/tg/ - Traditional Games

So I was gonna run a Fantasy Craft game but we ended up not playing anything for about 2 months and I got impatient (currently preparing for a pirate campaign wish me luck on that) but I had to make a religion *below* in order to properly account for the world and the alignments I never got to fully flesh it out but it's their if you wanna try and make it something.

{the email I sent to my GM to hear his opinion}

Okay so it's called "Personal Religion" the Idea being that their is no one god instead their are 4 universal beings who cannot directly effect the world but they can create gods for individual people. The beings are Good,Evil,Order and Chaos. They will create a god based on a persons Ideal but in their own image. For example: Justice.

Good would create a god who would focus on helping the individual man one crime at a time. So say you the god were to find a man in the streets getting mugged, He would intervene immediately in order to help that one man.

Evil would create a god who focused on personal justice dealing with the "eye for an eye" philosophy. So the god finds a man being mugged, he walks past without intervening because the mugger has done nothing to him.

Order would create a god who focused on helping the whole as opposed to the few. So he finds a man being mugged, he intervenes in order to gain information on the mugging ring that has plagued this village and stop it at it's core.

Chaos would create a god based on the idea that society is to blame for crime and the only way to truly stop it is by changing societies views. So the god finds a man being mugged, he doesn't intervene instead calls people to watch and see as the society they have created has summoned the scum of the earth and uses this crime as an example and starts political social change essentially becoming a radical activist.

>>219332

Man I been trying to get in a deadlands classic group for a long time but i dont know a site that supports it and there is not many people in person that I know would be up for that system.

I would say in your regards make smarter enemies. Don't have the enemies straight mob them but instead try to separate the party via terrain and have them try to dogpile a player while delaying help to the player. Make them sweat over it. If it is obvious straight up fights don't pose a threat play dirty and start hitting them from all angles. Also enemies in disguise. Make those that you paint as allies are actually working against them. Build an atmosphere of paranoia. Make it so they feel alone and isolated. Also make sure you don't take it too far. You are out to make it difficult but make it disheartening. That will turn players off as much as stuff being too easy.

So, I've been running a campaign for nearly two years now, focusing on the party solving many layers of a huge mystery that's been brewing for thousands of years. Mostly it's going great, everybody enjoys it, and the plot ever thickens.

However, I've run into one issue as time has gone on: Information decay. It's nobody's fault, real time is definitely advancing faster than in-game time, I get that people might forget things. We all have busy real lives etc. The problem is not knowing why players are wrong about the things they have wrong. If people are wrong because they have misinterpreted the far from complete pieces of the plot puzzle, I should let them go on being wrong, the pitfalls of grasping in the dark on incomplete information and unfounded theories is part of the intended challenge. But if they're wrong because their memory has faltered and/or I accidentally said the wrong thing, that should be rectified. But how do I know without chancing telling them things they shouldn't know, or indirectly cluing them in by quizzing them on a specific innocuous-seeming fact? I really want to avoid differentiating what the players know and what their characters do, that's another of my goals with this campaign. All custom races and monsters, weird magic system and theology, no need to worry about pretending you don't know exactly what monster X can do, for example. The player should have the same experience with it the character has.

Granted, I could take far, far more detailed notes than I already do, but if I wrote down everything any NPC said, that'd slow the games way down, and you know they'd notice that if I note what I narrated or an NPC said, it must be important even if it wasn't obvious at the time. Furthermore, I know players are somehow pulling info out of who knows where because the rest of the group has unanimously corrected players on some details they seemed sure I said but I was certain I never would have. Like getting the description of a character 100% wrong. I mean, it's one thing to slip on what an NPC said, another to provide a description completely contrary to such basic aspects as species. So I know that at the very least, I'm not the only one screwing things up.

So… I dunno, if I even have a question here… I guess, anybody have experience with proper info management regarding very long-running mystery campaigns? This is proving to be a significant, but unanticipated issue. I keep spoiling stuff by playing "what your character has actually learned so far" housekeeping.

>>220511

I don't think even mainstream TV has solved this problem yet.

> I keep spoiling stuff by playing "what your character has actually learned so far" housekeeping.

This sounds like how "Previously on [plot-driven tv show]" tends to spoil what happens in the episode. I think you're in good company with this being a problem for storytelling. To break it down, you have A) a lot of information that the players know, B) some of that information being important and relevant, C) the players are not supposed to know which information falls into that category, and D) the story unfolds over a long enough period of time that players won't retain the information very well. The result of this is that you can't remind players of relevant information without spoiling and you can't remind them of everything without wasting a lot of time.

