Elvenoutrider
2013-06-23, 01:48 PM
Before I begin, please let me start with who I am. I am a college student who has been gaming since I was a freshmen in high school. I am familiar with d&d 3.5, pathfinder, gurps, all flesh must be eaten, deadlands, World of darkness, d20 modern, and pokemon tabletop adventure. the vast majority of my gaming has used pathfinder and gurps. I decided to post this this morning because I wanted to share my experience and bounce my opinions off of others in an effort to put together an advice thread for dms. I am open to criticism and would love to see how my advice compares to those who choose to reply. Anyways there's a lot here so pull up a chair, ur going to be here for a little bit.
1) You are not lovecraft/Tolkien/rowling etc. You do not have to be to be a good gm:
One problem I would run into, and still do, is I watch an episode of my favorite TV show, or a great movie, or I play through one of my favorite video games again for inspiration, and find myself blown away by what they came up with and realize that I could never come up with something so amazing by my next gaming session. The thing that it took me a while to realize is that I didn’t have to. In my experience players surprise me with the low standards they have for what they consider a good story. One of the best sessions I ever had was my players waking up in a boarded up tavern surrounded by mindless undead. I had no idea where I was going with it, and an explanation was never given but they still look fondly on it. As long as the players are actively involved in some form of problem solving they will be having fun. Don’t be too critical of yourself. Your players will probably enjoy your game no matter how one dimensional your plot is. Keep plugging away at it you will get better.
2) Clichés are common because they are fun. Don’t be afraid to use them.
The king corrupted by his closest adviser, the dragon sitting on a pile of gold at the end of a dungeon, the princess kidnapped by monsters; these are all very common tropes in fantasy and even outside the genre, and because they are considered too common, most gms will not use them. Because many gms try so hard to avoid them I have noticed that some players consider it refreshing to see these things. The scene of bringing the king to his senses and watching his guards haul off the adviser to the dungeons makes for an amazing scene. A proper dragon encounter can last hours and never get boring. The princess grateful at her rescue telling the adventurers she will spread word of her deeds are all very rewarding. For a new player writing their first adventure don’t be afraid to embrace the tropes. They are popular for a reason.
3) Following the last piece of advice, avoid the urge to do something very new for your first adventure. Stick to what is familiar at first.
For my first adventure I decided that my group needed a break from fantasy, so I looked through my friend’s bookshelf and noticed something that looked like fin – a copy of d20 modern. Now many people have offered many conflicting opinions on the system. IM just going to go right out and say I hate it. The system is broken in the extreme, but in a way that makes the game less fun for players. The majority of the internet seems to agree with my opinion judging from the many threads on many sites for how to fix the system. I don’t want to turn this into an argument over which systems are the best. My experiences with this one were negative. I wrote a story that my players were interested in. I did a lot of things right, but my unfamiliarity with the system and the broken rules caused my pcs to wind up with more equipment than they could ever run out of and their character’s abilities were more powerful than even enemies at 6+ their cr. I was completely overwhelmed and failed miserably. Now building on the first it is interesting to note that my pcs still said they had fun. I was still too afraid to run a game for several months after.
OK so after that rant what it boils down to is for my first game I tried a completely new story, with a completely unfamiliar system, with a few unfamiliar players, and if failed. So what should you do? Looking back my advice for new players is to run a prewritten module for your first game. This will help flush out rules you are unfamiliar with, and identify to you which players may be problems in the future and give you an idea of some of your weaknesses as a gm.
For your second game, go back to your inspirations. Watch an episode of your favorite show, play through some of your favorite levels of one of your favorite video games. Now look at each and ask “how could I turn this into an adventure?” The story will probably boil down to characters go here, they are presented with a problem. They have to go to some place and do something to fix the problem. Then something gets in the way. Rinse and repeat. Now take this adventure and replace the characters with your pcs, replace their setting with yours, and replace their obstacles with a puzzle or monster encounter of your own, and their goal with one that fits your game and you have your story. I find myself doing this with adventures from mass effect, battlestar galactica, star trek, and bioshock nowadays.
