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[Egan_BW]

Repulsion gel!

[Loud Whispers]

The true win was the fun we had along the way, right? Otherwise no all my dudes got killed

I'm playing over table for the first time and also DMing for the first time. I'm running Lost Mines of Phandelver (I've played it as a player before and thought it was pretty good). I think I might have done well for a first time, at least it didn't go as bad as I had feared it might

TPK? Story time?

Y'know, that made me realize that if anyone knew how to make splatter proof/resistant varnish/coating/whatever, it would be a fantasy alchemist... and they'd probably know how to make something that encouraged splatter, too.

That plus something like, yes, polymorphine, and you're dealing with liquid hell you're not going to get out of with a dodge check. Turning bucket over door pranks into adventurer killers, just add bounce slime.

You've been struck down by the dread el bandito forma del teflon

[scriver]

The true win was the fun we had along the way, right? Otherwise no all my dudes got killed

I'm playing over table for the first time and also DMing for the first time. I'm running Lost Mines of Phandelver (I've played it as a player before and thought it was pretty good). I think I might have done well for a first time, at least it didn't go as bad as I had feared it might

TPK? Story time?

No, no, my dudes was the bad dudes they were supposed to die. The parry despite being down two planned members did very well and avoided any death, though I did go easy on them in the Bugbear encounter as I thought that 2d8+str is a bit unfair to level 1 characters to begin with and even more so as a boss fight when they've likely to have been wounded going up there, so I changed it to just 1d8+str.

I probably also were a bit nice to them with the stealth/ambush/surprise rules since I had trouble remembering them clearly and didn't make the chain-maily player roll with disadvantage. But it makes sense to me that in a cave where hearing is explicitely nulled by waterfall you should only have to roll stealth for visibility, not sound.

[Loud Whispers]

No, no, my dudes was the bad dudes they were supposed to die. The parry despite being down two planned members did very well and avoided any death, though I did go easy on them in the Bugbear encounter as I thought that 2d8+str is a bit unfair to level 1 characters to begin with and even more so as a boss fight when they've likely to have been wounded going up there, so I changed it to just 1d8+str.

Ye that was merciful of you. I would've just kept it at 2d8 or described the bugbear being a particularly young/old/injured one. Lots of ways you can add more story to a fight even when you're just doing an off the wall nerf to stop players getting hit by a brick wall that might be ~too~ unfair, especially for a TTRPG with class levels where there is the expectation that fights should at most be players+1 instead of players+5. It ties into the whole "combat as a sport" vs "combat as a war" philosophy. If it's a sport, players should expect fair enough fights, in which case you can describe how your players aren't fighting an aboleth. They're fighting a dehydrated aboleth. Why is it dehydrated? Who did this to the poor fish? Will they give it the precious hydration it seeks? Maybe the bugbear is missing an arm.

Combat as war though is really fucking fun to run as a GM. As long as you give players the tools needed to collect accurate info and choose their battles, then you can go all out. Players feel like they earned their deaths and their victories, whilst NPCs behave exactly as they should, and are as powerful or deadly as makes sense. I had a right good laugh with a 3 consecutive day Dark Heresy run, where my players went up against an army of disciplined heretics wearing master-crafted carapace armour, personal force-fields, plasma/melta-guns & power weapons in abundance. My players found really creative answers to all the combat situations they found themselves in. They were either overcoming or bypassing kill-corridors, ambushes, enemy HQs, checkpoints with tactical finesse. They could feel that element of "these guys will kill us if we let them."

Occasionally though, I get an anomaly. A regular dude who beats the odds on an astronomical scale. One of my players primitive worlder PC's once killed three dudes with crit headshots... Using a bow and arrow. A regular guardsman NPC won a fist fight against the entire party without taking even a single hit. A regular NPC gang-leader armed with nothing but a shotgun and a fireaxe held off three power-armoured sororitas and several hundred flagellants by himself for four rounds.

It happened again where after successfully neutralising dozens of elite enemies, after running low on grenades, they decided to attack a bunch of industrial workers conducting an improvised defence of the refinery palace they were assaulting. The industrial workers had a bunch of explosive rounds and a kiln gun. Players wanted their explosives, as they could be rigged as improvised boom sticks with the right know-how. It should've been fairly easy. The kiln workers wore welding visors and were all partially deaf, so the chances of them noticing the players was incredibly low.

[They noticed the players].

