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So, I ran it. To keep things short, I've realized a few things:
I'll definitely play on a Dungeon World campaign, but I don't know if I'm cut out for GMing it yet...
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Jun 14, 2018 03:41
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My two cents on a few of your comments:Pollyanna posted:[*] How do you manage sheets and character state? Especially online. I hoped Roll20 would help with that, but half the players had no idea what was going on and it sure isn't user friendly. Any suggestions for running it online? Do I really need to be able to draw maps n poo poo? When I was running my Monster of the Week game through Roll20, I had everyone with physical copies of their character sheets that we all referred to and just asked questions about it all when needed (although I suppose you could have a binder with all their character sheets and update them simultaneously). I am not sure if there are any DW or other PbtA playbooks up on Roll20 currently, but since there's not a ton of math you need the spreadsheet calculator to do and add bonus and disadvantages to constantly, I think it's easier just to have everyone have their own poo poo. As for maps, I used Roll20 purely for large splash screen artwork that I transferred between as they moved through places. For example, my Monster of the Week game had them spelunking into a museum that turned out to have a connection to an ancient egyptian tomb in the basement, so I randomized their movement as they went from room to room with dice rolls & then changed the map to an appropriate picture of where in the museum they were. Then I threw monsters and other poo poo at them and we theatre of the minded it up. quote:[*] The game is definitely not amenable to drop-in-and-play, since you need to be part of the creation stuff and go through the process and mathematics and all - that takes a long time. When we had people join late, I just told them "This is the world we built, these are the different factions/organizations/whatever everyone is belonging to and the goals they are pursuing, here are the available playbooks, what are you interested in and how do you want that to work in the ingame fiction?" I'm about to run a D&D game for the first time in Roll20 and talking about all of this makes me want to run a PbtA game again so hard 
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Jun 14, 2018 03:56
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Ok, run us a game (I am desperate to play). I'll also put out there again that I'm willing to put together a "teachers teaching teachers" workshop so we can all learn to GM like champs. If there's interest.
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Jun 14, 2018 04:26
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There is also no way in hell that I’ll be able to keep track of every detail of each character’s backstory (bonds, etc.). There’s already a lot going on, and I’m too busy acting out the fiction to metagame that stuff.
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Jun 14, 2018 04:29
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Overemotional Robot posted:Ok, run us a game (I am desperate to play). This is actually tempting I'd definitely be down to do a workshop at some point.
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Jun 14, 2018 04:54
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Overemotional Robot posted:I'll also put out there again that I'm willing to put together a "teachers teaching teachers" workshop so we can all learn to GM like champs. If there's interest.
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Jun 14, 2018 05:08
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I played night witches with people who've never played rpgs before. Highly recommended. I feel like it was designed with people who've never played games like this before in mind, but I could see more experienced players really digging into the system in ways my players didn't too. Edit: oops meant for the pbta thread but w/e
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Jun 14, 2018 05:17
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Pollyanna posted:Character creation is slow, which is made worse by Roll20 being a pain in the rear end to use. We spent a good 1.5 hours wrestling with it and coaching people through creation, which felt slow and useless. I don't know if I'll use Roll20 in the future, and I wish there was a more streamlined character creation system. It's heavily dependent on people knowing the system in order for it to flow well. I'm not sure what was so off about character creation for you. The book walks you through it, step by step, what to pick, in the character creation session. If you're using any kind of standard character sheet, like, derived from the handouts they give you for free on dungeon-world.com, it should list the starting bonuses alongside the standard stat array, which is... like the one place you have to do anything with math? I guess also hit points? quote:How do you manage sheets and character state? Especially online. I hoped Roll20 would help with that, but half the players had no idea what was going on and it sure isn't user friendly. Any suggestions for running it online? Do I really need to be able to draw maps n poo poo? Draw maps, sure, but you don't really need to do it live. For complicated places where positioning super-matters, you could have people move pawns around on a big map you prepared ahead of time. Really I'd trust people to keep up their own sheets. . But as the DM, you do need to know everybody's characters and what they can do. If you want to keep everything together... a free wiki? A shared folder on Dropbox or Google Drive or something? Obsidian Portal (which I know more by reputation)? quote:The game is definitely not amenable to drop-in-and-play, since you need to be part of the creation stuff and go through the process and mathematics and all - that takes a long time. You can help people through character creation on their own time, sure. Just save all the extra questions about character history and stuff for when everyone's together. quote:People are constantly talking over each other and I can't tell what the gently caress is happening. Sometimes I feel like I am only guessing at what's happening in the fiction. Am I supposed to do only one person at a time? Yes, only one person is supposed to "have the spotlight" at a time. Deal with one person's actions, then set things up for the next. quote:I'll definitely play on a Dungeon World campaign, but I don't know if I'm cut out for GMing it yet... Running isn't for everyone. Did you watch some other people GMing to get ideas and see how they run things?
