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Upmarket Mango posted:For me it's coming up with new story stuff on the fly. I could plan for every contingency but once the players decide to do something completely off-the-wall I have a hard time rolling with it--not because I don't want t--I'm just not that quick-minded. I don't have trouble coming up with neat poo poo, provided I can think it out beforehand. One of the first lessons you learn in improv is to turn off your filter. When creating stuff on-the-fly you do not have time to stop and judge your ideas or thoroughly think them through before proceeding. Improv is entirely "leap before you look". The place to start is to come up with an idea - any idea - and go with the first thing that comes to mind without judging whether it is good or bad. If you are having trouble coming up with any idea, just default to something mundane or a genre-appropriate trope. You will have plenty of time to elaborate or retcon in interesting ways later. The take-away here is that it is Ok - and sometimes necessary - to turn off your judgement and go with things that you think are "bad" or "incomplete" ideas if that's what it takes to keep the game moving.
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Dec 20, 2013 21:39
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Bad Munki posted:Maybe some of the systems you pro-level DMs use for creating a plan without railroading yourself. Like, do you have any peculiar outline mechanisms or note systems or what have you that do the heavy lifting of keeping things organized and ready to go, without bogging you down in the details? That sort of thing. The Dungeon World "Fronts" system is pretty great and can be applied to any campaign. Rather than having pre-written story arcs it sets the campaign up as simple state machines (shall we call these "plot-machines" as opposed to plot-lines?) at the campaign-level and adventure-level. Although in DW each component is represented as an antagonist or "Danger", you could use a similar system to set up a state machine of factions or other high-level players. As one cross-system example, the way the 13th Age icons are written you could almost pick 3 or 4 of them and drop them into a DW Campaign Front to set up an overarching "plot-machine".
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Dec 20, 2013 21:49
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I use a netbook that has my PDF copies of games and word documents of info that I keep and I pull up whatever information I need as it comes up. I don't usually work using more than two books, one of which is a PDF which has bookmarks, hotlinks, and all that nice stuff that make navigating a breeze. Even so, I also keep them all properly cataloged using a standard naming convention across all PDFs so finding the actual PDF is no problem. The word documents are mostly my campaign outlines which are contained to just one file while setting/world info is usually split into separate word documents by topic. The word documents pretty much just have whatever information I think might come up or would be interesting to the players. It's the stuff I didn't think of that throws me for a loop. Something the gang comes up with that makes me go "Well, gee, I hadn't thought of that." Some people can roll with it and come up with something great in response and the campaign goes off on this awesome new path right on the spot. For me I need to think it out otherwise things just turn out lame and dumb. At a live game this is awkward and weird and not conductive to steady gameplay. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm just not cut out for being GM just like I'm no good at bowling no matter how much I practice. e: took a long time to write this
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Dec 20, 2013 21:54
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Paolomania posted:One of the first lessons you learn in improv is to turn off your filter. Definitely turn off that filter. The nice thing about running the game is that, if you write yourself into a corner, you can also write yourself out of it. PCs are being real assholes to the Grand Duke, and you can't bear the thought of de-railing the campaign with getting them manhandled out of the castle by guards? Then it turns out the Grand Duke is a real oblivious dude, and thinks the PCs are telling hilarious jokes at his expense! It explains a lot about the problems he is having in his lands. The best advice I can give here is to just plan your stuff thoroughly, yet vaguely. Draw your maps and stuff, and come up with a vague timeline. But basically just keep in mind, "What do the [bad guys or whatever] want to do? Why do they want to do it? How do they plan to accomplish it?" Armed with that information, and a sketchy sort of "schedule" for them, you can shoehorn whatever NPCs or monsters you need to into whatever it is the Players are getting up to. If they want to go to a different place from where you planned, let them. They can run into some tangential enemy force, like a supply caravan or something, and get a clue from that about what's going on at the real destination. Alternately, it's gonna turn out that actual locations don't matter too much in a tabletop game. If you're letting PCs go open world-style, just put things where they are going anyway. If the evil shaman is trying to corrupt an ancient temple in the North, and the PCs decide to go East because they want to buy a boat or something, just put the temple on their way to Boat Town, and maybe have the shaman's minions causing trouble in Boat Town. If you're gonna do this, just make sure you don't say "Temple to the North"- say "Temple in the Forest" or something, instead. Flexibility, basically. You will lose a little bit of the worldbuilding in there, but in the end you are not writing a novel- you're facilitating a pretend game. Letting the players flounder around for 4 hours because they decided to walk in a different direction isn't a great choice.
