If it’s a new game, I start off with a basic adventure I always have tucked away. A good starter adventure is a lifesaver sometimes.
If it’s an ongoing game, then we probably have stuff we were still doing? Just recycle the prep from last time wherever possible and play for time. “Oh, yes, you have the treasure from the depths of the dungeon, but now your rivals have seized the place and you need to fight your way back out! Totally not just doing this to reuse the dungeon map.”
If it’s an ongoing game and we just had a good cutoff point? Thank god that player just arrived. Ask them what they’re expecting will happen this session, nod sagely at their guesses and work from that. “Oh, you’re hoping you’ll fight that cult sometime soon? You never know, it might come up sooner than you think!”
Everything else is just good prep advice. Keep generic NPC templates and tokens you can use for anything. Use a whiteboard for any maps you need. Give your players control of the plot so you don’t have to come up with it.
With the Dragon Age series, a map of Ferelden was created for use in the first game, and became the map of the region for a long time after. The TTRPG used the same map, and even had a printout in the box set for it. Many players, and even some GMs, base their understanding of the setting on this map.
This map includes:
The Circle Tower. There are two circle towers in Ferelden, and many more further afield. Only one is marked.
Lake Calenhad Docks. Lake Calenhad is massive. There should be many docks.
Ostagar. This is an abandoned fortress only notable for a battle that took place there.
Lothering. It’s an unremarkable and short-lived village you briefly visit.
The Dalish Camp. The Dalish are nomads. How the hell is that on a map?!
All that stuff appears in Dragon Age Origins, so it’s a good map of what a player might experience playing the video game. As a setting guide, it’s awful.
That is such a better way to do it. One map for plot, one map for setting.
It gets even worse when your players tend to stick to one general area, cause then all the places they want to see on the map get bunched up. No, there aren’t 5 times as many settlements in Ferelden compared to the rest of Thedas. We’ve just spent 2 games there and that’s what all the books, comics and adventure modules focus on. I promise you it’s more spread out than that.
I think a bigger threat to humanity is a LACK of modern medicine. Both because denying people life-saving medicine because you think they’re “weak” is inhumanly cruel, and because of that plague we just had.
For some reason I’ve just never liked Spider-Man. He comes off as a whiney, ignorant child that never seems to grow up or mature despite everything he goes through. I love a good coming of age story, but he just never seems to become an adult.
First, the appeal of Superman is his heart more than his strength. There’s one comic where he fights a giant robot and stops a runaway train, but the scene everyone remembers is when he talked someone down from the edge of a building.
Second, Superman may be invincible, but Lois Lane isn’t. It’s easy to defeat a villain, but much harder to defeat them while also keeping Lois safe. And she actively invites danger, so it’s always tricky keeping her safe.
Third, not every problem can be punched. Luthor’s greatest weapon against Superman isn’t kryptonite; it’s Public Relations. You can punch a monster, but that won’t help you stop a smear campaign.
For example, I sometimes do want to vote for Trump. Not because I like the man. Not because I find him as a credible leader, in fact, he's a murderer in my eyes by negligence because of his handling of the 2020 COVID Pandemic....
Imagine you’re in a hotel where the bedsheets are a little too itchy for your liking. So you decide to protest these sheets by pissing all over them. And it’s a foul pee, absolutely reeks and probably reflects an unchecked medical issue. That’ll punish the hotel for the sin of uncomfortable sheets.
Except it’s a 4 night stay, and you still need to sleep in that bed. And the shower isn’t as effective as you might have hoped.
That’s what voting for Trump to punish stupidity is like.
You’re not one for applicability, are you? That same metaphor can be used for voting for Brexit, or voting down healthcare, or any number of spiteful acts. Trying to ruin society is like shitting your own bed: no matter why you did it, you still have to live in it.
And to answer your question, pretty well. I literally went to bed straight after writing that. It had no shit in it.
No, there absolutely IS slack to be picked up. It’s by the DM. You get to have that fun, relaxed dungeon crawl because the DM busted their ass making it happen. Any work you put into your character’s backstory is work the DM doesn’t have to do themselves.
