u/brokenimage321

I'm pulling together an idea for a game with a heavy focus on faction politics. Current plan is, the PCs are trying to keep things orderly during a grand festival, but all the PCs have their own plot(s), ranging from "Smile and Wave" to "Make It Look Like An Accident." The challenge will be in choosing which faction / plot is most dangerous, and taking care of the biggest threats first.

This is my first time really playing with factions like this, though, so I'm a little nervous about how this will all work. In particular, I'm wondering--how many factions / NPCs is too many for the PCs (and/or myself) to keep track of / play around with?

For reference: at present, I'm imagining somewhere between 4-6 different factions, each with 2-6 major NPCs, arranged around roughly three different ideological axes.

1) Goal: I'd like to create a few "holes" in a piece of artwork, so that I can easily move them around, adjust them, etc., before exporting.

2) Steps: None yet. I know how to use a clipping mask, but I'm not sure how to make my idea work using that; additionally, I know how to "subtract front," but I would like to do something non-destructive.

3) Problem: The art I'm using is a little complex, so let's start with a simpler example: I'm creating art that includes a piece of swiss cheese. I would like to punch some (fully transparent) holes in the middle of the cheese slice, so I can see through to the background of wherever I end up using it. However, I would like the ability to easily edit the position, size, orientation, etc., of the holes, so I can make sure I'm satisfied with them before I export (i.e., I would like to avoid deleting pieces of my art until I'm 100% certain I like the placement). In a perfect world, I would love to be able to create, like, a dozen shapes of "transparent" and have them cut all the way through the layers of the cheese, while still being able able to move, rotate, adjust, etc., all of them. Short of stacking a different clipping mask for each hole: how would you recommend doing so?

My wife just got back from the Sphere, and LOVED it. However, she was really looking forward to getting a souvenir cup, but the concessions stand she went to had already sold out, and she wasn't able to make it to another before they closed for the night.

Would anyone be able to grab a souvenir cup and ship it to me? I'd love to be able to get her that cup after all.

Thanks!!

I am very much a layman, but I've been growing interested in bees lately, in particular little details of behavior, thought patterns, etc., that make them feel more... human, I guess?

For example: a few days ago, there was a r/BestOf post where a beekeeper explained the roles that drones play in the hive, including the fact that "the workers like having their brothers around." Loved the whole post, especially that bit.

So: what are your favorite bits of bee behavior/psychology that you can share?

Thanks in advance!

There's some lore-specific aspects to this question, so, from the top:

My villain is a powerful shapeshifter who is leading a shapeshifter invasion of the main city. He has captured and replaced the city's (female) Mayor, and is using his position to sow chaos and smuggle in more shapeshifters. Eventually, he will reveal himself and fight the PCs in open battle. Eventually.

[ETA: the fact that a male shapeshifter has bodysnatched a female NPC is leading to some pronoun weirdness. Basically, I use "he/him" to refer to the villain, his plot, etc., and "she/her" to refer to the disguise, her in-character motivations, behavior, etc.]

As a way of setting up that heel-turn rug-pull reveal, I've been trying to play the Mayor as evil, dropping little hints that she's not 100% above-board. Apparently I overdid it: last night, my PCs guessed that the Mayor had been replaced by a shapeshifter, and were making jokes about trying to jump her.

At this point, I think I want to walk back the evil-ness a bit, and try to convince the PCs that maybe she's not all that evil after all, if for no other reason than to convince them to leave the Mayor alone until he is ready for the invasion.

A particular problem: one of the party's favorite NPCs is a reformed shapeshifter who is good and friendly now. The Mayor, who is secretly an unreformed evil shapeshifter, hates her, and has not been particularly subtle about it. The PCs are interpreting her behavior as racism, and are mistrustful of her as a result.

So: how would you suggest winning back the PCs trust here? How can I convince them that maybe they were wrong about the Mayor, at least to the point where they don't try to confront her before the finale? In particular, can you think of an easy way to overcome the fact that she is apparently racist that won't raise suspicion? At this point, I'm not sure that making the Mayor suddenly nice towards the friendly shapeshifter wouldn't raise more suspicion than otherwise...

