u/SaltyKoopa

I'm getting ready to run my first hexcrawl and I'll be doing it in 3.5e. However I'm unsure how to handle the rules of getting lost with my players. We're playing on a VTT and I was gonna use fog of war to unveil the map hex by hex. However if the circumstances call for and they fail a survival check and get lost I'm not sure how to handle it. In the rules they move to a random hex (I was gonna roll d6 and move in any direction except intended), and until they pass another survival check or hit a landmark the PCs do not know they're lost.

Since they're not making their own maps I kind of just figured I should just tell them since while it's meta info, they have no power to control it anyways until they pass the realization check. They can just roleplay the discovery once they have.

But I'm not sure if this is robbing my players of the surprise (but possibly also frustration) of ending up somewhere they shouldn't be. I feel like this would be further enhanced by them making their own map, but am unsure how to handle them getting lost, since all their hexes would be wrong and it would eventually lead to book keeping while they sort it out, slowing down the pace of the game.

Any thoughts on this? How do you normally run hexcrawls online?

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I have a player at my table that I think I'm going to need to confront. And while I'm not exactly excited to do so, I think I need to. As such, I want to be as prepared as possible to ensure I get my points across to them, and hopefully speak to their reason instead of just coming off as a tyrant trying to control them. I also want to be as charitable as possible.

For context, in our game, this player (let's call him Rob) created a character that self-proclaimed "needs mischief." Rob has been very vocal about this. This means he'll go out of his way to do things that are often silly or out of the ordinary. They're mostly mundane things throughout, which I'm not exactly thrilled with because I feel our world has a more serious tone, but it's not intolerable. The problem is when it becomes problematic to the other party members.

For example, a while back one of the players in my group locked something important in a room. It was pretty obvious that this was important to them. After that character went to bed, Rob (with full knowledge of how important this was) completely destroyed the lock on door to the room, and forced entry to retrieve something he had left in the room. This was as opposed to literally just asking the player for the keys, which he certainly would have done). When confronted on this, he just acted like "Oh, I didn't want to bother you. Sorry! *shrugs*".

Another example was Rob not attending a funeral for the wife of an NPC the party has grown close to, instead doing random things in the background. He also lies constantly to NPCs, leading to a lot of unnecessary hostility. At one point, he stated his intention to sneak off in the middle of the night to do weird stuff, meaning he would hog some of the session as 1-on-1 since everyone else is sleeping and the table just watches for a while.

All of this really reached it's peak when Rob decided that when he was out of his ordinary outfit (which he had to remove because he was being identified by angry towns guard), he is a different person. Not like an act, but like an actual alter-ego that doesn't remember anything his main PC knows, and doesn't really contribute at all to the party. He's just there cause it's fun. This has been extremely irritating to the rest of the group because now they can't even do their objectives or plans because someone in the party suddenly has amnesia, just because they changed outfits. When another player asked Rob out of game if they could lighten up on the amnesia thing, Rob just responded with "could your player go grab my outfit so I can switch back?" (note his clothes were stashed somewhere atm). Regardless he was not willing to give up the idea despite everyone clearly feeling frustrated about it.

All of this being said, we don't have animosity towards Rob out of game. He's a good friend and we do things with him beyond D&D to great success. And even in D&D he's not doing this to annoy us, he just lacks social/game awareness of what is disruptive behavior at the table. Any advice on how I can fix these issues without alienating him from our game?

I'm a hardstuck silver Soldier player. Despite putting in a lot of time towards my own mechanics and fundamentals I haven't been able to unlock that clutch factor that will let me carry a lobby on my own. Something I've noticed is that almost every game I lose falls into one of about 10 situations, and often as soon as the situation occurs I can tell the match is no longer "winnable" because I have no idea how to dig us out of that hole. Below are these 10 scenarios with a general description of what I tend to see. I'd like to know the strategy of getting out of each. I'm aware most of them frame the issue as a team mate lacking. This is because I know that by being in silver I can't expect my team to play to a baseline like I would in higher ranks. I need to make up for them to be able to climb. I am also fully aware the opposing teams deal with these issues as well. It's easy to identify it and win those games, hence why my winrate floats right around 50%. I'm looking to be the X-factor that can carry through when it's my team that is stuck.

1. Endless staggering - The team trickles back in one by one despite me asking to group up or fall back. I wait at spawn but am lucky to get 3 going in together vs their 5.

