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Robzor McFabulous posted:First time I had them all roll to attack (if they chose to attack that turn), and as long as they beat something like 15 (not too difficult for their level) they'd roll damage, I'd halve or third it, whatever seemed reasonable, then I'd describe how they did some sweet moves and killed that number of mooks. If they rolled badly, failed reflex saves, whatever seemed appropriate then they'd either take a combo attack from two or three guys, or perhaps get grappled down by a handful of them. It worked well, they enjoyed feeling like badasses cutting down waves of guys, and as a comedy twist the big bad evil mage cleared away the corpses Katamari style before fighting the party himself. I think this works. Actually, I'll ask this thread for some ideas. Here's the situation: I'm temporarily taking over DM duties for a session or two, since our current DM is pretty busy and doesn't want the extra stress of DMing. I know a few players (including myself) are kind of frustrated with his campaign, and feel a bit powerless. So for my campaign (completely different universe), I'd like to let the players feel really powerful and just kick serious rear end. Right now I'm pretty much saying yes to any character suggestions they're throwing my way, and I'm building more fun NPCs for them to interact with, rather than having a more serious tone. I do still want there to be some challenge, but if anybody has tips for making a more light hearted game still worthwhile and interesting from a game play perspective, I'm all ears.
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Apr 7, 2011 20:07
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Hey, I'm a first time DM. I did the first adventure in scales of war a few months ago, and now I'm starting a new adventure/campaign from scratch with a new group. My question is, Should I use a campaign setting book? or just make up my own world? and if i should use a setting which one is the easiest for a new DM to use? Oh, and if it helps my main ideas for the start has to do with setting up a main reoccurring villain, ship wrecks and orc pirates, and maybe a hidden army of mind controlled people or something along those lines.
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Apr 9, 2011 04:22
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Elblanco posted:Hey, I'm a first time DM. I did the first adventure in scales of war a few months ago, and now I'm starting a new adventure/campaign from scratch with a new group. My question is, Should I use a campaign setting book? or just make up my own world? I don't know, how good are you at making up an interesting setting? One thing I'd heavily suggest is doing collaborative worldbuilding with your players, because it'll make the setting much more interesting for them and for you since you won't have to come up with all of it on your own. Pick some kind of starting point (lowish fantasy, dwarfish invaders created an empire when they were forced out of their underground homes almost a century ago) and then let your players pick parts of the setting they want to flesh out, and let them. You're never going to be as creative as all of your players put together. Basically, read the DMG2 and then use pretty much all of its advice, it's a really amazingly good book for DMing advice. quote:and if i should use a setting which one is the easiest for a new DM to use? None of them are that complex really, so I'm not sure it makes too much of a difference. Dark Sun is pretty well defined in terms of theme and so is Eberron (swords & sandals/road warrior and pulp, respectively), so if that sounds interesting to you're players they're good places to use. If not, make up something else.
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Apr 9, 2011 04:28
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I'm putting together a 4E game with a bunch of friends who have either never played an RPG or haven't played since 2E (I also have not played since 2E). For ease, I premade all the characters with input from the players so that we don't have to spend a long time going over character building before we start. Last time I DMed I was in middle school and games were pretty much corridors of goblins, so I'm not sure how to handle some situations properly. For the wizard in our party, I took the ritual "Comprehend Languages" because when I looked at the list it seemed really useful. As DM, how do I structure puzzles to allow use of this without voiding it? I considered houseruling it to only apply to the "standard" languages but MY NATURALISM because a magic spell wouldn't give a gently caress. I just feel like my choices are either "your ritual doesn't work on this so it is useless sorry for your loss" or "welp you can read the script on the map and you know the secrets of the ages. The best solutions I have come up with area riddle in an obscure language so just being able to read it doesn't give the answer away, and a map with some script so that knowledge of the location of X doesn't mean it will be easy to get.
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Apr 9, 2011 14:10
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JesustheDarkLord posted:I'm putting together a 4E game with a bunch of friends who have either never played an RPG or haven't played since 2E (I also have not played since 2E). For ease, I premade all the characters with input from the players so that we don't have to spend a long time going over character building before we start.
