|
So recently, one of my players gave me some feedback on my campaign. And he feels that it is like a soap opera.
Yes, a soap opera.
He point out some points, namely:
1) <Main problem> My NPCs all seem to have multiple relations with each other.
For example, a friendly NPC could be related to an enemy NPC and they have children together. And later on the party may found out that evil dragon they are suppose to kill is the children's dragon god-mother, which the friendly NPC made a deal with to get pregnant, but the children's Real father is the enemy NPC's twin brother... who is really a fae changeling... bah bah bah...
You get the point.
2) I frequently make extreme changes to monsters and NPCs.
Dragon God-Mother? That bake cookies? Goblins that are artsy and avant garde? Fairy Princess that is suing you for alimony, cos you got her pregnant by looking at her? Educated Golems? Taking any things? Players characters having to face the result of a youthful fling? Aboleths that challenge you to cooking contests? Liches, riding unicorns on a working holiday?
3) And extreme changes to environment too... (They are treated as an enemy)
Like... facing appropriate themed traps in a baby giant's playroom. Hedge mazes made out of webs, with spiders. Rivers of migrating hamsters. Tree roots that actively seeks, attacks and traps characters. PC's trapped with hands tied behind their backs in a flooding room with an antimagic field and a thick door made out of dark chocolate.
4) Also weird (as he sees it) events,
Cupcake bake-offs with giants. Storytelling contests with halflings. Fighting a court case in a fairy court. Helping talking ponies find a missing magical horse shoe...
---
So I'm basically running an AP with a number of changes and the aboves are really examples of what I sometimes confront the party with. For the most part I do stick with the AP. I just want to spice things up a little.
Most changes goes well with the party. It is just some feedback that suggest I may be taking the role-play part a little too much, especially with the relations between NPCs.
The mentioned player, feels that the NPCs are all so interconnected, that its hard for the party to kill anyone, cos the troll they killed today could be local village midwife, their future mother-in-law or the adoptive mother of 12 human orphans... who are aged 3-18 and just saw the party killed their adoptive mother...
Should I scale back such relationships?
And if so what can I do to keep the party interesting? I feel my presentations of combat are much weaker then my role-play sections. So throwing combat at them may not be ideal.
Like how should I role-play and still keep my story interesting without going overly soap opera or dis-interesting?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Personally I would have no interest in this campaign, it sounds like My Little Pony. Cupcake bakeoffs? It may appeal to some but I would guess the majority would prefer a more traditional campaign.
Full disclosure: I tend to the rollplaying murder hobo, rather than the roleplaying immersive type
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Communicate with your players. Find out how the others feel. Do the whimsical bits spoil the atmosphere for them? Do they want more combat? Do they feel like they spend too much time watching your NPCs interact with one another and not enough time participating?
Some general tips:
Frivolous cookie-baking-monster story elements make it hard to take anything seriously. You should probably isolate that stuff from the 'real' story, assuming there is one.
Combat is more fun when it's against a foe who is unambiguously evil. If even liches might be nice fun guys then you're going to take less satisfaction in killing them. Don't be afraid to have villains who are villainous, who laugh sadistically while kicking puppies.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Interconnections are good, even great. Don't feel like you have to cut those back per se.
On the other hand, making everyone a nice guy really screws up the kind of game Pathfinder usually is (what with needing legitimate villains and all).
The second sounds like the problem people are having, and is easily fixed without messing with the first. Make the connections between real adversaries and other NPCs more adversarial (like them having killed those orphans mother, rather than being their adoptive one). In short, don't try and diminish the villainy of the PCs adversaries, it sounds like that's your real problem, not the soap opera stuff.
Actually it sounds like once upon a time. Cant kill the BBEG because she adopted your son who years ago you gave up for adoption. Oh and she can be good, she just has a tendency to terrorize the town to get her way...
|
|
Actually it sounds like once upon a time. Cant kill the BBEG because she adopted your son who years ago you gave up for adoption. Oh and she can be good, she just has a tendency to terrorize the town to get her way...
Once Upon A Time is a very different kind of story than Pathfinder usually is. And the last season still had several major villain deaths.