ETA: A big part of the reason that I'm concerned about them confronting her early is that I'm actually running a pre-printed campaign for a paid table. I got them all together with the idea that we would run through the campaign more-or-less as-written, with a few side scenarios mixed in. In the original campaign, the mayor isn't replaced until, like, the Adventure Six, and we're only getting to Adventure Three on our next session. I was hoping to keep the "The Mayor got bodysnatched" thing as a side-plot until it was time for the actual reveal, if for no other reason than to make sure we can get through all the adventures (more-or-less) as written. Maybe I shouldn't be worried so much about it, but that's where I'm at.

This might be a pretty basic question, but I don't see the options to do this...

My goal: to automate a workflow that includes exporting multiple .PNGs, ideally at specific resolutions, and enabling/disabling a clipping mask in between.

More details:

I'm using Illustrator to make art for a TTRPG I'm working on. I have a couple of dozen characters I want to set up for use in my game, which requires three pieces of art each: a circular "token," created by turning on a clipping mask and exporting an artboard, a head-and-shoulders "portrait," which can be created by turning off the clipping mask and exporting again, and a "full-body" portrait, created by exporting the entire file, ignoring the artboard. I'm then opening the files in Photoshop and resizing them to lessen the bandwidth requirements for myself and my players.

The first step--resizing the art, placing it properly, and adjusting the clipping mask, is a little fiddly and can't be automated. But, once that's done, I would love to be able to push a button and handle all the other steps automatically.

I tried to record the steps using Actions, but it didn't look like it saved all the steps, in particular, disabling the clipping mask--and I'm still not sure how to export at specific resolution, anyways. Is this the sort of thing that could be automated using Actions, or am I just going to have to keep doing things by hand?

For clarity's sake, here's the steps I'd like to automate:

1. Export Artboard 1 as a .PNG, save as "[FILENAME]-token"

2. Disable a clipping mask.

3. Export Artboard 1 as a .PNG, save as "[FILENAME]-portrait"

4. Export entire piece as a .PNG, save as "[FILENAME]-fullbody"

5. Resize files to three seperate resolutions [currently doing in Photoshop, but if this can be done during the export process it would make things much easier]

Hi everyone! I'm new to Daggerheart, but I wanted to see what you thought of this idea:

I'm brainstorming for a "wierd west" take on the Curse of Strahd setting, in which death is no longer working properly--and the players have the help of the Grim Reaper herself to put things right again. I had an idea for how to work that into the mechanics by monkeying with how dying works.

When a player dies, they get one last dramatic action, as in vanilla, but afterwards, they die--there's no way out of it. However, after the PC has been buried in a cemetery, they have the chance to rise again: they'll draw a card from a deck of like ten tarot cards, with some cards granting a benefit of some kind, some cards granting a penalty. If they draw the Death card, though, this is their last life--the Reaper can no longer save them from their doom, and, the next time they meet, she will have to properly claim them. After each death, the card they drew is discarded, and another Death is added to the deck, meaning, each time they go down, it's more and more likely that they won't get back up again.

There will be all sorts of flavor to this process, naturally--Death will "read their fortune" each time they draw their card, and, when they come back, they'll wake up screaming--but what do you think of the mechanics, independent of flavor? Additionally: with this "revolving door afterlife" built in, do you think it would be fair to balance combat against them, so they each get more run-ins with the Reaper?

I'm starting to plan for a Curse of Strahd game, set in the wild west. I've been dreaming up ideas for the setting, and am curious what you would say about what I have so far.

I'm thinkin':

• The PCs are brought to Barron County by two friendly NPCs, Missus Scratch (a plump little devil) and La Muerte (a cheerful skeleton), reptesenting sin and death, respectfully. They tell the PCs that Marshall Leland Strand, who controls Barron County, has somehow broken the cycle of life and death, trapping the souls of all of the County's citizens. They ask for their help in undoing the curse, so that the dead can finally find their proper rest.

