The woes of GMing.

Kaun

i start by saying sorry in advance for my spelling and grammer..

There is no real point to this post besides the sharing of a painfull experiance as a gm.

Im running a game for some long time buddies of mine at the moment. We have been gaming together over a decade now and more then not i am the gm of the group. So durring one of the post session chats with the players im informed that lately my content is getting a bit to predictable and easy. Not a problem i promise to turn it up a few notches for them in the coming session at wich they seem happy and keen..

So i spend a fair bit of time preping for the next session and decide to make things more difficult not by simply finding harder monsters and adding extra damage to my traps, instead by pitting them against foe's who fight more as a seasoned unit with stong tactics. Also i make some of the game puzzels and traps require more then just some quick and inteligent thinking on the spot, but a little in game research and pre planing to get past.. (i understand that might not make alot of sense with out examples but im far to tiered to go to heavly into detail).

So any way the next session comes along and after some stuffing around and general non important things are taken care off the party is involved in there first combat with my new "harder" foe's. It becomes overly aparent right of the line that the partys charge in hack and slash aproch isnt going to work and after taking out a few bad guys they are forced to retreat just due to the fact that mindless hacking isnt wining the fight for them.

This didnt make them happy.

I must point out thou that i didnt go in with my killer GM hat on there were ways to win the fight, i just made it that going in and hacking down each enemy as they came wouldnt work.

Ok so we moved on from there and came to the first major puzzle that had to be over come. This puzzle was not intended to be quickly solved, nor was it ment to be solved with out a little resarch and leg work. So the party came, they gave it a min or so thought and discussion, they made a couple half ass attempts to solve it on the spot. Then the promptly decided it was two dificult and went to of to find something else to do.

ok, Every GM knows and loves it when the party completly walks away from the pre planed material you had preped for the session and i try very hard not to run a rail road style game but i do place a story line there for them to play through, how they go about it i generally leave completly up to them (i have found myself pre making little response to a multitude of possabilities and fleshing out the ones the party move down on the fly). However having a party just completly abandon a story line can be highly frustrating!! :evil:

But i did not lose heart...

I decided to drop in a few hint as a posability of getting there interests back up and getting them back into the story. After the first couple of hints the got shity at me and told me to stop trying to rail road them into something they wernt interested in.

In closeing i have decided my party has no fuckin idea what they actualy want out of the game and that im beter of just keeping it simple and entertaining cos they are morons with short attention spans.

I must admit thou, as i drove home that night i considered hanging up the old GM screen for good. Id just end up back and GMing aggin 4 months later when i got the itch to play thou lol.

Reynolds

I set up a series of riddle puzzles that would each hand out an item. When the party got all four items, they would have to assemble them in a certain order to defeat another little puzzle. This was near the very beginning of the dungeon, and I figured it would only take them a few minutes.

They simply could not figure out first puzzles at all. They were each split up with their own, so I went through each of them seperately. Gave the puzzle ot them slowly, tried to give hints, gave them multiple chances...nothing. So they all get knocked out by the traps set up for when you fail the puzzle.

The last party member goes to the first puzzle, gets it on the first try. He then walks to the next three, and solves them all just as easily. After healing up the party, they look over the pieces to the final puzzle. After he solved this puzzle just as quickly, the rest of the party looked stunned, and asked him how he got this all so quickly.

"I just thought of how a total retard would set up a puzzle, and then it was easy."

The adventure ended right there. Along with the campaign. And, since I was the only person that would GM for them (wonder why?), none of them have RPed in a campaign since.

Raziel

Illusion of choice is more important than actual choice.

If they want to skip the puzzle, let them. Just skip the puzzle and have their next decision move to the next room.

Super Namicchi

I'm a big fan of setting down with everyone and actively discussing what type of game the players and GM is interested in. It works wonders, I think, when everyone is on the same page as to the challenge level of the puzzles. It's much easier to swallow a difficult puzzle/fight scenario when everyone knows the ongoing tone of the campaign is careful planning and thinking. To suddenly shift gears like that may have been too abrupt (even though your players sound like they need to figure out what they want in a DnD game themselves) and you should have just ratcheted back the puzzles, or threw in some mitigating circumstances to weaken the badguys.

