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View Full Version : [Dresden Files] I'm just no good GM...



Siegel
2011-05-16, 04:10 AM
Hello Playground,

I'm currently GMing a Dresden Files game and i really have some problems.

1. I'm constantly having problems with the investigation part of my games. Having the whole city to go looking for information seems to be to big for my players and they constantly lack ideas for finding clues.
The wizard in the party sometimes figures out ways to use his thaumaturgy to find clues but the ninja-detective-werecat character has problems using her skills to her advantage.
Another problem for me is that i'm bad at helping them figuring it out. How should i give them clues without going "yeah you just need to go to this place over there and you will find everything" - that would be boring.
I have no idea how they will try to find info so it's hard for me to plan that or to even know how they could get that info.
I have run good "hey, that's the problem" sessions and good action ones, it's that legwork and detective thing that troubles me.

2. I'm lazy. I'm constantly underprepared and have to run a lot of stuff on improv. That's okay for me but the game is lacking because of that. Any tips for GMs that don't like to plan that much ?

3. My PCs right now have a job from the Summer Barons of the city to find out why some Summer Elfs attacked a group of anti-mining demonstrants.
At the same time they had to find a group of missing persons. Clues lad them to a museum where they found a sorcerer, enthraling people. After chasing him through the museum and the streats they battled a troll he had called for help. The next day the wizard conjured a water spirit to find him. The spirit warned them that this guy is the Black Miller (a fairy tale figure from our region), a sorcerer in pact with the winter court of the sidhe. (Our city is in summers territory, they try to get in)
The next session will be about them storming his home and finding proof that he tricked the elfs.
He has his home in a puppet theatre (because it's scary)
I want to try something a bit different, the session will start with them, captured and bound to chairs while the miller laughs at them. Then cut to the morning before. Should i do that or is this to railroady because they could try any kind of security measure possible and will still be captured...
Anyway, i don't want them to capture or kill him because i want to use this guy in following sessions and he, as a caster, can be quite deadly to them.
What can i offer my PCs to give them a satisfying ending to this story arc ? He could maybe collapse the house arround them. They will have to get out of their binding and then have to find a way out. (but that isn't enough i think)
Please playground, do you have any idea what i could do ?

4. problem : We only have time to play 2-3 hours every week and i have problems using that time effectively. Sometimes we spend this time and not much happens in the story because they venture of in a "wrong" direction or just RP without much story happening. What can i do to make the most out of the limited gametime ?

Earthwalker
2011-05-16, 06:06 AM
Well that’s a lot of questions.
1) What skills does the detective have, if it is social skills to get information / clues from peoplehide the clues there. If they have thief like skills hide the information in places that need breaking into. If they have computer related skills hide it in computers. Some times in my adventures I have no idea how the players get from point A to point B but if the players come up with an idea just think about it and see if it seems sensible.
2) You should be able to find plenty of tips to cut down on planning. I will say again, if you haven’t the time or are too lazy to plan. Then just make sure you let the players run with good plans and let the dice decide if it works.
3) If you are going to start the next session with the PCs tied up, that’s possible but you need a get out if the players don’t get captured. I would use some kind of sliding doors time manipulation. That way in one future they were captured but fortunatly not this one. In fact you can time loop it so that both things happened, only this time they avoided it (or possibly didn’t) its only when the players have no choice is it a true rail road.
4) If you and your players enjot the session is it a problem if the story isn’t covered enough ?

hewhosaysfish
2011-05-16, 07:39 AM
I want to try something a bit different, the session will start with them, captured and bound to chairs while the miller laughs at them. Then cut to the morning before. Should i do that or is this to railroady because they could try any kind of security measure possible and will still be captured...

I can only offer scond-hand advice here but I have read of one GM (link! (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?235815-Wushu-Actual-Play-Gotham-Nights)) who used a similar idea, every session for a whole campaign (naturally, this required each session to be a self-contained episode. If you have story arcs that span multiple sessions then you'd want to do it once per arc).

He would start each session in medias res. They would begin to play through the fight/chase/whatever and then when things reached a dramatic moment (often a revelation that would be bad news for the PCs, if they weren't at a disadvantage from the start), the GM would jump back to days/hours earlier when the PCs were receiving their mission briefing.

Play would continue from that point as normal but every time a player did something that led up to opening scene, helped to explain it or foreshadowed it, the GM would put a dice in a pot in the centre of the table.

