foolsjourney's page

I am that player. I'm autistic and I also have really bad adhd, so I forget stuff, my attention drifts and I lose my train of thought a lot. I also have at least two other players with learning disabilities. One of them has dyscalculia and literally can't do math.

Your three minute rule sounds useful, although in my case I might extend it to 5 minutes, see how that works out and adjust accordingly.
My group also plays over skype chat and roll20.net, an online tabletop software.
EDIT: On second thought, I might just keep it 3, see how well that works out, and...

The compromise is that the have 2 minutes to talk through and clarify what went before and start their actions, then 3 minutes to complete.

To be clear, it isn't done to penalise, but in a table with 7 players around, it's no fun for anyone to only get one turn every 30 minutes at best. So it gets players to think before their turn, or graciously defer to the next player (a little like readying an action) to keep the action going.

The notepads help for the subsequent sessions too as I'm often keeping track of three different simultaneous parties- not recommended for this old DM with fading powers of recollection.

Here's the start of my sandbox town if anyone wants a look. It contains about 20% of what I have written up so far, and I'm still writing, so a long way to go.

There are loads more photographs, maps and illustrations still to be added, but hey, I'm a busy man.

http://quest.foolsjourney.co.uk

It's an awkward one, because players will play their characters as they've planned them to be. I remember one 3.5 game I was playing, there was a giant beating up on a dwarf. The level 1 dwarf in our party waded in to help his kin, and was promptly one-shotted. The GM was asking "Why on earth did you do that?!?!?!" Errrrr, because it's what almost any dwarf would do in that circumstance.

In my games there are always consequences for actions, and my players don't see those as punishments. If the thief breaks into the armoury and steals the captain of the guard's magic +3 breastplate of golden glitteriness, that's up to them. If they then walk around the town in broad daylight wearing it, there are likely to be consequences. It's part of an immersive game.

However, expecting a lawful good paladin to break bread with a lich is quite possibly a stretch to the paladin player's immersion. Obviously you know this, hence being here asking advice on it.

Instead of getting the hound to vouch for said lich, perhaps instead convince the paladin to gather information, assess the lich, and report back ALIVE, or the fate of thousands could be in the balance. He is much more likely to believe that as a narrative than the lich is ok to dine with and you're gods might be ok with it.

Because I play an original sandbox setting, there are literally dozens of NPCs, and the players are free to invite any of them to join various parts of the adventure, and I will sometimes run them in game as a semi GMPC. In these cases though I try to get other players to manage their dice rolls). More commonly though the players themselves will run them (often as an alternate character if their's has become separated from the plot thread being played).

I don't like it if that NPC becomes too integral to the action in a gaming session (not the plot- that's fine, but in the plot resolution over and above the PCs), and if I feel it is going that way I'll look for ways to withdraw that character.

I have a player like that. He knew I was going to be running the game and asked to join, so I lent him the 3.5 player handbook to get a feel for the game. He came back a month later, announcing he was going to play a monk... and even bought the Pathfinder core rule book for the group too.

After several sessions and three level ups it is clear he's playing the monk alright- Friar Tuck. Complete with cassocks and 'bless you my son's. So I took his character sheet and with some fudging reskinned him as a Cleric Evangelist, printed out all his spells, powers etc.

2 years on, probably 150 hours of gaming, he still doesn't know his spells.

He is however the most punctual player, the most disappointed when gaming is cancelled, and very much engaged in the story (homebrew sandbox, and only he will remember the fine details of what went before), he has bought us the APG- he just can't work a character sheet.

The rest of the players seem happy to carry him though, so it's not too much of an issue.

In the next game I run I will be using rolling, but everyone will get to use the rolls of whoever rolled the best. That way it will be fair.

Wow! You know, I never thought of that idea. Inspired.

I use dice rolls, and the players get to reroll ALL the dice if they aren't satisfied with them. Usually though there'll be one or two tasty rolls so they have to think hard before rerolling just to get rid of that one lousy 7.

To me, it depends on the type of game you as a GM run, and the important thing is just to tell the players up front the kind of game you play before they start. I play full on sandbox, and in my experience players are less likely to dump in such games as it's harder for them to predict when stat dumps will bite them on the bum.

I'm also fortunate enough to DM for a group that don't all want to be awesome megadudes out of the gate. They like the idea of their character evolving from the mundane level one townsperson to the legendary hero.

As an aside, the wild mage in my party actually asked if he could dump his wisdom as his rolls were too high for him to roleplay the character as he would have liked. Sure I said, and gave him a bonus feat for willingly dropping his wisdom by 4 and in doing so building a more appropriate character.

I'd make the game so it's less dependent on just killing everything that moves and have better rewards for those players with more interest in role play interaction than just combat oriented.

I'd have more realistic, incremental rules for taking damage and falling prone during combat. It has always seemed illogical that a huge barbarian with a mega axehammer of doom can take all but one hit point off something, and it stays on its feet, then one slap later and it's unconscious.

