Manipulating Destinies #15
Jan. 5th, 2019 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkI think I'm getting better at this DMing thing! I was very nervous about yesterday's session because I felt I was way underprepared (also because the players could have gone in a number of different directions), and I did have to improvise a lot but it worked out fine. My players decided to split the party, but I tried to switch between the groups often enough so that nobody got bored, even the one guy who decided to be sensible and thus did not get into trouble.
One thing I'm quite proud of in my set-up is that my players are genuinely wary of the city guard. In the previous campaign I played in, as well as the campaigns I watched/listened to, the police was rarely a big factor, but here the party spends a lot of time in one city and the city guard is mostly competent, and half the party got into trouble and got an official reprimand in the first session and now have to regularly check in with their parole officer. It's harder to lie to the guard if they have truth and mind-reading spells :P So now every once in a while the party debates doing something and then decides against it because it would be illegal, which means many things are more challenging, which is great. The side-effect is that I constantly have to think about which things/spells are legal or not, and sometimes I almost forget (I got so used to Detect Thoughts that I almost forgot that using it without license and warning is definitely not allowed – to be fair my players could easily have guessed that and I don't have to warn them – so now they have to hope their parole officer doesn't find out…)
I thought that would be it, as far as complications with the guard go, because they were being careful. Then yesterday one of the rogues tried to break into a suspect's house, failed, and instead of wondering if there might be an Alarm or something similar she hung around for fifteen more minutes trying to figure out a way in. And when the city guard arrived they would have just asked her if she'd seen anything suspicious, if she hadn't when asked what she was doing here replied that she was looking for the very house the guard knew someone had just tried to break into. So they wanted to interrogate her as a witness at the guard station, but she remembered the truth and mind-reading spells and freaked out and ran away. She did escape but she wasn't disguised so now the city guard is looking her. And the party has a friendly contact with the city guard but now that just means he'll definitely recognize her and know who her associates are. *facepalm* That wasn't the plan. At least she didn't actually manage to break in, and she wasn't planning to steal anything just to look for information, but there will still be consequences.
(I wonder if the party will think to ask the Thieves' Guild for help with that. They decided to ask the Guild for help next time, even though they hate them, because they feel like they're stuck with their investigation – they found a person likely part of the kidnapping but she escaped – so now I have to decide what the Thieves' Guild knows, and is willing to share. Also I remembered that I was so wrapped up in their current quest that I forgot to leave more hints about the bigger plot in the background, I'll have to pay more attention to that.)
By the way, I invented a house rule that I'm very fond of by now: There are multiple people who could and conceivably might Scry on the party, but if I asked them for Will saves each time the players would know and it's hard to ignore that kind of meta knowledge. So now at the beginning of each session I ask every player to give me five Will saves for their character and then use these when necessary. It works as intended and is very convenient.
Do you have any favorite house rules?
One thing I'm quite proud of in my set-up is that my players are genuinely wary of the city guard. In the previous campaign I played in, as well as the campaigns I watched/listened to, the police was rarely a big factor, but here the party spends a lot of time in one city and the city guard is mostly competent, and half the party got into trouble and got an official reprimand in the first session and now have to regularly check in with their parole officer. It's harder to lie to the guard if they have truth and mind-reading spells :P So now every once in a while the party debates doing something and then decides against it because it would be illegal, which means many things are more challenging, which is great. The side-effect is that I constantly have to think about which things/spells are legal or not, and sometimes I almost forget (I got so used to Detect Thoughts that I almost forgot that using it without license and warning is definitely not allowed – to be fair my players could easily have guessed that and I don't have to warn them – so now they have to hope their parole officer doesn't find out…)
I thought that would be it, as far as complications with the guard go, because they were being careful. Then yesterday one of the rogues tried to break into a suspect's house, failed, and instead of wondering if there might be an Alarm or something similar she hung around for fifteen more minutes trying to figure out a way in. And when the city guard arrived they would have just asked her if she'd seen anything suspicious, if she hadn't when asked what she was doing here replied that she was looking for the very house the guard knew someone had just tried to break into. So they wanted to interrogate her as a witness at the guard station, but she remembered the truth and mind-reading spells and freaked out and ran away. She did escape but she wasn't disguised so now the city guard is looking her. And the party has a friendly contact with the city guard but now that just means he'll definitely recognize her and know who her associates are. *facepalm* That wasn't the plan. At least she didn't actually manage to break in, and she wasn't planning to steal anything just to look for information, but there will still be consequences.