Doing a story where you can't kill most people is very doable, but it's not the kind of story people usually use Pathfinder for, and certainly both the source of the complaints cited and a really weird thing to do with an AP (AP villains are real f+&&ing monsters).
It sounds more like Ponyfinder than Pathfinder, subverting expectations is all well and good but if players come to the game because of those expectations you are pulling a bait and switch. I would not be interested in a game with all of these elements, though I do encourage connections between NPCs.
I think the solution is pretty simple, think would I see this in a professionally published adventure. I have encountered a Calzone golem previously in professional material - was not very impressed - so there is some room for whimsy, but cupcake baking giants are ridiculous and immersion ruining for me.
If your players want Lord of the Rings and you are running a children cartoon you have a serious problem. Pathfinder and DnD default to serious worlds, your game sounds like Piers Anthony's Xanth than Game of Thrones and I suspect most players want something tonally closer to the later.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I like your ideas, but you may be doing it too much. Having the occasional "surprise" or odd idea is fine, but it should be like that the entire time. Those things work in movies and books as the rare treat. If they were always happening, they would not be as interesting.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's about expectation management. If the players were expecting to be killing the bad guys, but that's not really feasible because they're too entangled in these relations - that's bad expectation management. Because the players made characters that KILL, and now they've totally got the wrong characters for the campaign you're actually running.
Notice that I'm not saying your campaign is wrong - it sounds funny - but the expectations the players had, those were wrong.
If the players knew what you were going to do, they could've either said "nah, that's not for me", or made their characters more suited to it. Like, more Elan and less Belkar :P
I like a lot of your ideas but I think the key is to adjust it so the pc are the driving force of the soap opera.
Having it happpen all the tome becomes a chore. For example a guy I played with /always/ had npc surrender. Deciding what to do 4-5 times a night... its the same thing if every npc villain has a sister nearby.
|
|
Thank you all for the input.
I didn't realize I may be over doing it with the players.
Just to be clear, I'm definitely NOT going for ponyfinder... I just want to give my characters both evil and good ones, to have more facets to their character and background. I just feel making evil characters one dimensionally evil is... boring...
But I guess making them overly complicated does no favours either.
And overly blurring the lines between good and evil all the time may be unhealthy for a campaign.
I will be making some serious changes to the way I come up with characters.
Likely something like...
●) Aboleths and giants challenges the party to a cooking contest, with children from the surrounding villages as the main ingredient. (Party got to save the children)
●) Lawyer Liches, riding undead unicorns on a working holiday. Say undead unicorns got their goodly souls trapped in their undead corpses and the Lawyer Liches challenges party to a court case in a fairy court. (While the setting may be a little unusal. The INTENT for the party is clear, free those unicorn's souls and defeat those liches, with RP or beat-em-up options.)
●) Avant garde Goblins are just LE, more educated and refined goblins. That are still evil. (Goodly goblins, if any, would be properly portrayed as outcasts or unusual and not a "norm" for the setting's goblins.)
Basically make my NPCs more clear on their intentions whenever possible. Avoid making everyone, NPCs to Monsters ALL morally ambiguous.
Give clear shades of evil or good.
Overall, I understand my players enjoy my games. I'm taking players feedback as a sign of what I may be overdoing and re-tweaking the story to match.
The soap opera comment, just caught me off-guard.
What do you think of these changes?
Thanks again for all the input.
I'd love to play in your campaign, Secane. I'm drawn to your originality and iconoclasm. However, as has been pointed out, less really is more. And please, no baking. Absolutely none as no benefit can come from that.
Waiting for evil sentient cupcake-mimics secret Master Race of BBEGs.
|
Secane, you might also consider doing something like keeping all those interesting NPC twists, but limiting them in some finite way that allows your players to predict who is going to be weird corner cases.
For instance, if all of those instances were related to fey encounters, your party may hate fey, but they cant be surprised when they act unusual or are required to have a cupcake bakeoff (actually an amazing idea if they offend a brownie, etc). In this manner, they still get some encounters that they can flat out know they are sanctioned to kill or treat as expected and others they can expect the unexpected.
