ITT: Times when you have fucked up and generated a bunch of work for yourself as a GM or a player.
I recently had my players go on a fetch quest to trade magically-enhanced 1000-proof alcohol (yes, it has more alcohol than volume) to an alcoholic dragon for an ancient book of poetry. On the way back, they made decisions leading to the NPC they were on the quest for getting killed.
I only realized about a half hour later that they're going to wind up reading that book at some point, which means that I have to write a shitload of poetry now, as opposed to the one poem that actually has some plot relevance.
Mistakes were made.
>>46838650
Why write them? Just google poems.
>>46838650
>"We gonna read the book."
>"The book contains a varied array of poems, ranging from onyrical observations and exhaltation of the bucolic lifestyle, to romantic sonets written to fair maidens of wheat hair...One, whoever, differs from the others, it reads (Insert Relevant Poem)."
Not that hard, really
>>46838722
This.
>>46838722
I would love to do that, but then it would be way too easy for them to realize what's going on. It's not a very direct reference.
>>46838683
I've done this, but they're smart enough to metagame to find the one custom poem. So I have to write at least a few of those.
>>46838650
I once gave the party dwarf a chest filled to the brim with expensive, high-quality liquor.
I still haven't listed everything in it.
>>46840178
Are you asking us to write poems, OP?
Because that's pretty gay.
>>46842414
No. That would be fucking retarded.
I'm handling this myself, I just wanted to complain.
Dicked the Queen of the kingdom, more or less fucked things up for the entire group and the game completely changed tone and pace. I felt bad about it, but secretly don't regret it.
>>46838650
>Autistic about rules fitting the game I want to play
>No rules quite seem to match
>Decide to make my own ruleset
>Game is on Tuesday, only have vague idea of what I want the ruleset to be like
It's probably not even that hard, but god I'm a lazy fuck.
>>46842780
There once pon a summer's eve was OP
Ever fancy, ever dainty
>>46838650
If the relevant poem can be a haiku, and you're not opposed to weeb-ness, just make a bunch of shitty haikus. They sound good no matter what
Rolled 46 (1d100)
Floopldoop
>>46844012
Watch the king on throne
Realize he is alone
Those who non believe
Uh. I don't think I'm cut out for this haiku thing.
>>46838650
Why not fill the book with poems in other languages?
>Who here reads Draconic? No one? Oh. Well, it was in the possession of a dragon after all.
>>46845262
We have two people that speak draconic and I already said the poems are in draconic.
I'm actually kind of enjoying this at this point.
>>46838650
How erudite are your players? If the answer is not very, just use poems that already exist.
And even if they say "hey I've heard that one before" just tell them that a wizard did it.
>>46845280
oh wait I see that you addressed that earlier
I had the idea of writing out pieces of paper describing generic treasures of varying values. The plan was to put them in a little box I had, shake it around, and place randomly selected paper rolls into tiny plastic treasure chests to represent random treasure. The players thought it was pretty fun and it saved me effort improvising ingame, but holy hell that was a lot of work.
In order I:
>filled a little box with paper rolls
>realized they varied too greatly - you could get a boot and a rock or a few thousand gold
>bought five more tiny boxes
>marked them each to be filled with different types of stuff: mundane junk, mundane combat, money, magical combat, potions/scrolls, and wondrous items
>each piece of paper had a number of lines on the outside to identify what box they came from so I could replenish the boxes for future use
>they were also color-coordinated so the darker red they got, the higher level they were
>then I realized players could figure out the line stuff to determine what's inside before opening, not that it mattered a lot but I stll went through and erased the lines because I have no life
>players start fighting over who gets to gm next after a couple sessions with the boxes
>I spent two weeks on a project I saw in action two times before being locked up for anywhere from another year to forever
>my soul when
>>46840178
>smart enough to metagame
Yeah, okay.
>>46838650
>I have to write a shitload of poetry now, as opposed to the one poem that actually has some plot relevance
Can't you just be like "it's full of beautiful and thought-provoking poems that your DM is too lazy to write out"? Then you can just make them roll intelligence to find the important one, or just give it to them.
Or is it absolutely necessary for them to sift through decoy poems IRL?
>>46838650
>ancient book of poetry
>it's actually just full of redneck songs and limericks
You know you want to do it.
Do it.
DO IT.
>>46838650
>>46840178
http://www.languageisavirus.com/automatic_poetry_generator.html
Literally 5 seconds hunch and google.
>>46838650
Roses can be red,
Violets are violet, not blue,
Poem now haiku
>>46851216
I think it would just be kind of fun.
This is a lot easier than I thought it would be so far anyway.
>>46855983
>>46838650
Haikus are easy
But sometimes don't make sense
Dickniggerfuckyou
>>46858833
*"do not", my mistake.
