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Which are (some of) your favourites GM-tips/technique ? And how do you use-them in your games ?
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art. All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your gameIf you need to "cheat" (e.g. fudging a roll because you made your monster *way* too powerful) then **never** tell the players, it will only ruin their sense of immersion. Try to do voices, players love them even if they're shit and it helps distinguish the NPCs. The voices don't have to be remotely good and you don't need to be good at accents, just try things like "gruff voice" for the grizzled mercenary or "weirdly enthusiastic" for the mad old wizard.
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art. All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your gameI recommend players make their characters together. Fate's rules for it are pretty good, and can be ported to many systems: https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio . The whole "You all meet in a tavern for the first time" mode is a valid way to play, but I've had friends do that and then struggle with how contrived it feels to fight to the death for people they just met, or go on a whole dangerous sidequest for someone else's hobby. I also recommend reading other systems. Not everyone needs to know dozens of games, but if you always play d20 games spending some time in a different branch of the RPG family tree can really be eye-opening. Or if you've only really played really light games, looking at how something crunchier does detail can be insightful.
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I think better advice in that situation is to find players who want to play the game you're running. It might be fun to make a tunnel-exploration campaign, but I'm running that dungeon over there. We'll do the tunnel thing another time. Also, to rephrase your dad's advice, know enough of the world to be able to add shit where you need to. I don't even know if the world is round, but I don't need to. If the players are in a church, I'll make sure to know the popular religions in case I need to roleplay as a priest.> I don’t even know if the world is round, but I don’t need to. The players will find a way to make you need to.
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Wow, you guys are actually giving really good and useful advice. I was about to comment “When one of my players asks whether they can do something completely unreasonable I look at them, roll a D20 openly on the table and without checking the result, say ‘no’” But now I just feel bad
Of the responses so far, this one brought me the most joy. -
Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art. All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your gameUse every opportunity to turn planning into information gathering. I try to use every opportunity to stop the planning "phase" of the game and go to the information gathering before continuing the planning. This can be pretty much any unknown that the characters bring up, like some if -statement in their plan, some fact they are unsure about etc. The information gathering might be anything from a simple skill check to a full adventure and after that we go right back to the planning. This has removed a lot of planning hours that wouldn't have had anything to do with the situation they are going into.
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> I don’t even know if the world is round, but I don’t need to. The players will find a way to make you need to.No, the world is enormous and you only need to worry about a small part of it. There is literally nothing over there, and no reason you'd want to go there. The game is over here. Leaving this area is the same as leaving the game, which you are free to do.
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Wow, you guys are actually giving really good and useful advice. I was about to comment “When one of my players asks whether they can do something completely unreasonable I look at them, roll a D20 openly on the table and without checking the result, say ‘no’” But now I just feel bad> I was about to comment “When one of my players asks whether they can do something > completely unreasonable I look at them, roll a D20 openly on the table and without > checking the result, say ‘no’” Oh, GM Fiat... I always preferred the GM Camaro, but you do you...
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The players won't care about how pretty you make your maps. Make them functional and ugly, and you'll save up so much time for other prep.• I refer to this as the 'Video Game Rule'. In the last thirty years the visual aspects of the hobby have become more important because we’re think we are ‘competing’ with video games. Once we realize we are making a different kind of experience it allows the *story* (that is the narrative elements) to outshine the *graphics*, if you will.-
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art. All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your gameLet them look cool. Too much time is spent working around the players’ abilities to make a fight challenging. Some fights should look hard but have a player ability break them. Let them use the powers they earned. This slightly ties to the idea that the game is not the players against the DM, it is the players against the world, while the DM narrates.
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art. All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your gameFor depth in world-building I use a rule I call "Y-cubed". (I got it from somewhere else but can't recall the source anymore.) For every detail you make, you ask the question "Why" three times. So a village the characters have reached stop all work every 77 days for a festival. Why? It celebrates an ascended local hero who saved the village from a magical blight. Why 77 days? It took 77 days for effort for the blight to be defeated. ... And so on. This is a rapid way to both build depth in your setting quickly, as well as inspire possible mysteries and intrigue for investigation later. A slight modification works also for giving NPCs depth.
