(If you haven’t spotted the pattern, these “GM Advice” posts appear on Wednesdays, and will continue to do so until I’m out of advice, I get sick of it, or people stop reading them.) <\/p>\n
I wish I’d thought to write this introductory post before<\/em> I began the GM Advice series, as it would have averted some of the confusion in the comments of previous entries. <\/p>\n I get comments in my D&D campaign posts<\/a> along the lines of “I wish I was in a group like this” or “I wish I could run a game like this”. People lament that their game is too bland, too shallow, or too simplistic to offer the kind of roleplaying they’re interested in. This series is aimed at those people. I’m assuming you’re coming into this looking for ways to enrich your gameworld or swap techniques with a fellow GM. <\/p>\n I do not pretend to be an expert at running a game. I fully admit to being more of a novice than most of the people reading this. I’ve been playing for… four years? Maybe? I’ve run one game system (D&D 3.5) and read several others. My advice is little more than “here is how I do things and here is my rationale for doing it that way”. My strength, such as it is, lies in creating fun scenarios (on the micro or macro level) and in approximating details to make a medium-detail world feel like something I would call a “vast, rich, and endlessly robust storyscape” if I were a pretentious dolt in need of a backhand to the face. Generally the goal is to just make the world feel a little deeper than it really is, or make it feel like I put more work into it than I really did.<\/p>\n This advice is not intended to be universal to all groups. I’m starting with the assumption that you’re interested in the sort of experiences I am, that you like deeper roleplaying, and that you’re looking for something other than hack-n-slash looting and leveling at your table. ) <\/p>\n As the guys at Fear the Boot<\/a> are fond of saying, there’s no wrong way to play this game, and if you’re having fun, you’re winning. It’s fine if you’re the hack-n-slash type player, or an old-school number-crunching wargamer. But these posts aren’t written with your kind of game in mind and they probably won’t have a lot for you. Also, I’ll probably be poking fun at you from time to time, because we’re different and that makes you funny and strange. <\/p>\n Some people called me a “simulationist” in my earlier post on making dungeons<\/a>. I won’t argue with the label if that’s how my style seems. (Or we’ll end up arguing over definitions sooner or later.) But I don’t add that stuff in order to make this highly detailed world with a bunch of numbers behind it. I do it because it makes the world more immersive. <\/p>\n More than one person suggested that most players won’t care about where Kobolds poop. But the point wasn’t to put in a latrine in case they ask about one. The point was to put one in because they’ll eventually run into it. And the pantry. And the den where the Kobolds sleep. I believe that you can sometimes draw a group of hack-n-slash butchers into roleplaying by adding details which stimulate their intuition. <\/p>\n In video games, sometimes I enjoy mowing down endless waves of unambiguously vile foes for laughs<\/a> and sometimes I enjoy pondering the inner psyche of the main character<\/a>. Sometimes I’m hack-n-slash, and sometimes I’m a roleplayer. The gameworld determines how seriously I take the game and how deeply I’m willing to think about it. In essence, I default<\/em> to being a hack-n-slash gamer, and am drawn into deeper play by deeper worlds and characters. My thesis here is that in some cases you can end up with different players by presenting the same gameworld to the same group of people but with a few splashes of detail to draw them in. My further point is that these details aren’t that hard to add. If you can create a balanced encounter for a group of players, you’re more than qualified to present a gameworld which feels (to them) convincing. <\/p>\n Depth begins with the GM. Not just in making a world rich in detail, but in finding ways to make your players want<\/em> to inhabit it. <\/p>\n That’s the goal, anyway.<\/p>\n Topic for discussion: Do you prefer to make your own settings or use pre-made stuff? For myself, I couldn’t imagine using someone else’s setting, since making the setting is the part I enjoy the most. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (If you haven’t spotted the pattern, these “GM Advice” posts appear on Wednesdays, and will continue to do so until I’m out of advice, I get sick of it, or people stop reading them.) 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