LoadingReadyRun: The Theatre of the Mind

[cricket chirps]

Hehe.......Doom Booties...hehe

 

[Darth_Payn]

This is what happens in D&D when you run out of the Usual Suspects.

yeah, he totally Kaiser Sozie'ed the whole campaign, and it was hilarious. Nice video, team!

 

[Breywood]

Brings back fond memories, although the DM's I played with were a little more prepared. Extra props, though for the Cheetos and Mountain Dew. Too bad the DM wasn't Graham and someone wasn't asking questions from the kitchen.

 

[DJShire]

I have a story.

I was running a modified demo of the pen and paper RPG Spycraft with my usual (now long gone) Sunday night D&D group. We did it to take a break from the campaign we were on, and to give the DM some rest. The main plot of the original demo was to break into a lab....for some reason I can't remember. I turned it into a cloning lab, and the organization the PCs were working for had suspected that it was being used for cloning, but needed hard evidence before either acquiring the company or just stealing their research data....or both. So the PCs were being sent to investigate the place, find out what they could, and then were given the new objective of getting the data. One of my PCs asked if they could find anything about the corporation, and I had my little sheet of info about the company....and then threw me for a loop by trying to find former employees, conspiracy theories about the company, etc., and I had to think fast. Next thing I knew, I had to do an entirely improvised scenario where they visited a former company employees house, where two PCs distracted him at the front door posing as people from the local energy company, while someone else broke into the guys house and ransacked the place for info, including ripping the hard drive out of his computer.

I managed to handle that fairly well I thought.

 

[Eric the Orange]

looks like Beej needs to learn the difference between realism and verisimilitude.

 

[Elate]

Maybe I would just make a fantastic DM but...

Wouldn't it have been easier just to say the door needs a magic key and is unlockpickable. Bam, search for the key, first place? His corpse.

 

[actar411]

At least it is going slightly better than my group. "How do I get a flying mount? When do I get my flying mount? Flying Mount? FLYING MOUNT!?" Shut up, Mat, just shut up.

 

[i64ever]

Is Baron VonBadington just the PG version of Baron VonBadass?

 

[nuba km]

This is why I merely plan a world and everything that's happening in it and just see what the players do.

I've never been DM, but whenever I play I always make up spells and abilities for my character. "Now that Mr. Pimptastic is a level 10 Pimpaladin, he gains the passive ability Misogyny, which gives him +2 speech when speaking to female characters of a lower level, and -5 speech when speaking to female characters of a higher level."

that reminds me of the time I had my albino minatour struded his stuff through a forest when the rest of my group was trying to sneak past a group of kobolds, luckily the sentence the sentence 'you see a large group of heavily armed kobolds' being followed by the line 'I strude my stuff' was funny enough they didn't get mad at me.

 

[Ohlookit'sMatty]

It sounds like this DM needs to plan ahead... just a little.. :>

Sounds like the players screwed up his previously established plans. Of course, he should have known better than to expect dedicated gamers to waste time looting a body.

I felt like the GM did not expect them to kill his big bad, or ever get this far, so he had no idea what to do next // And yes I was wondering why he wanted them to loot the body? Was it that he had a trap set or he needed more time to think of what happens next? I'm going to go with both.

-M

I have a rule against making villains that I'm not able to kill off for precisely this reason. Nothing's worse than having to engage in a battle of wits and rule-bending to rescue your box text from the party.

But them leaving the body unlooted seems odd. Most gamers either go through it's pockets immediately or (if they're from the first 2 editions) very carefully examine the body for save vs. death traps, then go through it's pockets.

As is the golden rule of GM'n, Never make an NPC you care about as your players will end up kill it

I'm now getting interested about what the loot would have been? What would the evil vampire Barron Von' Baddington have been carrying on his person? Gold of course but what else?

Also, since when can a Magic Missile do 6points of damage? Magic Missile is 1d4+1

-M

 

[praetor_alpha]

For a while, this felt like a Commodore Hustle.

 

[RN7]

Beej's pitiable foolishness was palpable in this skit. I am amused and applaud his acting capability.

This reminded me of the time me and a couple of my friends were playing an modified version of MiniSix at this local convention. The original campaign was intended to be a generic fantasy-save-the-world scenario, but it ended up being one big Kung-Pow joke filled with a psychotic elf whose skill of persuasion was so high he convinced a god to ignite the fire of love between two men, a human who wanted so desperately to become Indiana Jones, and a Dwarf wearing underpants crafted from the flesh of the great martials arts hellcow.