4) Your first instinct when your pcs present you with a request or a plan should be to say yes, unless the idea would obviously destroy your adventure, or be completely unreasonable.
Your pcs are going to do it at some point – one of them is going to think or a brilliant or ridiculous way to trivialize an encounter that you spent hours planning. For some examples from my life, in one instance when I was a new gm, I had a climactic rooftop battle, and then discovered that my bbeg was within the barbarian’s charge range. He ran in and bullrushed my spellcaster off the roof in the first round of combat, drastically reducing the cr of the encounter down to his minions. In another case, my players grappled a spellcasting undead, threw him in a coffin, chained it shut, and threw it in the ocean. In a third case, they were sneaking through a guard barracks, cast silence, and used the time to nail all of the doors shut while no one could hear them. I could go on and on. One of your biggest challenges as a dm is going to be to let this go and let the players have their way. This sort of thing is really only an issue if it happens more than once an adventure. Your players will never have more fun in an adventure than when they are using some truly silly plan to completely ruin your encounter. They will talk forever with their other gaming friends about how their silly plan made the gm take a 20 minute break to leave the room to figure out how to pick up the pieces of his adventure. Telling them it doesn’t work will only make them resent you as a gm and will significantly lower the fun of the night. Try to keep in mind the bbeg can always have a back up plan. He can have allies that can break him out of prison, he can have a magic device set to resurrect him after this encounter, that he was of course only using to guage the pc’s strength. He could have a cousin who is out to avenge his death, or a superior who can call in someone more competent to take his place. If the pcs get ahold of something they shouldn’t maybe there is something else out there. If the pcs catch the murderer two sessions to early, maybe he inspired a copycat or maybe it was the weekend butler who did it. You have backup options when you are in full control of the world. If you really find yourself in a situation where you cannot continue if the players perform this action, be honest with them. Tell them openly that they have outsmarted you, give them extra xp for their creativity, but tell them that if they do this the adventure will end. It isn’t ideal, but hey, they earned it.
5) If you must have the pcs be captured, there is a good way to do it and the bad way. Either way the pcs will resent it so avoid this if you can.
I have a running count of how many times I have seen players and dms complaining about being captured or their pcs refusing to be captured and the frustrations and arguments that result. It is up to 14 since I started counting. The players are used to their characters succeeding in most things that aren’t horror games. They also perceive themselves to have worked very hard to level up their characters and to get their equipment. Them being captured means these things that they have worked for will be taken from them and they will be suboptimal. They will fight this blood tooth and nail to prevent this. Players are also very good at escaping these things – between their efforts to raise their saves, their ability to conceal weapons, their spell lists, and the fact that falling damage doesn’t do much in most settings means the pcs will have ample opportunity to escape from their decidedly superior attackers. If you do manage to capture them you must give them notice that they will get their equipment back or they will resent it. It kills the mood of a session. Now if you must capture your pcs there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Simply presenting the pcs with an overwhelming force is the wrong way. The pcs are used to being successful and will assume this is something they can overcome or run from and no matter how good you are, the pcs will find a way out of it. It is a difficult skill to translate enemy cr into descriptions. I once described a collosal monster rampaging through a city wrecking houses and devouring guards left and right and my 2nd level party’s reaction was “wow we need to stop that right now, lets go shove our pointy metal bits into it while the wizard casts magic missile a few times.” Now after several rounds of trial and error I believe I have discovered a right way to do it:
Debuffs or negotiation: the first option is do not give the pcs the ability to fight back. Cast hold person on the fighter, immobilize the rogue, hit the wizard with strength reducing poison, drop them into a pit trap, tear gas or flashbang them, trap them in a net. Put them in a position where they are obviously at a disadvantage. It is surprising how much more effective this is than presenting them with an obviously more powerful opponent.
