<\/p>\n
At long last, my answers to some reader-submitted questions about GMing:<\/p>\n
Jace911<\/strong><\/p>\n
1. Where do you tend to fall on a scale of simulationist vs narrativist games? I used to prefer the former in my early years for their structure, but as I get older I find myself drawn more and more to narrative-focused games. Is this your experience as well?<\/p>\n
2. When you set out to create a one-shot, campaign, etc do you start with the themes and craft a game around it or do you start with an idea or image and build the themes around it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I have no straightforward answer to your first question–it’s like asking if I prefer apples or onions. What I seek out and what I recommend depends entirely on the other ingredients.<\/p>\n
If I’ve got my STEM group, six hours, a six-pack, and a thick monster manual, I might choose a system that offers a high level of fiddly strategic detail. If I’ve got my looser humanities group and two hours, I might pick a system that’s low-maintenance and primarily narrative. If I’ve got my serious game-design people over, we might whip out something experimental and obscure that uses dreamcatchers instead of dice or some other nonsense. In RPGs, as in other things, my tastes run pretty eclectic–it’s all about the group I’m experiencing it with and what system compliments their strengths best.<\/p>\n
Anything shorter than a long-term campaign I tend to improvise rather than design. When I do design a campaign world, the watchword is always tone. <\/em>I tend to settle on sense of stakes, attitude, and pacing and create central elements that evoke it. I also find it helpful to think in terms of genre and pastiche. An office comedy fantasy game. Southern Gothic that feels like a Spaghetti Western. A post-apocalyptic LA <\/em>Dusk Til Dawn rock opera. <\/em>These glib summaries are useful to have on hand for when you start explaining the game to players, who (all being well) would like to make their characters fit into whatever you’ve been working on.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Narkis<\/strong><\/p>\n
And my question: How to deal with a player who has a reasonable IC request that's infeasible for OOC reasons? In my current campaign the party rogue is deadset on casing and systematically robbing the city's noble quarters. Alone. The player is an RPG newbie who based his character on Garrett and would essentialy like to sort of reenact the Thief games. I'm concerned for two reasons: one, it'd be an opportunity for loot not shared with the others, eventually leading to imbalances. And two, it'd take too much of the party's shared time for just one player's adventures. What can I do to accomodate him without ruining the others' fun?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course, a perfectly satisfactory answer to this question is “remind the player that the reason we all showed up at the same time in the same place is to play a game together<\/em>, regardless of the desires of this completely fictional person.” But that might not be strictly necessary. Anyhow, yours is a complex question, so I’ll try to answer in a way that’s helpful to you and to other GMs in similar positions:<\/p>\n
You should <\/em>reward your player for thinking and planning in-character.<\/p>\n
You should not <\/em>offer that reward at your group’s expense.<\/p>\n
You should <\/em>allow the unique personality and design of a player character to have long-term effects on how the campaign is conducted.<\/p>\n
You should not <\/em>do so in a way that cuts out other characters.<\/p>\n
I’m going to assume a worst-case scenario: that nobody in the party wants anything to do with heists and that the Garret wannabe has no interest in partners. Given this assumption, and barring extreme measures such as running a separate game strictly for that player, here’s the absolute most I would do:<\/p>\n
“Okay, you want to case a manor. Go ahead and give me a (relevant skill, stat, or class) check.”<\/p>\n
A few rolls later, I say, “Okay, you think <\/em>you have a good route. Now give me a stealth check for the actual burglary.”<\/p>\n
Roll, roll–“It’s a profitable night. You come away with (relatively minor monetary loot), as well as (piece of treasure). It’s not worth much now, but your fence will look for a buyer. Might take a year, but you’ll get paid well when the time comes.”<\/p>\n
Alternately, if the roll isn’t great–“You’re halfway through when alarms sound and guards start coming down. Not your best night, but it’s over now and at least you’re in one piece.”<\/p>\n
Then, before long, a heist would go interestingly <\/em>wrong. The thief gets in and finds out that instead of treasure, there’s (clues intrinsic to main quest). <\/em>The player feels accomplished, the balance is preserved, the plot moves forward. This is the absolute best way this situation could be resolved, and believe me, there’s no guarantee it’ll work out nearly this well.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps the party comes into a huge debt, or a pressing need for money, and these heists provide a way to fund them. Perhaps each party member could raise funds in a way central to their idiom. Again, this is assuming that Garret’s player has any interest in helping the party’s interest at all–which is absolutely, positively the the main obstacle here.<\/p>\n
So I can suggest ways to bypass or delay or accommodate the player’s interest, but nine times out of ten this sort of thing is not a tricky gaming problem, it’s a straightforward if uncomfortable social one. Tabletop gaming is inherently cooperative. A GM can only do so much before responsibility falls on the players themselves to behave appropriately.<\/p>\n
