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The GM Thread.

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13:45 / 15.06.05

I've been GMing various tabletop RPGs for a group of my friends since the mid-1990's, and I love it. We're currently running a superhero rpg using a White Wolf system called Aberrant. So I thought I might use this thread to talk about life as a GM and tell tall tales of my Players and their prowess as a bunch of ludicrously costumed superfreaks.

Plus, if there are any GMs around, active or not, then join me for chats on the endless thankless task of being the guy who builds the world your Players tear down.

16:00 / 15.06.05

No time to talk right now but I wanted to acknowledge a fellow GM. I'll throw outlandish tales of chaotic players at you when I have more time.

Great thread idea, and I love this new forum.

*

16:26 / 15.06.05

Around my friends, one of the key lines which expresses the GM's commingled player-related joys and frustrations is "I had to blow up the building. I was leaving it!" And the story behind that one is lurvely.

I've run several White Wolf games, and a few other things which were relatively short-lived (a GURPS Discworld campaign stands out in memory). I've never gotten to a point of real skill, at least not compared with the few people in my circle who are absolute fucking ARTISTS at running games. (Yes, my GM did destroy the Tellurian, and yes, we kept playing after that. Yes, it worked. It was terrifying.)

Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!

17:17 / 15.06.05

Yay! I was hoping somebody would start this thread. I love to get ideas and discuss the GMing (or STing) experience and look for pointers.

I've been Storytelling (as the WoD system calls it) for almost ten years, have one Changeling game currently on hold that ran for over two years, and am currently running a game of Mage: The Ascension which is starting to cohere nicely after a failed start at running Dark Ages: Fae.

I think the best game I ran was in the middle of our Changeling game, when the PC's had tracked an ancient item of power to the Deep Dreaming, and they met "The Tall Man", a creature of the Dreaming that appeared as a man wearing a white morning coat with a mask made of strapped-together rabbit's heads. He saved the characters, then invited them to his home - an ivory castle carved from a single gigantic bone. He told them that he had been cursed by the White Court of Fomorians years ago, although in the end it turned out he was a servant of said Formorians. But not before he had convinced the PCs to eat a "Wishing Banquet" which consisted of a stag's carcass and 100 boiled songbirds. Ick.

In the same session, one player was leaving the country, and his character's farewell actually had everyone in the room nearly crying, it was just perfectly played by the player. That game was ace. The players still gush over it. That makes me happy.

07:36 / 16.06.05

That sounds really cool. I think Changling was the only original WoD game I haven't read.

I always wanted to run a Wraith game, I loved the way the PCs play each other's Shadows. Unfortunately the GM has to play to his Player's tastes and my lot like their rpg to be a reasonabley straightforward without too much "experimental" stuff.

We're not talking hack-and-slash, but they do enjoy a certain amount of violence per session. Bless em.

I have to say I'm having a lot more fun with it now we've changed from WoD to Aberrant. The storyline is a lot more in-depth and doesn't suffer from the massive continuity problems of the original WoD (though I understand Version 2.0 has sorted a lot of that out).

Plus it has a very cool metaplot running.

09:01 / 03.08.05

er....*bump*

I had hoped this thread would have kept going as I'm interested in running a game in the forseeable future, provided I'm not flung out of this thread as I'm not a GM (yet).

I'm generally after hints and tips for my first game, probably in the D&D format although I have Mage I don't think the people I would be playing with have the book for that.

Anyways..... do more experienced of the GM/DM's use the plot guidelines you get on the D&D website? Or is it best just to jump in with flaming dragon?

10:52 / 03.08.05

Dragons every time.

Seriously though, I'm not too experienced with fantasy-based rpgs myself. Spent the nineties playing VtM or various superhero games (GURPS: IST or Heroes Unlimited). So I'm probably not the best one to ask.

...

That said, if you're doing AD&D I'd recommend you try and avoid some of the more common cliches of the genre. Have a good reason for the PCs getting together and going off on adventures. Something beyond the atypical "You're in an alehouse and an old man offers you a job.".