Kaun

ArcanisTheImpotent wrote:

I'm a big fan of setting down with everyone and actively discussing what type of game the players and GM is interested in. It works wonders, I think, when everyone is on the same page as to the challenge level of the puzzles. It's much easier to swallow a difficult puzzle/fight scenario when everyone knows the ongoing tone of the campaign is careful planning and thinking. To suddenly shift gears like that may have been too abrupt (even though your players sound like they need to figure out what they want in a DnD game themselves) and you should have just ratcheted back the puzzles, or threw in some mitigating circumstances to weaken the badguys.

I could have done that, but i didnt really ramp them up to far to begin with. The fight just required a little stratergy rather then mindless hacking and the puzzle a little thought and research. To take it back down i would just be back to were i started, then i would just get complaints it was to easy aggain..

Ill describe the puzzle quickly. Basicly they needed to get into a tomb wich had been magicly locked. To open the tomb you had to burn a certain type of insence at the site of the tomb during the half moon and the tomb would open.

I had given them a fair few ways of finding this out:

1: The expensive way was droping some coin into the purse of the local theifs guild would get you enough info to get you more then moving in the right direction. (this was aimed at the rogue in the group)

2: There is a popular local lullaby most mothers sing to there children wich with out there knowledge contains the clues to the riddle of opening the tomb. (This one was targeted at the bard in the party)

3: There was also a local elder who new how to unlock the tomb, but would require a favour from the pc's first. (This would be were they ended up after asking around town for long enough)

and the incense its self was not a commen one but a hermit who roams the local woodlands is ment to be a reputied natural healer and would either have some or know where to aquire some.

This is how my PC's delt with the tomb:

*They found it.

*They listened to the description of the entrance to the tomb, considered it for a few seconds.

*Tried to open the door by force.

*The wizard cast knock on it wich also didnt work.

*Finaly they poked around for a while trying to find any secret leavers or buttons. when that failed they gave up and left.


I dont know, maybe it was to hard or to much of a change but they asked for it and i tried my best to give it to them.

Arkady

In my Sunday game we play with a relatively killer GM and he is awesome. But the group has to drive him crazy. See, we play with 2 people with legitimate learning disabilities. Receive money from the government legitimate. And generally, it's cool, they can help out, don't play terrible (one of them is actually pretty good and dm's himself and he runs a moderately interesting game) and one of us other people can pick up the slack in areas such as remembering important npc's and other such things.

But recently the campaign kind of took a nose dive. It started with 2 of the most central pc's having to quit the game for various reasons. And then I retired my old character because he wasn't that fun. And then the other main player retired his character because he was tired of the constant shit he was getting from the other players (it had become a running joke that whenever his character went unconscious in battle, they were guaranteed a win). The game went on hiatus in the hopes the 2 pc's that quit would come back, but they didn't, so we got started again. The problem comes with the fact that the only original character remaining is one of the tards. And me and the other guy who actually can remember shit that's happened and keep the group going in some sort of direction keep dying through bad luck and just dumb mistakes. As an example, I've lost 3 characters in the last 2 months to 1's on fort saves, and my last character I lost because of the old portable hole+bag of holding trick. Anyway, let me get to some examples. First off, he plays a cleric of ilmater, bear that in mind.

1. We completed the main campaign story arc and we got a very fancy keep. He does not know where it is and neither does the one other player (also retarded) who was there.

2. Months ago before the game went on hiatus, we got a dragon golem thing, made of mithril, or whatever. At the time we got it it was emphasized that it was party treasure and it would only be as good as what we put into it (put into it meaning how many of us took item familiar). Fast forward to a month ago, this guy brings in aa dwarf duo and takes item familiar (silver dragon golem thingy) and cleric boy wigs the fuck out. He's all like wah it's my dragon and not yours how dare you steal things from me, blah blah blah. Queue an hour long arguement over how the stupid thing never was his and he shouldn't get all pissy about it.

