"don't engage them, simply learn more" Tried this once, as a Ranger, with an enemy encampment that was out on an island, in the middle of a lake. The party had a better idea- let's disarm/unarmor half the party and tie them up, betting all of our chips that the Bard can convince the guy at the front gate that we're one of them. Long story short, we nearly got killed, all of us. If I'd gone ahead, on a scouting mission, I could've released the very pissed off Owlbear that the bandits were keeping penned up, and made it look like an accident. I could've counted troops, and their arms and armor, or if they had any magicians in their ranks. You can't put a price on knowing, and softening up, the enemy's numbers, can you? Stuff, like that, is why I have trouble following orders and sticking with the group, no matter if I'm playing with an entirely new group of people- I'll be damned if I'm playing a "spy/scout" type character, and don't take advantage of my monstrous Stealth/Perception, only to be killed of because of the Paladin's "bright ideas".
Allow me to relay some advice from Spoony the Bard, aka Noah Antwiler of Counter Monkey. If the Paladin has a bright idea, let him, and sneak around the back. Their retarded ideas are the best distraction you could EVER ask for. Also helps if they realise afterwards "holy shit that was a retarded idea, thank you sneaky person for being intelligent and sneaking around like the sneaky person you are!"
Did you tell them about your plans, and they went forward anyways? If your allies won't let you try something and just dive right into the combat, deal with whatever is trying to kill you (and only you) and then run away. Don't show up again until they've either done all the work and killed/defeated everything, or were forced to run away. Don't help the wounded until the enemies give up on chasing after them. Don't help them at all. Then when they're getting their breath back, scold them for not trusting you and not being patient enough. You guys are party members. Friends, even. But that doesn't mean you have to play nice when they screw up - the bigger a mistake they make, the louder you should yell at them. Especially if you're not the leader, you have no reason to take the fall for them. Let them know that as long as they follow with the plan, you will support them with your life - and show that you will, too. But the minute they decide to go against the plan, they're on their own.
Jasina Sometimes it is the other way around: Hard to understand why so many Lawful Stupid people decide that their class HAS to be paladin... Maybe it is because they think their God protects them? Let us have a look in the Holy Bible: Matthew 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
i used siege weapons in my campaign without having a siege: I gave them the task to defend a noble from the Wild Hunt (i modified it a bit, should should be CR 25) while they were level 2. Ofc, the Wild Hunt couldn't harm the players but only the noble. They spent about 2 hours planning the positions of traps, balistas, cannons, the path they were supposed to take to lure the monster in the right place... it was very fun, even if they failed (even though they managed to get the Wild Hunt down to 50 HP (out of 300)
Good stuff. Many sources say the first dungeon delve was a counterworks scenario played as part of a larger war game campaign. A small party tunneled under the castle walls, broke into the dungeons, and skirmished against other small parties of defenders. The players wanted more scenarios in dungeons, and a new type of game was born.
Excellent video! You give siege a good feel of being an excellent setting for a campaign. "[...] Combat should only be used when it would make sense [...]" More time for role play! I like you include the story about Baden Powell, as it remind people of what is remembered. Same goes for role play: What people remember, years later, is not the senseless combat, but the weird ideas that came up and how they turned out, are remembered!
I have recently started playing Guild Wars 2 and have found the personal story quest in the game has helped a lot with bigger picture quests. It sets the story then gives you 2-4 options to help out (you pick one and the other NPC's take care of the others) The degree of success of the NPC's is up to you and create other story lines. It lets you pick what type of quest you want to go on from more aggressive options of head on combat, or sneaky, or research options. It does a great job of making you feel like you are part of something bigger. Great tips as always.
If I were you, I'd probably already turn camera off and go to bash the hell out of that fool in car in front of your house :D. Thumbs up for you continuing and not paying it even fraction of attention.
Very thorough! I was about to say there should be a list of the different points, but it's right there in the description with time stamps which is even better!
Set multiple options for their investigation success. On a campaign i am working on the dc for info on the enemy is around 12 for a charisma check but this is only for basic info, rumors, rough guestimations about the enemy etc. but higher rolls beyond 12 like a roll of 17 will get people that have seen the armies of darkness walking around or have seen them fight, valuable intel for a fighter i can tell you, and a nat 20 you happen to find the one old guy that not only survived but just happened to find a dead enemy combatant or even captured a guy for you to er....interview... Using the levels you can spread the info to your players based on their successes.
