There’s no grid in the sky, though
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sirblastalot@ttrpg.networktoAsk Game Masters@ttrpg.network•Making enemies harder/more dangerousEnglish0·4 days ago-
Deplete their resources by putting the fight at the end of a dungeon or other chain of different kinds of encounters
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Higher level monsters
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Smart enemies. Sit down and think about what they do as if you were playing them in someone else’s game. Dumb dragons land and get murdered, smart dragons stay in the air, flame the party, and have been abusing contingency spells for the last millennium.
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Stakes other than player death. Sure we can kill these bandits, but can we do it before they get away with the orphanage fund? What if they take hostages? What are we going to do about all these fires they set on the way in?
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Make it feel more dangerous than it is by use of good description. A hippo is a relatively low level monster, but when that one player that knows how scary they are IRL realizes what you’re describing, they will crap their pants.
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sirblastalot@ttrpg.networkto TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name@lemmy.world•Cmd. Riker chooses who has to follow uniform code apparently2·9 days agoI only recall seeing the hallway bunks in Lower Decks, and I think that was intended as a joke.
sirblastalot@ttrpg.networkMto rpg@ttrpg.network•Domain play experiences & lessons learned0·9 days agoWhat is a “domain game”?
sirblastalot@ttrpg.networkto TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name@lemmy.world•No civil rights infringements with this handsome investigator!3·11 days agoI don’t think “reasoning” is the right perspective to examine Picard’s comment from. He’s not making a debate point, Picard is politely telling Ralph that he’s acting like an assclown and that it WILL stop.
sirblastalot@ttrpg.networkto RPGMemes @ttrpg.network•The deathly gaze passes over all of you...0·22 days agoThe DM can not metagame, definitionally
sirblastalot@ttrpg.networkto RPGMemes @ttrpg.network•My Lexicon has a substanard inventory of expressions0·1 month agoThe secret to writing (or playing) characters that are smarter than you are is that you can take your time coming up with what they do. Maybe in-game your character has a razor wit and would have a snappy comeback for any situation. Out of game you’ve got a list of pre-prepared retorts you can bust out as needed.
So I guess that’s actually several questions, and they each have different answers.
Why does combat feature heavily in D&D? It doesn’t. Or at least, not necessarily. How much or little it features is dependent on your DM.
Ok, so why has it historically been featured heavily? Because of D&D’s lineage. The game evolved mechanically from wargames, where combat was the whole thing, and thematically from works like Conan the Barbarian and Tolkein, where fighting monsters featured prominently.
Why so many types of monsters, then, if works like The Hobbit only had a half dozen or so? Because The Hobbit is a single story, whereas D&D is a framework for creating lots of stories. Maybe one short campaign or a campaign arc has as many monsters as a Tolkein story, but then you go on to the next arc, the next campaign, and you need something new. You can obviously recycle lots; orc bandits are different from orc soldiers are different from orc cultists. But with (tens of?) thousands of games going on continuously, year after year, there’s always a demand for new content to slot in, and monster design is often a handy thing for DMs to outsource. Hence, there are a lot of kinds of monster because there is demand for them.
Are you asking why there are so many kinds of monsters, or why monsters appear so frequently in the campaigns you’ve played in?
sirblastalot@ttrpg.networkto TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name@lemmy.world•Star Trek: Strange New Enterprise0·2 months agoI want to see a Trek episode shot like one of those Eddie Murphy films where he plays all the characters, using Jeffrey Combs
Looking good! Those pirates have a pretty sweet setup!
sirblastalot@ttrpg.networkMto rpg@ttrpg.network•Which are (some of) your favourites GM-tips/technique ? And how do you use-them in your games ?0·4 months agoSometimes that can be fun, but only if everyone at the table is onboard for a wild tangent. If the other players are bored as shit while the special snowflake starts a unicorn breeding operation, it’s time to use that No. And you, the DM, are included in that too; if your players want to drag you off to write every book in the library and that’s not fun for you, you have the right to say “hey maybe you should play the game I made for you instead.”
Fantasy Dexter. Actually loves murder, but instead just gets their kicks vicariously by stealing the memories of murderers
sirblastalot@ttrpg.networkto Risa@startrek.website•Why did they put eyeliner on evil Kirk 😳English0·1 year agoQueercoding villains to make them seem dangerous and deviant to the people of the time (and those that are still stuck in that time). Admittedly, the people making that decision probably weren’t conscious of that being why they thought eyeliner made him look villainous.
If you actually have to use that much math more than once in a blue moon, you’re doing it wrong.