It really can be like night and day. My cat was so incredibly stressed out when we brought her home that she kept “fawning” all over us for the first two weeks. Lots of excessive side rubs and a general clingyness to every interaction. She needed constant touch.
After that she began to settle in and became much more herself: playful, independent, and only sometimes in the mood for a lap or a cuddle.
No idea. Not even the most meta-gaming-est members of that party had a workaround.
Still, as a DM, it’s far too tempting to give a little bit of this away and join in on the hijinks.
Me: You find yourselves in a hidden library. On one shelf you see a series of tomes named “How Not to be Seen”, volumes I-XX.
Newbie Fighter: Oh sweet, those look handy.
Seasoned Rogue: Aw fuck. NOBODY TOUCH NOTHIN’!
Ten minutes later:
Cats do enjoy a violent spectacle, but he is most definitely going to try and fight the beyblade himself. Because orange.
Not really, at least, not anymore.
There are some people that come to RPGs to escape reality and man, do they need it. D&D holds out a promise of agency, power, and control, in a fantasy setting free from real consequences. Provided a player lacks these things in real life, they can cling to it like a life-preserver. Then, take any of that away - as a DM must do - and things can get ugly.
I really want to say that there’s a known and practiced way to get people like this some real help, like a free hotline or website. After all, if it’s going to come up, this is the place it’s going to happen. Sadly, I know of no such resource.
Once, I played at a table where we did an x-mas themed one-off.
Fast-forward to the climax of the session where we face off against an evil santa. As a bard, I had to get very creative.
Me: Describe him for us. Is he wearing the full santa claus getup?
DM: Of course!
Me: Including the red hat and the big 'ol belt-buckle around his big 'ol belly?
DM: Who do you take me for? He’s the spitting image of St. Nick.
Me: Great! I cast heat metal on the belt buckle.
DM: …
DM:
Could be why they’re at the vet.
Agreed. It’s at this point I just hand the players the sheet-music for Yakkity Sax.
NGL, as a DM, multiple players with backstabbing abilities are a big problem to overcome. The odds begin to stack up in favor of the party. You start looking for monsters with the awareness of a beholder, but just a tad less lethal.
Then the mage starts hurling fireballs to remind you that you also need more fireproof options.
In light of that, the bigger problem is that the door here opens into the bathroom. If a person collapses up against that door - especially if they are of the larger persuasion - you’re not getting them out.
Crazy part is, that’s not the most unsettling and/or unhinged promo he did.
Okay DM, I’m going to snort a line and monologue for a few minutes to get the party pumped up.
I think everyone tries fielding a commoner or “normal” person at least once.
My version was a nobleman’s son that just “wanted to try this adventuring thing out.” He wound up bankrolling the entire campaign, right up until he died in the second encounter.
There’s also Brother Cadfael: a crime-solving sleuth from the 12th century. A high Wisdom stat is exactly what the Cleric class needs, so it would work out pretty well.
A druid who got involved because they’re the party’s weed dealer.
Isn’t that the plot of Dazed and Confused?
A werewolf who doesn’t believe in the moon.
This would play out as an unintentional (or intentional) allegory for addiction, and the denial that masks it. The party would very likely form an intervention of some sort. I mean, they’d have to. After the third werewolf attack or so, it starts to become a real problem.
I’m a fan of the Palladium games
Ah, yes. The system where you need multiple "session 0"s to get those character sheets in order. Also, there’s a suspicious lack of Robotech in that list. ;)
but switching over to turtles once the Kickstarter new versions arrive
Wait, what? Palladium games got in on the reboot craze too?!
I was introduced to flyweight RPGs a few years back and I absolutely love what they can do in the hands of a creative group.
Roll for Shoes is about as minimal as it gets. You will need one D6, and something to track player inventory. The game world is best started by the GM in the abstract, letting the players fill in the world’s details through creative use of questions that prompt die rolls. This is fantastic for players that want to stretch their improv skills.
Lasers & Feelings has a tad more structure. Everyone has exactly one stat that sits on a spectrum of “lasers” to “feelings”. The difficulty of challenges in the game sit on the same spectrum. Depending on the nature of the challenge and what the player’s stat is, a single D6 roll decides the outcome. Everything else is role-playing in what is encouraged to be a Trek-like setting.
In my experience, Roll for Shoes usually turns into a cartoon-esque “let’s see what else is in my backpack” affair, that usually ends with everything on fire (because of course it does). Lasers & Feelings typically devolves into Lower Decks. All of these are positives in my book - I’d play again in a heartbeat.
It’s sister setting, Earthdawn, also had a lot going for it on top of the typical D&D formula. Weaving, instead of casting magic, was a much more involved process for the player/character which did a lot to ground such awesome power. At the same time, fighters of all stripes were also more or less magic users, which unified the whole rule system in a nice way. The setting itself was a fantasy post-apocalypse, troubled by evil horrors that dominated the landscape in the centuries before. In fact, much of the lore was intertwined with how people survived those times.
And like Shadowrun, there were lots of dice thanks to the “step table” system. It could be a huge PITA to sum all the rolls on high steps, but then when else do you get to roll entire fists full of dice all at once?
As a totally cheap-ass DM, my recommendation is to find some printable DnD tokens that you like and glue them to things like bottle-caps, or small round bits of wood (like chunks off of a dowel from the hardware store). There are a bunch around. If you want to splurge, take the bits you want somewhere you can pay for a quality color printout.
Personally, I’m a fan of these generic tokens by “Acquitt”. They’re useful for every encounter: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FV7egJC87nsVUTybGs5E3DwvRihmz6KduUfniSJk6Fec.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D57f11a74865814f31c7236adb1555a43529ca355
I glued these to some sculpey discs of the same color. I also used transparent binder sleeves for HP tracker sheets, so I could use dry-erase marker. Lastly, my battle map was a large (but cheap) poster frame with 1" grid paper inside1. This let me use those dry-erase markers to draw terrain.
1. For more thrift, some wrapping paper brands print a barely visible 1" grid on the backside. Some quality time with a ruler and pen can turn that into something useful.
Yup. Same goes for temp/hunger/thirst. Unless the environment creates a situation that directly challenges that, like arctic conditions, desert, underwater, extended covert ops etc., these things do not serve the story and get in the way.
Plus, a bag of holding neatly side-steps a lot of encumbrance problems and I firmly believe that’s why it’s been a part of D&D lore since at least 2nd ed.
Meanwhile, if the table wants to go deep simulation on all this, the rules are there for that. But I wish everyone good luck with fighting monsters up close in a cave where weapons bigger than daggers are too large to swing, and heavy armor too bulky to be practical.