Quick Stupid DM Trick Postgame Report

So I wrote a scenario (a set of linked potential scenarios, really--you couldn't do it any other way and still fit it in the sandbox) using every idea y'all gave me.

During the actual session we got through 17 of the ideas suggested (though, to be fair several people suggested overlapping things involving dogs or kids), leaving 23 waiting beneath the sand in one or other corner of the map.

Mandy fell victim to an Adam-Thornton-inspired magnet trap in the Flesh-Shadow bordello, though she survived on account of her being Yuan-Ti and Caroline Pierce taking off all her clothes before climbing down to get her.

After being set upon by evil children (courtesy a few people) wearing unheard-of-in-Vornheim-mystery-color pink (thanks to Erin Palette) Connie decided to take a balloon ride with cameraguy Darren over an ocean of mystery goo created in the mid-battle flood suggested by James Smith and caused by James Raggi's much-agonized-over moral-dilemma disintegrating scrollkid (I made her a Yuan-Ti with readable snakebook scaleskin, just to twist the knife a little more).

Over the open water, after spying an enigmatic sea structure topped by a floating pig (of whose true nature Infamous Jum knows more than my players) and surrounded by a cloud of flying somethings (nods to Matt and Jarrah), Darren lowered Connie ropewise down to the deck of a ship where slept Chris Weller's unusual ettin which she, being Connie, decided to wake up for no discernible reason.

Thus began a long and lamentable battle wherein Connie got royally fucked up and Darren ended up trying to use her dangling and flaming body as a sort of giant match to set the deck of the ship on fire which only ended in non-disaster on account of Darren managing to roll a 20 (only possible successful roll) to summon the will to slice his own leg open after it got fused to the balloon basket and then equally screwing the gods of probability on a charisma check to be all "Ah, well-fought old boy, let's end this and have a drink!" with the ettin and joining him in a well-earned tankard on the deck of the now-decimated ship. Without medication, Connie may yet die.

In other news: the dogs have begun to behave strangely--biting people, who then giggle, and Mandy and Caroline found a glass sphere with an aurotropic fish inside.

Stupid DM Trick Update

5 hours to game time...
So far so good...

Sexy Cladograms?

You know how they make these things which show the evolutionary family tree...

...of various species, or sometimes all species, or sometimes just a species and subspecies?

Anyway--they used to look awesome. Now I can't find any good ones.

Anybody know of any?

Stupid DM Tricks

Got a game tomorrow.

I'm going to sleep now.

In the morning I will write a D&D adventure incorporating every single idea you all leave in the comments between now and when I wake up in 8 hours. (noonish Pacific Standard Time).

Then, a few hours later, I will run the girls through it (unfilmed, so no royalties for good ideas). (and please don't be a douche and link to some long thing that's already all written out)

Anyway, have fun.

Good night.

_____

(8 hours later)

Times up. Stop posting. I am getting to work.

Omnipresent Inspiration Hypothesis Day...3 is it?

Just got back from NYC. The art got shown and sold and all that. At some point soon I may be able to settle back and resume the regular broadcasting schedule here.

Anyway: still testing the hypothesis.

So I just saw Zach Galifinakis interview Bruce Willis and made me think of this player-skill-test mechanism:

NPC (or magic talking box, or communed with deity or whatever) asks a question. If the PC hesitates, horrible things begin to happen.

Unlike the Python "Name/quest/favorite color" gimmick, it's not just a binary answer-or-get-fucked-over situation, it has to get progressively worse the longer the player fails to answer and the player has to know it.

Also, I wouldn't go with a riddle, I'd just go with something that you have to think about for a minute.

Like the cleric goes "Oh, Mighty Vrogthrot, guide me in my hour of need!"
Vrogthrot: "Then tell me, holyman, what is the finest meal you've eaten since you left the Brass Forests of Klee Ten Krhome?"
Cleric: "Uh..."
DM: "You lose a fingernail"
Cleric: "What?"
DM: "Tik tik tik. You lose another. Off your thumb."

And then if you lie, things of course get much worse.

Alright, there you go.

Actual Play Report. (With puppets.)

Swashbuckling

Been very busy on account of having an art show opening this week. Squeezed a game in with a gazillion local friends*.

It was a pretty simple concept but it went over well including with like 4 people who'd never played so I'll lay it out here in case anyone wants to steal it:

PC's are shipwrecked in a barren and icy land (with their gear). Lost, hungry etc. (or otherwise desperate)

They espy 8 ships navigating a nearby fjord. The flagship is in the middle and is flying a flag some may recognize as that of some famous pirate. 7 fearsome frigates surround him.

The 3 most obvious ways the PCs can access the ships are:
-across the ice
-through a wood to a cliff (where they can drop down onto a frigate)
-and by water (they have a not-terribly seaworthy lifeboat left).

Each frigate has a crew of 4-10 pirates on deck ready to repel intruders.

Belowdecks on each ship there's a microdungeon containing a fearsome captain, a treasure or otherwise weird thing, a trap or two, and whatever else your sense of verisimilitude demands be belowdecks on a ship. (I based the 7 fearsome captains on the 7 Dwarves and the 7 things in the 7 holds on the Bela Bartok version of Bluebeard but I only had a couple hours to prepare so you can probably do better than that. I had Bluebeard and Snow White celebrating their recent wedding on the flagship.)

My group had a sea elf (Mandy) who was able to do a little reconnaissance on the frigates, and so I let them pick which target to attack first based on what little she could glean (one ship was unnaturally quiet, one had a garden inside, one had a lake of tears inside, the others were hard to read).

The real fun comes from the fact that as soon as anyone in the convoy is alerted to the presence of the PCs, the frigates will begin to maneuver so that they:

-put as many frigates between the PCs and the flagship as possible, and
-save the treasures on all the allied frigates.

And of course the whole thing happens in a narrow fjord, allowing for all kinds of channel-blocking and sea-to-land-to-ice-to-sea shenanigans.

This makes the whole set-up into a moving dungeon with interchangeable pieces. For extra swashbuckledom, have the PCs be attacked from behind by wolves, arctic stirges, or polar worms during their initial attempts to make contact with the pirates.


__________
*to: New Yorkers reading this who weren't there: joethelwayer, etc.--I would've called you but it was already over-capacity--my sister brought a ton of friends who'd never played. We should hook up later.