Firstly, I create a town, or at least a starting locale.
I then create a few plot hooks, and the NPCs that are most likely to be involved in those early on.

A week or so before we start playing I get my players to roll up character sheets for me, including a few paragraphs of back story (are they from the town, travelling through, working beyond the town walls, etc). Then, depending on the amount of detail they put in, and their race, class etc, I give each of them additional information about their world. The travelling monk may be aware of towns being sacked to the north for instance, whereas the town rogue may know of an intrigue at court.

I design and build a town, adding in buildings and personnel that I think will interest party members. One player is a monk, so I create the monastery, the abbott, and two or three other monks and their guests for example. Al NPCs potentially have boons, so the players are encouraged to interact with them early on, which helps get them invested in the town. You can't have too many NPCs. If you game regularly they're never wasted, even if the players don't interact with them. They can always be tweaked and used elsewhere.

Places of interest. Bernard's Books, with the rude, socially inept heavy drinker from over the sea is popular with my party.

The arrival of a circus is imminent. The whole town is buzzing about it, but things aren't what they seem... In that one device alone you can have a dozen different things going on. Hide your big bad, or some great magical loot. Big, broad brushstrokes and a handful of core NPCs to begin with. Flesh out only as things become interesting to the party.

After that though, you have to sit back and let them play their game. And in a sandbox the biggest challenge I have is getting and keeping the party together if there's a big hook I want to introduce. They often choose to do their own thing so I end up running overlapping games in a session. It can be frustrating, but as a DM it's about everyone having fun creating their own story- the end result doesn't have to be beating Thuggo the UltraNasty. In fact, there doesn't even have to be an end result unless the players are fishing for one.

Remember, if you go sandbox, you can't be precious about your great ideas, because at least half of them won't be picked up or used.

A couple of months back there were 3 games going on. The Charlatan as one party. The wild mage and the cleric in another, and the fighter with the other fighter, the gnome and the ranger in theirs. They regularly dump each other. That's the beauty of sandbox, they can all do their own thing if they choose to. Lots of PVP going on in a very social game, and they all love it, so there really isn't a problem.

The assumption is often, in threads like this, that everyone plays the same way, and the things you'd find intolerable, everyone else will too. As GM I let those who want to come play know what to expect in the games I run, and it's pretty much a take it or leave it offer.

The biggest problem with the fighter as a player actually is that he's typically a computer game player by default, so he gets miffed when there are consequences to him breaking into the town armoury to get a better weapon which will clearly be recognised when he wears it. He thinks every box he smashes open should contain loot, and every time there isn't any I'm somehow not rewarding him sufficiently for having the great skill necessary to bash a box.

So as a GM, I guess I'm a jerk too.
Maybe I should start a union. ;)

May the snot of a thousand camels agglutinate in your navel.

1)- If it makes sense narratively, fits in with your back story, and you can justify why your character should be able to do x, I'm open to letting you do it. The better your prepared backstory at the start of the game, the more willing I am. For instance, I let my party's gnome paladin animal rights vegetarian pacifist have trapfinding and disable device, but only in relation to snares and animal traps... especially because we have a ranger butcher's hunter in the party too, so that's fun. :-D

The overture from my campaign is

"This should be a tale of legend, the story of which we write together. The GM presents cues and clues, but from the very outset there will be several avenues to chose from, each leading to its own adventures. You, as the adventurers in question, get to choose which of the stories gets told.

There will doubtless be traps to avoid, mazes to negotiate, mysteries to unravel and treasure to be won. Whether you choose to do this as a team or as rivals is down to you."

I create a sandbox town with a bit of history and a reason for newcomers to be in the town (in this case the arrival of a mysterious circus). I add nearby mines, river and forest, and enough plot devices and NPCs to give them reason to adventure. Some they'll pick up, some they won't.

I do see it as a group of friends writing a novel (and indeed one party member is writing it up as an adventure story), and all I do as DM is provide opportunities to adventure, and make sure there are busy marketplaces, interesting people in the bars, rats in the mines, corrupt officials in the town council and bad guys wanting to ruin their day.

What they do is up to them.

ciretose wrote:

No, I'm going to not play that game with them.

You're not, but apparently foolsjourney is.

And you have a problem with this why exactly? On the unlikely event of you asking to or being invited to join a game I'm running, the parameters and expectations are detailed beforehand so you could make an informed decision to play or find another game. And oddly enough, those that do join in do so for exactly the same reasons you'd choose not to. It's made clear up front, we have a week or two discussion so everyone can craft a character and craft a story.

Why is how we play of concern to you? The OP asked a question, and I answered it. I don't recall saying in my answer that if you play differently you play wrong, or that the way you play would spoil my fun. It is as irrelevant to me how you play as how we play should be to you.

We play sandbox games, and we're not power gamers, so a power gamer would just not fit in. If you want a game that involves nothing more than big monster- kill- level up- find treasure- bigger monster- kill, repeat, then you're not for us and we're not for you. We're not a club or society, we're a group of real life friends and family who meet in my home to play a game we enjoy. And for the 9 of us playing, not one of them would have even asked the question the OP asked.

foolsjourney wrote:

A couple of people have hinted at what I think the problem is, and that's power creep from the other 'invented' classes.

