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View Full Version : What do I need to do as a GM?



Geordnet
2013-09-17, 09:20 PM
I know about needing to know the rules, the world, the NPCs, et cetera; what I want to know is more nuanced.

(For future reference, I intend to run with GURPS for its versatility. I know of no other system that would be able to handle the Low Fantasy/Hard Sci-Fi/High Adventure-with-Post-Apocalyptic/Steampunk/Horror-elements setting I'm envisioning...)


I've been wanting to do a campaign set in a homebrewed inter-dimensional world-hopping setting of mine. The premise is that the PCs are lost in the multiverse, and have to keep moving with little/no control over where they go next. (Except OOC, perhaps...) Each world is effectively one adventure, with sharp discontinuities between them creating a very episodic format.

There's no real "plot" to it, by which I mean these worlds would only be planned one or two adventures in advance. (And I definitely would prefer to use "situational" planning for them, as well.)

The two "themes" I wanted to focus on are exploration and survival. But how do I set up situations to encourage them? I can't always dump the party in a hostile situation, can I? (Oh, I should mention that I want combat to be a last resort/usually a bad idea.) And as for encouraging exploration... I don't even know where to start.


Also, how should I build the "pilot" (introduction) adventure(s)? What concepts and aspects of the campaign/setting are the most important to introduce, and how might I so do?

Dirtyoldguy366
2013-09-17, 10:25 PM
Give your multiverse some hidden architecture for the players to uncover. A common thread they might be able to follow.

Maybe your PC's just want to get home? Inhospitable environments, locations, and the such. Places that seem great on the surface until they dig a little deeper to discover something is amiss.

RochtheCrusher
2013-09-17, 10:44 PM
Well, all my GURPS experience comes from listening to a podcast, so my advice is unlikely to be system specific.

When trying to emphasize survival and de-emphasize combat, I would start with a simple rule: "You can't take it with you." In each reality, only the PC's physical bodies and their original gear shifts with them... they might have pocketknives, perhaps, but nothing from the land of overpowered tech can come with them.

This shifts advancement solidly towards getting a decent meal ASAP, then aquiring knowledge and skills. Figuring out how to use the alien tech or how to sneak past the guards is king, and that +2 Steampunk battleaxe is mostly a waste of time.

Secondly, I'd make about half the worlds barren and devoid of life. This emphasizes getting that meal because, between sessions, you may spend 48 hours in a desert, and woe be unto you if you aren't ready to outrun a T-Rex after that.

Think Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy... you've got your towel, a spoon, and what you know, and you'd better be able to make it work tomorrow or the next time you shift you'll be shifting dead.

It might also be good to vary the timing of jumps... the first time they sit in a cave for a week waiting for the next jump will cure them of the "wait it out" mentality. Also, if a few items are caught up in the world-shifting field and are available to them but in different places every time (say, there's a replicator the size of a fridge but this time it's at the bottom of the canyon) then that could be interesting. Especially if one of those machines could fix this mess, if they can figure out how to use it.

If their passage somehow breaks the realities they go to, studying how and where could help them fix the hops. The need to find these places first also helps encourage exploration.

PCs should probably stick together when they port for reasons of OOC time, but don't be afraid to split one off if it makes things more interesting.

As for the pilot... well, it should explain why this is happening. End it in their home world for the last time, with them trying to fix some machine/crystal thingy which explodes in their face. For bonus points, start them in a high magic world and dump them in a tech multiverse, so they're really out of place when they get there... obviously, their magical abilities should not function in tech worlds, or only selectively.

If they really love something at any point, consider attuning it to the hops so it can show up randomly with them if they look for it. A fellow traveller as lost/jaded as they might be fun to meet every few hops.

Hope some of that helps. Good luck!

Slylizard
2013-09-18, 12:15 AM
My only advice would be to watch some of Sliders... an old alternate world hopping TV show. It constantly deals with the "we're in a new world, what now" question.

Trekkin
2013-09-18, 12:33 AM
Make them some sort of journalists, maybe.

It would be very dependent on the group to work, but you could put together an overarching Excuse Plot around them being put in interesting situations and having them put a story together. Maybe that's the end of each episode: they put together a (brief) synopsis complete with whatever media they've gathered, and that partially determines their XP reward. That way, their editor can give them enough data to engage them in the universe and give them somewhere to start.

