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petrol blue posted:My turn. What system would people recommend for a relatively rules-light game where the PCs are normal-person-powered: I love FATE and DW, but they're both very high-power systems. Failing a better suggestion, I'm thinking Unknown Armies, and that's about as heavy as I'd want to go rules-wise. How about Open D6 or Mini Six? They're variants of the original WEG D6 system. Mini Six is more rules light than Open D6. http://opend6.wikidot.com/ http://www.antipaladingames.com/p/mini-six.html
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Jul 12, 2014 03:46
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petrol blue posted:Cross-post from Redcheval in the daily art thread: BRP/Call of Cthulhu. Though I guess there are a lot of little numbers. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 08:28
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Question to anybody else who writes game notes on a computer/laptop/cloud drive: What do your game notes look like? How do you format them? Examples would be helpful.
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Jul 12, 2014 09:29
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Mendrian posted:Question to anybody else who writes game notes on a computer/laptop/cloud drive: as someone just getting into DM'ing i'd love to see some practical example as well. Likewise, i read through some of the quick links in the OP, but how do people handle situations where players have gone a bit off the path? Obviously I don't want to railroad, but if they *really* want to go to the cave instead of the insane asylum, do DM's usually have "standard" encounters setup to draw from to handle off-chance situations not planned for? "oh good thing I have this 5-man bandit group prearranged" that kind of thing.
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Jul 12, 2014 14:06
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I always try and place decision points at the end of a gaming session so I can ask my group if they want to go through the cave or the insane asylum next time, and then I prepare that. If the decision falls in the middle of a session I try and anticipate that so I can have both prepared. I'd probably try and recycle as much as possible in that case - if the party goes through the cave I have an entire insane asylum ready to go in the future. Maybe for some other adventure, maybe part of the cave collapses and through the asylum is the only way back (some light railroading is okay, I think, as long as that's a given understanding). My actual notes are all in foreign moon language, else I'd share, but the main documents I keep are: - Plot hooks: my game is based on following one storyarc for each character, and this doc holds my ideas for each one, with subpartitions of a) What the player told me, b) what I make of it and how I connect it to the setting and NPCs, and c) how it could connect to other main arcs. - NPCs: List of important NPCs by location. Descriptions tend to be very brief. One example would be: quote:Bill - former Assassins' Guild Master. Friendly, avuncular gentleman; easy to forget he's killed hundreds of people. Walks with a limp. It's not an ideal system because there's a ton of overlap and when I change things in one document I usually have to change a fair bit in the others as well. And then there's bookkeeping - what kind of loot does the party get in the next X encounters, what's available in stores right now etc.
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Jul 12, 2014 14:30
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Mendrian posted:Question to anybody else who writes game notes on a computer/laptop/cloud drive: Preface: I have been told, repeatedly, that I way over-prepare, but I feel like I run quality games and I don't mind the effort. I've watched GMs run games with maybe 1/6th my notes and have rich, fun campaigns. Here are two sets of game notes from two different campaigns, across two different systems: Black College, Session 5. This is a dungeon world campaign. I did the adventure fronts first (a great thing that works in a lot of settings), then for any particular session just looked through and saw which parts of the adventure fronts were going to get pushed forward. Then I wrote up scenes that needed to happen to move the plot along, that my characters were likely to end up at, and let them fill in the in-between scenes or ran them out of order if they decided to do something unexpected. To be fair, that session's notes actually carried me through two six-hour games, so it was a lot of content. The Werewolf Run Here's a Shadowrun run I did for some people. Notice that it's a way different structure, because of the nature of the game. In Shadowrun, it's harder to plan scenes than occurances, because the game is all about players planning on how to avoid the exact obstacles you're throwing at them. They also managed to avoid the entire plaza scene, catching the werewolf in the Stuffer Shack, which was cool, and managed to just run from the Halloweeners instead of engaging them, which was cooler. In general, my approach is to get an idea of what things the PCs need to deal with, think up scenes that need to happen to make them deal with them, and then let the PCs react to those scenes and move between them, reordering scenes and creating new ones as necessary. Include monster stats and other