Patreon Q&A
- Kush P. So, I have a problem with my current group, in that they never actually check or look around for things like traps or secrets in any of the dungeons/rooms they explore. This has led to them missing out on several cool items as well as just outright taking permanent damage and debuffs from traps. I even hint about the traps, sometimes very directly as well. How do I go about making sure they respect the traps and secrets and don't just run through rooms without a second thought?
- Aaron W. In Return of the Last Dungeon Master section on lazy campaign building there is a step for grim portents. How does this step mesh with only planning for the next session?
- Dorr D. Have your players consulted an NPC Sage to uncover truths (lore) in any of your games? There are so many ways to get information into the player's hands (heads). The real challenge is getting the players to simply investigate by "asking an expert" in-game. Like casting an adjuration type spell, praying to their god, or consulting a sage. What thoughts and suggestions do you have to make it obvious to players that there is information out there and they could consult someone like a sage.
- Aaron W. In Return of the Last Dungeon Master section on lazy campaign building there is a step for grim portents. How does this step mesh with only planning for the next session?
- Great Diviner Games. What section or subsections do you find are often missing in GM guides of ttrpgs you read? Or what is a subsection that you’ve seen in a book you wish others had?
- Marius H How do you calculate the difficulty of an encounter with multiple waves? Specifically, is each wave measured against the Lazy Encounter Benchmark, or the encounter as a whole with all the waves combined? I find that the PCs, after 5th level, can handle multiple near-deadly waves but it drags out the combat immensely. On the other hand, making the whole encounter, instead of each wave, near-deadly makes the combat run smoothly pacing-wise but each wave feels like a throw-away, easy combat. How do you deal with encounter difficulty in a multi-wave combat?
- Sam P. Hey Do you have any suggestions on how to use Forge of Foes to level up key recurring villains throughout the campaign, a la Heroic Monsters in Monstrous Menagerie 2? I really like the concept of EN Publishing’s heroic monster progression system in MM2, but I find it (a) a bit too crunchy for me and not super conducive to a lazy DM approach, and (b) limited in the recommended features that monsters get as they level (versus all of the trait and ability options in FoF’s Monster Toolkits).
- Chris H. Do you have any advice on running or managing games where time in the real world is the same as time in our fantasy RPG world? There are some RPGs like Five Torches Deep and Deathbringer where an hour in the game world is tied to one hour in the real world. I am considering using this approach for my Alien RPG convention scenario. The players have a limited amount of time to investigate something, and instead of keeping track of time, I am thinking that the next time I run the scenario just saying "You have three hours and enough O2 to complete your mission" and starting the timer (which works well for a 4 hour convention game).
- Robert S. I have a question about P.C. motivations , specifically as between 5e variants and Shadowdark. I am moving back to Shadowdark as a DM, but my recollection of playing and DMing OSR style games back when I started in ‘78 was our PCs really had no motivation beyond “getting loot.” It was the Players (not the PCs) that were motivated to get XP and level up (kill monsters and get loot.). I’ve read through the Shadowdark materials and backed it all and I don’t see much on this topic. In Shadowdark is this just a hand-waved thing where the Players just agree the PCs desire for loot overcomes the seemingly overwhelming odds they face? Or in your campaigns did you supply a more 5e type player motivation for your PCs?
- Melanie. I am having some problems with combat difficulty in DnD 5. I am playing LMoP with my players and some of the Monsters just hit really hard. I did dial down the damage of the bugbears a bit at the start, but now with the characters about to reach lvl 4 I feel like I shouldn't have to do that anymore. It's not like characters are dying but often after only one or two encounters my players feel the need to short or long rest because one or two characters just lost so many hitpoints they don't feel like they can risk taking another fight. It often feels like encounters are either super hard or super easy and the deciding factor is more the dice rolls than the encounter difficulty level.
- Axem. Your video discussing 1:1 games came a day after I ran my first ever! It went so well that I'm questioning what I'm doing wrong in my normal games.. It was a published adventure of middling quality, yet this was the first game of dozens that I felt I truly understood "the game". We were so engrossed in the world and our characters, everything flowed at the right pace with no sidebar or worries of stepping on another's toes.. Have you experienced the same with 1:1 games? How do you get to that intimacy, that 'flow state' in a larger group?
