Tales From the Hydian Way

We talk about a topic from the discord regarding mixed groups and how to make it feel that everyone is in the story, instead of just given simple tasks to do. From magic users and Genesys to how to get force users to constrain their powers, we have ideas.

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We talk about villains in your game, from introducing them, how much different types of adventures bring a villain out to the players, and so many places in between. We have advice and tales of when things didn’t go right.

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From policing what or why your character would act a certain way to figuring out ways to make sure your split party compartmentalizes we have ideas on how to get your players and characters to identify closer to each other. We talk about how to metagame with a much freer conscience and a few simple ways GMs can gently push their players forward from planning to action.

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Your players do weird things and will deal with situations out of the order in your head. We talk about some of our experiences with players going left when we’d have expected them to go right, and give a few ideas on how to deal with it otherwise.

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Ben has players that through paying attention to all the little throw away ideas he had have found enough parts to go into business for themselves as an arms manufacturer. This boggled his mind, so he asked Rissa for advice. Also there are tales of a wookiee rescue and commune.

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Sometimes players get analysis paralysis and it gets frustrating for both the GM and the players alike. We have a few strategies to lessen the effect of it at the start of a session when the last session seems so long ago

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Ben is joined by Heroes Kristine and Leslie to talk about character backstory and motivations. From informing the characters actions to providing hooks for the Game Master to propel the story along we dive deep in these concepts.

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We talk about challenges we’ve had as GMs to get players engaged with the stories we’re trying to tell and some of the solutions we’ve had for when the players actively try to derail your plot.

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Rissa and Ben set out to talk a little about making careers in Genesys, that idea was a red herring apparently as they fall into the trap of making a whole murder mystery one shot for you to use.

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Careers talked about in this episode:

Holmes – Brawl, Perception,  Knowledge, Streetwise, Medicine, Skulduggery, Cool, Coercion

Poirot – Charm, Vigilance, Discipline, Deception, Stealth, Negotiation, Perception, Knowledge

Nancy Drew – Driving, Cool, Computers, Deception, Skulduggery, Resilience, Charm, Perception

Columbo – Ranged (light), Coercion, Streetwise, Perception, Discipline, Cool, Deception, Driving

Bones – Medicine, Mechanics, Computers, Knowledge, Discipline, Skulduggery, Coordination,

Jessica Fletcher – Vigilance, Streetwise, Stealth, Deception, Perception,  Knowledge, Discipline, Computers

NPCs talked about in this episode:

Frank –

Blustery man, chomping cigars, running the interview. He’s seen this so much he doesn’t think the second murder has happened, he thinks that the players are making too much out of it. He’s seen it all before in this interview process. They dislike at least one of the player characters.

Short of stature, and has a comb-over. Suffering withdrawal of his cigar smoking, still makes the hand motions to deal with the cigar.

Caroline –

They are the planner, they devised the initial scenario that the investigators are going through and attempting to solve, including how the night is supposed to progress, who ‘killed’ the victim and the implement. As their plans go awry they get more and more frazzled

In her late 20s, graduated early, this scenario is the first time she’s been in charge of any sort of large scale gathering. She starts the night very calm and collected, very logical and ‘cold’ and as the night goes on she becomes irritated. Dressed with big round glasses,

Jason –

Nice man at the front desk of the precinct. No one would suspect him of having a mean bone in his body, but now…. He’s dead, Frank.

He had knowledge of comings and goings in the building, but now he knew something that someone wanted him dead with. He was the one who could put two and two together, but he didn’t know he needed to.

Sonja –

Runs the negotiations branch of the police force. Brash woman  that is fairly short and wears sunglasses on her head all the time, even in side. Always wearing a duster/trench coat out into the field. When Frank and Sonja enter a room everyone else goes quiet since her and Frank do not get along usually. Has a very high willpower and a trained high charm/negotiations. 2 presence  Frank has to roll a fear check every time she walks into the room. She’s trained to the Nth degree for hostage negotiations, but is more naturally forceful in her demeanor. (high will average presence)

Dan the Lab tech –

Kind of lazy lab tech that works in Franks division. He’s taken this assignment to be the interviews dead body because he’s wanting to get noticed by Frank. He takes notes for people in the lab and is wanting a promotion to do actual lab work… Or so he says.

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From discipline to astrogation many skills are forgotten by the whole table. We talk about several ways to make them more valuable for you and your players.

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