oddities and rules and things that you need to quick-reference, and try to tailor situations to things your PC would do. And when they go off-script, just go with them. For instance, the entire aside with the mischievous imp in the dungeon world notes I posted went like this: when Helena asked the wizard for help, his solution was to summon a second imp that they could follow to find the first one. It was  logic, but they ran down the second imp, ended up trashing into a classroom, and then it sort of worked out and the ended up finding the first imp along the way.Edit: My Lovely Horse posted:- Plot hooks: my game is based on following one storyarc for each character, and this doc holds my ideas for each one, with subpartitions of a) What the player told me, b) what I make of it and how I connect it to the setting and NPCs, and c) how it could connect to other main arcs. I'd like to second this, too. My DW notes have these sewn in, but my Shadowrun notes had separate character arcs in different files that ran concurrently with the storyline, so I could just pull something out for a character during lulls, which turned out to be super-effective. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 16:55
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Is this a decent place to discuss Dread? It's sort of a role-playing-heavy game where, instead of rolling dice to determine your success, you must perform a turn in Jenga without the tower collapsing (your character is considered dead, if not immediately then later, if you fail). There aren't any stats, just a questionnaire for each player to determine some aspects of their character. It's interesting, though I'm find that divorcing myself from what I know of creating Pathfinder campaigns to create a campaign mostly bereft of combat and stats is pretty drat hard.
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Jul 12, 2014 20:11
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Read up on some Call of Cthulhu adventures to get how investigative horror adventures work. Ditching stats afterwards will be the easy step. It's probably even better to read some Trail of Cthulhu/Esoterrorists stuff, as Pelgrane Press does their adventures really, really good.
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Jul 12, 2014 20:30
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Morpheus posted:Is this a decent place to discuss Dread? It's sort of a role-playing-heavy game where, instead of rolling dice to determine your success, you must perform a turn in Jenga without the tower collapsing (your character is considered dead, if not immediately then later, if you fail). There aren't any stats, just a questionnaire for each player to determine some aspects of their character. It's interesting, though I'm find that divorcing myself from what I know of creating Pathfinder campaigns to create a campaign mostly bereft of combat and stats is pretty drat hard. It is  And turn to the dark side. We have games that are not only low prep, but that the GM is ordered not to prep. And games that play with no prep start to finish in under two hours You don't normally create a Dread campaign though. It's for a single survival horror adventure and plays in an evening. So just create a single adventure/mission/enemy, and run it lightly. And when it's done it's done.
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Jul 13, 2014 00:55
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My Lovely Horse posted:The Blade Falcon is the goblins' boss and uses them to blackmail the watch ("sure you can defend the city but do you want constant goblin attacks to drive away merchants?") and bandits alike ("it's not like the watch will protect you in your forest camps"), they've all come to a favourable arrangement, only the smugglers don't want to pay up and hire the party through the assassins' guild. Although now that I've written it down I realize it's essentially the question of whether I want my storyarcs to be self-contained or feature overarching elements.
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Jul 14, 2014 08:19
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Surely the right answer is "the falcon swoops away, five sessions later they find out it was the falcon all along." Some players might find that a bit cheap, though. My players would call it the moment the falcon tried to flee and would give chase and manage to kill it.
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Jul 14, 2014 09:15
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My Lovely Horse posted:or if it would be fun to have him secretly be an actual intelligent falcon who uses the strongest hobgoblin as a proxy. A falcon who used to be an elf.
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Jul 14, 2014 09:31
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When they defeat the falcon, have the goblin fly away.
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Jul 14, 2014 09:35
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neonchameleon posted:You don't normally create a Dread campaign though. It's for a single survival horror adventure and plays in an evening. So just create a single adventure/mission/enemy, and run it lightly. And when it's done it's done. Yup - my problem is that I'm so used to creating dungeons and factions and such that creating a single adventure that isn't based around room-to-room encounters is pretty difficult.
