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Soliciting DM advice + PnP system recommendations

hello friend

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'Sup nerds.

So the story is this: I live in a place where it's next to impossible to find anyone above the age of sixteen to play PnP with (youth clubs and shit). I actually managed to assemble a group of 7-8 people, mostly random people I met at a party, but as I wasn't really interested in DMing (rather be a player) and no one else had much familiarity to speak of with any systems we just had a couple of sessions with some super-barebones systems run by a dude who had no idea what he was doing. This is sometime last year.

A renewed interest in PnP is currently burgeoning amongst some friends and I've been wondering whether I should just bite the bullet and run them through a campaign. Thing is, I don't want to spend ages and ages in preparation for each session (I totally will though), and I only have experience with DnD 3.5 anyway - which is horribly broken.

I intend to run a mid-to-low-magic fantasy campaign with kind of a DnD vibe, maybe with a little bit of horror thrown in. So I need a system that's easy for PnP n00bz to pick up, and I need it to be something that offers some good templates for quickly/semi-quickly creating and modifying monsters/items/classes. With all relevant resources either freely available or easy to find on the seven seas.

Also, got any advice for first time DMs? Give me all your advice. Gib
 

Havoc

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Go with DnD 5.0. It's made for beginners. No complexity. Easy to use.
 

Space Insect

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D&D 5.0 would probably be your best option unless these friends are so retarded that they would need 4.0.
You could probably use 3.5 if you trust your friends not to look up all the brokenness and care enough to delve through splat books and the like.
 

Night Goat

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I prefer Pathfinder because I like the complexity and variety of it, but it's even more broken than 3.5 was. 5e is much better for new players.
 

SmartCheetah

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Warhammer 2nd ED was very easy for noobs to pick up, but keep in mind that you will probably have to change and introduce quite a few rules (vanilla combat sucks)
 

Neanderthal

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Well I don't know if its up your alley, cause its broken as well, but first an second edition AD&D are simple, cheap an quick to get familiar wi. First time GMing I wouldn't worry about rulesets failings, just have fun and build on it from there.

Tips:
  • Best advice I can gi you is that practise makes perfect, you'll fuck up as a GM but you'll get better, an rules'll fall into place.
  • Don't worry when players deviate from your plan or story, run wi it an think about how you can tie it in, but be prepared for players to create their own stories through doing stupid shit.
  • Most important I think is start small, as a starter GM I crafted fuckhuge maps, nations, cultures an all this shit but i've found best settings are small, detailed, wi masses o backstory and personal motivations for players.
  • Ask players what backgrounds they want, whether they know anybody in local are, whether they were born here, note this down and use it against em somehow.
  • If you can't find a rule an you want to make a quick decision to keep gameplay rolling, just fifty/fifty it on a d100, bonus or penalty depending on character.
  • Remember failure is good, funny an interesting, CRPGs are often boring because they've forgot this, fuckups can really make a play session.
  • Don't hide your dice rolls, be fair as players are to you an roll wi what dice gi you, this is fucking fun.
  • Be prepared for players who are twats, fact o life.
 

Smashing Axe

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Games designed around the players creating certain aspects of the world's lore and driving the plot work well. Try Burning Wheel, there's a bit of a learning curve but once you get your head around most of the mechanics the game works well and isn't as intensive or demanding in regards to GM prep compared to something like D&D where you need to have much more pre-planned. It really depends how your players like to play though.


Example of a game. In practice there's much less PvP, but notice how little the GM had to actually do for things to happen.

Also GMing with 7-8 players is going to be shit. Cull the herd. That's too much to do well.
 

Xathrodox86

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Word of advice: listen to your players but don't let them smother you with retarded ideas and "I wanna be superspeshul" bullshit. A good GM needs to find the right ammount of balance and inner harmony to be an effective game runner.
 
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Here's the thing. DnD isn't the best system around, by a long shot. But it's so much more culturally embedded than the others, that new players are far more likely to have an intuitive understanding of the systems based on computer games, or simply shit they've read and ignored over the years.

