u/Arcane_Robo_Brain

I'm starting work on my own CRPG with a sword and sorcery vibe. To me, that means fast, brutal battles and not Wasteland-like tactical fights. So I'm leaning heavily toward RTwP, but I'm starting to wonder at what point do "fast, brutal battles" turn it into an ARPG, which I don't want.

For some background, I started with the Ultima series, then Fallout, Baldur's Gate II, Planescape, etc., all when they came out. Yes, I'm old. But whether because of changing tastes or a shorter attention span, I find turn-based games too slow for me now. I still love the isometric, 3D rendered background aesthetic and deep stories of those old games though. So, that's what I'm shooting for with my own.

I haven't played too many of the more modern games, because of work and life and so on, but I've gotten through the first act of Pillars recently. I'm playing on easy mode and kind of feel like that's about the speed that I want fights to be. Not too much pausing needed, but enough decisions to keep it interesting.

I want to keep things simple in my own game, but the more I plan the more I start thinking, "Am I making an ARPG?" Like I said, I don't want that. So, how do I find that line and keep from crossing over it?

I'm about to start a campaign and one of the PCs took the Find Familiar spell. I know there are a lot of built in restrictions when it comes to exploring inside the city, like no long rests, getting contaminated and such. I was wondering if anyone had experience with familiars in the game. Was it a problem at all? Did you rule that the familiar was affected by the haze?

I feel like I'm missing something, but campaigns are always sorted from oldest to newest with no way that I can tell to change that. I've run tons of campaigns and am always having to scroll down, past the old ones that are done, to get to the ones I'm actually running now. Is there a way to change it so that the most recent are at the top?

There was another post asking about how to help narrow the ol’ “martial/caster divide”. One piece of advice that came up a couple times was to put better guidance for magic items in the DMG, but they didn’t expand on what that guidance would be. What special considerations should a DM take into account when providing magic items to the martial PCs in the party?

The book makes it very clear that the party can sometimes run into situations where they're hopelessly outmatched, but it doesn't say what the party's options are if/when that happens, at least that I can tell. In 5e, running away from a fight that's already started is actually pretty hard to do, mechanically. How do you all handle the case where the players have realized they're in over their heads? Just let me them leave? Go into a chase sequence? Something else?

This would have been a few years ago, but there was one episode where I think he was recapping the campaign that he'd just finished and talked about a session, maybe the final session, where the party was in the middle of a massive war. He talked about letting the players use NPCs as resources for bonuses in the own attacks. Something like, roll to see how well the NPC, like an army general or something, does with what their doing and on a success the PC gets advantage or some other bonus. The catch was that by using NPCs in that way, the players were exposing them to possibly dying.

Overall, it was a way to make the outside battles have an impact on what the PCs were doing and also making the NPC losses feel worth sacrifices.

It's all very vague now, but I'm hoping someone knows what I'm talking about so I can go back and listen to it.

This is a list of things I see Brennan do consistently in all games he runs. I'm sure many of us do some number of these in our own games, but the whole package is what makes the BLM "style", imo. There are probably some I missed or forgot about.

I kept to things I could reasonably hope to adopt and left out the traits that make him a master at what he does, like "be outrageously creative and the king of improvisation."

They're in no particular order. Just thought I'd share.

1. Ask for rolls out of combat
2. Failed rolls still result in something interesting happening
3. Reference the number rolled in the explanation of what happens
4. Use roll results to give lore to players
5. Be free with information
6. Give insight into NPCs motivations
7. Explain why things happen, not just what happened
8. Ask players to contribute to the lore surrounding their own characters
9. Describe how people are dressed when they're introduced
10. Give players choices
11. Tell players the consequences of failing saving throws
12. Tell players the DC of checks and saving throws
13. Get PCs to interact with each other
14. Graduated outcomes for roll (a 15 gets you X, a 20 gets you Y, etc)
15. Be free with advantage
16. Cheer the players
17. Lean into the story the dice want to tell

I want to take a break from long campaigns and just run some one-shots for a bit. To keep prep time down, I'm looking for suggestions where everything I need to run it is already in DDB, including a map or two I can use inside the Maps VTT. What are your favorites?

I love the Duskvol setting but don't love BitD. If you were going to run a campaign in that world, but in a different system, which one would you use?

I could swear that somewhere in the core rule book it gives GM advice along the lines of "if nothing interesting is going to happen for a couple days, just jump ahead to the interesting part." I looked again before writing this post but I can't find it now.

Anyway, I really like that advice and try to incorporate it into my games. The trouble I have is that I don't know what to do about rests when that happens. Let's say we're jumping ahead two days. Do they get two long rests? What if it's a longer period of time? Do I just tell everyone to top off their characters (the equivalent of a D&D long rest, which I'm not a huge fan of)?

I kind of feel like giving them just one long rest regardless of the time between so that we're still engaging with the attrition game mechanics and they're not always at full health/stress/armor (since I tend to do this pretty frequently). But that also feels weird, story-wise.

How do you all handle it?

EDIT: I found the part in the rule book. It's the "Cut to the Action" section on page 144. Interestingly, the example given has the GM saying, "Instead of playing this out and doing long rests, just clear all your marked Hit Points, Stress, and Armor Slots." Like I said though, not a big fan of that approach.

EDIT 2: Thinking more about it, what that sounds like to me is letting the PCs top off their core "damage" stats, but without letting them do a actual long rest. So no regaining hope or furthering their projects. Kind of makes sense, but kind of doesn't. The conclusion I'm coming to is, "it depends", which I guess is the answer to most of these kinds of questions.

I run games for lots of different people and I noticed that some of them bring their own rituals from other tables. The one that stands out is to hold a hand to their head when talking out of character. I've never said anyone needs to do this, and have never done it myself. I guess it's just habit with them. To be clear, I have no problem with it and actually find it kind of endearing.

What are things your table does, or other players do, that are unique?

Are there viable character builds that focus on dealing stress? Since giving opponents stress is a less direct way of taking them down vs direct damage, do they end up filling more support type roles?

I have a group of players where some are really into the epic heroic fantasy experience and others want more of a... I'm not sure what term to use, more story-driven intimate experience.

I know it's possible to combine the two and give each group a degree of what they're craving, but I was thinking, as an experiment, of approaching the challenge in a different way. What if, assuming everyone is up for it, I split the campaign into two groups and run each seperately, focused on the type of play each one wants.

This is very much inspired by the Lord of the Rings saga where at some point it splits into two different stories, more or less, with one group traveling back and forth across the land, engaging with kings and fighting armies while the other takes a quieter route and the story focuses more on the characters than on the larger events of the world stage. But in the end both are just as impactful to the overall story.

So just as in LotR, the campaign would start with everyone together, at one table, with a common goal, but then at some point split to play through their own stories in their own unique play styles. There could still be occassional points where they meet up and we join tables again, as well as ways in which the events of each table influences the other, and we'd still want to finish together.

I know this sounds a lot like a West Marches campaign, and there are takeaways from that style of game that could be used here for sure, but the big difference is that this would be the same group of players for the whole campaign, telling a single overarching story, with the specific intent of each table having a different type of play experience.

Most systems could support this dual play style game, I think, but do any stand out us especially well suited? I was thinking fantasy, but this could be any genre really.