Traditionally, pirates elected the captain and bosun. They would recall people in these positions if they didn’t like the decisions that were made. Does your crew do this?
Yep, the pirate captain that helped them take their ship do so on the condition that they implement some version of The Pirate Code. All major decisions are decided by vote, with each crewman also getting a vote. In practice I would rarely have the crew vote against the party, just cos that’s no fun. But morale has been getting low, and if they don’t address it, they may decide they want a new Captain and try for a vote, giving the players a crisis to deal with.
Loot is also shared out equally, except the captain/officers get two shares. The players decided that they all collectively share the position of captain, while also having other roles. So they all get twice what the crew gets. I believe this is pretty accurate historically.
I just let the players decide the route though, I’ll only get the crew to protest if they haven’t taken a prize for a while, or if I think the crew would have an issue with the specific destination they choose. One of the players has the role of navigator so she does a check to see if she does a good job of that. If she doesn’t, I roll on my encounter table and something gets in their way, slows them down, or attacks.
For me its the Star Spawn Emessary I mean, look at that thing. But for real the entire Far Realm take on eldritch horror type monsters is just fascinating to me and one of my favorite fantasy types.
It’s not even though. Tolkein was very deliberate about what he included in his world, whereas Forgotten Realms is just “we need to make up some shit so that everything can go here”
Older materials can be out of print, and thus impossible to get any other way.
In print stuff? Makes sense to not pirate (even wotc needs cash flow to function). But stuff that isn’t, it either gets archived and spread via p2p/piracy, or it dies.
Just as an example, I have the original box sets. They’re still usable even, because I’ve taken pains to make sure of that. But if I wanted to run a game with that stuff, it wouldn’t take much for it all to fall apart. It’s irreplaceable without digitizing. And, sure my kid is going to have the choice to sell or keep it, but other people’s kids won’t. Losing the material is a much greater loss to the world than whatever downstream affects piracy of that material may bring.
Listen, I agree with you completely but this is for the sake of lemmy.world at the moment, until .world gives an official policy on piracy, then we have to assume it’s a no for the sake of avoiding legal issues for the admins of the instance. And like I said, what you send to each other in DMs is entirely up to you.
Kinda disappointed by the article (Waterdeep, but no Myth Drannor, or Icewind Dale, or Thay? No Underdark?!!?!), so in protest I'm gonna post the OG D&D world - Greyhawk - the origin of Vecna and the late, great Gary Gygax's personal campaign setting.
Once heard a guy tell me about a game he was in. When a player didn’t show up the character turned into a gold coin. And when the player returned the coin would turn back into a character. During the game the party found out the BBEG was the one doing rituals to turn people into the coins.
The Chameleon and the Thousand faces were some of my favourites in concept because of their flexibility, though I never had a chance to play them. Gish builds in general were a lot of fun. There also was a Sand mage in a desert theme manual that was very interesting.
I always wanted to play a Malconvoker, but my group would not have been comfortable with it. It's a class whose core conceit is that they summon demons and make pacts with them that trick the demons into serving good causes. The demons are convinced that the Malconvoker is a traditional evil cultist or self-serving wizard, but it turns out all the favours they grant them are twisted to good ends and all the prices they demand get paid in unexpected ways that turn out to be not as costly as intended.
The key stat is charisma and bluff is the most vital of skills, of course.
This is the sort of build that makes me want WotC to drop onednd and start over without trying to jam in backwards compatibility. The system doesn’t have to be balanced to be fun, but things get increasingly busted as new stuff is added. At some point you just have to reset, though there’s a lot of value in the “PHB +1 splatbook” rule
As a DM, I ask my players at session zero, do you want me to fudge rolls to make the game more fun/interesting, or let the dice fall how they may? I’ve never had a table ask me to not fudge the dice.
In 22 years and close to probably 100 games that I have ran, not once have I been aske not to fudge. But also, I’ve not been asked to reveal when I do. Which is actually pretty rare. I’ve probably only fudged maybe a dozen rolls in that time.
That’s seriously crazy to me! Wow. It’s one of the things I would definitely say ‘do not do’ if a GM asked me that. Obviously I know everyone doesn’t feel as I do, I’m just surprised that in so long, no one has really cared.
I hate to say it, I think you might be in the minority here.
My take has always been that D&D isn’t an adversarial game - the DM isn’t trying to ‘win’, they’re just trying to keep things entertaining for the players.
The trouble with random is that it doesn’t always follow story beats, and doesn’t always feel fun.
A big boss not getting any hits in due to bad rolls deminishes the perceived threat, and the ultimate value of the victory. Stupid zombies that just won’t stay down despite the fact that everyone is now bored with them can easily be kept down.
As long as you know when to do it, it can be super useful for everyone.
As I mentioned, I understand there are different tables abd thoughts on this, and as such, different DM styles as well.
For me, while it’s the DMs job to help keep things entertaining (though that’s everyone’s job in my mind), it’s also the DMs job to be consistent in the world, since they essentially are the world. I personally don’t like fudging because half of the reason my tables play is for things to be determined by the dice, not the DM. I get that other tables play for story and are fine with fudging.
In my experience, this isn’t a thing you can discuss to try and convince people otherwise. This isn’t me trying to tell people fudging is bad and they should feel bad. I honestly just think after 22 years and hundreds of games, it’s crazy that no one cared about it. That’s all.
Jade Phoenix Mage was pretty cool. The capstone ability was that you literally explode, dealing a huge amount of damage to everything nearby and literally vaporising yourself. Then you reform on the same spot 1d6 rounds later completely healed of damage and most conditions, with all your gear.
I don’t have a fun and entertaining way, but I wanted to put in two cents anyway. My husband DMs frequently, and regularly has players miss sessions. Life gets in the way, whatever, no biggie. He always explains players being gone as a story that is told long after it happened - different people remember things slightly differently, sometimes they remember certain important figures being there and sometimes they don’t. They might even argue about it, ten years down the line. To him, every session is just another chapter in a story, told by imperfect people with imperfect memories.
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