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Dec 20, 2013 21:54
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Captain Walker posted:I've come to the conclusion that improvisation is hard for me. I can go off the rails of my super-elaborate plot, it just takes more time than I am generally going to get with four or five players staring at me waiting to see what happens next. Step 1: Get a copy of Dungeon World. Sit down and read all the DM advice. Failing that Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts both work. (I wouldn't recommend Monster of the Week and haven't tried the others). Unmapped areas are good. Step 2: Enrol yourself in a short Improv Drama class. Step 3: Run a game of one of the games I mentioned in Step 1. The choices at each point and the list of hard moves will really help. (Playing first is probably a good step 1b - but isn't necessary). Step 4: How much time do you need? Because there are some stalling tactics you can use that people won't notice unless they know you well. (Asking questions on details is a good one as is taking a drink). But you don't often need to do this as you can just grab the first conclusion and then draw in their train wreck.
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Dec 20, 2013 21:56
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With improv, my response is generally 'where are the PCs, and how would people react?' -> PCs cut down the guards who were going to invite them to the palace - well, how would police respond to cop-killers? The PCs run off on a complete tangent? Cool, roll with it, but their enemies will take the chance to advance their plans in the meantime. Seconding the recommendation for the idea of fronts, I'm using them in my current fate game, and they work amazingly well.
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Dec 20, 2013 22:10
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Something I found really helped me get comfortable with improvisation is practice. I would sit down and give myself 10 minutes to come up with a bare bones outline of a plot and a few key characters. I'd then repeat this a few times and toss any repeats. This forces you to think about a large number of possible plots and encounters and then later on when players go off the rails, you can pull from all these ideas you've already given some thought. The same thing works with NPCs. Grab a random name generator and either peruse your art collection or hit up the art thread and just make up backstories for all the pictures.
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Dec 20, 2013 22:26
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neonchameleon posted:Step 1: Get a copy of Dungeon World. Sit down and read all the DM advice. Failing that Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts both work. (I wouldn't recommend Monster of the Week and haven't tried the others). Unmapped areas are good. I've played Dungeon and Apocalypse World, and I'm sure I could never DM either. I don't think I can react that quickly. Not for lack of interest, or for not wanting to let my players shape the world or whatever--I just don't have the mental capacity to come up with an Amazing Idea that won't gently caress everything up later on, while under pressure. Last night I ran Blood and Lightning and the players seemed more interested in the completely empty temple they were supposed to destroy and move on from than the dragon buzzing around outside. I had no idea what to do, and none of the icon relationships were any help--what does the Emperor or the Gold Wyrm or the loving Dwarf King care about some podunk temple in High Druid territory? I was about to repeat my request for a tool or community for play-by-post that doesn't cost  so I can try a more detailed story and have the time to work on it at my convenience. Then I realized I'm literally asking for a way to avoid having to be with my friends when I play with my friends, and the last time I posted bullshit like that I got laughed out of E/N.
