From Dream to Dice

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Highlights

It’s not (Location 92)
a great idea to make your players memorize too many weird names, especially if they’re not important for the game – (Location 92)
It’s okay if it takes time for your game world to come together. That’s normal, I promise. But that’s also why it’s important to only build what you need – it’s already a time-consuming task to manufacture a setting and you can easily spend years on it without ever running a single game session. (Location 380)
My first outline for Tydalus looks like this: A ship is blown off course and wrecks on an island revealed by the abnormally low tide. The ship’s crew discovers a temple on the island and accidentally disturbs it. (Location 401)
The horrors inside drive one of the non-player characters mad, who will have crazed but accurate insight about the monster. The characters escape the mysterious island, but they must protect Korvath from what was unleashed. They find magic to defeat the antagonist. They deploy the magic in a final confrontation. (Location 403)
Your game needs an antagonist. That’s the dragon. Your players need to know how to reach the dragon, so you provide a map. And finally, they need incentive to go there. That’s the treasure. (Location 407)
Let’s face it – there’s not a lot of character interaction you can have with a lake of pissed-off goo. So my story needs a secondary antagonist, someone the player characters can talk to, someone who can have more character arc than a shoggoth. (Location 439)
But I’ll be sure to give this NPC some lucid moments, too. First of all, a dribbling lunatic who operates beyond reason is a pretty trite villain. (Location 455)
new world for my players, so I want at least one non-player character around who can help explain this world for them. (Location 464)
It’s a simple way to keep an NPC from taking over the group and stealing the spotlight. The first mate’s “orders” will involve a lot of Hey, talk to that person for me and You know this place, so where should we go? The first mate remains ostensibly in charge and I can issue some orders if I need to give the PCs a nudge, but I’ll mostly have him hang back – without sacrificing his authority. (Location 478)
Writers say show, don’t tell. That showing information you want your readers to know will always have greater impact than simply telling them. (Location 493)
crisis scenes are a series of skill checks or rolls to do important, exciting tasks in a role-playing game other than combat. (Location 496)
One of the great things about a crisis is that you can have your player characters succeed in a story-critical challenge, no matter how badly they roll. The cost will just be high as a result. Or you can have them fail at something that they need to fumble, but the characters can do so gracefully if the players roll well. (Location 498)
A “scene” is where stuff happens, when there’s action or knowledge dumps, and events occur. If a novel is made up of only action-packed scenes, the narrative becomes both exhausting and difficult to follow. (Location 533)
Readers require an occasional break to absorb what happened, and so do the characters in the novel – that’s the sequel. A scene’s sequel is a rest, the pause between waves. It helps break the story into digestible chunks, and does the same for a role-playing game. It gives your characters and your players a moment to breathe, to understand and discuss what just happened and then what to do next. (Location 534)
But before the PCs can get into any prolonged conversation, a bell rings. It’s an alarm (Location 561)
I think it will work because it’s a small-scale indicator and reminder of what they face with the full-sized shoggoth. (Location 576)
so when an NPC boils their conversation down into a single line and gives the order to head west, they will sound authoritative – even though your players actually made the call. (Location 619)
Returning to the temple gives my game a certain amount of symmetry as they go back to where this all began. (Location 685)
Alak provides a bonus attack to one character each round. (Location 799)
I’ll describe Alak hacking through tentacles and carrying his own weight, but I don’t make any dice rolls for him and he deals no damage to the tentacles on the map. The bonus Alak’ai gives is something for the players to use. The players can decide who gets Alak’s NPC bonus each round, giving them a resource to use tactically.] (Location 802)
I’m giving the tentacles low health and nothing special damage-wise. They will have a grappling attack, though, that may require the PCs to help each other get free – or they can have Alak use his NPC bonus to automatically get someone out. (Location 814)
It’s important that my players never know whether the cost of failure on a crisis roll is just going to be taking some damage while hauling Alak’ai out of the water, or if he will drown. Keeping my players guessing when it’s “safe” to fail a roll and when it’s not is a very important part of making the crisis system work.] (Location 870)
And in general, I would rather have my PCs cut through large numbers of smaller foes than one large one. I save the big enemies for special occasions. (Location 953)
Depending upon how long the rests between scenes needed to be, the player group has been fighting all day or for several days. (Location 1213)