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First Time GM - Advice on Creating and Managing a Game
Cowboy Bebop
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So recently I've gotten the bug to start playing some tabletop games and so have the rest of my gaming group, unfortunately our GM just simply doesn't have the time to set a game up now with his new job, so I volunteered to take the reins. However this is pretty much my first time behind the screen, with the exception of the odd one off adventure here and there, and to be honest designing a campaign seems rather daunting now that I've sat down to do it.
Would any of you fine ladies or gents happen to have some good resources, android apps or advice for a fledgling GM, we’ll be using the Pathfinder rules if that helps at all?
Would any of you fine ladies or gents happen to have some good resources, android apps or advice for a fledgling GM, we’ll be using the Pathfinder rules if that helps at all?
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After that, remember not to get too overwhelmed. In my experience, players have a tendency to not just derail pre-planning, but utterly decimate it. You can have that basic framework, but if you spend untold hours meticulously planning something.. the players are going to beat it in 2 minutes. Or worse, you're going to railroad them down that planning, which isn't fun for anyone. Have some setpieces made up, but be willing to move on the fly.
It's tough, but try to know the rules better than your players. It helps with keeping them honest. Also, remember that as GM, you are the final arbiter - and always be willing to BS things in the interest of telling a better story. This does NOT mean to BS things to be a dick to a player, or for some kind of a power trip. Reward creativity.
The term "Yes, and..." is your friend. It'll do half the work of screwing with your players for you.
i.e. - Giving a party a quest and the group just doesn't take the quest.
After each session, you should ask your players what the most enjoyable part of the session was and what the least part of the session was. You can also do feedback sessions individually (over e-mail or otherwise apart from the group as a whole), because there are quite a few people who won't make their opinions heard just for the sake of the group ("The group's having fun, even if I'm not, so I won't say anything.").
It is rare to have a group of players who make fully formed and realized characters at the beginning of a campaign. Often, there's some growth and evolution of the styles and personalities. Don't expect your players to have intricate character motivations right away. If they come up with new motivations and personality quirks, then reward them.
Give each player a reason to exist at every session. Even when your preplanned scenario doesn't call for a thief, make sure the thief has something to do. It is a terrible feeling as a player when you have sat there for the entire evening and done nothing of value.
When you are a GM, don't hesitate to say "Well, we'll play it this way for now, but we'll go back to the rulebook and look things up after the session" if there's an argument about rules arbitration. Do NOT say "I'm the GM, and this is how we're going to do it." Players expect a sense of justice and fair play from their GMs, and while you are the final arbiter, you need to make sure that the door is open for discussion and make it clear that expedient rulings on the fly are only there to keep the game flowing.
Don't predict. Go with the flow. Absolutely NO GM in the world is prepared for EVERY contingency... it's all smoke and mirrors. Reward your players when they are unpredictable, too (I tend to give out XP when players do something that surprises me). Keep the story simple so that it allows for the players to create their own stories. Let the players develop their own complexities, as this is going to be FAR easier and more fun for the players than if you try to come up with contingencies and complexities on your own. For example, a friend was GMing a particular Shadowrun game where the runners had to raid a private zoo collection. It should have been a rather straightforward mission, but it was completely hampered by the fact that the GM decided that having 4 SEPARATE zoos in the same location was a good idea. This bogged down the mission to the point where it was no longer fun to play after a couple of hours.
As far as preparedness, I'd have a couple of unrelated generic side encounters prepared, in case your players DO decide to go off the beaten path and explore rather than make a beeline for the objective. They don't have to be elaborate (a goblin raiding party, a mercenary group, a burning farm), but they will give you the illusion of being prepared for every contingency, give your players content to dive into if they sidetrack themselves, and give you a chance to gently push things back on the rails ("The mercenary group, all of them slaughtered to the last man, were carrying a banner... the banner of the Lord's castle you are supposed to be attacking..."). You can "reuse" these encounters when they don't show up during a particular session, too.
On the other hand, if you have a group who blindly follows your objectives at every session, then maybe you can create more structured scenarios on rails. *shrugs* This has never really happened to me, but it could happen, in theory. I wouldn't count on it, though.