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Apr 9, 2011 14:45
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JesustheDarkLord posted:The best solutions I have come up with area riddle in an obscure language so just being able to read it doesn't give the answer away, and a map with some script so that knowledge of the location of X doesn't mean it will be easy to get. Cultural context, as Jimbozig says, is a big deal -- there's a reason for the old quote (variously attributed to Shaw, Wilde, and a handful of other candidates) about England and the US being two countries divided by a common language. It becomes a matter of how strong the magic gets, and there you have a great opportunity to get beyond binary pass/fail for the ritual check result -- you can set up a band of results where your comprehension is "Pretty good for a 3-month intensive course," "A few years of academic study," "Lived in a place where they spoke that language but not the specific dialect," "Lived in that guys' hood and knows exactly what his slang means". Speaking of which, slang/cant/jargon is a good way to represent a partial success -- you speak Goblin, but not necessarily the mercenary slang of the Bat tribesfolk, which your captured Goblin is using to describe the troop layouts you're interested in. In general, for stuff like Comprehend Language, don't put stuff behind a language barrier that'll break the adventure -- put interesting stuff there instead. A shortcut, a mention of a treasure cache, a scholarly treatise about one of the big bad's weaknesses. Your options can be a lot broader than "Welp your skill is useless/Welp your skill short-circuited the plot."
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Apr 9, 2011 17:30
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Elblanco posted:Hey, I'm a first time DM. I did the first adventure in scales of war a few months ago, and now I'm starting a new adventure/campaign from scratch with a new group. My question is, Should I use a campaign setting book? or just make up my own world? and if i should use a setting which one is the easiest for a new DM to use? That said, most (all?) professionally available campaign settings are just somebody's homemade campaign world that somewhere along the line took a turn for the serious, so if you want to spend the rest of your gamemastering life running things set in this particular unique world, it still may be a good use of your time. But unless it has fundamentally different geography/biology/physics from extant settings (which, for the record, mine did, and yet I still thought it was a waste of time), you might still be better off using someone else's.
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Apr 10, 2011 03:48
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Quarex posted:The first campaign I ever ran had a fairly well fleshed-out setting, where I knew the races' histories and interplay and had a dozen currencies and principalities and the like fleshed out, and of course 95% of that stuff never came up. Every minute I spent on that game world would have been better spent coming up with interesting scenarios for the characters to work with, and that is something everyone should keep in mind. This for real. The cretins I run games for never give half a poo poo about any of the setting details and only ever get into the politics when it involves framing the king of a city's underworld and getting him crucified for mildly inconveniencing them.
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Apr 10, 2011 15:33
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Ok, so I've tried to remake my idea for my campaign as a new DM. The idea is to have an order or paladins and clerics and followers of Bahamut, centered in a large city. The party has been called in to help investigate a string of murders of their members. They already believe it's a fallen paladin(darkblade) that may have defected to a possible demonic cult. I'm having a hard time actually figuring out how to do this idea, I want them to investigate some of the killings, and run into some cultists and stuff. I'm just drawing a blank on how to get started and was wondering if anyone could help me out?
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Apr 11, 2011 22:55
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Elblanco posted:Ok, so I've tried to remake my idea for my campaign as a new DM. The idea is to have an order or paladins and clerics and followers of Bahamut, centered in a large city. The party has been called in to help investigate a string of murders of their members. They already believe it's a fallen paladin(darkblade) that may have defected to a possible demonic cult. They start investigating, the Cult hears about this and decides to off them. A gang accosts them either in an alley or just boots down the door to the tavern/bar/inn/whatever they're staying in. Fight ensues, baddies get killed. Some kind of clue is in the leader's pocket ("See HJ for payment. Note: Watch for any paladin tricks this time").
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Apr 12, 2011 14:53
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ItalicSquirrels posted:They start investigating, the Cult hears about this and decides to off them. A gang accosts them either in an alley or just boots down the door to the tavern/bar/inn/whatever they're staying in. Fight ensues, baddies get killed. Some kind of clue is in the leader's pocket ("See HJ for payment. Note: Watch for any paladin tricks this time"). ok cool thanks for the ideas. I was kinda drawing a blank yesterday, I had no idea what to do after they saw the first dead guy, for some reason.
