GMs: What are your trademarks?

[Isamu Dyson]

Myself, I like having the PCs start the adventure either on a vehicle, as prisoners, or both (prisoners escorted to a destination by vehicle).

[TheTrueMooseman]

There is ALWAYS a conspiracy, there is ALWAYS a murder-mystery and there is ALWAYS a bad guy hiding in plain sight/ masquerading as a good guy. Whether these are the focus of the story is neither here nor there .

[Jaycemonde]

Big, impressive fortress-cities, the more foreboding and shrouded in ancient history the better.

[Equinox]

There's a kingdom, and a king. The king's rule is a bit shaky, and there are other factions vying for the throne - either immediately, or setting themselves up as successors.

[Ceiling_Squid]

Otherworldly dimensions that intersect almost seamlessly with reality. The party could be travelling deep into an ancient wood, or picking their way through a crumbling manor on a foreboding moor, or journeying into the depths of a demon cult's subterranean temple. If they aren't paying attention, they could take a wrong turn straight into a space where the laws of reality as they know them do not entirely apply. Slipping between the cracks into another plane.

I'm a big fan of Eldritch Locations.

[The Dark Fiddler]

I like having powerful otherworldly beings as either the antagonist or the plot catalyst, with ambiguity as to whether they're gods or demons or what.

I blame Shin Megami Tensei.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Cinematic action. There are big, world-shaking events, with the players standing square against the chaos. There will be a lot of fighting, the occasional investigation, and a fairly direct (if wide and branching) path through the campaign.

[Malimar]

All my major villains are affable. Even the one demon who was kind of a dismissive jerk was still pretty friendly about it.

[Delvin Darkwood]

A trademark philosophy of mine: You are free to do take any action fitting of your character, and every action has a consequence. And stupid actions earn stupid consequences.

[Morithias]

Lots of stolen and re-purposed characters. Mostly women.

Study your Harem Animes, Visual Novels and JRPGS if you want a leg up in my world.

Other than that...nothing is ever as it seems.

The only 'world' of mine, that I dare use on this forum (mainly cause my other worlds are well...x-rated.) is Rosewood.

Rosewood has a goddess that can rip people from the 'real world' to fight threats, has had literal gods killed by adventurers, was invaded by the X-com aliens lead by the Elder Evil Hulks of Zoretha, and has a dragon diplomat who is into maid outfits, and the god of demons is a nun at a holy church!

Meanwhile every single country seems to be ruled by a princess, because for some weird reason *Ahem*thedmisuncreativewithnewcharacters*ahem* no princes seem to have been born in the last generation of nobles.

And there's a whole bunch of artifacts just lying around in buried temples, castles, and on other planes from an ancient civilization. These artifacts can do things like GIVE YOU BONUSES TO YOUR EXPERIENCE POINTS. And basically let you break the rules of the game.

Quite frankly, the worse thing you can do in Rosewood is assume the DM (me) is trying to screw you over. Cause 90% of the time, you'll travel to the artifact location, find it, discover your NPC companion is a demon...and....

...she'll hand you the artifact because "it's not one of the one's I'm looking for" and leave without a fight.

As the great Mad-eye Moody would put it.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

[CombatOwl]

Myself, I like having the PCs start the adventure either on a vehicle, as prisoners, or both (prisoners escorted to a destination by vehicle).

Treasure is never convenient.

[Piedmon_Sama]

Playing in a Piedmon game? You had better know that a village by definition has no walls, a tavern won't let you stay the night, that anyone you meet may or may not be a serf (it's not like they wear tags), that there is no such thing as a "police department" anywhere and criminal punishment is much more likely to involve branding you with a hot iron in the face and throwing you out of town than a stay in jail.

(I guess what I'm saying is being a medievalist sperg is my trademark)

[AgentofHellfire]

Really major plot-twists, and wildly inappropriate encounter levels.

Basically, I really like throwing off the players' expectations of what's going to happen, in some fashion. Because frankly, a straight-up quest that they could figure out the odds and ends of would be boring.

And what would also be boring would be a "climatic final battle" that they could solve with mere die rolls. If you're not really engaging a boss, I don't think it counts. Hence! My boss fights tend to be against things you can't defeat in straight combat--the Neverborn, for any Exalted players, were one such nemesis, but I've also had or planned but never got to use an Immortal/Constantly regenerating Leshay King, an epic level ghost-dragon-fey thing, and an Elder DB (who wasn't so much undefeatable in combat as he was possessed of some incredibly good Xanatos Gambit fodder).

Moreover, most of the time my players defeat these foes, too.

[Mr.Sandman]

Pumpkins share the same connotations as Pineapples do in our world and thus Inns usually have Pumpkin somewhere in the name.

[valadil]

I mostly run urban games with humanoid antagonists. I use many plots at once, most of which are borrowed from my PCs' backstories.

