After a few friends and mates expressed interest, I've decided to DM a DND session at my place. Most of those involved are beginners, and this is my first time DMing. I am looking to do maybe a single encounter first, to establish the party, and then hopefully spur it into a more campaign-like series.
Are you the GM who is character driven, quest driven, setting driven, where is you focus. Character driven GM's allow the PC's to the be centre of everything, some think that this is new role playing should be, others think that it pampers the players and is too generous. Quest driven campaigns are easy to develop a backstory for, but either become linear or easily broken. Setting driven is my preferred option, but can be very restrictive especially for those who feel PCs should do as they want, on the other hand you can pint a deeper picture and more immersive world for he players.
No one technique is superior, as each has their merits. Though one will be the preferred and thus best option or you and your gaming group. Before you begin though, the three techniques are mutually exclusive, while all contain a small mix of the other two for your GMing toolbox will naturally have to steer to one of the three techniques or fail.
The above is my own game theory, but I can back up my words, but there is too much to just post it all, and most of the nuances are best seen from experience.
I'm probably going to go with Setting focused, I love describing the world and immersion trumps everything else/ I've been working on building the world, and just enjoying the richness of DND lore.
1. Spend time making actual characters and not just a bunch of stats. Each character should have:
- motivations - make players dig deep. If they want riches, why do they want them? Is it to support their family? Pay for Grandma's magical healing? Build a keep to defend their hometown.
- personality- each character should have at least three character traits. For Example, the character is Happy-go-lucky, Opportunistic, and Adventurous.
- quirks, eccentricities, and habits- things like the magic-user has a nervous tick, the fighter likes to smoke pipes, and the cleric stutters, and the thief also collects stamps.
2. Build a group background. This is a basic idea of why the characters are together and adventure together. I.e. They all grew up together, they are all part of the king's household guard, etc. Think about why your friends are friends and do the same for the characters.
3. In you first adventure, give everyone a chance to use their special skills and shine.
4. Make the characters make decisions. If they are stalling, hold up your hand and start counting down from five, they will act before you get to 0. If they don't you tell them what happens while they are dithering.
5. Start you first adventure in the middle of the action, and then narrate how they got there. That allows you to set the stage for adventure early. I.e. You are walking the path to the local inn, when Farmer Jones comes bursting through the window, obviously thrown through it. What do you do?
Remember this isn't your novel with a few people playing characters. If you try and create something that is tightly scripted you will be disappointed as the PCs run roughshod over everything. You have to walk the line of having some structure but also prepare for some improv.
If all else fails throw books/dice/chairs at the players so they know you are dissatisfied.
Have a discussion about expectations with players before you play- if someone is looking for a gothic horror mystery story and another is looking for pulpy swords and sorcery, it's better to hash that out before you start prepping. Remember that your preferences for what is happening are very important too.
At the same time, prep situations, not plots. A situation presents the players with a problem and they then figure out a solution. A plot progresses along a defined course. Situations are more fun for players and give them a sense of control, and "playing" the situation allows you to be surprised by your own game, which is pretty fun.
When you feel yourself about to say "no" to a player request, do a quick check if saying "yes" would destroy or damage the game. "Yes, and" or "Yes, but" is almost always better than "No".
I also like to let the players get involved in the setting building if they show any interest.
Oh, and a big one - you're going to have the odd dud session. Don't let it get to you - sometimes it can be that the players just weren't on form, or you weren't, any number of reasons. Let it go and move on, instead of worrying too much about it. (I am terrible at this and therefore suffer periodic burnout!)
Right, so now I can tailor advice without it being too widecast to be of use. I will be basing this on 5e D&D. Many of my approaches work better in other systems, for Runequest it is ideal, but can be ported to D&D easily enough with a it of tailoring.
Character origins
For setting focused games think about the characters social class and origins. With new players I would try a more restrictive approach. First step is to get permission from your players for this style of game, then when permission is given request they all play human, give them choices of social class, best not to make more than one, if any, noble. Make them role play their own gender ad give the social and gender divide real meaning and set cultural obstacles. Female gamers are generally ok with this once it is explained that your society will be patriarchial, but as a hero player characters can step out of their social bonds. Most female gamers I have met appreciate this and prefer to overcome restrictions of gender b achievement than be given the 'we are all the exact same' variant of equality treatment . I don't recommend you apply a race based restriction though, unless humans are enslaved in general and you have a revolt theme. Then restrict the character classes available to eliminate wierdness. Then you stop taking away start giving.....
Enhanced character generation
Start by giving your characters a childhood for their characters, this will aid immensely in adding immersion. I tend to start my adventurer groups from the same village, town or tribe. Then have two mini scenario 'scenes' for each character lasting about five minutes each. They can be linear. One scene will be pre-teen, one as a teen. Do this around the table during character generation. None will require combat or challenge beyond choice making. Develop your characters bonus feat and stat boosts based on their choices.
One technique I do for childhood development is to take a fairy tale or myth for the firs scene and make my characters relive it. the second teenage scene will be a moral choice, or choice of benefits normally resulting in a minor item or personal contact.
Examples for you.
Child 'quest' taken from African Myth: A boy asks his father to hunt, but he is told he cannot because he hs not earned a spear,and must go help mother instead. Mother tells him to take a pot and milk the old goat. On the was a woman from the tribe asks for the pot to borrow, if the child hands the pot over it is accidentally broken and the woman compensates the boy with another item This in turn is taken by an adult in need used up or damaged and is replaced in turn by another item. Each demand should be reasonable, by an adult and from need, if the child refuses to hand over an item he quest ends, and if the pot is handed over the child doesn't even get to milk the old got and is spanked for being naughty. If the child keeps on handing over and having replacement items eventually he will get a shield.
A hunter returning to the village needs the shield to fight a lion (?or a big big orc?). He kills the opponent but the shield is ruined, in compensation the hunter gives the boy a spear, it should be emphasized that being given a spear is highly unusual, but the shield was well worked (many of the replacement items being a sequential upgrade in value from th point of view of the tribe). Now with spear in and the of rushes off to father and father asks how he came of it. When father learns the spear was gained honourably through obedience to elders father decides that while too young to be offered a spear fate had given him one anyway and he should be trained as a hunter. A successful 'quest' means a point of strength and encouragement to develop the character in the ranger, fighter or barbarian class (the player can choose otherwise).
Teenage quest micro-scenario. The player finds a money purse belonging to a merchant who is known to be searching for it. the player has three choices, - spend the money on ale, - give the money to father, - give the money to the merchant. The solution encourages alignment of chaotic, neutral and lawful respectively (player can overrule, but you give them a small bonus if they keep to alignment). Stay with chaotic - player meets the drinkers of low moral a learns a gambling skill, neutral - the merchant is reimbursed by the village,the elder commends your wisdom (+1) by letting elders handle the matter. Lawful - merchant is very grateful, player gets a minor valuable item which they will have on them at campaign start and the merchant becomes a contact who will be useful in play. Players who don't go with suggested alignment don't get a bonus but choose to set their alignment as they wish.
Character classes.
D&D is high fantasy by design, especially Pathfinder and v3.0 onwards. Whras this style of charcter generation fits low fantasy better. However you can meld the two with fancy footwork. Any character class considered too exotic to be used to sarting characters can be deferred. Make the character a rogue or fighter instead, ignore any rogue skills that dont fit the ethos of the eventual class. At third level when the player normally chooses a rogue/fighter subclass benefit they get the one off choice to replace all rogue levels with levels of a character class of thief choosing. It works better in practice than it sounds, if you encourage to think of themselves as an ordinary person or nondescript character-concept-in-waiting rather than a 'rogue'.
Example.
A player wants to play a Warlock, and you decided that warlocks are ok to play in your campaign, but are rare and you don't start as one. Arrange for the player to build a rogue and find an evil looking tome during play. They can secret it away, and use fiat to prevent other characters from interfering. Te demon lord to whom the tome refers offers the rogue a dark pact in a troubled ream (just after the character reaches third level. At this point the player can choose to multiclass, continue with rogue levels or make a one off replacement of rogue levels to warlock levels.
Start would be paladins as fighters, give then a religious conversion/awakening experience between 2nd and 4th level, convert all fighter levels to paladin overnight.
Tip: Make the religion mean something more than just a spell list, this is important for immersive play for druids, paladins and clerics.
Why do this?: Players should pre-book their intended character classes with the GM, but need not start this way. Warlocks and paladins in particular are creaming out for character development. All too often players start characters as caricatures, for a setting based campaign start them off as mundane as possible and let them become variety fantasy tropes rather than start hardwired into those roles.
Explain via the 4th wall that th development processes are there to allow players to step into their character classes in play, and that other players should make excuses for their characters not to find out or interfere.
Common origin Having a common origin like a tribe or village helps you as the GM paint the picture as there is a common point of view for all characters, later add on characters can be more diverse, non human etc, but starting characters together makes your job easier, it also encourages setting based play, gives characters intrinsic cultural or national loyalties and make the party a part of the setting rather than a random bunch of well tooled individuals rampaging through it. Thus in turn channeling the rampagings all PCs eventually do long natural logical paths.
This has a secondary advantage of helping bond the characters without alignment fixing. Chaotic Evil dick characters excepted, which you should try and ban, you can have characters of very wide alignment base geling as a loyal team because they all come from the same social unit.
Third you can start the ball rolling by having a disaster befall the characters and their formative environment. Forexample - you all grew up in the same village, village gets burned by marauding ors and you are all carried off as slaves.
Players immediate first goal is to escape their bonds and or take revenge on the orcs. You immediately set up a sandbox setting for further play, have an enemy, a point of origin and a point of perspective. The latter being important as you describe the world from the point of view of adventuring ex-villagers who had until then not taken any notice f anything more than a few miles from home.
Downsides of setting based games. Have to throw this in here to be fair.
- You will be restricting the characters a lot more than people are used to, especially at the start.
- It will be harder to justify using many of th races and classes technically available in the sourcebooks, even during play.
- The game will have a low plot feel and may take a while to get 'epic' and might never actually be epic.
However all of these disadvantages are conversely advantages if the players agree to this style of play, which an be very enriching.
Thus setting based play comes down to one factor, get your player group on board with it before you start. If your players want to be what they want when they want (within reason) choose another playstyle. If you start theme out as something paraphrased to be 'you are all lost refugee commoners - get over it' and sell the immersion benefits to the players your campaign may well become awesome.
Some recommended starts
You are all prisoners/slaves who make a mass escape (a 'Bethesda Special').
- Good choice for a party of multiskilled diverse characters with a common start point and little or no equipment.
You are villagers/townsfolk trying to make their name in the world.
- Basic rustic starting point, for back to setting based gaming. Encourage players to emphasize character personality over character build. Good for starting wide eyed local boy makes good storylines, and voyages of discovery. You don't need to burn their homes to start the campaign, starting a trade caravan is a good alternative.
Shipwrecked
-Starts everyone as a sailor or passenger, allows some diversity from the start. As a hint don't allow early rescue, let the characters develop from local resources and rescue themselves after they have bonded as an adventuring team. Good for throwing players into an unknown environment with no way back.
First of all, there's a great tool called the Ten Minute Background. Basically, this is a tool for your players to fill out for you before the game starts. This will allow you to weave some of their backstories into the plot itself, which gives that character a time to shine and makes them feel more alive.
Second, learn to improvise. No matter how obvious the solution, no matter how clear the path, no matter how simple the puzzle, the PCs will nine times out of ten overthink it and come up with some ridiculous solution. Or, in some cases, they may take a turn you never expected. You have to be familiar enough with the lore of the system, as well as the system itself, to quickly and seamlessly make new and interesting threads when your PCs ridiculous choices send you there.
I also agree with a lot of what Da Boss said. Do not stop a player from doing something because it wasn't in your script. My philosophy is, a DM only has the right to say "no" if the game allows it. If some action would greatly defy the PC's morals/alignment, or is something the PC simply cannot do, then yes, you can say no. But if it is entirely within the realm of possibilities, then yes, it is allowed. Hell, that's how my signature was made- a series of rather silly events led to an undead ogre eating explosive pies because he thought they were a parrot. Did I plan for that to happen? No, but it became one of the most memorable parts of the campaign because it was unplanned, and most of all, because it was entirely planned by their characters. The most you can do to keep a campaign on track is to give the PCs a reason to keep it on track. Give some promise of loot to the greedy mercenary, have some mission from the gods for the devout travelers, and whatnot.
The ultimate goal of a campaign is to be fun and memorable. If a building or something explodes because you said it would happen in the script, then oh no, a building exploded, just as planned. But if the players explode a building, and it was in no way planned by the DM at all, then that becomes one of the most fun experiences of the session. The most fun to be had in these games is when your PCs do something incredible completely on their own. Let them grow and have their freedom, but at the same time, do not be afraid to bring the hurt if they make a stupid decision. Sure, go ahead, climb in the catapult, but get ready to roll up a new character if your trajectory is off.
As far as combat goes, here's a few quick pointers. Mass combat with tons of enemies sounds fun at first, but you have to realize DND is a rather sluggish combat system when lots of people are involved. Don't be afraid to throw a couple handfuls of enemies at a time, but keep them simple. Second, after rolling initiative, it helps keep the pace if you tell your players to have their move ready at the end of the turn of the person who goes before them. If they already know their move when the person before them goes, they can immediately make their move and combat is sped up.