3. So, he has item familiar dragon, and so do these dwarves. We get into a fight with a wizard who's CR is above ours to such a degree that if it were one higher it would be an "impossible encounter" in the sense that it would be off the experience chart. Well we manage to kill the astral projection we teleported to, but I died in the process. Everybody leaves for town while the dwarves try and arcane mark around. They do something dumb and end up caving a mine in on themselves, burying them and my corpse. In the morning, cleric face is just like ho hum guess they ran off to do something, and never once looks for them, even though the item familiar he shares with them could find 'em in a second. Oops, there goes 3 characters, all of whom were with him when we did the end of the world battle. The kicker to this story? Next session some monk he never met before died and he immediately wanted to get them back.

4. Cleric of ilmater. Has 5 (yes, five) levels in fighter. Uses a +5 vorpal greatsword, and when I say +5 I mean he actually payed for it to be +5 instead of getting a +1 vorpal gs and then doing GMW on it because, "It's too much of a hassle." His favorite spell, as a level 19 character? Flamestrike. When he isn't casting that, he is in melee, doing 2d6+6, because he never casts divine favor, divine power, or righteous might, but he does cast bless every fight. Which is tangential to the point because he is a fucking cleric of ilmater, not tempus. He shouldn't be using the GS anyway.

And I don't even want to get started on how many plothooks he's skipped merrilly over. The whole thing makes me, the dm, and the other 2 not retarded people go :x

cytorak

Reynolds wrote:

I set up a series of riddle puzzles that would each hand out an item. When the party got all four items, they would have to assemble them in a certain order to defeat another little puzzle. This was near the very beginning of the dungeon, and I figured it would only take them a few minutes.

They simply could not figure out first puzzles at all. They were each split up with their own, so I went through each of them seperately. Gave the puzzle ot them slowly, tried to give hints, gave them multiple chances...nothing. So they all get knocked out by the traps set up for when you fail the puzzle.

The last party member goes to the first puzzle, gets it on the first try. He then walks to the next three, and solves them all just as easily. After healing up the party, they look over the pieces to the final puzzle. After he solved this puzzle just as quickly, the rest of the party looked stunned, and asked him how he got this all so quickly.

"I just thought of how a total retard would set up a puzzle, and then it was easy."

The adventure ended right there. Along with the campaign. And, since I was the only person that would GM for them (wonder why?), none of them have RPed in a campaign since.

What exactly were the puzzles, if you don't mind me asking?

Spoon

what sort of motivation did you give them for getting into the tomb?

If you can't get them to go where you want to I suggest you develop a few "motivators" to get them going into the right direction. I find that a coming up with a few standard lures that you can toss in on fly can be helpful even if you can't hook them just on curiosity or by plot. Remeber to use thier own vices agaisnt them whether it's greed, glory or whatever.

Like having someone steal somthing from the party and the thief hides in the tomb.

Plant rummors of phat lewt in the tomb.

Also to ramp up the combat I would recomend that you set up the npc's as a "boss" fight and later reveal that they were the new standard. For instance you could have your group fight a team of npc's at the climax of a story who use smarter, and more coordinated tatics. Then later they encounter more of "those" guys in the red capes, robes or whatever revealing that they are just run of the mill mooks.

Reynolds

cytorak wrote:

What exactly were the puzzles, if you don't mind me asking?

The exact details are upstairs in the ol' GM's notebook. But, basically, they were four of those little word puzzles that lead to a letter. Like, "I am the first part of history, and the last step to death." For 'H.' Or whatever. Only with four or five hints for each puzzle.

The four letters that answered the four little riddles were handed out on small metal circles and spelled out 'M-E-L-T' together. There was a 'wax' barrier blocking the only way down into the rest of the dungeon. You put them in little notches in the wax in the shape of the items, in that order, and the wax magically melted out of the way.

I tried to help them out with the riddles as best I could, even gave the hardest one out last, hoping that they'd have figured out the rest first and know what to look for in that one. Oh well...

Pkmoutl

As most of you know, I've been GM'ing since before most of you were born. I have to say that if you are going to put puzzles in a game, make sure to keep them simple. What may make sense to you will not make sense to everyone else, especially since you're trying to describe your puzzle without giving away too much, and the players have no idea what they're up against in the first place.