Investigation missions could be the initial things to earn the commander's trust. Once trust is earned, he assigns them to infiltration. Mass combat would be good (players lead smaller units in a larger assault or defense against an assault), but you'd have to transplant a war game into it (eg. warhammer fantasy battles) and include a way in which the player characters might suffer damage or add to the battle.
Yeah, I'm watching this at 12:30am and kept thinking it was down the street like, "What inconsiderate jerk is honking his horn this time in the morning?" Then realized it was from the video.
A siege doesn’t have to be complicated. Seven Samurai & Night of the Living Dead are both examples of sieges. Either the PCs are the only besieged or they command a group of defenders. It can be fun.
Super cool video like all the time, i would have loved it if you had separated your's way to introduce a play with Title and transition, i don't speek english very well and it would be easier because it give the main idea quicly and it give the main idea in a title clearly, even if you already do a great job!
Very useful video as always, thank you. However, I wonder what advice you could give me about running a siege when the PCs are the one in charge instead of an NPC. My PCs have their own island that they have developped over time and that I have carefully populated with NPCs that they like, and I want an enemy fleet to asiege it further in the campaing. Do you have any tips for this particular type of situation when the PCs are the one making the decisions ?
I’d say is establish who the NPCs are in danger and that the PCs can’t do everything. For example, have a thief be established, then have a task like, “we need their arrows, we have run out”, and give hooks about the thief being a better choice
Siege: The enemy surrounds the castle and prevents supplies from getting in. If the people doing the siege wait long enough the people inside the castle starve to death. In DnD, this doesn't work well because the clerics have "create food and drink." There is also the mage using teleport without error who can truck in a bag of holding full of supplies at a time... And the mage stands on the battlements, firing fireballs and other spells at your siege engines and troops. The vast majority of the troops will be level 0 or level 1 conscripts with virtually no chance of surviving a fireball even with a successful save. Then the besieged city gets friends to come and route the army besieging them.... there are all sorts of ways to send for help in Dnd that didn't exist in our history So, there's no point in running a long term siege in DnD. Mass the armies and attack... or just look like a wanker when you get run off.
I'm preparing to play in a game set in the setting created by Kobold Press; The Southlands, which is an analogue to the African continent. Kobold Press is very good about including cultural flavor and I want to build on that. Since you live in South Africa, do you have any experience with using African cultures as inspiration for your games?
It seems like you're making a large difference between a siege and an attack. This is stating that a siege is avoiding combat and trying to stop resources and stuff like that? But then there are "siege engines" which are things like battering rams, trebuchets, ballistae(?) and siege towers. This doesn't sound like what is being described here as a "siege" but they have siege in the name. I'm looking for my players to play a part, probably operating siege weapons as a defense against a larger army invading Candlekeep. There largely won't be a ton of defense that needs done right away, but I'm going to be rolling dice to see what happens during the attack and where they need to focus fire or other events that happen.
Greetings, everyone. Does someone have a fantasy world building form I can fill in freely? So my locations are more developed. Because currently, information about my cities consist of - its name is this. these NPCs can be found there. they mine this or have this. I know for some that is enough, but most of my PCs have taken classes that make them more useful in civilized places, so I need to build them a little bit more.
That depends a lot... my personal suggestion is to learn to improv such things. If you want to build whole cities with all people in them, buildings, maps, guilds, trade... Thats a lot to do. If you like doing so, then good for you and go for it, if thats what you enjoy doin. But otherwise you can end up just overpreparing loads of stuff and lore which just doesn't get used during game and get tired or even upset because of that. Whats detailed preparation of smithy, smith and his family and all kinds of interresting stuff about all of that good for, if players never go to smithy? Well, you can always use what you have prepared elsewhere, but what you can also do is just prepare nearly nothing at all and just come with something on fly. Don't take me wrong, it can be difficult to do and there are things which are better to be prepared ahead and carefuly considered (siege is a very good example), but note that those are exceptions. When it comes to common world building, only very basic skeleton of information like "there is smith named X in city of Y, in lands of Z" can be more than enough to know. When players ask "does he have a wife?" - well, just say yes or no, whatever makes more sense at the moment or whatever you feel like can be more interresting or entertaining for them - based on current moment. But you don't have to have all of this prepared ahead of time. Obviously, as long as you don't really want to. Its actually called "power of not-knowing". When you don't know something ahead of time, you are completely free to come up with something what will be very well suited for current moment and mood. When it comes to forms, I tend to keep table on Google drive with my NPCs. It has following fields: Name, sex+race, job/position, alignment, friends, enemies, ideals, wishes, fears, relationship with PCs, kind of voice used, description and notes. Note that many of thoes fields often end up empty. When I start to have that table too big and too long, I usually divide it into multiple sheets by places/cathegories/whatever.