Once you get a better read on what each of your PCs wants out of the game, you can tailor it better, either expanding your unusual NPCs or tightening them up even more.
Just remember, GMs get to play too, even if the players don't like it sometimes. Just make sure they are getting a healthy dose of what they do like also.
And yes, your game sounds creative and very entertaining.
|
|
All that sounds pretty good. :)
Just one thing:
I just feel making evil characters one dimensionally evil is... boring...
The trick isn't to make them one-dimensional, or even entirely unsympathetic (both of those can, indeed, get boring), it's just to make them clearly Evil, with any redeeming features vastly overshadowed by their worse traits and actions. Many shows featuring serial killers do a good job of this, for example, with an in-depth analysis of who that guy is and why he does what he does...all without diminishing the badness of the person in question at all.
The Paizo APs are also pretty great for this kind of thing, with detailed backgrounds for main villains going into exactly why they do what they do...without diminishing how truly bad what they do is. The first chapter of RotRL is particularly notable for this, from what I understand.
Characters this bad aren't necessary for all, or perhaps even most, genres...but do tend to be necessary if you want to have non morally-ambiguous protagonists in a genre that involves combat and death.
I'd love to play in your campaign, Secane. I'm drawn to your originality and iconoclasm. However, as has been pointed out, less really is more. And please, no baking. Absolutely none as no benefit can come from that.
Oh really... even if this or this was the inadvertent outcome?
If your party is good, they should have figured out some non-lethal takedowns by now. Spells with merciful metamagic (or sleep or color spray), or possibly merciful weapons (or saps) are easy enough ways to drop someone without making them dead.
Sounded more like Adventure Time to me than Ponyfinder. Which is good I guess, Adventure Time after all is a billion times better than pony.
In any case, I think it would be best if you made the villains evil. But you could also give the player's a look into the villain's point of view so they can see their motives. For example, Avatar the Last Airbender did this very well with Lord Sozin of the Fire Nation. If you haven't seen the show, essentially what goes down is this. (This isn't a spoiler.)
The fire nation is filled with wealth and prosperity, so Sozin wants to spread this prosperity to the entire world. An idea that at its core is a good and moral thing to do. But how does he do this? He goes out and tries to conquer the world. As do his descendants. Who are probably even more evil than him.
Another example would be Darth Vader. We are given glimpses into his motivations in the Star Wars universe also. The Emperor as well, his end goal is galactic peace and ultimate leadership. Which he got for 20ish years till he was dropped in the reactor.
|
|
I'd love to play in your campaign, Secane. I'm drawn to your originality and iconoclasm. However, as has been pointed out, less really is more. And please, no baking. Absolutely none as no benefit can come from that.Oh really... even if this or this was the inadvertent outcome?
If your party is good, they should have figured out some non-lethal takedowns by now. Spells with merciful metamagic (or sleep or color spray), or possibly merciful weapons (or saps) are easy enough ways to drop someone without making them dead.
Thanks Te'Shen and EpicFail! I'm cooking up an ideal of the party discovering the village children been stolen in the night and after going into the forest, encounters a bunch of hags in the middle of a baking-off featuring children. Hansel and Gretel-style! Those gingerbread golems would fit in perfectly with the theme.
I'm taking redcelt32, Deadmanwalking and Domestichauscat advices on villain making. Going to make villains Clearly Evil, but with their own thoughts and views. For example, as far as the above hags are concern they are just having a perfectly normal Sunday afternoon baking contest. The fact that they are murdering children does not concern them, cos they see these children as nothing but food.
My players would be able to clearly see the hags actions as evil, while the whole "bake-off" gives it a slightly fairytales feel without going overboard.
I do admit that I do like fairy tales. Something which I find a little lacking in most Pathfinder campaigns. Most APs and other campaign story boils down into either advanture/travel/detective/dungeon/jungle/discovery, social/political/pirates/family history/etc intrigue or a if it has stats, it can be killed stories.
I wish there are some that are a little more whimsical and fairytale like.