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Dec 20, 2013 22:58
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Captain Walker posted:the players seemed more interested in the completely empty temple they were supposed to destroy and move on from than the dragon buzzing around outside. For what it's worth, this happens all the time and is totally normal. Players enter a room and you say, "You see a bare room, entirely empty except for a lone table near the far wall." Suddenly, the players decide that table is a major loving plot point and will spend an hour trying to unravel its mystery. And the more time they spend trying to figure it out, the more important it must be, because why else would we be spending all this time on it?? My point is, it's okay to stop and say, "Guys, it's just a loving table." If you make them figure that out on their own over the course of an hour, they're going to be disappointed.
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Dec 20, 2013 23:28
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This reminds me of the time my friend was DMing some lovely introductory dungeon in Dungeons and Dragons, and he was really set on the door and it's importance, and we're like, it's a loving door. But he insists we examine the door. I was a dwarf and I roll a 20 on my roll, expecting a cool surprise or something. "The door is 4 inches thick." I left.
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Dec 20, 2013 23:35
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Captain Walker posted:Same here, essentially I need planning time that I don't get at a real table to deal with ridiculous plot twists. The way I think of it is: you have two agendas as a GM. One is to make your NPCs react in ways that are consistent with the world, and one is to craft a plot that is fun for your players. The former, you have to be able to do at a second's notice -- but that's okay, so do your players! If your players throw "We're burning down the inn!" at you, then sure, you have to figure out how all the NPCs in the inn are going to respond to this threat. But they have to do the same thing when you shout at them "Suddenly the inn is on fire!". The latter takes more time, and I agree that you need planning time to deal with it. If your players decide they're going to betray a major NPC then sometimes you're not ready for that -- but that's okay, because you rarely need to make the call there and then! All you have to do for now is stick to the first priority. What are that NPC's agendas, how would he react to the things they're doing here and now? Sooner or later, you'll get time to breathe. Certainly, the PCs will eventually want to take some time and figure out how to get out of the horrible mess they've gotten themselves into! That's when you take your planning time -- and ultimately, if you don't have it, there is absolutely nothing at all wrong with saying "Guys, I totally didn't expect this, can I step out for a couple of minutes to figure out what happens next?". Hell, since I've been running Dungeon World I think I've said something like that once per session? (The last time, this happened.)
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Dec 20, 2013 23:58
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Bad Munki posted:For what it's worth, this happens all the time and is totally normal. Players enter a room and you say, "You see a bare room, entirely empty except for a lone table near the far wall." Suddenly, the players decide that table is a major loving plot point and will spend an hour trying to unravel its mystery. And the more time they spend trying to figure it out, the more important it must be, because why else would we be spending all this time on it?? My favourite solution here is to think of a thing about one of your main plotlines that the players haven't figured out yet, and then work out a way that the table could inform them of it. Like, maybe the Druid realises it's made of a unique wood only found in the jungles of the Northern Continent -- so the warlock who runs this dungeon can't have been acting alone after all LIKE I TRIED TO MAKE CLEAR SEVERAL TIMES IN THE PAST, BUT NOW A GODDAMN TABLE HAS TO TELL YOU.
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Dec 21, 2013 00:02
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Can I stab the table? Maybe if I threaten to saw it into bits it'll tell us more? Also, insert 'random encounter table' joke
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Dec 21, 2013 00:48
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Whybird posted:My favourite solution here is to think of a thing about one of your main plotlines that the players haven't figured out yet, and then work out a way that the table could inform them of it. Like, maybe the Druid realises it's made of a unique wood only found in the jungles of the Northern Continent -- so the warlock who runs this dungeon can't have been acting alone after all LIKE I TRIED TO MAKE CLEAR SEVERAL TIMES IN THE PAST, BUT NOW A GODDAMN TABLE HAS TO TELL YOU. This is how I do most of my storytelling, actually, and I (would at least like to) think it works pretty well. I know what's going on and who the Big Movers in the world are. I have my Fronts planned out. I improvise how we'll see those clues as time goes on. The party inspecting the table obsessively is a great chance for the table to be made out of weird wood, or have strange claw scratches in it, or have graffiti carved in by a bored henchman. Basically, what works for me is to have in mind the Big Importants, and improvise how that manifests during play. Oh and ASK QUESTIONS if your group is that sort of group. That right there can do wonders. In our current campaign the party was climbing a mountain to get a book from the library at the top. I'd already decided that a Bad Wizard stole some books from this library and that said McGuffin Book was among them. One of the players is a Cyclops who hurls rocks and is a physicist to make up for poor depth perception; when he told me it was a physics and engineering textbook they were looking for, I asked myself what kind of wizard would steal that book; and so the wizard became a mad scientist building a giant magical golem to sell to a nearby military nation. Asking questions can do a lot to stir up your brain and it gets the players invested too.