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Jun 14, 2018 05:24
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If you want to avoid crosstalk, the best way to do it is in person or with video. There are a lot of nonverbal signals people use in conversation that don’t really apply to multi person phone calls. I played in the sessionand I think a few people just weren’t ready to engage with DW. In terms of bonds, they’re only really useful to the GM in creating tensions. If two players have a debt, a secret, or a difference of philosophy, it gives you something to create a scene around. But it shouldn’t be on your mind all the time. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 08:42
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Overemotional Robot posted:Ok, run us a game (I am desperate to play).
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Jun 14, 2018 14:54
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After a night of thinking it over, I don’t think I’m obviously bad at GMing, and the session was just a matter of inexperience and getting used to a system, sharing artifacts like character sheets and playbooks, and still figuring out a good flow for the game. I’m still interested in doing it again, maybe even a longer term campaign, but I might need more practice before I can tackle that.Quidthulhu posted:When I was running my Monster of the Week game through Roll20, I had everyone with physical copies of their character sheets that we all referred to and just asked questions about it all when needed (although I suppose you could have a binder with all their character sheets and update them simultaneously). I am not sure if there are any DW or other PbtA playbooks up on Roll20 currently, but since there's not a ton of math you need the spreadsheet calculator to do and add bonus and disadvantages to constantly, I think it's easier just to have everyone have their own poo poo. The primary reason I went with Roll20 was to have a centralized repository and source of truth for character sheets, dice rolls, SRD artifacts like monster stats and items, and mapping. I felt like I needed it because I needed to have a constant, up to date understanding of each character’s status, gear, and moves - if that’s written down on a physical sheet held by someone on a Discord call, that makes it harder to know what that character has and what it can or cannot do. In practice, it ended up being more overhead than it was worth.  I think Roll20 is a good tool for something crunchy like D&D, where you have to keep track of distances and maps and complicated math n poo poo, but I don’t think Dungeon World needs that IME. That said, I do think I need access to the current state of the character sheets, cause I can’t know what they can do off the top of my head.quote:When we had people join late, I just told them "This is the world we built, these are the different factions/organizations/whatever everyone is belonging to and the goals they are pursuing, here are the available playbooks, what are you interested in and how do you want that to work in the ingame fiction?" This was more about a couple people having 5~10 minutes to go from “wanna join my DW game?” to “introduce your character”. It may have simply been an artifact of needing to fill spaces on short notice. quote:I'm about to run a D&D game for the first time in Roll20 and talking about all of this makes me want to run a PbtA game again so hard If this really becomes a “teach the teacher” sort of thing I would totally be interested! That sort of thing is super helpful. Glazius posted:Oof. Were people not used to Roll20? Getting to grips with a new tool is bad enough in and of itself. That was definitely a good chunk of it. It added overhead and moving parts that I think made the game more difficult to pull off, not easier. quote:I'm not sure what was so off about character creation for you. The book walks you through it, step by step, what to pick, in the character creation session. If you're using any kind of standard character sheet, like, derived from the handouts they give you for free on dungeon-world.com, it should list the starting bonuses alongside the standard stat array, which is... like the one place you have to do anything with math? I guess also hit points? For me, it wasn’t too bad. I don’t think more than one person didn’t know what was going on. That said, the Roll20 sheets don’t have that information and are just a straight-up “fill in X” thing, which isn’t very good for walking through creation - certainly not as good as the official handouts. The people with little experience in Dungeon World struggled a bit. I think it would be more efficient to use the official handouts/playbooks and ask people to print them out, and have them put the characters together before the first session (stats, appearance, name, gear, special stuff). Then, when we get together, we introduce ourselves, and set Bonds. Is that a good idea, though...? quote:Draw maps, sure, but you don't really need to do it live. For complicated places where positioning super-matters, you could have people move pawns around on a big map you prepared ahead of time. I kinda feel like relying on theater of the mind is “good enough” for Dungeon World, which isn’t really concerned with distances like D&D is. I think I’ll keep maps of the world at large and maybe like a city or something, but maps that are particularly dynamic probably won’t work. quote:Really I'd trust people to keep up their own sheets. But as the DM, you do need to know everybody's characters and what they can do. Thaaat’s the kicker...if someone does an action that should match up to a special class move or something else on their sheet, I need to know about it - hence the access to their sheet’s state at any point in time. This is simple IRL (“pass me your sheet real quick pls”) but via Discord, not so much... quote:If you want to keep everything together... a free wiki? A shared folder on Dropbox or Google Drive or something? Obsidian Portal (which I know more by reputation)? Something like this might work, yeah! I’ll review my options. I’ve had decent success with sharing files via Discord, too. quote:
