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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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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.
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You decide that if an when the players make it a priority with their choices.They decide that with their choices. The only decision you, as a DM/GM have at that point is how to pretend that you had already covered that possibility.
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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.Well.... That doesn't always go the way you'd want it to go. https://youtu.be/M-9-bQ3JoWY As this "short" session shows.
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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 put my top tips here after about 15 years of collecting the best tips from hundreds of GMs: https://slyflourish.com/top_advice.html - Let the Story Unfold at the Table - Set Up Situations and Let the Characters Navigate Them - Be On the Characters Side - Use Tools and Techniques that Help You Prepare to Improvise - Focus on your Next Game - Build Your World, Campaign, and Adventures from the Characters Outwards - Pay Attention to Pacing - Focus on the Fiction First and Mechanics Second
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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."I think that also depends on the tools/rules you can use. If I feel that this unicorn ranch is something only one character is interested in, I would propose a clock. We decide what they want to achieve in the end, efforts are a personal project with one roll per session/adventure, the spotlight can be kept short (remember, one roll in a while). And who knows? Maybe there will be a hook or mcguffin for me to use later on?
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Use 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.FWIW, I have never managed to achieve that fluently. To elegantly switch from "sitting around, planning" to interacting with the world. Retrospections are the only way that works for me
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FWIW, I have never managed to achieve that fluently. To elegantly switch from "sitting around, planning" to interacting with the world. Retrospections are the only way that works for meYeah, it was really a challenge to do that at first but when everyone agreed that our planning took too long and we decided to do this, it has become quite routine for us to notice when planning triggers the information gathering phase. And as players are getting more familiar with this, their planning has changed as well. The focus of planning is now more about coming up with relevant sources of information than trying to anticipate the future.
