>run long-term steampunk RPG campaign>setting has "ruined lands" from attack by phyrexian cthulhuoids 50 years ago>lo and behold, they act up again late in the campaign>characters have to go destroy their portals and cut them off once and for all>they do this, campaign continues for a bit>eventually endsThis was several years ago>start running new campaign on a different continent>characters fighting demons, alongside political intrigue in between>characters get involved with a cult that believes in an impending apocalypse>cult has nothing to do with the demons>characters joke about the apocalypse being the phyrexian cthulhuoids again>I tell them, no lol, that's not it>tell them I don't like to make any OOC promises but that that's not it>in reality, the apocalypse is another group of bestial cthulhuoids that chased the demons out of their realm and interbred with them>which is why there were demon incursions in the early game, they were chased out of their homeland>PCs have only slightly begun to put together these piecesIs this bad GMing? It feels like a "gotcha" but it's hard to think of an apocalypse that you would have an illuminati cult manipulating society to prepare for. What else is it gonna be besides some invading extraplanar army? I guess the other option is a disease, and the Illuminati is stirring up war and strife to depopulate the world enough that humanity will be sparse enough to not spread SuperAirborneAIDS and isolate it. But that really doesn't make any sense either.
>>98502862Just keep insisting its not them. Who cares what the players think, just kewp telling them its not the cthuloids even after the campaign ends
>>98502862You have a consistent group that has lasted years. They still play with you. Obviously you're doing something right.
It might be a bit of both you and the players. Gming right in a fun way is a coin toss where it is easy or hard for some depending on the person and players.Are there any other factors not explained in your op for better examination?I’ll admit I like to be the gm/dm. I just have sometimes lost track and made mistakes or forgotten things.
>>98502892 (me)This anon is also right. >>98502890It also nice to see steampunk still alive. Can you describe the aesthetic of it for us?
Well it's certainly not the way I GM. What I do is at the start of the campaign create 4 or 5 plot hooks all that threat level 1. As the party investigates and solves the issues the threat levels of the unchosen adventures go up and I make them more difficult. If anything reaches threat level 4 major world changing event will happen (like a migrating Orc tribe coming down from the north sacks and takes over a major city creating a refugee crisis). I never have a single overarching narrative driving player actions in the campaign. I let them approach the world the way they want because it forces them to make tough decisions (like do we go after a Necromancer at low levels when he can only create skeletons and zombies or put it off and fight him when he can command ghosts and flesh golems). The important part is that I'm not trying to tell a story as if I was writing a novel, I make the world a sandbox that still exists outside of the players being there.
>>98502862>characters joke about the apocalypse being the phyrexian cthulhuoids again>I tell them, no lol, that's not it>tell them I don't like to make any OOC promises but that that's not itSeems open and shut to me. They joked it was A, you confirmed it wasn’t A, they haven’t yet figured out it’s B but have started to. What’s the issue? Are you worried that you’re tricking them or something? Cause there’s nothing wrong with them forming hypotheses before you do the big reveal, you know.
>>98502862What here is supposed to make you sound like a bad GM? Using a similar idea to one you've used before? Arguably underwhelming or uncreative, but you're there to run a game, not conjure up completely novel ideas.
>>98502881I mean technically it's not. What it is, is closer to something like the Obyrith demons from D&D, or Qlippoths from Pathfinder. Basically more primeval demons with stranger anatomies. The idea is that they were sealed away in another nightmare world, but there are enormous numbers of them, and in this sort of endless swarm, like Tyrannids. The cult referred to them as "the walking wave" at one point. But it could mean anything, any kind of slow tide of destruction. And you're right, there's a good chance the actual apocalypse won't happen. But the "main character" PC is not being killed, and it's been hinted at that his actions (he has some very clear character goals in creating new kinds of magical artifacts) will either prevent the apocalypse or ensure it or help humanity defend against it.>>98502890Yeah I wouldn't put this much effort in if it was some randoms.>>98502892>Are there any other factors not explained in your op for better examination?Basically one player is singlehandedly creating a magitech industrial revolution.And the biggest reason the cult hasn't just assassinated him, is because he is necessary to help humanity survive.And maybe their justification for causing so much strife, is to "harden" humanity in that strife.Or, give him an opportunity to rise as a war hero (which he has) thus giving him the power to spread his magitech revolution further.>I’ll admit I like to be the gm/dm. I just have sometimes lost track and made mistakes or forgotten things.Me too. I vastly prefer it to playing. I'm not a very railroady GM either, I just like reacting to stuff they come up with.