• La Muerte and Missus Scratch don't join the party, but are *always* around. E.g., every saloon they enter has Missus Scratch behind the bar and La Muerte on piano, or the two of them pass the party on the trail, or they're the ones working the stable when they need a new horse. Something something, "death and sin are your only companions out here."

• All of the PCs owe a favor to either Missus Scratch or La Muerte, which is why they were picked for the job. All the PCs secretly committed a major crime in the past, or are already dead, which may come out over the course of the story. Perhaps the PCs themselves don't remember what happened?

* The Vistani are replaced with a Native tribe. They're much less stereotyped--they don't have any sort of magic powers re: Strand or Barron County itself, but can provide help, guidance, and supplies as the PCs wander the wilderness.

• Marshall Strand himself is a revenant, of a sort. He's not particularly difficult to kill, but each time he dies, he shows up roughly 24 hours later, with an additional scar. Each time he comes back, he is progressively less polite and patient, and may even start ambushing the PCs with a whole posse of the undead.

• When a PC dies, La Muerte brings them back to life at the nearest graveyard. They might come back with a scar of some sort, perhaps even a permanent debuff, but also come back with an additional clue.

• Perhaps: the PCs are on a time limit, and have one month from the time they arrive to permanently kill Strand.

• Perhaps: the plot is a little less freeform. After the PCs find the "Tome of Strand," they can use it to navigate the surreal, Escher-like interior of Ravenloft Manor. If they succeed, they find Strand's (for lack of a better word) phylactery. If they take the phylactery to the "Amber Temple" and defeat Strand one last time, they can undo the bargain he made with the Dark Powers and put Barron County right again.

So, I just finished a long campaign of the Essence20 My Little Pony RPG. During the game, I ran into a problem with the balancing, which I attempted to correct by adding resistances to my monsters. One of the players objected, saying she felt targeted, and that we should have talked things out beforehand. What would be the better approach?

More info:

The MLP RPG introduced spellcasting to E20, and, though I think the system is fun and flavorful, it's also pretty easy to bust wide open. Players can theoretically get top-level spells at character creation (at steep cost, but even so), and several of the spells can hard-counter certain obstacles--for example, a spammable spell that renders a hostile target passive, with no real way for the target to resist, which shut down one of my boss battles, hard.

A couple of times over the course of the campaign, my spellcaster character told me that she was thinking about taking one of those hard-counter spells (e.g., she asked if she could take the spammable "Greater Restoration" spell, right before a session that was planned to focus on finding a cure for a poisoned NPC). I asked her to take different spells, which she did.

For our big finale boss battle, though, I tried to think ahead and add resistances, narrative bonuses, etc., that would shortcut the most broken spells--e.g., it couldn't be affected by the "calm down" spell because it wasn't actually being aggressive in the first place.

I thought these were clever, in-universe ways to do keep things interesting and challenging... but, after the session, my player objected to this strategy. She said that, if I had asked her to not use the "calm down" spell, she woukd have, but coming up with specific counters ahead of time felt more like a disingenuous "gotcha" designed to punish her, rather than an actual solution to the problem.

Don't get me wrong--I'll be taking this approach with this particular player going forward. However, I wanted to ask: in general, what's the better approach? I was under the impression that working with/around the players' abilities to provide interesting challenges was considered the superior option, as opposed to asking my players to avoid certain courses of action.

Basically the title. I know the khyber crystals can be "reprogrammed" to represent different characters, if you have the equipment and know-how, but I'm curious if the holocron / wayfinder cam be hacked to play custom voice clips. Anyone know if that's possible?

Hi everyone! I'm an experienced GM, looking to run a game of Impossible Landscapes on Thursday evenings. If you happen to be near 84606 (North Utah) I'd love to meet in person, otherwise, we'll be meeting online using my tricked-out Foundry server. Please contact me if you're interested, and we can start nailing down details!

I feel like the title sounds kind of awful, so please hear me out...

Over the past year or so, I have twice given my players the opportunity to set up for the big final encounter of the campaign, and they somehow find a way to just completely kneecap the monster before the final battle begins. I want to reward their creativity, but at the same time, they're making the encounter significantly less interesting / challenging. How can I find a balance there?