Finally, as a last piece of advice, random loot tables have the potential to be amazing or horrible. The best part about random loot is that your party might have no immediate use for it, and if your party is creative, they can find some way to utilize that "Staff of Nosepicking" to save the day at some point. Also, as a DM, don't be afraid to cheese the random loot rolls. If it is something your party absolutely cannot use, like a ring of spell storage in a group of fighters, go ahead and pretend that wasn't the final roll on the chart.
Also, as another last final piece of advice I just remembered, make your rules ironclad. You may have little power over your PCs, but the power you do have is solid. Make your dice rolling rules very clear at the start. I've had players who had a habit of lying about their rolls, so my mandatory rule is that it must be rolled into the center of the table where everyone, especially the DM, can see. If a player is consistently cheating or becoming toxic, do not be afraid to give them a warning or eventually the boot. This is about having fun, and if someone is preventing that, then they are missing the point and should be kicked out.
1-Don't plan too much ahead- No plan survive contact with Players. Make the general line, important NPCs, but don't raw every single detail; you'll end up working for nothing as nothing will be used (yes, the PCs will go via the sewers for added sneaky instead of going as disguised guest to the Grand Ball)
2-Keep it simple; first mission for people who aren't too sure, so a sinple 'get my pigs for the goblins' should be all right to get the action going, have a little RP with the NPCs, and a few funny moments with bringing the pigs back home (since no hero take skills in farming or animal handling)
There is a lot to get into but honestly the main thing, the most fundamental and important thing, about DMing is this:
- the players tell you what they are attempting
- you tell them what they need to roll
I know this seems self-evident but you might be surprised how many DMs get flummoxed during a session trying to figure out if a PC can do X and what the rules for it are, flipping through pages, killing the pace of the session. When (not if) you find yourself in a situation similar to that, just re-focus on the basic structure of the game that I just described. Forget what the rulebook says, just stay in the moment and run the game. It is okay to come up with a ruling there and then -- in fact, that's your job as DM. That's the first fundamental principle of DMing.
The second fundamental principle of DMing is, always ask players to describe their characters' actions in reasonable detail. If they say, we're searching the room then you ask, how are you doing it? Do not let them get away with conclusory declarations. You will need to prompt them at first but pretty soon they will get into it and -- just trust me here, we can get into the theory later if you want -- everyone will have a better time.
The third fundamental principle of DMing is, when a player asks whether X is possible you can ONLY either say "yes" or "no, but." When you just say "no," you are effectively shutting that person's creativity down. Saying "no, but" and then providing them with more information to use is a method of keeping them engaged. But as a general rule, just say yes and apply the other principles: okay, sure, but how are you going to do it?
Psienesis is right. a lot of the advice here is about tantrum control. Giving the players what they want by never saying no. They end up 20th level spoilt brats. As its only as game this might be cool with you in which case allow the players to have their fun play through and move on.
If that doesn't satisfy you, you need to adapt but also tyo have the resolve to run the campaign you want to run.
In a nutshell.
1. You the GM are the world builder, your player characters only live there.
2. If you play in poverty, a small reward is magnified.
3. If you give players what they want when they want ultimately no reward is satisfying. You can avoid this fate is you speed on to level 20 retire the characters and restart.
4. There is not a asingle one of the GM's rules, including my own which should not be broken if it suits you.
I run a very successful and popular campaign that breaks just about every one of the Gamemastery 101 tips in the link Da Boss gave. Even though I don't fully disagree with them.
I will frequently tell my players No, and make things hard for them, and under-reward them.
Why is my campaign so popular? Because its not the opposite, its not the player comes first do what you want sort of campaign. After so much modern laissez faire gaming as forwarded by 3rd D&D onwards, my players have come to appreciate a harsh GM bitchslapping.
You wanna play a paladin, ok roll up a paladin, here are his awesome paladins abilities.
or
You wanna play a paladin, ok roll up a fighter, now join a religion and prove yourself worthy to become a paladin.
Neither approach is right or wrong, but you can break the rules, ignore most of the dos and donts that a good DM supposedly ought to follow, and still have the rep of running the best campaign in town.
Ahtman wrote: Remember this isn't your novel with a few people playing characters.
It can be, but need not be. I think you misunderstand big vision GMing, and also for that matter book characters.
Making a big vision and making characters passengers in it is reasonable dependent on how its handled, we are all passengers through life for a large part as a lot of what is around us is beyond our control. we interact with our environment rather than dominate it. Those who do dominate it often get bord more quickly than those who interact.
As for book characters you can have a firm plot and have characters exceed their bounds while remaining within a set framework, good writers allow for this. So good GMs should also.
Running a campaign and writing a short story/novel/play/script/etc are completely different things. Anyone doing the former based upon the latter is likely to be a fantastically terrible DM. I have suffered through such campaigns.
Manchu wrote: Running a campaign and writing a short story/novel/play/script/etc are completely different things. Anyone doing the former based upon the latter is likely to be a fantastically terrible DM. I have suffered through such campaigns.
I've read your posts and I think your advice is bad and also it kind of seems more like you are bragging than giving advice. I have played with DMs who practiced some of what you post and they have been mostly terrible, including driving first time players away from D&D. Of course, what one DM does ineptly another may do successfully so if such practices work for your group, more power to you. I'd be happy to discuss in detail but further "reread my posts" type responses are a waste of everyone's time.
I can only offer limited advice, given that I play with close friends, and I've always been stuck as the GM from the start.
First I have to say, you must be willing to put the foot down when necessary. As Manchu said, flipping through pages constantly checking the precise rules will kill the pace entirely. By all means be open to player points and arguments, but YOU have the final say. If it saves you 30 minutes of rules-wrangling by winging it then so be it.
Second, things can get heated. I've noticed my mates sometimes have real difficulty separating in-character decisions, mistakes and rivalries with out-of-character arguments and insults. It's gotten out of hand more than once, to the point where I intend to issue an ultimatum at our next session. I hope you don't reach this point, just make it clear from the start it's a bloody game.
Third, encourage your players to 'play their character' not just 'play to win' (of course that might be part of their character). In an Only War session, one of my player's comrades had her leg blown off by a rampaging CSM. The player, to the outrage of the others, ceased firing his melta (the only weapon they had aside from det-packs that could reliably hurt the Chaos Marine) and dragged his comrade to the medic.
This infuriated the more 'play to win' fellows, arguing that the more logical thing to do would have been to keep firing and allow someone else to come over and help the wounded comrade. The player in question said, given they had signed up together, trained and fought together for years now, there's no way he'd ignore her leave her bleeding out on the ground waiting for help to come.
That's the kind of beautiful roleplaying that I truly enjoy seeing as a GM, and you should do everything you can to encourage it.
Very good point about in-game and out-of-game issues getting blurred. I have been in groups where out-of-game bullying has carried over into the world of the characters. Fortunately, in that case, the bullied player's character put one over on the bully's character and that settled things. In that case, there was a happy ending with no DM intervention, which I would say is ideal.
Manchu wrote: I've read your posts and I think your advice is bad and also it kind of seems more like you are bragging than giving advice. I have played with DMs who practiced some of what you post and they have been mostly terrible, including driving first time players away from D&D. Of course, what one DM does ineptly another may do successfully so if such practices work for your group, more power to you. I'd be happy to discuss in detail but further "reread my posts" type responses are a waste of everyone's time.
Very well.
You have picked up a lot of misinterpretations, which are covered. This stems from your interpretation of what you assume is being written from your own experiences rather than actually just reading it. However I will reiterate if it helps clarify, as it is clear that the techniques I share I outside your experiences and this is why you are jumping to conclusions as to what I am describing rather than thinking about what is written long enough to work it out. As you have had some GMs try similar techniques unsuccessfully your mind is closed to them, and you need to take a fresh look to see the actualizable benefits for this to profit you in any way.
"The advice is bad."
GMing is an art not as science, often in art you do things which other people do not do and it trailblazes a path rather than fails if presented well. Best examples of that truth come from art itself, and the myriad times art and perception of art has changed as an individual artist threw away the rules about how artwork is presented. Every time you get a change of period you get this. Best example is the Impressionist movement in 19th century Paris. Apparently they were all doing it wrong because they threw away the rule book as to how canvass art was to be portrayed.
"and also it kind of seems more like you are bragging than giving advice."
Have you actually read the advice given on giving characters group origins etc? I cant see how you can just write that off as bragging. What I do works, and I to some extent explain why it works and better yet offer similar examples of technique which are known to work and mirror this Gming technique closely. Therefore I claim its the technique and not my leet gaming skillz that makes it work.
However if this helps here is my actual inspiration for one of the main concepts:
1:45ff
I oft remembered Dr Tyrells theory as Bladerunner is one of my favourite films, I thought the advice sound and applicable to player characters, who don't exactly have much personality or attachment when just first scribbled onto paper. Origins stories help this immensely. I have been playing this way for years and "bragging" or not I do have valid reason to say it is popular with my players, and to expect you may have similar results if you understand what you are trying to do enough to do it. I advise you to experiment.
e.g. Ever played Fallout 3? See how much deeper your character was for the growing up vignettes. Same again.
Oh and some of my play group are first time, some veterans. This technique of charcter generation while unusual is of itself acceptable to a wide variety of gamers.
Now onto the re-explanation. It is difficult to handle and quantify emotive processes, but shall try, and will keep this as brief as possible if I can for my own benefit, I wont explain a third time.
"The third fundamental principle of DMing is, when a player asks whether X is possible you can ONLY either say "yes" or "no, but." When you just say "no," you are effectively shutting that person's creativity down."
"Be advised that the above advice is often the path to campaign-ruining inventions."
The 'find-a-way-to-say-yes' approach to GMing is shallow frankly. I relies on constantly giving out the candy as its sole means of providing fun. I called this 'tantrum control' as that is what it is. A campaign revolving around wish fulfilment for players desires is an identical mentality to that of overindulging parent and spoilt child. This is true even of adult gaming groups because the want is entirely illusory players have no reason not to grasp for it in the same manner a spoilt child will. The 'tantrums' might differ from that of spoilt kiddies but are essentially similar. The only way out of this is if the gaming group has enough inherent maturity not to ask too much, and usual only some ask for less than others. It also is the original common tensions in player groups where one or more players tries to hog the limelight or be the centre of everything.
Your method works on the grounds that a GM has an infinite reward bag and you can keep on adding challenges and rewards, but it is very detached. If you can mask the shallowness as many Gm's have to do then, as you say, more power to you.
"As its only as game this might be cool with you in which case allow the players to have their fun play through and move on."
"Pray tell, if playing this game is not about having fun ... then what is it about?"
Touching on this briefly. Fun can be had in many different ways, but with a never say no policy, tantrum control is untimately the sole way to maintain and semblance of fun. A different technique has potential to be more fun, rather than necessarily devoid of fun. This should be obvious enough that rereading was recommended.
"Remember this isn't your novel with a few people playing characters."
"I think you misunderstand big vision GMing, and also for that matter book characters."
"Running a campaign and writing a short story/novel/play/script/etc are completely different things. Anyone doing the former based upon the latter is likely to be a fantastically terrible DM. I have suffered through such campaigns."
Hence the need to understand how to do it right. First to dispel your misconception as to book characters and their analogy to player characters..
Book characters only appear to just be passengers to the plot following it page after page this is because a book character whether written in first or third person is a narrative of a past events as the story is written. The writing of the story is the 'present' and a good writer develops the story as it is written, this includes the characters. A living character doesn't just follow the plot, he or she alters it by the dialogue and actions. Let me give you some examples of this from fantasy. Aslan, tyrion Lannister and Severus Snape were all intended to be minor characters in their respective books but they developed in the authors mind and yet developed. A good author will not shut down such creativity in favour of the meta plot but will alklow character to develop and thus write memorable and living characters. GRRMartin spoke of how at least one of his characters talked his way out of his own execution and Martin completed the character allowing for the plot digression. CS Lewis wrote later of how Aslan 'came bounding over the pages', and quite aptly took for himself the lions share of the first book. This was not intentional.
The main point here is that if good novel writing allows characters to grow and develop without the plot milieu, the same should also be true of narrative game player characters.
It is a bad writer who only writes the meta plot, and likewise it is a bad GM who develops a narrative campaign and doesnt understand writing narrative. This explains why you suffered as you say.
To give further example, one of the prime reasons must mystery stories are devoid of memorable character is because most mystery stories are written backwards for simplicity. You start with the big reveal at the end, then write the preceeding chapter showing how the deed was done and worked out, and from that generate a plot and characters. its an easy way of writing a clever plot with a hard to see but logically remaining twist, properly foreshadowed without needing the touch of genius to do the thinking the other way around. This is where Conan Dyles stories shine, as he didnt do that with Sherlock Holmes, he could write a deep mystery plot front to back and thus have his characters along for the ride, and present their deduction as though it were genius. Most literary mystery solvers however only reach their conclusion because they start from there, and when written backwards there is no room to live through the plot chronologically and thus experience character development as described above, as the hero must follow the meta plot and has absolutely no choice as time is working in reverse. Hense these characters are so often extremely bland.
Why have a narrative campaign to begin with?
The reason is because narratives have so much more depth to them than reactive play where the GM is opening the monster and goodie bag sequentially. In a narrative campaign there may be set unfudged encounters per location because that is how the 'sandbox' gameworld is set up to be. There might not be any opportunity for specific reward or yes-answering if the sandbox world doesn't have the option to fulfil the players wishes. However the sandbox world reinforced by narrative structure offers a more immersive experience which when handled right is a better play experience.
