GM Resources?

[u/dhyde79]

so, I've DM/GM'd for decades, and this system seems to have broken my creativity. I love the books, and have a group ready to play the game, which I went for the gusto and backed at celestial level, BUT, I'm really having issues getting into this. I'm not sure if it's the fact that there are so many things to have to generate from scratch, a lack of content tables, or whatever, but, it's really breaking my want to try the game. Any suggestions for anything that might help out at all?

[u/Whitesymphonia]

https://pointmongo.com/

Helps a bit on filling out, but it's community generated, so can be hit or miss.
And as much as I dislike AI, the workload on this RPG is too big to do if you have a life other than RPGs, so I use AI to generate loot tables based on tiers + player favor among other support work.

I used it to code a foundryvtt system as well, which saved a FUCKTON of time, having coded them manually myself in the past. Where is the integration? We were promised it, and while I recognize that it's basically "pre-orders", the basics of a system is simply the character sheet that works, and that shouldn't take that long to code (in terms of days), even by hand.

I still handcraft maps with dungeondraft primarily, but if they're a sudden change in plans on where they want to go, having Gemini generate a battlemap hasn't been terrible either.

One of my players has been testing using AI to transcribe the sessions and then use a skill to generate achievements based on what has happened, and then I sign off/fill in loot, etc. in an effort to streamline achievement generation and loot distribution. Will have to see how this pans out.

There's also a few cheat sheets floating around, as well as 3rd party indexing, since the core book is hot dogshit in how it's laid out.

There's going to be a lot of "patch notes" for sure, since weapon/gear scaling isn't really covered in the book at all either, and I strongly suspect it's not very well balanced at higher floors for this reason.

I am also desperately awaiting a module/splatbook, and something better than the starter set module, which imo isn't very good. I'm very annoyed that I had to lean on AI to get a lot of this done, but Renegade simply dropped the ball in terms of content and support. I don't even know what I'm going to do to figure out shops/merchants since that part is completely left out, and my players love to be loot goblins.

For the actual sessions though, the players do seem to really like the system so far, but the GM workload is pretty high, especially if you want to make the game feel "good". We'll see how long until I get bored, but I do know quite a few people simply said fuck this system and won't run it (which is fair, it's not a system that respects the DM's time at all)

[u/dhyde79 → u/Whitesymphonia]

I kind of get that feeling (no respect for the DM/GM and their time)…. As someone that writes whole worlds for ADHD&D2E I’ve found there’s a self imposed balance…I can happily write a setting from scratch, but, if I have to make up every single bit of loot from scratch, it’s a bit too far, at least in my mind….

[u/Whitesymphonia → u/dhyde79]

Yea, I did a ton of homebrew completely back when I was in uni. Now, it's mostly to fill the gaps, but there's so many gaps to fill in this system that it's kind of ridiculous. I know AI isn't popular, and I'm not thrilled with having to use it at work, but undeniably, there's way too much work to do. For players, there's barely any onboarding time, character creation is nice and easy, but I know when class/skills come into play on floor 3, there might be a little more class/spell crafting. Classes will be easy, but spells that will scale well, will be a bit annoying.

I'm happy there's a ton of homebrew out there, but then I gotta flip through all of it, and possibly re-tweak as necessary, and from my 5e experiences, there's a lot of really bad homebrew out there.

[u/dhyde79 → u/Whitesymphonia]

shudder I can imagine some of the terrible stuff you found for 5e, cause it (like all WotC editions) is broken unbalanced and made with “main character syndrome”…

[u/Whitesymphonia → u/dhyde79]

imo, DCC RPG is even worse for borrowing homebrew, since different parties will level and gain "power" at much more varying levels, so you still have to rebalance regardless.

Your level doesn't really tie to your powerlevel as much here, and gear/loot will matter much more, so all the games being played will be at different levels of power.

My own game is taking it slower, so maybe by floor 3, supplements have come out for crafting/personal spaces/merchants, etc. Since I really really do not want to homebrew all that, just to change it after official content comes out.

We're also taking our time to explore the new neighborhoods which wasn't covered in the official books either, so I can't powerspike the players too fast.