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The issue is that your pre-authored content may not reflect the themes that the players have focused on in their story. You don't know where the story is going to go, so your pre-authored content may simply fall flat and fail to be emotionally engaging. Like a great Cthulu-ish city in the...

Here's the thing: You play with certain people because you like their ideas. This means that, for a pre-authored game, you like the content that the DM pre-authored. It also means that, for a no-myth game (or whatever - pemertonian-scene-framing, fail-forward, etc.), you like the content the...

One possible reason is that the failure condition is communicated more easily to the player. In a risk/reward type of game it's important for the players to know what the typical outcomes of a failed check may be. It gets complicated because in these types of games there is often a good deal...

I don't think that Black and Grey morality necessarily applies to the protagonist or heroes in Noir. Look at The Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade wears the white hat. It may not seem like it for most of the movie, but by the end you can see that he was looking for justice (and not just revenge). He...

All you need is the core book. If you're looking to pick up something else, I'd suggest Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim. It's for Han Solo-esque campaigns, though.

I've always felt Burning Empires to do a great job of this. Burning Wheel is okay.

Not necessarily in a sandbox. How time is used in RPGs is an interesting question, one I'd like to see covered.

In my game Clerics gain their power from their devout worldview, along with a few Words of Power. I have training times for gaining levels, and clerics need to get high on drugs in order to twist their minds to see their worldview more closely. They think that the gods give them power, but...

I like this kind of stuff. The PCs found a Fallout-ish vault full of Lemurians in stasis built before the deluge that sank Atlantis. They had modern+ weapons (assault rifles, plasma/laser weapons), which the PCs stole (of course). One PC has a "magical" belt from Atlantis that uses...

Traps Automatons (possibly) Ghosts and spirits Booze ooze Crawlers from the underworld Unstable constructions And possibly another adventuring party that has made a deal with the orcs - for safe passage they will provide a map and a cut of what they find in there. (One of their member thinks...

I have a custom system that applies bonus dice based on the description of the PC's action. It satisfies two goals: immersion (because you need to imagine what you're doing to describe it) and tactical play (obviously). This applies to physical and social conflicts.

A sword. It has a point, a blade, and a pommel. A quick search brings up this sword technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordhau edit: whoops, I did not read the original post very closely. Never mind.

I ran the module a couple of years ago. I did some work to give the NPCs a timeline to work on. Here's the link: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?328058-Return-to-the-Temple-of-Elemental-Evil

Actually I think that's a good thing. You need the children to take risks in order to activate the (mechanical) reward cycle; risks are a result of choices, so the children drive that reward cycle. Maybe you could engage the reward cycle regardless of success or failure, rewarding just the...

I think your reward cycle needs work.

Good posts in this thread, Celebrim. I use morale checks at certain points in the evasion/pursuit to see if the monsters will chase the PCs, so that helps even things out.

One way to deal with that might be to offload that onto the DM somehow. That might be tricky. Hmm... Maybe you could tie it into the check - I don't know if you have success levels, but a "just barely" passed/failed result could allow the DM to place a property on one of the terms. Then that...

What choices are the players making when they are doing Science!? I had a half-formed idea a while ago that went something like this: All tech has three blocks to it. The primary block describes the basic function of the tech: weapons, shields, cloaking, genetics, power, etc. The secondary...

48. A crashed rocket ship. 49. A large raven with the gift of speech. 50. A blind pilgrim. 51. A large skeletal steel tower (radio or power transmission tower) with a house built into its top. 52. The remains of a summoning circle and the corpse of a sacrificial victim. 53. A courier...

Interesting choices can liven up wilderness travelling. I think the first step is to make a well-designed map. You can think of a wilderness map like a dungeon map - they should have the same features: choke points, traps and ambushes, secret paths, and weird features (tricks) to interact...