So what to do? Why and how does this work?
The advice given is linked and each part reinforces the whole. Lets look at the components:
- A set of common origins giving an emotional cushion for the characters and a foundation on which to build play.
- A 'sandbox' environment allowing free roaming, but which doesn't tailor its threats or rewards to the players but exists of itself.
- A narrative description heavy game world with its own back story which doesn't revolve around the players.
- A sense of accomplishment due to having any challenges exist within a pre-existing framework rather than be continually fudged.
I cant exactly describe the synergy easily, point is the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Best way for you to understand it is to try it.
However you might notice that the environment created is very similar to that hardcore RP modders look to achieve for sandbox games, the reason why such modding is popular as because it offers greater immersion and a deeper gaming experience. It is no accident that the goals are similar, making a gaming experience 'real' as a goal for immersive gaming because it is so satisfying. Exactly why its more fun is not easy to describe, as its never easy to explain how something is fun, it just is. However the techniques shown have their mirror and though ought to be enough for you to see that there is a connexion even if you cant fully see it before you try it.
Thankfully I usually try these techniques with Runequest not D&D, though they can translate.
One of the true reasons for the enduring popularity of Runequest is that its games materials are more like a book of restrictions than a list of candy to hand out to players. Take Cults of Prax for example, in my opinion the finest work in gaming ever written.
This book would hit all your bad game buttons at once. It doesn't offer much reward, it includes a huge list of limitation on play. Yet its immersion is unrivaled. I suggest you take as look at a copy so you understand the art of saying NO and getting away with it.
To summaries, to get anywhere in Runequest you usually need to join one or its guilds or religions. If you choose to join a religion you are told what the benefits of restrictions for joining are. Those restrictions are serious and effectively create a form of character class. But instead of a hard coded mechanic like 'wizards cant wear armour' these are religious strictures that you can break but are likely not to get away with it. As you progress in the cult you gain some magical talents specific to the deity, further benefits and further restrictions. By the time you become a priest or rune lord (paladin) you have a long list of who you can associate with what you can do and who your enemies are. In modern D&D terms its a big book of NO, and the rewards are fairly paltry by modern gaming standards, two or three unique spells that is all.
However the immersion is total.
When someone decides they want to play some D&D, whether it is their first time or their hundredth, it's usually because they are feeling creative. One way this manifests is writing up a character background. Sometimes, the pre-game character background can get extremely involved.
This is a trap.
Honestly, not even your friends want to read your fantasy fiction. And they certainly did not sign on to play the supporting cast to your hero. And when the DM gets involved, because it's his world after all (eye roll), this becomes even worse ... because now you are not just a frustrated writer treating your mates as a captive audience but now you have a tyrannical editor who constantly demands you change everything (especially the most important parts). Even setting this circus of vanity aside, there is still the problem of the game not working out the way you imagined. They character you intricately crafted just isn't translating into the game. Instead of being darkly noble, your PC ends up as the butt of jokes. Where did this urge to do something creative go wrong?
Simply put, D&D is a great way to be creative together. Practically speaking, the best way to ensure the players enjoy playing their characters is to completely avoid pre-game background.
In other words, stop getting ready to play and just start playing. If something that happened to the characters before the game is (or rather becomes) important, it can be made up during the course of play. This method is superior because it helps the whole group participate in creating ... which, at the end of the day, is what "playing" D&D actually is ... and information that one helps create is ultimately more interesting than information you don't create.
As far as characterization goes, this method allows the player to "meet" her character more naturally -- to find out who the character is rather than just assuming the character is X or Y and then getting disappointed and frustrated when that is not how the dynamic actually plays out.
To the point about rewards ... all players and not just the DM have a stake in the game, which is about creation, and therefore must be allowed to create. This is not a reward that the DM confers; this is a reality that good DM's recognize and facilitate.
Manchu wrote: When someone decides they want to play some D&D, whether it is their first time or their hundredth, it's usually because they are feeling creative. One way this manifests is writing up a character background. Sometimes, the pre-game character background can get extremely involved.
This is a trap.
Handled the way you often see it, you can be right, and it might not work well.
The difference is that I can see a way for it not to be a trap. You cant, as yet, that is the difference.
Honestly, not even your friends want to read your fantasy fiction. And they certainly did not sign on to play the supporting cast to your hero. And when the DM gets involved, because it's his world after all (eye roll), this becomes even worse ... because now you are not just a frustrated writer treating your mates as a captive audience but now you have a tyrannical editor who constantly demands you change everything (especially the most important parts). Even setting this circus of vanity aside, there is still the problem of the game not working out the way you imagined.
The only reply possible to this is reread again. You are so missing the point.
Simply put, D&D is a great way to be creative together. Practically speaking, the best way to ensure the players enjoy playing their characters is to completely avoid pre-game background.
Ok for a start by removing all character background you create a sterile environment, it can make beginning harder especially for newer players, and also effectively starts by forcing you to do something random. Which only encourages further chaos. Ironically you are being more of a control freak than those who have a preplanned narrative campaign and do it the wrong way. At least they encourage a framework, albeit an overly rigid one. Denying the process at all is both controlling and denying. Odd that allowing for the levity you seek to generate.
In other words, stop getting ready to play and just start playing. If something that happened to the characters before the game is (or rather becomes) important, it can be made up during the course of play. This method is superior because it helps the whole group participate in creating ... which, at the end of the day, is what "playing" D&D actually is ... and information that one helps create is ultimately more interesting than information you don't create.
So its definitively superior is it?
So the whole group is not creating unless the GM has limited creativity and primarily reacts to player input?
As far as characterization goes, this method allows the player to "meet" her character more naturally -- to find out who the character is rather than just assuming the character is X or Y and then getting disappointed and frustrated when that is not how the dynamic actually plays out.
There is an element of truth to this, but it is still applicable, as potentially more so if there is a preexisting framework. One technique is to give the character a backstory but to allow then to fill in the blanks. This way you get benefits of both.
To the point about rewards ... all players and not just the DM have a stake in the game, which is about creation, and therefore must be allowed to create. This is not a reward that the DM confers; this is a reality that good DM's recognize and facilitate.
An unrestricted growth is called a tumour. A foundational framework allows controlled creativity, it doesn't prevent creativity. This so often works better for having common ground on which to interact.
Ask yourself why people buy campaign settings like Forgotten Realms. Because they cant image world for themselves or because they want a foundation on which to build. The evidence for foundations is strong.
Are you to argue that using the Forgotten Realms setting aborts creativity because the players are not in direct control of the universe?
Would you aregue there is no 'stake' for the players unless they have full foundational control?
If you say no to either of the above questions then you have already experienced the need for a game narrative and some sort of foundation. The positivity of background is identical, you just need to make the logical leap to see it.
IME people like established settings because they already have a stake in them. People like Star Wars, for example, prior to and independently from wanting to play a Star Wars RPG. They don't want to play a Star Wars RPG because they aren't creative enough to come up with their own setting. That is a common misconception about established settings. (It's why Golarion, the D&D-flavored theme park setting of Pathfinder, exists.) People want to play in Forgotten Realms because they like the Forgotten Realms. It's really that simple.
Playing in an established setting that you already have a stake in as a fan is nothing at all like playing in the setting of your mate's fan fiction. I like the Forgotten Realms quite a bit but I would be very hesitant to play a game set in FR with Ed Greenwood. A more vivid example is, I wouldn't want to play a Star Wars RPG with George Lucas as the Game Master. George might just absolutely insist that the Force is all about midi-chlorians or some similar foolishness when midi-chlorians have nothing to do with why I, or almost anyone else, likes Star Wars. But he could say, well, it's my world so deal with it. Doesn't sound very fun. It's even less fun when the person doing it is just some guy you know rather than one of the most successful Hollywood creators ever.
But back to the idea that folks need a published setting to play D&D. Well, D&D is already a setting. No I'm not talking about the officiual default setting (in 5E, Forgotten Realms; previously Greyhawk); rather, I'm talking about the generic low end of high fantasy tropes of which pretty much everyone who'd consider playing D&D has some idea, even if a vague one. Because a vague idea is all that's necessary.
Here's another principle of DMing: setting really isn't that important. Florial III may be the archpriest of the Sacred Crusade off in the great capital city of Imperial Lothgran but ... who cares? The PCs in a traditional D&D campaign are a lot closer to the dirty, mundane, hayridden countryside -- that is, when they're not creeping down dark holes in the ground. Nine times out of ten, maybe ninety nine times out of one hundred, most of the binderfulls of setting prep DMs get carried away "designing" never gets used unless said DM really insists on foisting it on players who would rather be doing something else, like dungeoneering.
The politics and theology of the empire can wait until (and if) the players make it to higher levels, assuming that is the sort of thing they even care about when they get to the higher levels. And therefore, like everything else, the high concepts can and should develop along the way with everyone's input into the mix, reinforcing the stake that all characters have in the campaign as it rolls along. This can and should even be done when you play in published settings.
Psienesis wrote: Be advised that the above advice is often the path to campaign-ruining inventions.
Explain yourself.
It's quite simple, really. Every group has at least one player who, either through obsessive study or natural talent, can remember every minor rule, spell, and class perk in every book published for the game. (If your group doesn't have one of these, it's you). Such players, through absolutely no malicious will of their own, will look at things like the Item Creation Rules and decide that, why, yes, a cluster of a half-dozen Wands of Magic Missile crafted at the 10th level arranged around a Staff of Contingency makes the perfect weapon for his/her Wizard/Sorcerer/Insert Spellcaster here.
... and now you have someone launching 30 1d4+5 ranged attacks that cannot miss or be Saved against per round. That is, incidentally, minimum damage of 180HP per round. That's... freaking deadly. That drops, in a single attack-action, any PC Class build. It drops most monsters. And it's fairly cheap to build, and absolutely nothing in the rules prevents its construction.
You can assign it a higher DC on the crafting roll, to be sure but, and this is a very old adage of RPGs in general: "If it has stats, we can kill it". Players will figure out ways to meet that "high-but-not-insanely-unreasonable" DC. Usually through items that grant Skill/Talent buffs, and/or just by dumping all their Skill Points into the relevant Skills.
Case in point: I've been running Dark Heresy for awhile now. Years, in fact. The group wanted to do something a little less high-powered. I offered a game based on Dark Heresy, but set on "a world much like Earth in the Fallout games, a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the institutions of the Imperium still exist, though in debased form, as people barely remember that there even is an Imperium". The group was cool with it. The group enjoyed having to actually think about whether or not they could afford to fight a given enemy, as they were using a lot of SP weapons or lasguns with fire-cooked cells that held only half the ammo and had, through wear and tear, become Unreliable. Some people in the party had only blackpowder weapons, others bows and arrows. They appreciated that it was now a very viable option to attempt to talk one's way out of confrontations with other survivors in the wastelands.
And then the Tech-Priest decided to start building power weapons. And then rad-grenades. And then salvage a crashed ship (an Arvus Lighter) and make it air-worthy again. And then build himself a suit of TDA out of the hull-plating of a crashed starship. Soon enough, this one character had the firepower to level entire cities at absolutely no risk to himself. Once he put twin-linked lascannons on one arm of the TDA and a powerfist on the other, there was nothing that flew, walked or crawled in the deserts that could pose any significant challenge to him. No town of survivors could hope to match him in battle, because gunpowder cannons and salvaged Tarantula Turrets don't do a lot against Terminator Armor.
Worse? The rest of the party had been just fine with their "regular" guns... but now it began an armsrace in the group to try to out-do one another and reach the same level as the Tech-Priest.
Ah yes, the game mastery age of roleplaying (i.e., ruleplaying). This gets a little deep (for this thread), but we're coming to the difference between RPGs where the GM makes rulings as opposed to "RPGs" where the GM just enforces the published rules. In the latter case, the GM should only say "no" to whatever breaks the rules. If the rules allow for something that breaks the game, well that's the game's fault. And of course that is the basic problem with ruleplaying ... you see, it's not roleplaying. Well, there is roleplaying going on but it is extraneous to the actual game (just like how chess can be roleplayed if you want); the actual game is piloting stats.
Manchu wrote: IME people like established settings because they already have a stake in them. People like Star Wars, for example, prior to and independently from wanting to play a Star Wars RPG. They don't want to play a Star Wars RPG because they aren't creative enough to come up with their own setting. That is a common misconception about established settings. (It's why Golarion, the D&D-flavored theme park setting of Pathfinder, exists.) People want to play in Forgotten Realms because they like the Forgotten Realms. It's really that simple.
You miss the point again. I kn ow why people play Forgotten Realms, what needs happen to understand is for you to think about why. People have a preconceived idea, this naturally leads to a background. A character coming from Tatooine or Waterdeep already has a measure of backstory, which is why people play them. It rubbishes the idea that people shouldn't have backstory.
Here's another principle of DMing: setting really isn't that important. Florial III may be the archpriest of the Sacred Crusade off in the great capital city of Imperial Lothgran but ... who cares?
No one if your GMing is shallow. If its immersive however details like that can be important.
Florial III might be a heretic, he might be on ther take. How will the players know, because Bon the local priest is grumbling, and Ben th abbot is concerned about the tithes being requisitioned. Could it result in a schism, what side will the party cleric be on if there is. Who are the successors, and can the succession be influenced. Will stepping in at the right time mean a promotion for the cleric.