2. Tank or team is stuck in a choke and doesn't know to try a side route - Not only do most silvers not understand how to break a choke, but they love voting for choke maps. King's row, Eichenwalde, Blizzard world, are all top picks. I'm aware that there's always another path but I find it really hard to get value when I take it alone unless I get a lucky pick. (See issues 3
   & 10)

3. The opponents own a powerful position, and it's hard to clear it alone - The amount of time high grounds go uncontested is astonishing. But beyond that I'll frequently see 2 or 3 on an angle just spraying, or a junkrat in a room, and trying to clear them alone feels almost impossible. Meanwhile the tank is too busy in a kaiju battle in main with the other tank.

4. Someone is under performing beyond just the average (e.g. 1-8 DPS) - I won't pretend I haven't been this guy sometimes. It happens. But when it does happen how do I make up for them?

5. One character on the opponent's team is out of control - As you can imagine it's not hard for someone, smurf or not to run the lobby. A lot of times a ball will just keep coming in and getting picks and never die, or a doom will have the whole team shooting his block and then bursting people down. There's also a lot of Sombras, Reapers, and Tracers everyone is ignoring.

6. Team is running a comp or playstyle that really poorly fits the map or opposing comp - You'll get a team of low range brawlers on circuit royale, or ashe and widows on tiny maps when they have divers. A lot of times it's made worse when half the team plays one way and the other doesn't leading to fractured playstyles where no one is helping each other at all.

7. Supports are healbotting making sealing kills/holding space really difficult. - First round ends and Kiri or Lifeweaver are at like 300 damage and we have a mercy that doesn't know about blue beam. The game will end with both at like 20K healing/sub-3K damage and tank and DPS can't seal any kills because there's not enough pressure to burst people down or prevent them from just walking forward.

8. The whole team is sitting on cart or point instead of taking space - I die inside when I see winston sitting on cart. I'm not asking us to run up to their spawn, but a lot of times we could move up a corner or two and stage the fight with better cover and angles while 1 pushes, but this concept doesn't exist in silver it seems.

9. I'm pressuring enemies and forcing cooldowns, but they escape because team mates don't see the easy punishes. - I'll admit it's on me too ensure I close as many kills as I can. But a lot of times I'll get the jump on a Moira, Reaper, Sojourn--anything with an escape option, they go flying away and I lose LOS. I pinged them and notice there was a good chance someone else could have finished them off and didn't. I've seen reapers fade right through our team and no one but me bother to rush him down after.

10. The enemy frontline is mitigating all pressure so any attempt to flank has 4 guns mow you down, despite the rest of the team being "engaged" - I like to call this the mother goose scenario. A beefy tank is holding a corner (say Rein with shield, first corner of Rialto) with his whole team behind him. Our tank and three others are in main shooting at him, but through a mix of character picks, aim, and/or range they make zero progress in melting him. Well my whole team is shooting right? So I can take an offangle and try to get a pick? The moment I shoot even one shot three or four unoccupied players behind him will turn and delete me in seconds. Even if that might be valuable at high level, in silver you're guaranteed no one took advantage of it.

There's probably other more specific situations, but these are the big ones I see almost every game on one side or another. I genuinely believe all of these have easy solutions that any good player would work through, but after 2K hours in game and a whole bunch spent watching coaching and educational content I have yet to find a way to break through them on my own. So I'm all ears to hear what you guys have to say. Thanks.

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So recently I've been getting into old school d&d (and OSR to some degree) and the culture around random content generation is really appealing to me. De-coupling things like encounters, travel mechanics, NPC/monster reactions, loot, terrain--the list goes on and on--feels really liberating; especially since I've always been an over-prepper who makes a dozen pages that get thrown out each week.

However, while the steps required to implement these elements are extremely easy (just make some tables or procedures), the idea kind of comes to a screeching halt as soon as I try to make anything coherent out the things I roll. Random tables are good for creating set pieces, but they seem terrible for actually putting those things in any sort of context. I've tried keyword tables, oracles, conflict generators, etc. Everytime I always feel like the story is mediocre because either everything is acting so independently there is basically no plot, OR things suddenly become so over-connected that everyone and their grandma has something to do with the blacksmith's affair for some reason--to the point it leads to disbelief.

Dice cannot curate things it seems. And while I know I can go in and fix it by moving or adding things, it begs the question: what's the point of dice in the first place then? I might as well just make up my own hook and do the rest myself.

But I know there's DMs out there running successful campaigns like this. I've heard of people that show up with zero prep and wing it. Adding in the element of dice shouldn't be this big of a roadblock to me, yet it feels like it is.

To any DMs that have run games like this and found success, what did you do? What mistakes did you discover and how did you fix them?

If you choose option four describe it in a comment

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Obviously there's times to save it for an anticipated duel. This poll is mostly referring to when you get the jump on someone.

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I decided to just redo my last post with codes instead this time. Here's the games (my tag is TCG, all games on PC).

