage of contracts was. It's demanding various things that it doesn't spell out (admittedly they probably can't be spelled out).
Myself, I get antsy about the "social contract" terminology itself, because I feel like it makes the thing feel less flexible and adaptable than it usually should be.
I've seen "you didn't mention your trigger before the game so we won't remove it now" as an Actual Thing People Say. I suspect that "contract" wording enforces that kind of thinking.
I've seen it in this chat. People have said that if you don't mention your lines and veils ahead of time then they can't REALLY be that bad, you had your chance and now it's unfair to expect the GM to change their plans mid-game.
Somebody (either the OP or somebody else) did mention in a reply that having it as a printed document on paper made it look rather non-negotiable, especially since it seemed to be drawn up one-sidedly by the DM without input from the players.
That's why I appreciate games like Wanderhome which make it explicit that there should be an ongoing conversation about needs and goals which continues through the whole game.
Well, those people are misinformed, you often don't think of things until they come up but they are nevertheless really serious problems. Some things are so abstract that they're hard to think of until you see it happen in practice.
A pre-made list of prompts can be useful for reminding us of things that are important but we wouldn't necessarily think of on our own; I don't exactly keep a list of my squicks in the foremost part of my brain all the time.
but yeah the fact that they wrote it down as a set of rules put forth by the DM with no player input and seemingly little to no flexibility is,.. definitely a problem in and of itself
Like the person who invented the Luxton System. They actually didn't realise until after several games that the thing that was unnerving them was people saying that something never happened. So if that kind of thing can happen, what price being able to name all your triggers from memory before the first game? Having a list of common ones is probably a good idea. There's still the possibility that someone will have an uncommon one, but it cuts down the odds.
(I never think of "insects" because I don't mind photos of insects, to the point where I have a hard time believing that people are serious when they say that those should be put in spoiler tags in chat, but apparently a lot of people do have this, to the point where many of them think that it's "obvious" that this "would squick people out". So that would be one I would make a note of if I was making a list of triggers to ask people about.)
I've also seen GMs say "I can't ask about triggers because that would spoil the surprise I'm planning." We've got at least one mainsite question about that.
I seem to remember that question, or a question about that. I think one answer somebody put forward was to put forward a list of things, not all of which will happen.
anyway I do agree that this particular contract isn't exactly representative of what she is talking about, but I also have to back up what she's saying on principle
not knowing the expectations at the table and not having any reasonable tools to guess or converse about them is an easily ignorable problem from the outside, or possibly the inside (IE people already cemented into a group dynamic that don't understand fully someone who doesn't already know it)
The pre-made list of prompts would solve that one neatly, I think. It's really only a problem if you only ask about triggers when you're planning something particularly alarming, rather than as standard - which has the other disadvantage that it leaves you open to things that you didn't think were alarming but one of your players does, like spiders.
I've seen Google Forms checklists that let people submit their lines and veils anonymously, with both a checklist of common ones and space for custom ones.
Somebody made a good point in the Twitter thread that this arises more often than ever now that online gaming is a big thing, and people are often in the position of catering for a group of strangers whose tastes and possibly nationalities they don't know and whose expressions they can't even see.
@trogdor There's value in that, yeah. It's just that presenting those things as a prepared "contract" is a pretty firm signal that you're not interested in negotiating.
mm I see that more as pointing out something that she does need that she doesn't feel people always consider
but I do think there are possibly better ways to say it or even get what she wants without implying a rigid inflexible rulset
and also that some groups will have a rigid inflexible set of rules and only bring them up after you've stepped in them
I haven't had to deal with a lot of that myself but it would be incredibly frustrating
and I have had to deal with that kind of thing outside of TTRPG games plenty
I am autistic myself, and while I don't think the post is necessarily perfect by any means I do think it highlights an issue with people not being accommodating enough in certain social situations, especially since TTRPG groups can sometimes be rather insular with predefined dynamics and soft/hard rules that aren't readily apparent to outsiders
I can only assume she's coming from a place of having had to deal with that kind of thing a lot
On pg. 140 of the Dungeon Master's Guide there is a sidebar for handling scroll mishaps. It states:
A creature who tries and fails to cast a spell from a spell
scroll must make a DC 10 Intelligence saving throw.
While interesting, it leaves a question wide open: how (or why) would a creature fa...
I was wondering why a Wild Magic Sorcerer's Bend Luck ability is always 2 sorcery points and a reaction to increase or reduce another creature's attack roll, ability check or saving throw by 1d4.
I think it's pretty wild (pun intended) that is does not scale with levels considering there's anothe...
Third party publishers themselves are awesome, so their existence isn't in question.
Rather, I'm wondering about the 3pp tag. Ostensibly it's meant to indicate the question's referencing third party material, but
it barely gets used (6 questions since its creation in February this year).
we ha...