>>98502902>Can you describe the aesthetic of it for us?It's more gunpowder fantasy and waterwheel fantasy. 1600s-era. There are airships, war golems, et cetera. So not really steampunk. It will become magitech steampunk more and more as the setting goes on. In fact, there's a possibility the PCs might get petrified at one point, and thawed out a few hundred years later to see the consequences of their inventions...>>98502982>>98502907I think the best analogy is, if your group says "lol I hope the BBWET (big bad world ending threat) isn't an army of orcs like last campaign"And you say "no, of course not."And then it shows up, and it's actually a huge army of hobgoblins.People are gonna be a little mad.But maybe not. I think I might be feeling that another extraplanar invading army of ANY kind is a bit uncreative, too.There are a lot of themes of the morality of invention and technology and all that too.
>>98502904Yeah there are a lot of layers in this campaign too. But unfortunately the way it's layered is such that the Illuminati cult is their main target.It caused civil war.It got eastern barbarians to ally with the separatist factions, and now they're still fighting.The PCs think that they might be behind the demonic incursions.The campaign is going really well, and they are trying to go after the cult agents directly now.It's a good transition to a high-level enemy that can't be beaten by combat prowess.But the other factions still have to be dealt with.And they bounce around a lot between different adventures.I just want to make sure the cult's actions make sense and that they have a real goal.I think I have the "JJ Abrams" problem of DMing, where I like to create these mystery boxes, and some of them stay shut forever. But a lot of the time it is hard to decide exactly what is in there.So far, any agents they've captured, even under magical duress, will just hypnotically suicide themselves instead of revealing the nature of the apocalypse they are trying to prevent. I don't know if that will work forever though.
>>98503032> if your group says "lol I hope the BBWET (big bad world ending threat) isn't an army of orcs like last campaign">And you say "no, of course not.">And then it shows up, and it's actually a huge army of hobgoblins.>People are gonna be a little mad.>But maybe not. I usually find “not” is the common response. Unless they really hated dealing with those orcs from the last campaign, hobgoblins shouldn’t be that big of a dealbreaker.
>>98503091Yeah I guess I could be overthinking it. Perhaps it's more for the sake of my own creative integrity.Which I know doesn't matter much for the sake of a game, but this is also possibly the best TTRPG campaign I've ever run. I want to make sure it is something I fondly remember forever.
>>98503063Well it sounds like you're doing a good job. You might actually help if the cult doesn't make a lot of sense because who knows if they're acting on accurate information or not. Cult soft and shoot themselves in the foot over ideological issues.
>>98503325That's a good point. So far they have been hypercompetent and entirely faceless. The characters have only interacted with one agent of theirs, as well as a palantir-esque artifact they acquired and talk to sometimes. They just see the cult's work, they don't attack any of their networks or even know who is in it. They get little snippets of visions from the palantir when they choose to peruse it, and that's about it.So it's possible they are all deluded. Maybe I will leave that as a mystery forever whether it's true. And the demons' reason for invading a mystery as well, unless forced to reveal it.The only problem is that it is so intricately entwined with this one PC being the catalyst for a technological revolution, that it is hard to go forever without that plot point being resolved. Especially because the palantir has shown visions of the future he will create, hellish industrial warfare and mass magical pollution.
>>98502862>steampunkYes, you're bad.
