Twilight Sparkle: Here’s where we’re at: I’ve been given a map of the mountain. There are multiple branching paths ahead, so I’m planning out the best possible route for our ascent to the top.
Fluttershy: Um… The TOP of the mountain? All the way up?
Twilight Sparkle: Yes. There’s a cavern near the peak where the dragon’s made its nest. We need to get there by nightfall, so we won’t have time for any extended rests.
Rainbow Dash: Darn. I was planning on taking a nap at “freezing cold, thin air” altitude.
Rarity: You HAD to remind me. Good thing I packed some scarves, then.
Twilight Sparkle: Look, if we take too much time getting up the mountain, the damage to Equestria’s skies will be more difficult to overcome. Any questions?
Applejack: Yeah. When did ya become the DM’s mouthpiece?
Rainbow Dash: Probably when she spent an HOUR here with only the DM for company.
DM: Hey!
Looking for new ways to deliver that pesky but necessary exposition? Give it to only one player and let them deliver it to the rest of the party in-character!
... After which a prompt leadership rebellion is obviously neccesary, overthrowing the influenced player in favor of someone who is still capable of destroying every railroad he finds.
Because that's what D&D is about: Finding the railroads put down by the DM and utterly obliterating them in any way you can.
The trick to good DM'ing is to make them think that they are breaking the rails, when, in fact, they were following much smaller, hard to find rails. All according to plan /fingerarch
A good DM should also be able to lay new tracks to cover up a derailment. And they should have alternative routes and parallel tracks lined up, to account for predictable situations.
My group hates leadership. Yet they don't even do well with some kind of simple democracy. It's more like an anarchistic confederation. Or really... they just do whatever. XD
And sometimes it gets frustrating trying to keep them from clawing the wizard's tower and eating the mayor's houseplants, when you'd prefer if they chased a few pests once in a while.
I want to point out here that herding cats really isn't all that hard if you have a bit of fish, a string, or anything they will play with/eat. I have no idea why that expression is in use, since I herd cats with success all the time.
Personally, I think PCs should be treated like chimpanzees. Clever and resourceful, but they'll fling poop at you if you piss them off or they're bored enough. And then use the poop to kill the big bad.
Full marks, Bronymous. I didn't even realize I'd set that one up. Thankfully, it's still better than my collection of cheesy lines for picking up Equestrian princesses.
Does anyone else just NEVER play the "resting" part of the game? Camping, getting a room in an inn, whatever, I've never played a game where that happened.
I've also never had a character die on me, but that could just be because I'm awesome.
I've done both. I like to occasionally throw a night time encounter where the party is half dressed and barely awake, trying to scrable for a weapon and defend against whatever it is attacking.
Then there was the time the party slept in Castle Ravenloft. Yeah, they only did that twice...
We're playing Kingmaker, so a lot of it is wilderness exploration, so we do a LOT of camping. And we get attacked sometimes. But being a ranger, I was very strict on setting watches from day 1.
One campaign I was in routinely asked us to figure out our sleeping arrangements, which led to some of my favorite moments.
First favorite moment being when I'd set up a secure shelter in a shallow cave, dozens of undead decided to ambush us from outside, and I wound up having to save the party with magic missile spam from behind the barrier.
Second favorite moment was from that inevitably leading to me picking the Mage's Mansion spell, and once the DM told me I got to decide how it looked inside, I looked forward to describing the new mansion every time we used it.
In my most recent game (cut short when I moved) I had one character a knight in service to one of the dukes secretly supporting the resistance to the stereotypical evil emperor, and another an assassin that had previously served the emperor. That made it pretty easy to justify handing exposition about either side of the conflict to one player or the other. The third character was a wizard, which also let me pass them occult knowledge.
I demand you stop using a real name and comment using a pseudonym like normal people who post comments about a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic screencap comic in a tabletop rpg setting.
AND IF YOU DON'T THEN I'LL...! mutter disapprovingly and look like this ಠ_ಠ
I quickly gave up the notion of 'rails' and 'adventure hooks'. I use 'bait' instead. It's great to figure out what your players want and make it clear that they have tons of options... But one path leads to bait that the whole party wants. It works better if you're using emotional triggers, like killing a hated enemy or saving a beloved NPC, or at the very least some wondrous artifact from a forgotten age that has the power to control dragons or a flying castle equipped with orbital death-laser attached. But, if you must, just a boat-load of gold can work too - it's just nowhere near as good as something specific. Great bait makes the players want to go where you want them to go a lot more than they want to derail things.