Here's a suggestion, although it may not be all that useful to you at this point: try breaking down the story into plot threads, where each plot thread involves only a few characters and only a few key facts. If information belongs to a small group, it's much easier to remember it. You could have a very large number of plot threads, and as long as they're all fairly simple and the players only have to think about a few at any given time, it's easier to keep track. An adventure or "episode" can involve several plot threads, as long as it only handles 1-2 in a given "scene" (maybe 3 or even 4 for a climactic scene where everything comes together), and it'll still be easier for the players to remember what's happened. This sounds awkward and restrictive, but if you frequently conclude plot threads, you can re-incorporate characters and ideas from finished threads into new threads. The major downside is to this approach is that it does force the story to be somewhat compartmentalized, but everything's a trade-off. Like I said, might be a bit late in the game for you, but maybe you'll find this tip useful.

>>220720

You should try grabbing a system that actually forces roleplaying and knowing the character and developing it.

That, and going full sandbox. Maybe both at the sime time.

And maybe running a pre-sandbox funnel just for the sake of it.

>>220635

If nothing else, I'm pleasantly surprised by how precisely you grasp the problem.

>the players are not supposed to know which information is important and/or even correct

>can't remind players of relevant information without spoiling and you can't remind them of everything without wasting a lot of time

That's the problem exactly. For what it's worth, I have been trying to keep things compartmentalized into single adventures, all of which are at least meant to establish just one aspect of the story or further one plot thread. So yeah, there's TONS of stuff going on, all ultimately interlaced, but one adventure will be about demons, another about gods, another about elementals, another about political affairs, another about the most mysterious main badguys it all revolves around, etc.

However, players being players and all, even if each "episode," is meant to be focused, they tend to go off the rails into other areas, trigger things that are seemingly unrelated but logically would happen or be currently underway, etc. And since I have a personal pet peeve regarding storytelling that basically pauses or disregards everything not related to the current plot, I'm compelled to keep it all rolling if they wander into other plot threads. I LOVE an organic world where lots of stuff is happening, even stuff that isn't the current plot focus, and… that isn't helping. Quite frankly, I could make up nothing new and just let the players conclude everything they've initiated and that'd be several sessions alone. But they keep wandering ,and if they wander into plot thread J they weren't even supposed to have interacted with yet, I can't help but reveal it. Because I HATE HATE HATE it when stories feel like new plot elements didn't exist at all until the author finally brought them in officially. So the part of me that loves it when the new important thing had been referenced occasionally for the past two books MUST let them find what Senator so-and-so is doing now if the players choose to go that direction, even if he shouldn't be important yet. And yeah, though it does tickle some players that the glowing water I mentioned over a year ago is important now, (or bother them that they've learned a million other things but still don't know what was stolen from the train in their first adventure) it does make the info overload terrible.

I guess I should just guide them a little harder for the sake of story focus? Though that might be improving one thing while harming player freedom… I guess I could make more time-limited plots, the party voluntarily stays way more focused when it's "stop badguy before he kills those people or finishes his evil ritual" type adventures, as opposed to more open-ended challenges that aren't going anywhere like a ghost just waiting for them to find a translator. In any case, thanks for the advice.

>>220767

>I'm pleasantly surprised by how precisely you grasp the problem.

That's the first and most frequently botched step to solving a problem. I'd argue it's the most important step too.

I also prefer your storytelling method. To sum up the issue you have, you're trying to pull off an exceptionally difficult form of storytelling. If you were to have the players go through the sessions all at once in a binge, this would probably be less of an issue but that's almost certainly not feasible. You may be dealing with a problem that simply isn't practical to solve under the conditions you specified.

I'll point out though that my suggestion still applies in a sense. What I suggested is less about what information you keep and how you present it than how you organize it. Plot threads can certainly tie together (especially in ways the players can't see yet, because then it's easier to compartmentalize the threads) and you can bring up several at once. The key is to divide the information into the smallest logical parts.

> I guess I could make more time-limited plots

This definitely helps. I'm basically suggesting that you break the story up into the smallest chunks you can, resolve those chunks often, and if you want to bring back characters, items, plot devices, etc. then re-combine them into a new plot thread. If you have something on the backburner (which is fine) just prod the players a bit to push them back in that direction. Like that ghost waiting on a translator might contact them to ask for an update on progress. For stuff like this, also remember that you're working with an organic world. If the players take too long to solve a problem, maybe someone else will do it or the situation will otherwise change.

Here are some other suggestions you may find useful.

Keeping more specific notes might help. You might use a checklist of clues associated with each plot thread. Maybe have one sheet for each thread, and check off clues as they're discovered (faster than writing them down). Then you could leave space for notes, so that if the players miss part of a clue or come to weird conclusions, you can include that. If the players forget something relevant or get wrong what their characters remember, you could just remind them.