Because they had welding visors, the players' usual tricks of blind grenading the enemy and then flanking them just didn't work, as their eyes were protected against bright flashes. Despite being armed with just simple autoguns and wrenches, the kiln workers were able to use the vats as cover, surviving the players' initial fusilade of storm bolter hellfire rounds. They kept their allied seraphim pinned with autogun fire, with the seraphim too out of range to make effective use of their pistols. One of the seraphim even managed to get wounded by one of the kiln workers through their power armour, despite it being a 1 in 10 chance to do any damage at all. All the while they used their kiln gun to just steadily destroy any of the cover the players were using to protect themselves. And as some of these vats they were all fighting in were full of volatile chemicals and molten metals, the players had to be careful what they were willing to shoot at. The players managed to disable the kiln gun, at which point the kiln workers successfully retreated with only one dead, one injured (but carried to safety by the others). One of my players remarked that the industrial workers were a superior foe to the elite foes they had been facing, whilst the other player defended the honour of my elite NPCs arguing they had just outplayed their enemies with ambushes/flanking attacks/special tactics.

I probably also were a bit nice to them with the stealth/ambush/surprise rules since I had trouble remembering them clearly and didn't make the chain-maily player roll with disadvantage. But it makes sense to me that in a cave where hearing is explicitely nulled by waterfall you should only have to roll stealth for visibility, not sound.

Adapting the rules to fit the context is the greatest strength of a good GM

[scriver]

Oh, I just remembered I also added a single gem to the dungeon and it wasn't just because every time I've played this adventure before the party's had a  bit of a hard time getting around Phandelver, specifically getting to the Mining Exchange in it, which is a bit unfortunate because as I read the manual the head of it has the chance of being a pretty fun player in the adventure, being

Spoiler: the starter adventure from 10 years ago still requires spoilers surely (click to show/hide)

a mob-connected (Zentarim) businessman whose ambitions  aligns with the players' goals at that point since she also wants to get rid of the Redbrands, but she wants it because she wants to get rid of the competition.

So my aim with the gem was to give them an early reason to head to the Miner's Exchange and introduce her. I'm guessing they might want to sell it off in Phandelver so if they try to sell it to Barthen's Provisions or the other store I'll be able to have them be "aw no sirree I don't deal in gems but if you head down to ye goode ole Mining Exchange and Halia'l be able to appraise that fer you no problem".

I am gaem design

[Kagus]

I've gotten some of the sweetest feedback I've ever heard in my life recently. One thing was having one of the newbie players message me and say flat out that they're really enjoying themselves and they think I'm a great DM, which is great; but after NYE celebrations I was driven home by the husband of the other newbie player, and he commented that she's been coming home from the sessions absolutely ecstatic and excitedly gabbling about the game. And I tell you hwat, that just about melted my heart to a puddle then and there.


I still haven't made the maps for next session though, which is on Saturday.


EDIT:
So, my players:

• Lied to, browbeat, and bullied a gifted alchemist into giving them all his stuff, then directly led to his being captured and probably tortured by a criminal group.
• Walked straight into the heart of said criminal group and cheerfully sold their leader a bomb, while brazenly showing off the ornate magical artifact in their possession.
• Promised one of the most powerful noblemen in the city to do a job for him, took advance payment for the work, and then stopped caring about it.

Also my players:
"Man, I'm trying not to metagame, but this shining radiant sword we found in a crypt dedicated to fighting evil is *totally* a cursed item that's gonna bite us in the butt later"

[Kagus]

Had another fine session on Saturday, one I'd been very curious about... See, the players had positioned themselves in such a predicament that they had taken forward payment for a job about a "day's travel" (I.E., 8 hours) west of the city, and then faffed around looking for supplies and nonsense the rest of the day... And then that night, had made other powers aware of them and landed them with a threateningly polite request for their presence in the evening of the following day.

So they woke up to that day, early enough that they probably would've had time to run out west, do the job, and then be back in time for the meeting (and I attempted to make this clear to the table), but they figured that the later meeting was far more worrying and they didn't want to risk being late for that. "Besides, we can just stick around until the evening, have the meeting, and then head out to do the thing. Everyone's happy!" (spoiler: Everyone will not be happy)

Instead, they wandered around town a bit more, made me realize some spellcasting rules I hadn't considered previously, robbed a sheep (not stole, robbed), and wound up getting themselves attached to an archaeological expedition into the ruins buried underneath/around the city's sewer network.