It also helps to plan what obstacles and events the players will face, then leave it completely open how they overcome them. For example, the party once wanted to assassinate a powerful leader of a thieves guild in her private, well-guarded office. The only thing my plans required was them getting to that office (and even that could be easily worked around if they failed), it didn't matter how they did it.
They decided to impersonate a fake company they called, "Viking Cleaning and Asbestos Removal". Their slogan? "Don't let your Asbestos turn into an as-worst-os." =)
It was awesome, it got them what they wanted and it didn't throw off the session at all. Players want to be creative, it's a good thing. Be not afraid.
Bronymous, I'm sorry to say, but that won't work with this particular DM.
See, we did that once. Sneaked in through a secret door, killed everything, got the gold, sneaked out. Really unusual for us, but we particularly didn't like these people.
And he expected it, because we knew we hated these guys enough to just murder them. It was just more of his "bait." And he made us pay for it big time down the line.
(Stairc, I believe I'm talking about taking out the Silverfern HQ in Aurixan.)
So read his play. Predict. Use reverse psychology. Bait is only bait if you know it's there. Try doing what you think he'll least expect, and then at the last second do something else, and pretend you don't want to. If you can get him to open up about other options, you can most likely guess which he wants you to do, and which is a backup.
It's all about playing Chess with the DM and then beating him at Tic-Tac-Toe before he realizes the game has changed.
One, metagaming him doesn't work, because he's doing the exact same freaking thing - playing my expectations of him against me whenever I'm in a metagaming mood. He's been playing the Chess-slash-TicTacToe game much longer than I have. I usually lose.
Two... this whole concept of laying down "bait?" He's really good at that. We'll gladly get on the rails when there's what we really want is at our destination - even if we argue about it for a half hour before boarding the train.
Really, Bronymous... As much as we love to demonize and stereotype all DMs, the problem is that this one is actually really good at doing the JOB of the DM: engaging the players.
Oh dear. Now I have the image of this party and DM doing some sort of Princess Bride campaign and coming to the Picnic scene. That would be a sight to behold.
An alternate method, you can not go out of your way to screw up a DMs campaign because he goes out of his way just to create a world for you to play in and works twice as hard as everybody else. Ever considered that?
(Sorry, I never been a DM but I played in groups where the one guy has to screw it up for everybody, so I kind of gotten sick of Derailing just to be an ass.)
I run a D&D game every Sunday that lasts about 6-8 hours depending on how much time we spend goofing off. I spend about 6 hours on Saturday setting it all up, 3 hours for the way it's supposed to play out, and 3 hours plotting out alternate ways it could go down.
To give you an idea about how detail oriented I am, one of my players had his character picked up a bottle of peach schnaps about a year ago IRL time in an abandoned bar in a haunted town. In the year IRL/month game time since it was never opened or drunk. I turned that randomly picked up bottle into a plot point that the fate of the world hung on.
The moral of the story is give the DM a chance to blow your mind and he just might do it.
Yeah Darkwulf23, I agree. Some players just like to try to be destructive and ruin their friends' work. That rarely tends to be a problem for me though and more just one for the rest of the party. I like building an adventure and a world for the party to try whatever they want in and making sure the people in it behave realistically.
The funny thing in Bronymous' first attempt to derail the above scenario that I posted was... That was the default option he suggested. Charge in, kick down the door and kill her then possibly stab the nasty guy manipulating you in the back is the classic adventure. By trying to wreck the plans, Bronumous came up with the easiest possible scenario to DM. :)
I've found that so long as you don't try to anticipate what players will do (with the exception of certain Silverfern adventures that Alex mentions, where it's all about trying to outguess a manipulative enemy) but rather provide a situation with characters that behave realistically... There's just nothing to derail in the first place. The players are in the driver's seat, the only people they can derail are themselves.
Let's say Newbie's group had done the exact opposite and offered to serve the Silverferns they hated. I know how the organization works and how the higher-ups have a grudge against the players but also like turning their enemies into advantages. They would send an insultingly low-rank official to bargain with the players and offer a humiliating deal that is win-win for them. If the players refuse in anger, their plans progress as usual. If the players accept, the Silverferns get a group of powerful people who slay monsters for a living working on their side of the fence. Then they would send the players on some task to get them to prove themselves - something distasteful, likely asking them to betray a former ally...
And once more, if they players change their minds again - things work out. If the players stick with this new alliance, a brand new interesting adventure unfolds. If the players go on a rampage and kill everything in site, they will be declared national enemies and will be forced to fight against overwhelming odds or else flee to a safe haven in another land that will be granted conditionally, and only conditionally upon a trial of virtue administered by a legendary paladin's crippled mentor or else they might join the forces of a Desert Lord, where such butchery is valued.