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Dec 21, 2013 01:01
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Captain Walker posted:I've played Dungeon and Apocalypse World, and I'm sure I could never DM either. I don't think I can react that quickly. Not for lack of interest, or for not wanting to let my players shape the world or whatever--I just don't have the mental capacity to come up with an Amazing Idea that won't gently caress everything up later on, while under pressure. Two options. Either tell them it's abandoned, or give them something mysterious to find. The sort of "Here's a chalk sigil two weeks old. Enough of it is left to know there was a ritual, but it was about a fortnight ago." With the implication that something happened there but that's one piece of a puzzle - and one you've no need to tie up (or you can). And if you make the ritual one to the Prince of Shadows no one will expect to find out what it was about. And seriously, read the *World rulebooks. They guide you through the process of DMing them. And keep a drink handy when you play - which buys enough time to look at the Hard Moves list. They might as well be training manuals for improv DMing.
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Dec 21, 2013 03:23
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Bad Munki posted:Maybe some of the systems you pro-level DMs use for creating a plan without railroading yourself. Like, do you have any peculiar outline mechanisms or note systems or what have you that do the heavy lifting of keeping things organized and ready to go, without bogging you down in the details? That sort of thing. Personally (not that I consider myself a 'pro-level DM' but still), I avoid being organized as much as possible. My prep work involves building characters. Build NPCs. Even if you don't know what you'll use them for, design them anyways. Make their niche as general as possible. Design several "Byzantine schemers" and "badass warriors" and "naive nobles" and so on. Then give them personalities. Schemer A is fastidious to the point of OCD; Schemer B likes using patsies who don't even know they're working for him, et cetera. Then just keep those NPCs in a big Folder O' NPCs, ready to be pulled out when and if you need them. When the PCs say something along the lines of "Hey, we should go talk to the local nobility" or what have you, you have a stack of nobility to choose from. And because you focused on creating them as characters and not story beats, you have a unique opportunity - you get to figure out how this character fits into the story you've created. Example! The PCs killed a bunch of goblin raiders and want to talk to the nobility to warn them that it looks like the goblins have a new leader. You pull out Bob The Noble, who you've already designed as being well-meaning but also sort of naive and dumb - and whose brother is Steve the Schemer. So how do they fit in? Is Steve behind the goblin attacks? Or maybe he's trying to find out whoever is, and he'll convince Bob to hire the PCs to find out? Or is Bob the guy who's been ordered by the King to stop the attacks and the attacks are only succeeding because Bob is inept? Who knows! You get to decide! The best way to avoid getting your story tangled up in plans is to not have any plans. Make it up as you go.