So now it's a dungeon crawl! Sorta. And one I kinda had to flat-out improvise the first section of, despite my previous plans... See, I'd wanted/expected them to check this place out eventually, and had lined up several points to facilitate this, but... Never got around to actually making any sort of dungeon area xD But it's all good, just bullshitted my way through a couple room features, and I'll figure out an explanation for them afterwards.

[scriver]

Did they miss the meeting too in the end?

[Loud Whispers]

New player rolls up a preacher edgelord supreme for dark heresy. I get him to moderate the edginess and amateur voice acting a bit early on, so huge win for competent player-GM communication. They're super into TTRPGs, Baldur's Gate, pathfinder, 5e, but have never done a d100 system or one where player characters have the survivability and competency of the average joe. Aiding him was a more veteran player of many systems, playing a regular scummy bounty hunter - the "best money can buy."

Plot of the one-shot was very simple. Preacher man is also a ganger, and one of his congregation was brutally murdered. He promises to find out who did this and personally avenge their dead billy. The congregation raises 197 thrones to hire a bounty hunter to track down the killer. In addition, two pure gold coins were left on billy's dead body which if push comes to shove, they can use for bribes/incentives. 197 thrones is a lot but not that much. It's like someone saying I'll give you $500 to look into a suspicious murder. So the preacher "gets the best tesco finest money can buy."

Our scum player takes the money and royally screws up the autopsy, getting 6 degrees of failure. When trying to apprehend a drug dealer connected to Billy, he unloads full auto and the only person he hits in the back is the preacher (losing half of his wounds, but surviving thanks to his body armour). He falsely claims to the preacher there was an ambush behind them, but he scared them off. After this gaff, he seeks out help from an expert in underhive hunts to check the body, bribing him with cases of beer. The expert was somewhat helpful(??) but this mostly turned into an excuse for the scum player to use the congregation's money to buy beer for his mates. The existing clues point to a red light district where a noble, a crime boss and Billy all had mutual connections that pointed to why he was murdered. The preacher disapproves because the scum already knows the directions to the RLD.

Preacher is disappointed to see that four of his congregation are in the RLD, with one working there. Scum rolls a natural 1 on his fellowship/inquiry check to see if he's already one of the clients of this congregation lady. Preacher, prostitute and scum all mutually pretend not to know one another to avoid any awkward questions in front of the moralist who officially opposes all recidivism. Prostitute manages to get preacher, scum and scum's best mate into a guarded club with all of their concealed weapons to track down the crime boss last known to have offered Billy work connects. Scum's best mate disappears to carouse within the club. Preacher heads off to track down the crime boss. When he comes back empty handed, he's found the scum has disappeared with the prostitute and all the money.

10/10 welcome to the underhive rp

Preacher did manage to find out in the end what happened to Billy and why. A Noble scion had been arranging for underhivers to be hunted down for blood sport. Billy had been contracted to find underhivers for some work, but when he discovered the truth, refused to sell out for a deranged upper hiver's amusement. Got killed for his principles. Preacher reluctantly lets the middle-men who profit off of upper-hive sadism live, and pays them to arrange for a new hunt with the noble scion at a place of his choosing. Preacher picks a part of the underhive that is swelteringly hot, dark and infested with dangerously mutated creatures. He is armed with a primitive glaive-burner, whilst the noble scion has a power sword, a futuristic elephant gun, three gun servitors equipped with high capacity autoguns, a cyber-wolf tiger and two marker servo-skulls.

Because the scum player left (he had an IRL emergency social thing to take care of), this suddenly went from being a very dangerous fight to one where death was nearly certain. Preacher's plan was to goad a dusk stalker into attacking the nobleman, then charging in and detonating a suicide vest. This plan was nearly certain to succeed, however I did stress to him his chances of surviving detonating such a vest was 0%, and it might be worth giving a melee charge a try. His preacher had mutant eyes giving him decent night vision; the nobleman did not.