You can surprise me all you like, I enjoy it. But the only ones you can derail are yourselves. =)
Well that is either no fun at all, or shaping up to be the best campaign one could hope to play.
However, the way you make it sound, it seems you would have to be ready for any possible outcome, any possible choice, at any possible time- and that falls back on the characteristic flaw of many, if not the majority, of DMs- improvising. So if you're just awesome at that, if you can transition from any one idea of what's going on into another seamlessly, then I believe you when you say you can't be derailed.
But what I'm talking about is those moments when there isn't a seamless transition, when that player does something so out there that you have to stop and think "ok, well then what would happen". The reward I'm looking for is seeing the DM break his game face, step back and work around what I'm doing, so I know I'm making an impact.
And also, to clear up any misunderstanding, this is never my original goal in a game. I don't try and break and derail the campaign every chance I get. It's only when challenges like that are issued, when the DM begins to think too highly of himself, or begins to treat the party like his personal playthings, to use and discard on a whim. That is when I decide to take the fight to him.
The great thing is that you don't need to be prepared for every possible thing as long as you design things adequately. You design events and obstacles that have 2 or three possible outcomes, then plan for those. For example, once I know the players want to take out that guild leader (and they definitely did) - I can plan obstacles to them taking her out. Then I can plan for a situation where they accomplish their goal or fail in their attempt. HOW this happens doesn't really matter in my plans, whether they kick down the door or impersonate an asbestos-removal service. However, how they do something will both have ripple-effects (a frontal assault will mean the city guards think you're criminals, something you'll have to deal with or rectify) or else allow hefty extra advantages. I love it when players bypass something terrible with clever thinking.
For example, Newbie's group once went to a hell-plane after retrieving a sword-that-was-the-prison-of-a-greater-demon (ask him about how that happened sometime) that banished their friend's soul to hell. The event: "Break out Ian's soul from Purgatory, the soul-jail". If they succeed, they can resurrect him. If they fail, they'll either run out of the hellscape or end up in purgatory themselves and a new campaign arc will begin with a devil overlord forcing them to work for him (which I can start planning on next week, once I know if that's what happened).
They did succeed... And they did it in an absolutely awesome way. The souls were kept in prison by the power of an infernal seal housed within the jail. The players asked a disgruntled guard how it could be broken and I answered, "It could only be shattered by some incredible entity, like an arch-devil or greater demon"
At that point the players' eyes electrified. "Wait..." Newbie said, "Don't we have a Greater Demon in the sword?"
Epic. They decided to kill themselves and voluntarily enter the jail as souls, bringing their sword with them hidden in a bag of self-holding as souls have physical form in the astral sea and can wield weapons, then plunged the sword into the seal - shattering it and freeing EVERY SOUL IN PURGATORY.
The tidal wave of souls ran rampant through the city, shattering it as they leaped free as the rescued player rallied a cry of glory... And thus did the players devastate the entire planar city of Char.
I sure didn't plan for that, but I sure didn't have to. And it was epic... And didn't derail a thing. =)
A good way of secretly laying down rails: Use NPCs, revenges and personal grudges to manipulate the players.
Want the players to go to the next town? Have a random bard in another town spread slanderous lies against them, ruining their reputation.
Want to direct the players towards finding a secret in the dark alleys of a town? Have one of them be pickpocketed in a crowd and get them to play detective on finding him.
Need to ensure the PCs wont be merciful to a baddie? Have them break or ruin some of their equipment.
Bronymous, you forgot to mention the part where you raise her and enthrall her, and go forth to spread death and despair throughout the land, with her as your queen of the dead.
But that's really more of a long term goal, and hey, if she's not willing to come back, necromancy is always a perfectly viable option.
Simpler plan: Buy 30 barrels of pitch, cart them all up to the rooftops, then light them on fire and throw them at the building. Worked like a charm for us.
Well, not sure if I'll get in, but I submitted an earth pony miner named Earth Digger. Or that's too bland, an earth pony carpenter named Hay Seuss who spreads the word of Celestia.
Honestly, name is the very last thing I come up with when it comes to characters, as in name is stamped on minutes before the game session starts proper. Agonizing over the name seems to be a weakness of mine when it comes to character creation, but then again, once you got it, you're stuck with it. Guess I'd rather be happy with a name after knocking the rocks in my head around for way too long, rather than the rest of my group ripping on me for having a lame name. I hope I get in on this game, since one of the games I was in just ended abruptly, due to three of our guys having a falling out. Still, I'd be interested in hearing about the antics of this new group, regardless.