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Jul 14, 2014 10:41
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If you're playing Dread, I'd go with the classic slasher-horror stuff. Group of friends accidentally kill a hobo and hide the body, start the game as they discover the messages left for them by the oh-so-mysterious killer, that sorta thing. Watch some cheesy films for ideas, then start experimenting with less genre-standard stuff once you've got the hang of how it plays. I'd also recommend reading through this article on the idea of 'fronts' for a less dungeon-crawl style of prepping for a game. So a slasher-horror themed front could be "the hobo we killed", and have 'grim portents' be things like "messages left in blood on the mirror" or "he's walking after you!". The impending doom would be wall-to-wall claret, naturally. e: Also, if the group is just used to D&D, might be worth making sure you're all on the same page when it comes to PC death (ie, very likely, and as messy as possible), in case any of your players get the wrong idea and get upset when/if they die. Better safe than Bill having a hissy fit, etc. petrol blue fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 14, 2014 14:57
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Hey guys, new GM hopefully about to take the leap from face-to-face gaming to PbP/email games via Google Groups. All the sparse GMing I've done has been IRL, as has almost all of my experience as a player (aside from a single IRC game). I'm still learning the general ropes of GMing - and will certainly be back with more questions - but today I'm specifically looking for advice on transferring over to a format neither I or my players are familiar with. Several questions come to mind: What are the general strengths and weaknesses of the format, in your experience? What are some things to look out for that work especially well or poorly for PbP gaming, when it comes to systems and mechanics? What do you guys look for in a pitch for a new game? ...but any and all advice you guys have would be fantastic. I'm planning on running games for my friends so I can breathe a little easier, but I still want to try to get off on the right foot. Thanks for your help!
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Jul 19, 2014 10:27
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You have lots and lots of time to put stuff in just the right words or think about the best tactics in combat. You don't have to schedule with a bunch of other people and can spend a little time every day whenever you want rather than have to set aside 4-5 hours on a specific date. Things tend to take a long-rear end time to unfold and it becomes even longer when you have to coordinate with another player before putting your plan into words in-game. You tend not to know your players outside of the game so a flaky player can just drop out without telling anyone and leave everyone wondering and eventually having to plan around that. Not a huge problem when you run for your friends, but for that matter, it can be hard to determine whether someone hasn't posted in two days because they have nothing to add to the situation and would just like to move on, or because they haven't been around. Mechanics that interrupt another player's turn are the PBP devil. Mechanics that put players' turns into a specific order aren't ideal either. Ideally you'd have a system where it's always DM's turn - all players' turn in whatever order - DM's turn and so on, and for example D&D's initiative system is adapted to that easily enough, but does tend to put things a bit on the "rocket tag" side. A good pitch should have all the info on how to build your characters, allowed/disallowed elements etc., and the intended tone of the game. Detailed description of the setting and initial setup is only really important when you're trying to pull in players, like here on SA, when you already have a group I'd argue the metagame stuff is more immediately important (but then if you have a group, you should probably work that out cooperatively, too).
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Jul 19, 2014 10:43
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When I was starting out, I found it helpful to read through a few recruitment threads to figure out what I needed to include. As MLH said, turn-based combat can really slow down a game, depending on the system. If the system supports it, and your players are OK with it, I've noticed things go a lot smoother if you make basic decisions for players, ie. player A and player B both declare they're attacking hobgoblin X but player A kills it outright, instead of asking player B what they'd like to do just assign their attack to hobgoblin Y. Obviously, if something important happens, like a player being put into critical health, you break the combat narrative there. This also applies to non-combat situations, like conversations. Try and have NPCs pre-empt questions by giving them more information than you might in a live setting. If you can also chat with your players online through something like IRC or google hangouts, that can iron out some of the bumps.
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Jul 19, 2014 15:42
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What do you guys mean when you say "rocket tag"?
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Jul 20, 2014 17:54
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When both sides are so powerful that whoever wins initiative usually determines the outcome of the battle, it's rocket tag.
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Jul 20, 2014 17:59
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insanityv2 posted:What do you guys mean when you say "rocket tag"?