Besides, if you've got a group who is new to PnP, and interested in starting, then let's face it - DnD is the one they all really want to play. They might guess that there are other, better, systems - after all, the leading name brand is rarely the best, especially when its fame is really based upon stuff from decades ago, and they probably realise that - but even so, it's still going to be the one that they're thinking of when they decide they want to give PnP a try. Starting them off on a better system is like introducing a first-time comic reader to some non-canon, off-beat/dark-and-gritty version of Superman just because it's also the best Superman. They know damn well that the most wellknown version probably isn't the best version of the character. But when they decided to give comics a try, they were thinking of the classic Superman with the 'truth, justice and the American way', 50s spit-curl, circus strongman outfit, puns, and panto-villains, and giving them something else just makes them feel like you tricked them into revealing a part of their inner child just so you could stomp on it.
 
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Word of advice: listen to your players but don't let them smother you with retarded ideas and "I wanna be superspeshul" bullshit. A good GM needs to find the right ammount of balance and inner harmony to be an effective game runner.

Totally correct and very important - but also don't go the other way and design unreasonably hard scenarios just so you can have fun fucking with them, or to make them jump the hoops that you've set out in the way you want. You're having fun with them. DM'g may involve facilitating some war-gaming, but it isn't an asymmetric DM v the players war-game. If you start thinking of it in terms of you being the 'opposing team' or the 'challenge' that the players have to beat, instead of the guy who facilitates those challenges, it won't be nearly as fun for the players as it is for you. And then they'll stop playing, and it won't be fun for you either.
 

Quatlo

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My best advice is to turn the "AI" on the NPC's, both friendly and enemies and monsters.
Don't make them stand in place and autoattack, make them use items, use cover or higher ground for their advantage, make them run away if they start losing, set up simple traps like snares, let them sneak in bushes and wait for players to be tired, etc. If players are going to wipe out the goblin camp goblins could TRY something sneaky and cunning to turn the battle in their favour, maybe they should try to poison the players water, or steal their food?
Don't design every encounter in a way "Room A: 5 kobolds, Room B: 6 kobolds" Think of a way how and why they live there, so they can move around and carry on their daily lives instead of standing in place waiting to be aggroed by players.
Give every "bigger" npc 2-3 bullet point goals he will try to follow to create a feeling of living and developing npc's.

Oh, and dont overdesign, it causes you to railroad players even if you don't want to, and its awful. If some shit you prepared doesn't fit just throw it into the "For use later on" box in your brain and use it when you are out of ideas
 

hello friend

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I prefer Pathfinder because I like the complexity and variety of it, but it's even more broken than 3.5 was.
That's one of the things I really like about 3.5, too. Tons of variety. Being as broken as it is, you can take completely off-the-wall concepts and still make it work as long as you're not in a party of powergamers. I play PnP for the RP experience, but I was born under a munchkin star - DnD 3.5 is great for that the first 10 lvls or so, but it starts to get ridiculous after that. The illusion shatters.
Games designed around the players creating certain aspects of the world's lore and driving the plot work well. Try Burning Wheel, there's a bit of a learning curve but once you get your head around most of the mechanics the game works well and isn't as intensive or demanding in regards to GM prep compared to something like D&D where you need to have much more pre-planned. It really depends how your players like to play though.


Example of a game. In practice there's much less PvP, but notice how little the GM had to actually do for things to happen.

Also GMing with 7-8 players is going to be shit. Cull the herd. That's too much to do well.

Burning Wheel looks like it was designed by an angry DM to force people to roleplay.

The large group is already dead and gone. This would be with different people, around 3-5 players.

Here's the thing. DnD isn't the best system around, by a long shot. But it's so much more culturally embedded than the others, that new players are far more likely to have an intuitive understanding of the systems based on computer games, or simply shit they've read and ignored over the years.

Besides, if you've got a group who is new to PnP, and interested in starting, then let's face it - DnD is the one they all really want to play. They might guess that there are other, better, systems - after all, the leading name brand is rarely the best, especially when its fame is really based upon stuff from decades ago, and they probably realise that - but even so, it's still going to be the one that they're thinking of when they decide they want to give PnP a try. Starting them off on a better system is like introducing a first-time comic reader to some non-canon, off-beat/dark-and-gritty version of Superman just because it's also the best Superman. They know damn well that the most wellknown version probably isn't the best version of the character. But when they decided to give comics a try, they were thinking of the classic Superman with the 'truth, justice and the American way', 50s spit-curl, circus strongman outfit, puns, and panto-villains, and giving them something else just makes them feel like you tricked them into revealing a part of their inner child just so you could stomp on it.
Good point, and very true.
Go with DnD 5.0. It's made for beginners. No complexity. Easy to use.