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Dec 21, 2013 04:47
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Regarding improvisation, I can come up with additional details in a vacuum, but I don't do as well with one player who (having come up in D&D 3.5) is very, very detail-oriented in the hopes of wringing an advantage out of it, and also asks a lot of questions while he's waiting for a plan to materialize in his head. I can come up with some details off the top of my head, but when those then lead to MORE questions, and more beyond those, I start to get exasperated. In Edge of the Empire's Beyond the Rim published adventure, players find a community that's been cut off from civilization in a survival atmosphere for 20 years. The questions cover the expected "what happened" and "how have things been" and then we get "Do they have children?" (it's not covered in the adventure. I improvise with the easier answer) "No" "NO? That's VERY odd." (he is clearly interested, and sounds as though he thinks he's discovered a MAJOR clue) "I ask her [the NPC] why not." (I am dismayed, I don't want him interested, I want him not asking this stuff) "It's a survival situation! It's no place to raise a child" "Well, but TWENTY YEARS? Everyone really wants to raise a family, that's such a strong motivation. Something must be going on." "These are military folk, and they've been living in a 20-year fight for their lives, that's not a life they wanted for their kids, if they wanted kids at all." "Well, I am VERY curious about this. I think something's going on. Where are there some more townsfolk to ask about this?" In retrospect, I wish I'd told him that there have been children, but they didn't live. But I didn't -- couldn't -- stay ahead of his enthusiasm for getting to the bottom of why a bunch of people on a remote planet wouldn't want kids. When my answer does the opposite of the guidance I'd intended, and their line of questioning goes off the rails HARD and I don't see anything fun in indulging them, I just don't feel I handle it as well. And I'm not sure how to get better other than continue to put myself in situations where I have to come up with "stuff".
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Dec 21, 2013 04:59
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Homullus, I find that generally most players will be okay if you say "Hmm, that's a good question. Let me think about it for a minute." Just by saying that, you've told them something already - you've told them that that detail wasn't important enough for you to have at your fingertips, so it's probably not plot-essential... but you've also told them that since it's something they're interested in, you're willing to work with them and fill in the details that they find intriguing. Plus it gives you a little bit of time to think your answer through and potentially avoid landmines.
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Dec 21, 2013 05:22
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If you do get stuck with a mystery you can't explain like this, though, you can always just have the next NPC act really cagey about the subject, then you ask the player 'Just so I know, what's YOUR theory about this?' and then roll some dice behind a screen, ignore them, and pretend to be miffed that the player totally figured it all out and his theory is totally correct.
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Dec 21, 2013 05:37
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Homullus, I find that generally most players will be okay if you say "Hmm, that's a good question. Let me think about it for a minute." This is a good point too. If you snap off an answer too quickly, people who are used to very prep-intensive and detail-oriented GMs will assume you wrote this minute detail ahead of time, and clearly you did this because it fits into the massive interconnected plan that you meticulously wrote for days, and it is the beginning of unraveling the secret. EDIT: Yeah, or ask the players these questions. "Do you see any pictures of kids or toys around their house?". Sixto Lezcano fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Dec 21, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 05:38
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homullus posted:Regarding improvisation, I can come up with additional details in a vacuum, but I don't do as well with one player who (having come up in D&D 3.5) is very, very detail-oriented in the hopes of wringing an advantage out of it, and also asks a lot of questions while he's waiting for a plan to materialize in his head. I can come up with some details off the top of my head, but when those then lead to MORE questions, and more beyond those, I start to get exasperated. A good way to short circuit this is to prod the questions-guy to provide the answers by throwing the questions back at him.  "But why are there no kids?" "Why do you think?" "I don't know, what does it look like is going on here?" "I mean isn't it clear whats going on here?" "C'mon just tell me!" "I think you've got a hunch." "I bet they have forbidden procreation." *BINGO!* "You ask the NPCs about that and they confirm that they have enacted strict measures in order to keep the population down."Nothing like making the players do the work for you.
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Dec 21, 2013 05:39
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A phrase that has saved me time and again: "You find goblins." It doesn't have to be goblins, of course. It can be bandits, it can be space pirates, it can be something non-combat like an innocent waif. The idea is that you'll have come up with several encounters unrelated to anything else you're doing that you can slot in as needed. Just come up with like five things your players might encounter, work out any mechanical stuff necessary, and have it on stand-by. Trot it out when your players go in a direction you weren't expecting (literally or otherwise). It doesn't necessarily move the plot (though it might!), but it will give you time to think while they deal with it.
