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Yet Another Advice for a Rookie GM Thread
Wearingglasses
Of the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered User regular
Of the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered User regular
Or if you want, make this a generic GM tips and tricks and advice thread.
My friends have decided to try out Pen and Paper RPGs. My brother in law was generous enough to lend me his D&D 3rd Ed books (just the monster manual, the player's handbook, and the DM guide book), but the other players were daunted by the amount of numbers to keep track.... so we're stuck at GURPS Lite, 4th edition, until I manage to buy the official rulebooks. (I'm thinking getting enough experience RPing with GURPS can soften them up later for D&D anyway).
The first session I came up for them is breaking out of prison just in time for the city to get assaulted by invaders. Being that the majority of the garrison is out of the city and the defenders are poor local militia, they're currently "employed" to help defend the city. (The pyromaniac was savvy enough to ask for 6 times the reward offered by the remaining lieutenant, knowing that the defenders have no other choice).
Some things I've noticed during GMing:
If an ensuing (relatively easy) skill roll has no bearing whatsoever to the story/scene, should I just ignore it? I've let off forcing a PC to roll for success on his Climbing skill on climbing up a 1 story rooftop with a reachable ceiling.
I think I forget to keep them rolling their Stealth checks, since they say they're slowly proceeding through the slum areas, but then again, it should only be something like a Contested roll when someone's actively looking for them. They only encountered once scenario where it mattered.
Realizing that railroading them is a no-no (they have unpredictable thought processes), I just made a map and a set of randomized encounters in intersections and other main city areas, and let them wander about.
What do you guys do when the PCs (at least, their leader) is greedy/plain evil? I hadn't counted on them actually refusing to help, which is my fault. What else can work besides bribery to make them enter conflict?
My friends have decided to try out Pen and Paper RPGs. My brother in law was generous enough to lend me his D&D 3rd Ed books (just the monster manual, the player's handbook, and the DM guide book), but the other players were daunted by the amount of numbers to keep track.... so we're stuck at GURPS Lite, 4th edition, until I manage to buy the official rulebooks. (I'm thinking getting enough experience RPing with GURPS can soften them up later for D&D anyway).
The first session I came up for them is breaking out of prison just in time for the city to get assaulted by invaders. Being that the majority of the garrison is out of the city and the defenders are poor local militia, they're currently "employed" to help defend the city. (The pyromaniac was savvy enough to ask for 6 times the reward offered by the remaining lieutenant, knowing that the defenders have no other choice).
Some things I've noticed during GMing:
If an ensuing (relatively easy) skill roll has no bearing whatsoever to the story/scene, should I just ignore it? I've let off forcing a PC to roll for success on his Climbing skill on climbing up a 1 story rooftop with a reachable ceiling.
I think I forget to keep them rolling their Stealth checks, since they say they're slowly proceeding through the slum areas, but then again, it should only be something like a Contested roll when someone's actively looking for them. They only encountered once scenario where it mattered.
Realizing that railroading them is a no-no (they have unpredictable thought processes), I just made a map and a set of randomized encounters in intersections and other main city areas, and let them wander about.
What do you guys do when the PCs (at least, their leader) is greedy/plain evil? I hadn't counted on them actually refusing to help, which is my fault. What else can work besides bribery to make them enter conflict?
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3E is free.
D&D has rules for "taking 10" and "taking 20". The former allows a character to assume he rolls a 10 (plus modifiers) on a skill check instead of rolling the die as long as he isn't distracted. The latter allows a character to assume he rolls a 20 (again, plus modifiers), as long as he has 20 times the normal time to make the attempt and there are no consequences for failure.
This is a fantastic rule for hand-waving certain skill-checks where success is reasonably assured and the character in question is at least mildly competent. Of course, if the character in question is a centaur in half-plate and tower shield with a strength of 16 who is unskilled in climbing, taking 10 will result in a whopping -12 (yes, that's negative twelve, total), so said centaur had better find a ramp or something (and not one too steep
Edit: if you're curious, here's the math:
take 10, +3 strength, -7 armor check penalty (armor), -10 armor check penalty (shield), -8 incompetence penalty (assessed for creatures who normally can't complete the task, like fish jumping a chasm or horses -- and centaurs! -- climbing a cliff) = -12
Edit2: honestly, 3E is so quirky that I would suggest skipping it and diving straight into 4E. We've even got a cool new campaign setting coming out next month: Dark Sun!