I actually did have to smack down my players once, and it basically caused the game to reboot. I made kind of a silly choice that I wanted to drop my players in media res into Norway in Shadowrun. Think Borderlands 2, actually. One player was the face, and was royally screwed by this even though I told them all not to invest in contacts as heavily as would normally be done. It went about as well as could be expected with a bunch of players who didn't know a ton about real life survival, let alone Shadowrun survival.. and that was entirely on me. I fully recognize that now.
So anyways, after they got some footing under them, they teamed up with an ecoterrorist group. That led them to a run on a nearby casino... that happened to be mafia run (to tie into one player's backstory) and where the man that had dropped them off was located. Obviously they were heading there. I played up the security, the need for stealth, how they needed to get in and out without drawing attention, all that. I also played up the need to case the joint. Only once they got there.. the mafia guy walked up in said "Hi. I'm a mafia guy. From America. I want a job." Then the female rogue like character decided to try and get a job as a card dealer.. by performing slight of hand and card counting right in front of the person interviewing her. A third player, along with the hacker, set themselves up as a local DJ group, riding on the Orksploitation angle.
Things went about as well as expected. The party was split up, no one was getting useful intel that didn't massively tip off the guards, so on and so forth. And I can't abide by playing my opposition as dumber than they would normally be. At a certain point, probably around the time the thief snuck to the main vault without the hacker and by herself if I recall right, I basically pulled the plug. The players were rounded up, the villain confronted them, pointed out every point along the line that they were spotted.. and feeling merciful, he kicked them out on a plane and told them to never come back.
Yeah. I learned a lot of lessons with that game. In the end, it's about having fun with the players, which means their input needs to be part of things. That said, don't assume players know as much as you do about real world scenarios (or, in this case, the fact that none of them had seen Ocean's 11 kinda hurt), and make sure the game you want to run matches theirs. We rebooted after that.
I'd also like to point out that my players really were having a lot of fun, save for a character that panicked because she had no clue how to properly do something basic socially in character. A lot of the sabotage in the game was due to my own self esteem issues. Which brings us to another point: You, as the GM, need to enjoy it as well.. and genuinely listen to what the others are saying. You may think a run was disastrous because all your plans blew up with 1 dice roll. The players may have loved it because they felt like badasses. If a night doesn't go as planned, it is NOT an issue you should take offense with. These things just happen, and we all roll with the punches.
-railroad your players(force them to do things)
-expect them to follow your storyline
-expect them to care about your carefully laid traps. The will get around them without a second thought with some sand.
-stop your player from doing something just because it doesnt fit into a skill or ability. You want them acting like badass heroes, not "I swing my sword at it" heroes.
-worry about the rules. rule of cool, make something easy up if it sounds too bullshitty to look up the rules. Pathfinder has stuff I could take or leave, unless its "I dont remember what this spell does at all", the rules are too lengthy to bother with alot of the time if you dont have someone who knows them.
-let the players abuse you, they are little shits and believe you are out to kill them(in pathfinder the mechanics murder them all by themselves). This is about the only time I will say this though, because I find that approaching PnP RPGs as a coop experience is usually a much better time.
Do
-Get feedback ask what they want to see more of, and what sucks. Dont go overboard on what they want to see more of, and tune what sucked to be better instead of scraping it.
-Get creative. Stuff like physical puzzles (a cipher code sheet for them to figure out, a batch of documents that reveal a password) are better then a bunch of people just talking around a table.
-Use awesome set pieces: there's a reason CoD and Michael Bay goes back to these time and time again.
-give obvious bonuses when players do something cool, or do something well. It lets them know the behavior you want to see out of them during the game. By obvious you hand them a token to turn in later for a +2 to a roll or something.
It will take you a long time to figure out when its ok to say no. When they want to do something crazy, sometimes that can lead to the funniest shit of your life. I upped every ones enjoyment experience at the table a whole ton when I learned to be less controlling.
As a starting DM, you might want to talk to your players first and ask that they bear with you and a little railroading to start. DM'ing your own made up campaign can be rough when players zag and you wanted them to zig. With your own campaigns though you build up your muscle to learn how to improv, and usually you can detour players back on track without them even knowing it. On the other hand them wandering off to their own devices can lead to awesomeness too.
