Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Judge Dredd]

Does anyone have any ideas for encouraging players to be more creative? The players in a game I'm running just refuse to take advantage of the narrative aspect of TTRPGs to drive events.

Sorry for the late and possible repeat. I thought other, smarter people already said this, but since I missed a reply it might have been a different problem.

Anyway, I echo the people saying get a mentor NPC. It doesn't have to be a literal mentor, they can be useless and can even be disposable.

In a scenario very similar to your robot example, I had a monster attack a shopping mall. The mall cops quickly die before the PCs roll initiative. One tried to run away and got cut off by summoned minions, one tried shooting at it and the bullets bounced off.

There's also the Eberron thing. If the mentor is good, why don't they save the day? There was a YouTube video I saw (and old Seth one) where to introduce CoC to his group, he has the PCs accompanied by a drunk private eye who's only looking to get a paycheck. He'll advise the PCs if they do something "dumb" like charging straight to the house, instead recommending they do research first, both for safety, and because they're getting paid by the day.

Foreshadowing. Again, horror adventures have a lot of this. Not exactly your example, but lets say there's a killer robot that is clumsy. When the PCs first arrive, they notice most of the gumball machines are smashed. A dead body carrying a sack of gumballs. An engineers diary complaining how they company won't buy a decent stabalizer and he's sick of having to fix it every time it falls over. You can keep piling this on depending on how heavy handed you want to be.
(I'm actually liking this idea and might use it for a future game.)

I'll also add, I saw a claim somewhere that players only absorb 50% (or less) information the DM gives them, so it might be better to lay it on thick than keep it subtle.

Finally, you can ask "where" or "how".



This post is already too long. I wanted to ask what you guys think of "Flee Mortals", a monster book that supposedly fixes 5e, but some YouTuber wrote it so I'm skeptical.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

Great idea, but it's not necessary for a superhero game.

I don't know, super hero comics do shit like that all the time. I'd just make it an alien or a mutant or something.

 

[Revelator]

I don't know, super hero comics do shit like that all the time. I'd just make it an alien or a mutant or something.

Yeah, that's precisely why I say it's not necessary. Every player has infinite "lives" if they want them, and I let everyone know that.

@Ghostse Your advice is good, and I might have been a little hard on them out of the gate, but it's done now. The biggest issue I have is they seem to be worried about unintended consequences (in PF the freshman lit the match on a riot by advancing on a paladin investigator during a powder keg situation, and the senior sold his soul to a devil so couldn't be rezzed when he got eaten by a giant spider after he went down a hallway alone).

In the superhero game, they originally played two skeletons that were "comic relief" characters, and the freshman actually got yelled at by another player for spoiling a dramatic scene that involved human sacrifice. They changed over to a Space Marine style brick (freshman) and a sliver of a Cosmic entity made of light, so they're pretty hard to take out.

Space Marine was conceived as a military experiment/soldier, and the player had problems with being AWOL a couple times (one of his complications was he had trackers in his body armor, so the army knows where their base is) and he was actually afraid to talk to his COs because "They always yell at me, then they get mad when I say nothing and yell more." So I had him "resign" and he's a free agent now, albeit one with some enemies. We'll see how this goes.

The other just doesn't seem to know what to do with an alien character, especially one with no common ground with humans. I keep prompting him by asking him what Solith thinks about mundane things or what he's doing, but I mostly just get a "Oh yeah, he's confused" and that's it. The guy is also severely ADD, so that isn't helping.

I'm probably going to try to come up with some power stunts and team attacks they can try to jog the mind, but they're good kids and they're improving bit by bit (my table was their first ever RPG table) so I'm mostly blaming zoomer brainrot.

 

[Ghostse]

Space Marine was conceived as a military experiment/soldier, and the player had problems with being AWOL a couple times (one of his complications was he had trackers in his body armor, so the army knows where their base is) and he was actually afraid to talk to his COs because "They always yell at me, then they get mad when I say nothing and yell more." So I had him "resign" and he's a free agent now, albeit one with some enemies. We'll see how this goes.

The other just doesn't seem to know what to do with an alien character, especially one with no common ground with humans. I keep prompting him by asking him what Solith thinks about mundane things or what he's doing, but I mostly just get a "Oh yeah, he's confused" and that's it. The guy is also severely ADD, so that isn't helping.

Sounds like the freshman you've got reasonably worked out. I'm... kinda a bit concerned about how his character's relationship with his COs is framed to the point I'd wonder if there are deeper troubles at school/home but you know them better.