Add immersion and you add so much room to maneuver, as seen handled well religion is not just the means by which the cleric gets his spell list, its also a well of intrigue and power. Which the players tap into by themselves.
The PCs in a traditional D&D campaign are a lot closer to the dirty, mundane, hayridden countryside -- that is, when they're not creeping down dark holes in the ground. Nine times out of ten, maybe ninety nine times out of one hundred, most of the binderfulls of setting prep DMs get carried away "designing" never gets used unless said DM really insists on foisting it on players who would rather be doing something else, like dungeoneering.
Again if you open your eyes to immersive play you will find the opposite is true. The setting is the campaign.
For example I had my PCs be part of a local militia, they had orders to carry out from the captain which naturally set a plot of sorts. However within that loose framework they did what they wanted within reason and made thioer own scenarios by knowing what was happening in the district and what needed doing or could be done.. I dont need to foister stories on the players, in a sandbox they made thier own. So for example my players moonlighted on the side working a grain trade after a merchant disappeared and a market opportunity developed. as to why did the merchant disappear, that was some foreshadowing.
The politics and theology of the empire can wait until (and if) the players make it to higher levels, assuming that is the sort of thing they even care about when they get to the higher levels. And therefore, like everything else, the high concepts can and should develop along the way with everyone's input into the mix, reinforcing the stake that all characters have in the campaign as it rolls along. This can and should even be done when you play in published settings.
Howevber you turn it into a 2D cardboard cutout. Politics and theology matter at first level. You could ignore it, but that makes the world unlived in. Your first level so lets throw orcs at you.... your tenth level time to know where the capital is and who runs the major religions in the region so we can have som e set piece encounters.
vs
You ar a new priest, this is the heirarchy, these are the local events and current affairs of the religion. Even if you don't do much about that at first level you get foreshadowing, which is one of the immersion techniques from writing that translates so well to role play by making the world have depth. Furthermore characters can spend time looking at the whys and wheres in good time to make decisions. They can even set the ball rolling on high politics and watch while leveling up long enough to be able to finally show a hand.
As its a sandbox environment you dont even need to parse out leveled adventures, players pick their plots as they develop into them. Bottom up access to heirarchies, and having a meaningful stake in those heirarchies offers more depth than a staid option to do the quest that solves a problem in the local temple for exp and loot.
To quote the Bard, the play's the thing. Whatever you dream up about your setting elements as a DM or your character as a player, it doesn't really matter unless it matters during play. The very best way to get to what matters during play is to play. And whatever matters will emerge. This includes what is important about the characters as well as what is important about the world in which they live. Or more precisely, who the characters are, including what is important to them, will emerge as they live and breath and exist. But the only way for them to do so is if they are played. Settings also live in this way and only in this way. No one is immersed by being hung up on how the game was supposed to work out; immersion is effectively the state of playing without distraction. If the player is ruleplaying as per Psinesis's example, immersion is impossible. If the player is shot down because their ideas do not correspond to the DM's, immersion is impossible.
While that's true to an extent, a rich background to the world allows the PCs to decide what's important and let's you, the GM, be ready for when (not if) they go off the track of the campaign's story. In the above-mentioned DH game, I had notes for all the regions of the Wastelands, the major city-states that had established themselves, the seven cults the Ecclesiarchy had broken into, the four various philosophies the surviving Mechanicus had split apart into, and the "tactical sects" that were the remains of various IG Regiments that had become something akin to mercenary armies/rolling tribes of nomads. Plus, how all of these various groups interacted with one another, which groups liked (or hated) other groups, and what people could expect in dealing with them... or being a member of one (or more) of these groups.
What's a good DH game without politics and intrigue?
I think we've wandered off from the original topic slightly.
Speaking as a first-time GM, the best advice is just go for it, but don't make the first adventure over-ambitious.
As everyone's a beginner, you won't have any "back-seat GMs" telling you you're doing it wrong.
Does everyone else own a PHB, or are you the only one with the rules? If it's the latter, it makes it easier to keep things under control, and helps with the "- the players tell you what they are attempting - you tell them what they need to roll" thing; it can mean that the players describe what they're doing without rendering everything down to game mechanics. Or it can mean everyone flounders around without knowig what's going on, if you're not careful.
Mind you, my group doesn't take things too seriously; plenty of hack & slash, and most of the character interaction is along the lines of "I say that 'blah blah'", rather than actually acting it out "in character". That's fine if that's what everyone wants.
Which is probably the best bit of advice I can think of; find out what your players want to do. Because I'm part of an established group, I knew the sort of games we play, so when I decided to run a Star Wars adventure, I picked Age of Rebellion, because it offers the most opportunity for straightforwardly gunning down hordes of Stormtroopers and general mayhem.
I played in an adventure once where one player wrote up pages and pages of backstory - all that happened was that he derailed the adventure at every opportunity, and then claimed "but my character would do that - see, it's written here". The way I look at it is, no-one cared what Luke Skywalker did before he met C-3PO.
AndrewGPaul wrote: I picked Age of Rebellion, because it offers the most opportunity for straightforwardly gunning down hordes of Stormtroopers and general mayhem.
You can assign it a higher DC on the crafting roll, to be sure but, and this is a very old adage of RPGs in general: "If it has stats, we can kill it". Players will figure out ways to meet that "high-but-not-insanely-unreasonable" DC. Usually through items that grant Skill/Talent buffs, and/or just by dumping all their Skill Points into the relevant Skills.
Case in point: I've been running Dark Heresy for awhile now. Years, in fact. The group wanted to do something a little less high-powered. I offered a game based on Dark Heresy, but set on "a world much like Earth in the Fallout games, a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the institutions of the Imperium still exist, though in debased form, as people barely remember that there even is an Imperium". The group was cool with it. The group enjoyed having to actually think about whether or not they could afford to fight a given enemy, as they were using a lot of SP weapons or lasguns with fire-cooked cells that held only half the ammo and had, through wear and tear, become Unreliable. Some people in the party had only blackpowder weapons, others bows and arrows. They appreciated that it was now a very viable option to attempt to talk one's way out of confrontations with other survivors in the wastelands.
And then the Tech-Priest decided to start building power weapons. And then rad-grenades. And then salvage a crashed ship (an Arvus Lighter) and make it air-worthy again. And then build himself a suit of TDA out of the hull-plating of a crashed starship. Soon enough, this one character had the firepower to level entire cities at absolutely no risk to himself. Once he put twin-linked lascannons on one arm of the TDA and a powerfist on the other, there was nothing that flew, walked or crawled in the deserts that could pose any significant challenge to him. No town of survivors could hope to match him in battle, because gunpowder cannons and salvaged Tarantula Turrets don't do a lot against Terminator Armor.
Worse? The rest of the party had been just fine with their "regular" guns... but now it began an armsrace in the group to try to out-do one another and reach the same level as the Tech-Priest.
All because I, as the GM, did not say "No."
I'm not sure that the GM should have said no, but clearly an unqualified "yes" turned into a disaster.
You can tell the munchkin in a group in about five minutes. My last gaming group had "that guy" who was obsessed with becoming the powerful character (he played in Warcaster in IKRPG, and a Jedi in a throwback West End Star Wars campaign). In every encounter with the slightest bit of tech, he'd be trying to salvage/steal stuff to kit out his characters. The GM just took it out of random chance, and usually ruled that, for example, cortexes were broken. Over time, the character grow and got what he wanted, but only through questing.
And that's, at least in my understanding, the core of "no, but..." answers. No, a techpriest shouldn't be able to build power weapons from scraps, but maybe after a quest you find the parts to build one.
It's also a fine line between one player wanting to ruin the DM's vision of his world, and one player ruining the rest of the groups vision. If the DM and the rest of the group want to tell one story, and "that guy" wants to tell his own, than I think the DM should be more firm and rein that player in.
One of the most important steps in having a good game takes place before it begins: Get everyone on a the same page.
A satisfying experience is one where everyone at the table is on board for the same game. The same level of seriousness, the same style, the same tone, the same content expectations. So many issues occur when you have one player at the table who wants to play a CharOP Dungeon-Crawl, two want a relatively "on the rails" adventure with a clear plot, one guy wants to play sandbox and the GM is looking for a gritty, character-based game with political intrigue.
As a GM I always put out a description of the game I'll be running, the premise, what appropriate characters will be like and the intended tone and feel when I'm at the "Checking for interest" stage. Before anyone has signed up to play, before anyone starts generating character concepts. Here's an example of some text I might make available while I'm polling my gaming friends to see if anyone would be in:
"It's a D&D 5.0 game, where players will be low-to-mid ranking members in an organization kind of like an adventurers/problem-solvers guild. The intended focus is for players to work their way up in the guild, while doing jobs and dealing with what comes up during them. I'm doing this is a new setting so there will be a fair amount of time spent explore cities, meeting NPCs and contributing ideas to world building. The overall tone is meant to be heroic and more upbeat than "Gritty", though characters need not be saintly something should be compelling them to be in the business for positive reasons.
At the opening of the game, PCs will have known each other and have been working on the same team for at least a year so you have a working relationship. If you can come up with some bullet points on how you interact or some shared events your past that'd be ideal. It's much better to have people who wouldn't like the game you're going to run, not sign up in the first place than to have them sign up and then try and reconcile everyone's preferences after the ball is already rolling.
The part of the setting players are starting in is roughly roman inspired at least in terminology and architecture, though not some of the more unpleasant cultural specifics. Feel free to ask my any questions if you're interested. You can find a calendar for the setting here <link> and my usual house rules here <link>. "
It's just a couple of paragraphs but it means anyone who signs up knows what they're getting into, and knows what everyone else at the table is getting into.
And that's, at least in my understanding, the core of "no, but..." answers. No, a techpriest shouldn't be able to build power weapons from scraps, but maybe after a quest you find the parts to build one.
There are ways to mitigate such issues, yes, but, and to tie it in with something said previously about having all involved "on the same page" before the game begins, there are going to be times where the DM is going to have to say "No, sorry, you just can't do that."
Veteran play-groups, especially, will sometimes want a game that's challenging. Where the level 1 party is consistently facing enemies of 3 or 5 CRs higher than they are (or more), relying more on their own wits and thinking rather than dice-rolling or the special abilities of their characters, or in not having the best armor, the biggest guns.
Such a game is fairly difficult to balance and maintain, because maintaining a sense of character advancement and progression, as well as material rewards, is also important... but if you had set your game on a Feudal World, having an off-world Tech-Priest show up with power weapons and auto-cannons just isn't going to fly.
There really isn't a reason to say "no" if you haven't already let things get away from you. If the player says her character tries to do X and her character has the skill, the materials, the plan, etc, then there just isn't a reason to tell her no except that you just don't want her to succeed. It's called metagaming, even when DMs do it.
Manchu wrote: There really isn't a reason to say "no" if you haven't already let things get away from you. If the player says her character tries to do X and her character has the skill, the materials, the plan, etc, then there just isn't a reason to tell her no except that you just don't want her to succeed. It's called metagaming, even when DMs do it.
And it also depends on player personalities, not just the characters. In my examples, the guy that was most obsessed with being the most special snowflake of an uber-hero was also the guy with the worst job, the worst luck with dating, the weirdest relationship with parents, etc. I wouldn't say that the guy needed one night a week where he was the champion, but I think it helped.
But yes, the DM does need to decide if he wants to be fair and even with loot, or if he's okay with some players benefiting more than others. And if you have a builder/mechanic character, scrap is essentially loot. So having tools, scrap, raw materials readily available is not that much different than scrolls, healing potions, or gold readily available to other characters.
In my gaming group, we were grudgingly okay with our guy trying to collect more Warjacks or build his lightsaber or otherwise power up. But the GM also subtly "said no" because if he never did, he'd lose three players that didn't want this to become one guy's Mary Sue fantasy while he watched.
Back when I played weekly ten-hour sessions of 3.X, the archetypal game mastery ruleset, we were all power gaming to some extent -- that's just the unfortunate nature of the edition -- but there was one guy in particular who perfectly fit the munchkin stereotype. He basically wore down the DM (who wholly subscribed to the "just say no" philosophy FWIW) until the munchkin had managed to create this utterly broken character that essentially made the rest of the party totally redundant in combat. So at one point, his character charges into combat and the rest of us just waited in another room. For about ten minutes, he was having a blast killing Diablo-esque waves of monsters. But then it tapered off into two people doing subtraction out loud. And in a few more minutes, the munchkin was like "well this is stupid." It was quite a revelation for him.
Manchu wrote: Back when I played weekly ten-hour sessions of 3.X, the archetypal game mastery ruleset, we were all power gaming to some extent -- that's just the unfortunate nature of the edition -- but there was one guy in particular who perfectly fit the munchkin stereotype. He basically wore down the DM (who wholly subscribed to the "just say no" philosophy FWIW) until the munchkin had managed to create this utterly broken character that essentially made the rest of the party totally redundant in combat. So at one point, his character charges into combat and the rest of us just waited in another room. For about ten minutes, he was having a blast killing Diablo-esque waves of monsters. But then it tapered off into two people doing subtraction out loud. And in a few more minutes, the munchkin was like "well this is stupid." It was quite a revelation for him.
There's nothing worse than creating what you wanted, only to realize it sucks!
Having played minis wargames, I really don't see the appeal of combat heavy RPGs anymore. Don't get me wrong, I like the plot possibilities of combat, and there's nothing like the heroism of battle, but so very many different things handle the "kill something, get better at killing, kill something bigger, repeat" type of fun that having a group of adults sit around and do it longhand seems odd to me.