Well I don't know if its up your alley, cause its broken as well, but first an second edition AD&D are simple, cheap an quick to get familiar wi.
I always like what I saw of ADnD. Prolly going to use that or 5thE.

The advantage/disadvantage mechanic is pretty interesting. Simple and elegant, albeit a bit easy to game. Setting yourself up to have advantage on A LOT of rolls should be a piece of cake.

How are things on the template front? Could go a long way toward mitigating inexperience in a DM. If you're creating new creatures it's easy to get the balance wrong. I'd love something like tables of sample abilities in a kind of modular mix-n-match with point values that add up to challenge rating suggestions or smth; Systems for creature advancement, guidelines for how to come up with reasonable DCs for whatever comes up, determining good equipment costs for unique items - that sort of thing. Maybe a good template for creating/modifying player races - I'm not going to allow retarded shit like Draconians and Aasimar in my game, could be interesting to replace it with something else.

Any dungeon design tips? Clever traps, satisfying rewards, cool items? Interesting intrigue situations? Anything helps.

I don't think railroading will be that much a problem. I'm planning to develop a bunch of adventure hooks and drop them in as background noise, try to create a semi-living world of multiple developing situations to make it easy for the party to find something to do - but I want to give players full freedom, so I need to prepare as much as possible for winging it a lot.
 

Quatlo

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How are things on the template front? Could go a long way toward mitigating inexperience in a DM.
I played only one game of 5e and it was... meh, so I cant help you with resources.
If you decide to go with 3,5e pathfinder wiki (provided it works cuz it goes down from time to time for a couple of hours) has a fuckton of stuff you are looking for.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering
Its in the books too but its easier for me to do that on a computer. As for the monster CR I just reskin enemy npcs as something else of comparable power. If I cant find stats for Orc Warrior Level 4 I just look for any humanoid warrior level 4, maybe increase his strength and con a little, give him some "orc" traits/feats and voila, you get a guy on the fly in 10 seconds.
 

Alchemist

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Sounds like you're on the right track and in the right mindset (being ready to "wing it"). Key advice: expect the players to do things you never expected. So be open to the fact they might not take certain plot hooks, and do something completely random. Have some backup stuff prepared you could throw in "on the fly". Some stock locations, dungeons, merchants, town NPCs, interesting situations, etc. Some good resources to cook up this sort of thing:
System-wise I think both AD&D and 5E are good choices. They are relatively easy to get a handle on and quick to prep for. AD&D (my personal choice) is a bit more brutal and deadly. Depends on what you and your players enjoy. Some might not want their 2 HP 1st-level magic-user to die instantly from a rat bite. If they play AD&D they have to be open to the fact that their special snowflake character might not survive very long.

By the way, if you're going to learn 1st edition AD&D - read through the OSRIC retro-clone (it's free). It's much better organized than the actual 1E books. I love them to death, but coherent book organization was not Gary Gygax's strongpoint. After you learn the system with OSRIC, read Gygax's 1E DMG for all the amazing advice and ideas within. It applies no matter what edition you use.

Templates were one of the cool ideas to come from 3.5. I don't know of anyone adapting that concept to other versions of D&D yet, but I'll have a look around. I have thought of creating a template system for AD&D myself.
 

Space Insect

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What sort of general plot do you think you might want to have? Are your players more interested in the combat aspect or the roleplaying?
 

DavidBVal

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D&D 5E seems to be the "default" option, and I agree to that, unless you're planning an investigation-based adventure or any other plot in which skills play a big role. IMHO skills are extremely simplistic in 5E.

If you're thinking about a modern-day adventure with little combat and heavy on RPing, consider using Vampire rules. Even without anything supernatural. They allow to create very detailed characters in no time, easy to understand and fast to resolve.
 

Neanderthal

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Any dungeon design tips? Clever traps, satisfying rewards, cool items? Interesting intrigue situations? Anything helps.