Works for me, then. If everyone does their sheet in advance, that cuts down on the awkward silence of everybody typing and writing, and I won’t interrupt them with questions delving into their stuff. How does this handle character stats and gear and stuff that depends on questions asked, though? e.g. signature weapons. quote:Yes, only one person is supposed to "have the spotlight" at a time. Deal with one person's actions, then set things up for the next. Nice, ok good. I’m gonna try and enforce a spotlight rule during my sessions then, cause there were many cases where 3 or 4 people spoke over each other and I just got lost. I should also be better about making the action focus on a specific person, and knowing when the action has focused too much on one person. I ran the one-shot partly for the benefit of a friend, but I feel like she didn’t get to play much... quote:Running isn't for everyone. Did you watch some other people GMing to get ideas and see how they run things? I’ve been watching a lot of Adam Koebel’s streams and videos, and I’ve gotten into podcasts like The Adventure Zone and Critical Role, so I’ve kept an eye out for GM behavior and principles during these examples. I don’t dislike GMing, I’m just still a novice at it. I do want to GM again sometime soon! Just, with a little more preparation and expertise.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:41
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Everyone has a rough time GMing for the first time, don't sweat it, you'll get better. If I can say one quick thing though; I wouldn't use Adventure Zone or other AP podcasts as examples of Good GMing. They're generally not. They're good proformative GMing. Someone on twitter described it as the difference between sex and porn, which is silly but holds some truth to it.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:03
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Golden Bee posted:If you want to avoid crosstalk, the best way to do it is in person or with video. There are a lot of nonverbal signals people use in conversation that don’t really apply to multi person phone calls. Yeah, it’s also a common problem outside of RPGs. I think that’s just normal for human conversations - everyone wants to be heard - and RPGs need structure around that. I’ll add a spotlight rule. quote:I played in the sessionand I think a few people just weren’t ready to engage with DW. I didn’t want to outright push someone out of my first session, but some did contribute more than others...  quote:In terms of bonds, they’re only really useful to the GM in creating tensions. If two players have a debt, a secret, or a difference of philosophy, it gives you something to create a scene around. But it shouldn’t be on your mind all the time. Hrmmm. Sounds like a downtime thing, then. I think next time I’ll use a Starter, like the ones I got from the bundle. Castle Death looks good.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:06
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Don't give up! My first game of DW as GM went horribly. I had spent years before DMing 2.5, 3rd, and 4th edition D&D and 13th Age, so understanding the flow of DW did not come naturally. Reflect on the things you tripped up on and focus on fixing one or two at a time each time you run a game. Most importantly, if everyone at the table is having fun, you did your job! Don't beat yourself up or dwell. GMing is one of the most thankless roles, but can also be one of the most rewarding when you see players enjoying your work.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:09
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Everyone has a rough time GMing for the first time, don't sweat it, you'll get better. Also some of the GMing changes stem from the players are also taking a different approach - they may move things along more or take certain actions because they know it makes for a better show, but would act differently in a home game. In any case the Roll20 presents Apocalypse World series Adam Koebel did has a lot of useful GM stuff in it, for example, and Friends at the Table does a good job with the attitude and philosophy that leads to good GMing, if not necessarily the mechanics due to its nature as a show - not game mechanics, I mean the actual nitty-gritty things a GM does to run any game.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:24
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I think that's fair, there's stuff in there you can learn and grow from, I'm just wary of suggesting anyone use APs as their primarily learning source on this. The difference in format, the presentation and the editing process makes emulating them a bad idea. But as you said, there's variance there, and its unfair for me to say that you can't learn anything at all from listening/watching them. But then I just had one of my players try to GM by aping Adventure Zone a LOT and it led to a pretty bad campaign until they broke out of that mold.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:06
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:I think that's fair, there's stuff in there you can learn and grow from, I'm just wary of suggesting anyone use APs as their primarily learning source on this. The difference in format, the presentation and the editing process makes emulating them a bad idea. But as you said, there's variance there, and its unfair for me to say that you can't learn anything at all from listening/watching them. Trying to run a game in that fashion outside of a very close group of friends or family is not gonna go over.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:10
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I get that APs are performance more than realistic play, and I’m certainly not trying to be the new hotness. That way lies only pain. But I am influenced by it in a way, which might be a bad thing?