The Dusk stalker charges in after being goaded with a gout of flame. Gun servitors unload, nobleman unloads, the dusk stalker is shredded in a hail of automatic fire. But the gun servitors are out of ammo. Preacher charges in; fails his charge. Nobleman drops his gun and draws his power sword, swipes at the preacher and misses. His cyber-wolf tiger leaps at the preacher, sailing over his head with a skillful dodge. Gun servitors begin reloading; he has two turns before they finish. Lunges at the nobleman; nobleman tries to parry with his crackling power sword and falls for a feint. Preacher follows up with a second strike that wounds the nobleman's unarmoured left leg. Cyber-wolf tiger lunges at the preacher, who parries by catching the creature's jaws in between the stave of his glaive-burner, throwing the cyber-wolf tiger away in a display of great strength and fury. Nobleman goes all out with an overhead strike, but he misses when the preacher sidesteps at the last moment. Preacher returns with an all out strike of his own, the glaive critting and dealing a massive 11 damage, beheading the nobleman just above his body armour. He sprints and grabs the nobleman's head all the while the cyber-wolf tiger tries to avenge its dead master.

The whole fight was over in six seconds; the cyber-wolf tiger failed to kill or catch him, and got lost in the labyrinthine corridors and vents of the underhive. This is the first time I've had a new player in a one shot succeed without dying!!! :]

[Kagus]

Did they miss the meeting too in the end?

Not yet! Following the clock, we're still only a little after 8 in the morning, and the meeting's not until 7 at night... The clock+calendar thing from That Unnamed Repository of Useful Tools for 5e is great and I love it, but I have been kinda bumping into areas of "dead time" where the party doesn't have anything particular to do at the moment, with something else happening later on. It's something I've have to wiggle around, but I don't think I'm ready to go into fully narrative time just yet, as I do really like the clock... I just need to either cut off larger slices when estimating time spent on various actions, or be better about providing filler content in between.

The area they're in now is a mildly-to-moderately cursed ruin of an ancient civilization... However, the local gangs don't care much about that, as it's a nice sprawling underground network that's not patrolled, so they've been having their turf wars down there in a bid to gain control of better access routes.

Or at least that's how it started, but recently the energies of this place have begun to grow stronger and are affecting people more severely, so what were once squabbles between competing-if-respectful groups have now begun escalating into full-on pyrrhic carnage.

So it's not, like, full of spooky beasties, because the gangs kinda do a decent job of shooing things off... But the gangs themselves are down there, and the players might just wander into a mixed brawl at some point next session.

[Kagus]

Y'know, I'm not sure why I even bother coming up with enemies for my party... They seem to be incredibly proficient in making their own.

We've had a couple sessions since last time, during which time they've managed to enrage a psychotic shadow-infused dwarven hermit, set off alarm bells within the arcane university that maybe they're not actually the people they claimed to be before getting involved in sensitive research, and provided the thieves guild master with materials and information necessary to line up a major power grab and change the dynamics of the criminal underworld...

For their services, witting or otherwise, the guildmaster has granted them a token of goodwill in the form of letting them know that the noble they took the job (and money) from is pissed and out for blood, and to suggest that the party skip town and go to the neighboring settlement out west to keep their heads down for a bit... Heck, he'll even pull some strings to prevent the nobleman's goons from looking out there, and will send a messenger to tell them when it's cool to come back.

So, with that neat little package laid neatly at their feet, what is the first thing the party decides to do before taking off?

Why, they write a goddamn letter to a wizard at the arcane university, telling them where they're going in case any important developments in the research pop up

Heck, even the method they posted that letter is most likely going to get even more people in trouble, and potentially spark some more grievances...


Splendid stuff!


EDIT:

Me: "Alright, I recognize that I'm inexperienced as a DM and have a long way to go before getting really solid on all the stuff happening on this side of the screen, so I should keep things fairly basic rather than try to reach too far above my grasp."

Also me: [Makes redesigns of the Wild Magic subclass and the whole damn game's stealth system because natively they're both awful for everyone involved]

[Kagus]

Perpetually agog at my own ability to dig myself in way over my head.

It's a homebrew world (not pre-established, so I'm making all the lore and locations up basically as I go along), sandboxy, I've thrown time and energy into redesigning a couple of the systems as mentioned...

And now I've yeeted a murder mystery at them and I was absolutely not prepared to put this sort of hook together properly. So many missing connections/clues/details, I feel like all my NPCs keep melting into the same personality aggregate, we've barely had any combats which is like the one thing 5e can do, and I'm worried that I'm not engaging our rogue player enough... And, of course, next session is on Thursday and I've done literally zero prep; haven't even written the recap for last session yet.

...but on the flip side, last session did involve at least one situation where one of the players legitimately had to get up and go outside for some fresh air because she was laughing so hard she couldn't breathe. So I guess maybe it's still going okay.