SFX
Once upon a time, I sat in on a Curse of Strahd game. We rolled up our dudes, plopped down at the table, and got ready for some standard intro text. You wake up in a spooky scary land full of spooks. What’s your marching order? That’s what I was expecting anyway. As it turned out, this mess was anything but standard. Our GM had rigged up a fog machine. He had the lights on automatic dimmers. Red spotlights were set to give him the full Bela Lugosi effect. And by the time the organ music kicked in, I’ll be damned if it wasn’t von Zarovich himself at the head of the table. My GM happens to be very good at what he does.
Things simmered down into a more standard adventuring experience after that, but the special effects had elevated the session from “merely good” to “outstanding.”
Contrast this to my own experiences in the special effects department. I’d decided to steal an old Penny Arcade concept and construct some Styrofoam planetoids. I’d mounted everyone’s minis on spikes so that they could walk around the miniature worlds like they were playing analog Mario Galaxy, fighting bizarre elemental creatures as they hopped between gravity fields. I got plenty of oohs and ahhs from the crowd at first, but thing quickly devolved. I failed to explain my mini game adequately. The bizarre theme was a poor fit for what I’d billed as a courtly musketeers game. And to top things off, when I realized that the encounter wasn’t the big hit I’d hoped for, I rushed the group along just to get to the next thing (read: I railroaded the crap out of ’em).
Lesson learned. Elaborate props and novel encounter design can’t save a bad session.
So by all means, draft elaborate handouts and craft elaborate sets. Build your dungeons, ready you fog machines, and get those dimmer switches ready to go. But just remember: special effects are no substitute for good fundamentals. Even if they can make a good session great, you’ve got to build upon a solid foundation.
Question of the day then! What is the most elaborate sound effect, lighting effect, or physical prop you’ve seen in a game? Did it single-handedly make your game night amazing, or was it just a cheap thrill without much impact? Tell us all about those sweet handouts and cool voice-changers down in the comments!
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Has Magus been comparing notes with Elan the bard?
They are cut from the same cloth.
One of my regular players runs an occasional Call of Cthulu game.
Without doubt his best moment was when he ran a session by candlelight. That wasn’t the play, that was a clever set-up. A candlelight session sounds cool, but poor lighting and overly-complex character sheets make for a bit of a tedious experience. About halfway through the session our characters entered a room and he asked us to make Perception Tests. Cue rolling of dice and close-up squinting at character sheets. With all of our heads down and distracted, he slipped a mask out from behind his screen and put it over his face; when we looked up from our character sheets to find Jason Vorhees staring back at us, we all hit the ceiling.
Simple was to introduce his villain, but nicely heart-attack inducing
I tried the candlelit horror session. Once. If you’ve ever gone out to eat with your grandparents and watched them squint at the menu, it was a lot like that.
Lighting is important.
I vaguely remember one TRPG session from when my brother and I were kids, though I don’t remember what game we were playing. It was the start of summer, so we ran the first part of the session outside next to our fire pit. My brother was burning workbooks and stuff from the school year. It was dark outside.
Care to guess what happens next?
We went inside once we needed to roll dice and stuff, but my brother couldn’t find his character sheet. He had apparently tossed it into the fire as well, which derailed our session rather nicely as he needed to quickly replace it.
Lol. If you ever needed an excuse to make “spontaneous combustion” an encounter….
One of the best uses of props I’ve ever seen was during a Kingmaker campaign. Early on, we found a basket of items that straddled the fourth wall. The DM literally pulled out the basket from under the table and told us that our characters had found the contents as well. My wizard was fascinated by the tale of Harold and the Purple Crayon. The barbarian clung to a teddy bear that acted as a cloak of resistance. It was great fun and heightened the immersion to a startling degree.
Hey, I know this one! A prof of mine calls them ‘threshold objects.’ She talks about the Jurassic Park ride in Orlando as an example:
Jurassic Park is not a place, any more than a theatrical stage is, since a visitor cannot step off the boat without destroying the experience. Jurassic Park is essentially a giant computer-driven machine for telling an immersive story, and the boat is the fourth wall, an enchanted threshold object that carries you into the immersive world—and then out again. Like Harold’s moon, the Jurassic Park boat is both part of the illusory world and also a reminder of the boundaries. Sitting within it, you are free to give way to terror without worrying about being able to find your way back.
I’ve always used Roll20 for RPGs (or theater of the mind), so props in online games were effectively a restriction of DM’s time/care and how much moolah they had for any ‘special effects’ (which required premium subscription), such as fog of war or realistic visibility ranges. Or whether one could find good art to show off on their character page and token.
This changed somewhat when I first tried out Foundry, as that particular tabletop ‘engine’ lets you efffectively turn the tabletop into a videogame, almost – reactive sounds, tokens, macros and intuitive systems to work on this kind of stuff.