The second method is to ask the pcs to surrender and give them a reason to. The negotiator should be sympathetic, like a police negotiation, tell the pcs they have a chance to clear their names. Role play it out. If playing good cop doesn’t work tell them they have a favorite npc or dependent and you will feed them to a pack of dogs if they don’t come out with their hands presented. Conclusion: if you must capture your pcs use debuff bombs or role play, as a plan b just level with them and tell them for the next part their pcs will be captured but you as gm will make sure they get their stuff back. Make sure you follow through with this promise.
6) When running a horror game, do your homework beforehand and don’t be disappointed if your players are not obviously effected. People react to fear and discomfort in different ways, some do it by cracking jokes. When in doubt, see rule number 1.
Horror may be the most difficult type of game to run. It is the hardest emotion to invoke in players. Before you decide to run a horror game, find a sourcebook on it. Both 3.5 heroes of horror and the gurps guides to horror are great supplements to anyone running any system. All flesh must be eaten also provides great advice. When writing it, try to get yourself into the mood. Lock yourself in a dark basement with only a few low wattage lights on, watch something scary, read some conspiracy theorist pages, reread slenderman’s many fan materials. Youtube has great short creepy videos for getting yourself in the mood. Once appropriately jumpy, start writing. For advice on running horror, try finding a thread on this subject. Two things I have used are dimming the lights, playing sound effects off my computer (you would be surprised at the variety), and the jenga tower of sanity. Every time your pcs see or experience something scary have them pull out and stack a jenga tile. Tell them when the tower falls something horrible will happen. What happens when or if the tower falls is up to you, but your players will be fixated on that tower and nervous whenever someone goes to move a piece.
7) Gming skills atrophy if not used – keep up with your materials. Keep in mind one bad session does not a bad gm make. Games can also fail for reasons that are entirely beyond your control.
This one is pretty self explanatory. If you havn’t gmed in a while your going to have to prepare extra hard for your next adventure. Don’t forget to take some time as a player, it helps you get in their shoes. If you have a bad session don’t be too hard on yourself, it happens to everyone. Games can fail for reasons that are entirely not your fault. I had one adventure at my school where I thought things were going well. Then half my players stopped coming and we could never find out why. I found out months later that it was due to interclub drama involving one person spreading an STI to 6 different people and the resulting fallout from this. Sometimes players might like your gming style but hate the system you are running. Not all systems are created equally. I can not reiterate this enough. Failure happens.
8) Best description I have ever found for a gm is this: “your job as Gm is not to kill the players, your job is to make sure that by the end of the adventure they are out of resources and on their last legs. Get them as close to this point as possible while making sure that everyone is having fun. A character dying is an unfortunate by product of this goal
I cant remember who told me this but I have definitely run my adventures by this philosophy. For some games there may be a very different goal but this seems to eb the case for most games I run. After each encounter in the adventure you need to take a few moments to analyze how much the pcs have used in each encounter before and how much they have left. This takes practice and might require you to be able to upgrade or downgrade your encounters on the fly. Keep in mind that your villains don’t always want to kill the players – a monster might want to drag them back to their nist, a bandit might want information. Maybe they just aren’t the kind of psychopaths who are ok with murdering people and will feel satisfied knocking the pcs out or deterring them. Accidental crits happen. Keep in mind you are entitled to hide your rolls from the pcs if you see fit. Build yourself a dm screen with campaign notes to hide your rolls behind.
9) Use props
Invest in a good map. If you are technically inclined, pick up maptools and an hdmi chord and display the map on your tv. Your players will be impressed. Play sound bytes, use mood music, get a chalkboard or dry erase board for keeping track of initiative. Use timers to put the pcs on edge. Pull players out of the room when they fail saves. Make players hide under the table when they are invisible or unconscious. The dmgs have great advice on how to do this. Use it to the greatest amount you can.
10) Get someone to write your campaigns alongside you
Keep in mind that some of the greatest video games, movies, books and tv shows were put together by a team of writers and editors. Two people bouncing ideas off each other will make beautiful things happen. Give it a shot. Remember there are no bad ideas when your brainstorming.