On the other hand, you could (and maybe should) put this responsibility on the players. You could give them some notebook paper or a small notebook and have them take their own notes (roleplayers would probably like the opportunity to write in character). Characters in a situation where they have to wrangle lots of information do tend to take actual notes. For bonus points, you could incorporate these into the story by having a sneaky character swipe the notes and/or read them to learn what the PCs know.

>I guess I should just guide them a little harder for the sake of story focus? Though that might be improving one thing while harming player freedom…

Dead on. This is a tradeoff. I can't give you any better advice than to suggest you do what works best for you and your group. Note though that this is a balance. You shouldn't pick one extreme or the other, and it would probably benefit you to oscillate between them a bit until you find the sweet spot for your combination of group, story, and system.

A compromise that might work well here is some kind of roll that could determine whether or not the PCs know a piece of information. If a player goes "do we know this already?" you could have them roll vs. a DC appropriate for the obscurity of the info. You could even have a random table for how memories might be distorted if the PC misses the roll by a small margin. Even if the results of the check contradict the story there are ways around that. If the character fails to recall something they should know, they just forgot about it. If they character knows something they haven't come across in gameplay, you could fluff it as something they overheard or stumbled across in their downtime.

Finally, you could just roll with it when the players forget or misremember events. Since you don't want to separate player and character knowledge, why not just let the players' naturally imperfect memories inform their characters' memories? They can have missing or wrong information both because of what they do or don't encounter and because they don't remember everything. This of course depends on things like game time vs. IRL time and the degree to which information is decaying.

>>220767

>>220884

I agree with what he said about notes. I sometimes have my players go over their notes separately or together. If they didn't think something was worth making a note of, then all they have is their memory, even if it's wrong. When their notes talk about their suspicions or conclusions or whatever, I leave them with whatever they've got. If their notes have a flat out wrong bit of factual information that they and encountered and noted, but just recorded incorrectly, I'll usually help them out. "Oh no, he actually said X, not Y."

>>220884

>>221178

Thanks to a helpful player, we've increased note taking. Plus, I went ahead and decided to just roll with it more when player memory fails. Some seem bound and determined to operate on certain assumptions and mental biases - if not just plain forgetting things - and fine, those mental foibles might as well be part of the characters. They're mostly playing fantasy hero versions of themselves anyway.

However, recently party cohesion has gotten… pretty bad. It was never great, but it's just about past the limits of suspension of disbelief. And fuzziness regarding "who exactly did what to who and when" has become an extra huge problem in terms of figuring out who killed the PC's trust and friendship first. However, no sense retreading the same questions about notes at this point.

So here's my new question: Is party cohesion normally so difficult? Was I just lucky when it was going smoothly in my previous experience? Coming up with plot scenarios to get the party in the same place with interdependent goals is easy enough, but the players seem to want to play personalities that just will not work together. I'd really, truly rather not, but is it unreasonable to ask them to just tweak the personalities to coexist better?

Alternately, the self-proclaimed party leader is absolutely terrible at unification and reconciliation, is it reasonable to expect him to bear the burden of the peace maker as long as he wants to be the benefits of being the leader? The player isn't a bad person at all, but I think his lack of people skills is about half the problem here. And even when I tell him what his character would need to do to smooth things over, simple stuff like apologizing without additional qualifications or treating party members more like equals than subordinates who must justify their presence via utility, he refuses. Not angrily or anything, he just doesn't think the character would admit he was wrong. Especially because the character clearly has never done any wrong at all, why isn't everyone instinctively following his perfectly logical directives? To be clear though, he's absolutely not That Guy, he just cannot read the room. And if absolutely nothing else, this party is falling apart if somebody doesn't bend. They ended the session fighting each other in front of the villains in their own evil layer.

Is it good form to usually have your players read the rulebooks before playing a new system?

>>228518

Yes. If they don't want to read the whole thing, tell them specific ranges of pages you need them to read (like character creation and how to play the game), and then you can go over the rest ingame.

Chances are they'll probably read the rest of it.

So I've started a new game, and I'm about to reveal to the party what they've been hired to do. It's been very hush hush so far but basically one kingdom has been getting it's ass handed to it by another kingdom because they somehow have some god being on their side.

I don't want to go into too much details but the party has been hired along with some other folks to help create a similar god construct to counter the other one.

And to do this they need to find powerful artifacts to power the process.

Now the important part is that the artifacts have to represent the aspects that they'd want the God to have (power, justice, stuff like that).

Now assuming the party doesn't go "you blasphemous fucks we'll find our own way to stop this god thing", they'll have to research places to find these amazing artifacts.

I've already thought of a few interesting locations, but it'd be great if some more creative people than me could pitch in with interesting set pieces to explore.

Specifically places with powerful artifacts.