For the Senior, where he's talking about being "confused", I would lean into that for the character. I would do something where your Cosmic Light creature gets a human body (maybe there are entities hunting it, and it needs a human body to "hide" in when not using its abilities) and get them to start thinking about how an alien would respond given they now have a physcial human body and everything is new; given they're 17 I'm sure they'll have a very close perspective on dealing with feeling weird in a body that doesn't always do things that make sense.

 

[Revelator]

Sounds like the freshman you've got reasonably worked out. I'm... kinda a bit concerned about how his character's relationship with his COs is framed to the point I'd wonder if there are deeper troubles at school/home but you know them better.

I don't know the exact situation, but there's some fatherless behavior to deal with. It's not super pronounced because he's had a live in grandad. I mostly chalked it up more to "tacticool" theming without having a great understanding what military life is actually like and getting a culture shock when he realized he had to ask permission for everything, especially since he's an experimental super soldier.

For the Senior, where he's talking about being "confused", I would lean into that for the character. I would do something where your Cosmic Light creature gets a human body (maybe there are entities hunting it, and it needs a human body to "hide" in when not using its abilities) and get them to start thinking about how an alien would respond given they now have a physcial human body and everything is new; given they're 17 I'm sure they'll have a very close perspective on dealing with feeling weird in a body that doesn't always do things that make sense.

That might work, we'll see if it helps him work through his execution issues. It matches the bsckstory, so I can give it a shot.

 

[Ghostse]

I don't know the exact situation, but there's some fatherless behavior to deal with. It's not super pronounced because he's had a live in grandad. I mostly chalked it up more to "tacticool" theming without having a great understanding what military life is actually like and getting a culture shock when he realized he had to ask permission for everything, especially since he's an experimental super soldier.

If he wants to be Tacticool and is 14 I might go about it a couple ways.

First, instead of resigning, have him put under the command of Lt. Col. Dirty Harry. His CO is publicly there to keep him reigned in, but in private he is also a loose canon and is well on board, even supportive, of Space Marine's "collatoral damage isn't my fault" attitude. This might get your player to feel less hemmed in by regulations while also keeping some guiderails in place and giving him a guiding force to maybe his id from poking all the way out "If I do this, it'll make things hard for the character I like".

Other thing I might do is he ends up with a promotion and is now incharge of his own unit. If you are doing a Justice League sort of deal, maybe he's now the liason between the team and the military, so all the shlubs putting security at the Hall of Justice work for him. From the small snapshot I got, it sounds like he might want the opportunity to feel in charge of something.
I'd have it be "low risk of consequences" stuff; you could use the fact his character gets/has to go through reports or get orders from his superiors as an easy plot hook; "Pentagon says they want use to check out Skullrock Island"

That or just have him go full A-Team/Punisher.

 

[Revelator]

If he wants to be Tacticool and is 14 I might go about it a couple ways.

First, instead of resigning, have him put under the command of Lt. Col. Dirty Harry. His CO is publicly there to keep him reigned in, but in private he is also a loose canon and is well on board, even supportive, of Space Marine's "collatoral damage isn't my fault" attitude. This might get your player to feel less hemmed in by regulations while also keeping some guiderails in place and giving him a guiding force to maybe his id from poking all the way out "If I do this, it'll make things hard for the character I like"
Other thing I might do is he ends up with a promotion and is now incharge of his own unit. If you are doing a Justice League sort of deal, maybe he's now the liason between the team and the military, so all the shlubs putting security at the Hall of Justice work for him. From the small snapshot I got, it sounds like he might want the opportunity to feel in charge of something.
I'd have it be "low risk of consequences" stuff; you could use the fact his character gets/has to go through reports or get orders from his superiors as an easy plot hook; "Pentagon says they want use to check out Skullrock Island"

That or just have him go full A-Team/Punisher.

He had a more or less operational carte blanche already, and was more or less the military's "cape spy." The issue was his actions outside of the emergency actions (read: role play stuff) and even bare minimum oversight was an issue because the other characters were worried about their secret identities. Full separation wound up being the only way to deal with the RP issues we kept running into. It was easy enough to say he wasn't "on the books" so he could be dropped and go independent. Plus he has a shiny new complication.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'm very late on this, but I didn't know until now.

TLDR: What do you guys think is the best DMG? How are the adventures and rules in 2024 DMG? How compatible is 4e with different editions? And are there 4e books worth reading?