I have my Pony completely fleshed out, backstory and all- even more so than any other character I've ever played. Adult Pegasus, special talent dealing with fire, everything.
I can't decide on the name though- Flashburn (alluding to his special talent and current job as firefighter) or Flashpoint (alluding to marksmanship and a general sense of military precision- he served in the Pegasus Corps).
In terms of useful abilities, I didn't really think of them for my character. I just sorta made a character, and didn't try to min-max it or whatever, other than acknowledge that she was probably a little roguish.
Though after I submitted my application, it occurred to me that my character's special talent, she would have to be godlike at bluffing.
Have fun trying to figure out what her special talent is now.
If I remember correctly, character sheets weren't needed, but this should help out tremendously. Sadly, I forgot to submit an earth pony concept; hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass... :/
in my experiance reverse pshycolagy is often the best way to get the checters to do what I want them to do, unfortanatly they cant tell the difference between when im trying to trick them and when im trying to not trick them, for example, they killied a level twenty priest in his sleep by dropping a buiding on him, the reason why? he had a gotee. *sigh*
One campaign I was playing in started off as a typical wondering mercenaries setup. That is, until we took on what was intended to be some brief work dealing with nomadic raiders who were terrorizing the countryside.
First mission, we find an outlying farm, everyone dead except one young girl who the raiders were taking turns with. Somehow, we mutually agreed without saying a word to spend pretty much all our proceeds from that mission (minus the money to set the girl up as an apprentice in the nearby town) to start raising an army and spent the rest of the campaign more or less wiping out the nomadic culture.
And this was all from what was intended to be just a stand alone encounter. The GM was more surprised then we were about the path the campaign had taken, and we all pretty much agreed that it was one of the best campaigns we had ever been in.
Moral of the story: Never let the rails get in the way of something more interesting.
I've done this once with a character. I had a side-party of NPCs that I eventually gave to player control (gave them the sheets, with info on their personality and such), but one of the NPCs was special. He was a god in disguise.
This meant that I could give him a smug attitude, with him usually knowing the answers and treating it as obvious (If you've ever played The World Ends With You, he was heavily based off Joshua). This also made for fun when I handed it off to player control. I was able to downright spoil plenty of things, telling them to the player... with the catch that when he reveals any information, he has to keep up the charade, and can't just say he got it from divine providence. Sadly, the player just tended to stay quiet rather than figure out how to give the answer in a way that doesn't break the masquerade.
Well, I'm storyless this time. The only player who I'd trust to get *correct* info to the other players is playing a very secretive half-fiend gargoyle.
Hey, if you can get a player to act as mouthpiece without breaking character, AND they're okay with that, I see no problems! After all, a DM needs all the help they can get keeping the story even sort of cohesive. DMing is like writing a fantastic novel, with deep characters and an epic story, and then reading only excerpts about that one (or more) really cool guy(s) who you only put in to appeal to a a crowd that has an obsession with the concept of being a badass to a bunch of howler monkies.
I understand that Fluttershy's player is just roleplaying her cowardly and largely ineffective druid, but all I can think of is how much I HATE characters who don't jump at the call to adventure. I really have no patience for those who pick something other than adventure as their priority.
I mean, sure, if the game naturally evolves to the point where the high level PCs have found themselves with political responsibilities and what not, then sure I can see not delving into dungeons on a regular basis, but if a low level character isn't at least a little bold and reckless they shouldn't be a PC!
Off the top of my head, roleplaying. I can think of any number of reasons. They have to raise adventuring money to keep their family afloat, they're only around because they owe a debt to one of the other party members, they've never been *in* a dungeon before (works best with lv 1 chars, though). Those all allow for adventure without the character needing to be especially excited about it or heck, downright scared. After all, you're going into the home of monsters in an attempt to kill and rob them, in that order. These creatures are ferocious, unnatural, or both, and what if it's a dragon's cave you're raiding?
(Oh wait.)
Well, it was an excruciating decision process - absolutely excruciating. I can't begin to say how many great applications I got and a lot of people bounced emails off me all week expanding their characters and applications. Ultimately I wound up with these final four for the first MLP Skype Session. Bear in mind, there's probably going to be more than one - and it's not going to be a full campaign. Probably just a one-shot or mini-series to try things out. If it goes well, there will be others for anyone who missed out this time to try again.
Anyway, without further ado, here are our adventurers!
Karilyn
Ranubis
Dragyphon
Anthony
I'll be emailing you as well for confirmation. Enjoy.