At times I felt somewhat sorry for the DM, because my friends make it their mission to derail set, normal plans. However, in the end we completed our adventure, somehow destroyed one iteration of reality and got free swag from the convention for being so entertaining.

 

[theultimateend]

Sounds a lot like my campaigns, especially when I craft specific routes for them to take...

One time I had a simple mechanic, endless waves of X until they flee.

I thought...obviously after I say its an endless wave they'll try to flee.

Nope...they stayed and fought. Forever...

I learned that I need to be better at adlibbing because some people don't take a hint.

Also, since when can a Magic Missile do 6points of damage? Magic Missile is 1d4+1

-M

Probably a damage modifier of some kind.

 

[The Random One]

I've been to Generic Questingville. It's one of the loveliest towns in Arkansas.

Eeeeh. Can't agree that I've found DM'ing to be particularly hard. Prepare ahead and have a good imagination. Anticipate players moves by thinking of the most stupid shit they could ever do. Since they nearly always will. Most importantly, have fun!

If you do get stuck in Beej's situation, well you gotta be good at bullshitting. My first major story as a DM was about 60% made up on the spot, with 90% of dialogue ad-libbed. And they freaking loved it!

Hot Tip for you: Make up a setting, characters (with motivations and personalities) and a general idea of the story and the goal of it. Then just let it play out. Prepare some pitfalls and traps ahead to spring when it's appropriate.

You speak the truth. A DM that tries to set up a linear quest full of setpieces for the players is begging to be fucked because we already have a thing called videogames that is particularly apt at doing linear quests full of setpieces. If I'm playing pen-and-paper I want to make my own adventure.

I've never been DM, but whenever I play I always make up spells and abilities for my character. "Now that Mr. Pimptastic is a level 10 Pimpaladin, he gains the passive ability Misogyny, which gives him +2 speech when speaking to female characters of a lower level, and -5 speech when speaking to female characters of a higher level."

...I think I love you.

 

[freebiewitz]

One of my more popular NPCs were created this way. Basically there were these brothers that were all thieves but went about it in different ways. The first one was a more traditional thief, cut purse cat burglar type. The second guy was a more thuggish version, beat you up and knock you out before taking your stuff or just plain intimidating you to give it. The third was an illusionist who helped the first two guys. I had names for the first two thieves but forgot about the third guy so when the players wanted to talk to him I had to come up with something quick.

So I looked down at my 'Notes' and saw the brand name for one of my sketch books.

"Monte Marte" luckily as he was the brother of the first two he'd share their last name.
Thus Monte Marte Ospanard was born.

 

[kailus13]

I think by the time your getting inspiration from breakfast cereals is about the time to give up. Also, if your stuck on naming a place, name it after what's in it. In this case "the forest of the direweevils", it just sounds much better.

 

[LadyRhian]

Sounds a lot like my campaigns, especially when I craft specific routes for them to take...

One time I had a simple mechanic, endless waves of X until they flee.

I thought...obviously after I say its an endless wave they'll try to flee.

Nope...they stayed and fought. Forever...

I learned that I need to be better at adlibbing because some people don't take a hint.

Also, since when can a Magic Missile do 6points of damage? Magic Missile is 1d4+1

-M

Probably a damage modifier of some kind.

Nope. More than one MM at higher levels. It sounded like Kathleen rolled more than one die.

And yeah, never let the players see you flopsweat. The ability to make up stuff on the fly is a major component of DMing. Even more important is the ability to sell it like you had it in mind all along. I think Beej was discombobulated by the party not looting Baron VonBaddington's formerly undead corpse. Or he was going to spring a "totally faking death" move on the Baron, which is why experienced parties will, arm, "distress the corpse" before getting close enough for it to possibly grab them. Boiling oil, holy water, decapitation, cutting off limbs... whatever it takes to ensure the corpse is properly dead first. That's where the party starts to distinguish "he goes down" from "The unlife flees from his now quiescent corpse."

I've been playing since I was in 5th grade. Can you tell?

 

[Shinsei-J]

At least it is going slightly better than my group. "How do I get a flying mount? When do I get my flying mount? Flying Mount? FLYING MOUNT!?" Shut up, Mat, just shut up.

Give him a flying mount that spontaneously combusts every time he trys to ride it, he'll learn quickly not to ask for things.

 

[leviadragon99]

He used to have 12 claws, but the last guy managed to hack one off.