[Craft (Cheese)]

- You have no allies, only enemies who don't want you dead quite yet. Trust no one, least of all yourself.

- The villain will win. The road is lined with the graves of heroes much more worthy than you. The best you can hope for is that your defeat will mean something.

- The world is doomed. You cannot stop it. Trying will only make things worse.

I like grimdark stuff okay

[Morithias]

- You have no allies, only enemies who don't want you dead quite yet. Trust no one, least of all yourself.

- The villain will win. The road is lined with the graves of heroes much more worthy than you. The best you can hope for is that your defeat will mean something.

- The world is doomed. You cannot stop it. Trying will only make things worse.

I like grimdark stuff okay

You and I are exact opposites. My world is so full of insane heroes, and when the normal PCs aren't enough, the goddess will pull a grimoire of the rift and recruit 5 nerds with attitude to beat the bad guys.

Needless to say both can be enjoyable, but I think your world might be more....'realistic'. I guess.

My world is a mix between, disgaea, power rangers, D&D, and basically every cheesy abridged series ever made.

Needless to say. I think people who tire of my games, should give yours a try.

What are your inspirations? I think I'll start a thread on that.

[prufock]

Dimension and/or time travel are two recurring themes in my games.

There are usually shady organizations that are widespread and near-impenetrable. A church, a thieves' guild, a power company, etc.

I tend to work in real life legends, analogies with myth, and so on. For example my current supers game has numerological themes as well as ties to various religious mythologies.

I also like bittersweet campaign endings; there isn't always a "right" choice, and sometimes the big bad evil guy is right, even if his tactics are questionable. Often ending the game involves selecting the lesser of evils. I usually allow for creative "good" endings, but it's not obvious.

Oh, and I like vague prophecy that keeps the PCs guessing.

[jedipotter]

*High fast paced action. Often. Very little down time and very little sitting around.

*Lots of Comedy.

[ghost_warlock]

Not sure if they're trademarks, but I tend to use a lot of custom monsters and tactically-challenging combats. Those are really my main strengths as a DM since I'm not really great at improv or method acting. What I really need for my campaigns is a co-DM to handle the RP part of party-NPC relations and conspire with me brainstorm story stuff.

[Hyde]

Is that Marty? ...no, Craft (Cheese) is way too clever for Marty.
...I feel I have to apologize for even thinking it.


After taking a poll, my trademarks appear to be scaring the living crap out of my players, creepy little girls who are somehow Japanese despite there not being a Japan or them being described as asian at all (I think it has something to do with Japan's preference for a creeping, omnipresent horror, rather than the stalky-bursty slaughterfest Americans prefer).
Dragons. Even when it's explicitly stated that all dragons are dead, and that we won't have dragons this time... dragons. Dragons dragons dragons I love dragons.

Despite being almost universally chromatic, none of the dragons are likely to fight you, unless it's a CR 9 White Dragon being repurposed (YET AGAIN, I KNOW, I'M SORRY) as... say, a raptor king or something.


And everything is as relevant as you make it. I'm a fan of Babylon 5, and I have more plot hooks available or discoverable than most gamers have sessions. There are always always always at least three ways to get where you want to go.

[Craft (Cheese)]

What are your inspirations? I think I'll start a thread on that.

My greatest aspiration as a GM is to top to Red Wedding scene. Not really what literally takes place in that scene, but rather the punch to the throat and giant middle finger it delivers to the reader/audience.

EDIT: Oh yeah, you asked about my inspirations. Uhh... Closure? If I could have a tabletop session with even 1% of the atmosphere of that game, I'd be happy with myself.

[tasw]

The devils bargain.

At some point your characters will each everyone, some time when they are alone, be given the choice to make a devils bargain for power, literally.

There will be many other times along the road when devils bargains (not literal) present themselves to the group. That group will define itself by how they respond to those choices more then anything.

[SimonMoon6]

Things I used to do a lot:

(1) The multi-part quest. This is the sort of thing where you've got four or five specific things to do before you can gather the results of your adventures together for the final part of the story. Like, maybe you've got to gather the five parts of a magic item, each of which is hidden in a separate dungeon.

(2) "You think he was tough?" This is the sort of thing where you're fighting one tough monster/badguy and barely survive... and then the *real* enemy shows up, which might be a main boss fight or a swarm of those monsters you just fought (like fighting one shambling mound, barely winning, and then finding six shambling mounds). This is often a precursor to running away or diplomacy or something.

I remember back in the 1980s when something like that happened in a comic, and one of my friends was like, "Hey, that's just like something you'd do!"

[Zaydos]

A multiversal inn which serves as the ultimate neutral ground for entities.

A tendency to see how blatant a reference to media I can get away with, usually in the forms of cameos and naming things after what inspired them.