Dungeons for me are the heart o roleplaying, your adventurers have entered into your house, their choices an options are gone now an its time to make them shit emsens.

First off concentrate on detail in both the characters: Party order, who's carrying torch or is a light spell being used, are they sneaking, are they on look out for traps, what noise are they making and what armour are they wearing, can they swing that two handed sword or is it going to smash against a tunnel wall, have they back up weapons, ask them these questions an note em down. Build paranoia from get go.

Next concnetrate on detail in your dungeon: Decide on a theme, figure out how that fits into the gameworld, place lore and detail in appropriate place, remember Tomb o Kresselack the Black Wolf in IWD, his face carved everywhere watching you, statues and scripture carved all around, this were giving you exposition in a real good organic way. You could have the bloody signs of a cults sacrifices littering the place, and stretching back into antiquity, devotions carved in the wall and terrible murals of the entity they worship, and prophecies that may come into play later on outside. Or the spartan training chambers of a brotherhood of assassins, their training chambers, their meditations chambers where the Black Lotus wafts from braziers, chapels to the grim deity who they worship, librariums of their fees and assassinations, a pit were they throw the bodies of the children who fail their training.

Remember its not a CRPG: Worse thing you can do is usual CRPG shit of making a dungeon a boring sequence o combats from room to room, remember the Fellowship sneaking through Moria, remember to emphasise the danger of the place they're entering and build on it. Do not be afraid to overmatch the players with a vast horde of superior enemies who they should run from if caught and must try to avoid if they want to proceed. A good escape can be an amazing experience, throw obstacles an opportunities in their path, make it quick and demand answers quickly or they lose ground on the pursuers. Remember that not all of a dungeon should be patrolled, there may be chambers that have been empty for decades or centuries, places where the dwellers will not go, which can really creep out a party whose being pursued when suddenly their enemies stop and won't go after em.

Little things: A good build up can really boost tension, an little eery touches are easy to throw in and effective. For instance the players notice their shadows in the flickering torchlight are screaming and writhing in pain, no explanation an no effect other than to freak em out. Paintings shift and change from moment to moment as the party passes. The ceremonial armour flanking the corridors seems to shift and creak, making the players think it may animate but it never does. A magic mouth opens and either recites some disturbing poetry or gibbers in a language nobody understands, putting the characters on edge. Dust rises from the floor to waltz in time to a music that is faintly heard, when the party makes a single sound or movement the dust collapses and the music stops abruptly. The players are sure they are being watched, are they glints of light or eyes in the darkness. Sounds, moaning and weird cries, or a solemn recitation of some disturbing shit. Fuck with the players.

Course you can also just have simple caves an monster encounters, little crypts an Troll caves, though i'd throw something in there that leads to something bigger. Also wilderness can sometimes be best settings, haunted battlefields where steel rusts and bones jut from the ground, virgin forest where wisps wander an decieve, mountain paths that lead to long forgotten places, swamps where the ruins of ancient civilisations stand, barren moorlands upon which standing stones huddle against the cruel wind and ancient peoples once worshipped, golden field of wheat shimmering under the summer sun making the players drowsy and vision blur.
 

Neanderthal

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Cheers Alchemist.

Oh an two invaluable resources I used back in day were early White Dwarf magazines, its a Games Workshop rag now but back in day (pre issue 100) it dealt wi AD&D, Runequest, Traveller an all kinds o roleplayin for us English, it were leaps an bounds better than Dragon or Dungeon mags an had some o best content i've ever seen. In about issues 40 to 50 or so it created a city called Irilian, and serialised different quarters until you had a full map and adventure in it as well as future campaign ideas, massively detailed and ripe for dropping in any gameworld. Second one were Greyhawk: City of Splendours pack, an exhaustive campaign background for City o Greyhawk in old man Gygax' campaign setting, fantastic, detailed, masses o lore, NPCs and hooks, as well as information on just about every street and nook. As well as surrounding lands an loads o mini adventures to run in em.

You can probably pick both up on Ebay or an hobby shop.
 

Saxon1974

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My advice would be to "relax" and try to have fun and be light. Its easy to obsess over every rule and over prepare. If your not 100% sure of something and can't find it quickly just make something up to get things moving again.
 