My group has not done any RPing for a while now and I can tell we are all thinking about starting something up, which I hope will be CoC7E or The One Ring.
Manchu wrote: There really isn't a reason to say "no" if you haven't already let things get away from you. If the player says her character tries to do X and her character has the skill, the materials, the plan, etc, then there just isn't a reason to tell her no except that you just don't want her to succeed. It's called metagaming, even when DMs do it.
Meta-gaming isn't necessarily a bad thing, however, in a table-top RPG that is intended to be basically a cooperative game of story-telling. Like, if your group is playing "core book D&D 3.5" (meaning you use the PHB, DMG and MM 1 & 2 and that's it) and someone wants to roll up a Priest/Rogue who follows Mask with side-devotions to Loviatar from the Forgotten Realms book, and is also a half-dragon Tiefling... well, that's just not meshing with the "meta" of the game.
Manchu wrote: There really isn't a reason to say "no" if you haven't already let things get away from you. If the player says her character tries to do X and her character has the skill, the materials, the plan, etc, then there just isn't a reason to tell her no except that you just don't want her to succeed. It's called metagaming, even when DMs do it.
Certainly there is, if whatever that is isn't the game you want to participate in. When a GM runs a game they aren't signing up for "Sit there and go through whatever, even if you don't enjoy it" any more than a player is. That's why setting expectations is important. For example generally in my games torture is off the table, I'm not going to entertain a torture scene. Sure your character may have a knife, and a dude and is perfectly capable of inserting into his eye socket - but no your character doesn't do that. The tone of the game was laid out explicitly when you agreed to join this game and that isn't what we all agreed to.
These issue comes up when the GM wants one game, and one or more players wants a different game. The player isn't "Right" just because they want to do something, you have to find something that works for the GM too. They have us much right to run a game they enjoy as the players do partake in one.
Manchu wrote: There really isn't a reason to say "no" if you haven't already let things get away from you. If the player says her character tries to do X and her character has the skill, the materials, the plan, etc, then there just isn't a reason to tell her no except that you just don't want her to succeed. It's called metagaming, even when DMs do it.
Meta-gaming isn't necessarily a bad thing, however, in a table-top RPG that is intended to be basically a cooperative game of story-telling. Like, if your group is playing "core book D&D 3.5" (meaning you use the PHB, DMG and MM 1 & 2 and that's it) and someone wants to roll up a Priest/Rogue who follows Mask with side-devotions to Loviatar from the Forgotten Realms book, and is also a half-dragon Tiefling... well, that's just not meshing with the "meta" of the game.
See my post on setting expectations. If you're doing things right, this kind of thing shouldn't come up. Only a big ol jerk is going to go past interest check/player selection if he wants to play something outside the scope of the game.
Psinesis, seems like you are using "meta" in more of a pseudo-miniatures gamer sense than a RPGer sense. "Meta" in metagaming does not refer to the "done thing" in a certain group or campaign. Metagaming is polluting what happens in-game with out-of-game knowledge/motivations. If there isn't an in-game reason why a character cannot try X, then the DM is metagaming by simply saying, no you can't try X.
Whenever I talk about D&D, my perspective is that everyone at the table should have a stake in the game. I totally agree that being on the same page, or at least in the same chapter, is necessary to even play. If this isn't the case, we don't even need to talk about DMing. There's nothing a DM can do to force the game to be possible when the expectations of the players are fundamentally mismatched. The DM "saying no" in such circumstances is useless and, in the example of outright taking over a PC ("no your character does not do what you just described her doing"), play has effectively ceased and now we aren't talking about two players playing a game but rather two people who need to decide whether they are going to play this game together.
Manchu wrote: To quote the Bard, the play's the thing. Whatever you dream up about your setting elements as a DM or your character as a player, it doesn't really matter unless it matters during play.
So its a Bard quoting contest now, you're on.
“All things are ready, if our mind be so.”
You need preparation to make the magicks happen properly. Leave everything to adlib/during play and you aren't really ready.
Manchu wrote: Psinesis, seems like you are using "meta" in more of a pseudo-miniatures gamer sense than a RPGer sense. "Meta" in metagaming does not refer to the "done thing" in a certain group or campaign. Metagaming is polluting what happens in-game with out-of-game knowledge/motivations. If there isn't an in-game reason why a character cannot try X, then the DM is metagaming by simply saying, no you can't try X.
Whenever I talk about D&D, my perspective is that everyone at the table should have a stake in the game. I totally agree that being on the same page, or at least in the same chapter, is necessary to even play. If this isn't the case, we don't even need to talk about DMing. There's nothing a DM can do to force the game to be possible when the expectations of the players are fundamentally mismatched. The DM "saying no" in such circumstances is useless and, in the example of outright taking over a PC ("no your character does not do what you just described her doing"), play has effectively ceased and now we aren't talking about two players playing a game but rather two people who need to decide whether they are going to play this game together.
I know what metagaming in the RPG sense means, and I stand by my usage of it. The OOC knowledge of the player that the group's game is intended to keep the setting (in this case "Planet Fallout") basically the same while navigating their adventures should be used to inform character decisions to do/not do certain things. For example, in this case, the OOC player knowledge that the game is intended to be "low powered" should keep the character from expending the IC time and resources on developing backpack fusion reactors (to produce power armor) and, by extension, sticking them in an armor-plated frame on wheels (called the Corvega Aquila) because the game isn't intended to permit rapid ground transport via armoured cars and tanks and the combat enhancements of powered armor.
This is a point where the player approaches with a plan (to do all of the above) where the GM needs to say "that really doesn't fit the vibe of the campaign" or needs to lay out on the table, with the rest of the group, what introducing such changes entail.
Orlanth wrote: Leave everything to adlib/during play and you aren't really ready.
Not everyone can do it, I absolutely agree. It takes a certain amount of skill, which means practice, trial and error, thinking, discussing, etc.
Psienesis wrote: in this case, the OOC player knowledge that the game is intended to be "low powered" should keep the character from expending the IC time and resources on developing backpack fusion reactors
If the characters have the knowledge/skill and resources to make "high powered" equipment then the game is not really "low powered."
Yeah, I'm not sure allowing a Techpriest in a low powered campaign is going to work. Either the character is cut off from some of his functionality, or the campaign will change around him.
Now, playing a techpriest with the understanding that there won't be much STC tech to work with could be interesting in a very role heavy campaign.
Orlanth wrote: Leave everything to adlib/during play and you aren't really ready.
Not everyone can do it, I absolutely agree. It takes a certain amount of skill, which means practice, trial and error, thinking, discussing, etc.
Psienesis wrote: in this case, the OOC player knowledge that the game is intended to be "low powered" should keep the character from expending the IC time and resources on developing backpack fusion reactors
If the characters have the knowledge/skill and resources to make "high powered" equipment then the game is not really "low powered."
So..? People just shouldn't try to execute on any game concepts that don't have a perfectly matched game engine to them, or where they're not actively aware of every interaction within the game engine that might break that concept? Wanting to play a "low-powered" game in the 40k universe, using the general framework and as much of the appropriate content of the most available 40k game but with the understanding that the group should stay away from parts of the engine that may have been built with other assumptions is perfectly valid.
Sure it's best if these things are taken care of up front but that's not always possible. My tastes run in such a way that I typically blacklist flight, teleportation and long-distance communication spells in D&D games I run because those aren't things that are conducive to the style of game I enjoy. That I might miss some interaction with a general use spell and the jump rules doesn't suddenly mean I'd be OK with players engineering 40-mile jumps*.
In this case it seems like they had a premise "Low powered crap hole planet, with 40k trappings" which is a fine premise. They used the most immediately obvious 40k engine, with the general expectation people would stick to the premise. That the GM might not have been aware of, or knew how to preemptively patch things (though it would be idea), in the game that would break that premise doesn't invalidate the premise, nor the engine choice.
*and my playerbase wouldn't try because they understand the spirit of the premise and aren't total dicks so it's a non-issue, but whatever.
Orlanth wrote: Leave everything to adlib/during play and you aren't really ready.
Not everyone can do it, I absolutely agree. It takes a certain amount of skill, which means practice, trial and error, thinking, discussing, etc.
Psienesis wrote: in this case, the OOC player knowledge that the game is intended to be "low powered" should keep the character from expending the IC time and resources on developing backpack fusion reactors
If the characters have the knowledge/skill and resources to make "high powered" equipment then the game is not really "low powered."
A Tech-priest is perfectly capable of building modifications to pre-existing weapons, performing maintenance and construction and doing the things that Tech-Priests do, like, say, digging a well in the desert to found a new settlement, providing instruction on crop-rotation and fertilizer compounds or, hey, Magos Biologis, have you tried being a freakin' doctor lately?
As to the characters having the skills and knowledge? They don't, really, but that's kind of the point. In an "alternate build" of Dark Heresy like this, certain Skills and Talents simply don't exist or are used in different ways. For example, there is no "Forbidden Lore: Inquisition" because the Inquisition, as a body, doesn't exist on the planet, not like it does in the wider Imperium (yes, there are groups performing the same general role, but not in the same manner or with the same authority). So, the Tech-Priest in question, ICly, actually would know next to nothing about the fabrication of a starship... but in DH, there is no specific Skill that covers such, the Wright skill goes from horse-drawn carts, all ground vehicles, to aerocraft and spaceships. So this is the point the GM steps in and says "While that skill covers those things, here on this planet, which has bombed itself into oblivion, you just don't have that kind of knowledge".... which is the GM answering "No" to the question "Can I build a Valkyrie?".
I find this false dilemma of "accept my demands" or "be a total dick" ... troubling, to say the least. What is so surprising about someone who's playing a TechPriest building cool stuff? If the resulting tech way outrstrips what should be possible in the setting then ... how did the TechPriest build it in the first place? The DM made a mistake somewhere but it wasn't a failure to say "no." If a player tells me, my character wants to make this cool item, I start thinking things like,
- maybe the character needs to find special parts - maybe the character needs to obtain required skill/knowledge - maybe the character needs to join an organization to have access to parts/knowledge - and so on, trying to generate story possibilities
Now this is important: my goal here is not to frustrate the player's intentions because what they want to do doesn't suit my vision of the campaign. It is to play off of the player's intentions in a manner that creates more gameplay: getting the player to establish goals for her character and be creative in pursuing them. And to create opportunities for this player's goals and ideas to intertwine with those of the other players. The "setting" or "vision" of the campaign should not be some predetermined, rigid concept; like the characters and the story, the campaign should be allowed to organically develop, too.
Psienesis wrote: which is the GM answering "No" to the question "Can I build a Valkyrie?"
Maybe we're talking past each other. To me, this is not an issue of needing to say no. My response to that question would be, your character can try, assuming the character even knows what a Valkyrie is, followed up by, how is your character attempting it? Full disclosure, I do not accept invocation of mechanics as roleplaying. "I use my X skill" doesn't fly at my tables. The player needs to describe what they are attempting and it is my job as the DM to tell them what to roll.
The difficulty in this situation for me is the player of said Tech-Priest is, IRL, a heavy vehicle mechanic and will, if you ask him, draw you working designs for a tank. Or an aircraft.
So he has ready answers to such questions and, since he and I have been gaming together for almost 20 years now, will come prepared with said drawings, done in an in-universe style, to indicate what salvaged crap from the Wastelands he's going to use to build, say, a Grav Cannon. And I'm like "well, it could work... but do I really want to give someone a Grav Cannon in a game where a standard hunting rifle is considered powerful?"
Okay just playing along*, that takes us back to square one: if the character has the knowledge and the skill and the plan to undertake his intentions then the DM saying "no" boils down to that particularly tyrannical form of metagaming known as fiat.
* No amount of IRL knowledge is sufficient to build fictional technology. As the GM in a DH game, it is within your purview to tell any player, regardless of their IRL occupation, that irreducible fictional component X is necessary to assemble fictional device Y and can only be obtained by means Z.
Manchu wrote: Okay just playing along*, that takes us back to square one: if the character has the knowledge and the skill and the plan to undertake his intentions then the DM saying "no" boils down to that particularly tyrannical form of metagaming known as fiat.
* No amount of IRL knowledge is sufficient to build fictional technology. As the GM in a DH game, it is within your purview to tell any player, regardless of their IRL occupation, that irreducible fictional component X is necessary to assemble fictional device Y and can only be obtained by means Z.
I'm still not entirely sure I understand your perspective or not. In these cases would say a flat out:
"I'm looking to maintain a low-tech feel in this game, so players will be unable to build advanced energy weapon or vehicles. Skills related to these will still be available, where they may represent knowledge of these things in a general sense or the ability to do limited repairs on examples that might be found (but only to the extent that they won't become permanent fixtures). Players should create characters with this restriction in mind and are asked to respect any oversights that might result in a situation where creating such things would be theoretical possible in the interests of keeping the feel of the game intact"
Before any character generation place, or even player selection takes place be acceptable terms on which to start a game?
If so, would enforcing the last clause be considered "Tyrannical", since it is by definition a form of DM fiat and in your framework all fiat is Tyrannical Metagaming?
Unless I'm misreading, what Manchu is saying is that having a Techpriest player ask "can I build a power sword" is an opportunity to build on a characters goals.
What the GM shouldn't do is just say "well, you need to roll a 15." What he should do is figure out roughly how complicated such a bit of tech would be, how powerful it would be, and make it a quest goal.