>>98502862You're uncreative so yes, a bad gm/player.
>>98504418It's not really steampunk, that was a bad description on my part. It's more like, Eberron with gunpowder.>>98504465Yeah I feel like everything else in this campaign is my best "work" of my entire "career" as a GM, with what I've come up with, but it's like now that I *might* have to show what's in the mystery box, I am not sure it will live up to the tension and mystery I had promised.
>>98502862Well, your players would have to be masochists to stick with you for years if you were bad. It's a bit derivative of your earlier stuff and raises some world questions (multiple armies trying to take over the world) that I think can be turned into something cool if you sit with it for a while.
>>98502862>Standard Demon invasion This is fine>Demon Invasion 2: The Re-DeemoningThis is not great, not terribleI understand that it might seem a bit hashed out and you didn't want them putting the pieces together so soon, but I don't think they'll be upset that its a descendant of the previous apocalypse they vanquishedUnless this is your magnum opus, I would just go with whatever seems fun, but in the future I would refrain from answering soft inquiries with hard parameters In a general sense, it's just going to pen you in and keep you from exercising your freedom to switch up on ideas you don't feel excited about anymore, or improvising new features into your game that might improve itIn this case for instance, depending on how far along into the game they've progressed, you can just set this down as a suspicious but ultimately petty cult and then just make something else upif you're already committed, just stick to your guns and dig deep for a few defining characteristics that make them more discernibly different and then just focus on executionPersonally, if my GM was like, its not orcs this time its double giga orcs I would think it was funny and then go looking for the secret features I assume make them different/specialif there is no underlying depth and it truly is just Orcs/Demons 2, then indeed you wasted their time unless they spent all their free time around you talking about how much they love orc slaying with their character Garth "I Hate Orcs" Goreblood
>>98502862You probably shouldn't make promises as a GM you absolutely do not intend to keep. It probably won't seriously piss off anyone at your table, but OOC lying isn't great.As far as what else to do for an apocalypse, you could do a magical event that isn't monsters, such as areas of the world being so tainted/charged/innundated with magical energy that mutation/spontaneous resurrections/interdimensional incursions happen that threaten general society. Or global warming orchestrated by merpeople supremacists who want to dominate the entire world. Or maybe the illuminati cult and the doomsday bringers are one and the same, the leader manipulating the individuals cells into destabilizing their own native regions to prepare for an apocalypse due to increasing international/racial tensions, leading to your setting's personal World War/Cold War.
>>98504835>You probably shouldn't make promises as a GM you absolutely do not intend to keep.I do intend to keep it, but I'm realizing it might have been a half-life, because I hadn't quite decided how things were gonna be when I said that. I figured I would just keep the apocalypses vague honestly. But it really depends where the campaign goes now.>>98504666I mean it'll be an entirely different faction, unique concept and everything, more based on hunger than assimilation like before, but even so, it just feels kinda lame. Like the apocalypse shouldn't be an army at all.But then, why is this cult trying to make all these royal houses fight each other? I guess I could just leave it at them being delusional.Alternatively, the whole thing could be bullshit and they could be puppets of one of the foreign powers.
>>98504853If it's a force of hunger, you can spin it on other ways. Could be something like Nihilus from KOTOR2, where it's an avatar of hunger. Sure, he has an army, but the problem to solve is the guy that passively kills anything in his vicinity and gets stronger as a result. Or you could have a corrupting force that, rather than send an army, transforms local life-forms into twisted, ravenous versions of themselves.
>>98504925I might do something like that, yeah. Some kind of immense elder-evil type of force. I just don't know how to incorporate the artificer PC's inventions into it. They don't want to kill him, or he'd be dead. But he interferes in their plans. So his inventions (he's basically magitech Iron Man) have to have some kind of use as military tech against the coming strife.