I am sure that several of the players here will have had more experience than me and will have very different opinions. I welcome criticism and more advice and I hope this thread will make everyone who reads through it a better gm. I may take some time between posts so I can respond to questions or comments in bulk.
1) You are not lovecraft/Tolkien/rowling etc. You do not have to be to be a good gm:
One problem I would run into, and still do, is I watch an episode of my favorite TV show, or a great movie, or I play through one of my favorite video games again for inspiration, and find myself blown away by what they came up with and realize that I could never come up with something so amazing by my next gaming session. The thing that it took me a while to realize is that I didn’t have to. In my experience players surprise me with the low standards they have for what they consider a good story. One of the best sessions I ever had was my players waking up in a boarded up tavern surrounded by mindless undead. I had no idea where I was going with it, and an explanation was never given but they still look fondly on it. As long as the players are actively involved in some form of problem solving they will be having fun. Don’t be too critical of yourself. Your players will probably enjoy your game no matter how one dimensional your plot is. Keep plugging away at it you will get better.
2) Clichés are common because they are fun. Don’t be afraid to use them.
The king corrupted by his closest adviser, the dragon sitting on a pile of gold at the end of a dungeon, the princess kidnapped by monsters; these are all very common tropes in fantasy and even outside the genre, and because they are considered too common, most gms will not use them. Because many gms try so hard to avoid them I have noticed that some players consider it refreshing to see these things. The scene of bringing the king to his senses and watching his guards haul off the adviser to the dungeons makes for an amazing scene. A proper dragon encounter can last hours and never get boring. The princess grateful at her rescue telling the adventurers she will spread word of her deeds are all very rewarding. For a new player writing their first adventure don’t be afraid to embrace the tropes. They are popular for a reason.
3) Following the last piece of advice, avoid the urge to do something very new for your first adventure. Stick to what is familiar at first.
For my first adventure I decided that my group needed a break from fantasy, so I looked through my friend’s bookshelf and noticed something that looked like fin – a copy of d20 modern. Now many people have offered many conflicting opinions on the system. IM just going to go right out and say I hate it. The system is broken in the extreme, but in a way that makes the game less fun for players. The majority of the internet seems to agree with my opinion judging from the many threads on many sites for how to fix the system. I don’t want to turn this into an argument over which systems are the best. My experiences with this one were negative. I wrote a story that my players were interested in. I did a lot of things right, but my unfamiliarity with the system and the broken rules caused my pcs to wind up with more equipment than they could ever run out of and their character’s abilities were more powerful than even enemies at 6+ their cr. I was completely overwhelmed and failed miserably. Now building on the first it is interesting to note that my pcs still said they had fun. I was still too afraid to run a game for several months after.
OK so after that rant what it boils down to is for my first game I tried a completely new story, with a completely unfamiliar system, with a few unfamiliar players, and if failed. So what should you do? Looking back my advice for new players is to run a prewritten module for your first game. This will help flush out rules you are unfamiliar with, and identify to you which players may be problems in the future and give you an idea of some of your weaknesses as a gm.
For your second game, go back to your inspirations. Watch an episode of your favorite show, play through some of your favorite levels of one of your favorite video games. Now look at each and ask “how could I turn this into an adventure?” The story will probably boil down to characters go here, they are presented with a problem. They have to go to some place and do something to fix the problem. Then something gets in the way. Rinse and repeat. Now take this adventure and replace the characters with your pcs, replace their setting with yours, and replace their obstacles with a puzzle or monster encounter of your own, and their goal with one that fits your game and you have your story. I find myself doing this with adventures from mass effect, battlestar galactica, star trek, and bioshock nowadays.
4) Your first instinct when your pcs present you with a request or a plan should be to say yes, unless the idea would obviously destroy your adventure, or be completely unreasonable.