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Dec 21, 2013 08:22
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Paolomania posted:A good way to short circuit this is to prod the questions-guy to provide the answers by throwing the questions back at him. This is a variant of the classic 'give the players a small mystery, listen to them argue about what it means, pick their most amusing hypothesis and twist it a little' technique. Cap, there's loads of good advice here already - particularly the improv class, based on my recollection of your E/N woes. But behind it all is just the confidence that you can keep one step ahead of the players, and that primarily comes from practice and the occasional pratfall. Maybe go into a session with a sentence of plot and a couple of characters and see how you go. You may surprise yourself. Remember, you only ever need just enough plot. The actual game is not the plot, plot is just a skeleton the game hangs on.
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Dec 21, 2013 19:53
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Would you believe that in my four semesters at a very expensive nearby university for Theatre Arts I never once took the improv class? I'm strongly considering going back to school to get skills that will help me get a job that will pay the bills long enough to make my theatre degree pay off. Anyway. Point is, I'm going to take that advice, but I'm not going back to school just to be a better DM. I have Dungeon World and the fronts are just a great system. I see why my friends like it so much: the players basically tell you what they want to explore and you can prepare just the slightest amount of material for that, and have it be enough. Problem is, I need to keep running games in order to get better and they're probably going to get sick of mediocre games at some point. Hence, my request for an external PbP host. Though honestly, I could probably get the same result from running for goons.
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Dec 22, 2013 02:18
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Grab DMing by the horns and just go balls to the wall, I say. If you aim for like 100% more than what you know you can accomplish, you might not make it all the way there, but even 50% better than what you know you can accomplish will make your players have more fun. Also, make sure you have fun because if the DM doesn't have fun, then gently caress everything.
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Dec 22, 2013 08:45
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I'll give it exactly one more shot, when the final Pirate World book lands I'll give that a whirl. If that fails utterly I'll hang up my DM hat and expensive cotton dice bag and go back to Ziploc, and I don't even care what OneThousandMonkeys thinks about it, I do what I want you're not my real dad.
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Dec 22, 2013 23:20
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Captain Walker posted:I'll give it exactly one more shot, when the final Pirate World book lands I'll give that a whirl. If that fails utterly I'll hang up my DM hat and expensive cotton dice bag and go back to Ziploc, and I don't even care what OneThousandMonkeys thinks about it, I do what I want you're not my real dad. [I'm normally Captain Walker's GM, but I was a player in his recent one-shot.] I am therefore bound to tell you, you're fine, that was a great session for a second-time GM, we were all laughing and having fun. When you're running stuff out of a module, there is a different set of expectations than if you're running au naturale. We're okay with understanding that it isn't coming from you, it's from a book. Next time we hang out, you should talk to my other GM friend, who is running both the Skulls and Shackles and Carrion Crown Pathfinder Adventure Paths, and doing a great job of it. The first Campaign I ran was Shackled City, and it was filled with disruptive players and giant dungeons. Things to note: When we used Ghost Sound and made a lot of noise in the church, to try to attract that dragon, it's because we wanted to fight a dragon in a church, and then make the church explode. Fulfill our expectations and you'll make us happy. But really, I was surprised at how good you were for someone so new at the role. At my first time, half of what I was doing was reading descriptions out of the book. It was about a thousand times more engaging than the game I went to two days later, which was done by a guy who had been GMing for about five months, because he had learned some pretty lovely habits along the way. The first three hours was a boring slog of NPC conversing with other NPCs and smalltalk with players about the rudiments of the alignment system. I literally only agreed to come back so that my character could be killed off in a blaze of glory, but it took like four hours for him to get there. As a new GM, you're learning good habits, because 13th Age and DW have fairly explicit advice for GMs. When you're at a loss, when someone asks you a question, you're totally allowed to lessen your burden by saying, "I don't know, Does the wound seem infected to you?". The answer to that one is yes, duh. I'd totally be up for some more one-shots. That said, if your current group [us] isn't up for a long campaign or something, find yourself another group and take it to them. Bring the light and the fire of elfgames to their door. Here's the thing: if you get new players who don't know anything about D&D, and you show them something really cool, they won't give a gently caress if your skills aren't up to par or whatever. They won't know any better. They're like babies. I'd agree with the people saying that you should consider taking an Improv class. They don't tell you this, but Improv is essentially role-playing with non-nerds. Maybe there's some correlation between when I got much better at thinking stuff up on the fly and the year of classes I took down at The Second City in Hollywood, California. You should keep doing it, you'll only get better with practice, take an Improv class, Keep doing it.