Learn to disguise by way of The Magician's Choice. What I mean for system heavy things is feel free to stat out the opposition of your planned adventure but keep in mind they might change window dressing. Player's not up for raiding the local Kobold lair? Maybe they'd rather investigate what's been raiding the local caravans? (Hint: It's Kobold's.) What about finding out what happened to little Suzie Jenkins who disappear a week ago? (Small, scaley dudes might be involved....) By giving player's the feeling they are making meaningful decisions it can help a great deal with how they feel about the adventure.
You have to be crafty to set this up but if your players are the least bit reasonable they aren't going to say at the beginning of the session they've decided to travel 1000 miles due east to face whatever they may. Campaigns have a flow, characters should have some goals you can build around and ultimately saying "What's your PC's plans for next week?" isn't cheating or anything. Everybody at the table should know you all have other things going on in life and be a bit accommodating.
What advice would you give for dealing with ‘disruptive’ players, the few times I did one off adventures or when other members of the group took over, I found that our regular DM had a nasty habit of almost going out of their way to hit members of the party with area effect moves and running off on his own. Obviously it got to the point where the rest of the party would just leave him to die rather than risk being set on fire. Now that I think about it he’s never survived very long in any of the one off adventures(possibly because he just didn't care) or when he’s played a campaign, one of the other players wore the regular DM's dead character as a pelt once he was despised so much.
He's a nice guy and were all friends it's just when you put him in a situation were he has to cooperate with other people he just ignores the rest of the group and does his own thing.
Any advice on nipping that in the bud early so I'm not dealing with a mutiny in the party right out of the gate?
Have a sit down with him outside of the group and explain that if he's going to play, he needs to learn to cooperate. Otherwise, he needs to find another group or hobby.
I take 3 phases:
1) If a player is known to have issues interacting, or even if you have two personalities that don't mesh well in games together, one or the other is going to be left out of the game. Hard to do with established groups, but it can be done.
2) If a player is in-character and acting like a douche, have the consequences of their actions get played up. Don't be a dick about it, but make it something where the whole group feels pain because of the player. Public shaming is very powerful.
3) If the player just doesn't get the message, or if they decide that acting like the Joker is the right way to attend the sessions, then you talk to them outside of game. Support from the rest of the players at the table helps with this, but again watch out for social land mines.
Also keep in mind that some players may be projecting real-life issues into the game, of varying levels. I know I nearly killed a game because I was feeling incredibly depressed and just couldn't engage without my character being nihilistic and hell bent on killing himself. It took a good hour of us talking about what we wanted out of the game to recover from that, as the GM was demoralized, we were demoralized, and so on. But.. it helped.. a lot, in the long run to get that all out there.
Also, make shit up on the fly when it comes to dialogue and options for the players to interact with the world. That's the most fun part of the whole thing in my opinion.
The only thing I really recommend is making sure no one is trying to 'game' the game, no matter the ruleset you use. There's a type of player that shits up campaigns of every variety because they like abusing loopholes, don't put up with that shit. Before you ever start, request that the players are of similar alignment and will at least attempt to work for the good of the group initially.
My most successful sessions of GMing have involved me creating a few set pieces for a game, establishing a theme for the game, and making sure everyone at the table is on board with that theme.
Communication & buy-in are very important; most players will happily play along with your plot hooks & follow the bread crumbs as long as you had the discussion before you began playing that, "This game is about [X], and we're going to be doing a lot of [Y] as a result,"
Also, don't be hesitant to pull the plug on a campaign if it's not working (if players seem to be trying to do anything other than engage with the plot hooks you've provided, the session isn't going to be any fun for anybody, and it's likely that your players just aren't interested in your theme for whatever reason). Play some videogames or whatever, and try again with a fresh idea next time.
Um. Yeah.