Context. Supposedly the 2024 DMG is shit, no surprises there. I was watching some videos about it to see how shit it was but most YouTubers shill it, no surprise there. But I saw some interesting claims. Like the claim it has "100 adventures" which they don't go into. I have to assume these are the most bare bones OSR style quest hooks because I doubt WOTC would dedicate that many pages to adventures. Another mentioned how he loved the "bastion system" which is rules for the PCs to build and manage a home base with practical, in game ramifications.


In this thread I've seen some praise for 4e elements, and some of these DMG videos praise things pulled from 4e. I've seen YouTubers shill the book "flee mortals" which adds 4e elements to 5e monsters. This has been a surprise because until now 99.9% of 4e opinions have been how it's the worst thing since sliced bread. Now I'm starting to wonder how bad it really is. Is it like Sonic and Dragon Age where bad games are praised simply because what came later was somehow worse, is it grognards doing the grognard thing, or something in between?

I also wonder how compatible things are. Supposedly 4e had a great way of dealing out treasure called treasure parcels. I'm not sure of the specifics of this, but I assume this can be used straight in 5e or other games? Because a +1 longsword is a +1 longsword.

 

[strawberry15]

I'm very late on this, but I didn't know until now.

TLDR: What do you guys think is the best DMG? How are the adventures and rules in 2024 DMG? How compatible is 4e with different editions? And are there 4e books worth reading?


Context. Supposedly the 2024 DMG is shit, no surprises there. I was watching some videos about it to see how shit it was but most YouTubers shill it, no surprise there. But I saw some interesting claims. Like the claim it has "100 adventures" which they don't go into. I have to assume these are the most bare bones OSR style quest hooks because I doubt WOTC would dedicate that many pages to adventures. Another mentioned how he loved the "bastion system" which is rules for the PCs to build and manage a home base with practical, in game ramifications.


In this thread I've seen some praise for 4e elements, and some of these DMG videos praise things pulled from 4e. I've seen YouTubers shill the book "flee mortals" which adds 4e elements to 5e monsters. This has been a surprise because until now 99.9% of 4e opinions have been how it's the worst thing since sliced bread. Now I'm starting to wonder how bad it really is. Is it like Sonic and Dragon Age where bad games are praised simply because what came later was somehow worse, is it grognards doing the grognard thing, or something in between?

I also wonder how compatible things are. Supposedly 4e had a great way of dealing out treasure called treasure parcels. I'm not sure of the specifics of this, but I assume this can be used straight in 5e or other games? Because a +1 longsword is a +1 longsword.

Adnd 1e DMG is superior. 4e is also well done for people who likes some different gaming approach. pf1e comes next.
but do not use 4e's treasure system. 4e has a very different approach to items and other things revolve around spending money. some of it might be found in 5e, but not all of it.

 

[p1138]

Context. Supposedly the 2024 DMG is shit, no surprises there.

Most of the people on youtube claiming the 2024 DMG is shit, have no reference to compare it to other than it being different than the 2014 DMG, and they're just upset that it's different.

In this thread I've seen some praise for 4e elements, and some of these DMG videos praise things pulled from 4e. I've seen YouTubers shill the book "flee mortals" which adds 4e elements to 5e monsters. This has been a surprise because until now 99.9% of 4e opinions have been how it's the worst thing since sliced bread. Now I'm starting to wonder how bad it really is. Is it like Sonic and Dragon Age where bad games are praised simply because what came later was somehow worse, is it grognards doing the grognard thing, or something in between?

The problem with 4e, is that 4e as a whole is hot fucking garbage. The boss/minion system, and bloodied mechanics are actually just fine and basically tells the DM how to run the monsters in a way that could be considered at least minimally interesting compared to 5e where everything is just a block of HP with the occasional bonus action. 4e basically wanted to be a combat focused system that was going to have a VTT(there's some insane shit involving a murder suicide of some Microsoft employees involved with it) and would have played better as a board game since basically everything else outside of combat may as well have been magical tea party.

Ironically, 5e if you really look at how it launched was just a re-skinned lazier version of 4e due to Mike Mearls running the show after failing upward at WotC(everyone else quit/got fired during 4e).

 

[Ghostse]

TLDR: What do you guys think is the best DMG? How are the adventures and rules in 2024 DMG? How compatible is 4e with different editions? And are there 4e books worth reading?

tl;dr: Not unless you are running 4e. With a two partial exceptions.
The advice in the DMG isn't bad but its so 4e-centered and anything that isn't 4e centered has been covered, better, in other books.