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Jun 14, 2018 17:17
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Friends At The Table actually has a side cast that’s entirely about how to be a good player or GM, but it’s only released to Paterson backers which is a shame because it’s quite good.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:19
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Pollyanna posted:I get that APs are performance more than realistic play, and I’m certainly not trying to be the new hotness. That way lies only pain. But I am influenced by it in a way, which might be a bad thing?
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Jun 14, 2018 17:23
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Comrade Gorbash posted:What aspect do you feel like is influencing you? Hmmm. Description style, I guess? Describing the scene or something, tho that also ends up being partly me. And I guess voicing characters, which is a pain in the rear end sometimes but can be a good way to get into character (which I suck at). For non-bigname-AP stuff, my emphasis on asking questions of the players comes from how Adam does character creation. Everything else is me and the crap that pops onto my head (afaict). I should analyze GM behavior after character creation more, and maybe even in some long running campaigns.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:36
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I think those are probably fine ways to be influenced. The issues I have with AP GM styles are mainly around structure and game flow, plus the tendency to take everything in this very slow, structured, step by step way that introduces mechanics and explains rules in a way that is absolutely great for a listener, but would be a nightmare to actually play. AZ is a good example for this, when listening to it listen to how often they explain the exact particulars of spells and abilities to each other, and the very clear and careful language that they use. The other thing is that most AP hosts are railroady as fuuuuuuuuuck due to the nature of the medium, but Kobel tends to be better about that than most.
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Jun 14, 2018 17:40
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I don’t have the patience to railroad in any significant way. It’s more straightforward and requires less work to improv, even though I’m really bad at it. It takes me a while to come up with motivation and personalities for a new NPC that just came into existence a second ago. Which reminds me, I should leverage that thing in the book for it sometimes...
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Jun 14, 2018 19:10
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If attribute math slows down character creation you can just leave them blank to start. Same with everything else, really. For character sheets, I just try to note a few things per character to keep in mind for prompts. Like, the wizard can do rituals, is fascinated by magic artifacts, and thinks the fighter is a selfish prick. If anything else comes up I just ask. I'm usually lucky if I remember to reference one of those things during play anyway, so I don't need the whole sheet.
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Jun 14, 2018 21:31
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Ok, well I am typing up something now on what I am tentatively calling "Game Master Camp." I plan on linking a survey here to see when the best time to host is. I'll also have a write up of what we're going to do and what you'll need if you want to participate. If you just want to come and spectate / ask questions, that's fine, but I'm hoping to give some of the less seasoned GMs in this thread a controlled outlet to practice the craft and all of us a forum from which we can learn best practices from one another.
Overemotional Robot fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 23:02
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I am absolutely down for that.
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Jun 15, 2018 01:16
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I haven't posted but I am absolutely interested in that. I have run PbtA games a handful of times (2 sessions of DW and 2 of The Sprawl) with some successes and some horrendous failures and would love to learn how to build on my basics. I have found two specific things I don't know how to deal with well: players who don't push themselves to be creative and players who are unhappy with my penalties and want more control over the narrative than I am prepared for
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Jun 15, 2018 02:16
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I find Dungeon World games a lot more fun to play or GM than to listen to, personally. If I'm listening, I'm in the mood for narrative and action, and I think the questioning breaks that up a lot. Playing or GMing, though, I'm invested in the action and able to make decisions about what happens, and that's fun and engaging. Am I just weird?
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Jun 15, 2018 02:41
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Pollyanna posted:Thaaat’s the kicker...if someone does an action that should match up to a special class move or something else on their sheet, I need to know about it - hence the access to their sheet’s state at any point in time. This is simple IRL (“pass me your sheet real quick pls”) but via Discord, not so much... For you, moves are there as a starting point to help think about what's happening. Actually telling people the names of your moves doesn't really give them new information and can just confuse the question of what's going on. Player-facing moves, on the other hand, have a bunch of scripting attached to them, and as a result everybody needs to agree that the move can happen, and be on the same page as to how it's happening, before the script can kick in. For that reason, bringing up move names as part of that discussion is totally fine. So if they feel like one of their moves applies, they can just say that. It's still helpful to learn the playbooks, of course. Pollyanna posted:How does this handle character stats and gear and stuff that depends on questions asked, though? e.g. signature weapons. Players make the decisions about what's on their original character sheet. I can't really think of one that looks to the GM for guidance. ...though they'll still look to you for questions, which you can answer outside the session. Everybody should know about the characters to make bonds, but you can take care of that with the player introductions before bonds.