In short, having a Techpriest "build" a powersword isn't all that different from having a Fighter character "loot" a powerful weapon, or having a rogue character "steal" a powerful artifact.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think it's a great way to build a character's arc to have them decide what they really want their character to do, and then go out and do it. That might mean one or more sessions of questing, it might mean sacrificing something, but a good GM should discern what the player wants to do in game, and then explain what the character needs to do to accomplish it.
If the character wants to build something that is Tech Level 7 in a setting that is Tech Level 4, I would not simply say No. To me, this sounds like an opportunity for characterization and story generation. Maybe this will be a quest that the character will need to work on over the course of the entire campaign, such that the Tech Level 7 item is achieved just in time to be part of the climax.
Chongara, I think what you are talking about is part of what makes the game possible or impossible in the first place rather than a GMing issue. If someone agrees to join a 1920s CoC game but then insists on playing Mikey from TMNT, the issue is not the GM saying no to the player but rather a person saying to another person, we can't even play together in those circumstances.
Chongara seems to be grokking what I'm saying because it is still me, the GM, telling the player of the character "you can't do that", whether it's Fallout: Dark Heresy or Teenage Mutant Ninja Cultists.
The GM is still going to be earning their Dreamcrusher perk in either case, because the GM still needs to tell the player that what they want to do is either a) not feasible, b) not in keeping with the spirit of the game, or c) going to require a whole lot of time and effort that may only matter in 1 battle (the actual compromise on the TDA... the rest of the party got tired of waiting for his Slow & Purposeful ass to catch up to them) and major side-quests of this nature are either going to need to be handled "off-table" or require the player to get the rest of the party involved, because otherwise they're stuck sitting there while the GM and one player work through it.
Psienesis wrote: Chongara seems to be grokking what I'm saying because it is still me, the GM, telling the player of the character "you can't do that", whether it's Fallout: Dark Heresy or Teenage Mutant Ninja Cultists.
The GM is still going to be earning their Dreamcrusher perk in either case, because the GM still needs to tell the player that what they want to do is either a) not feasible, b) not in keeping with the spirit of the game, or c) going to require a whole lot of time and effort that may only matter in 1 battle (the actual compromise on the TDA... the rest of the party got tired of waiting for his Slow & Purposeful ass to catch up to them) and major side-quests of this nature are either going to need to be handled "off-table" or require the player to get the rest of the party involved, because otherwise they're stuck sitting there while the GM and one player work through it.
Well, that's when you find out if you're gaming with adults or overgrown children. An adult might realize that the effort isn't worth it, and focus on something more attainable. Or, they decide to shift their goal to something equally time consuming, but more rewarding.
If you are told you can have what you want, but it takes time and the cooperation of your friends, then its up to you to decide if you really want it.
Very true Polonius and that decision is a great example of opportunity for characterization.
Deciding what kind of game you want to play doesnt involve the role of the DM at all. Each player wants to play in a game or not. This is completely different from a GM telling someone who is playing a TechPriest in a 40kRPG that they are not allowed to build cool tech period end of.
Manchu wrote: Very true Polonius and that decision is a great example of opportunity for characterization.
Deciding what kind of game you want to play doesnt involve the role of the DM at all. Each player wants to play in a game or not. This is completely different from a GM telling someone who is playing a TechPriest in a 40kRPG that they are not allowed to build cool tech period end of.
Except it's exactly the same, and your example at the end in the context of Psienesis campaign is barely different than your mikey in TMNT game only later.
"We're playing 1920s CoC"
"I want to play the Orange ninja turtle"
"No. This isn't this kind of game"
(not tyranny?)
is one step removed from
"We're playing a low-tech 40k game. All the emperor stuff, none of the sword-guns and plasma rifles or tanks."
"I want to play a tech priest"
"OK, but it's a low-tech game. With none of the sword-guns and plasma rifles or tanks."
"OK. I'll play in that low tech game, with none of the sword-guns and plasma rifles or tanks."
*10 sessions later* "I want to build sword-guns, and plasma rifles and giant tanks now"
"No. This isn't that kind of game"
Yikes, that is some extreme bad faith argument considering anyone who has read the thread knows it didn't go down like that. Psinesis and this guy have been playing RPGs together for nearly 20 years. The fact that this old friend of his who is a mechanic and everyone agreed could play a TechPriest wanted to build cool sttuff obviously did not come as a surprise to Psinesis, not even in the context of the setting -- which Psinesis said he described to the players as like FO3 ... a game in which you can eventually access plasma weapons and power armour (and a giant killer robot by the way). And let's keep in mind it was still a 40k campaign. The character seems to have been aware of wider Imperial technology. He's a TechPriest. Why would he not want to build that stuff? I mean, his own body is probably a higher tech level than the rest of the setting.
It's absolutely nothing like a situation in which one person wants to play a game of nihilistic horror set in a historical period and another person wants to play a cartoonish humour-driven mutant romp game. What you're talking about is, in board game terms, one person wanting to play Monopoly while another wants to play Chess. A game has not even started yet. In Psinesis's example, the players are already playing the same game.
But let's say it in some hypothetical situation, it does go down like you say, where everyone agrees to play a certain style of game and then during play one of the players wants to radically diverge. Well, how would this look in the board game example? We're all playing Monopoly and suddenly one of the players starts moving the little houses around like chess pieces. What has happened there? The game has stopped. Monopoly is not possible to play when one person is trying to play it as Chess. This is why the expectations thing is so important and why when there is expectation mismatch it often kills the campaign and maybe even the group.
Manchu wrote: Yikes, that is some extreme bad faith argument considering anyone who has read the thread knows it didn't go down like that. Psinesis and this guy have been playing RPGs together for nearly 20 years. The fact that this old friend of his who is a mechanic and everyone agreed could play a TechPriest wanted to build cool sttuff obviously did not come as a surprise to Psinesis, not even in the context of the setting -- which Psinesis said he described to the players as like FO3 ... a game in which you can eventually access plasma weapons and power armour. And let's keep in mind it was still a 40k campaign. The character seems to have been aware of wider Imperial technology. He's a TechPriest. Why would he not want to build that stuff? I mean, his own body is probably a higher tech level than the rest of the setting.
It's absolutely nothing like a situation in which one person wants to play a game of nihilistic horror set in a historical period and another person wants to play a cartoonish humour-driven mutant romp game. What you're talking about is, in board game terms, one person wanting to play Monopoly while another wants to play Chess. A game has not even started yet. In Psinesis's example, the players are already playing the same game.
I've only re-framed and re-expressed the exact same argument I've been making all thread. To say that I'm now making it bad faith, and know that how it isn't went down when the previous post on the matter was this:
Psienesis wrote: Chongara seems to be grokking what I'm saying because it is still me, the GM, telling the player of the character "you can't do that", whether it's Fallout: Dark Heresy or Teenage Mutant Ninja Cultists.
and I'm making the same argument I've been making the entire thread that lead up to that comment.
There are perhaps some matters of magnitude to be put aside I'll concede, but in in terms of kind the two problems are identical. GM signs up players up for deverivation on an established game a that demands certain changes, players agree then ham-fistedly tries to force things through to make it more like the standard version of the game subverting the entire purpose of putting together the derivative in the first place.
What I got from the story about knowing him for 20 years is that he's a cool guy that's mostly fun to game with, but likes to use OOC knowledge to spring "gotchas" on the GM for the purpose of scoring higher numbers. Maybe not all the time and certainly not with intentional malice, but enough so that it's frustrating even if he could kind of see it coming. Like my buddy that always tries to work raunchy sex antics into his characters and sometimes we let him and other times we're like:
No Anthony, you characters can't find "A whole bunch of hookers with giant muscles".
But let's say it in some hypothetical situation, it does go down like you say, where everyone agrees to play a certain style of game and then during play one of the players wants to radically diverge. Well, how would this look in the board game example? We're all playing Monopoly and suddenly one of the players starts moving the little houses around like chess pieces. What has happened there? The game has stopped. Monopoly is not possible to play when one person is trying to play it as Chess. This is why the expectations thing is so important and why when there is expectation mismatch it often kills the campaign and maybe even the group.
It's closer to saying "Let's all play monopoly, and use the house rule where "Free Parking" gets all the penalty money and also all the light blue properties count as part of dark blue" and he starts going "Oh come on, let me build the house I've got boardwalk and park place. We never said explictly you'd need all 5 properties, what if I just get one of the light blue ones. That's a total of 3, you usually need 3 to build houses".
At any rate I'll try not to nitpick too much here at least, since we agree on one point: Setting expectations is key. Regardless of how you view breaches of them or what are or aren't fair guidelines to use.
What I got is a mechanic was told he could play a TechPriest in a game that was like FO3 and when he tried to play a TechPriest doing stuff that can be done in FO3, the GM bizarrely interpreted that as off-brand.
Also, I think a big difference between our perspectives is your experience seems to be that the DM offers a game with X conditions and players either accept your terms and play or not. My experience is much less formal, basically a D&D game sort of works with people's schedules and we go with it and as a DM I am open to everyone's input as to how the game ends up going.
Manchu wrote: What I got is a mechanic was told he could play a TechPriest in a game that was like FO3 and when he tried to play a TechPriest doing stuff that can be done in FO3, the GM bizarrely interpreted that as off-brand.
Also, I think a big difference between our perspectives is your experience seems to be that the DM offers a game with X conditions and players either accept your terms and play or not. My experience is much less formal, basically a D&D game sort of works with people's schedules and we go with it and as a DM I am open to everyone's input as to how the game ends up going.
Typically if I feel like running a game. I'll think of 3-5 "Pitches" for games I'd like to play like I outlined my previous posts and run whatever people want next. Like for my next game I pitched a variety of things including that D&D 5 game I described, an X-COM inspired savage worlds game, losing war against monsters at the end of humanity, and super heroes in 1980s NYC among other things. Everyone was super gung-ho about the super heroes thing so that's what my next game is going to be.
Certainly I'm not going to go "I'm going to run a game" then just patchwork something together with everyone tastes. Every time I've tried something like that we get this odd design-by-committee feeling experience that satisfies no one, least of all me. It always feels disjointed because you're trying to align 5 different sets of desires into a single new thing, rather than just align 5 people on to this concrete thing that already exists.
EDIT: Just to be clear I don't know enough about Fallout to judge what would or wouldn't be in character for fallout specifically. However I am taking him at his word that what the player purposed was out of line with whatever they discussed initially, even if something (like fallout) where it might be slightly more appropriate is/was being used as shorthand to describe the game.
For me, it is almost to the point where I don't want to run license-based games. The last time I ran a Star Wars game, the players ended up being really violent. I could have paused the game and lectured them about Star Wars and how their ultra-violence doesn't at all fit but there was no point. These players were totally familiar with Star Wars. They understood that how the game worked out was not Star Warsy. To me, it seemed utterly clear that these cats did not want to play Star Wars even if they had agreed to it previously.
I mean, social interactions are complex. Sometimes your friends want to play something because they know you are excited about it. But they aren't.
When I play D&D, I feel like there is a lot more room for different tones. IME the players eventually start to play off of each other and a tone emerges. Up to that point, as a DM, I am just encouraging them to play off of each other: I am not putting much effort into setting the tone. Once I am reasonably confident they have gotten into their groove, I reinforce that with vivid descriptions and on-point story development.
With CoC, it's a bit different. I feel like the theme of the game is already so strong that players kind of bring the right tone to the game.
Let's back up a second and point out (to the casual readers of the thread) that neither "side" in this is wrong, these are just examples of different play-styles and play-groups. What works in one group with one group of people might not work in another.
Chongara wrote:There are perhaps some matters of magnitude to be put aside I'll concede, but in in terms of kind the two problems are identical. GM signs up players up for deverivation on an established game a that demands certain changes, players agree then ham-fistedly tries to force things through to make it more like the standard version of the game subverting the entire purpose of putting together the derivative in the first place.
What I got from the story about knowing him for 20 years is that he's a cool guy that's mostly fun to game with, but likes to use OOC knowledge to spring "gotchas" on the GM for the purpose of scoring higher numbers. Maybe not all the time and certainly not with intentional malice, but enough so that it's frustrating even if he could kind of see it coming. Like my buddy that always tries to work raunchy sex antics into his characters and sometimes we let him and other times we're like:
And that is exactly the situation. This player is known to do things like this, not because he maliciously wants to "ruin the game" or be all-powerful compared to the other PCs, but it's simply how his mind works. And the rest of the group (myself included) have plenty of "Oh, you..." moments. Most of his ideas start off with "Wouldn't it be cool if..." and then rapidly spiral out of control from there.
Case in point (names changed to protect the innocent... and the guilty):
Me (to group): "Following your successful prosecution of the slaving and smuggling ring in the city of Sprucetuck, you have a couple months to rest and recuperate and pursue some of your own studies. The only admonition the Guard gives you is 'don't get yourself killed!' So... now is the time to train up some skills you have 3 or less ranks in, learn something new, or pursue a personal goal. Plans?"
Him: "Gryx is going to start summoning and imprisoning small fire elementals. Like, small ones."
Me (suspicious): "Ok.... uh. How?"
Him: "I'll get to that. See, what I'm going to do is bind them into orichalcum orbs, right? Then throw them into a big tank of water. The elemental, inside the orb, won't be extinguished, but will heat the water, making steam, add more elementals, heat water faster, make more steam faster..."