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Apr 12, 2011 17:29
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If you're ever stuck for ideas, have someone boot down the door and threaten the party. If nothing else, the players will want to know why that guy's there and you've got a hook. On a personal note, I'm thinking about starting up a Spelljammer game for my friends, but I just can't find any of the setting info. There's a website (http://www.spelljammer.org/) but it looks kinda abandoned and is short on fluff, like they expect you to know it already. Anyone got a free (or cheap) source? I don't mind winging it, but it's always nice to have some stuff already nailed down.
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Apr 13, 2011 12:55
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http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Spacefarers-Handbook-Spelljammer-Reference/dp/1560763477/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1302697516&sr=8-6
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Apr 13, 2011 13:25
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Currently DMing a Star Wars Revised set in the KOTOR Era. I've been running them do mission based gameplay, but I'd really like to start a drawn out storyline, but I'd like a lot of interaction and comedy as well as just something besides combat, any suggestions for brainstorming?
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Apr 13, 2011 14:23
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ItalicSquirrels posted:
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Apr 13, 2011 15:40
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MadScientistWorking posted:What version are you playing? 4E has some pretty decent stuff entailing the Spelljammer setting in at least two books. My group's pretty much a 3.5E group. I don't mind hammering the occasional monster or prestige class together, I just want some setting stuff. What're the 4e books?
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Apr 13, 2011 16:37
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ItalicSquirrels posted:My group's pretty much a 3.5E group. I don't mind hammering the occasional monster or prestige class together, I just want some setting stuff. What're the 4e books? 
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Apr 13, 2011 16:48
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ItalicSquirrels posted:My group's pretty much a 3.5E group. I don't mind hammering the occasional monster or prestige class together, I just want some setting stuff. What're the 4e books? The Plane Above, which is an excellent setting book by any standard. 
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Apr 13, 2011 21:11
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Interstellar Owl posted:Currently DMing a Star Wars Revised set in the KOTOR Era. I've been running them do mission based gameplay, but I'd really like to start a drawn out storyline, but I'd like a lot of interaction and comedy as well as just something besides combat, any suggestions for brainstorming? For more action-y feel, give bonuses to rolls for in-character lines that make the group visibly light up and laugh (though don't tell them that you're basing it on crowd reaction, just say they'll be rewarded for good one-liners. Cap these bonuses per scene, so that your more talkative players don't completely take the spotlight from the less talkative ones. For more talky feel, tell players that to recover their HP, they need to have a pure-roleplaying scene with some other PC or NPC, featuring interaction of a kind that you like to encourage. For a Star Wars game...well, stealing examples from A New Hope, you could do "discuss your shared past," "play space-chess," "discuss the force," or "practice or teach a skill." edit to finish sentence 
Doc Hawkins fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Apr 15, 2011 |
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Apr 14, 2011 19:48
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That really is shoehorning roleplay into your game incredibly hard. Realize that the game that you want is not always the game that the players want. Most players will want to participate and talk. But some just want to lightsaber poo poo to death and pretend that they don't like it (or secretly do). Encourage it. Sit down with your players and sort it out with them like adults. "I like X. I enjoy myself when you do X. What will it take for you to do more X? What do you folks want? More Y? I can do more Y if you can give me some extra X. We can have both together if we just do this." You could be passive aggressive. But some people just don't have a clue.
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Apr 15, 2011 08:09
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Ice Phisherman posted:That really is shoehorning roleplay into your game incredibly hard. I think it depends on how much the OP is looking to encourage... But, on my second suggestion, I should have emphasized that there's a continuum between saying "Yeah, I guess on the journey to Planet X, I train you in using the ship's turrets a bit, like with drones or whatever" and actually playing out that entire scene. Let people decide their own level of involvement in project mayhem. Does that seem less like "shoehorning"?