Back in the day, there were a handful of builds. The fighter, ranger and caster all fulfilled basic roles. As a player you wanted to be either melee, wizardy or shooty. Then we had a rogue which fulfilled a unique niche too.

Then people, quite rightly, thought that it limits the game. There's so many other types of thing we would like to be. So as a gaming community we evolved other characters who sacrificed some magic ability to be able to wear armour and wield a mace. And that too was OK. It was well balanced enough, and quite thematic.

For some though, that wasn't enough. Some wanted the Warcraft Win Button. I want to be the best fighter in the game and fight one handed with no shield and cast combat magic with my off hand with limited concentration penalty. All of a sudden, the fighter understandably becomes less attractive.

I don't see it as a problem with the fighter. Just some of the 937 other classes that have turned up since it was first imagined.

...

The fighter has had the lion's share of its problems since 3E debuted in 2000 (before World of Warcraft was released I might add {>.<}). The answer to the fighter's problem has thus far been to throw bigger numbers at it and hope it goes away. Except it doesn't. It just becomes a fighter with the same issues and bigger numbers which at least make it decent at the hit/damage portion of the game (whereas in 3.x you really didn't pump damage nearly as efficiently until later in 3.x when certain combos like Shock Trooper + Pounce came along, but I rather hated that mechanic because either you used that one build option and brought ruin to your foes or you didn't and failed at everything; but Barbarians could do that better too).

Also, people need to stop using Warcraft as some sort of derogatory phrase. Especially when they use it in a way that clearly demonstrates a gross ignorance of the...

I wasn't having a go at Warcraft. I was referring to a certain type of player. I played Warcraft once 5 years ago, so know nothing of how it plays. What I do though know a number of MMO players who are only happy if their character can instakill everything, and are racing to get through the levels with little regard for narrative, fluff, feel, REAL character development or anything that involves anything other than bashing an ongoing sequence of ever bigger nasties. Of the MMO players I know, most say they can do this much easier than in Everquest for example.

I too have been playing AD&D for a lot of years (though am very new to Pathfinder) and have seldom had fighters who struggled in a mixed party. They all have coped very well, and the only ones that died have done so as a result of their own stupidity, not overpowered nemeses. And in general, a lot of other classes get killed a lot sooner than fighters.

A couple of people have hinted at what I think the problem is, and that's power creep from the other 'invented' classes.

Back in the day, there were a handful of builds. The fighter, ranger and caster all fulfilled basic roles. As a player you wanted to be either melee, wizardy or shooty. Then we had a rogue which fulfilled a unique niche too.

Then people, quite rightly, thought that it limits the game. There's so many other types of thing we would like to be. So as a gaming community we evolved other characters who sacrificed some magic ability to be able to wear armour and wield a mace. And that too was OK. It was well balanced enough, and quite thematic.

For some though, that wasn't enough. Some wanted the Warcraft Win Button. I want to be the best fighter in the game and fight one handed with no shield and cast combat magic with my off hand with limited concentration penalty. All of a sudden, the fighter understandably becomes less attractive.

I don't see it as a problem with the fighter. Just some of the 937 other classes that have turned up since it was first imagined.

I think using words like 'mature' doesn't progress the discussion, not least because they're by default implying that the rest are immature. Once you imply I'm more mature than you, you throw all hope of reason out of the dialogue.

I think, OP, it comes down to you knowing (or guessing) how your group would react. Is Andy a douche, or is he a much loved friend who's trying to play a character who's a douche? Your wording suggests that he's not going to be received well, so that may be your barometer. If you already think they'll be miffed, then go with that instinct.

My group would be 100% cool with it, providing they also get the chance to catch him at it. We all like each other very much in real life and see such things as interesting plot twists. Most here it seems don't and their friendships would be threatened, so it may be safer to assume that's a distinct possibility.

I'd still allow it. And smile when he gets a huge lesson in consequential awareness. You can't make someone play nice, but you sure can make them wish they had.

I think the DM should have made Frank make a few Wisdom/Intelligence/Perception rolls getting ever more obvious, but there does come a point where you just have to say a player killed his own character and not blame bad DMing. It's borderline though.

One from a game I played in (not DM) but it went like this...

Level 1 paladin, exploring cave...

DM: you step over 2 or 3 charred skeletons.
L1P: I continue on...
DM: you spot 3 more corpses, with good armour.
L1P: I continue on...
DM: You see a burned great warrior corpse in badly damaged masterwork armour. His tower shield is buckled almost beyond recognition and his masterwork axe is in 4 pieces at his feet.
L1P: I continue on...
DM: You hear some sounds... what languages do you speak?
L1P: Draconian.
DM: OK- what you hear is Dragon for 'mama, mama, mama' You look down, feet from you is a baby dragon.
L1P: I hit it with my...
DM: Here's a new character sheet...
L1P: THAT'S NOT FAIR!
lol