Though now I started thinking: aren't most (or at least very very many) crunchy tags meta-tags? For example, [multi-classing] is notionally for questions about, well, multiclassing. But it can't meaningfully stand on its own without a system-and-edition tag because it means very different things depending on system/edition. Something like [sorcerer] is even more radically different in meaning between D&D and MtA.
> If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the only tag on a question.
It seems to be impossible to just have a single question tagged 'sorcerer' (and no other tags). And if one were to leave such a question with one tag, the tag would still effectively give zero information (since it can mean outright opposite things depending on the system).
@ThomasMarkov "second party" publishing would be something published by the second party in the transaction, the purchaser. Since this doesn't make sense it's often been repurposed as a term for "halfway between first and third-party" - studios outside a publisher working with the publisher's material under license.
We've talked about meta tags a lot here. One thing that the last round highlighted is that we have a lot of tags that are impossible to use without a system tag. It's been said that tags like spells or rules-as-written maybe shouldn't exist because they can't be the only tag on a question. Perhap...
Even moreso, I think that it's not 'saying' what we want it to say. I'd think a 3pp tag is a question about third party publishing, not that the content is from a third party.
Exceptionalist in the sense of the conclusion being 'this one huge tag category counts as zero tags', as opposed to 'you know, maybe there is value in tags that cannot stand alone in general'.
@nitsua60 Done, I think. I'm not sure the linked related question; rpg.stackexchange.com/q/165890/52137 deserves the same treatment, but it's awkward as it's my answer on that and the q is better about versioning itself (it also has way fewer views)
Also, obv if I mucked up anything about it tell me and I can fix it. Downside to the whole lock thing
@doppelgreener System tags stand on their own, but they also were concluded not to contribute to the counter (in the sense that a question with a system tag and another tag is counted as a question with only the other tag for meta-counter-benchmarking purposes). As opposed to conclusion being that the example demonstrates that venn-diagramesque treatment of tags has merit overall.
we simply concluded what you concluded earlier: lots of tags don't make sense on their own, but with the added context of a system they make total sense, therefore we shouldn't consider a tag to be a problem because it doesn't make sense independent of a system.
I guess I am having trouble conveying the difference between a narrower/exception-esque (actual) and a broader/general-principle-esque (hypothetical, and one I think has merit) conclusion. But based on how such similar discussions went so far, I'm inclined to stop trying at the moment.
@ThomasMarkov Nice analysis and presentation. I still wish he'd given stats in the question so that you could screen out the non eligible classes; but that led to a comprehensive answer ...
It's also funny how the devs took the "feature, not bug" approach with their physics engine, and purposely filled the lobby area with things that have wacky physics properties.
@doppelgreener We really should switch over to the printed on tags or smoothly sewn in. That way people won't be poked by them and are less inclined to want to cut them off.
also promoting dwarves is required to keep advancing your overall miner level since that is based on overall experience earned and you stop earning experience with a class once it reaches max level
@NautArch I usually use them like a grenade when there's lots of enemies concentrated in one area. I've tried setting them in advance to be triggered later, but that requires a lot of team coordination and luck.
Has anyone run a D&D 5e game which includes an enemy that has the Talisman of Ultimate Evil? I'm interested in adding an antagonist like that to a game I'm running, but I haven't used a "destroyed when its last charge is used" item, nor an item with a hard-to-avoid instant-kill feature, on an enemy like that
I doubt any of the PCs would want to become able to use it, but tactically efficient use of such an item seems likely to annihilate PCs without much recourse, so it might not be worth including without plot devices to rein it in
@Upper_Case This is not an item you want your main villain to just have
This is an item that serves better as a "keep the villain from getting it" item
It's a "Save or be Removed From the Game" effect, with a minor boost to spellcasting tacked on
The best case scenario is he uses it once against a non-good player and it does nothing, in which case there's no point to him having it, worst case he uses it on everyone in the party, one after another, and they all fail their saves, ending your campaign right then and there
@RevenantBacon That's how I'm leaning. I've only got one good-aligned PC in that campaign, so it's an awkward thing for an enemy to have (at least with regard to that property). I'm thinking that a powerful enemy might have it, but only use that property to destroy an NPC in front of the party, or have it but not know about that property at all.