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Apr 15, 2011 23:30
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I found this cool thing about 4e, which I don't have any real experience with, but the article seems to have some good broadly applicable advice. ----- Less Plot, More Story: 4e and the Art of the Situation You know what I’ve stopped doing? Plotting. I’ve been at this place for many years now, but I’ve recently found words to express my thoughts. When I say plotting, I mean I’ve stopped thinking of the games I DM as somehow being my story. I move away from creating a story that my players interact with. I do it because it causes problems. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. DM creates a huge, epic gllobetrotting epic. Players look in the other direction, chasing some other detail that the DM thought was throwaway but the PCs are absorbed by. DM pulls out hair. I do it because, even though 4e feels on the surface like a game that depends on massive amounts of prep-work, in the end that’s not true. 4e robustly supports a game with stronger blends of improv and set-piece encounters. I do it because I hate secrets. Things that I hide from the players are potential wasted; If I have good ideas, I will use them, and create surprises and interesting situations that spark interesting play. Lastly, because story really can’t be pre-made in a roleplaying game. Story is what happens after we play. Narrative is generated by our table decisions and by the roll of the dice. Our games are our stories. The players bring characters with goals and interests and histories, and the DM presents the PCs with situations, obstacles and danger. The DM weaves together these elements so that we can generate stories through this deft interplay in this wonderful hobby of ours. Yes, even in 4e (there’s no roleplaying!). Here are some thoughts specific to D&D. Death by a Million Branches Let’s look at DM plotting at a basic level: I am making a story but as it starts it is a railroad. Event follows event follows event. No choices. Your players are going to hate you and quit your game. To prevent this, you incorporate space for the players to make choices in. But that space you carve out of your story? That actually adds more areas for you to potentially fill. What to do if the players go left instead of right? Or they choose the dark side instead of the light? Under a “must have plot” model, you are making almost endless contingencies. Where do you stop? How deep do you go? There’s always a point where you make the cut, but my personal experience has been that you always make that cut-off a little later than maybe you should. Even if all you do is generate a high level story arc, you still have all this material that may or may not be used. You’ve created a bunch of material that may not be touched or even thought of. All these forks and branches, and for what? The players are only going on one path — the one they choose. You should react to that, and build along the path they provide. Here’s the Situation What you end up designing then are situations. How is a situation different from a story? The fundamental difference is that a situation imposes no outcomes and presumes no choices whereas a story must, by definition, presume actions. Here’s a story: The adventurers hear rumors of a dragon roaming the countryside, terrorizing the populace. The players are asked by the mayor of the nearest village to stop the dragon. They take up the task and then after much searching, they find the dragon’s lair, defeat the dragons, and steal his treasure. Here’s the situation: There is a dragon terrorizing the populace. The mayor the nearest village has put out fliers with a large rewards for those that seek out the dragon. In the former, there is a nice, strong flow. This to this to that. The problem here is that the game hasn’t been played yet. The characters can bust loose from the story in so many ways, going “off the rails” at any point. The situation on the other hand, eliminates that possibility. It requires the players to take actions to pursue it, and then relies on the players taking actions to complete it. The players say “hey, I need that money!” and the adventure begins. The cool thing about the situation is that you can generate a few for each session, based on things that have happened before and/or tossing in new situations. But I Need My Set-pieces “But Gamefiend,” you cry, “I love me some set-pieces. I NEED set-pieces. I’ve got this awesome dungeon full of traps that I need to build and spring upon players.” Me too. But think: what is a dungeon (or any site for that matter) but a bunch of situations? I can’t talk about dungeon design at this moment, but I think the design of a site that the players choose to go to is a pretty safe bit to work on. I need to reinforce that I’m not saying “don’t ever prepare a game in advance”. What I’m saying is “prepare less”. Shrink that time of building endless scenarios and plot into building the framework for you next session. What I’m about to say next is for players, so PCs? Line up. Plotless? Oh, I meant “Player Driven” You may think that if you play a more traditional plotted game, I am telling you “you are an awful DM” implicitly. Not even remotely true. I am advocating a style that I’ve been using. If you like what you’re doing, please continue, whatever it is. If you decide to move towards more “plotless” Gming however, make sure you know that it means your game is becoming more player-driven. Sort of obvious, right? It is, but your players need to know what is expected of them. I’ve had games that died because I forgot to explain to players that they are the ones making things happen and I, as a GM, am simply “master of surprises”. The players pursue goals, they pursue the things that interest them and their characters, and I do my best to make it not easy. But if players are looking at more traditional ways of playing D&D, they are expecting me to delivering the hook, the interest, the progression, and the obstacles (note to DMs…are you doing all of that? Are you feeling burned out? This might be why). You’ve got to be clear that the game is about the characters do, not about what the world builds around them. You can’t have more than one or two PCs “along for the ride”. People have to make decisions, players have to agree to not just sit in a tavern and wait for adventure to fall in their laps. The characters need desires, they need goals. The characters need the motivation to go after these goals and see if they can overcome the challenges you put in their way.