That said, the best stories are still those with a mix of all of the above! :)
The trick about soap operas, the thing that make them instantly recognizable as such, is the lighting. Switch to a better lighting system and you'll make your campaign feel like less of a soap opera.
Hell.. this really reads like "Hello Kitty meets My little Pony" instead of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS..
Twists are nice, but I think you overdo it... especially with the relation, cupcake contest etc.
Have to say I would never play in such game...
Yep, cupcake cooking contests, looking at someone and getting them pregnant, etc... is definitely not traditional dungeons and dragons type stuff. It sounds very silly, like something my 10 year old daughter might come up with.
If you are adults playing an adult game, then I can understand why one of your players would confront you about this. The fact that he said your game is like a soap opera was actually kind in my opinion.
Ive played many a game with hundreds of players from around the US and not once have I had a GM introduce such frivolity.
I know that every gamer desires different things from the games they play, but human adults that get into this game normally do not want liches riding unicorns spreading good cheer to all around them.
I think your game might need that sticker on the side which reads, "for children 10 and younger..."
I do admit that I do like fairy tales. Something which I find a little lacking in most Pathfinder campaigns.
Have you looked at Reign of Winter? I mean... it's fairy tales more in the line of the original Grimm's or the old Red/Green/Blue Fairy Books with the darkness and death and the little mermaid turning into seafoam at the end, but it does have a fairy tale feel, esp in the first two books.
Honestly your new proposals sound just as bad, how about the Lich does not need to ride a Unicorn Undead or not because he is a powerful spellcasting nightmare? Heck have him ride a Nightmare, at least that has useful and thematic abilities.
Just because he is evil does not mean he has to be one dimensional. Think Darth Vader, he is connected to the other villains, has complex motivations, and is a scary badass, not a cupcake baking joke.
Hags that are luring children into the forest for a ritual to empower themselves, or to create some twisted monstrosity melded together from those childrens flesh are far cooler than hags having a bakeoff.
Aboleths are supposed to be other, they are betentacled horrors with great intelligence and the power to use their slime to breed scaly Skum servitors from the wombs of human women. They are master schemers who dream of taking over the world again. Having them organize a cooking contest with surface being devalues them and will potentially ruin their mythos for those involved in your game. Probably my favorite DnD/PF monster.
For the record I think Adventure Time is great, but the Lich is genuinely scary, and silliness is an inbuilt expectation - and rarely taken to the levels described in this campaign.
@Broken Prince: I think it is pretty well pointed out that Secane's players are by and large ok with the silliness. Regardless of what you think aboleth are supposed to be, perhaps in Secane's game they are Iron Chefs. And the mythos doesn't seem the worse for it by his players.
The main point seems to be that the PCs couldn't turn around to scratch themselves without finding a forgotten son of the postman's other mother's sister's pastry troll looking for their lost father's uncle's cousin's nephew's niece's betrayer aboleth.
Personally I would avoid this game like a plague of plague-planets with a plague of plagues, but Secane obviously has passion for the awesome frivolity and lampoonery the mash is providing.
@Secane: Lawyers? Cupcakes? Bake-offs? Keep your real-world tropes out of my everything-else-except-things-I-hate-which-constantly-changes-except-real-w orld-stuff sci-fantasy RPG.
Go for it. Sounds like you and your players are fine, just dial back on the relatedness of everybody.
You're running Kingmaker, I take it? Part of what the player may be reacting to is a lack of a narrative spine to guide him. Make sure some of these connect to the BBEGs in the AP. Otherwise, your flair for creative characterization will pay off when they know everyone whose lives are at stake in the apocalyptic scheme.
Its more of an elaborate fairy tale than a soap opera. As stated above, you should probably find out how the other players feel, but on the other hand this one player has probably already talked to one or more of them. It sounds as though you need to scale back all of the things you mentioned, not just the relationships. Perhaps the counterpoint between the gritty and the whimsical hasn't complimented the adventure, and has ruined immersion. I would enjoy what you descrived as a short adventure, but not a campaign of it.
I once did a bunch of whimsical fairy tale stuff, and it was a lot of fun for everyone -- but it was all inside the castle of an insane chaotic being, not permeating the entire campaign. Once the PCs left the premises, things went back to "normal."