I'm putting together a set of plot strands that will draw the party to the Shadowfell, and having a few different avenues to make use of seems important. The talisman is just one, but I want to game it out more fully before putting that up as an option
@ThomasMarkov It seemed to me that the application of the shadow blade (spell) makes it a unique case, though it is certainly related to some of the other questions. Did it reopen due to the gold dupe unhammer? That wasn't my intention; I found it in the review queue and my only choice in there (since I felt that it needed an edit) was edit and reopen. Anyone with a gold dupe hammer who wants to, feel free to reclose. Not gonna die on a hill for that one
@ThomasMarkov They're ever so slightly different, as the Flame Tongue has a basic damage type plus an inherent extra, while the Shadow Blade has an inherent, unusual damage type (psychic) plus some spell effects. But I don't think that those differences affect the underlying rulings
There is a non-dupe question in there, but I don't know if it's what the querent wants to ask
As to answering the question, I prefer the KISS principle as a DM, such that if the weapon attack is the shadow blade, the sneak attack is the same as the shadow blade. His dragging green flame blade into it makes it a bit more munchkinny than I find useful in play. (see the related green flame blade (must be worth at least 1 SP) thing)
> Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify, is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gold pieces (plus the cost of any expensive material components).
@Someone_Evil I suggest a complicated, fussy, retroactive accounting: how much did the caster receive in total quest rewards (measured in gp) for that adventuring day, and how many of their actions in that day were done with (or could have been done with) the spell slot(s) used to cast SB?
If the opportunity-cost-weighted value in quest-day rewards are less than 1sp, then the magical enhancement is retroactively invalid and severe penalties are applied
Repeat for every day the combo is used, forever. I bet it won't take players long to not even dare to suggest it anymore!
@ThomasMarkov I should have that memorized, but since I have my own scheme in the Salt Marsh campaign, I don't want to answer with that value ...
@Upper_Case Brilliant! 😎
@ThomasMarkov For some reason, my memory of the DMG says 100 GP from the crafting thing, but I am not where my books are. And, of course, Xanathar's has a differing cost scale, so that may be different too
@Upper_Case Odds are good that the value of that spell slot is going to be quite high. After all, the slot could have been used to cast a healing spell as easily as a combat spell, and what price could you put on your health? (Hint: it's a lot :p )
something something adventure, something something health insurance
@RevenantBacon Depends on the adventuring day! Unless I'm really pressing my players, they're pretty casual about their spell slots on most in-game days
@KorvinStarmast I'd totally offer health insurance to adventurers! Since a good night's sleep fixes nearly everything, payouts would be low. Life insurance for adventurers, on the other hand...
Nah, a Raise Dead spell only costs 500GP. All you have to do is determine the odds of a death per campaign. Since it's nearly impossible to die in 5e, this ones almost a guaranteed moneymaker!
Spear are wildly effective weapons, in small-ish Combat Groups.
In particular, when used defensively, they can keep melee attackers at bay with no ability to retaliate relatively easily. You would, for example be able to hold a 5ft-wide bridge against a mass of opponents pretty easily if they wer...
My three year old is at the point of coming up with explanations of her own anatomy and bodily functions. We try to reinforce proper vocabulary and good biology facts, but sometimes we just cant compete with the poop fairy.
No kidding. She told me she pooped in her pull-up, and when I checked, she hadn't. I informed her she was fine, and she claimed the poop fairy stole her poop.
The Thrown Weapon Fighting Style states:
[...] In addition, when you hit with a ranged attack using a thrown weapon, you gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll.
My question is whether "a thrown weapon" means "a weapon with the thrown property" or "a weapon you have thrown". An example of something ...
D&D 3.5e question: is there any metamagic that boosts fixed numbers, other than duration, within spells? (akin to how Maximize and Empower operate on spell dice rolls)
@Powerdork basically, I suspect that trying to use the Reveal seed for epic-magic-based long-range casting is off-limits, and eye of power is already 9th circle but only permits up to 3rd circle casting
So the text for the Nature's Mantle in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything states:
while wearing the cloak, you can use it as a focus for your druid and ranger spells." Other foci specify "while holding the focus.
So does mean that by wearing it you do not need a hand free to access mundane material...
Black puddings are immune to slashing damage, and the Corrosive Form trait states:
... Any nonmagical weapon made of metal or wood that
hits the pudding corrodes. After dealing damage, the weapon takes a
permanent and cumulative-1 penalty to damage rolls. ...
The bit that confuses me is "after ...
On pg. 140 of the Dungeon Master's Guide there is a sidebar for handling scroll mishaps. It states:
A creature who tries and fails to cast a spell from a spell
scroll must make a DC 10 Intelligence saving throw.
While interesting, it leaves a question wide open: how (or why) would a creature fa...
Third party publishers themselves are awesome, so their existence isn't in question.
Rather, I'm wondering about the 3pp tag. Ostensibly it's meant to indicate the question's referencing third party material, but
it barely gets used (6 questions since its creation in February this year).
we ha...
The Thrown Weapon Fighting Style states:
[...] In addition, when you hit with a ranged attack using a thrown weapon, you gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll.
My question is whether "a thrown weapon" means "a weapon with the thrown property" or "a weapon you have thrown". An example of something ...