Vitruviansquid
2013-09-18, 02:34 AM
In my experience, the easiest way to get players to cooperate with your campaign plan is to tell them what it is. If you want to railroad your players, tell them you fully intend to railroad them. If you want your players to take the initiative and choose what to do, tell them. Having a good set of players can really be as simple as being upfront and honest about your campaign.

As for your specific themes of exploration and survival, the number one most important thing you have to do is make sure you have rules and mechanics that back up those themes. If your game of choice does not have already have mechanics addressing it, homebrew something up, because if you're not using rules to express your world, you might as well be doing a freeform roleplay.

Now, the way I would execute the exploration element is to structure most of your sessions as a sandbox. Try not to railroad your players at all, except to hustle them from one world to another at the end of each session. During the sessions, you want to craft a couple of places that your players can opt to explore. Make them interesting, make them unique, make them useful, but most importantly make them optional and make sure your players can't explore them all. This way, the choice of where they will go becomes interesting for the players, and their own desire to get the best loot, find the most information, or whatever else, will drive their exploration.

As for the survival element, I generally think of survival as resource management. Make the management of resources a very very interesting metagame if you can. Try to find a fun and efficient way to track things like water, food, ammunition, fuel, and whatever else you can imagine the players running into trouble by running short of. Now, I like to somewhat randomize the rate at which all of these things deplete to give players a sense of thrill and crisis when they get low on resources, but you may want to consider other mechanics, as long as they reinforce player choice. For instance, you could limit player resources but allow them to choose what they get, or you could enforce a low limit on how much resources the players can carry to ensure they always feel like they're running out. Above all, make sure it is the players who choose when they run low on a certain resource.

Yora
2013-09-18, 03:20 AM
I think the most important thing would be that the players actually want to explore the planes.
If they don't, then pretty much no amount of baiting will get them to take initiative.

Geordnet
2013-09-18, 10:04 AM
Thanks to all for the feedback. (Keep it coming! It really helps!)


From your advice, it seems like the #1 important thing to do is to get the players' OOC cooperation. Because with it, the players themselves will provide reasons to drive the campaign forwards; without it, nothing I can do in-game will make it mutually enjoyable.

The second thing was focusing on the environment itself as opposing the players. I hadn't thought of this, but now it seems like something I could very easily work in to my ideas. So, thanks. :smallbiggrin:


What if I wanted to do something where the PCs were trying to survive powers greater than theirs? Like being caught in the middle of a warzone? An "ants in the playground of giants, trying to avoid getting stepped on" sort of thing?

BWR
2013-09-18, 10:11 AM
If you don't mind shelling out for a book, Pathfinder's "Game Mastery Guide" has tons of practical information about all aspects of DMing, especially useful for new DMs, but also some good stuff for those with a few games under their belt.

It's mostly geared towards D&D/PF, but a lot of it is universal.

Preparing games, inter-player conflict, story vs. mechanics, running sessions, how to build adventures, how to build campaigns, how to create campaign worlds, story seeds, tables full of random flavor for when you need something fast, and more: just about everything you could want to know is at least mentioned.

Jay R
2013-09-18, 11:23 AM
They need to find a specific place or thing in each world to be able to change dimensions.

"OK, we're here. Is this home?"

"Nope - look, there are talking animals. This is Narnia."

"Then let's start looking for the temple of the Great God Mota, so we can go to another world."

Either that, or there is a multi-piece artifact, hidden on multiple worlds, that they need get home (or to slay the evil dimension-hopping space walrus, with photon flippers or something).

[I've never referred to C.S. Lewis, Robert Heinlein, and Berke Breathed in the same post before]

Trekkin
2013-09-18, 03:44 PM
What if I wanted to do something where the PCs were trying to survive powers greater than theirs? Like being caught in the middle of a warzone? An "ants in the playground of giants, trying to avoid getting stepped on" sort of thing?

I've had mixed experiences with that type of setup. :smalltongue:

A war could work, but I worry that your players might semi-inadvertently put themselves in a position where violence becomes more than the last resort you want it to be. Perhaps some sort of natural disaster might better suit exploration and survival?

Geordnet
2013-09-18, 06:37 PM
I've had mixed experiences with that type of setup. :smalltongue:
Heh, I think know exactly what you're talking about...

(Ironically, your SUE Files more or less directly inspired the setting's creation myth:)
It was created as the playground of mad gods, but they didn't understand their creation and lost control/ragequit when it rebelled.