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Jun 15, 2018 03:08
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Overemotional Robot posted:Ok, well I am typing up something now on what I am tentatively calling "Game Master Camp." I plan on linking a survey here to see when the best time to host is.
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Jun 15, 2018 03:30
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:I think those are probably fine ways to be influenced. The issues I have with AP GM styles are mainly around structure and game flow, plus the tendency to take everything in this very slow, structured, step by step way that introduces mechanics and explains rules in a way that is absolutely great for a listener, but would be a nightmare to actually play. AZ is a good example for this, when listening to it listen to how often they explain the exact particulars of spells and abilities to each other, and the very clear and careful language that they use. Almost every AP podcast I've ever listened to is just some folks playing a game and recording it. I recognize that very produced casts like TAZ do exist but I think they're probably more the exception than the rule.
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Jun 15, 2018 04:31
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I enjoy listening to other people play RPGs slightly more than hearing about other people's dreams.
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Jun 15, 2018 04:43
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I should be ready to post everything tomorrow. Very excited to see that there's so much interest. My general abstract idea for this (as I've been looking on the web for guidance today and it looks like we're kind of breaking some ground) is that everyone who wants to (depending on how many people we have show and how long we run it) will get a chance to run and play. We'll be hot-seating GMs in terms of different scenarios (more on that in the survey) so people who want practice with certain parts of a game should, in theory, be able to stretch their legs in a lab-like environment. We'll be keeping sections brief and switching out a lot of characters, with time at the end of each section for roundtable feedback and questions. There will also be a system in place for during-play questions or feedback that should keep things from bogging down except for the most pressing questions or feedback. Overall, objective is for people to learn at least one new skill/strategy/trick/etc, share a best practice, or get a real tangible example for an element of the game they don't quite grasp. Oh, and we'll be using RAW (rules as written) for everything, including the base character sheets. Overemotional Robot fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jun 15, 2018 |
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Jun 15, 2018 05:31
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When do you call for Discern Realities vs. not? There’s been a couple times that a player wanted to look around the scene and reached for Discern Realities, but it didn’t seem necessary to me to glean information via a special move instead of just looking around. What’s the threshold for calling for the move?
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Jun 15, 2018 13:29
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Pollyanna posted:When do you call for Discern Realities vs. not? There’s been a couple times that a player wanted to look around the scene and reached for Discern Realities, but it didn’t seem necessary to me to glean information via a special move instead of just looking around. What’s the threshold for calling for the move? My uber rule is to call for moves when I can imagine what failure means. If they're just hanging out in the library they don't need to roll, they just find whatever they're looking for eventually. Unless they're in a hurry, let's say, and then failure means that they take too long and bad things happen! So for Discern, the trick is to have some good ideas for what failure means. Finding an unpleasant answer is my favorite.
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Jun 15, 2018 15:10
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Overemotional Robot posted:Ok, well I am typing up something now on what I am tentatively calling "Game Master Camp." I plan on linking a survey here to see when the best time to host is. I'll also have a write up of what we're going to do and what you'll need if you want to participate. If you just want to come and spectate / ask questions, that's fine, but I'm hoping to give some of the less seasoned GMs in this thread a controlled outlet to practice the craft and all of us a forum from which we can learn best practices from one another. I would be in for this. And willing to toss  your way
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Jun 15, 2018 16:27
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That is... extremely gracious of you  However, it's free! I just want people to feel more comfortable running games so there can be more GMs out in the wild. Plus, I have no idea how this will shake out. I have ran plenty of training classes (I am a teacher IRL), but have never done anything quite like this. Everyone is welcome to join!
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Jun 15, 2018 18:27
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Overemotional Robot posted:Ok, well I am typing up something now on what I am tentatively calling "Game Master Camp." I plan on linking a survey here to see when the best time to host is. I'll also have a write up of what we're going to do and what you'll need if you want to participate. If you just want to come and spectate / ask questions, that's fine, but I'm hoping to give some of the less seasoned GMs in this thread a controlled outlet to practice the craft and all of us a forum from which we can learn best practices from one another. This sounds fantastic.
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Jun 15, 2018 18:41
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I've almost got everything ready, but what content would you like to see covered if we have around 3 hours to run? I guess I'm asking for not super specific things like, for example, how to handle a druid's shape-shifting, but more broad topics like "how to handle class moves during play," "how to handle combat." That kind of stuff.Pollyanna posted:What’s the threshold for calling for the move? "When do moves trigger?" Gonna put that on the list 
Overemotional Robot fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Jun 15, 2018 |
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Jun 15, 2018 19:53
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Def. How to handle flags and/or bonds. Probably one of the easiest to good things
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Jun 15, 2018 20:10
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