Xathrodox86

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Word of advice: listen to your players but don't let them smother you with retarded ideas and "I wanna be superspeshul" bullshit. A good GM needs to find the right ammount of balance and inner harmony to be an effective game runner.

Totally correct and very important - but also don't go the other way and design unreasonably hard scenarios just so you can have fun fucking with them, or to make them jump the hoops that you've set out in the way you want. You're having fun with them. DM'g may involve facilitating some war-gaming, but it isn't an asymmetric DM v the players war-game. If you start thinking of it in terms of you being the 'opposing team' or the 'challenge' that the players have to beat, instead of the guy who facilitates those challenges, it won't be nearly as fun for the players as it is for you. And then they'll stop playing, and it won't be fun for you either.

Totally agree with that. Many GM's make that mistake, especially when faced with clever and imaginative players, who tend to derail or break their campaigns. This is a game, not a "who's the best" competition.
 

hello friend

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That's some great advice Neanderthal . How long have you been GMing?
As for the monster CR I just reskin enemy npcs as something else of comparable power. If I cant find stats for Orc Warrior Level 4 I just look for any humanoid warrior level 4, maybe increase his strength and con a little, give him some "orc" traits/feats and voila, you get a guy on the fly in 10 seconds.
Good idea. Thanks.
Tome of Adventure Design by Matt Finch - you can use it as an idea generator for nearly everything.
System-wise I think both AD&D and 5E are good choices. They are relatively easy to get a handle on and quick to prep for. AD&D (my personal choice) is a bit more brutal and deadly. Depends on what you and your players enjoy. Some might not want their 2 HP 1st-level magic-user to die instantly from a rat bite. If they play AD&D they have to be open to the fact that their special snowflake character might not survive very long.

By the way, if you're going to learn 1st edition AD&D - read through the OSRIC retro-clone (it's free). It's much better organized than the actual 1E books. I love them to death, but coherent book organization was not Gary Gygax's strongpoint. After you learn the system with OSRIC, read Gygax's 1E DMG for all the amazing advice and ideas within. It applies no matter what edition you use.
Exactly the sort of stuff I was looking for. Thanks.
Key advice: expect the players to do things you never expected. So be open to the fact they might not take certain plot hooks, and do something completely random. Have some backup stuff prepared you could throw in "on the fly". Some stock locations, dungeons, merchants, town NPCs, interesting situations, etc.
This is pretty much what I'm going for. Just throw enough adventure seeds in there that something is bound to stick. I think having some end-the-world 'main quest' ALMOST invariably becomes very, very, cheesy, so I'm trying to think up some long-term, mid-term, and short-term event chains that will advance and develop somewhat on their own without player involvement + some more context-agnostic events I can throw in pretty much anywhere, e.g. an encounter for one person that can be slotted into a camp watch situation or the party being split. Experience from the player side tells me that the real fun often happens off the rails anyhow. I WANT them to just stumble into interesting stuff to do, and experience the world change around them depending on their action or inaction.
What sort of general plot do you think you might want to have? Are your players more interested in the combat aspect or the roleplaying?
Probably a little of both, with emphasis on the roleplaying. Currently I've just got some ideas bouncing around in my skull. Some examples:

- An innkeeper hires the party to 'take care of' a guy that's threatening to kill him. Tells a story about this guy going around asking for protection money or whatever. Innkeeper is bluffing. He's borrowed a lot of money and sees a way out of paying. Guy is a half-ogre, working as muscle for local crime boss (half ogre's are fucking rare, for obvious reasons, so there's a backstory). Is also his ward. In fact, crime boss is in no way exceptional and carved out his hegemony on the basis of having the biggest muscle around. So if party kills him, they've suddenly got the whole (very local) criminal underworld after them. However, they've upset the balane of power, yadda yadda, factions and shit - innkeeper uses some of his money to purchase protection from upstart gang at a lower price - there's a lot of ways it can go. Basically a whole can of worms from a job gone wrong. Then again, maybe party resolves the situation a different way. They figure out innkeeper is lying, offer to purchase the debt from crime boss - sky's the limit.