Example from the campaign I was running that just ended last night: The players are all at a summer camp together, with each session representing one week each summer (i.e., each session was separated by a year of time). They learned that a giant monster was going to show up the following year (i.e., next session), but that they had the option to summon him early, before they were entirely prepared. Either way, they were given the session to get ready for the Big Boss--gathering supplies, calling up allies, etc.

In order to give some of the less combat-focused characters something to do, I was planning on having the summer camp still be full of NPCs--some of them might be able to help, but a lot of them were innocent civilians that would need to be evacuated before the giant monster could eat them. The non-combat PCs would handle the evac, while the combat PCs would try to stop the monster.

I was proud of this idea, as I thought it would help keep everyone engaged and participating in what was going on, and would also dramatically raise the tension to have the fight take place in a, um, target rich environment.

However, the players all decided that they would use their prep time to summon the monster early--but they would do it during the off-season, when everyone had already gone home. They would still have a drop-down, drag-out fight, of course--but, if it was only them around, the non-combat characters wouldn't really have much to do, and a lot of the tension would be gone.

We got it figured out--I talked to them about it, and allowed them to send their favorite NPCs home before an NPC summoned the monster for them--but I still felt like I didn't handle that as well as I could have (there was a lot of, from my perspective, "C'mon, this will be really cool, promise" from my end). Again, this particular situation has been put to bed, so I don't need advice with this idea, but I'm still wondering what happens next time: I want to reward clever planning, thinking outside the box, etc., but I'm also worried about what happens when I give them freedom to plan, and they manage to just side-step the challenge. Any thoughts, ideas, advice, etc.?

Due in large part to my own neurodivergence, I am rather sensitive to criticism. I do my best to respond positively, but I tend to take even mild critiques pretty personally. I'm aware of this, and am working on it, but, for now, it's still something I struggle with.

Last session (two weeks ago), I ended our session with the big, dramatic reveal of our final boss, and last night, we actually ran the boss. I've spent months planning for, and weeks prepping for, both sessions. Both would have been probably top 5 gaming memories ever--except that, right afterwards, one member of the group asked to discuss a problem they were having with my GM-ing (last session was a legitimate grievance, last night was a mix of complaints about narrative and mechanics). And, to be honest? That really ruined the experience for me. I walked away, not with the feeling of pride and triumph at the cool story moments we were pulling off, but feeling like a failure.

Let me be clear: I want to be responsive to complaints, I want people to feel heard, and I want to help everyone have a good experience with my table. In that respect, I welcome the criticism. But coming off the high of the big moments, the overriding impression I come away with is "you did it wrong." Even though they were effusive with praise, in my brain, the criticisms weigh heavier than the triumphs. "That was so awesome! But I felt insulted." "That was the coolest session ever! But I didn't like my character's hairstyle." I want to emphasize, I know this isn't good or fair, to myself or my players, but this is how my brain works.

With that in mind: would it be appropriate to ask my group to not talk about problems right after the session? Under ordinary circumstances, I know that's how things should be done, and I want to be able to address complaints in a timely manner. But would it be too selfish to ask everyone to wait and discuss things in text chat or something, so I could hold on to the high of the session for at least a little bit? Or, is there a better way to discuss criticism like this?

I have to say, I feel like a whiny baby asking "How can I talk about problems without getting my fee-fees hurt?" I know the proper response is "suck it up," "walk it off," "take it as a way to improve," etc., and I am working on this. But for now, my brain still sucks. And it's not a good feeling to pull off one of the highlights of my gaming career, only to have someone immediately dump a bucket of cold water on the proceedings by bringing up all the things I did wrong.

Hi everyone,

I'm starting to plan for our first Disneyland trip in a long time, which we're currently spitballing for the end of May. I've looked at a couple crowd calendars, which say that it's going to be a mess around our chosen timeframe, but my wife has heard that, due to certain sales starting / ending, it will be the perfect time to go--the sort of factor that might not be reflected in a normal crowd calendar.

Where would you recommend we go to get a good forecast? And, what are y'all's opinions on what crowds will look like over the next little bit?