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Apr 15, 2011 23:32
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Doc Hawkins posted:I think it depends on how much the OP is looking to encourage... The first rule of project mayhem is that you do not ask questions. Its shoehorning if you reward or punish people for conforming to what you want. Less so for positive reinforcement, doubly so for negative enforcement. Gaming is give and take. It is better to sit down and ask what people want from the game rather than force them into what you want to do. Ultimately it ends in a lot of butthurt feelings and shut mouths. You can't make them do anything otherwise they'll begin to resent you.
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Apr 16, 2011 04:22
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Ice Phisherman posted:Its shoehorning if you reward or punish people for conforming to what you want. Ah, I see, assuming it's not something the player's also would enjoy, it is misplaced, sure. I guess I assumed the opposite. Though I didn't and wouldn't suggest "punishing" anyone, that would be terrible.
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Apr 16, 2011 06:47
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Doc Hawkins posted:Ah, I see, assuming it's not something the player's also would enjoy, it is misplaced, sure. I guess I assumed the opposite. If it is something the players would enjoy, you wouldn't need to use the stick of no HP recovery to make them do it. I find if the players actually enjoy character interaction, the way to make them do it is to frame scenes where character interaction is expected. A lot of GM/players are used to fast-forwarding through downtime scenes, so asking players "what are you doing?" during a voyage or having an NPC start talking to them can jump-start a character interaction scene without seeming forced. This works best if you don't over-use the techniques to make PCs haggle with merchants for basic gear or other boring stuff.
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Apr 16, 2011 15:46
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Doc Hawkins posted:I found this cool thing about 4e, which I don't have any real experience with, but the article seems to have some good broadly applicable advice. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Apr 16, 2011 |
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Apr 16, 2011 17:19
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Alright I need advice for DMing a 4E game. My players all picked monster races except for one. Party make up is: Kobold, Goblin, Minotaur, Bugbear, Halfling. How in the world am I supposed to work with this? Right now I've just plunked them into a large city near an Inn and been handing out a small quest line to get them a couple levels. They are now level 4 about to hit level 5 and the 95% of play time has been spent in dungeons. It doesn't help that they're all previous World of Warcraft players so they're translating stuff into 'Get: Item' 'Give: Item' with rewards attached. Same with how they picked their races, they picked like you would in WoW with such and such race getting this ability. Coming up with a story for them is hard because they're all monsters and most stories are written from the heroes perspective, so how would I tell a story from the anatagonist direction. It just feels like I'm running random dungeons. I'm gonna have to start pushing more story slowly into the game. Any suggestions? Also any advice on creating realistic dungeon maps?
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Apr 17, 2011 10:30
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Apocadall posted:Alright I need advice for DMing a 4E game. My players all picked monster races except for one. Party make up is: Kobold, Goblin, Minotaur, Bugbear, Halfling. How in the world am I supposed to work with this? Right now I've just plunked them into a large city near an Inn and been handing out a small quest line to get them a couple levels. They are now level 4 about to hit level 5 and the 95% of play time has been spent in dungeons. It doesn't help that they're all previous World of Warcraft players so they're translating stuff into 'Get: Item' 'Give: Item' with rewards attached. Same with how they picked their races, they picked like you would in WoW with such and such race getting this ability. You're running this all wrong. The monsters aren't the villains, they're a force of freedom fighters against the fascist elven oppressors and their lapdogs. The tales of the Dragonblessed Empire's fall are old, passed down from father to son and mother to daughter for generations upon generations to keep hope alive. The Dragonblessed Empire was a place of great equality and liberty for all races, defended by the virtuous dragons and established as a place where kobold and gnollish children could play with their human and dragonborn brothers, working together for the common good. Until the elven treachery. They were not content to work under the dragons, submitting themselves to no man and despising the empire for its principles of 'equality' and 'fairness'. Despite this, the leaders of the Dragonblessed Empire welcomed the elves with open arms... and for this they were destroyed, obliterated in one long night of despair and treachery. Even worse, after the shocking destruction of the empire the elves moved in to 'help the citizens of the empire', accepting the former citizens most like them and declaring the rest monsters to be purged. Humans and Dragonborn were folded into the new Elvish Empire, and after centuries of 'reeducation' under the guise of their Elven masters now believe the lies that they tell. Dwarves and Halflings exist on the periphery of society, tolerated because of their utility but never trusted, and the legions of kobolds and minotaurs have been driven into the wilderness. There they remain, but the beaten and battered remnants of greatest civilization are fading. Without leadership, without hope, they will fade into the mists. You must provide this leadership. It's time to hit back. ----------- That took me like 10 minutes to write. It's really okay to change the default setting assumptions if that's what your players want to go with.