When events in the game caught up to the opening scene the players were free to start using these dice as "bonus dice" that any player could use (I don't know anything about the Dresden Files system but if it has any sort of Fate points/Action points/Hero points/Bennies/whatever then that's what you'd hand out here). This sudden influx of bonus dice halfway into the scene would enable the PCs to pull off a burst of awesomeness and turn the tide of the conflict.

In the campaign I linked, when the players began to get used to the in medias res openings, they started using them to introduce out-of-place details (like on PC having lipstick on his collar or another one being drenched from head to foot) with the specific intention of putting themselves in a situation that would explain it and thereby earning more bonus dice. Sneaky devils. :smallsmile:

So the keys elements here would seem to be:
1) Be open about what you're doing going to do. Explain the whole "in medias res" concept to your players before you start using it.
2) Be flexible in the ways the PCs can reach the set piece. Give the players enough narrative control that they feel they are proactively working with you to collaboratively build towards the opening scene, rather than just obediently following the trail of breadcrumbs you left towards it.
3) More importantly, be flexible in where they can go afterwards. Define a point which the story will pass through but not where it will end.
4) Bribery. This whole technique hinges on bribery :smallbiggrin:

In your specific case, of having the PCs captured by the bad guy, it might be best to build up to that. Run a few adventures/episodes using this technique, with fairly benign (but still dramatic) opening scenes. A fight scene or two, a chase scene, maybe a courtroom scene? The sort of thing that could be reasonably expected to turn up in an RPG anyway, so no-one feels like you are imposing on their character.

After a doing this a few times, your players should be used to the non-linear causality that's going on here and - more importantly - used to the idea that this is not a trick by the GM to try and screw over their characters.

And then when you have that trust CRUSH THEM ALL you can try the "you all wake up tied up in the villains basement" scene and instead of going "Oh noes! What has Siegel done! We must argue with him why this shouldn't happen!" they will go "Hmm, this is an interesting hook. I must think of how I would have got into this position."

This does, of course, all depend on your relationship with your players. Use common sense, where applicable.


Anyway, i don't want them to capture or kill him because i want to use this guy in following sessions and he, as a caster, can be quite deadly to them.

And is being killed a major barrier for a wizard? If so, do they have to fight him at all?


What can i offer my PCs to give them a satisfying ending to this story arc ? He could maybe collapse the house arround them. They will have to get out of their binding and then have to find a way out. (but that isn't enough i think)

He could leave after having his gloating monolgue, off to pursue nefarious business elsewhere, perhaps leaving his prisoners guarded by summoned/animated/hypnotised/evil minions (or maybe just magical wards). They are then trying to escape before he comes back and turns them into novelty hats.

If they have been suitably intimidated by your villain, or if they are wounded and/or disarmed (either when they wake up or after defeating the minions), then they will be happy just to get away.
You can throw some sort of bonus objective in their way so that they feel like they are snatching a victory from the jaws of defeat, rather than limping away with their tails between their legs.
For example: rescuing the last person the Miller kidnapped (who may or may not possess information or connections which leads into the next plot arc); tealing the Miller' crystal ball/black grimoire/magic doodad (which may or may not lead into the next plot arc); wrecking the Miller's magic circle/evil shrine/whatever; burning the Miller's house down with all his stuff in it (just out of spite); clobbering an infuriating minion who had previously harassed the party.

If the PCs aren't afraid of the Miller, they'll probably plan to lay an ambush for him just inside his own front door. Discourage this by having the players' escape attempt, their fight with the minions and/or their destruction of magical doodads start a fire. This will force them the flee the premises, maybe hurt them badly enough to make them think about fleeing and (failing all else) it will give you a plausible reason why the Miller would be suspicious and avoid the trap.

valadil
2011-05-16, 08:15 AM
Hello Playground,

I'm currently GMing a Dresden Files game and i really have some problems.

1. I'm constantly having problems with the investigation part of my games. Having the whole city to go looking for information seems to be to big for my players and they constantly lack ideas for finding clues.
The wizard in the party sometimes figures out ways to use his thaumaturgy to find clues but the ninja-detective-werecat character has problems using her skills to her advantage.

What sort of clues are you giving out? It's hard to give precise advice without an example, but here's something that helps in general.

There's an article out there that's currently eluding me, but I'm sure someone has a link. It explains the rule of threes, in which all your clues should come in groups of three. If the players are investigating a murder, you've got a weapon, a witness, and trace magical energies (since this is Dresden and there has to be some amount of arcane babble). Any one of those should be enough to advance the plot. You don't have to use those three either, they're just the first that came to me.