And it’s not a resentment thing. It’s fun to work on an adventure and balance things. I know, I like doing it myself. But don’t assume that just because YOU aren’t doing the work, nobody’s doing any work.
If you’re going to reply to me, at least pay attention to what I said.
At no point did I demonise casual styles of play. Beer and pretzels is a legitimate way to play, and it can be a ton of fun. If the point of the game is just to have some fun with a bunch of friends, you don’t need them to deliver monologues. They can just be there, rolling dice and making puns.
The more you invest into a campaign, the less work on the DM. Conversely, the less you invest into a campaign, the more work on the DM. And if the DM is fine with that, no problem!
But don’t for a second think that the dungeon just formed itself. Don’t think that all the combat encounters are a fun challenge for your unbalanced party by pure luck. Don’t assume this world is full of fun hooks for your character by random chance. And don’t assume that, just because the work was fun, it wasn’t work.
Don’t assume that spilling food on the carpet isn’t causing more work for the cleaners. Don’t assume your mother, who cooks as a hobby, wouldn’t delight at you offering to help peel potatoes at thanksgiving.
Don’t assume that, just because the DM picked up the slack, there is no slack.
It’s not casual play I condemn. It’s people who don’t appreciate the DM for working hard to make casual play happen.
Breakfast cereal served the standard way, in a bowl with cold milk poured on and eaten with a spoon. Does this count as a soup, why or why not? Defend your answer with logic (or emotion, whatever I’m not your dad)
The moon landing happened. It’s obvious. Even without the evidence that it happened (which we have in abundance), there’s the fact that the soviet union didn’t even try to claim it was fake (when they had every incentive to do so).
If you claim to not believe in the moon landing, you’re either a troll or an idiot. You were banned for trolling because they were being kind in their interpretation of you.
Second-hand? We have a fucking video. The people who were there wrote fucking books. We have the fucking capsule they returned in. We took souveniers. There’s a flag on the surface of the moon. If that’s second-hand, what do you count as first-hand? Do you need to be physically on the moon before you admit we went there?
It’s not that the soviets had no reason to. It’s that they had EVERY reason to, and didn’t. They could win the space race and break public trust in the USA with one good piece of evidence, so long as that evidence existed. If there was any actual proof that it was fake, the soviets would have done everything possible to find it.
You honestly expect me to believe that:
The USA created a fake video of the moon that could pass for real in the 1960s;
They were able to stick a flag upright into the moon without manually positioning it;
They were able to synthesise a moon rock that could pass for real in the 1960s, when studying that rock progressed our science significantly;
They could create rockets, shuttles and capsules capable of taking people to the moon that we can see today in museums, complete with blueprints, and didn’t use them;
They were able to cover up this secret so well that every engineer, scientist, set designer, cinematographer and government official kept the secret for 55 years;
They were able to do this 6 more times in the next 4 years;
Not one shred of evidence of any of this has been found, despite spies and sceptics looking for half a century;
…All while the president can’t fuck a secretary without people finding out? That seems less likely than the US being able to go to a moon in that moon rocket they built.
No, that audio and that person are first hand sources. There was no hand between them and the thing that happened. You, having heard of what happened from them, are now the second hand. If you disagree, what do you think is the first hand source?
For a moment, consider the fact you are an imperfect being capable of fault, and you may not know everything that is or was. In this situation, where you are capable of being wrong, is there any hypothetical piece of evidence that could exist that would prove to you if it happened or not? What would it take to change your mind?
You’ve mistaken “first hand” with “verified”. What you’re describing is “unverified first hand sources”. Hardly matters, because third party sources DID verify it.
Despite the massive block of rambling, semi-relevant text, I can’t help but notice that you didn’t actually answer the question I asked you. What evidence would you need?
“We’ve almost got some of their telecommunications cracked; the front end even runs on a laptop!” The Mac that sunk a thousand ships could have been merely clunky product placement, not a bafflingly stupid tech-on-film moment....