Easy, look at real towns and study their layouts. Assuming you're looking to create a traditional medieval fantasy, focus on old European towns, try to find old maps as well. Have you been to York? It would be a great fantasy town, if you stripped out the modern stores. I wouldn't in depth plan every town, only very important ones. For other towns you just need to know in general where things are, like the districts and the general layout. So you don't need to know every specific blacksmith in town, you just need to know what part of town the skilled tradesmen are at. You can't possibly hope to make tons of unique towns, all with fine grain detail. You can make lots of unique towns with an overall design and improv the details later. Just take notes if you add specific details when the PC's visit, like the PC's go to a tavern in Hamletsville and you call it "The Prancing Pony," jot it down so if the players go back to Hamletsville you can remember the name of the tavern there. You might not remember the generic tavern at the town they visited five sessions ago, but the players will. You could also have generic names for shops and stuff in a list, so if a player goes to Townsburgh and goes to the local trader, and you need to improv a name for the store, you can refer to your list. If your setting has multiple cultures with different naming conventions, make sure to divide the name list into culture subcategories.
Q: Why are the besiegers laying siege?
A: Someone wants the castle badly and is having difficulty getting it.
"don't engage them, simply learn more"
Tried this once, as a Ranger, with an enemy encampment that was out on an island, in the middle of a lake.
The party had a better idea- let's disarm/unarmor half the party and tie them up, betting all of our chips that the Bard can convince the guy at the front gate that we're one of them.
Long story short, we nearly got killed, all of us. If I'd gone ahead, on a scouting mission, I could've released the very pissed off Owlbear that the bandits were keeping penned up, and made it look like an accident. I could've counted troops, and their arms and armor, or if they had any magicians in their ranks. You can't put a price on knowing, and softening up, the enemy's numbers, can you? Stuff, like that, is why I have trouble following orders and sticking with the group, no matter if I'm playing with an entirely new group of people- I'll be damned if I'm playing a "spy/scout" type character, and don't take advantage of my monstrous Stealth/Perception, only to be killed of because of the Paladin's "bright ideas".
Allow me to relay some advice from Spoony the Bard, aka Noah Antwiler of Counter Monkey. If the Paladin has a bright idea, let him, and sneak around the back. Their retarded ideas are the best distraction you could EVER ask for. Also helps if they realise afterwards "holy shit that was a retarded idea, thank you sneaky person for being intelligent and sneaking around like the sneaky person you are!"
Did you tell them about your plans, and they went forward anyways? If your allies won't let you try something and just dive right into the combat, deal with whatever is trying to kill you (and only you) and then run away. Don't show up again until they've either done all the work and killed/defeated everything, or were forced to run away. Don't help the wounded until the enemies give up on chasing after them. Don't help them at all. Then when they're getting their breath back, scold them for not trusting you and not being patient enough. You guys are party members. Friends, even. But that doesn't mean you have to play nice when they screw up - the bigger a mistake they make, the louder you should yell at them.
Especially if you're not the leader, you have no reason to take the fall for them. Let them know that as long as they follow with the plan, you will support them with your life - and show that you will, too. But the minute they decide to go against the plan, they're on their own.
I can't understand why so many paladins decide that their alignment HAS to be Lawful Stupid... :/
Because they don't understand how to Paladin, simple as that.
Jasina Sometimes it is the other way around:
Hard to understand why so many Lawful Stupid people decide that their class HAS to be paladin...
Maybe it is because they think their God protects them?
Let us have a look in the Holy Bible: Matthew 5:3
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
i used siege weapons in my campaign without having a siege:
I gave them the task to defend a noble from the Wild Hunt (i modified it a bit, should should be CR 25) while they were level 2. Ofc, the Wild Hunt couldn't harm the players but only the noble. They spent about 2 hours planning the positions of traps, balistas, cannons, the path they were supposed to take to lure the monster in the right place... it was very fun, even if they failed (even though they managed to get the Wild Hunt down to 50 HP (out of 300)
Good stuff. Many sources say the first dungeon delve was a counterworks scenario played as part of a larger war game campaign. A small party tunneled under the castle walls, broke into the dungeons, and skirmished against other small parties of defenders. The players wanted more scenarios in dungeons, and a new type of game was born.
