tankschmidt
Explorer
I disagree here. The players should have asked someone. It's not your responsibility to have someone run up and inform them.
I wanna get back on the railroad
- Thread starter Noumenon
- Start date
I disagree here. The players should have asked someone. It's not your responsibility to have someone run up and inform them.
Noumenon
First Post
Here's why I have never managed to get around to generating random monster tables. The way I do things, #1: each encounter takes a lot of thought to design. #2: each new monster in 3.5 takes a lot of preparation to play.
#1 My idea of "encounter design" includes reasons why the fight is happening, terrain, etc. To put "water elemental" on a table I have to ask, "Do water elementals live there? Why is a water elemental hanging around by itself in the bay? What makes it attack the party, too?" By the time I've figured out the water elementals are guards for the river pirates, I've gotten out of random encounters and into design.
#2, you can't just pick a monster out of the 3.5E monster manual and run it. To run "allip" you've got to know incorporeal, you've got to look up ability drain, you've got to figure out a good suggestion to use with the hypnotizing babble. To run "water mephit" you've got to know stinking cloud, you've got to figure out what "summon mephit" is doing in the abilities line, you've got to remember the damage reduction. You also have to print out tokens if you want the encounter to seem real and not random.
I typically spend 15 to 20 minutes on every new monster I pick out of the MM, and I'm not even touching pit fiends. I was cured of the idea of running truly random monsters the first time I opened up to the Roper. So putting six monsters in a random encounter table seems like a major undertaking.
Remathilis
Legend
Which will lead to people telling you that 3.5 is poor for sandboxing and instead you should be playing [insert favorite past edition or retro-clone here].
Noumenon
First Post
I have been playing for one year or so. My players have been playing for over ten years. They seem firmly convinced that in D&D, it is perfectly OK to just get up one session and decide you're going to travel across the entire continent. I don't think a DM can handle that. One of them ran his entire campaign as random encounters, I think. I can't see it at all. I wish I could see how their campaigns used to run without me.
I am taking more and more note of how computer games "play the DM" -- the way GTA: San Andreas makes sure you get the scene, jumping onto a moving semi, even if it has to prevent you from any creative moves like making a roadblock, for example. It's a total railroad, but it's still fun! Or Prince of Persia, the merciful DM that just wants to make sure you see all the cool environments it's laid out in a straight line. That's a fun railroad too, despite having no branches whatsoever.
I just thought of a game that is a sandbox, though, where the DM just lets you wander around everywhere. Legend of Zelda for the NES. Go almost anywhere in the Overworld, do at least half the dungeons in random order. That was a fun one.
Raven Crowking
First Post
Later on in the campaign, when the PCs can succeeed against that location, this will very likely be a legendary story. When the PCs know that the world can kill them -- and will kill them, if they don't play well -- in-game accomplishments become far more meaningful, IME and IMHO.
As has been mentioned upthread, a part of your DM prep time should be devoted to deciding how the world reacts to the PCs. If you do not, your players won't get the immediate benefit of seeing that their actions change the world.
Some suggestions:
1. Plant hooks about what treasures are where. "Legend says that the Staff of Horus is lost in the Dungeon of Boiling Warts." Giving the players definite goals to achieve within a setting is a good thing.
2. Let the mayor, tired of nagging the PCs, hire some other would-be adventurers. Over time, she hires a sherrif. Based on what she has told the new adventurers, their opinions of the old adventurers may (initially) be rather poor.....
3. As above, but give one of the NPC adventurers a cool magic item. When said adventurer is lost in the Dungeon of Boiling Warts, the PCs may well want to try to recover the item. The question then becomes.....does the item belong to the PCs or to the adventurer's heirs? The answer will affect what happens when PCs die and their gear is recovered by NPCs.......
4. In addition to random encounters, write up a few small lairs that you can drop into the campaign world as needed. Do not let the players know that you are placing these lairs during the game -- they were always there! One placed, mark 'em on the map so you remember they are there.
RC
Raven Crowking
First Post
In 3.5, every time you use a monster, include its stat block in a Word file. Print that Word file out and keep it at the table, with its (eventually) hundreds of stat blocks. Where monsters have special abilities that require special info, put that info into the stat block.
I did this with 3.x, and it made it a heck of a lot easier to run the game.
You can email me (see sig), and I'll be happy to send you a big Word file (or text, if you don't use Word) that should get you going.
tankschmidt
Explorer
Problem one is definitely manageable. Pick a few monsters of the appropriate terrain, and come up with a brief reason for the attack. Include it on the chart. Let's say the chart is for an orc fortress. My chart might be:
1. Orc patrol, 2-8 orcs, alert and armed.
2. Orc revelers, 3-12 drunk orcs, -2 to attacks, not alert
3. Orc slaves. 1-4, Timid and fearful, though not immediately hostile.
4. Escaped wolf pack - 5-8 wolves. Orcish Wolf Handler will follow after 3 rounds.
5. Escaped prisoner - "Buggs" 1st level dwarf fighter with eyepatch, slightly mad.
6. Pick a monster from an adjacent room.
As Remathilis points out, your second problem is more difficult in 3.5. These sorts of things are much easier in an earlier edition, but I'm playing in a 4E sandbox game right now, so I can tell you - it can work. If you want to prepare fewer monsters, add non-monsters to the chart. "A gust of wind blows out your torch" is a fine addition. "You hear crying in the next room" is fine too, particularly if you want a horror atmosphere. Grabbing a monster from an adjacent room is a good trick. That's really annoying that you can't run a monster straight out of the book in 3.5.
This is a hilarious idea. That would really get me steamed if I was a player.
Talking over how things are going is important; playing D&D is a social affair!
