EyruGM's page

With the utmost respect I have to disagree for many reasons. If you were as into the industry as you say you are then you would already know why that is a bad idea without me having to explain it.

As a creative professional myself (a Graphic Designer with a little photography on the side) I've got to agree with you there. A debate for another thread (well, probably another board I'm sure) but the whole "crowd sourcing" thing for either no pay or very little compensation has IMO led to the overall devaluing of intellectual property and a glut of "product".

Frankly, I think it confuses potential buyers more than anything. Everyone is so convinced that getting something "free" is better than paying for actual quality they fail to see they are getting precisely what they "pay" for. Either that or consumers are so convinced that they "deserve" IP for free that they simply refuse to pay (illegal downloads of music, PDFs etc.)

I'll be keeping the cool magic item ideas and such to myself thank you very much. If I want to freely share, it'll be on my own site, my own terms. But that's just me and my own opinion. A sincere best of luck to those that choose to participate!

Also - Pan's Labrynth. Not traditional "swords and sorcery" but pretty solid "Fantasy" elements. Its got a Satyr-demon-thing and a freaky flesh eating demon along with magic items, healing rituals and a "quest". Definitely worth watching.

No one dropping Beast Master? Heh. Ok, so it wasn't a "great" fantasy movie, but it was watchable. They actually tried to make a TV series out of that show like ten years after it came out...never understood that.

Also, the obvious "Harry Potter" flicks. They've progressively gotten better IMO.

Legend - not sure if anyone mentioned that yet. Its at least worth watching to say "THAT'S Tim Curry???"

I have a problem with having too many people wanting to play my campaign. My original party started with 6 people, which is a lot for a beginner GM, but I managed. Over the last couple weeks that number has grown to 11 and I'm having trouble working through our campaign and keeping everyone involved.I'm wondering how I could manage this group.

I also have a problem with a specific player who doesn't like to take more than 10 minutes. He is a level 7 Cleric/Holy Vindicator and since our campaign path (Curse of the Crimson Throne; Seven Days to the Grave) is for level 2-7 players, he can walk into a room full of creatures that are not too hard for the party and channel energy twice and kill the room, while the other PCs are just moving into the room.

So any ideas?

In college I was in a game with 15 to 20 people. The DM required us to all have back up characters, which is generally a good idea. However, he decreed that the backup characters never got XP unless they adventured, so if you did die and need the backup, youd be several levels behind everyone. This in turn led to everyone playing both their main character AND their backup charcater simultaneously. In combat it would literally be 2 hours between your turns.

Thats about the time I started my own game : )

At any rate, moral of the story is - there are too few people with the ability to be DM in the hobby and always a ton of people wanting to play. As everyone else suggests, at some point you have to draw a line. Its for your own sanity and to not burn out our rare commodity of willing DMs : )

First off - if they want to play, they need to buy their own book. Period. Sitting back watching you do everything for them might be awesome for them, but frankly it is lazy. Whether it is a few books purchased as a group or simply requiring everyone to have their own, you will pretty quickly find out who is really interested in playing a cooperative game and who is just a sponge.

If you want to keep running with that many people, you need to get serious about managing a group that size. I would highly recommend a timer for combat - everyone gets one minute (or whatever time frame works) to tell you what they are going to do. Set some serious ground rules on table talk and the like. Assign or have players assign tasks to individuals - party leader, party "seller", party mapper, etc. etc. As an easy rule of thumb, you could double encounter sizes (treasure and monsters) to ocmpensate for the large group (and keep the 7th level guy from wiping out entire rooms). I wouldn't recommend trying this though as a new DM.

I consider myself an experienced DM an I draw the line at 6 players. Beyond that, its very tricky as you noted to keep everyone involved in the game. Your trying to corral double that! Commendable, but crazy, heh.

Two groups is the best option. If it is a close group of friends and you want a challenge, break them into two groups playing at different times and pursuing (cooperatively or maybe competitively)the same goal.

That way every now and then you can have the big 11 man games for key moments in the campaign so everyone can catch up and the things they do in the different sessions will impact each other (One group gets to a treasure before the other group for a competitive thing, one provides necessary intell to the other group for a co-operative one.)

I'm starting too really like brainstorming this one... Assuming your players have flexible game times and can go to either game, if the to groups are competitive you could "kidnap" other players between groups and such, heh... if they are cooperative, you could have them call on each other's expertise between sessions. Maybe one group needs the skilled rogue from the other, so they set up a joint mission with him...

I generally only run games with a roughly one level gap to avoid balance issues (new players always start at the XP total of the least experienced PC in the party, never at the lowest level for the adventure/module). For your cleric, in some encounters, you may need to create a slightly bigger challenge for him that will take up his abilities while the other players support him. You'll need to maybe adjust XP levels and start the lower level PCs on a slightly faster track (they kind of are anyway) to close the gap between PCs levels and get everyone within at least 2 levels of each other. Don't be afraid to fudge things a little if it means everyone is getting to particpate and having more fun.

In two different groups, one I play in, another that I GM, we have what I think is a rather interesting approach to satisfying the gp requirements for crafting...

I used almost exactly the same approach in a long time 3.0/3.5 campaign. Details are here under Magic Item Creation Feats:

The main difference was I had a little more definition regarding what you could use to make what. For an easy example, the hide of a displacer beast (well several actually to meet the gold requirements) could be used for a Cloak of Displacement. Ogre Blood in potions of Giant Strength, etc. Roc's can "Snatch" why not a good base for Big--'s Hands spells, etc. It was all based on the creatures stats and feats/abilities.

I found it worked alright but there were several issues. Allowing players to harvest physical components for magic items from monsters -and- giving the full monster's treasure essentially leads to a double material reward. Luckily, the economy in my game was quite depressed and monetary treasure was a bit below book levels, so it wasn't much of an issue.

The other problem was my players became gruesome "hoarders". Gentle repose jars and the like became necessary for their travelling monster funk wagon to not attract buzzards and such : ) That was mainly a campaign issue - it was fast paced and there was little "down time" to spend days/weeks building items.

In the end, I altered it to still require gold to make items and instead allowed the extra components to be used in lieu of XP. (The creatures life force imparted instead of yours).

At any rate, this is one of those areas where I am glad they are vague since it encourages the DM to have their own solution. If there was some official "magical crystal" BS ripped out of a popular MMORPG, I'd be a bit disappointed... :)