Excellent video!
You give siege a good feel of being an excellent setting for a campaign.
"[...] Combat should only be used when it would make sense [...]" More time for role play!
I like you include the story about Baden Powell, as it remind people of what is remembered.
Same goes for role play: What people remember, years later, is not the senseless combat, but the weird ideas that came up and how they turned out, are remembered!
I have recently started playing Guild Wars 2 and have found the personal story quest in the game has helped a lot with bigger picture quests. It sets the story then gives you 2-4 options to help out (you pick one and the other NPC's take care of the others) The degree of success of the NPC's is up to you and create other story lines. It lets you pick what type of quest you want to go on from more aggressive options of head on combat, or sneaky, or research options. It does a great job of making you feel like you are part of something bigger.
Great tips as always.
If I were you, I'd probably already turn camera off and go to bash the hell out of that fool in car in front of your house :D. Thumbs up for you continuing and not paying it even fraction of attention.
AmarothEng
Goodness, I thought I had that accursed honking going on down the street from my house!
@@dreddbolt same
Very thorough! I was about to say there should be a list of the different points, but it's right there in the description with time stamps which is even better!
Perfect timing for me, got a siege going right now! Thanks!
can you do a video of investigation. how do i come up with clues and leads (as GM) for the players
Set multiple options for their investigation success. On a campaign i am working on the dc for info on the enemy is around 12 for a charisma check but this is only for basic info, rumors, rough guestimations about the enemy etc. but higher rolls beyond 12 like a roll of 17 will get people that have seen the armies of darkness walking around or have seen them fight, valuable intel for a fighter i can tell you, and a nat 20 you happen to find the one old guy that not only survived but just happened to find a dead enemy combatant or even captured a guy for you to er....interview...
Using the levels you can spread the info to your players based on their successes.
Investigation missions could be the initial things to earn the commander's trust.
Once trust is earned, he assigns them to infiltration. Mass combat would be good (players lead smaller units in a larger assault or defense against an assault), but you'd have to transplant a war game into it (eg. warhammer fantasy battles) and include a way in which the player characters might suffer damage or add to the battle.
These videos are truly inspirational!
I get lots of great advice even though I’ve been playing for almost 30 years!
Thank you!
you forgot to mention Robert Baden-Powell also had his troops pantomime planting a mine field to secure a portion of the city's defenses.
Those car horns though.
Yeah, I'm watching this at 12:30am and kept thinking it was down the street like, "What inconsiderate jerk is honking his horn this time in the morning?" Then realized it was from the video.
Yea, I was spooked af as I was listening while riding my bike
A siege doesn’t have to be complicated. Seven Samurai & Night of the Living Dead are both examples of sieges. Either the PCs are the only besieged or they command a group of defenders. It can be fun.
Super cool video like all the time, i would have loved it if you had separated your's way to introduce a play with Title and transition, i don't speek english very well and it would be easier because it give the main idea quicly and it give the main idea in a title clearly, even if you already do a great job!
Lol I thought the car horns were happening around me irl
Good gaming to you too.
Could you do a video on breaking a siege as an outside ally gandalf style?
Thanks! I've really been thinking about a small siege based adventure lately
What about the "Go get help from this near by city. We need more men!"?
Very useful video as always, thank you. However, I wonder what advice you could give me about running a siege when the PCs are the one in charge instead of an NPC. My PCs have their own island that they have developped over time and that I have carefully populated with NPCs that they like, and I want an enemy fleet to asiege it further in the campaing. Do you have any tips for this particular type of situation when the PCs are the one making the decisions ?
I’d say is establish who the NPCs are in danger and that the PCs can’t do everything. For example, have a thief be established, then have a task like, “we need their arrows, we have run out”, and give hooks about the thief being a better choice
Siege: The enemy surrounds the castle and prevents supplies from getting in. If the people doing the siege wait long enough the people inside the castle starve to death.
In DnD, this doesn't work well because the clerics have "create food and drink." There is also the mage using teleport without error who can truck in a bag of holding full of supplies at a time...
And the mage stands on the battlements, firing fireballs and other spells at your siege engines and troops. The vast majority of the troops will be level 0 or level 1 conscripts with virtually no chance of surviving a fireball even with a successful save.
Then the besieged city gets friends to come and route the army besieging them....
there are all sorts of ways to send for help in Dnd that didn't exist in our history
So, there's no point in running a long term siege in DnD. Mass the armies and attack... or just look like a wanker when you get run off.