The first exception is the system itself.
There is still a lot of good to be stolen from the system (so just PHB and DMG) like minions, anti-munchkin bonuses, and simple mechanics that scale*. Plus a "Just shut the fuck up and play" approach to the game is good if you are tired of waffling players. Unlike PF or even 3.5 where there is a lot of opportunities to stun lock or otherwise punish charcters (player and non) for suboptimal choices and builds, 4e requires work to make a broken character and all your choices are valid: some are just more valid than others.
Skill challenges are also a "just-ok-not-great" way to let DMs build non-combat encounters with a structured system. With a little cleverness you can over load the challenge system for combat too - allowing for complex multi-round actions like forcing a door or toppling a statue into challenges that might requite one character multiple rounds of effort or the party much less.

*they scale in a math-but-not-human way which is a problem especially at later levels. Its easy to flowchart but its hard to keep origins of things in one's head sometimes.

The second partial is the splats.
4e has some of the best, most playable splats. Everything you need to run an encounter is on a 2-page spread, eveything you need to link the encounters is on the dungeon description at the front. This makes it nearly trivial to grab-and-go specific encounters or remix things as needed.

 

[p1138]

tl;dr: Not unless you are running 4e. With a two partial exceptions.
The advice in the DMG isn't bad but its so 4e-centered and anything that isn't 4e centered has been covered, better, in other books.

The first exception is the system itself.
There is still a lot of good to be stolen from the system (so just PHB and DMG) like minions, anti-munchkin bonuses, and simple mechanics that scale*. Plus a "Just shut the fuck up and play" approach to the game is good if you are tired of waffling players. Unlike PF or even 3.5 where there is a lot of opportunities to stun lock or otherwise punish charcters (player and non) for suboptimal choices and builds, 4e requires work to make a broken character and all your choices are valid: some are just more valid than others.

*they scale in a math-but-not-human way which is a problem especially at later levels. Its easy to flowchart but its hard to keep origins of things in one's head sometimes.

The secodn partial is the splats.
4e has some of the best, most playable splats. Everything you need to run an encounter is on a 2-page spread, eveything you need to link the encounters is on the dungeon description at the front.

I normally don't give a shit about the reactions, but you marked my post as disagree and then proceeded to agree with basically everything I said.

The minions and combats? How the encounters are laid out?

Or are you disagreeing with the murder suicide part surrounding the non-existent VTT? Because that definitely happened. Joseph Batten was the guy btw.

edit: And if it's the Mike Mearls bit, where do you think the lack of basic shit like buying and crafting items came from after 4e's loot packets, hardly supporting skills outside of combat(skill challenges... they were shit), and in general not having alternatives to combat, while focused on a 15 minute adventuring day due to the limited number of powers per rest similar to the encounter and per-day powers from 4e?

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

View attachment 6973535

Nope not at my table.

We already had that with the original Pathfinder since the Jade Regent adventure path and expanded on with the Ultimate Relationships book from Legendary Games. These new "fans" are clueless. Just use the Book of Passion if you want to do more, or better yet hang yourself because you have to resort to an RPG to get any form of love. Sick fucks like that is why we needed to gatekeep the hobby back in the early days.

where is my half elf cannibal serial killer waifu who mentions on the off-hand she might think about raping you after you deny her?

Reminds me of the woman who played for the first time minus her character being a cannibal. Fun game. Being asked if she can rape someone surprisingly never got old.

 

[Ghostse]

You marked my post as disagree

See the edition warring you lead with and have yourself a mediation on that.
Also the 2024 stuff being no worse than 2014 which is objectively not true. now the 2020ish revision when the faggiest edition was determined to not be faggy enough and more faggotry was injected, that's fair.

I normally don't give a shit about the reactions

X

 

[p1138]

See the edition warring you lead with and have yourself a mediation on that.
Also the 2024 stuff being worse than 2014 which is objectively not true. now the 2020ish revision when the faggiest edition was determined to not be faggy enough and more faggotry was injected, that's fair.

I didn't say the 2024 edition was worse.

Most of the people on youtube claiming the 2024 DMG is shit, have no reference to compare it to other than it being different than the 2014 DMG, and they're just upset that it's different.

That is what I said. Reddit and youtube are full of people bitching about the 2024 edition when their only reference to anything is 2014, and it's not even that the edition is worse, they just hate it because it's different. This was apparent when Hasbro tried to fuck around with the OGL shit a few years back prompting people to all spend a whole week discussing how everyone should move to another game system, but then hardly anyone did because the bulk of the 5e playerbase was fucking terrified of playing anything that wasn't "5e".

Even Hasbro and WotC are aware of this regarding their player base and it's why they avoided calling it 5.5, or 6e.