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Dec 23, 2013 00:26
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Mimir posted:[I'm normally Captain Walker's GM, but I was a player in his recent one-shot.]  I'll have a look at Second City, I resolve to spend more time down there in the new year since theatre is my major and acting theoretically my chosen career path. I also resolve to stop referring to it as "theoretically" my chosen career path. On topic: Is Dungeon World, as run the way you run it, easier or harder to pick up than a system like 13th Age with an established setting and poo poo like that? I feel like with established settings, I get bogged down in poo poo happening 200 miles away and of no relevance to where the game will be taking place. Maybe DW would be the perfect system for me. Hell, I just saw another thing with high quantities of  in it, Pirate World it is.
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Dec 23, 2013 08:01
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Captain Walker posted:
Using established settings works fine, as long as you're willing to blow up "established canon" for the sake of your players. Your characters are the stars, and everyone in the setting is there to either help, hinder, or challenge them. This works better with some settings than others. I have a feeling that if our group started running around Waterdeep, it would become a blasted crater in a really awesome way really, really quickly. Of course if you use established settings, you miss out on getting to ask your players questions about a setting THEY want to play in. The last time I started with "You come from a world I might find strange, heroes, what makes your home different from lands familiar to me?" the players came up with a verdant post-post-apocalypse styled vaguely after Phantasy Star Online by way of Jet Grind Radio, where they defended the common people of their land from bio-weapons from ancient wars and a malevolent computer defense grid called  They came up with all of that, and because they came up with everything they feel more invested in it. You just have to give them the OK to start going crazy. EscortMission fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Dec 23, 2013 |
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Dec 23, 2013 10:22
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EscortMission posted:You come from a world I might find strange, heroes, what makes your home different from lands familiar to me? This is a fantastic question. And I think remembering this is gonna be crucial too: quote:Using established settings works fine, as long as you're willing to blow up "established canon" for the sake of your players. Your characters are the stars, and everyone in the setting is there to either help, hinder, or challenge them. Never again do I stall and refer to the book when a player asks me about the structure of the Imperial legion. I don't know! I wasn't there when the Empire sacked your town! You were! You tell me!
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Dec 23, 2013 19:02
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Captain Walker posted:Never again do I stall and refer to the book when a player asks me about the structure of the Imperial legion. I don't know! I wasn't there when the Empire sacked your town! You were! You tell me! As long as your players give a gently caress. If they for some reason are asking those things and don't give a gently caress about them, you'll have problems. If they're engaged and cool with doing their own world building at times, it'll be fine. A lot of times I'll just be like "what sort of clue/information do you hope to find?" And then instead of beating around the bush in-character, I ask for a roll and determine what they figure out, and the plot marches on. I think the classic GM folly is getting too invested in a setting so YOU care about it, but none of the players do, or they're interested in different aspects of it than what you're trying to highlight. The GM I'm playing under right now has a very explicit setting and story in mind for us to play through, and that's cool since we all knew that coming in; sometimes we just have to sit back and chug along with the railroad, or otherwise not go too batshit sideways and screw things up. Basically have a firm idea of what you want to do as a GM, don't dither or figure out the focus of the campaign as you go along. Set it out for yourself and the players off the bat and stick with it; going along with whatever the players come up with is also a perfectly valid focus.