The kinds of things you have all described would work in some games, but not in others. For instance, the tomb thing with the incense was a relatively obscure thing to throw in there. You can't expect the Bard or the Theif or whomever to know where to look or whom to talk to. If you're going to do something like that, you really have to present it to the party in bold-faced type, or they aren't going to get the connection. I play with people who have Master's degrees, and even they can't figure out something that obscure. Now, I would put something like that in a Call of Cthulhu game or Chill or something along those lines, but D&D? No. When people play D&D, they don't want to go around asking a gazillion questions to a dozen and a half NPC's, they want to find the key under a rock and then go in swinging. Know your game and know your audience.

On another note, if the players are complaining that your games are getting dull and predictable, change games. Run something else. And don't go from D&D to Runequest or Rolemaster or something in the same genre. Go from D&D to something like Champions or Gamma World or something from another genre completely. If you want to run games with complex puzzles, run a game that is made for that sort of thing. Myst-style puzzles don't translate well into tabletop RPG's, trust me. I've had to scrap several campaigns for the same kind of thing.

And always remember: What is easy to you may be obscure to your players. Unless everything they need to solve the puzzle is within 50' of the actual puzzle, they won't get it.

Reynolds

It wasn't the fact that my puzzle stalled them so hard that caused everything to crash. It was that, instead of just learning from it and moving on, they insulted me.

If your RP group only has one GM, *be nice to the GM*. Look at KODT...

Pkmoutl

Reynolds wrote:

It wasn't the fact that my puzzle stalled them so hard that caused everything to crash. It was that, instead of just learning from it and moving on, they insulted me.

If your RP group only has one GM, *be nice to the GM*. Look at KODT...

If one insult gets you to quit, go into building model cars.

My group insults me at least six times a session. Get a thicker skin or get another hobby.

And KoDT is all about everyone giving the DM a hassle, or haven't you realized that yet?

laughingfuzzball

Ignore everything your group tells you they want to do. Half of them don't know, and the other half are lying. Give them multiple, varied options, make it clear that they have multiple options, and let them do what they want. Try to make which option is really the best vary. If you have a 'hard way' (the kind of thing you tried) and an 'easy way' (the kind of thing you usually do), reward the 'hard way' more generously or more quickly, and make sure they know you will. I assume you already have your group's dynamic under control, so you'll know which options to plot in detail and which to sketch, but for those who don't, this is an easy way to get started on it.

Kaun

Pkmoutl wrote:

As most of you know, I've been GM'ing since before most of you were born. I have to say that if you are going to put puzzles in a game, make sure to keep them simple. What may make sense to you will not make sense to everyone else, especially since you're trying to describe your puzzle without giving away too much, and the players have no idea what they're up against in the first place.

The kinds of things you have all described would work in some games, but not in others. For instance, the tomb thing with the incense was a relatively obscure thing to throw in there. You can't expect the Bard or the Theif or whomever to know where to look or whom to talk to. If you're going to do something like that, you really have to present it to the party in bold-faced type, or they aren't going to get the connection. I play with people who have Master's degrees, and even they can't figure out something that obscure. Now, I would put something like that in a Call of Cthulhu game or Chill or something along those lines, but D&D? No. When people play D&D, they don't want to go around asking a gazillion questions to a dozen and a half NPC's, they want to find the key under a rock and then go in swinging. Know your game and know your audience.

On another note, if the players are complaining that your games are getting dull and predictable, change games. Run something else. And don't go from D&D to Runequest or Rolemaster or something in the same genre. Go from D&D to something like Champions or Gamma World or something from another genre completely. If you want to run games with complex puzzles, run a game that is made for that sort of thing. Myst-style puzzles don't translate well into tabletop RPG's, trust me. I've had to scrap several campaigns for the same kind of thing.

And always remember: What is easy to you may be obscure to your players. Unless everything they need to solve the puzzle is within 50' of the actual puzzle, they won't get it.

I have sort of taken your advice.... premptivly.. i "paused" that game and we have started a Dragonstar game ... yes its still D20 and there are still elf's and magic and what not but its fantsy to sci-fi.

