Hehaku Tokuo's page

Yes one of my starting flaws was building the story fairly linear, however a lot of my flaws I've caught and worked to fix. My plot writing is a lot more open and I roll with the punches the best I can with what the players decide to do. I've watched Matthew Colville and Geek/Sundry for a majority of tips to aid me. I appreciate all of the input you've given me though =) I haven't taken any of this negatively, just constructively.

Yeah, it's sounding like this will just have to be my go-to regarding the dragonborn.

I mean I caught myself in our last session worrying if he was having fun/approving of how everything was going. In sense more focused on his fun/approval, rather than everyone else and even my own fun. (though I'm with Colville in 'I have fun if my players are having fun')

I don't think any of my players are actually this way. My dragonborn may not feel anything towards the main campaign, but he is interested in the world itself. Hell his character wants to fight a northern country to save the people simply because he sees the leader as an a*$%#~@. That's it. Like, that guy is an a~#!%+! to his country. He cares about this. But the main villain has a massive army, powerful ancient magic, has already killed a diety, and obviously planning to do more with his power. The dragonborn doesn't care in the slightest. I'm just dumb founded by what is driving him lol Tis' why it sounds like I just need another talk with him to help solve the issue.

NOW! Back to what my other issue is if you guys are sticking around and wanting to help =)

What are somethings I can create/use/put in my sessions to help characters build bonds? I felt giving them a location they can all work together on was a good step towards this. Any other ideas or things you guys have done/seen that could help with this?

I knew I wasn't fault free so rest assured I'm not hurt. And sadly at the start of my world building/first session I had three players. The Dragonborn barbarian / Night Elf Rogue / and a player no longer playing. We started under the agreement they were all close friends/allies with different backgrounds but managed to see each other as worth dying for. The Dragonborn has disregarded this completely. The Panda/Genasi are not a part of that group so I totally get it, just bewildered on what to do about the Dragonborn ignoring the past we as a group agreed to have.

And after recent educating I have learned several of my mistakes and acknowledge them. Currently trying my hardest to become a better DM for my players.

As for the back story thing, this is a bit of personal part I enjoy doing with the players, and vice versa. When I say 'back story' I have actually worked with the information they have given me and create future open quests tide to their already existing history.

And I may use your idea of what happened to the bar and do something similar with their newly acquired castle.

-So what should I do if a player has disregarded me saying "this NPC has helped you in the past" or actually doesn't care that the NPC has actually helped and saved them in real game time?

So I'm having a bit of a challenge to unite my players. They tend to act, at least in my perspective, as lone wolves in a group. Hell one of them actually died in my last session, also was our first death. I have half of my players heavily interested in my main plot in our sandbox world, while the others have said "their character has no honest reason to care about what is going on."

My house rules are very open and accommodating to help allow players be whoever and whatever they want to be within reason, also if I can make it fit. So we use Pathfinder, but have plenty of homebrew, dnd 3.5, etc

We have:
- Dragonborn Barbarian/Witch Doctor ( Heavily Disinterested in main plot)
- Earth Genasi Samurai (Heavily Interested in main plot/personal backstory)
- Night Elf Rogue (Heavily Interested in main plot/personal backstory)
- Panda Barbarian (Neutral, also is the Samurai's Lord) and more or less Party leader
- DEAD CHARACTER (Interested when alive, currently making new character however player will be moving away in 3 weeks

I have managed to create a new bad guy NPC who will make an appearance hopefully in our next session, who has his fingers in every character's back story. He has ties with my main plot that players have mixed feelings on. Players have also just come across a now empty destroyed fortress they plan to make their home. (possibly a kingdom in the future)

I'm reaching out to hopefully get some advice on ways (encounters, plot hooks, whatever i can get) to get them to have their characters develop trust, friendship, loyalty, etc in each other. (disclosure, I'm fine if characters don't agree with one another however there is that and then there is just ignoring each other's presence.)

I could type out what story I have going on and any information people may need, however I tend to ramble and get in depth to try and paint an exact picture/scenario for someone to understand what is going on. (this is actually my 4th attempt in actually posting this, trying to make this short) lol

I know this is extremely old, but for those that search for this in google have this pop up. At least for me it had. And I found a program that actually allows you to have a monster creation process.

http://combatmanager.com/

This program is very useful, much like the PC Gen which I also use. This combat manager has a monster tab where you can select "new" and fill it out. From there you can add them right into an encounter, much like how you can add players and pre-made creatures. I hope this helps!

Oh, and on another note I actually had an issue downloading the combat manager's newest update. So for it to work for me I had to download an older version of it and it worked perfectly =)

Here is a story of a crazy ending to a session I ran.

Alright so I'm new to this site, but I'm hoping some of you can help me out. I'm still a new GM with less than a year of experience but I have some experience with role playing via forums and such.

Now, the players decided they wanted to search for a friendly NPC of theirs since they lost him a while back in a previous session. So I'm working on finishing this quest for them.

Forgive for the read but I just feel the need to type it out to help me wrap my head around it completely.

Story stars with a were-wolf clan leader....

Grimclaw was the leader of the Kokutan Wolf Pack in Fangwood. He was a strong and respected leader, also a father of three boys; (eldest) Aghda, (2nd) Voghra, and Morgrym. Grimclaw was determined to make his clan expand and become part of society with trading in hope to make his people more civilized.

Little did he know that the Goddess Lamashtu, the mother of all beasts, did not like this as it took them away from their roots. She sent a fiend army to attack the wolf clan. Eventually in a large battle, Aghda witnessed his father and brother Voghra be killed in battle. After this battle, the attacks stopped...that was until Aghda became the new alpha and attempted to continue his father's legacy.

Making Lamashtu upset once again, she gave birth to a new beast. Though, it was more of a recreation as Voghra was now born as a White Wolf, along with all of the fallen wolves in the fiend attacks. Essentially a white wolf army. They came to Aghda telling him to change his ways as "their Mother was disgusted with the new life style he was implementing on their people." Aghda seeing his brother alive, believing it to be of dark rituals or magics cast his brother out. Thus the war began between the wolves.

The war wasn't getting anywhere, so Lamashtu personally took Morgrym as a vessel. When she would posses him he would take an appearance of a Kitsune/wolf hybrid. Morgrym would have no memory during this time. The Goddess then reached out to the players by acting as a friend and luring them into the war by searching for Morgrym.

---------------------------------------------------

So that's where I'm at. I want it to where players have a tough choice of who is right and wrong in this. But I'm not exactly sure how to make it look like Aghda and Voghra are both good and bad guys at the same time. The players don't have any magic except for their one cleric of Sarenrae, and I feel he is the only one going to figure out that Lamashtu is apart of this because the wolves don't believe in her as a Goddess, but she is taking part in this quest. The players will more than likely see this quest as a type of civil war.

I have more information on characters and such, so unless you guys want me to post up, I can answer any questions you have.

Please by all means give critiques and tips, the works. I'm in need of some help >.<