Figure out how those clues will tie into the investigation, but don't place them. Dresden is sandboxy. The players will look for clues in places you didn't expect. Yes, the witness has a favorite bar, but he also has an apartment, a day job, a gym membership, and a son he gets to see on weekends. He can show up at any of those. Whichever one the PCs investigate will probably be it (or at the very least point to his other locations).

I like this method because it doesn't require a ton of work on your behalf. All you need is a list of clues. Improvise how the players find those clues.

Kiero
2011-05-16, 08:16 AM
Sounds to me like you haven't really got a method for breaking mysteries down into a format that makes clues obvious to you (and thus approachable for your players).

Take a murder, for example. There are a number of approaches you could take to solving what happened when you come upon a body. There's all the physical/forensic stuff around the scene. Clues that come from being observant and having a lab that can analyse anything connected with the crime.

There's the detective angle of looking for witnesses who might have seen/heard/smelled something relevant (and parsing through the stuff that is actually connected from the irrelevant stuff is a whole process itself).

There's investigating the history, character and recent interactions of the victim. Again there might be all sorts of false leads in there.

There's also the angle of unreliable witnesses and people with vested interests in either lying to you, or simply covering up the truth. Their motives can themselves spin off investigations of their own, to determine whether they're people of interest or not. Is this someone covering up their own complicity in the act, or just something embarrassing they were doing at the time?

That's without the office politics around bosses who want results, or particular witnesses/suspects who have to be handled with care because of their connections.

There's lots of play around with in an investigative scenario.

Siegel
2011-05-16, 08:30 AM
The problem with the two hours is that sometimes it's a bit of a drag because no one has any idea what to do and it's just crouching along and "nothing" happens this evening. I'm working on that but sometimes i come up with cool scenes but that scene doesn't help them one bit to get closer to the goal.

What i did to help them when they want to investigate is to ask "What do you want to do and what do you want to figure out?" In this way i can help them if they go in a wrong direction or i can get them clues on where or how they might find information.

Aidan305
2011-05-16, 08:39 AM
1. I'm constantly having problems with the investigation part of my games. Having the whole city to go looking for information seems to be to big for my players and they constantly lack ideas for finding clues.
The wizard in the party sometimes figures out ways to use his thaumaturgy to find clues but the ninja-detective-werecat character has problems using her skills to her advantage.
Another problem for me is that i'm bad at helping them figuring it out. How should i give them clues without going "yeah you just need to go to this place over there and you will find everything" - that would be boring.
I have no idea how they will try to find info so it's hard for me to plan that or to even know how they could get that info.
I have run good "hey, that's the problem" sessions and good action ones, it's that legwork and detective thing that troubles me.
Investigation missions are always tricky, partly because they rely so much on the players doing the sensible thing. I'd have a look through your players' character sheets to see what abilities they have available that can be used for investigating. I don't have my copy of the Dresden Files on me at the moment but skills your looking at are ones such as the following:

Knowledge skills: When the players come across a crime scene, have them roll suitable knowledge checks. For example:
"Harry Dresden is in a hotel room looking at a rather unpleasant scene. It seems that the hearts of the two murder victims have burst out of their chest. Harry rolls a knowledge check which tells him that the best way to do this would be thaumaturgy, but it would need to be an extremely powerful spell, which would need an appropriate power source; perhaps a leyline well."
Active abilities: You were-detective may have some sort of scent ability, if they decide to go fuzzy you might give them a description of the scene. "Billy Borden is in his apartment, trying to work out who might have kidnapped Georgia. To help gather clues his player decides to go fuzzy, and picks up the a faint smell of fish and salt-water" This scent can provide a useful little clue as to the identity of the perpetrator or, at the least, give the players an idea about where to look for more information. More might be able to be found out with appropriate knowledge checks.
Contacts: In the Harry Dresden books, the majority of the information he gets about what events are going down come from his contacts, whether it's White Court vampires, Murphy, or the Summer Lady. Encourage your players to make contacts, either in their downtime between arcs or during sessions. It'll give your players a wider variety of options and they'll think "Oh hey, that old brazilian professor was really helpful with all that information he had on Red Court vampires. Maybe he'll be able to help us out on this as well."

valadil
2011-05-16, 08:54 AM
The problem with the two hours is that sometimes it's a bit of a drag because no one has any idea what to do and it's just crouching along and "nothing" happens this evening. I'm working on that but sometimes i come up with cool scenes but that scene doesn't help them one bit to get closer to the goal.


