u/BleachedPink

I was contemplating about the plot and scenes for the future session, I was thinking about doing this:

One of the PCs has an issue of that one evil faction Xolla has a vendetta against him. Xolla was foreshadowed a few sessions ago and wasn't the main focus on the current short story, so by the end I wanted to create an ambush onto the party during their mission against another evil faction Zetta.

This would give me an opportunity to introduce Xolla as a tangible enemy finally and provide some leads for future adventures and foreshadowing another Big Bad.

However, it seems like a compel, an event compel in particular. And couldn't the player just pay a fate point and say, actually, that there's no ambush.

The player in the moment may not think that it's something of importance or that I can create future adventures from this event and provide leads for the current story line?

Should I just force the event and pay a fate point to the player or anyway? Or how is it handled?

I'm not talking about losing as in the end of the game, but more like a story beat where enemies win a battle, but the war still continues.

I was thinking about some story arcs, possible development of the current story and can't think of anything fun, if they do not surrender like a cliff hanger at the end of the episode.

We've played a few sessions and left on a cliff hanger, and if players win that encounter I can't think of having anything fun immediately afterwards except for ending that adventure. The way I framed the cliff hanger scene, it seems it can be dealt with like an hour.

I do not have any strong preferences where to put them afterwards, asylum, mafia underbelly, laboratories, literal prison etc

I just wanted to skip some time, like a TV show, we had one episode resolved, some time skipped and we play another episode with a different adventure. But the players kinda want to start from the place we ended, reminding me the way we used to play for months with a continuous progression in OSR

Hello, we're playing a pulpy zombie action game, as if Michael Bay wanted to create a Resident Evil game.

We had a scene, where the president of the USA, who is a body builder weighting 220kg (a lot, I know) turned into a zombie.

One player decided to create advantage by shooting him into a leg with a shotgun, trying to cripple him.

I thought the zombie president would defend using forceful (4), as it would depict the bodily fortitude of the zombie.

After that players tried to do a few create advantage against him, using sneaky, and careful, by trying to cut his tendons on hands using a scalpel and or sawing his head off with a garrote. Again I decided that it's a time for Forceful defense by the zombie. Which made my players unhappy.

I am not sure whether it was a right call? Players said that they were unhappy as no matter what approach they used, the president, who pinned down one of the characters, used the best stats all the time. I can't think what kind of a defense a zombie bodybuilder can do other than being tough against such create advantage actions.

They also fought a few other zombies, and I decided being former normal people they simply cannot defend against a shotgun using fortitude, so I just asked to roll to shoot against a static number of a few zombies quick approach (0), which were basically free kills.

Maybe it was not a very fun designed encounter as it was the president cabinet with some body building equipment, and he successfully pinned down one character, so they couldn't move around and try to be quick keeping distance. I suppose I'd allow create advantage if they just told at the beginning that they dodge his attacks keeping distance using their quick reaction and training, so it would be their quick against the president's quick approach, which would be quite easy to win.

Something that can close the skill gap outside of the pure skill and game developer's design is just plain cheating... It's like sanctioned. Like in WC3 knowing the range of sight of units and having an ability to eyeball it during the game can bring you victory, because different units have different sight ranges allows you to outmatch your opponents.

In Dota being the inheritor of the WC3 mechanics, sight is very important

Or imagine some mod for SC2 that would make micro-control easier, everyone would blow up.

Moreover, I am not installing this shit after reading all the news how hackers hack people by injecting malicious code into game mods and getting access to their PCs

I love Arx Fatalis because it intertwines dungeon crawling and narrative very well, you can see what each room is about, placement of rooms and corridors, you rarely encounter bland rooms, every room you stumble upon has some element of storytelling.

I am not too familiar with DRPGs, but the ones I tried were kinda lackluster in this aspect. I recall Might and Magic 9 was ok in this aspect and Grimrock 2 as well.

Most of DRPGs I checked on youtube, were kinda too random. Bland rooms with no story, layout which make no sense etc. I know that there are "tropes", like looking at the map you can get the idea of where certain secrets can be, but it's not narratively coherent.

I liked SMT4 most of the time, but it's some dungeons are just random and make no sense as well, there's very rare you can see any environmental storytelling, and labyrinths seem random most of the time.

I kinda love Arx Fatalist because it intertwines dungeon crawling and narrative very well, you can see what each room is about, placement makes sense and everything. Also System Shock 2

I am not too familiar with DRPGs, but the ones I tried were kinda lackluster in this aspect. I recall Might and Magic 9 was ok in this aspect and Grimrock 2 as well.

Most of DRPGs I checked on youtube, were kinda too random. Bland rooms with no story, layout which make no sense etc. I know that there are "tropes", like looking at the map you can get the idea of where certain secrets can be, but it's not narratively coherent.

Was pretty nostalgic recently, and tried out a few mmorpgs and realized that all of them were completely solo experience. Like even WoW was instance based experience or you need to get to the endgame to go big raids. So you kinda can do everything in the game without any interaction with the other people.

My personal favourtite was lineage 2, because it was difficult as fuck and you had to party play while still wearing diapers. Different classes made for different niches, like Shillen Elder was giving out mana, while Sorcerer was shooting fireballs. You basically couldn't do anything alone, as even simplest mobs would fuck you up.

Any recommendations for difficult MMORPGs, where party play is de-facto mandatory? Be it old or new, doesn't matter, just still alive.