Also typically the stakes are big and Lovecraftian entities will make an appearance and be dealt with in the manner of my favorite Mythos Author (Howard ) my five most recent campaigns:

The 3 Worlds: The PCs were stopping a secret illithid invasion which was finally ended by a duel against the Marshal of the Illithids (a recurring boss) to determine the fate of all 4 worlds (the Illithid world was forgotten).

Chikyuu: The world was divided into three bands of magical power. The PCs were initially stopping a madman from becoming overdeity but the major artifact they destroyed to stop him from using it just happened to be the cornerstone of their reality and it all started collapsing. 2 characters were Cthulhu cultists (they later reformed), the less said of what they did before reformation the better.

Planescape: Not my own setting but, I decided to spin the Great Wheel leading to the fall of Asmodeus, the rise of Moloch as Lord of the Ninth, Demogorgon with heads of opposing good-evil alignment, and the multiverse almost becoming tang. The final encounter was against a portal into the Far Realm which was the 7th Heaven of Mount Celestia.

Teaching Game: The god of Darkness was sealed away centuries ago but now has begun breaking free (a CR 11-ish dragon iirc). The gods choose a group of heroes to preserve the world. No farspawn here. But the PCs did have to save the world from a dark god and one of them became the next god of evil.

The God Game (that's what we called it): The power of the gods was usurped and the PCs have been born with fragments of it and gathered together to overthrow the usurper and return the world to what it was supposed to be. Unfortunately for both sides the Outer Gods, a group of what I can only call pirate (or more accurately raider) gods from other cosmologies sealed away by the Old Gods before the usurpation of their power were also returning turning it into a 3 way battle between the God-King, the PCs, and the slivers and aberrations of the Outer Gods. Ended with the PCs fighting a team of evil Lovecraftian abomination sentai in the middle of a giant mountain Outer God that was one of the former character from the Planescape game of one of the players.

And in all of these but the beginner game the Three Boar's Inn did in fact make an appearance.

[Jay R]

In every game I've run - D&D, Flashing Blades, TOON, Champions, whatever -- there's been a character called Lord Victor, who is the only one who can combine magic and science. He is therefore a mage/engineer wearing full plate armor and a green cloak.

Almost no players have ever run into him, but he's always been there.

[GallóglachMaxim]

The bad guys are always screwing around with the dead in some way. Over various games I've had three different types of zombie army (standard necromantic, mechanical endoskeleton inside a dead body filled with sand, semi-intelligent plague type), and the bad guys who didn't get a zombie army were usually up to something in that area.

Protagonists start off not knowing each other (with a few exceptions, to accommodate backstory) and begin the game all meeting the same NPC.

Getting characters drunk at some point. Did it in the first game I ever ran and it was hilarious, so there's always an opportunity now (the squad leader in my current game is bucking the trend by only occasionally sobering up, but it's a similar result).

[Averis Vol]

Bards. Particularly battle bards will be a popular thing, and if you can guess what power metal band I've based the character off of (Even more so the actual member) you may have a better chance of getting by.

I also prefer to reward truly bombastic and clever thinking. If you do something so extraordinary that I have to stop the game for more than 15 minutes, feel free to level up and pick out a free feat you qualify for on the spot. You earned it (I plan leagues ahead.....kind of, individual encounters I wing)

I also have a tendency to make my PC's squirm I intentionally deceive them just to watch them all slap their heads and go "Noooooooooo!!!!!". This comes in the forms of using what I know my PC's won't mistrust (They're my friends of atleast 8 years, I ****ing know them ) like a kindly old gentleman who for no reason gives them upgraded magical gear (**** you not, they should have mistrusted Aleister Crowley, the elderly southern plantation owner who later turned out to be a shadow demon obsessed with war. Instead though, they entered the ghost woods and decided to trust the chaotic evil blackblood cultist/werewolf. They aren't the brightest bunch but i love them.) or the adorable little harpist girl. Sometimes they are right, normally not though.

I also like to bring the above mentioned deception in combat. I've had enemies cut up squares of grass, dig holes, and hide inside of them with the grass pulled over to set up an ambush. Gnolls will dig hovels in the sides of hills and just cover the doors with grass and pop out to launch a volley of arrows before running to a different hole. There's a group of gnome warblades out there who use rings of stonemeld to hide in the ceiling and battle jump the party as they walk by. stuff like that.

So yea, the overarching mark of my DM....DM'smanship? is basically that I'm a complete ****, but for some reason my PC's keep coming back.

[PersonMan]

Pumpkins share the same connotations as Pineapples do in our world and thus Inns usually have Pumpkin somewhere in the name.

Pineapples have connotations in our world?

[TuggyNE]

Pineapples have connotations in our world?

That's what I was thinking.

But then I figured it was probably some obscure yet somehow dirty connotation and decided the better part of valor would be not to question it.