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Apr 17, 2011 12:37
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Yeah, just take the wow setup - give them a goblinoid town that has a few old relics and a grizzled old high warlord/shaman/whatever who tells them of the good ol' days. And you don't have to pit them against the elves per se, just have them take on people who harm goblinoids instead of the normal humanoids. Go after treasure hunters, pirates, evil necromancers/warlords in the woods. Those who encroach on what little the monstrous humanoids have left and try to take it. Treat it like Indigenous peoples versus colonial powers and you should have fun.
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Apr 17, 2011 18:05
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Yeah what I was thinking of doing was after I end the quest line they're on which should be tonight I'm gonna change the world a little, on their way back a new government has taken over the city and imposed a ban on all non-humans from entering the city. This would help move them away from that area, then I can make the humans start pushing to control and destroy other races slowly. I'm starting to get an idea of how I can take a group of monsters and make it fun without resorting to WoW's setup. That article someone linked about 'Less Plot, More Story' is a really great read.
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Apr 17, 2011 21:03
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Apocadall posted:Yeah what I was thinking of doing was after I end the quest line they're on which should be tonight I'm gonna change the world a little, on their way back a new government has taken over the city and imposed a ban on all non-humans from entering the city. This would help move them away from that area, then I can make the humans start pushing to control and destroy other races slowly. I'm starting to get an idea of how I can take a group of monsters and make it fun without resorting to WoW's setup. You could play up the fact that dungeons are effectively where the last and greatest examples of monster civilization are. It gives them a reason to go into a dungeon that's less "money" and more "the holy relics of Kurtulmak, Kobold Exarch of Tiamat is said to have been lost here in this abandoned kobold city-warren that became a dwarf mine."
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Apr 18, 2011 03:01
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Spiderfist Island posted:You could play up the fact that dungeons are effectively where the last and greatest examples of monster civilization are. It gives them a reason to go into a dungeon that's less "money" and more "the holy relics of Kurtulmak, Kobold Exarch of Tiamat is said to have been lost here in this abandoned kobold city-warren that became a dwarf mine." Well I went with after their short romp into the mountains to complete the short quest line I've had them working on they head back to the city. They were denied entry and asked to leave, reason being all non-humans were removed from the city. Four of the five players decide to leave and head towards next town, but not one, who attacks the guardsman calling them racists. The other four not wanting to die subdue him and make a run for it. Close to what I had in mind would happen, except now they want to start looking for allies and build an army to crush that city. I wasn't even expecting it.
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Apr 18, 2011 12:12
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I had a semi-crazed rant all prepared to post here, and  I swear, I will post it if my demands are not met, but I thought I would give the "less plot, more story" fans a chance to let me know if I am missing the point:Is the basic argument there that there should not be any definitive ending, planned or otherwise, to a campaign? That it should just go along its player-driven way until the players want to drive to another campaign? Because if that is so, as it seems it is, then oh, do I ever have something to say in response.
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Apr 18, 2011 17:08
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Quarex posted:I had a semi-crazed rant all prepared to post here, and Mostly, I think people just don't want you to plan things out in detail. If your story depends upon the party becoming an ally to a single NPC, prepare to have the PC's kill that guy in a fit of confusion. An end is ok, because more than likely it is implied when you say what type of game it'll be before people start. If the game is about a civil war, say, the players know beforehand that they are going to get involved, and are probably going to have to find a way to end the war. How they do that, however, should not be planned in advance. Feel free to have certain ideas with which to give them hints, but don't expect them to even choose the side you want them to join.
