Has your party ever had an session where, you know, you just shoot the shit.'The Sea Wyvern's Wake' was basically an extended travel session, even if it did have a lot to do.
Yes. And I never want to repeat that experience ever again. Because it revealed to me that beyond teaming up to go kill a bunch of evil monsters in a dungeon, our characters were fundamentally incompatible with each other.
>>96759434Ya. Our characters literally had a sleepover with their friends, it was fun.
>>96759434In my last Pathfinder session the group crashed at a random NPC's hovel for the night (they had previously stolen and replaced his grill), figured out he was not actually degenerating into a mindless animal and had actually just lost a fight with a bleach tank, and then hung out doing some downtime crafting and shooting the breeze. It was nice and chill. And of course our Fighter had to miss for IRL reasons. He's dodged literally every single non-combat session in the campaign so far, which sucks because when he's around he has some fun banter with the wizard. The man must be stopped.
>>96759434Her greed sickens me.She doesn't need three watermelons.
>>96759434>The Sea Wyvern's WakeI haven't reached that part yet, just wrapped up There Is No Honor. Will it be fun?
>>96759434I have a GM who runs nothing but campaigns where nothing ever happens. We've had a cyberpunk campaign that went over ten sessions without a single gig, heist, job, or even combat encounter. It's been more than twenty sessions now, and we're still trying to sell a six-million-eddie antique compsoft that we found in session one and secured a buyer for in session ten. We've had a campaign of Hardwired Island where we never found a gig, so we just simply never used 90% of the game's rules. We have a Discworld: Adventures in Ankmorpork campaign that's been going for over six sessions now and I still haven't even been able to introduce the character I've been playing. Yes, I've talked to him about this, and have tried to help him come up with plot hooks, and he has said that he does have stuff cooking, but I've yet to see any of it. It's fun shooting the shit with the other players, both in-character and out-of-character. The GM is very cool, and lets us do things that most other GMs wouldn't ever let fly. But sometimes I just want something to happen, eventually, please.
>>96759434I GMed a session like this once. Or, tried to. There were seeds laid in the background for something real that would come up later, and it grabbed some of them in a way where they got a little too serious about it. All of the things that I wanted to happen in terms of chill stuff and a little foreshadowing happened, but I also had to face the hard reality that some of my players were not committing to the long-established premise that their characters were supposed to be friends.
Sounds fun with the right party
>>96759453Second this, but for me it was that the characters reflected their players in that they have no personality, hobbies, or interests outside of combat. For that particular group I learned that they were only good for dungeon crawls.
>>96759434There is a franchise called The Ark Knight that is a common place for entire sessions of discussion, debate, arguments, and musings about many subjects.
>>96759453>>96766420>our characters were fundamentally incompatible with each other.The fuck is this even supposed to mean? Other than some newfag shit it tune of "oh woe me, we didn't have a single, unified goal across the party".This is literally the whole fucking point of playing those games. If you have entire party that's single-minded and driven toward a single goal, you might unironically just play a cRPG.
>>96766583Seems self-explanatory to me>Elf: I fight for my tree>Dwarf: I fight for fuel to burn elf trees>Orc: I fight for strength to defeat dwarves>Human: I fight to get revenge on all orcs because they killed my parents>Halfling: I hate fighting>Gnome: Once I have enough cash I am funding a project to genocide halflings.Unless you're lobotomising your character to get along there's no getting along.
>>96759434I feel like "what does your character do when they have nothing to do?" is an interesting question that more players should explore, but it's not something to fill an entire session with.
>>96759434Way too many. My table tends to just not get shit done and go on tangents and discuss bullshit. It's fucking annoying. I like them but holy shit last session we only had a combat encounter, start to finish, and we didn't even finish the fucming combat encounter. WE SPENT LIKE 5 HOURS ON HALF AN ENCOUNTER.
>>96759434Yes but I find them very annoying. As both a player and GM, I prefer to have at least 1 fight every session, even if it's just a minor scrape.I ran 19 games of Pathfinder 2e for My group back in 2023 and in that time, they only ever had 3 fights. 1 of those barely counts because was just them killing a player who was an asshole that we were kicking out of the group anyway. The others were a single low-level monster and a group of thugs.As a player, I tend to go out of My way to find bad guys to beat up, whether they're in the back alleys of a city or deep in a dungeon.>>96760528>I just want something to happen, eventually, please
I love it.Some of my fondest memories of the ass end of my D&D career were sessions, or parts thereof, where the characters just hung out in a travelhouse common room singing songs and talking to NPCs, going over what kind of food there was, what the drinks were made of, etc. Heating water for a bath, organizing and re-stocking travel provisions -- Things that were just playing out living.I like going to village and finding a cooper to buy barrels from, and sending message boys from among the local kids to let so-and-so farmer know I was in the market for a large quantity of pickled cabbage.Then we'd fight carcass crawlers and ghosts and slimes in the old ruins at the foot of the mountain but I kinda hate D&D combat, specially 5e's, so my favorite parts are all the ones where we're not engaging with the shitty rules systems and instead the rigors of traveling and survival.
>>96768364This. I tend to ask my players about mundane details once or twice a session just to jog their thoughts a little, they aren't very good at expressing their character ideas. A single sentence is good enough, then we move on but we have a more vivid image.