This sounds like a very fun campaign, but your OP said something about soap operas and entwined relations. Now THERE I can understand your players' frustrations. I've been guilty of this myself. I had a PC with a big family in a fairy tale styled game, so naturally her mom was a witch.
But it didn't end there. The witch mom was a changeling who married a human. The hag grandmother had had an apprentice. The apprentice had pretended to be the witch mom's mom. Then there was another PC whose parents were fey hunters, members of the Grimmen Society, but secretly they'd made a deal with a "good" fey to have kids. They had a baby girl who the fey took to the First World while their other baby was a boy (the PC) but then the daughter hated what had happened to her so she joined forces with some witches and hags and slipped her bonds to become a BBEG.
My players were less than amused.
You see my players felt they needed family trees and complex charts just to keep up. In fact I had such a document I was working from. This also made my job harder: not only did I have these past relations to work into the story but when I gave my PCs carte blanche at creation my one female PC gave me 8 aunts and uncles along with 8 siblings in her immediate family, all with some detail and many with ties to the starting town. Everywhere the PCs went in their homebase there was at least one of this PC's family.
So the lesson I learned that campaign was to keep it simple. Rather than inter-relating everything and everyone I make a point to create a 1 step relation to a villain/important NPC but to only use this tack sparingly. In our current campaign there is one NPC, a dwarf mercenary captain, who killed a PC's father. This captain (it will be revealed) is the dwarf PC's own uncle mentioned in his backstory. That's it.
TL/DR. My advice (like many above me) is to use these excellent creations of yours in moderation.
@Broken Prince: I think it is pretty well pointed out that Secane's players are by and large ok with the silliness. Regardless of what you think aboleth are supposed to be, perhaps in Secane's game they are Iron Chefs. And the mythos doesn't seem the worse for it by his players.
It does not sound like that to me at all, and that is only with the OPs presumably biased view - even with the best will in the world its hard to give both sides of a story fairly when you are squarely on one.
The fact is that groups are often hard to come by and its very likely, to my mind, that some of the players are suffering through this in polite silence. The best thing to do IMO, would be to pitch a couple of possible plot lines in blurb mode, one with a cup cake baking showdown and one with a climactic battle against a proper villain and see which one the players go for.
The fact is though you find Paizo's adventures lacking in whimsy they have a far better idea than you do waht is popular, take a look at the ratings of scenarios, those with "whimsy" tend to be low marked. Whimsical concepts can be fun, but they tend to be polarizing, and for the most part people only want a dash of whimsy not for the game to devolve into silliness.
If your players enjoy the game and everyone has fun that is the main thing. But this thread was created because that is not the case for at least one, and I would be pretty astonished if it was not a more prevalent view amongst your players.
My advice is a little different from what has been said before. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. If you were running a game like this for the main group I play with you would get 100% buy in. So that means the players trying to befriend all the monsters and attempting to gain equally ridiculous things like a Paladin with a Succubus girlfriend or a Cavalier with a Wyvern mount. Once you open the door to over the top silly, you have to let the players through the door too or they have no fun and quit.
Until you have swamp camels, you don't know silly.
To the OP. Did the other players seem to agree with his comments?
From the little bit of description, I would say you aren’t too far off target. Maybe just a little left and high of center. I would say most GM’s I know (including myself) are too far the other direction and don’t put enough life into the environment.
My personal perspective.
Item 1). This can be good, but it can also be too much. I once read a novel where every single character no matter how minor had pages of description and backstory. It got to the point where when a new character was introduced I would skip several meaningless pages. Then 3 chapters later I would find out that it was important for this one character and I would have to try and remember where he was introduced so I could go back and read it. It was more than a bit irritating.
Especially in a small town, intermingled relationships should be the norm. Average commoners don’t travel much and if there are only a few hundred people in town, they are probably all related or feuding with each other in some manner. That is normal and believable. It is something the players should have to deal with on a regular basis.
