Search results

Not so long ago, my players decided to stop killing things for five seconds and count up their loot. Much to my horror, they discovered that they’d accumulated nearly half a million GP in assets. But rather than buying out the magic item chapter of the book, my li'l murderhobos did me proud...

If you've got a story hook and the players are down to clown, then running with that mess is a great idea. My own version of this came in an Exalted game. The players were lunars -- shapeshifters that have to eat their prey to take its form. Because we were due up for a little urban recon...

Do you like to linger over the “bookkeeping stuff,” or do you think that it’s better left to emails and forum posts and between-sessions play? Does the answer change if you're on Roll20 vs. a PBP forum vs. an IRL table? Comic for illustrative purposes.

You guys have heard the phrase "your class is not your character," right? the idea is that you don’t have to be an baby-eating psychopath just because your sorcerer has the Abyssal bloodline. You don’t have to be a purehearted hero just because you know your way around a smite evil. I'm curious...

Ugh. My google-fu sucks. Thank you for the link! It's exactly what I was looking for.

My 1e campaigns are wrapping up, and I'm finally preparing to jump into Society and figure out how this 2e thing works. All the cool kids are talking about it, and I'm ready to get a piece. Help me out though: I don't want to be the guy at the table saying "that's not how it worked in 1e" every...

But did you form packs bonds with them only to watch them get senselessly murdered by your DM?

I have henceforth sworn off adopting any and all baby monsters. That's because of the tragedy of Stool the myconid sprout. Suffice it to say that things did not end well. So here's my question to the forum: Have you guys ever adopted a baby monster and NOT have it come back to bite you...

Can confirm: it's what the comic references. I wrote this one a while back, but it just came up again last session in a Strange Aeons game. I've got a pacifist druid in that one, and he wants to avoid doing any of the actual killing himself. He crit an enemy that was at single-digit health...

We've all heard stories about silly GMs ruing that player's have "rolled so high they fail." I'm talking about acing a jump check and concussing yourself on a ceiling. Or intimidating so hard all the other NPCs in the room now hate you. Aside from the fact that there aren't any crits outside of...

I call it "metagame pvp." I tend to prefer it too.

Have you ever seen a player refuse to share plot-relevant information? Like, their PC is the only one who witnessed the thing, the next phase of the campaign assumes that the party acts on that information, but the PC chooses to sit on the info? Is it a mistake on a GM's part to give that kind...

Nice! Cabbage dude becoming more than a running gag is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. It's a bit precious, but it's also good fun.

As a DM, I like to periodically trawl through my backlog of NPCs. That's because a sprawling cast of characters can serve your verisimilitude. When a few months or years of campaign time go by and you’re able to pull out a blast from the past, the world suddenly feels more real. These characters...

lol. Yup. I almost need to throw them into an aquatic mini-dungeon just so the silly apparatus actually sees play. "Oh if only some brave heroes with personal watercraft could come to my rescue!" party stares blankly "Like... Heroes with their own crustacean-based mecha." party continues...

I don't think I'll ever understand players. They had tens of thousands of gp to spend. They had access to "Big Six" items in the shop. There were powerful scrolls. A flying carpet. And they wound up blowing their wad on an apparatus of the crab. They immediately took it for a joy ride around...

But Doctor, I Am Pagliacci. I haven't been a player in nearly a year. :(

I could get behind a periodic "reminiscing about past deeds" encounter. Hell, that could be a fun way to do session recaps.

I worry sometimes that I'm ruining the game for myself. That by being overly-critical of each and every session, I wind up talking all the fun out of my favorite pastime. It's especially bad when a nervous new GM friend asks, "Did you guys have fun?" Cue the nitpicks, followed by the gut punch...

I think this last line might be the closest I've seen to what I'm looking for. Even more than the previous bit about "worming my way out of deals," this is the description that shows us the character rather than just telling about him. And for me, that's the point of the exercise.