Trolling around in a session can & will ruin the fun for the rest of the players, so I have a pretty strict rule of just plain not allowing people who do this play. Obviously it's not usually feasible to kick them out of a game you're in the middle of playing, but when I've had disruptive players in a given session, I simply don't invite them back for any further sessions (and I just write their characters out of the plot). You can try talking to them about their play style or whatever, but in my experience this only causes a lot of dumb drama over a tabletop game, so I personally dislike that approach. Let them be a douchebag for one game, and don't have them come back for any future games.
You want to design people and plots. If you know what the NPCs *want*, you can make up a lot of stuff on the fly based on how they would/should react.
Example: No matter where my players go and what they do, Bad Bill will still want to hire them to recover the Secret Jade Statue. Also, he wants to blame them for stealing it. In fact, he's hired multiple adventuring groups to recover/steal it... simultaneously.
Hijinks ensue... but while your bars and church descriptions may be a little thin (I've made up a ton of "put anywhere" ones for later use), the players wandering won't affect you as much.
One really cheap trick that I use is "Defending your Experience". After the game, I assign extra, Roleplaying XP rewards. The way this works is that every player lists one thing they did that was worthy. Then every other player lists up to three things they remember that's worthy for that person's character.
As we go down the player list, this process does take some time, but I use it wisely... by writing down everything that happened that I forgot about. "John totally scammed the Bartender of the Ugly Eagle out of 3 gold by pretending to be invalid!" That's nice, because I completely forgot the name of the "put anywhere" bar... but you can bet 4 figures the Players will think it's a major quest hub later.
Also, one thing usually leads to another and you may find a lot of inspiration from the activities of a small adventure that could lead to a great campaign.
As for an uncooperative player. I always felt like playing a game was a group exercise, and everyone should be basically on the same page with where the game is going. If you have a player that refuses to cooperate, and is making the game unfun for everyone else.. then they are out.
I have had friends that want a heavy RP game and talk everyone else to death, or rules lawyers that can't stand if everything isn't spot on the letter of the rules. Or players that create strife by backstabbing the party with secret meetings with the GM to discuss their nefarious plots. Mostly we did not include them in future games and found other fun things to do with those friends at a later time.
That's such a good idea I'm going to steal it. Because in the end the only things that matter for GM planning purposes are the things the players remember.
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Running a game is not a small amount of work, so I get players to help me out with it as much as they can, in the vein of what great Scott said. Get them to add in memorable details when you describe what they see. Ask them to define one or two memorable features of NPCs. And always, always at the end ask them what they liked and what can be improved.
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Most people respond positively to statements like this, and the game becomes better for it. No in-game lightning strikes or orbital cows or whatever method you want to abuse your power as a GM. "You're the boss" is an appropriate metaphor... sure, you can abuse your workers, but then they all leave, and you don't have a game. At the very least, if you abuse your players (EVEN if they are being belligerent), you fail the primary objective of playing a roleplaying game, and that is having fun.
If a problem player is disrupting a game, peer pressure is a better method to get them to behave. Ask the rest of the players what they think about the actions of the disrupter. Maybe they don't mind, and you can confront it in the appropriate manner right at the moment. Or maybe they DO mind, and this gives them a forum to voice their complaint. It takes a truly abhorrent player to continue maladjusted behavior at the table after an open discussion with the rest of the group, and in that case, you can tell them that they aren't invited anymore unless they change. I've only had to deal out such bans two times, and both times, the person came back later to the group and apologized for being such a silly goose, and they were allowed to return.
One possible solution is to offer him a bit of world-building in lieu of having him as a PC in the group, not so much as a co-GM because he might not have time for that, but as a designer of some aspect of the world. Another possibility is to see if he would do you a favor and roleplay the main villain. The thing about the main villain is that you usually don't spend a lot of time with them till the end, but he can communicate with you between sessions with things like "okay, the group went here, the villain will react by taking this action. The spy network says they talked to this guy, the villain will move to off said guy." Then at key moments he and the group can face off. Something like that, or giving him something to design, will do two things: 1) it will make him privy to information other players won't have, which some people really get a kick out of, and 2) it will give him an element of control over the world, allowing him to interact with it directly while not necessarily bothering the shit out of your other players.