To the paladin "just go stand on the hill and count their troops" finds and charges the enemy.
I'm preparing to play in a game set in the setting created by Kobold Press; The Southlands, which is an analogue to the African continent. Kobold Press is very good about including cultural flavor and I want to build on that.
Since you live in South Africa, do you have any experience with using African cultures as inspiration for your games?
Idea for how to get rid of an opponents water supply just shit in it
True galaxy brain is to have your players going into the castle to kill a certain person/retrieve an item/save someone
Like in the red wall book
I've made a world I've made new classes and backgrounds i at large scrapped the lore and have built the history from the ground up now i need friends
Best way to punish players for losing a siege is...
All the fancy vendor items they wanted to save up gold for have been stolen by the attackers. :P
honking car horn?
It seems like you're making a large difference between a siege and an attack. This is stating that a siege is avoiding combat and trying to stop resources and stuff like that? But then there are "siege engines" which are things like battering rams, trebuchets, ballistae(?) and siege towers. This doesn't sound like what is being described here as a "siege" but they have siege in the name.
I'm looking for my players to play a part, probably operating siege weapons as a defense against a larger army invading Candlekeep. There largely won't be a ton of defense that needs done right away, but I'm going to be rolling dice to see what happens during the attack and where they need to focus fire or other events that happen.
Greetings, everyone.
Does someone have a fantasy world building form I can fill in freely?
So my locations are more developed. Because currently, information about my cities consist of - its name is this. these NPCs can be found there. they mine this or have this.
I know for some that is enough, but most of my PCs have taken classes that make them more useful in civilized places, so I need to build them a little bit more.
That depends a lot... my personal suggestion is to learn to improv such things. If you want to build whole cities with all people in them, buildings, maps, guilds, trade... Thats a lot to do. If you like doing so, then good for you and go for it, if thats what you enjoy doin. But otherwise you can end up just overpreparing loads of stuff and lore which just doesn't get used during game and get tired or even upset because of that.
Whats detailed preparation of smithy, smith and his family and all kinds of interresting stuff about all of that good for, if players never go to smithy? Well, you can always use what you have prepared elsewhere, but what you can also do is just prepare nearly nothing at all and just come with something on fly. Don't take me wrong, it can be difficult to do and there are things which are better to be prepared ahead and carefuly considered (siege is a very good example), but note that those are exceptions.
When it comes to common world building, only very basic skeleton of information like "there is smith named X in city of Y, in lands of Z" can be more than enough to know. When players ask "does he have a wife?" - well, just say yes or no, whatever makes more sense at the moment or whatever you feel like can be more interresting or entertaining for them - based on current moment. But you don't have to have all of this prepared ahead of time. Obviously, as long as you don't really want to. Its actually called "power of not-knowing". When you don't know something ahead of time, you are completely free to come up with something what will be very well suited for current moment and mood.
When it comes to forms, I tend to keep table on Google drive with my NPCs. It has following fields:
Name, sex+race, job/position, alignment, friends, enemies, ideals, wishes, fears, relationship with PCs, kind of voice used, description and notes. Note that many of thoes fields often end up empty. When I start to have that table too big and too long, I usually divide it into multiple sheets by places/cathegories/whatever.
Easy, look at real towns and study their layouts. Assuming you're looking to create a traditional medieval fantasy, focus on old European towns, try to find old maps as well. Have you been to York? It would be a great fantasy town, if you stripped out the modern stores.
I wouldn't in depth plan every town, only very important ones. For other towns you just need to know in general where things are, like the districts and the general layout. So you don't need to know every specific blacksmith in town, you just need to know what part of town the skilled tradesmen are at. You can't possibly hope to make tons of unique towns, all with fine grain detail. You can make lots of unique towns with an overall design and improv the details later. Just take notes if you add specific details when the PC's visit, like the PC's go to a tavern in Hamletsville and you call it "The Prancing Pony," jot it down so if the players go back to Hamletsville you can remember the name of the tavern there.
You might not remember the generic tavern at the town they visited five sessions ago, but the players will. You could also have generic names for shops and stuff in a list, so if a player goes to Townsburgh and goes to the local trader, and you need to improv a name for the store, you can refer to your list. If your setting has multiple cultures with different naming conventions, make sure to divide the name list into culture subcategories.
thanks for the random locales list tip, I should make one of those. I already have one for NPCs, but never thought to make one for places.