Your pcs are going to do it at some point – one of them is going to think or a brilliant or ridiculous way to trivialize an encounter that you spent hours planning. For some examples from my life, in one instance when I was a new gm, I had a climactic rooftop battle, and then discovered that my bbeg was within the barbarian’s charge range. He ran in and bullrushed my spellcaster off the roof in the first round of combat, drastically reducing the cr of the encounter down to his minions. In another case, my players grappled a spellcasting undead, threw him in a coffin, chained it shut, and threw it in the ocean. In a third case, they were sneaking through a guard barracks, cast silence, and used the time to nail all of the doors shut while no one could hear them. I could go on and on. One of your biggest challenges as a dm is going to be to let this go and let the players have their way. This sort of thing is really only an issue if it happens more than once an adventure. Your players will never have more fun in an adventure than when they are using some truly silly plan to completely ruin your encounter. They will talk forever with their other gaming friends about how their silly plan made the gm take a 20 minute break to leave the room to figure out how to pick up the pieces of his adventure. Telling them it doesn’t work will only make them resent you as a gm and will significantly lower the fun of the night. Try to keep in mind the bbeg can always have a back up plan. He can have allies that can break him out of prison, he can have a magic device set to resurrect him after this encounter, that he was of course only using to guage the pc’s strength. He could have a cousin who is out to avenge his death, or a superior who can call in someone more competent to take his place. If the pcs get ahold of something they shouldn’t maybe there is something else out there. If the pcs catch the murderer two sessions to early, maybe he inspired a copycat or maybe it was the weekend butler who did it. You have backup options when you are in full control of the world. If you really find yourself in a situation where you cannot continue if the players perform this action, be honest with them. Tell them openly that they have outsmarted you, give them extra xp for their creativity, but tell them that if they do this the adventure will end. It isn’t ideal, but hey, they earned it.
5) If you must have the pcs be captured, there is a good way to do it and the bad way. Either way the pcs will resent it so avoid this if you can.
I have a running count of how many times I have seen players and dms complaining about being captured or their pcs refusing to be captured and the frustrations and arguments that result. It is up to 14 since I started counting. The players are used to their characters succeeding in most things that aren’t horror games. They also perceive themselves to have worked very hard to level up their characters and to get their equipment. Them being captured means these things that they have worked for will be taken from them and they will be suboptimal. They will fight this blood tooth and nail to prevent this. Players are also very good at escaping these things – between their efforts to raise their saves, their ability to conceal weapons, their spell lists, and the fact that falling damage doesn’t do much in most settings means the pcs will have ample opportunity to escape from their decidedly superior attackers. If you do manage to capture them you must give them notice that they will get their equipment back or they will resent it. It kills the mood of a session. Now if you must capture your pcs there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Simply presenting the pcs with an overwhelming force is the wrong way. The pcs are used to being successful and will assume this is something they can overcome or run from and no matter how good you are, the pcs will find a way out of it. It is a difficult skill to translate enemy cr into descriptions. I once described a collosal monster rampaging through a city wrecking houses and devouring guards left and right and my 2nd level party’s reaction was “wow we need to stop that right now, lets go shove our pointy metal bits into it while the wizard casts magic missile a few times.” Now after several rounds of trial and error I believe I have discovered a right way to do it:
Debuffs or negotiation: the first option is do not give the pcs the ability to fight back. Cast hold person on the fighter, immobilize the rogue, hit the wizard with strength reducing poison, drop them into a pit trap, tear gas or flashbang them, trap them in a net. Put them in a position where they are obviously at a disadvantage. It is surprising how much more effective this is than presenting them with an obviously more powerful opponent.
The second method is to ask the pcs to surrender and give them a reason to. The negotiator should be sympathetic, like a police negotiation, tell the pcs they have a chance to clear their names. Role play it out. If playing good cop doesn’t work tell them they have a favorite npc or dependent and you will feed them to a pack of dogs if they don’t come out with their hands presented. Conclusion: if you must capture your pcs use debuff bombs or role play, as a plan b just level with them and tell them for the next part their pcs will be captured but you as gm will make sure they get their stuff back. Make sure you follow through with this promise.