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Jul 20, 2014 18:00
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insanityv2 posted:What do you guys mean when you say "rocket tag"? ^ What they said. Usually it means that both sides are squishy against the other side's weapons, kind of like playing a game of Tag with rocket launchers. Whoever manages to make the first hit wins. Pathfinder greatly cut down on this from the older D&D versions, but it still occurs with spells that cause status effects or stuns that leave you helpless if they make a hit. Instead of it simply being a one-round wipeout, they blind or paralyze you and let you get beaten to death. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jul 20, 2014 |
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Jul 20, 2014 18:00
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In D&D 4E specifically the assumption is that 1-2 PCs go, then a group of monsters goes, then 1-2 more PCs and so on, and you can change that easily to "all PCs go, all monsters go" but whichever side goes first will probably take down 1-2 opponents and that starts a downward spiral. It's like that drinking game from Hitchhiker's Guide Through the Galaxy where you have to telekinetically force your opponent to drink a spirit that reduces telekinetic abilities.
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Jul 20, 2014 20:17
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Anyone have any non-system specific tricks for running a Dungeon World game? What I've got so far in mind is make some cards with a bunch of GM moves written on them, and draw them as necessary to start or complicate a scene. Maybe for something more complex like a proper Temple of Evil or whatnot have a map for the players and let them navigate room by room with possibly pre-selected complications in each? Also, puzzles: Anyone got some good, fairly quickly player-solvable puzzles to use? Something with multiple possible solutions would be great.
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Jul 20, 2014 20:47
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For DW? DON'T OVER-PREPARE. Unless you're planning on a prewritten oneshot, MAYBE have a small bit of setting in mind, don't prep the plot at all.
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Jul 20, 2014 22:54
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thespaceinvader posted:For DW? DON'T OVER-PREPARE. I think I still underprepared while GMing DW. You do have to put in a minimum of Fronts and the like.
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Jul 21, 2014 02:37
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Quick one pals, I'm running a 13th age game and it'll be the second session this weekend, the first one was mainly char gen and a quick scenario to figure out what's what. I've got a Fighter, Ranger and a Mage in the party and I realised they have absolutely no healing between the 3 of them and this might be a problem. The 2 ideas I have are: 1) Grant them a healing wand or something similar, it would have a good quirk to it like "whenever it's used "something" somewhere takes damage equal to the heal, and they are getting increasingly annoyed by this" 2) Young child with gifted healing powers is sent with the party as a "favour" from "Someone" I like them both, my leaning is towards the DMPC healer, by making it a child it means there's no combat help other than the odd heal and it opens up a lot of plot hooks and ways to move things forwards. It also means they have some kind of responsibility to this kid to make sure she stays safe or they get boned. The wand also seems good and would be pretty fun to have them use it not knowing the quirk then have something turn up pretty pissed off and wanting to put the hurt on them. What do you guys think?
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Jul 21, 2014 10:20
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gently caress kids and gently caress DMPCs, I'd take wand every time. I like the quirk you though up for it, it could lead to all sorts of plot hooks, comic relief scenes or random encounters if things slow down.
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Jul 21, 2014 10:27
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The DMPC is best if she functions more or less like a robot: the players only need to deal with her when she's performing her function, otherwise she fades into the background until the next time they need her. She should get more involved in the plot if and only if the PCs get invested in her. As Lichtenstein demonstrated, some people don't like dealing with children, so you should only make the DMPC a child if the players don't mind babysitting.
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Jul 21, 2014 10:40
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I suppose I could whip up the DMPC character and the stats for the wand and just give my guys the outright choice I guess. At least when the kid grabs the maguffin and teleports out with a resounding "see ya later shitlords" I can always say "welp, I gave you a choice..." :v
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Jul 21, 2014 10:47
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I agree with the people who hate kids, but I'm not necessarily 100% against a DMPC or otherwise important NPC. The problem only arises with bad DMPCs, the ones who take control of the party and are used to force the players onto a particular path or become the defining factor in solving encounters. A proper DMPC should be as powerful or lower in power than one of the players, and someone who stays in the background and only uses their healing powers to help rather than blowing up monsters with his mind can work like that. Or if the DMPC is genuinely powerful and could unbalance the party, make them a temporary ally that's only with the party for maybe one session or less.