Me: "But...again, how?"
Him: "Here, see?" (produces twenty-seven page design specs for steam-driven flying galleon). I figure that I can bargain steam-tech with some rats and get them to summon and bind the elementals for me. We can fly over the Scent Barrier and take the war to the Weasels!"
Me: "Dude, this is a game of Mouseguard... you're three inches tall and live in a hollowed-out gourd. Rats are strange, large and frightening. Not to mention that your people make boats out of twigs and leaves."
Iv always liked the Manchu method of explain what you are doing instead of just declaring of things.
it has lead to a whole lot of hilarity and high jinx of our groups rogue.
In general though i think its reasonable to play loose fast and fun if you think your group can handle it.
for a Beginning group though i think improving situations where everyone gets to do something is a good idea. and make sure they do it right so they learn how to do it in the future.
One thing a GM can do is keep in mind that he controls the actions of all NPCs, which means that societal pressures don't need to be abstract. If a PC violates the beliefs or propriety of the game world, than there likely will be in game conflicts and consequences.
Meaning, if the use of such elementals and/or steam teach was unknown in that world, than wouldn't there be a group that was willing to work against its creation? Would they be armed?
Psienesis wrote: Let's back up a second and point out (to the casual readers of the thread) that neither "side" in this is wrong, these are just examples of different play-styles and play-groups. What works in one group with one group of people might not work in another.
Chongara wrote:There are perhaps some matters of magnitude to be put aside I'll concede, but in in terms of kind the two problems are identical. GM signs up players up for deverivation on an established game a that demands certain changes, players agree then ham-fistedly tries to force things through to make it more like the standard version of the game subverting the entire purpose of putting together the derivative in the first place.
What I got from the story about knowing him for 20 years is that he's a cool guy that's mostly fun to game with, but likes to use OOC knowledge to spring "gotchas" on the GM for the purpose of scoring higher numbers. Maybe not all the time and certainly not with intentional malice, but enough so that it's frustrating even if he could kind of see it coming. Like my buddy that always tries to work raunchy sex antics into his characters and sometimes we let him and other times we're like:
And that is exactly the situation. This player is known to do things like this, not because he maliciously wants to "ruin the game" or be all-powerful compared to the other PCs, but it's simply how his mind works. And the rest of the group (myself included) have plenty of "Oh, you..." moments. Most of his ideas start off with "Wouldn't it be cool if..." and then rapidly spiral out of control from there.
Case in point (names changed to protect the innocent... and the guilty):
Me (to group): "Following your successful prosecution of the slaving and smuggling ring in the city of Sprucetuck, you have a couple months to rest and recuperate and pursue some of your own studies. The only admonition the Guard gives you is 'don't get yourself killed!' So... now is the time to train up some skills you have 3 or less ranks in, learn something new, or pursue a personal goal. Plans?"
Him: "Gryx is going to start summoning and imprisoning small fire elementals. Like, small ones."
Me (suspicious): "Ok.... uh. How?"
Him: "I'll get to that. See, what I'm going to do is bind them into orichalcum orbs, right? Then throw them into a big tank of water. The elemental, inside the orb, won't be extinguished, but will heat the water, making steam, add more elementals, heat water faster, make more steam faster..."
Me: "But...again, how?"
Him: "Here, see?" (produces twenty-seven page design specs for steam-driven flying galleon). I figure that I can bargain steam-tech with some rats and get them to summon and bind the elementals for me. We can fly over the Scent Barrier and take the war to the Weasels!"
Me: "Dude, this is a game of Mouseguard... you're three inches tall and live in a hollowed-out gourd. Rats are strange, large and frightening. Not to mention that your people make boats out of twigs and leaves."
When will the Tyranny end! When will you stop robbing the players of all their agency and forcing them to take part in your bad fan fiction! Why must you ruin everyone's fun just so you can have the satisfaction of being in control of everything. Can't you just see that was an opportunity for character growth. You're a terrible, terrible GM that's ruining RPGs. You won't let them do anything!! They may as well be watching cutscenes from FINAL FANTASY oh the horror!!
More seriously though, sounds like this dude would be more at home in episodic, high-concept game centered over-the-top antics with lighter continuity. His type wants to constantly push boundaries, break from the status quo and do things in any way but the most intuitive. This can be a lot of fun in the right kind of game but they're bound to feel stifled in anything focused on staying within restrictions or playing a part in the story instead of being the story. I wonder if there is a good system for running a game that mimics the style of "Rick and Morty", that'd be exactly the kind of thing players like this would be looking for.
Chongara, that's a really childish response and yet another example of bad faith argument. Can you really not tell that Psinesis's latest example is completely unlike his first one? In the first example, the TechPriest character wanted to do things that are generally possible in the setting in question as well as the game in question -- plus what he wanted to do was completely in line with what TechPriests usually want to do in that setting and game. In the Mouse Guard setting, by contrast, there is nothing like summoning magic or elementals. These things simply don't exits at all as a matter of the setting and game. I guess you must be unfamiliar with 40k, Fall Out, and Mouse Guard.
Manchu wrote: Chongara, that's a really childish response and yet another example of bad faith argument. Can you really not tell that Psinesis's latest example is completely unlike his first one? In the first example, the TechPriest character wanted to do things that are generally possible in the setting in question as well as the game in question. In the Mouse Guard setting, by contrast, there is nothing like summoning magic or elementals in Mouse Guard. I guess you must be unfamiliar with 40k, Fall Out, and Mouse Guard.
Dude. It's called joke. It's in italics, with a winky-ork face and the next sentence begins with "More seriously though".
Manchu wrote: Was I not supposed to take that as a parody of my point?
Certainly. That doesn't make it yet another "Bad Faith Argument" or any kind of argument. It's a joke, a bit of ribbing. You know taking the piss, busting your chops, some levity. Because you know you were talking consistently about how I didn't understand the situation, and that I didn't get the story. To which I clarified and got a response of:
And that is exactly the situation. This player is known to do things like this, not because he maliciously wants to "ruin the game" or be all-powerful compared to the other PCs, but it's simply how his mind works. And the rest of the group (myself included) have plenty of "Oh, you..." moments.
Clearly I do get the situation. We're just dealing with a player who likes to pull a little gak now and again. Sometimes it's amusing, sometimes it's not, sometimes you can reasonably see their line of reasoning (sword guns and laser tanks in 40k) other times it's outright insane (fire elementals in mouse guard). In the end though it's all kind of the same for the GM, the player in question and the rest of the group: He's going out of the ballpark of what the game is trying to do, maybe a little, maybe a lot but in the end out of the park is out of the park. In the end it's not the worlds biggest deal but he does need reigning in if you're looking to keep the game grounded.
GM: How does your character know about such things?
This question is just a set up to remind the player or let the player know, if the player is unfamiliar with the setting, that there is pretty much no such thing as magic in Mouse Guard. If the player insists:
Player: Well, I start waving my paws around and chanting strange squeaks.
GM: Townsmice stop and stare, exchanging puzzled looks.
Point being, players can attempt whatever they are willing to describe -- the GM narrates the consequences. This is actually why I stress the "tell me what you're doing and I'll tell you want to roll" principle because when players invoke mechanics rather than narrating what their characters are doing, it gives them the false impression that they narrate consequences.
There is nothing remotely close to summoning elementals when it comes to MG. In that case, you didn't explain or the player did not understand the game being played. Returning to our boardgame analogy, he was basically suggesting that he move queen to knight 4 in a game of Monopoly. It's as if a player in a Forgotten Realms game said, my character escapes in her X-Wing starfighter.
Manchu wrote: Yikes, that is some extreme bad faith argument considering anyone who has read the thread knows it didn't go down like that.
You say that, however it becomes your dogmatic 'but it shouldnt happen' when a formulated character origin or a development storyline is proposed.
Restrictions are not of themselves limitations on gameplay but enablers of deeper gameplay. If a campaign calls for everyone to be a commoner from the same village with a communal backstory, or if you have a no tech-priests allowed 40K backwater campaign, the restrictions enables the setting which is turn enables the story.
At any rate I'll try not to nitpick too much here at least, since we agree on one point: Setting expectations is key. Regardless of how you view breaches of them or what are or aren't fair guidelines to use.
This is so true, in fact a little discipline on setting has additional benefits. One thing our group does is round robin GMing, where the GM chair cycles between story arcs, which requires a mutual agreement on what is available, what and where. This would not be possible without a structure.
For our Dark Heresy campaign we exclusively used round robin GMing from the start. 40K based systems are excellent for this, we tried round robin for D&D also and it works though to a lesser degree as the game universe is compact. In 40K players only have a very limited interaction with the universe as its too big to be affected in a meaningful way. So we can round robin easily as the consequences of one GMs play doesn't really effect the next. With more deep involved system like CoC and Runequest we have one GM and a standard party.
After a few friends and mates expressed interest, I've decided to DM a DND session at my place. Most of those involved are beginners, and this is my first time DMing. I am looking to do maybe a single encounter first, to establish the party, and then hopefully spur it into a more campaign-like series.
The first thing you must consider is what your players want...dungeon crawl or character driven champaign, or combination
Dungeon Crawl: is an adventure based entirely on fighting, gaining XP, and Treasure. The need for high character interaction is not really needed (great for NOOB's)
Character Driven Champaign: Think Final Fantasy here, there is a purpose for the characters to do some epic quest, character interactions (good and bad) are in high demand. This is where player put more effort into 'acting out' there character and should be equally rewarded just as much as killing monsters.
combiniation: most RPG pen and paper, is a combination of the above 2, most have a overall goal, but do dungeons crawls from time to time. After all players want to defeat monsters, gain XP and treasure so indulge them.
Next thing to consider
YOU MUST BE OK WITH LOSING ALL THE TIME....Your job is to entertain and set challenges not to win against the players.
while encounters with antagonist NPC's and monsters should be a challenge to the players you should not outright seek to kill the party or a individual character (no matter how annoying). That said, well it happens from time to time.
it is helpful to randomize who is attacked in a fight or ambush to attempt to spread out damage, with that said some antagonist NPC may have an agenda against one of the party.
Encourage the party to diversify...
Tank, cleric, mage, thief. A wide varitey of skills is need for good adventures.
Number of Players AKA Player Management
I found 5-6 is the magic number anything over that becomes herding cats. Stray conversations and commentary become a problem in large groups, especially when one character goes off by themselves to do something.
FEATS for other sources
Careful when combining sysytems, Pathfinder has an array of excellent feats that cross-over to DND. becarefull when allowing this. PC characters can quickly become too powerful fast.
For a new GM, and doubly so for newer players, I would simply not allow the party to split. there's simply no good way to handle it, and the best ways are still hell on a GM and the players.
I don't meant that the party can't do different things in the same dungeon or town, but you cannot have parts of the party out of touch with each other.
YOU MUST BE OK WITH LOSING ALL THE TIME....Your job is to entertain and set challenges not to win against the players.
while encounters with antagonist NPC's and monsters should be a challenge to the players you should not outright seek to kill the party or a individual character (no matter how annoying). That said, well it happens from time to time.
I'd caution the underlined text isn't exactly right. You should learn to not frame things in terms of winning or losing. When I throw up a combat encounter I have no investment in that encounter "winnning" and when it is defeated I haven't "Lost" what I care about if it's properly engaging. If it is than I have succeeded, if it hasn't I've failed. What properly engaging looks like changes with the situation, the playerbase and the specific game. Sometimes this is the encounter beating the players, most often it's the players beating the encounter in an interesting way.
This holds true with social scenes and other things. I don't "Win" when the merchant is able to get the highest price for his goods, or buy from the PCs at the lowest price. I "Succeed" when the process of buying and selling enhances the game experience in some capacity for both me and the players. I'm not a force opposed to the players, I'm sitting down as invested in playing the game and seeing the characters move through the world just as much as they are. I just go about it through different mechanics and with a different perspective.
Polonius wrote: you cannot have parts of the party out of touch with each other
Can you give an example?
Well I know I can.
In my long running campaign we've had a few party splits:
One member of the party took a train halfway across the continent to join a meeting with a government official, while the rest of the party continued on the regular mission. His character was totally out of touch with the group for a good 2 months of in-game time (~2-3 sessions iirc).
One member of the party had her swords stolen by a giant bird and went on adventure to go get them back, but could only convince 2 of the remaining 3 party members to go with her.
A couple of times party members have gone to different cities to visit parents or love interests while the rest of the group was concentrated on personal projects in their home base.
After one incident half the party refused to even enter a city where they had a mission to do, so the other 3 had to go in while their characters waited outside.
Yeah, I was asking more about what seemed like the distinction Polonius was drawing between going to separate areas of a locality on the one hand and going to different regions of the world on the other.
Manchu wrote: Yeah, I was asking more about what seemed like the distinction Polonius was drawing between going to separate areas of a locality on the one hand and going to different regions of the world on the other.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I used the words "in touch" to mean that there was a concrete plan to split up and reunite in the same gaming session. Haivng half the party explore a dungeon while the other half rests in town in bad. Having half the party use tunnels to sneak into a keep while the other half talks/charms its way in is good.
My old GM called it the "smoke break rule." He was fine splitting a party, as long as the party that split off could finish its business, in real time, within a smoke break for the people that weren't involved.
I like the dramatic possibilities created by split parties (especially in 1920s CoC games) but it does take some effort to be "cinematic" about how you manage the "scenes" so to speak.