If the number of people on social media discussing their opinions about the 2024 edition were actually around during 4th, or even 3/3.5, then why the fuck do most of them know next to nothing about it? It's a generation of TTRPG players stuck playing 5e because it's the only thing they know, and anything that's different is something they immediately don't like. Generally that's due to how "complicated" other systems(including previous editions of D&D) could be by requiring single digit addition and subtraction, or actually having options to select for a character at every level. If most of these people actually did play 4e, it wouldn't have fallen off as quickly as it did. nor would 5e have overtaken pathfinder so quickly.

So once again... you're agreeing with what I posted, but apparently can't actually read it and instead add a bunch of shit I never said. Interesting.

edit: In simpler terms for you, I never stated my opinion of the 2024 edition vs the 2014 edition, but somehow you pulled that out of your ass.

 

[Ghostse]

I didn't say the 2024 edition was worse.

I forgot to add a 'no' in there, fixed it.
The 2024 edition is much faggier than 5e 2014 even its not much faggier than 5.5e 2020 or whenever it was they let trannies do a rewrite. It is objectively worse which means I disagree with you on that + your weak ass 4e edition war. And I think proving you wrong about not caring about stickers as well in the balance.

 

[The Ugly One]

edit: And if it's the Mike Mearls bit, where do you think the lack of basic shit like buying and crafting items came from after 4e's loot packets

5e's buying & crafting items rules are broadly the same as AD&D 2e's DMG and have little in common with 4e, which advises the DM to basically act like Magic Item Wal-Mart for buying and selling and has the Enchant Magic Item Ritual for crafting. If you're going to come in here and try and start a flame war, at least get basic facts right.

 

[p1138]

5e's buying & crafting items rules are broadly the same as AD&D 2e's DMG and have little in common with 4e, which advises the DM to basically act like Magic Item Wal-Mart for buying and selling and has the Enchant Magic Item Ritual for crafting. If you're going to come in here and try and start a flame war, at least get basic facts right.

I didn't say they had anything in common with 4e. I said there was a lack of comprehensive rules for shit after 4e's loot packets.

I forgot to add a 'no' in there, fixed it.
The 2024 edition is much faggier than 5e 2014 even its not much faggier than 5.5e 2020 or whenever it was they let trannies do a rewrite. It is objectively worse which means I disagree with you on that + your weak ass 4e edition war. And I think proving you wrong about not caring about stickers as well in the balance.

Apparently you still can't fucking read, type, or something. At no point did I say anything about an "edition war", nor did I say which version of the DMG was faggier than another version. If you haven't noticed the retards for the past decade that lose their fucking minds at at the idea of any major changes occurring in 5e, faggy or otherwise, you've clearly not been paying attention to anything really.

Bunch of illiterate retards giving opinions about shit... is this what it's like trying to have a text based conversation with xQc?

 

[Adamska]

Oddly enough I never really read any DMG since I picked up experience with GMing via another system (the only one I've skimmed is 3.5's and 5e's; again I was seasoned enough to at least run games and just got better with it with time). But if you had to force me to, I'd probably pick the first two editions since the hobby was much more niche and unfamiliar than it would be today, meaning by my logic it'd probably teach you a lot more of the basics of setting up and running a campaign.

 

[WhatIsThePunchline]

For example, they were fighting a robot in a recent session. I was careful to mention that most of its case was off. Loose wires were hanging from its arms, and it had an exposed battery pack. Instead of announcing that they would try to cut the wires with a knife or target the battery with a heat ray they had, or just use their burning torch to melt the wires, they opted for round after round of "I attack again".

Ask them 'how do you attack?'.
Literally:

"I attack again."
"How do you attack?"
"Uh what?"
"How are you attacking the robot?"
"Uh with my gun?"
"Ok roll your 'Shoot stuff' skill."
"19"
"Hit, roll damage."
"5"
"Your bullets plink near harmlessly of the armored frame of the robot. Player2 what do you do?"
"Uh I attack."
"How do you attack?"
"What?"
"Describe how you do your action."

That's all. There's no need to be fancy. If they succeed anyway then all the complicated stuff was pointless gimmicks from the start. If they need to apply some amount of tactics and they don't and they die or otherwise lose that's fine too as long as you were upfront about difficulty at the start of the game and you know what to do if the chars die.

Oh and when the robot attacks them describe how it aims at player1s unarmored head, and with its second attack does a 3 round burst into player2's chest. Enemies doing fancy stuff is fair so long as it's stuff the players could do if they wanted to.

But start with always asking them how they do their action.