Heather B<\/strong><\/p>\n
My question for Ruts (and you fine people in this thread): Have you encountered game commitment issues as a GM, and if so, how to rekindle the romance? I tend to plan epic storylines, run them enthusiastically for six months to a year, and then lose interest in running the game long before the story is over or the players are done. Then comes a period of a few weeks to a few months where game gets canceled for lack of energy, until we finally give up and play something else. I usually have a sheepish epilogue session where I tell my players where I was going with things, and answer their questions about the world and the story. They like the games I start, and are always disappointed when it doesn't finish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You’re in luck–no problem at all to solve this one. Every GM has a point beyond which they get burned out with a campaign. Fortunately, stories–even stories told cooperatively–can have any length at all. Run shorter games.<\/strong><\/p>\n
I recommend this exercise: sketch out an outline of your last campaign and cut out all the parts that dragged, got bogged down, or hastened your loss of interest. Failing at that, cut out anything that can <\/em>be cut without a major rewrite. Chances are you’ll end up with the campaign you would have been happier running.<\/p>\n
Six months to a year is plenty <\/em>of time to be enthusiastically GMing interesting stories that your players care about. Knowing that’s your soft limit is half the battle.<\/p>\n
FuzzyWasHe?<\/strong><\/p>\n
I know it isn't easy starting out and I'm not expecting to find the next Shakespeare in my D&D group, but if at some point now or in the future they want to do more subtle roleplay how can I help them conceptualize a character in their head without it just being me deciding the character for them?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’ve seen a lot of people get into roleplaying. Some of them have done a lot of theater or writing or other creative work and have an intuitive grasp of how to construct, personalize, and inhabit a character. Others–don’t. They have no idea where to start and are almost always nervous to try. But if they play long enough, create enough characters, watch enough people ham it up, and grow comfortable enough with their group, then some day–maybe a few months in, maybe a few years in–they’ll suddenly surprise you. For these players, practice is the main barrier to overcome.<\/p>\n
I have two more immediate, helpful suggestions. Firstly, offer choices <\/em>to players. Instead of asking “who do you want to be?” to someone who can’t answer that question, ask, “Do you want to be a good person? Do you want to be nimble? Do you want to be ugly?” They may seem like they’re answering randomly, or indifferently, but if they’re able to answer at all they’re taking their first steps. Secondly, whenever possible, allow characters to be generated or detailed randomly. <\/em>Many of my players who used to struggle at the table still have difficulties creating <\/em>characters, but have learned to make premade or unplanned characters their own.<\/p>\n
p_johnston<\/strong><\/p>\n
What's the best way to get better at descriptions?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s certainly not about description quantity. <\/em>Or at least, not about giving lots <\/em>of description.<\/p>\n
When players see a tavern, it doesn’t help them to know that it’s got a gabled roof, two wings, whitewash, leaded windows, straw on the floors, the sounds of laughter and some drunks singing, a pudgy innkeeper with hairy arms, and a young serving woman. They’ll either assume that stuff or won’t care one way or the other. Delivering a description like that teaches players not to bother listening to your descriptions. Old editions had a huge problem with over-descriptive modules that inevitably put players to sleep–players who needed to have been paying perfect attention, because anything less spelled trap-related death. Trust me on both accounts.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, you want to give players details to focus on. Details provide tools to grow immersed and things to interact with. My principle is to come up with one <\/em>or two <\/em>unique things per scene, things that describe that tavern and no other tavern in a hundred miles, and let the rest go unsaid until it’s necessary.<\/p>\n
You enter the tavern, nearly hitting your head on a mobile of reindeer antlers. The air in here smells minty.<\/em><\/p>\n
For all we know, that’s the same tavern I so elaborately described before. I haven’t mentioned any of those other details, but that doesn’t mean they exist. When a player punches out the barman, you can mention how he staggers and slips on the old dirty straw. When the bard starts strumming, you can mention how all the singing and laughter stops. When the player yells “Pig!” mention that the bartender looks suspicious and offended.<\/p>\n
Key, unusual details. That’s the ticket to making a space feel vivid.<\/p>\n
Here’s an exercise: write down the word “guard” ten times. Now come up with one interesting detail for each one–this one’s got a waxed moustache. This one’s got a burn. This one’s got missing teeth. This one is sixty. <\/em>Think about why that detail would be noticeable–the guard strokes his moustache a lot. The burn’s weeping. The missing teeth make a sucking sound. The old guard’s got saggy chicken arms. <\/em>If you can pull this sort of thing off at the table, or at least plan it out beforehand, you’re all set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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