If your players are enjoying the looser approach, then it might be worthwhile to see whether your comfort level increases with experience. I suggest that because, in the long run, a campaign can offer the same pleasures as a series of linear scenarios -- and more besides.
It is possible to start with a more constrained situation and open it up gradually.
You have hit on a key element in the interactions with NPCs. I prefer not to go into much detail as to PC biographies prior to play, but a bit of that could help in providing "hooks" for planned adventures. The town is a pretty geographically bound nexus of relationships. Family and old friends (and enemies) might more easily be worked in wherever the PCs go.
In designing or adapting "modules", an important adjustment is not to focus on particular events meant to happen to the PCs -- and above all not to count on the players responding in any particular way. Save the effort you would otherwise put into such set-ups, or invest it instead in sketching more environments with "lives of their own".
The idea is that even if a "set" is moved "off stage", into a section in the referee's binder (or equivalent), the places and people can be revisited. Ideally, the players eventually will form long-term relationships with some of those -- all the stronger for having been developed naturally.
Leaving it up to the players to choose how they spend their time (rather than "pacing" it for them) introduces an element of skill. Skills tend to take some practice to develop.
The campaign approach to play benefits from a somewhat different (and perhaps less easily produced) arrangement than is common today. My impression (not having played any) is that MMORPGs are closer to the old model. Instead of having a small, set group of players meeting at regular intervals -- like the cast of a TV show -- there is a large pool of players forming teams for specific purposes and undertaking game sessions to play out those expeditions.
That tends greatly to reduce in-session dithering, waffling and intra-party disagreement. The practical limitations (and compensating advantages!) of the "TV show" model are worthy of serious consideration. They have, I think, contributed greatly to the decline of the traditional campaign model. Different approaches were adopted in large part because they were found better suited to circumstances.
Game mastering an RPG is always a bit of work, and good players should expect to do some work as well -- not merely to be entertained. That said, the work itself should be fun! Adjust your methods to suit the needs of your group, including yourself.
If your players are enjoying the looser approach, then it might be worthwhile to see whether your comfort level increases with experience. I suggest that because, in the long run, a campaign can offer the same pleasures as a series of linear scenarios -- and more besides.
It is possible to start with a more constrained situation and open it up gradually.
You have hit on a key element in the interactions with NPCs. I prefer not to go into much detail as to PC biographies prior to play, but a bit of that could help in providing "hooks" for planned adventures. The town is a pretty geographically bound nexus of relationships. Family and old friends (and enemies) might more easily be worked in wherever the PCs go.
In designing or adapting "modules", an important adjustment is not to focus on particular events meant to happen to the PCs -- and above all not to count on the players responding in any particular way. Save the effort you would otherwise put into such set-ups, or invest it instead in sketching more environments with "lives of their own".
The idea is that even if a "set" is moved "off stage", into a section in the referee's binder (or equivalent), the places and people can be revisited. Ideally, the players eventually will form long-term relationships with some of those -- all the stronger for having been developed naturally.
Leaving it up to the players to choose how they spend their time (rather than "pacing" it for them) introduces an element of skill. Skills tend to take some practice to develop.
The campaign approach to play benefits from a somewhat different (and perhaps less easily produced) arrangement than is common today. My impression (not having played any) is that MMORPGs are closer to the old model. Instead of having a small, set group of players meeting at regular intervals -- like the cast of a TV show -- there is a large pool of players forming teams for specific purposes and undertaking game sessions to play out those expeditions.
That tends greatly to reduce in-session dithering, waffling and intra-party disagreement. The practical limitations (and compensating advantages!) of the "TV show" model are worthy of serious consideration. They have, I think, contributed greatly to the decline of the traditional campaign model. Different approaches were adopted in large part because they were found better suited to circumstances.
Game mastering an RPG is always a bit of work, and good players should expect to do some work as well -- not merely to be entertained. That said, the work itself should be fun! Adjust your methods to suit the needs of your group, including yourself.
Noumenon
First Post
If you copy and paste the stat block as is, won't you just get a copy of the Monster Manual? I guess it depends on how much extra info you include. I'll e-mail you and see.
But I have got a different solution, which is to put the entire monster on an index card. All the complications are spelled out -- spell durations, immunities next to the saves, fast healing next to the hit points. This is how I think the monsters should have been packaged in the first place, so you can use them as initiative cards.
Sorry, I get off topic because I love them. It lets me harness all the monster's abilities, but it does not lend itself to casual random monster encounters.
Being able to use rolls on tables as inspiration for, and reasonable limits to, improvised encounters is a great asset for a DM running a wide-open game. The relative difficulty of doing that in 3E was one factor that dissuaded me from using the rules set for a campaign.
On the other hand, I think that greater complexity is in general associated with greater rarity. Ordinary animals and common types of human (and humanoid) NPCs and monsters are likely to appear most often in regions canny players of low-level characters frequent. As time goes on, more and more should be familiar from repeated use.
More powerful (and more game-mechanically complex) creatures are reasonably likely to require a bit of initiative to meet. One can, I think, carry that principle further than is usual in campaigns with rules-lighter older D&D -- thereby accommodating the needs of 3E design -- while creating a vibrant setting. It is after all contrast with the ordinary that makes the extraordinary so!
On the other hand, I think that greater complexity is in general associated with greater rarity. Ordinary animals and common types of human (and humanoid) NPCs and monsters are likely to appear most often in regions canny players of low-level characters frequent. As time goes on, more and more should be familiar from repeated use.
More powerful (and more game-mechanically complex) creatures are reasonably likely to require a bit of initiative to meet. One can, I think, carry that principle further than is usual in campaigns with rules-lighter older D&D -- thereby accommodating the needs of 3E design -- while creating a vibrant setting. It is after all contrast with the ordinary that makes the extraordinary so!
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