6) When running a horror game, do your homework beforehand and don’t be disappointed if your players are not obviously effected. People react to fear and discomfort in different ways, some do it by cracking jokes. When in doubt, see rule number 1.
Horror may be the most difficult type of game to run. It is the hardest emotion to invoke in players. Before you decide to run a horror game, find a sourcebook on it. Both 3.5 heroes of horror and the gurps guides to horror are great supplements to anyone running any system. All flesh must be eaten also provides great advice. When writing it, try to get yourself into the mood. Lock yourself in a dark basement with only a few low wattage lights on, watch something scary, read some conspiracy theorist pages, reread slenderman’s many fan materials. Youtube has great short creepy videos for getting yourself in the mood. Once appropriately jumpy, start writing. For advice on running horror, try finding a thread on this subject. Two things I have used are dimming the lights, playing sound effects off my computer (you would be surprised at the variety), and the jenga tower of sanity. Every time your pcs see or experience something scary have them pull out and stack a jenga tile. Tell them when the tower falls something horrible will happen. What happens when or if the tower falls is up to you, but your players will be fixated on that tower and nervous whenever someone goes to move a piece.
7) Gming skills atrophy if not used – keep up with your materials. Keep in mind one bad session does not a bad gm make. Games can also fail for reasons that are entirely beyond your control.
This one is pretty self explanatory. If you havn’t gmed in a while your going to have to prepare extra hard for your next adventure. Don’t forget to take some time as a player, it helps you get in their shoes. If you have a bad session don’t be too hard on yourself, it happens to everyone. Games can fail for reasons that are entirely not your fault. I had one adventure at my school where I thought things were going well. Then half my players stopped coming and we could never find out why. I found out months later that it was due to interclub drama involving one person spreading an STI to 6 different people and the resulting fallout from this. Sometimes players might like your gming style but hate the system you are running. Not all systems are created equally. I can not reiterate this enough. Failure happens.
8) Best description I have ever found for a gm is this: “your job as Gm is not to kill the players, your job is to make sure that by the end of the adventure they are out of resources and on their last legs. Get them as close to this point as possible while making sure that everyone is having fun. A character dying is an unfortunate by product of this goal
I cant remember who told me this but I have definitely run my adventures by this philosophy. For some games there may be a very different goal but this seems to eb the case for most games I run. After each encounter in the adventure you need to take a few moments to analyze how much the pcs have used in each encounter before and how much they have left. This takes practice and might require you to be able to upgrade or downgrade your encounters on the fly. Keep in mind that your villains don’t always want to kill the players – a monster might want to drag them back to their nist, a bandit might want information. Maybe they just aren’t the kind of psychopaths who are ok with murdering people and will feel satisfied knocking the pcs out or deterring them. Accidental crits happen. Keep in mind you are entitled to hide your rolls from the pcs if you see fit. Build yourself a dm screen with campaign notes to hide your rolls behind.
9) Use props
Invest in a good map. If you are technically inclined, pick up maptools and an hdmi chord and display the map on your tv. Your players will be impressed. Play sound bytes, use mood music, get a chalkboard or dry erase board for keeping track of initiative. Use timers to put the pcs on edge. Pull players out of the room when they fail saves. Make players hide under the table when they are invisible or unconscious. The dmgs have great advice on how to do this. Use it to the greatest amount you can.
10) Get someone to write your campaigns alongside you
Keep in mind that some of the greatest video games, movies, books and tv shows were put together by a team of writers and editors. Two people bouncing ideas off each other will make beautiful things happen. Give it a shot. Remember there are no bad ideas when your brainstorming.
I am sure that several of the players here will have had more experience than me and will have very different opinions. I welcome criticism and more advice and I hope this thread will make everyone who reads through it a better gm. I may take some time between posts so I can respond to questions or comments in bulk.