Sorry, it was too short a sentence:
Be flexible to your players needs as well as fair and open-handed, but understand that people will try to bully you into getting their way via any number of means. In those situations, you may need to remind them that you are, in fact, running the game. Most players will try to test your limits, and usually a better route is "you find nothing in your perception check" or "your actions have enabled you to determine you are, in fact, in a dungeon and you cannot find any secret passages" first.
The best solution is to try to create channels for those tendencies in the game that provide the player with the sort of interaction they're looking for while not derailing things for the others.
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If possible, try to have combat encounters against small numbers of powerful enemies (preferably one really big enemy with multiple attacks per round). A highly technical system like Pathfinder can get bogged down in fights with a lot of participants. If you really want to have a lot of weaker enemies in a fight, assimilate D&D 4e's minion system to work with Pathfinder.
If players have invested heavily in a particular skill set, make sure there are opportunities to use those skills. For instance, if you have a player that put a ton of points into stealth, try to include scenarios where someone has to sneak by some guards to lock a door before the PCs make a frontal assault. Make sure the scenario just becomes harder if the skill check fails.
Try to avoid fights that can be won through sheer attrition. Having unusual terrain that requires skill checks and PCs coming up with plans that can't be resolved purely through dice roles really spice up encounters. A fight that is nothing but combat rolls can get pretty boring sometimes. Scenarios where PCs have to move across difficult terrain while under attack, have to survive for a set amount of time vs. endless waves of enemies, have to complete a long task while under constant attack are all way better than just straight combat scenarios.
I've been pretty heavily inspired by all the computer RPGs I've played over the years, so this is how I've set things up. Before we started the game, I spent like a month or two coming up with the universe and the main plotline (the "main quest"). The main quest has a bunch of points I plan on hitting, but I'm not doing it all at once - of the 5-6 jobs they've done so far, 2 have been "main quest" and so far the players don't even really know what the main quest is. In between each one there's jobs more fitting to their work as crew of a small freighter starship ("side quests"), and it's not turning them into "hey now you're the most important people in the universe overnight for some reason". So I've got a list of points I want to hit, but obviously I can barely predict the end of the gaming session let alone six months down the road, so I'm leaving it very flexible as to when, where, how, and who with certain things happen. Different factions have been introduced, will they want to side with one or several or go independent? I've left things vague enough that any will work. I've also left things open for myself by "seeding" the game with a lot of NPCs. Do I know exactly how each reoccuring character will actually reoccur? Nah, might not be for months. But when the time's right, I'll have someone in the wings ready to push things forward.
Although I don't normally fudge dice to help the players (in very rare cases bad luck ruins good stories) I will not-bother-rolling for "mook/minon" fights. Instead of breaking out into full combat I'll ask what the players want to do, and, knowing that, simply describe the beatdown.
For real/important fights, yes, having 3 or less (tough) opponents really speeds things up without needing to abuse the rules.
Plans, or guidelines, are very useful for determining where you want the story to end up, but one needs to accept that they aren't absolute.
I also like to include character's backgrounds and stories into the overall plotline and I encourage my players to put at least a little effort into them. It's a win-win, in my opinion. You get a bunch of plot / quest ideas, and players enjoy their characters having an impact on the world around them (at least I do when I'm a PC).
You also need to be flexible with rules. No rule set has rules for every single conceivable action. Be ready for, and encourage, creative play. For example, my players recently went through a dwarf hold overrun by gnolls. They found the dwarves tavern which still had kegs of ale inside. One of the players thought of trying to use these as improvised explosive / incendiary against the gnolls. They happened to be traveling with an NPC who was an alchemist so it was a plausible idea. I let them get one explosive keg (afterall, it's not like an alchemist carries an entire lab around) and they then proceeded to blow up some gnolls. Encourage and reward clever play, but you need to limit how much or how effective it is or you end up with players trying to improvise explosives out of everything. You'll find a balance that works with your own group.
I have a few combat maps handy for when a fight happens, and a rough estimate of enemies the acolytes have to fight, but for example my very first fight went entirely differently, I expected my players to join 1 gang but they instead split the party and joined 2 gangs, obviously throwing 2 acolytes up against 8 rival gang members is just asking to get them killed I made a few changes on the fly so the experience would be survivable.