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Dec 24, 2013 04:18
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P.d0t posted:I think the classic GM folly is getting too invested in a setting so YOU care about it, but none of the players do, or they're interested in different aspects of it than what you're trying to highlight. Dear god, this. For years, I wanted to run a game, and got obsessed with getting every last detail of the world right before starting. Naturally, those games never happened. I think I was saved by games like Diaspora (fate-based) with shared world-gen that I couldn't (over-)prep for - it knocked me out of that rut. Now I make a real effort not to over-plan, which also stops me getting into the mindset of 'but they've got to go there, or they won't see the awesome set-piece I made for them' (which I reckon is the root cause of railroading, but that's just my theory, etc.)
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Dec 24, 2013 04:45
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petrol blue posted:Dear god, this. For years, I wanted to run a game, and got obsessed with getting every last detail of the world right before starting. Naturally, those games never happened. I think I was saved by games like Diaspora (fate-based) with shared world-gen that I couldn't (over-)prep for - it knocked me out of that rut. Now I make a real effort not to over-plan, which also stops me getting into the mindset of 'but they've got to go there, or they won't see the awesome set-piece I made for them' (which I reckon is the root cause of railroading, but that's just my theory, etc.) This is my problem, too  A lot of it is scheduling, too. My group is kind of flaky, so sometimes there will be like 3 weeks between sessions. Then I over-prep and set way too many things in stone. My girlfriend has been brewing up a campaign, and I hope she doesn't fall into the same trap, because it is the same flaky group. It's a good way to burn out as a GM.
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Dec 24, 2013 14:51
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It's a problem without a good solution. If you homebrew a campaign, nobody is going to be as interested as you are in the world. If you use a published setting that your players may actually be really into (Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Eberron, et cetera), you run the risk of one of them knowing more than you do and running toward things too large to "I don't know, you tell me!".
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Dec 24, 2013 17:50
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homullus posted:It's a problem without a good solution. If you homebrew a campaign, nobody is going to be as interested as you are in the world. If you use a published setting that your players may actually be really into (Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Eberron, et cetera), you run the risk of one of them knowing more than you do and running toward things too large to "I don't know, you tell me!". This is why I adore Fate Core and collaborative world creation in general. Everyone gets some input and invests themselves.
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Dec 24, 2013 18:11
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homullus posted:It's a problem without a good solution. Well, it used to be, but my point was that it's a solved problem now - quite a few games now start by everyone making the world(/galaxy/island/etc) together, and that really gets players invested - even if there's no IC link, 'their' city coming under threat will make them leap to the defence, and come up with all sorts of details about how that city would try to fight invaders. [Replace city with planet/island/whatever as needed.] Not only that, but it also works to stop the GM overplanning before the game - if you've not got any idea what the game will be beyond 'genre', you'd have to try pretty hard to get caught in the planning trap. e: Even if you're not playing a system that does it by default, you just need to pull out your copy of microscope (of course you own a copy, right?), play a quick round, and you've got a game world with a rich backstory that every player knows and cares about - because they made it as much as anyone else did. petrol blue fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Dec 24, 2013 |
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Dec 24, 2013 19:15
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Dec 25, 2013 22:49
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petrol blue posted:e: Even if you're not playing a system that does it by default, you just need to pull out your copy of microscope (of course you own a copy, right?), play a quick round, and you've got a game world with a rich backstory that every player knows and cares about - because they made it as much as anyone else did. What's Microscope?
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Dec 26, 2013 02:43
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Bad Munki posted:What's Microscope? http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/ quote:What is Microscope? TL/DR An interesting little RPG that is basically all about setting building.
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Dec 26, 2013 02:46
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:The best way to avoid getting your story tangled up in plans is to not have any plans. Make it up as you go. I believe a wise Plutonian once opined, "Plans are for fools." This is my #1 GMing advice for all systems. Works every time.
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Dec 26, 2013 05:37
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