Do you think he was flying around the earth for kicks? No, he was using a gravitational slingshot to build speed. Granted, they could have explained it better, so I guess a line like “we need to use the turn of the world to speed up our satilites, and we still can’t match his velocity. Imagine how fast he’d be.” But less clunky, of course.
I remember my reaction to the sword moment in Pacific Rim the first time I saw it: This is dumb and I don’t care. I was taken out of the story, but it was so cool that I pulled myself back into it.
With TV shows, they don’t want to trap you, they want you to come back later to hear more. It’s rare for someone to read an entire novel in one sitting, but a good story is one you’ll pick up again later. With theatre, they give you an intermission so you don’t pee on the seats. That used to be the case with movies, too.
Well, that’s a clear sign you haven’t seen Pacific Rim. It’s a dumb ability to have without using up until that point, especially given everything that led to it. But it’s fucking awesome, so I rebuilt my willing sense of disbelief just to enjoy it some more.
You said you dislike it when you’re reminded you’re in a theatre. Intermission is the story literally just saying “you’re in a theatre, go do something else for a few minutes and come back later.” The play isn’t good because you’re unable to leave. It’s good because you DO come back later.
This article is dumb. It claims that diversity among dragonkind is reductionist? No, what’s reductionist is claiming all dragons should be Smaug.
What are the essential parts of a dragon? There are literally none. The terrasque of myth had a lion’s head, turtle’s shell, scorpion’s tail and no wings, but it was still called a dragon. Eastern dragons are commonly wise sages and protectors. Artwork of Saint George has the dragon barely bigger than his horse.
Saying “all dragons have to be this specific thing” is terrible worldbuilding advice.
Technically, it’s not an overdone trope. Because it’s hardly done at all.
In most folktales with a dragon as a villain, they either hoard wealth or hold a woman captive before eating her, rarely both. And they don’t even need to kidnap her, because she’s offered to the dragon as a tribute to avoid its wrath. And this isn’t even mentioning worldwide variations on dragon mythology.
You're the GM, but haven't prep anything for tonight. How do you make tonight game a succes ?
Pretty sure it happened to everyone, you lacked time to prep tonight session, and now the first player just arrived...
It's weird this happenned twice (ttrpg.network)
Lessons Learned:...
A bit of a weird question: Can modern medicine be a threat to humanity long-term by greatly reducing effects of natural selection?
OK, I hope my question doesn’t get misunderstood, I can see how that could happen....
What's the best wax-on-wax-off-style advice you've heard that you can attest as being helpful in certain situations?
Anyone else switched from googhell to kagi.com?
I’ve been using it for a year now and it is giving absolutely phenomenal search results right now....
Name a Superhero you just can't stand
For some reason I’ve just never liked Spider-Man. He comes off as a whiney, ignorant child that never seems to grow up or mature despite everything he goes through. I love a good coming of age story, but he just never seems to become an adult.
What are some personally spiteful things you want to do against society because of how much you don't like it's direction?
For example, I sometimes do want to vote for Trump. Not because I like the man. Not because I find him as a credible leader, in fact, he's a murderer in my eyes by negligence because of his handling of the 2020 COVID Pandemic....
the guy at your table who only wants to play D&D
Full post on Reddit. Final paragraphs:...
Is Cereal a Soup?
Breakfast cereal served the standard way, in a bowl with cold milk poured on and eaten with a spoon. Does this count as a soup, why or why not? Defend your answer with logic (or emotion, whatever I’m not your dad)
What is the most downvoted post you've seen on Lemmy?
Pretty much the title. Here is my best find so far. Really funny thread....
What plot holes could be adequately explained away with a single shot or line of dialogue?
“We’ve almost got some of their telecommunications cracked; the front end even runs on a laptop!” The Mac that sunk a thousand ships could have been merely clunky product placement, not a bafflingly stupid tech-on-film moment....
Dragons: The Great Victims of Worldbuilding (sheepandsorcery.blogspot.com)
To the smallest detail (lemmy.world)