The way out weird relationships (dragon god mother, fae changling, evil twin, etc…) should be uncommon. Things aren’t special, unique, memorable, or meaningful if they happen all the time. Ask yourself if it really adds something to the story (meaning it covers some part of the meta plot), are the players bored with the social interactions, or if there is nothing interesting in what is intended to be a focal village? Or did it just get added because “I thought it sounded kool.”
Item 2). Many of those are ok if used sparingly. Over the course of a campaign, the PC’s might encounter a single goblin that was raised by a lonely widow to be educated and artistic. Whole tribes of them or all the time? Now it became just a bit ridiculous. Just make a new small race if you want that. Educated golems? I can see a wizard making that to help him with research. Again it would be rare since it is so difficult. Players having to face some consequences for their back story? Yeah I can buy that. Again, if it isn’t constant or destroying the playability of the PC.
Dragons baking cupcakes? Aboleth cooking contests? Liches riding unicorns?!? To me those are just silly and don’t make sense. But it might be entertaining to add something kinda unique and silly if rare.
I can almost see a single demented dragon that got obsessive about some aspect of shapechanging into a gnome and is trying to learn to cook cupcakes.
Item 3). Some people like this kind of thing, some don’t. I can’t get the past the “What? Why?” of things like that. Why would a giant parent trap their kids playroom? Why would spiders make their webs in a maze? Why would the villain tie their hands behind their back, put them in a flooding room, then walk away so they have a chance to escape? (I know it is a staple trope of older fiction, but it has always bugged me. If the guy is cruel and wants to toy with them he will stay and watch. If he just want them dead, he will just kill them. It makes no sense.) And why would anyone try to make a door out of chocolate (dark or milk)? Why would a unicorn cooperate with a lich? I believe alimony is pretty damn modern concept. Does it really need to be added to your fantasy legal system?
Item 4). These I like. But many people might not. At least not all the time. Many will prefer the classic kill/steal mission. Maybe try one as a cover for the other. A couple of PC’s are fighting the rigged Fae court case. But just to buy time while the others break out the defendant. Alchemist asks you to enter the bake-off because he wants to find out if XYZ drug works on giants. Enter the story telling contest to see if the Halfling has the stolen scepter in his home without accusing or making him an enemy.
You might have a bit of a fixation with food events specifically cup cakes. You might try doing your planning after a meal, instead of before. ;-) jk
I think many/most of your ideas are pretty good, but possibly cut back on the really far out stuff.
Also more isn’t always better. Again, things aren’t special, unique, memorable, or meaningful if they happen all the time.
... I do admit that I do like fairy tales. Something which I find a little lacking in most Pathfinder campaigns. ...
Do your players like them? Many people don't. If you are basing your campaigns around fairy tales for people that don't like fairy tales... Well I can't see it going very well.
I'll echo a few others and say, everything in moderation, and simplify a bit. A few other thoughts though...
Honestly your new proposals sound just as bad, how about the Lich does not need to ride a Unicorn Undead or not because he is a powerful spellcasting nightmare? Heck have him ride a Nightmare, at least that has useful and thematic abilities.
What isn't wrong about an spellcaster who choose to possibly live forever at the expense of his humanity turning a symbol of innocence and goodness into a mundane tool. I'd even say twist the process a little more. Add a template or two like enraged or mana wasted mutant to the zombicorns/skelecorns/unicorpse.
Just because he is evil does not mean he has to be one dimensional. Think Darth Vader, he is connected to the other villains, has complex motivations, and is a scary badass, not a cupcake baking joke.
I was agreeing with you until you got to that last bit. Isn't a person who has other hobbies less of a one-dimensional character? As pointed out by another poster, it could be a monstrous Iron Chef kind of thing. Wouldn't you be creeped out if you found something bigger and stronger than you that viewed you as food, possibly with the belief strong fear or sadness or pain were flavors?
Hags that are luring children into the forest for a ritual to empower themselves, or to create some twisted monstrosity melded together from those childrens flesh are far cooler than hags having a bakeoff.
Hannibal Lecter and Jeffrey Dahmer make a bet... It's not necessarily about the obvious. It's the thing lurking underneath the surface and sometimes hiding in plain sight.