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Apr 18, 2011 17:23
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Apocadall posted:Close to what I had in mind would happen, except now they want to start looking for allies and build an army to crush that city. I wasn't even expecting it. This is great. Your players are now an RPG trope. You absolutely have to have an adventuring group stereotype come after them. I hope there are some past events you can distort into reasons for elves/dwarves/humans in power to send people after them, so then they can come in and shout about distorted versions of past events as justification for trying to kill them.
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Apr 18, 2011 17:36
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Quarex posted:Is the basic argument there that there should not be any definitive ending, planned or otherwise, to a campaign? That it should just go along its player-driven way until the players want to drive to another campaign? Because if that is so, as it seems it is, then oh, do I ever have something to say in response. I don't think it's about endings in particular. I think it's more that character actions should be drive by character goals, not by the fact that the GM gave the character a mission to do, and that you typically shouldn't define a situation as having one way of resolving. To the former, stories are more interesting when characters have internal motivations for what they are doing. If the PCs are tracking down a group of marauders, "because the king told me to do it" is a less interesting motivation than "because it's the duty of the strong to stand up for the weak," "because then the mayor will use his influence to look for information about my missing brother," or "because this is my town, and no one steals from it but me." To the latter, if you, as the GM, only think about the marauders to the extent of what it will take to kill them, you're going to be over-prepared in one way and under-prepared in many others if the players decide to do something other than kill them (try to intimidate them, try to recruit them, try to bribe them, try to convince them that there's an easier target for their raids, try to lure them into attacking someone they can't face, recruit someone else to kill them, etc.). Essentially, the most interesting stories will come out of creating a complex situation and allowing the players the opportunity to manage it, because the creativity of you plus the rest of the group will exceed yours by itself, and because the opportunity to think creatively is part of the fun of playing roleplaying games. And, further, the less you worry about how a situation will resolve, the more time you have to add details to the situation, which will make the resolution that the players come up with more interesting. Planning for endings can be both good or bad. Good, in that if you have something planned you can lay the groundwork for it in advance. Bad, in that if you plan too much, you risk either wasting time or forcing the characters towards something the players aren't interested in. As Astus says, it depends on how specific this ending is; the more it depends on particularly character actions, the more likely it is you'll have to either rewrite or force those actions. But if your "ending" is like the ending I'm currently in the process of planning - the PCs are preparing to invade an undersea base and activate a magical machine at the heart of it, and I'm writing up a number of situations that might occur in the base - then I see no problem in working on it pretty far in advance. Personally, if I'm doing anything particularly complex, I tend to write a few paragraphs of notes about a few different endings or ways players might approach a situation - what I think are the most likely places things will end up - then I do a little bit of steering towards the one which best matches the players' actions, and then do a little bit of mix-and-match and improvisation when we get there.
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Apr 18, 2011 17:51
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Quarex posted:Is the basic argument there that there should not be any definitive ending, planned or otherwise, to a campaign? That it should just go along its player-driven way until the players want to drive to another campaign? Because if that is so, as it seems it is, then oh, do I ever have something to say in response.
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Apr 18, 2011 18:39
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Apocadall posted:Well I went with after their short romp into the mountains to complete the short quest line I've had them working on they head back to the city. They were denied entry and asked to leave, reason being all non-humans were removed from the city. Four of the five players decide to leave and head towards next town, but not one, who attacks the guardsman calling them racists. The other four not wanting to die subdue him and make a run for it.
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Apr 18, 2011 18:48
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Quarex posted:I had a semi-crazed rant all prepared to post here, and I'll go ahead and take on the mantle of the straw man. The theoretically perfect GM would present situations to the players which are fully resolved only and exactly when the players are no longer interested in facing them any more, though good pacing would include localized climaxes too. It's hard to come up with infinitely extensible everfresh concepts, though. So a series of related ones is usually a good compromise: if the characters are all crusaders wrapped around the paradox of personal greed for gold and solace in the grace of god, then you can have that premise go on effectively forever, even though you plan on the story of this siege or that king or the other looted church having beginnings, middles and ends. I've done lots of short, focused campaigns with explicit premises, the completion of which ends that story. But what if the players want to know what happens next? Only occasionally is it cool and appropriate to say "No, too bad, we're only allowed to speculate about what happens next, even though we're all interested in it." What would an unplanned definitive ending be?
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Apr 18, 2011 21:07
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Doc Hawkins posted:What would an unplanned definitive ending be?
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Apr 18, 2011 21:21
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