A war could work, but I worry that your players might semi-inadvertently put themselves in a position where violence becomes more than the last resort you want it to be.
I'm perfectly fine with that, as long as violence doesn't become a permanent first resort. (I may have overstated my position against it somewhat.) In fact, might it not make for a refreshing change of pace, for once?


And natural disasters (impending, recent, and ongoing upon arrival) certainly should be a staple premise, regardless. :smallwink:

Matre
2013-09-18, 06:57 PM
I'm perfectly fine with that, as long as violence doesn't become a permanent first resort. (I may have overstated my position against it somewhat.) In fact, might it not make for a refreshing change of pace, for once?


And natural disasters (impending, recent, and ongoing upon arrival) certainly should be a staple premise, regardless. :smallwink:

If you don't want your players to want to prioritize combat, a pretty good way to do that is to make prioritizing combat really unappealing. If combat situations tend to go terribly and people end up dying easily, it's going to set a tone for the game that makes people feel much less gung-ho about trying to engage in those sorts of activities.

Alternatively, if you make your players face situations that they CLEARLY can't handle through combat, you also manage to sidestep combat as the "go to" response to a situation. If two mountains sprout legs and start beating the crap out of each other, as a PC, I'm not going to say "Oh yeah, gonna get me some mountain pants!", I'm going to say "OMG I need to find cover or I'm going to get crushed!"

I think all of this is pretty dependent on your players, regardless. While I'm perfectly willing to play characters that try to sidestep dangerous situations because I feel like it's in-character to do so, I've had plenty of people in my campaigns that see a creature and just assume that it has to die. Point is, no two players are the same, and you're going to have to tailor your content to the group you're DMing for.

I think that Vitruviansquid pretty much nailed it, myself, especially in regards to talking with your players about the type of game it is, and making sure that there is an understanding.

Anxe
2013-09-18, 07:01 PM
The Pendragon series is what world-hopping adventures always reminded me of. Pendragon always had to find Saint Dane in the new world he hopped to. Maybe they are following an evil shape-shifting villain through the multiverse? They have to explore to find him in the new world.

veti
2013-09-18, 07:27 PM
Sounds like what you need is a McGuffin. Something (or someone) the players want/need to find, but have no real idea where it is or how to start looking.

So they'll maybe want to find someone who can tell them how to work out questions like that. Then they can start asking the questions themselves. And be prepared for your players to forget about it completely, possibly for several sessions at a stretch, when they find something else to be interested in.

If the McGuffin is sufficiently compelling, you should be able to string that along for a loooong time.

Madcrafter
2013-09-20, 12:44 PM
Maybe the PCs start in their own world, messing with an unknown artifact. It explodes, and bits get stuck in different spheres of the multiverse. These pieces will cause some sort of calamity, either local or multiverse spanning, if not retrieved and put back together. Luckily, thy all end up in some "significant" place in each world which the players have to track down and put them back together with the piece they have, which shunts them to the next world. The time limit adds some urgency, which you can always calm by having a slow time world or the like.

Actually this sounds really fun. Maybe I'll try to run this game. GURPS is definitely the system for it.

TriForce
2013-09-20, 01:37 PM
Rule nr 1 of being a GM: the players will always ALWAYS do something you didnt expect. if you didnt tell them you want the campaign to focus on exploration and getting to new worlds for example, they could decide to settle in the first world they encounter, waiting for something to happen :P
it depends on your players ofc, but some are really passive and need not so subtle hint on what to do, while others are really pro-active but choose to charge head first into situations you yourself never expected. my advice for those situations would be to just improvise and humor the characters idea at the least, see where THEY take the plot of the story :P






What if I wanted to do something where the PCs were trying to survive powers greater than theirs? Like being caught in the middle of a warzone? An "ants in the playground of giants, trying to avoid getting stepped on" sort of thing?

id say you need to make it absolutly clear that they are in over their heads. if you dont, they might actually try to fight whatever they are getting into

(as a sidenote, your players might wanna join one of the armies they encounter, seen it happen before)

Honest Tiefling
2013-09-20, 01:41 PM
Have you tried out and out bribery? If there is something similar in GURPS to flaws/traits, tell your players that if they work their backstory into the framework of the setting, they get some or more of them. You might ask that the backstory contains a hook you can work with, even.

Tell people about the low-combat thing before someone tries to make Rick, Super-Solider extraordinaire, who never met a problem (And a few things that technically speaking, weren't problems) he couldn't explode.