9ZVB2H (Samoa L)

8C2DGT (Numbani, W but rough)

RWXH1J (Eichenwalde, L but felt winnable)

EC54DV (New Junk City W, Kinda Popped off here no idea why)

Not to much to say about the games. They were a normal session. I was aware of a few things as I played (cover usage, trying to rotate a lot) but I wouldn't say I was trying to push the envelope with them. This is my normal gameplay. Hopefully there's one big gap I can patch up, because I've spent the last year or so working on things like aim, positioning, timing, etc but I haven't seen any results.

So my players have a manor that kind of classifies as a stronghold although that wasn't the original intention, nor are we using the Stronghold splatbook (we mostly just play SRD). Long story short demon attack left a gaping hole in the stone wall of the grand hall. I searched up how to fix it, as well as looked at a few books. Assuming it's like a fix item craft check, the DC would be the same as what it took to build the wall, right? But I can't find specific craft checks for building walls, just break DCs and cost to hire labor to make them. Is there a specific rule for this?

I'm DMing for a group of fairly casual players, and while they are definitely enjoying 3.5e, they're not really well versed in all the mechanics, and I tend to help them with their character sheets and builds basically. As our campaign progresses there's been more and more monsters I've been wanting to introduce, but many of them have character sheet altering effects like ability damage that while simple to understand require several numbers to be recalculated on the sheet (DEX alone would affect AC, touch AC, range attack rolls, reflex saves, all of the dex skills, etc.) Again, while this isn't hard to understand, it's book keeping, and it's amplified by the fact that my players don't really know the sheets well enough to erase and replace the numbers--or if they do it still slows the pace of the game a lot which they find unfun.

I've thought of replacing these types of statuses with others that provide similar but easier to manage effects, although I'm worried it'll break the balance somewhere in there.

So my question is, how do you run these types of effects without leading to constant updating of sheets over and over throughout the session?

P.S. this issue extends to other types of ability affecting conditions like exhaustion, entangled, etc.

EDIT: I should mention that we play on discord and their character sheets are PDFs (but not the auto-calculating kind)

So I have around 2K hours and float around top of silver with Soldier 76. I use a logitech M317 with no mouse pad (just directly on the wood of my desk.) My aim feels okayish but not great. As a benchmark, when playing VAXTA I usually have around 30-33% accuracy. I'm not one to blame being hardstuck on poor hardware because I feel like if a GM player used this setup they'd still dominate the games I'm in. But I am curious how much of a hindrance this actually is. I mean, if I legitimately could win me a few extra duels it'd probably be worth the upgrade. Suggestions are welcome (although I'd rather no spend too much money on this.)

So my campaign is still pretty early on (7 sessions) and it started with a really small scope of just a single location (a manor) and the surrounding forest. The players are finally ready to start venturing out and since both they and I want the world to be sandbox-style, I've been trying to add locations and seed interesting plots they can stumble into.

I am well aware I should be writing scenarios not plots, and I'm doing that by building characters with goals, random social encounters, and hiding clues in different places, etc. The problem is I'm not sure when enough is enough. I'm currently making a scenario for one of the nearest towns and it already involves 13 NPCs (probably will need a few more), three factions, five or six locations in town, a half dozen encounters, and culminates in a full on dungeon crawl that I haven't even started yet. I've built the scenario so no one really knows everything and even if the players ignore a few encounters, they'll probably still get involved through others.

But as you can imagine this is turning into a logistical nightmare and my notes are reaching the point of spaghetti--and this is just one town out of six I've already placed on the map. I also fear them basically just walking out of town after getting supplies leaving all that work wasted.

I recently have been using Village of Hommlet as my organizational inspiration, try to replicate it's LOCATION -> NPCs -> GOAL/SECRETs flow to make the world feel like a living breathing place, but honestly it has only brought me more stress as it feels I'm having to write a whole adventure module for every nook and cranny of the world. I can't tell if it's that what I'm creating is too complex (too many moving parts), or if I'm making it so by overcomplicating the pieces involved (backstories, rat's nest of connections).

My next session is Saturday and while I don't need the whole world ready realistically there's two towns and a lot of wilderness they can reach and I want that to be as ready as possible. But at my current pace there's no way I'm gonna hit that goal without spending hours. I feel lost and overwhelmed. I've tried looking at lightening the load (things like Lazy DM), but everytime I do either the world feels so shallow or I feel like I can't visualize the threads in my head and will end up relying on ass pulls. Even worse I know I'm not railroading my players but I also feel like I'm not setting things up to react to their cool ideas. If they don't really vibe with my scenarios it's not like I can pull another one out of thin air. I basically feel like I've already locked them into what's going to happen even if they have total freedom within that bubble.

Any advice would be appreciated.