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Yeah - just skip checks that won't add anything to the adventure. Die rolling for the sake of die rolling will slow things down.
Ugh. Honestly, bad characters just don't work unless you have a campaign specifically set-up for bad characters. They'll refuse to play along with your arc, your game will hit a brick wall and the whole experience will fall apart.
Have a plan ready for either good guys or bad guys, and let your players know that they're alignments have to fall within the parameters of your game in order for the adventure to work.
If you need to skip a roll, or alter the rules as printed to make the narrative flow better, do so.
1) Yeah, if it's a simple skill that isn't hugely plot important, you can let the player take a ten just to keep the game moving. Nothing is worse then watching somebody struggle to make a simple check because the dice hate them while the rest of the players are getting bored.
2) I'd suggest just having them roll Stealth checks if something is searching for them, if they're just trying to move quietly in an environment without something hunting them, let them say they're being quiet and be good with it.
3) If the players aren't going to your story, sometime you have to bring a story to them, even if it's not the one you initially planned. Have them jumped in the next alley way they enter, and one of the muggers escapes to tell the local crime lord or whatever. Have them spotted and pursued by an invader squad. Maybe they come across a wounded invader who asks them for help getting back to his lines (chances are your PCs aren't feeling too generous to the city at this point...)
It can suck when they go off your planned route forcing you to improv, but doing anything is better then watching them sit around avoiding an adventure.
Really, as the GM you're there for two reasons: 1) To facilitate a story by involving the players in an interactive narrative and 2) to kill said players in horrible ways.
The 50/50 Rule: If you don't know the odds of an outcome, just roll a die. 50% it happens, 50% it doesn't or whatever the situation calls for. It's also sometimes called the Odd/Even Roll since you can just say X happens on odd, Y happens on even.
Being the boss is important.
@delroland: I have access to D&D, but right now my friends are averse to playing it, plus we just got started on our "campaign". Maybe when I kill them all off, we could start on a D&D game.
@Ender: Welllll.... pyromaniac mage girl isn't really evil per se, but she's hot-tempered, and is very used to getting her way (the character, not the player).
Hmmm... some more questions. What's a good way of organizing info? I have too many sheets of index cards lying around with no system to them. I tried the index cards to keep tabs of mooks during combat but they seldom serve their purpose.
EDIT: Also, what's the proper ratio of in-game dialogue to meta-gaming discussion between players?
Good luck getting players to do this. I'm fortunate to have found some people that will in my current campaign.
Continuing with this thought, sometimes it works best if you don't try to construct some fancy campaign story arc. Sure, some players like well-structured plots and will try to follow along without 'rocking the boat', but the underlying appeal of roleplaying is the group making the calls. And the players are that group's majority, as well as the audience.
When I for one inevitably start another campaign, it's going to have virtually no planning beyond one week. I'll be sure to throw out something solidly-made for the first session, but I'll be listening to their ideas and plotting during the game and use that to direct the next session. I've been doing that more and more with my current (though often put on short hiatus) campaign as I run through my older designed events, but there's still those pesky persistent plot points and scenarios I have to wrangle and adjust to fit what the PCs will actually chose to do.
There's still room to write cool battles or story elements or series of quests, but why make it rely upon the main characters making specific choices, when that's the one thing you don't have narrative control over? If you got a cool encounter with Orcs, don't tie it down to one location and hope they'll go there and decide to fight them, put them at the place the PCs want to go, or ambush them when their guards are down. Throw in some 'random' encounters. If they skip the town you wanted your plot NPC to be in, put them in the next town, or cut and paste the unrevealed bits onto other NPCs. What about finding some fancy plot item, like the big bad enemy guy's source of power? Don't give it to them and hope they'll hold onto it, reveal it to be something that'll surprise or wow them; 'oh, it's the ring! the one you've had since level one and forgotten all about till now! talk about long-term campaign planning, eh?'
I call it quantum GMing. 'Random' is an illusion, you're the one who decides when stuff outside their control happens. It's all unknown to the party until they actually discover it. It saves a lot of headache writing concrete plot structures with multiple alternatives or excuses to not having them. It also gives the party more freedom to make choices and have meaningful immediate consequences; the less tied-down your eventual events, are the easier it'll be to tie them into the players' current sequence of events.
You're the narrator and the referee, but you're also another person playing the game. For some games you just can't expect one person to carry the full load.