Interrupt them. There should be other entities in the world that demand the players attention. They can be related to the plot at hand, they can be sidequests, or they can be red herrings. Write up a few interruptions. Bare minimum you should have one ready, but ideally you should have one per player. If the players look bored, put the interruption into the game. This is really easy in modern games, since all your players (barring the wizards of course) have cell phones.

Kiero
2011-05-16, 08:56 AM
The problem with the two hours is that sometimes it's a bit of a drag because no one has any idea what to do and it's just crouching along and "nothing" happens this evening. I'm working on that but sometimes i come up with cool scenes but that scene doesn't help them one bit to get closer to the goal.

What i did to help them when they want to investigate is to ask "What do you want to do and what do you want to figure out?" In this way i can help them if they go in a wrong direction or i can get them clues on where or how they might find information.

Unfortunately it sounds to me like a combination of players who aren't terribly pro-active, and don't have a clue about how to approach an investigation.

Do they watch cop shows at all? This sort of thing is routine; with a crime, a crime scene and an initial set of witnesses/suspects, this sort of thing should run itself.


Interrupt them. There should be other entities in the world that demand the players attention. They can be related to the plot at hand, they can be sidequests, or they can be red herrings. Write up a few interruptions. Bare minimum you should have one ready, but ideally you should have one per player. If the players look bored, put the interruption into the game. This is really easy in modern games, since all your players (barring the wizards of course) have cell phones.

This is a good point. When they're twiddling their thumbs doing nothing, that's when someone with authority harrasses them for results, or an informant drops them a breadcrumb. Or both, the person harrassing them has their own information sources and has picked up a new lead for them.

Lapak
2011-05-16, 10:41 AM
What sort of clues are you giving out? It's hard to give precise advice without an example, but here's something that helps in general.

There's an article out there that's currently eluding me, but I'm sure someone has a link. It explains the rule of threes, in which all your clues should come in groups of three. If the players are investigating a murder, you've got a weapon, a witness, and trace magical energies (since this is Dresden and there has to be some amount of arcane babble). Any one of those should be enough to advance the plot. You don't have to use those three either, they're just the first that came to me.

Figure out how those clues will tie into the investigation, but don't place them. Dresden is sandboxy. The players will look for clues in places you didn't expect. Yes, the witness has a favorite bar, but he also has an apartment, a day job, a gym membership, and a son he gets to see on weekends. He can show up at any of those. Whichever one the PCs investigate will probably be it (or at the very least point to his other locations).

I like this method because it doesn't require a ton of work on your behalf. All you need is a list of clues. Improvise how the players find those clues.You're talking about this article (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/three-clue-rule.html), which was the first thing to come to my mind, as well. Siegel, valadil has given you excellent advice on the investigation front, so I'm just going to provide the link mentioned and second the advice: create multiple clues, any of which is sufficient to point them the right way, and then place them wherever the PCs happen to go looking. They still have to find the clues at the location AND interpret them, so you're not stealing their chance to succeed, but it makes things move much, much faster than hoping they'll figure out exactly what you had in mind. The article mentions the most important thing to keep in mind: players are not Sherlock Holmes.

Ranos
2011-05-16, 11:00 AM
1)Declarations. People with high investigation and related skills can use declarations VERY easily. Remind the detective of that.
He doesn't need you to give him clues. He can MAKE the clues, and shape the adventure and the world around him at his whim.

2)Again, declarations. You don't have to plan for everything if your players are also backup DMs ready to pick up the slack. All you have to do is prepare the essentials of a plot, then go with the flow and let the players fill in the details as much as possible.

3)Well, it does sound a bit unsatisfying, but the first part can work out okay. Use the "you are going to get tied up and gagged" as an Aspect on the world for this session.
Anytime there's a way for them to get captured and fulfill the "prophecy", compel them to do so. You may just end up with situations you hadn't planned out at all, like the characters being tied up actually being decoys, but that's the beauty of player intervention. If you absolutely cannot manage to recreate the scene, well, they've escaped their fate this day, but the aspect remains. Maybe they'll get captured in a month ? Next year ?

4)When things get boring, compelling an aspect can be a good idea. Relationship based aspects (friends, ennemies, etc) are very good for that. Not necessarily something related to the investigation, but something of a B-plot. Unless the investigation invites itself - leave the winter sorcerer alone for too long, and he might just come get his revenge at the worst of times.