Unsorted Tips

by Alan De Smet

More GM tips

No page on the web is ever really finished. I regularly add to this section of my web site. Unfortunately I haven't organized all of my thoughts yet. Instead of hoarding my notes for the day when I get around to organizing them, here they are, raw but hopefully useful.

Ruling questions

• Listen to player's opinions. They're part of the game and have valid opinions.
• Explain your actions, but don't defend. Ultimately it's your call. Defending takes time away from game play. If you're defending, a player is pushing the issue. Both of you are increasing your emotional investment and will both be frustrated by the effort. The "loser" will be really frustrated.
• If you're starting to defend, or a player is pushing the issue, explain that you need to keep the game moving, you're using your current decision now and you'll be happy to discuss it later.

Never take view the players or the characters as adversaries to be worked against.

Know your players

Consider types of gamers. Consider just asking. See 4 types of online gamers. I see explorers, achievers, sight-seers, combat monsters. Explorers tend to take notes and draw maps. Combat monsters fight. Achievers place emphasis on achievement, either character statistics or in game accomplishments (titles, positions).

Give players fair warning

Ensure players have a sense of what they're up against. Otherwise the characters may blunder into their deaths not knowing they're outclassed. Equally bad is having the players run scared from everything.

Horror

• "...remember that they need small triumphs even if they're eventually going to be eaten by aliens." (paraphrased!) Kevin Bulter of Hex Entertainment, http://www.hexgames.com, (cited by Annalee Newitz, "Sex with stormtroopers". It's not much of an article, but this bit caught my eye.)
What players fear more than death is not knowing the rules." (Unknown gamer at DragonCon at a panel on horror in role-playing, (cited by Annalee Newitz, "Sex with stormtroopers". It's not much of an article, but this bit caught my eye.)
• Not knowing the rules (see above quote). Rules of the world is most obvious. How to balance feelings of powerlessness (and giving up the game) with horror of being out of control.

Assume the players will foil any "must happen" plot element

Allow for anything to fail. If your plot requires that the villain get away the first time the players encounter him, you're setting yourself up for a fall. Players can be brilliant, especially when it comes to defeating your carefully planned scenes. When you're trying to create such a scene, you're pitting your own mind against the combined minds of all of our players. Inevitably there will be at least one small hole in your plan, and the players have a good shot at finding it.

Be prepared for any "must happen" element to fail. Have backup plans, villains, and plot twists to handle the situation.

Avoid putting everything on a single skill check

If the players must make an archeology check to continue on the plot, they will probably fail. Fate seems to like torturing GMs. Don't balance your plot on the assumption that bad luck won't happen. Have fall back plans. Can the characters call in a professional to decrypt the clue? Will another strike by the villain reveal more clues?

Exotic locales

Visiting foreign places is expensive. Seeing the interior of Air Force One is basically impossible. But it's cheap and easy in a role-playing game. Unique settings are a staple of movies and novels. Another superhero fight on a generic city street in dull. You're super heroes, have your fights on Air Force One, on top of the Eiffel Tower, or in the Capital. Dusty streets are a traditional place for a shootout, but don't forget from the back of a speeding train or stagecoach. Pick random locations: a race track, a lumber yard, a food court, a rock concert, your office building. Vary the situation: crowds of people, barren of people, news reporters nearby, fire, tornadoes.

Steven Marsh has even more good ideas in his Pyramid magazine article "Setting Up Setting Need Not Be Upsetting"

Ensure player/PC empowerment

• Player's need to generally be taking action, not reacting! Occasional reaction is okay ("Oh, no, we've been ambushed by Ninjas!"), but in general actions ("Let's track down and defeat whoever sent Ninjas after us!"). For this reason any plot that focuses on the characters reacting to an external attacker whom the character can do nothing directly against is doomed to piss off players. For example, a campaign where the character's rulership is constantly challenged by the political machinations of an unknown adversary is at risk. If the player's can't chose to track down their adversary, they can only react to the latest attack, then you have a problem. (And of course, if the player's actually have an option, but fail to see it, you have a different problem, but still a problem that is your responsibility to fix.)
• Players must not believe things are happening arbitrarily. Perhaps your villains have a brilliant plan that the player's don't understand, so it just appears that things happen without rhyme or reason, but if that goes on too long your players will become frustrated and give up.

Draw things out

Never rush your big scene, give cool things time to just be cool. Especially if this is a character specific subplot.

Bad: Meeting your estranged brother you never really knew who wants to kill you and holds your birthright: a family crown signifying your right to rule. Then killing him, claiming the crown and the family lands, a few hours later.

Good: Hearing that your estranged brother is looking for you. Seeing the results of his actions. Tangling with his hired goons sent to kill you. Almost catching him, seeing him with the crown. Tracking him down and finally confronting him.

Conflict

Stories are about conflict. While it doesn't need to be violent conflict, without a struggle there is not story. Make sure you have conflict and that the player characters are directly involved in that conflict. If there isn't any conflict you don't have a story. If the player characters aren't directly involved they are just watching a story, which isn't much of an RPG.

Are you using the right game?

Is your game system actually supporting the type of game you want to run? If not, your game will suffer. Maybe you want to run exciting pulp action, but if your rules set makes combat dangerous and frequently deadly you're not going get a lot of pulp fights with lots of risks taken. Maybe you want to run a gritty urban game where combat is dangerous, but if the rules don't make combat dangerous your players will happily dive into fights. Is your focus going to be on courtly intrigue? You probably don't want a game that has fifty pages of combat rules and a single page on social interactions.

This can be more subtle. Look at the assumptions your game creates. To take D&D for an example, the game system assumes that characters will build up a collection of magical items, replacing them as they become more powerful. That's a functional game, but it doesn't really match most of fantasy literature where each magical item is treasured. The system also tends to assume plenty of down time for wizards to copy spells and craft magical items, a weakness if you're planning on a high tension campaign where the characters are always on the move. D&D tends to reward heavy armor; the best fighters wear magical full plate mail armor. You can make a successful swashbuckler who runs around without armor, but you're clearly fighting against the system.

Here are just a few things to consider about your system and your expectations:

• How dangerous is combat?
• Who easy is it to heal?
• How dangerous are heroic actions? (e.g. Leaping from a bridge onto a moving train.)
• How are social interactions handled?
• Is inventory important to track?
• How exceptional are the PCs compared to normal people?
• How many normal enemies can a single PC defeat in combat?

It's a widespread belief that rules don't matter. To an extent that's true. A good GM can work with almost any rules set. However, to do so you're spending time tweaking or outright ignoring the rules to make the game better. If the game better supports you instead of spending time thinking about that, you can think about other ways to make your game better.

Have spare supplies

Players will forget things. Have spare supplies to loan your players so you can get to the gaming and not spend time having players pass pencils around the table. I keep two sets of loaner dice (old dice that have fallen out of favor), and a pile of cheap mechanical pencils.

Ask your players what they want

At the start of a campaign, just ask your players what they want. You might try giving them a minute each to write on a piece of paper as many people, places, things, and ideas that they can that excite them and they would want to involve their characters in. The short time frame keeps it brainstormy, encouraging inclusiveness and discouraging second guessing. The result is a pile of ideas to reap from. Based on these posts: Eric "Quendalon" backup, Brand Robins backup.

Random links

"What is your character's daily schedule?" and other awesomeness.