My best recommendation is to keep it fairly loose, come up with the main objective of the campaign and let the players do their own thing. If they like combat make sure you have a few encounters ready to go just to keep the game interesting, or maybe they will spend a few sessions completely roleplaying or talking about their strategy.
I've made it a habit now to ask each of my players individually what they liked about the last session we played, and what they didn't like as much. Depending on the answers you get you tweak your next session in a way that pleases most if not all of your players.
Hopefully this helps, like I said before I'm getting a lot of great advice out of this thread too and should help my future stories.
I really liked Great Scott's suggestion, it helps me keep track of what's working and everyone gets to pat each other on the back - win win.
Everyone seems to have covered a lot that the game has to offer, so that just leaves me to enquire about the puzzle/problem solving aspects of the game.
Obviously I want my game to have some depth rather than just a straight up hack and slash adventure so would any of you happen to have some good examples or resources for implementing puzzles and the like into my game? My GM said he used to know of a wiki that was crammed full of this sort of thing, specifically for tabletop rpg's, but he can't recall the site.
Good luck mr_mich with your game, feel free to ask your own questions, or anyone else for that matter.
All of those things plus the fact that people just love to hear recounted all the crazy shit they did that game while people laugh and go "yeah, that was awesome and really in character." It never gets old.
read the games that use the Apocalypse World Engine. Specifically Dungeon World whose rules can be found here completely free.
essentially what makes the games so great is they codify everything great improvisational GMs already do, and the best thing about this stuff is it can be applied to any game, any system.
Edit: Do not be clear that it is a door, just have a ring on the wall and describe some drag marks or disturbed dust. It doesn't have to kill anyone (and really shouldn't) so don't make it some acid trap or fireball or something.
The way it works (form the calculating I saw) is this:
1) The GM comes up with a flat amount for the session that is appropriate. This is base XP - everyone gets something. It's a low number, but not so low that people couldn't progress very slowly on base XP alone.
2) The player defending comes up with I think two things that s/he did that s/he feels are his/her best examples of roleplaying for the night. It's not based on how much stuff he killed, but specifically RP-related things. Obviously this system doesn't work too well for campaigns or groups that are not focused much on RP.
3) Everyone else gives three unique things the player did that helped define or demonstrate his character's personality, or even just "were really funny."
4) The GM decides how much each item is worth. The number may vary depending on how much time was spent on said item, how in-character it really was, and what kind of effect it had on the group and the campaign. In Scott's games, you can actually get negative XP for some things that are very out of character, but it's really hard.
5) On a really good day for a character, the GM may open it up to the floor if it feels like not everything's been said for a player. The GM may add things the he remembers that the other players didn't mention. Then everything is added up, adjusted for level, possibly reduced a bit so one person doesn't wind up TOO far ahead or behind, and then written on a scrap of paper and handed to the player.
There is a lot of room for tweaking there. Combat XP is usually rolled into base XP for the session: if you were in attendance, you get it. Some players are generally more enthusiastic than others, and some will have trouble speaking up. It's nice to make adjustments for people who have some trouble getting involved. By this system, everyone is going to have really good XP days and really bad ones. If you have a player that never has even a middling day for it, it's worthwhile to try to figure out why. It's a good idea to start with a different person and go in a different order every time, so the same person isn't always going first or last to defend.
Sometimes in a group of 5 players it is really hard to come up with 14 unique things that a player did, especially if sessions are very short. In a group of 6 players, the whole process takes 30-45 minutes once people get used to the flow.. in an effort to cut down on that Scott tried to do the same thing over email by having everyone write in everything they could think of for each character and filtering out duplicates, but it really doesn't work as well, it takes longer for everyone, and sometimes people would wait a few days before writing them up, by which point they'd already forgotten half the session. You didn't get any of the group bonding you get when everyone is sitting and chatting about all the awesome stuff everyone did, and the transparency wasn't there.
That's what I remember.. @Great Scott can probably clear it up a bit.
I employ a house rule for D&D games wherein if an attack would be instantly lethal against a PC it instead reduces that player to -6 hp. I would recommend not fudging rolls ever, and to roll publicly if possible. If you fudge even once then the possibility of it hangs over everything.
