The RP Message Board

[Marvelous Miscreant]

Yeah, like I said. My group is less than serious. Especially my brother, he is our token comic relief. He's never serious about anything he does. He's makes decisions arbitrarily.

Sometimes its helpful. With one word he can change an argument over rules into a laugh riot.

Sometimes it's less helpful. Like when they fought a dragon for the first time. The wizard was dying, the barbarian down to 4 HP and the Paladin was trying desperately to fend off the dragon himself. And my brother spends his entire turn summoning a dolphin, with no water around.

[Zaleramancer]

Ouch.

TPK?

[Marvelous Miscreant]

Naw, The Paladin managed to kill it once my brother stopped being himself long enough to provide medical aid. It was a much weaker version of the normal Black Acid Dragon (taken from the Beginner's Adventure to Pathfinder or something) and it was weakened by that point.

Also, since you're pretty savvy on these sort of things. Do you have any good tips for an aspiring DM?

[Zaleramancer]

Ah.

Understand that they may do things you never ever would expected them to do.

Try to mesh their personalities and backstories in with what happens.

I try to give people things to react too.

What's the basic plot of whatever you have going on now?

[Marvelous Miscreant]

Right now? They're off killing some generic evil wizard who's been terrorizing a nearby village. I've been giving them generic quests to get them accustomed to the rules, but I'll be starting them off on their first actual plot worth quest next.

The gist of this quest is that the wizard they'll have just killed was part of a larger cult attempting to revive a legion of demons and abominations to destroy the land. The group will have to track down this destroy six relics needed for the  revival. This will take them through a large number of dungeons and encounters I have begun to plan.

[Zaleramancer]

A classic Mcguffin plot.

I think Abominations are a bit much though.

Demons are fun. Much more easy to deal with than Devils.

[Marvelous Miscreant]

I mostly just want to see how my Brother will deal with them. Considering he took a specific feat so that he could throw his animal companions as weapons....It might just end up being the funniest thing ever.

either way, I have much to learn about being a DM.

[Marvelous Miscreant]

I have just devised the Pathfinder equivalent of "The Big Red Button"...

The Big Red Flagstone! Its basically a super obvious trap that my friends will be unable to resist. Especially when I place a sign on it that says "Do Not Push"

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

You want to do something really evil to them?

Give a big, important sounding description of a room. At the end, mention a stairwell leading up and tell them that there's an apple sitting on the.... fourth step (the pause, as if remembering something, is important) of the stairway leading to the next room.

[Marvelous Miscreant]

You sir, are devious....and I love it.

[Zaleramancer]

You'll love this.

[Marvelous Miscreant]

Hold on.....I'm trying to puke rainbows of happiness.

[Zaleramancer]

Once, the players adopted a cat. Said cat was obsessively protected by the local fighter, who probably loved it more than his sword.

About five real-life months later, a small town was being assaulted by a small army of orcs. The party was pretty battered, and the cat was the only thing that was not utterly screwed over in combat. The party managed to fight off all but twenty or so orcs, and when all seemed lost, a fireball spell was cast.

The cat? A shape-shifted efreet. After wiping the floor with the orcs, it patted the head of the now mortified fighter and plane shifted away.

[Marvelous Miscreant]

"I want to go to there..."

Or rather, I want to use a variation of this to mess with my group.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Here, this is an old high school prank.

They're in the maze and they meet a big old monster. Somewhere on the monster is written 1 in big print.

They meet another monster, big and dangerous, with 2.

Finally, they meet one with 4 painted on it.

For the rest of the dungeon, make them roll random perception checks. No matter what they get, answer with "You don't spot anything unusual."

Never have them meet 3.

[Zaleramancer]

Do you ever have Inns or Taverns in cities?

Have the same one show up again and again.

The Singing Mermaid or something.

Every time it shows up, describe it exactly the same.

Watch them squirm trying to figure out what's going on with it. :D

[Marvelous Miscreant]

You guys can;t tell, but I'm dying of laughter over here. I'm loving these ideas so much, you have no idea.

[Zaleramancer]

Do any of them watch Doctor Who?

If so, do this:

Have a well-lit dungeon decorated with angel statues.

Make it so that something the players do causes the lights to very briefly go out, after which at least two of the statues are gone.

Start randomly asking for spot checks.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

/tg/ wrote

The party moves their conversation into a room which they can lock and is private so they can discuss their plan. Suddenly a knock is heard on the door. If the party ignores the knocking, it will continue. If someone asks "Who's there?" There will be no answer. The knocking will only stop once a party member opens the door. The doorway will be empty and so will the accompanying hallway. The party member can then shut and re-lock the door. A short time later, the knocking will come at the door again. Once again, no answer, and when the door is opened, the knocking stops. Shutting the door again, the party member only has to walk away from the door for a moment, before this is another round of knocking. This time when the party member opens the door, there will be a piece of paper laying on the floor at the foot of the door. If the PC reads the paper, it will say:

"Now we are all inside."

[Zaleramancer]

When the DM starts laughing manically, it's usually bad.

On the way back - they were third level, out of spells and severly wounded - they spot a Beholder in a parallel corridor.

First 'Uhoh' reactions. One eye of the Beholder turns in their direction - one of them stares at me open-mouthed with impressively big eyes - then the whole beholder turns towards them, a second later he charges forward. They flee in blind panic.
He catches up, and I count down the distance. "50 meters... 40 meters... 30..." I've NEVER seen more panicked reactions from any player. One of them in desperation urged everyone to drop the magical gems they found, somehow thinking the Beholder wants those. Their fasttalking arguments were glorious

Then I count down to zero, they're out of ideas and on the edge of their seats... And then the Beholder just passes through their bodies, racing onwards and taking a left turn ahead.

At this point we had to pause for some moments until I was done laughing.

Was it a ghost, an illusion, something else? They preferred not to delve deeper into that story.