- Party comes across down-on-his-luck merchant. Last caravan was attacked by bandits, lost everything. Now he's gone into debt to fund his next venture - this one has to go well or he's in trouble. He can't afford to hire enough guards to protect against banditry - who can? But what the merchants tend to do anyway is join forces and combine into one big caravan. To join the caravan you have to bring four guards to the table. Now, being in a bit of a tight spot financially, down-on-his-luck can't afford to hire professional guards, but he offers to hire you scrubs (the party) for half price. Adventure ensues. Can potentially lead to a fun circle-the-wagons camp defense. Or something else.

- Mysterious murders will be heard about from time to time. Unattended (there'll be a lot of other leads to chase down, after all) this will snowball into a bunch of wererats moving into the sewers, more and more hobos will start appearing as they are pushed out by the rats.

- Party meets a man on the street that tells them about some dangerous necromancer in a tower, or how the mayor is a vampire or something. If other people are questioned about this, they'll just say the man is crazy, don't listen to him. The twist: He actually is. Maybe they end up doing a home invasion on a wizard who is only defending himself, or they end up in trouble with the authorities for going after the mayor. If they fall for it.

- Party goes shopping. Across the street of the shop selling healing potions, a man is offering to sell the same at 2/3 the price. It's a scam. Potions don't work. Party can get the chance to get revenge by getting hired by some merchant's guild or thieves' guild to bring this man to public or private justice, depending on the employer.

This is all still very rough draft type of stuff, and I'm working on a bunch of others, too, but this is the sort of stuff I'm doing right now. Low-key stuff that can still blow up spectacularly. No epic quests to thwart the evil wizard king threatening all of existence with his relic macguffin.

I want to throw in a Smaug-type dragon as a bit of a higher-level thing later on, foreshadowing it with rising food prices and building a bunch of fluff around the whole situation, though. Gotta love the classics.

Edit: Obviously not everything should be a trick or conspiracy. But if it is the case often enough, I imagine it will keep players on their toes and make the world seem more alive. I want to reward them to. Maybe they get offered a sponsorship deal with an armourer (reduced price on armour but it's engraved with ads to do your armour shopping at this dude's smithy). It would be fun to have a player sign a contract to actively advertise to NPCs, but I don't see what reason the armourer would have for trusting the players to honour their end of the bargain. Maybe only offer the sponsorship to clerics and paladins of certain standing or of certain gods?
 
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Space Insect

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All in all, those sound like a good number of general quest ideas that the players could easily run into if they simply wander around the town. You said earlier that this was going to being low-magic, right? I'd suggest that you do up the foreshadowing about the Smaug crisis that is apparently rising. If you can make the world feel alive and that normal people are being affected by the wererats, crime, food shortages, etc., that will make the players feel a lot more like they would want to actually solve these problem.s
 

hello friend

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Yeah, there'll be a whole thing with refugees, rumours... The areas previously terrorised by the dragon will be resettled by goblins probably - they've worked out some deal with the dragon. Maybe they worship it, maybe they just bring it some captured peasants from time to time and some tribute in return for not being wiped out. I like the idea of the PCs finding out that those goblins they just slaughtered? Peaceful farmers defending their new home. There's a lot of potential inspiration for the brewing conflict to be found in the whole Israel-Palestine thing.
 

Neanderthal

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That's some great advice Neanderthal . How long have you been GMing?

I want to throw in a Smaug-type dragon as a bit of a higher-level thing later on, foreshadowing it with rising food prices and building a bunch of fluff around the whole situation, though. Gotta love the classics.

Been playin bout thirty years on an off, GMing about twenty on em. I feel old now.

You ever thought o players knowing the Dragon? That polymorphing is a damn useful spell, an that lazily powerful bloke surrounded by the wealth of his counting house, who wears a voluminous cloak, is always smoking on a pipe, strangely enough wears a coat of shining mail at all times and whose speech is fiery and vitrioloic, well that could be a good headfuck for the players. Could be his Draconic depredations are a means to an end, drive up or down property prices so that he can buy them, giving out loans to farmers who want to take advantage of the food shortage, arming and equipping the Dragonslayers who roll up to find the beast, maybe hes smart enough that hes playing the market an he sees the local area as part of his hoard.

Maybe hes in a turnaround a good ruler for the region, that evil necromancer invading the area with his army of zombies, so much ash on the road. I like the idea of the Goblins settlers, in fact I like all your hooks, sound fun.
 

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