I also was intrigued by Tabletop Simulator, as there you have 3D props to play around with – which means anything you can 3D, you can make a prop of. Which is particularly intriguing to me as a 3D artist.
I remain baffled by the apparent lack of a special effects laden intro scenario in tabletop Simulator. If someone went through the trouble of making such a thing, it would be a great onboarding tool for the platform.
I feel like this comic is a good example of another common pitfall in tabletop games – ally-detrimental spells/effects that effectively mess with your allies turns if not handled properly.
By this I mean spells that, in theory, should always be helpful to you and your party in a given scenario… But end up being equally or more damaging and disruptive to you instead. They’re usually ones that limit vision, make terrain hazardous or difficult to pass through, or flat out block off sections of the map with walls – anything a Fighter would be annoyed by showing up between them and their target.
Fog spells perfectly describe this problem – their main purpose is to conceal you in fog to prevent ranged attacks, allow for escaping, or to hinder your enemies vision. Unfortunately, your allies are equally hindered as your enemies – a 20-50% miss chance affect both sides, not to mention cause mistakes with positioning as they can’t see their targets anymore.
Though it doesn’t even need be a spell that is mechanically detrimental to your allies – it can also just be irritating/annoying. Good examples of these are the Create Pit trap and Entangle. Both cause a large chunk of the terrain to become difficult to traverse and hinder enemy mobility… But also makes your own allies unable to close the distance and attack their enemies – forcing them to wait and do nothing on their turns whilst the enemy inchest, or it makes the enemies just grab their ranged weapons and force the melee to trudge closer into hazardous terrain.
When I played a Wizard, I used Create Pit to drop a few major enemies into a pit. Unfortunately, this meant our melee frontliner couldn’t reach them, leading them to literally jumping into the pit, falling prone next to them and undoing the entire purpose of the spell.
Notable is that lingering damaging spells like Black Tentacles are exempt in this case – enemies never benefit sticking around in these and allies benefit from ‘waiting’ rather than trudging into them, but they can be abused by a smart enemies (‘you gotta walk through your own coals to reach me now!’).
I know that feel: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/artillery
There’s a fine line between ‘friendly fire’ and asking ‘you have evasion, right?’.
The classic would be the Darkness spell. My warlock can see just fine in magical darkness, while everyone is left to wander around blindly — including my allies. That makes it a useful spell, but one requiring a certain care and creativity to use effectively.
I’m actually about to run into a very similar problem with my half-drow monk. There’s a feat that gives extra damage while fighting in an area of magical darkness. She’ll be able to see just fine. But anyone without Darkvision is going to have trouble.
I still want to take the feat though because she also has the Dimensional Savant feat chain so she’ll just be teleporting around the battlefield in complete darkness, pummeling all enemies she comes across.
There really ought to be a shapeable darkness spell that acts like fire snake:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/fire-snake/
Which system is that? in D&D 5e at least, Darkvision cannot see through magical darkness, and there are very few means of doing so… the only one I know of is one of the optional warlock powers… Devil’s Sight essentially being super-Darkvision.
Context clues, yo: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/dimensional-savant/
In Pathfinder, Darkness doesn’t cancel out Darkvision. But the spell Deeper Darkness would. Luckily the feat only requires the regular Darkness spell so there won’t be any trouble for her.
I’m guessing team Bounty Hunter is stalking the top a theater stage castle prop, because barring extremely weird cosmology or very shiny space monsters (which I’m sure Colin took account of for this comic 😀 ), a waning crescent moon (or any other moon phase) can’t have stars visible in front of itself.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3z2lzk/eli5_why_cant_stars_be_in_front_of_the_moon/
DM Voice: “Yes, that is unusual, isn’t it?”
“The moon blinks at you. Roll for initiative.”
Relevant xkcd page.
Corrected link to relevant xkcd page:
https://xkcd.com/1738/
Let’s go with that instead of ‘Laurel reuses her star pattern and forgets to erase things sometimes.’
I’m reading questions in that reddit post and barely managed to stop my hands from facepalming.
I wonder what kinda education those people had.
Not quite a prop, but I do enjoy official adventure paths, campaigns and similar pre-written adventures that have a fancy and good looking map. Exploring these maps with fog of war adds to the enjoyment from there.
There’s also quite a bit of fun to be had if you’re playing kingdom building games, ‘Home Improvement’, or are otherwise designing your crib, vehicles, starships and similar property, as you get to effectively plan out and decorate your own props.
This also applies to custom items owned by your PCs – little heirloom, toys, trinkets (which D&D 5e incorporates), named/cool looking unique weapons and similar flavorful/theme items.