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art. All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your gameRead George Polti's _The 36 Dramatic Situations_. It's a list of plot elements that have a snappy title, a list of participants in the plot element, a brief discussion of how it works, and then (unfortunately dated) references to dramas that used them. Using this when building a world, or a campaign, or a local setting, lets you quickly set up a bunch of conflicts (ideally with interlaced participants so that single NPCs (or PCs) can be in different roles in different dramatic situations. Then you just let the events flow logically, and as the dramatic situations get resolved you get a plot. PCs can interfere with these dramatic situations and thus have an impact on resulting plots even if the overall setting is far larger than they are.
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> I was about to comment “When one of my players asks whether they can do something > completely unreasonable I look at them, roll a D20 openly on the table and without > checking the result, say ‘no’” Oh, GM Fiat... I always preferred the GM Camaro, but you do you...
What's... What's GM camaro?
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The players won't care about how pretty you make your maps. Make them functional and ugly, and you'll save up so much time for other prep.Also make maps that people in universe would use, not a god or modern satellite images. Romans used maps that showed main roads and villages, why would a random adventurer need a super detailed map with borders on it.
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It is much faster than a GM fiat.
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oh its a car joke ffs
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art. All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your gameI talk only as much as is necessary to paint the scene and hurry to prompt player action. There's an old bit of advice I read somewhere that the sooner you ask players, "What do you do?" the smoother your game is running. Those really old AD&D modules with 3/4th the page taken up by boxed text? People tend to zone them out. WotC did studies on this and figured attention starts to drift after 2-3 sentences. But it goes beyond boxed text. Any time the GM is sitting there talking, be it narration, exposition, or -- worst case scenario -- two NPCs having a conversation, that's time the players have to sit there trapped in an unskippable videogame cutscene.
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A few favourites from the Alexandrian: - Don't prep plots. Prep scenarios. If you give the players a goal and a world, they will make the plot themselves, and it'll be more interesting. And it's not like you wouldn't need those things for a railroad plot anyway. - Don't plan contingencies. Instead of explaining everything the party could do to get past the guard, just describe the guard. It's a lot more flexible, and it takes less time to prepare. - With the 3 clues rule, make sure to have different rule types. If all your clues are pieces of evidence, then a party who prefers to talk to people is clueless. - If you feel the need to ask "are you sure you want to do that", there might be a miscommunication to figure out. Maybe you didn't explain the situation clearly, or a player misheard you, or the player has an item to help things work out. - When creating a system within your setting (eg, nobility), add two exceptions to the neat and tidy rules. "Each region is ruled by a count, except for those over there which are ruled by comtes." This adds history to your world while making it less daunting to add more exceptions if you need them later.Addendum to the "Are you sure you want to do that" bullet: if a player ever does something that seems nonsensical to you, ask them what they expect to achieve by doing that. Understanding their motivation is often what resolves the miscommunication and/or allows you to steer them towards a better way to do what they're trying to do.
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> I don’t even know if the world is round, but I don’t need to. The players will find a way to make you need to.You decide that if an when the players make it a priority with their choices.
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> I was about to comment “When one of my players asks whether they can do something completely unreasonable I look at them, roll a D20 openly on the table and without checking the result, say ‘no’” Actually, saying no is one of weakness, so the PC wanting to do something completly unreasonable led to some pretty great player driven session or even campaign arc. I just ask them _how do you plan to do-it_ and suddenly the non reasonable plan becomes a suite of small reasonable tasks so I want the peace in the world, it's easy just give _the love drug_ to world leader and they will all start to love each others, so first step is to put my hand in enough drug, the second is to get access to the water factory that will provide water at the next diplomatic summit, do you think the militaro industrial complex will be happy with this terrorist action ? OK that one is a bit extreme but you get the point, suddently the PC are the one writing the campaign and it's pretty cool.Sometimes that can be fun, but only if everyone at the table is onboard for a wild tangent. If the other players are bored as shit while the special snowflake starts a unicorn breeding operation, it's time to use that No. And you, the DM, are included in that too; if your players want to drag you off to write every book in the library and that's not fun for you, you have the right to say "hey maybe you should play the game I made for you instead."
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art. All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your game1) You can storyboard ideas/set pieces with no idea how to get there. Get them written down somewhere with some extra cool details. I can guarantee now you have that list that you will see a cool option stick one of them in now and then. 2) your players don't have to defeat every encounter, letting your players lose (without killing them!) can be really fun. It gives them someone to hate, let's you evolve a story and makes your players think more. 3) embrace chaos! My players love throwing charged dust of dryness capsules at things, definitely makes fights more dynamic! Disclaimer: I can't run a campaign without an adventure to follow. The above are really helping me go beyond the adventures as written.