>>98504853For a hunger themed adversary, it could be some kind of degenerative cult; like a nature cult that believes that people's progress towards civilization has divorced us from the satisfaction of basic needs that make us alive. As >>98504925 puts it some kind of corruptive force that reduces people into slathering beasts.It could also be a pleasure cult focused on satisfying the appetites of those involved. Perhaps a depraved aristocrat using dark magic to channel the wishes of the populace into a tulpa/egregore/minor deity shackled to his will, that he will then use to satisfy his own lusts to the detriment of everyone and everything else.Or it could be some big hidden sleeping beast of such enormous magnitude that its hunger influences the mind and will of those who live near it. Cultists are enslaved to its guttural will, and with enough sacrifices it will arise again to devour the world.
>>98504530>Eberron with gunpowderStill bad.
>>98504970The cult itself is just focused on steering history. They want to subtly influence it to keep it "on the right track." That is their core concept. The cult itself doesn't want to bring about the apocalypse, they want to prevent it.>>98505280Okay what is your genius original setting then anon?
>>98505331>originalDoesn't exist, as all human ideas and inventions are derivative of other sources.That aside, what does what I do have to do with OP being a bad GM?
>>98506962>That aside, what does what I do have to do with OP being a bad GM?It doesn't, and originality is relative, but you need to explain why Eberron with gunpowder is a bad setting. Note that you discard originality you cannot complain that it's derivative, in your explanation about why it's a bad setting.
>>98505280If alchemists an ancient China could invent gunpowder in a world without magic and divination then there's absolutely no reason why the gnomes or dwarves of eberron couldn't figure it out.
>>98508044>you need to explain why Eberron with gunpowder is a bad setting.Because Eberron is a bad setting.And Eberron is a bad setting because it is a part of D&D.
>>98508354Good luck finding people to play Traveller with nogames. FYI I tried this with my D&D group and almost immediately half of them were completely disinterested in it because the high degree of randomness in the character creation system.
>>98502862>am I a bad GM?>>run long-term steampunk Yes.
>>98508354>le all associations with D&D are le badJust kill yourself man. I'm not even playing D&D, but Eberron is far from an objectively bad setting, even though I don't think it's a good D&D setting, it's a decent fantasy setting and decent magitech setting.>>98508511I also play Traveller. It's a fun system. But that's not what I'm playing here.
>>98508609Extremely low-IQ opinion with no substance. I bet you're gonna call me a no-games next or some shit, that's how brainless you are.
>>98504969Well obviously the artificers inventions are putting a strain on the magic weave. The mana sphere or what have you is being stressed from overuse which leads to stuff on the other side of it poking and prodding and making their way in.
>>98508818that makes sense. and the idea is that they invent these mana conduits, but it wears away at the fabric of reality so that eventually things start falling apart. But the cult claims to want to prevent this apocalypse from happening. So they must be see the main PC artificer as helping that, or at least being something that will help humanity prepare. I'm not sure how to do it.
OP don't listen to these people who don't like your setting. That your players like it is all that matters.
>>98509271I like the setting a lot. It's like Game of Thrones with gunpowder.It's just the campaign meta-plot I am having trouble putting together.Because I laid out a bunch of mystery boxes and now it's coming to the point that I need to have a real concrete answer to things to play the illuminati correctly, even if I never explicitly reveal their secrets.
>>98509368I'm not sure how to help you with that the only secret organization I've ever been a part of is the trans mafia. We would gin up fake protests over stupid shit like a mayor refusing to put in a rainbow crosswalk to create the illusion of public pressure so they would spend $10,000 putting one in by the company owned by the uncle of one of our members. I only participated in this bullshit for a few months cuz I was banging a troon who was heavily involved in activism.
>>98509475that's really fucking gay but interesting. MTF or FTM?
one final bump for advice
>>98508705>it's a decent settingSay this again, but this time keeping in mind we wouldn't exist as we are now if it wasn't for our ancestors' ability to throw hard and make tools.
>>98519424what the hell kind of attempt at a zinger is this?