As for realistic props, a tarot deck is wonderful to have whenever your PCs are in any kind of gambling establishment, or are faced with the dreaded Deck of Many Things. And it’s pretty much mandatory to have for any Curse of Strahd game. 😀
I’m running Crimson Throne, and actually shelled out for the harrow deck. Unfortunately, it loses some of the pizazz when it’s a Roll20 game.
We play online, so it’s hard to use all that stuff.
However, dunno if that count as a prop, but my DM once surprised us by having an important NPC in the session, and inviting a friend in the Discord when we met him to play the NPC.
Said friend was a very good friend we had kind of lost touch with. So it was a very good surprise, and made the session much better.
Otherwise, the first time I used dynamic lighting on roll20 was pretty well received, even if we’re used to it now.
Another time, a dragon was going to show up unnanounced to ruin the PCs day after they completed a task. I let them RP a bit, and then simply played a SFX of distant-but-closing-in dragon roars and said nothing. Their reaction was delightful, as only one of them caught the first, most distant set, and basically went “wait, was this…” just as the second set started and everyone heard it and started panicking.
I like that unexpected guest player business. I might have to steal that one.
Magus, sweetie? Here’s some words for you to remember: “less is more”. =p
“That doesn’t make any sense. And I should know. I scienced one time.”
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/behaving-intelligently
Heh. ^_^ If I were to stat out Magus using PF 1E, I think I’d probably leave her Intelligence at 16 and make Wisdom her dump stat. High, HIGH Charisma, though. She’s cute as the dickens.
Back to IC:
“That’s because ‘less is more’ isn’t a rule of science, but a rule of SHOWMANSHIP. You know, making people believe things that aren’t true.”
My thoughts on Magus’s build: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/magus/archetypes/paizo-magus-archetypes/eldritch-scion/
That makes a lot of sense…!
It isn’t much of a prop per-say, but preparing a map beforehand instead of on-the-fly or right before a session can make all the difference in the world. I’m a new GM, so I figured that all we really needed was a basic interpretation of the world. Showing where walls are, any hazards, rough terrain, water, and so on. Between that and my inexperience, my players never really got immersed in my campaigns. We just had our first session in months, and I had used the time to prepare some maps for the new campaign. It’s amazing how a little grass and actual trees instead of a blank background and green circles completely changes the feel of the campaign. My players were pulled in and explored, they actually talked to NPCs and actively searched for their next goal. It may seem basic to more experienced GMs, but a well-made map can make a world of difference.
What maps did you use? Got a link or a screenshot?
Sorry it took so long, it took a while for me to figure out how to share photos over the internet. But here you go: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tu6qvh3tomg7o0u/AABCAxKicffuF9WOKqcIEedca?dl=0
I made both of these maps myself! The town I made using random Roll20 tokens, and the forest I made with Inkarnate.com’s free account.
Nicely done! And mad props to you for the DIY business. I usually just steal whatever I can from Google Image search. Either that or the “million square feet” guy over on DA:
https://www.deviantart.com/zatnikotel/gallery/69186144/the-one-million
In real life we don’t use SFX, for obvious reasons. In-game, well. The Taumathurgy cantrip don’t need presentation. And let’s not forget Haunting Apparition Trick charm 🙂
On a more meta-example: “But just remember: special effects are no substitute for good fundamentals. Even if they can make a good session great, you’ve got to build upon a solid foundation.” That is something you can learn by watching almost any modern movie with SFX 🙁
^ true words
I must say, today’s comic is especially beautiful. =)
Thank you! I was really happy with how it turned out 😀
The first game I ran for my third group was a horror D&D session, in the dark, by candlelight. Midway through, I went “to the toilet,” quickly pulled on the cloak and cane of the main villain, headed to an outside door and came in from there, walking up behind them in a blast of chill October air and accompanied by a sinister tapping from the cane. One of them jumped out of his seat…
Other than that – I’ve done a fair bit of dramatic red lighting for Beast scenes in my VTM game, but mostly I stick to the dim light and narration.
The Shadow!?
Laurel finished my commission today. Tamarie is SO pretty!
But how will anyone know if she’s all the time fighting in magical darkness? 😛
Her friends will know. 🙂
I’m really glad you like her! She was very fun to draw <3
<3
I’ve played with a CoC keeper who was damn good at it.
We once broke into an abandoned sanatorium and played. He dressed up as a doctor with a white lab coat and face mask (this was like 8 years ago, before it was cool), he had pictures of all the NPCs and he brought his trusted cow skull and pentagram sheet for the game.
Another character and mine went alone to investigate a thing, so he physically brought us to a different room in a pitch black building with only a small candle for lightning, and won’t you know, he had prepared some clothes with some kind of dummy inside and strung it up to make it look like someone had hung themselves.
The lady I walked in with screamed like nobody’s business. 🙂
Hey, I remember this story! No idea which comic it was mentioned on before though. Still beats the pants off of anything I’ve managed.