We do usualy try and mix it up, the games we seem to switch between are

:DnD (Obviously)
:Deadlands
:Mutant chronicals
:CHampions
:Vampire/warewolf/mage (Basicly which ever one our white wolf fanatic wants to run)
:Gurps

But when it came to the puzzle when they didnt start looking into it of there own accord i slid hints and leads in for them and they purposly avoided them.

me

Reynolds

Pkmoutl wrote:

Reynolds wrote:

It wasn't the fact that my puzzle stalled them so hard that caused everything to crash. It was that, instead of just learning from it and moving on, they insulted me.

If your RP group only has one GM, *be nice to the GM*. Look at KODT...

If one insult gets you to quit, go into building model cars.

My group insults me at least six times a session. Get a thicker skin or get another hobby.

And KoDT is all about everyone giving the DM a hassle, or haven't you realized that yet?

We trade friendly insults, sure. The way this one was delivered, though...the timing, the tone, etc. It was very uncool. Afterwards I basically told them I wasn't going to bother trying to GM for them when stuff like this happens. As I said, I was the only one they could get to GM for a *reason*. This wasn't the first bad thing...just the latest and easiest to sum up in one quote.

And the KoDT comment was just a little joke. BA quits, or changes games, or whatever plenty of times after they get to him.

DeVryGuy

Reynolds wrote:

cytorak wrote:

What exactly were the puzzles, if you don't mind me asking?

The exact details are upstairs in the ol' GM's notebook. But, basically, they were four of those little word puzzles that lead to a letter. Like, "I am the first part of history, and the last step to death." For 'H.' Or whatever. Only with four or five hints for each puzzle.

The four letters that answered the four little riddles were handed out on small metal circles and spelled out 'M-E-L-T' together. There was a 'wax' barrier blocking the only way down into the rest of the dungeon. You put them in little notches in the wax in the shape of the items, in that order, and the wax magically melted out of the way.

I tried to help them out with the riddles as best I could, even gave the hardest one out last, hoping that they'd have figured out the rest first and know what to look for in that one. Oh well...

For some reason riddles haven't worked so well in my game, because whenever one is presented they usually start shouting answers hoping they'll luck upon the right one, rather than thinking through it. So I decided to make riddles optional as a rule in my game. Basically if you answer a riddle, you'll get a little bonus like a map of the installation your invading or a safe place to sleep in the dungeon.

Reynolds

Yeah, my guys aren't so good at that, I guess.

Sometimes it works out in my favor, though. Problem solving, that is. I remember when one of them was GMing and left us a map to some treasure, but with the last few directions erased (manually, not a spell or anything) off the map. He expected us to go do a side-quest to get the last bit of info.

Instead, I pulled out the 'rub a pencil (charcoal?) over the indentions the writing leaves' trick. He was dumbfounded. I had to have someone else there at the time back me up that, yes, that actually works.

Easy treasure...

Pkmoutl

Reynolds wrote:

Pkmoutl wrote:

Reynolds wrote:

It wasn't the fact that my puzzle stalled them so hard that caused everything to crash. It was that, instead of just learning from it and moving on, they insulted me.

If your RP group only has one GM, *be nice to the GM*. Look at KODT...

If one insult gets you to quit, go into building model cars.

My group insults me at least six times a session. Get a thicker skin or get another hobby.

And KoDT is all about everyone giving the DM a hassle, or haven't you realized that yet?

We trade friendly insults, sure. The way this one was delivered, though...the timing, the tone, etc. It was very uncool. Afterwards I basically told them I wasn't going to bother trying to GM for them when stuff like this happens. As I said, I was the only one they could get to GM for a *reason*. This wasn't the first bad thing...just the latest and easiest to sum up in one quote.

And the KoDT comment was just a little joke. BA quits, or changes games, or whatever plenty of times after they get to him.

My favorite was when he had their sci-fi characters attack and kill off their fantasy characters and all their loot. It's too bad it's so long, because it is almost worth posting.

I've actually considered doing that with my group and having them kill off their old Shadowrun group, just because they keep wanting to play the old characters instead of the new ones, but the old ones are at the point where they could probably take on a dragon without too much trouble, and that just isn't fun, it's overkill.