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Jul 21, 2014 14:04
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chitoryu12 posted:I agree with the people who hate kids, but I'm not necessarily 100% against a DMPC or otherwise important NPC. The problem only arises with bad DMPCs, the ones who take control of the party and are used to force the players onto a particular path or become the defining factor in solving encounters. Good points, it's really only out of necessity that I was considering it as I don't want to have to make someone re-roll a healing character, I thought about the child aspect so I can make it plausible that the kid could be gifted in healing from birth, have that kid quality of being able to not draw attention towards themselves in a fight and if they do gain aggro it might motivate the players to have the secondary objective in a fight of looking after the little fucker. In no way is the DMPC going to be some kind of bullshit all powerful self insert that the team have to rely on for everything, just a basic healbot with a bit of flavour. They're also planned as a child cleric agent of the Priestess who will totally double cross them at some point and spy on them the whole time.
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Jul 21, 2014 14:33
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Xelkelvos posted:I think I still underprepared while GMing DW. You do have to put in a minimum of Fronts and the like. You work out fronts AFTER session 1. Session 1 is when you work out what the players want from the game, and move to get on board with that.
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Jul 21, 2014 14:37
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As long as they play smart, then healing shouldn't be that big of a problem. Make sure they buy enough potions or scrolls to use and make them work on using those recoveries. Your are not going to be a TPK out of not having a healer though, it'll either be bad luck of the dice, or your players rushing into danger without a clue that they should've shut the gate on the rancor monster you inserted in instead of trying to attack a rancor with swords.
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Jul 21, 2014 15:17
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One of my least favorite campaigns ever started with us nearly dying and subsequently losing all of our equipment. The rest of the campaign was basically us being walked through the adventure by a series of powerful DMPCs. One of them even had an intelligent sword. At one point I said something to the DM to the effect of "Did you write this campaign for us or for your NPCs?" Which was admittedly a little passive aggressive, but it did the trick and the NPC who was holding our hands decided to go off on his own adventure at the beginning of the next session.
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Jul 21, 2014 15:24
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HatfulOfHollow posted:One of my least favorite campaigns ever started with us nearly dying and subsequently losing all of our equipment. The rest of the campaign was basically us being walked through the adventure by a series of powerful DMPCs. One of them even had an intelligent sword. At one point I said something to the DM to the effect of "Did you write this campaign for us or for your NPCs?" Which was admittedly a little passive aggressive, but it did the trick and the NPC who was holding our hands decided to go off on his own adventure at the beginning of the next session. Yeah, that's definitely not what I had in mind, knowing that they won't be too boned by not having an actual healer I think I'm going to go ahead and gift them the wand. Plus I really want to play the hook that the wand can only heal people by causing damage to something somewhere else bound to the wand. I can even let it run a few levels so the stronger they get and the more healing power comes out of the wand the more the other entity gets damaged and that ups the urgency of the bound entity to get this poo poo sorted.
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Jul 21, 2014 18:34
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I'd just go the healing potion route. Give them a few to start their adventure if it makes sense and drop a few on various baddies through the early levels. If healing becomes a problem they'll figure out a way to deal with it.
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Jul 21, 2014 18:41
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The way I do GMPCs, they're carefully limited and never stay with the party for more than a short time. If they're stronger than the PCs, it's only by a small amount and their capabilities are noted and played fairly so that I can't just invent scripted wins for them as the plot demands. In one game I'm running right now online, I'm using a slightly stronger character to basically guide the players through one or two simple encounters so they get the hang of how I'm running the game (and provide a simple emergency out if they gently caress up a fight so badly that they would get killed early on without assistance), at which point he gets killed off and they have to go on their own. He's a short-term crutch that lasts for the equivalent of half a session before permanently going away, and the players don't get such a character later as a replacement.
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Jul 21, 2014 18:57
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In the mecha game I'm running, the party has a whole crew of NPCs running their flagship (with a PC captain in charge). They're useful for dumping exposition, players can pick them up temporarily if a character is temporarily AWOL/captured/whatever, and the ship can take pot shots at enemies randomly during fights to provide a bit of utility while still keeping the party members in the spotlight. I think it's worked pretty well.
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Jul 21, 2014 19:30
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PCs are hired to test a new brand of SuperHeal healing pots, guaranteed* pain-free! Have them wear goofy tabards and play up how awful tasting the pots are. And they must drink them all and report back about them by the new moon.
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Jul 21, 2014 19:57
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