Not sure exactly how Pathfinder does it, but I like to use the Hit Point/Vitality system (the one where your Hit Points are equal to your constitution and Vitality is equal to what your hit points would normally be). Critical hits deal damage directly Hit Points instead of having their damage multiplied. I still apply the "-6 rule" wherein a PC can't be reduced past -6 from a single critical hit.
I also like to do defensive rolls. Instead of straight up adding 10 to calculate AC vs. an attack, the target rolls a 1d20 and adds that. The players like this because it feels more interactive for them when defending. It also means that it becomes possible to hit things that are significantly higher level.
I like these rules as a set because it makes combat more exciting/dangerous and makes it take longer for PCs to become mathematically indestructible against your average orc/town guard/low level mook. It can work against you though in that I've had major NPCs taken out with a single, lucky crit.
If you allow Skype players, let me know! I'm always interested in pen-and-paper
I like this idea and I've tried it a number of times (discovered this in the BESM D20 rules), but the extra rolls drag down combat. I'll definitely try again the next time I run a game with less than 6 players.
You get used to it after a while. We don't even notice it anymore. Plus players seem to appreciate having something to roll even when it's not their turn.
It's funny to find a thread like this in Help and Advice. I've cruised through Critical Failures many a time hoping to find a DM threat for swapping traps, rules and resources with the classy gents and ladies this forum tends to attract.
A puzzle that is solved by the _characters_ requires character knowledge or skill and perhaps some sort of check to recall information or manipulate a piece of the puzzle. This can be a puzzle that no one at the table would have a prayer of actually solving in real life.
Either option presents interesting advantages and disadvantages. The player-solved puzzle is more directly engaging but carries the risk that no one at the table can figure it out causing the game to grind to a halt. The character-solved puzzle can spare you from the unsolvable puzzle problem but may end up just being more dice rolling to the players and fail in the goal of providing something new.
Edit: Actually, thinking about it now I think the best solution is probably to start out presenting it as a player-solved puzzle then either set yourself a time limit or break in as soon as you see they're off on entirely the wrong track and use a few knowledge checks to steer them back on track or completely transform it into a character-solved puzzle. Whichever way it works out was, of course, the way you expected them to solve it all the time.
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Description: There is a pit 30' feet across and about 45' wide. There is no way around the pit as it runs right up to the side walls. The bottom of the pit is covered by a permanent Deeper Darkness spell so you can't see how deep it is or what's in there without some hefty mojo. Jutting up from the center of a pit is a stone pillar 5' wide and 10' long. On the opposite side of the pit there are sturdy looking wooden planks that look long and wide enough to be used as a makeshift bridge if you can get to them and them lay them across from the edge of the pit to the center pillar. Be sure to mention at the end of your description that getting to the center pillar and to the opposite side will require two jump checks.
The trap is that the center pillar is an illusion. The danger in the pit was two fold. First, some distance down but within the Deeper Darkness is a layer of giant spider web that spans the entire length and width of the pit. The spiders are blind cave spiders and have no penalties to fighting in the dark, whereas a PC caught in the web is both blind and entangled. Below the web is another drop into something terrible of the DMs choosing. This makes burning the web not a great solution.
The proper way to get across is to use the invisible, permanent Wall of Force that runs the length of one of the side walls.
I only used it once but it worked like a charm. Thinking that this was nothing more than a skill check, someone tried to leap across. They didn't even bother to tie a rope to him. I think it was the casual mention of a jump check at the end of my description that put them in that mindset.
I also like this trap because it makes sense as an actual security system. It's not designed to be "solved". It's designed to kill intruders. It's also easily bypassed if you know about it and rewards players for being prepared with rope and a Detect Magic spell. It doesn't require any upkeep aside from remembering to throw a cow into the pit from time to time. I wrote this big, long description about the special breed of cave spiders and how they never left their webs and the how that trait evolved in them but you can put anything you want in the pit. That's what I love about being the DM. You can make up any damn thing you like.