(I wonder if the party will think to ask the Thieves' Guild for help with that. They decided to ask the Guild for help next time, even though they hate them, because they feel like they're stuck with their investigation – they found a person likely part of the kidnapping but she escaped – so now I have to decide what the Thieves' Guild knows, and is willing to share. Also I remembered that I was so wrapped up in their current quest that I forgot to leave more hints about the bigger plot in the background, I'll have to pay more attention to that.)
By the way, I invented a house rule that I'm very fond of by now: There are multiple people who could and conceivably might Scry on the party, but if I asked them for Will saves each time the players would know and it's hard to ignore that kind of meta knowledge. So now at the beginning of each session I ask every player to give me five Will saves for their character and then use these when necessary. It works as intended and is very convenient.
Do you have any favorite house rules?
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Date: 2019-01-05 03:21 pm (UTC)I haven't really been playing long enough to have very many house rules, but we stole the one from Critical Role that drinking a potion is a bonus action, but feeding one to someone else is still an action. It just feels like it makes things flow a lot better, and I'm not out here to kill my players.
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Date: 2019-01-05 03:45 pm (UTC)Hm, tips about the city watch... I think in my case it made a big difference to make it clear that the city watch is not "just" fighters, but that they have access to magic, both items and casters. They use Zone of Truth and Detect Thoughts for interrogations, they use Scrying and Locate Object to find things/people, they use things like tanglefoot bags etc. to stop people from escaping, they are specifically prepared to go up against spellcasters with Silence etc. and in some cases even small AMFs and golems. They also have the authority to get nearly anyone's assistance, from the magic university to the guilds to the tax registry to guards in other cities.
And of course eventually the question becomes how their jail is secured, but we haven't gotten that far yet ^^
Good luck with your campaign! "Dragon Heist" sounds very promising :)
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Date: 2019-01-06 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-06 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-07 06:09 pm (UTC)I think my favorite house rule is my modified Ranger with Beast Companion rules. It has really balanced the game for our dear ranger, whose beast companion otherwise would have been more of a hindrance than a help. Hoping it continues to balance as they read double-digit levels!
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Date: 2019-01-07 09:37 pm (UTC)Surprises can lead to the best twists ^^ what happened?
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Date: 2019-01-09 08:44 pm (UTC)And oh boy, our poor little gnome druid messed up Big Time in the most delightful of ways the session before last. Therefore, last session the game went completely off the rails and it was beautiful. The group (a charismatic tiefling rogue disguised as a human, a naive dwarf bard, a jaded dwarf cleric, and said gnome druid whose mentor is a werebear so her social skills are...lacking, to put it simply) have been together for quite a while now. They've managed to (almost) all get branded as sacrifices for a crazy demon cult, but they've moved past that and just saved a town from a green hag jousting for a place in a hag coven. That's great news, right? Right! They're all set for a harvest festival in a town mostly populated by halflings (= extra excellent food) and they're heroes!