As to the Aboleths, "There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range." I can see them mostly in shadow, as wet, smacking, slithering entities that you only see in part and never in total. One might ask in a slightly quavering, blissful voice, "What does the screaming taste like?"
Grimm's original tales were warnings and object lessons, not the happily ever after bits foisted on us by years of Disney and sanitizing things for children. Make it dark. Make it horror. Make it murder. That's a real faery tale.
Tell the pianist to knock it off with the two-note chords.
I think the right question should be: "are you having fun?". If the answer is yes, you have nothing to worry about. People play any game as they like.
|
|
Yes, I'm running kingmaker! Lots of work, but tons of fun for my players.
To address the enjoyment of my players, they do enjoy the game, cos I don't drop ALL of the above on them. What I posted above in my orignal post are just examples of the wackier ideals that I have. Its Kingmaker in Golarion after all, not alice in wonderland or world/palne jumpers.
All in all, I'm currently just editing the basic kingmaker to be more interesting. Like playing up the malleable nature of beings of the first world like the fae. Or in another case, I roleplayed some of the encountered fae more in tune with how they are portrayed in other books and stories, aka they can't lie, don't eat their food, etc.
I do have a couple of unusual NPCs running around to spice up the adventure, like an awaken wolf, but the rest are logical additions to the game.
For example, bandits parties that the players encounters, don't just consist of a bunch of similar stated NPCs, but have an actual party make up with a leader, fighters, clerics/healers and casters. A mix of ranged and melee enemies are also included.
@Broken Prince,
I can understand your concern about the enjoyment of my players.
As I wrote above, what I posted in my original post are examples.
The player in question is a friend that I trust. Hence the feedback, which is to help me be a better gm. His only two concerns are that I may be over complicating the relationships of my NPCs and leaning way too much into the role-play side of the game. Mainly due to the fact that the first few episodes were very RP heavy. The game is much more balanced once the party move on to explore the wilderness.
GMing is an ever learning process.
There is no need to get work up over the defence of the enjoyment of my players or how certain story ideals may look "silly" or offensive to you.
The game is into its 12 Episode, and I most of players have stick around since the day they joined. They all give regular feedbacks.
The few that left are mainly due to work or study commitments.
And yes, the party do use Episodes to chronicle our game sessions. It is the party that chose to use that term.
. . .
The game is into its 12 Episode, and I most of players have stick around since the day they joined. They all give regular feedbacks. . . .
See... now you've made me jealous. My S.O. will give me feedback about games, but my other three regulars just say 'Yeah, cool man.' Getting them to give actual answers to many basic questions is like pulling teeth.
Ah, well that is reassuring, I would still not be interested in your game, but its nice to know the crazy is diluted, and again all that matters is that it is fun for you and your players. If you have had them for twelve sessions and your palyers critique was in response to requested feedback then it seems like there is little to worry about and you just need to try to tone things down a little.
@Te'Shen twisted unicorns actually sounds quite cool, but the example given was Lawyer Lichs on undead unicorns on a working holiday, which is far less so.
Ah, well that is reassuring, I would still not be interested in your game, but its nice to know the whimsy is diluted, and again all that matters is that it is fun for you and your players. If you have had them for twelve sessions and your palyers critique was in response to requested feedback then it seems like there is little to worry about and you just need to try to tone things down a little.
@Te'Shen twisted unicorns actually sounds quite cool, but the example given was Lawyer Lichs on undead unicorns on a working holiday, which is far less so.
My only question, is that if all the NPCs from lowly villageperson to marauding dragon are so interconnected, then why aren't the PCs equally interconnected to the environment? Why isn't the dragon also the PCs' godmother?
If the drive of the story depends on the PCs being strangers, then you've set up the situation for the PCs to be manipulated by locals who understand their personal connections better than the PCs. So, one NPC can ask the party to slay the marauding dragon, knowing full well that it's the councilman's family friend, and then frame the PCs upon return from the dragon cave, running them out of town for killing the councilman's friend. Now that the council doesn't have draconic protection, it's far easier for the NPC to dispatch him, himself, and claim power on the town council.