Here's a couple ways to spruce it up:
1) Have the PCs encounter this trap while being chased or trying to escape. It'll make it more likely that they'll be reckless and jump for it.
2) Make the center pillar a mechanical, spring-loaded, self-resetting trap that flings PCs off to the side when something heavy enough to trigger it lands on it. This makes it so Detect Magic won't work and throwing pebbles and crap at it won't set it off. Similarly, have the real bridge across be mechanical as well. It slides out of a side wall when activated by a well-hidden mechanism on the PCs side of the pit. Perhaps it's locked so activating the bridge controls requires some sort of thievery check.
3) Instead of big spiders, a player who falls in the webs is swarmed by a zillion tiny, poisonous spiders. Personally, for me, that is some terrifying goddamned imagery.
I don't GM very regularly at all (I hardly have time for it) but when I do, I always start out with one or two little side adventures like Thundyrkatz suggests. Even if you feel completely comfortable with the idea of GMing (or DMing, or whatever participial phrase your game of choice likes to use) it can be helpful to start off with a discrete scenario that allows the players to introduce their characters to one another.
Example: I started off a Spycraft campaign with all of the player characters blindfolded in the back of a van. The characters had never met one another before and came from all walks of life. The only thing that they all had in common was that each of them had just accepted a brand new job. At various points during the first session, I asked each of them to describe what job they had applied for, how they heard about the job, what the application process entailed, and what they were doing before taking this new job. It was intended as kind of a low-key way to allow the players to develop their characters while the first session was progressing while establishing a justification for why they all had a common stake in moving forward through the rest of the campaign as a team. It also sort of helped them figure out how they were going to work together to solve the adventure because I didn't provide a ton of direction initially beyond an initial goal which would help them survive past sunrise, and I allowed them to approach that goal however they wanted.
All the while, I'm furiously jotting notes down as each player describes his character so that I can bring these background details up in the future, and so that I can also try to use the way they approach a more free-form adventure to guide how I'll try to structure later missions that are actually part of the broader story line.
So I'm going to start by taking a step back and talking about how I think people should approach the idea of playing a tabletop RPG, rather than how people should run a tabletop RPG.
I tend to think of role-playing as being a cousin to improvisational theater. Tina Fey says that the fundamental rule to being successful at Improv is to always say "yes." And it's true. The most catastrophic failures in improvisational theater all happen because one of the actors refuses to say "yes" to the conceit of a scene as established by the audience or the other actors. Fey wrote a scene into 30 Rock to show just how hilariously horrible improv gets when an actor says "no."
Likewise, what you need are players who will say "yes." Part of this is obviously up to the players themselves, but like @DevoutlyApathetic mentions, you can go a long way towards mitigating the potential that players will say "no" by presenting them with explicit, meaningful choices. If the only option I put on the table for a group of players is "Do Action A," players as a necessity are left with two choices: "yes, we will," or "no, we won't." However, if you throw an equally appealing Action B onto the table at the same time, players are more likely to forget about the possibility to say "no." Instead, they approach that choice as two different opportunities to say "yes." And as long as the choice was truly meaningful, the players won't feel like you're railroading them horribly.
However, what happens if you have one player who is a Jenna Maroney in at a table full of Liz Lemons? You can dismiss that player or take him aside and gently but firmly chew him out, but honestly I think it is as much up to the players. They need to establish their own dynamics as well. Reward the Liz Lemons in your group for saying "yes," and give them a chance to help the Jenna Maroneys of the group get with the program.
This is probably a different discussion for another time, though. Unless you are roleplaying with 100% members of the drama club, be reasonable with the "yes, and..." principle as a GM. As a moderator, you are there to make sure everyone has fun, like a party/dinner host, not just the people who come to the table fully prepared to "yes, and..." their way through all situations. When you GM a game, keeping the flow of the game going can also mean "No, but..." as well (and it often does, in many games... that's why we have dice). Be attentive to all of the players, not just the ones who are extroverted or enjoy improv.
On a side note, I recently read some articles on how Improv is being taught at business schools, such as this one:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/02/18/improvisation.business.skills/index.html
The principles can be applied to just about everything, it seems. But use careful moderation and feedback when you do.