But...see, they got help against the hag from an NPC who asked them to not tell anyone he was helping them. This was Very Important to him. He and his wife own the local magic shop and he's always dressed from head-to-toe, doesn't even show his face or hands, and he's got some powerful magic. It stands to reason he's probably looking to hide himself and whatever he is from basically everyone. Druid gnome of course happens to blurt out that the NPC in question had helped them, to the _one_ other NPC that it would matter if she told (a very powerful arch druid). So, instead of the group getting to enjoy a "shopping episode" of a harvest festival and getting to plan whatever they'll be doing next, the dwarf bard stumbles upon the NPC and his wife scrambling to pack up their magic shop and get out of dodge. We spent 4 hours on the party trying to figure out if they should stop or aid the magic shop couple, managed to make it so the husband of the pair fled the town to protect his wife, and now the heart-broken and angry wife has guilt-tripped them into helping her find him. So yeah, that's where this campaign is heading at the moment.
Like, I knew the possibility of the arch druid finding out was there, but it was so minimal it took me by surprise when it actually went down XD I'd though the gnome druid might spill the secret to someone, maybe have the wife yell at her husband a bit for taking such risks, and yet...yeah, D&D is fun~!
(The best part is that the magic shop NPCs are two characters I pretty much improvised on the spot since the party really wanted a magic shop. All conflict and tragic backstory with those two I simply made up to make sense of why this itty-bitty town in the middle of nowhere would have a magic shop. Aaaand now they're the current main quest XD)
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Date: 2019-01-09 09:21 pm (UTC)Not sure what the most random/unexpected development was so far, but last session I had to improvise a brothel on the spot because a player wanted to hide there from the city guard, and afterwards one of the players complimented me on the brothel description and asked if I'd had that prepared. Nope, not where I had expected them to go ^^
I also forgot to decide what job the evil ex-cultist high-level Beguiler has so now she's a seamstress, and I still have to figure out why that cover identity. I mean, you don't have to be a great craftsman if you can talk people into buying your stuff regardless, so maybe it was just her hobby. (One of her co-conspirators is an actress, idk why I didn't make her the Beguiler. Still haven't decided on her class.)
Different laws simultaneously in the same country is a great idea :D I don't think it works in the city where they are, with all the magic students around they have an incentive to have clear guidelines for what's allowed, but there are additional rules sometimes, I could use them more. I've only used that once so far, when they looted the tomb of an ancient dwarven king and got some very fancy jewels, and long story short they can sell them for money if they want but there's a chance of descendants of that dwarven clan recognizing them and being very unhappy about it.
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Date: 2019-01-10 08:20 pm (UTC)Kippe and Ella sprung from me reading the "drow favored consort" info in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes the day before needing to improve the shopkeeper(s). The drow are the only group of people anywhere near Schillefeld with any inclination towards magic, so I had to think up a way to motivate a drow setting up a magic shop in a small mostly-halfling-partly-human town in an empire that the drow generally don't get along with. Kippe showed magical talent young and was on his way "up" in drow society, courted by a pretty powerful drow priestess, when he more or less stumbles upon Ella. They became BFFs and soon fell in love = time to get out of dodge. Sadly, the priestess Kippe ditched to marry Ella (which they did in accordance with the Moonweaver - i.e. just the two of them, no law or priest involved) is noooot happy about being snubbed + Kippe using magic "for the human empire" is a big no-no for most drow, so...yeah. Kippe and Ella have moved several times since leaving the Underdark and Kippe never takes off his haed-to-toe disguise unless in their warded bedroom + he doesn't speak outside of their own morse-code-ish language (that's a spell/curse thing going on with him, the priestess, and all forms of language, even the more common sign languages).
In short I gave these two NPCs waaaay too much backstory and mystery, and my players couldn't help but poke at it XD
Well done you! Improvising environments is super challenging, so it sounds like you did it excellently when it left an impression like that on your player :D Evil Villain with a hobby sounds like a great idea! And having the actress not be the Beguiler actually sounds super to me - makes it possible to set up a "red herring" for the players once they get a glimpse of what they're facing, seeing as an actress would be a more "logical" choice than a seamstress. Sounds like it could grow an interesting dynamic between both the conspirators and the villains vs players :)
Oh dear, never mess with ancient kings and their bling! And yeah, different laws within the same city would likely get super confusing (though could be fun to explore...darn, I might have to do this now, somehow).