Manchu wrote: I like the dramatic possibilities created by split parties (especially in 1920s CoC games) but it does take some effort to be "cinematic" about how you manages the "scenes" so to speak.
It can be done very well, but as you point out, it takes a skilled hand. I'd advise a new GM to avoid it. Of course, you want to foster creative problem solving and narrative, so you need to strike a balance.
And "splitting" a party that's in town (meaning, not actively in adventuring mode) is different, as many campaigns have montages where months pass. But as a rule, no session should end with a split party.
In CoC, investigators inevitably decide to fan out across town: one groups goes to the public records hall, another to the local historical society, a third to the university library, etc., and I love it, especially considering telephone is so much more cumbersome in that setting, and I am pretty strict about metagaming, so the players get to see how they're being cornered just as their characters start to get the relevant information that, if they could only make it back to one another safely, would piece together how danger could be avoided, or at least forestalled. Oh yes, it can be marvelous!
YOU MUST BE OK WITH LOSING ALL THE TIME....Your job is to entertain and set challenges not to win against the players.
Excellent point well crafted, while obvious to us techniques are often hard to describe to others.
The above is short and crystal clear, it sums up the role of a GM. Mental notes have been taken.
With regards to creating pre-game character history amongst the player characters, I quite like the way it is handled in many of the games based upon the FATE system whereby all the players and the GM have a hand in picking some overarching themes of the world itself and also link their characters together by being present in their pasts.
So, as an example, my getaway driver character in a Dresden Files game had been the wheelman for the Mafia in a bank heist in which the cousin of another players character had died. This linked us together by more than just the cliche "you all walk into a bar" bit and created a relationship between our characters which could be roleplayed from the get go, i.e. that he and his family felt that I owed them compensation for failing to look after his cousin, compensation that came in the form of my services as a driver and hired gun. After all, when the Mafia think you owe them a favour it's best not to argue.
You are all going to be playing co-operatively, so co-operatively designing the world and your characters, even if it is just minor story details and themes, can help get the players invested in the world from the get-go.
Splitting the party in certain environments whilst also keeping players whose characters are not currently active involved can work if you give the players whose characters are not in the current scene NPC roles to play instead.
So, one could play the curmudgeonly guard called over by the GMs angry shopkeeper who is accusing the party rogue and wizard of stealing. The GM gives a brief description of the NPC and their mannerisms then assigns the role to one of the unused players, or the player could could come up with mannerisms of their own. This allows more people to be active in a scene and reduces the possibility of the GM having to have a conversation with themselves as more NPCs get involved. Can also lead to great stories if a player comes up with a memorable NPC and basically allows you as the DM to trick your own players into designing NPCs for you
However, as others have said, tryinging to avoid split parties unless your players have a set time and location to meet back up might be a good bet until you're more experienced and comfortable in the role of the DM. Otherwise it can lead to whole sessions of trying to herd them back together (such as the aforementioned Dresden game in which it took several sessions for our characters to be in the same room as each other, let alone work together as a group! ).
YOU MUST BE OK WITH LOSING ALL THE TIME....Your job is to entertain and set challenges not to win against the players.
Excellent point well crafted, while obvious to us techniques are often hard to describe to others.
The above is short and crystal clear, it sums up the role of a GM. Mental notes have been taken.
As an addendum to this...
If you have an NPC that is not intended or designed to die? Don't give it stats. Keep its abilities vague and ill-defined. And, most importantly, use it sparingly! If this character is meant to be the main "bad guy" in a long-term story, don't let the PCs meet him/her face to face once they know it's an enemy. Use video-calls, recorded messages, signs, tele-screens, psychic powers, crystal balls, whatever... but don't allow them to be in the same room where combat might erupt unless and until you are ready to give the NPC up.
As another addendum: If the PCs *do* manage to kill the NPC somehow, make sure his/her "death scene" is appropriately dramatic, and done in such a way that the body cannot be recovered. If there's no body, they aren't really dead, and you can bring them back (via magic, cybernetic reconstruction, cloning, whatever) at another time.
Generally, I don't agree with that advice. I've always allowed the players to kill or defeat anything that they manage to, fair and square. This is sometimes annoying for me, but generally satisfying for the players.
Of course, sometimes, when it makes sense, I do bring villains back from the dead or from defeat. But I don't do it often, so when it happens my players don't feel cheated.
Generally speaking, those I play with get mad if they aren't winning all the time; the idea that everything isn't meant to be won or beaten right away isn't a thought.
Ahtman wrote: Generally speaking, those I play with get mad if they aren't winning all the time; the idea that everything isn't meant to be won or beaten right away isn't a thought.
Well none of them are 'neckbeards', and a few are ex-Marines. I just think they play for different reasons then the people who want to...ACT. I sure wouldn't cal any of them insecure. Well one of them and he is the other player that has been doing this for a long time. He also would probably have a neckbeard if he could grow one come to think of it.
As far as splitting the party goes, I had an instance of that in an early adventure; two players elected to fight their way through the interior of the starship to get to the engine room, while another two took a fighter out to catch the fleeing villain. Unfortunately, I took so long going through the first pair's scene that we ran out of time to get to the second pair. They got their moment the following week, but they'd still sat there for an hour doing nothing, so it was a failure on my part. :(
AndrewGPaul wrote: As far as splitting the party goes, I had an instance of that in an early adventure; two players elected to fight their way through the interior of the starship to get to the engine room, while another two took a fighter out to catch the fleeing villain. Unfortunately, I took so long going through the first pair's scene that we ran out of time to get to the second pair. They got their moment the following week, but they'd still sat there for an hour doing nothing, so it was a failure on my part. :(
I've found the best way to handle this is rotate. Rather than wait for the engine room thing to finish before doing the fighter thing, do both at the same time. Spend 10 minutes on the engine room caper, then pause that and spend 10 minutes with the folks doing the fighter routine. Even if the events aren't happening simultaneously so long as they super-duper interdependent you can just go "OK. What do you do, just keep in mind this is actually happening an hour before that other thing we just did".
It can be a bit sloppy but keeps folks from sitting longer periods than they have to.
1. Always remember that you set the consequences
2. You can fudge a bit to make things more interesting/exciting
3. NPCs lie
4. Make the characters talk, always refer to players by their character's name and make them use character names with each other.
5. Accents and funny mannerisms in NPC rule!
AndrewGPaul wrote: That was what I was trying to do. Unfortunately, between a rookie GM and no-one else knowing the rules, the "quick" fight scene took all session.
That was a bad outcome, not a failure!
You'll learn how to handle timing as you gain experience. It sounds like you had a good idea, and wanted to make a cinematic ending. As always, look for quality of process, not just quality of outcome.
AndrewGPaul wrote: That was what I was trying to do. Unfortunately, between a rookie GM and no-one else knowing the rules, the "quick" fight scene took all session.
That was a bad outcome, not a failure!
You'll learn how to handle timing as you gain experience. It sounds like you had a good idea, and wanted to make a cinematic ending. As always, look for quality of process, not just quality of outcome.
Also, if a fight scene is taking longer than expected you could cut to the other players during that scene if there's a suitable point (Bad guy powering up a spell? Cut to the other party for a bit of a cliffhanger and to let them get to play). Just make a note of initiatives and character placements (photo with your phone works wonders) if the table/board/whatever space is going to be needed by that party.
1. Always remember that you set the consequences
2. You can fudge a bit to make things more interesting/exciting
3. NPCs lie
4. Make the characters talk, always refer to players by their character's name and make them use character names with each other.
5. Accents and funny mannerisms in NPC rule!
I agree on most of these. I also agree on 2 generally. It's good tool, but not one I use often. Just to offer a contrast, I find making everything open as possible can add engagement by enhancing the sense of tension or realness. What I mean is rather than say the exchange going like this
"I'd like to try and improvise some explosives so we can blow up that thing"
"OK Roll Craft[Exlposives]"
"14"
"You succeed"
It'll very often go something like this":
"I'd like to try and improvise some explosives so we can blow that thing up"
"Ah Sure. It's a Craft[Explosives] roll. The basic DC to succeed is 12. If you get a 16 or more you'll be able to get the mixture just right and increase the damage by +2. On a failure, something goes wrong and you catch it but spoil about half the materials. On 7 an or lower you fail but don't realize it, the explosives will go off in half the amount of time your character thinks they will"
"14"
"OK. You got your bomb"
Now these are all the same results I'd use if I was keeping the DCs behind-the-screen so to speak. However it does a few things that I like from a game dynamics standpoint:
1) I can't fudge, which makes the roll very real. There isn't any wondering, guessing or maybe even meta-betting I'm going to just let the roll go through because it's a pretty big deal if it fails. Nor can it feel like maybe I made the bomb fail because that train really wasn't supposed to get derailed.
2) It highlights consequences ahead of time. This adds tension to the roll and bad results don't feel like a "Gotcha". On a 7 The PC tells the other characters the bomb is going to go off in 10 minutes, and when it goes off in 5 the PCs are caught off guard but the player's aren't. The same bad result feels more fair.
3) It makes the results feel more like they belong to the player rather than me. If the player tries and then I announce a result, I'm the last one to be interacting with that roll my dictation is the final word. In this case even though nothing has changed from a practical standpoint the player is the last person to interact with the resolution from a mechanical perspective, their attempt is the last word in the action, they own it.
Certainly I don't do this with every roll, either because I forget or the consequences/difficulty are fairly obvious and it'd just be wasted time. That said it's a useful tool to really get players engaged. Especially if your system has some kind of bonus points system that let them enhance rolls ahead of time. I find players tend to hoard these, and feel cheated if they wind up using them on rolls that don't wind up being as important as they thought. With everything on the table like that it makes the choice a bit easier on when to use resources and knowing the failure was gonna be terrible makes the expenditure feel better even if the base roll was so good it wound up being a waste.
A die is a tool that has two functions, so far as I have been able to figure, when it comes to D&D: randomizing a result ... and making dice-rolling noises behind a DM screen. In other words, you can use a die to either (a) randomize an outcome or (b) make the players think you are doing (a). One school of thought holds that DMs should only roll a die when they want to randomize a result. In essence, if you are not comfortable with a consequence being "out of your hands" then simply don't roll a die. I used to believe this quite strongly. But I have come to think that the real issue is making a concrete decision about whether you intend (a) or (b) before rolling. There are times when it is more fun if the players think something is random which the DM actually controls.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Also, if a fight scene is taking longer than expected you could cut to the other players during that scene if there's a suitable point (Bad guy powering up a spell? Cut to the other party for a bit of a cliffhanger and to let them get to play). Just make a note of initiatives and character placements (photo with your phone works wonders) if the table/board/whatever space is going to be needed by that party.
Well, yes, I know the theory. It was the execution that was flawed.
Anyway, we don't bother with tactical maps. A quick scrawl to set the scene if need be, but other than that its all in our heads.
Chessex makes some nice wet-erase battle-mats that, with the markers for overhead projectors or similar, can be used to sketch out a battle-map in pretty short order, as well as record initiatives, statuses or whatever else you want.
At GenCon I got a weird (had one inch of line missing on one outside edge) dry erase mat cheap from Chessex since it was considered a factory screw up.
If you wanted to spend the money you could also get an online map making program. That is what I wanted to do so I went with Profantasy Softwares Campaign Cartographer system. It's based around a fastCAD drawing system and takes a little while to learn to use properly but once you learn it, you can make some very amazing looking maps.
Here is an example of a map I made for a Dungeons and Dragons Next campaign set in the old Kara-Tur setting of the 1st edition AD&D game. It is from the module Night of the Seven Swords. The module never had a battle map of the Inn but it did have a small map of the inn not suited to miniature gaming. So I made my own and updated it a bit so it is in color and much more beautiful than the original. This is the end result:
What I decided to do was to make many small maps of general encounter areas and just printed them so I had them ready to go. I would rather have used a projector but those are really expensive.
I can also make maps of continents, worlds, galaxies, dungeons, pretty much anything I need/want. To me, that was worth it.
It's not a lack of availability - we simply don't use 'em - in any game. Apart from anything else, it means we all need to crowd round one table, and we don't generally have that much room. We play in each others' living rooms, and the GM sets his screen and paperwork on a little camping table.
I'm pretty old school when it comes to Pen and Paper RPGing. There are no battle maps, only what is in your head. I found actual battle maps led to non-characterful min-maxing with the groups I ran with.
In a real pinch where clarity is essential, I will use a <gasp> drawing on a sheet of paper!
Easy E wrote: I'm pretty old school when it comes to Pen and Paper RPGing. There are no battle maps, only what is in your head. I found actual battle maps led to non-characterful min-maxing with the groups I ran with.
In a real pinch where clarity is essential, I will use a <gasp> drawing on a sheet of paper!
My main RPG at the moment uses the FATE system which is quite loose in terms of stats and mechanics compared to some other systems and hence is pretty hard to min-max. Plus side is that if you can think of something and it makes some sort of sense, you can probably do it (one of our favourite misadventures was when our party killed a vampire matriarch by building a homemade claymore mine out of self-cooked plastic explosive and blessed steel balls in a paint tin, which we then hid under a sofa and invited her to sit down. Turned what was meant to be a difficult big bad boss fight into paste in the middle of some ruined lounge furniture )
We use a seminar room at a university so we have access to projectors and whiteboards for maps and things.
The projector is currently being used to show our "Wheel of Problems", a list of all of our current problems/things we have to sort out which seem to build up as we keep ignoring them