Prepare yourself for random Player decisions that make no sense. Have a few backup adventures and adversaries on hand in case they decide to do the exact opposite of what you expected them to do.

Regarding plot guidelines. Use them if you've got them, but don't be afraid to alter them to fit your game. In fact those plot guidelines are just the thing to have on standby if the Players decide that attacking a fort full of orcs isn't what they wanted to do this afternoon.

Anything else? Like I say, I'm not experienced with the fantasy genre. But most GM stuff translates from game to game pretty well.

Regarding Mage: Bloody good game, but does need flexible and imaginative Players.

11:02 / 03.08.05

Ah, flexiable players......Hmmmm the group I'm hoping to DM a game for is the group I'm playing WBD with. One member is known for playing a wizard who has the spells you wouldn't normally think someone would go for, hence when they are in a pickle and need a bizarre X spell, the wizard has it and knows it. However I know this and hoping that the ideas I have are more challenging.

Although the humour that can occur is funny in these situations. We ended up facing a wererat in WBD nobody had any silver apart from my Halfing who had an attachment to a grubby silver cup he had found and was hitting the wererat on the knee with it due to the wererat's height.

12:27 / 03.08.05

There's nothing like watching Players scrabble in a panic for any available silver when confronted with lycanthropes. I specifically removed fire as a vulnerability for the werewolves I threw against my Fomori Players in a WoD campaign. Just to spice things up.

We're having a brief interlude from Aberrant, and are going to do a few months of it's 1920's pulp setting; A!dventure. The guys have made some fantastically lantern-jawed explorers of the unknown ranging from an aborigine with a 40ft crocodile, to a Wing-Commader with his own personnal zeppelin armada.

Should be a hoot.

*

14:20 / 03.08.05

D&D GMing... I'd like to give a shout-out to my current DM, who is running a Thieves' Guild campaign with great aplomb, considering that of four players, one elected to play a wizard, one a guileless fighter, one a 'gypsy'/bard, and one a hit man, and not one of us is a proper thiefythief type. His organizational skills are incomparable. Having decided the general latitude at which the (entirely original) setting lies, he printed out a chart of the weather for the next month. For instance.

The best thing about this campaign, for me, is that it is centers around getting into and out of places unobserved, without drawing fire or engaging in much combat. That's an entirely different kind of challenge, and it's very refreshing. The problem with it is that the players to a man (including myself) seem to have thought in reaction to being told we were going to play a thieves' campaign "Hm. That means everyone will be a thief. I want to stand out and do something a bit different, so what can I play that will be interesting working with a bunch of thieves, but not actually be a thief?"

Like herding coked-up cats, I tell you.

08:25 / 05.08.05

I've never herded coked-up cats but I'm assuming it's not easy.

As for plot I had an idea which has spawned (not sure if that's the right term) lots of little ideas which have grown into little plots and are growing fast. Although I have kept things in balance as I'm working purely from the PHB and when I get hold of them the monster manuel and DMHB as well.

In your opinions is it best to keep the players only using the PHB for characters and stop them delving into the various spin-off books?

09:55 / 05.08.05

I'd recomend letting them work out of the PHB. Otherwise there's a risk they'll all want to have characters which have nothing in common with each other. Unless you're setting it in a specific location, then you might want to consider allowing character types from that setting in.

Too much choice encourages munchkin-ism.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:26 / 05.08.05

Munchkinism? Pls explain OK thx bye.

10:38 / 05.08.05

munchkin

A rather excellient set of games with drawings from dorktower artist John Kovalic. I guessing you mean to avoid the pick and mix approach like when you mix various sets of munchkin up?

08:46 / 06.08.05

I'd recomend letting them work out of the PHB. Otherwise there's a risk they'll all want to have characters which have nothing in common with each other. Unless you're setting it in a specific location, then you might want to consider allowing character types from that setting in.

Ethics wise, if I ask them to stick to the PHB, is it fair for me to go outside it if it's fits with the plotlines? And possibly tweak some of the monsters*?

As for settings I was going to look up lands that have already been described and add a previously unseen valley city. So there shouldn't be too many issues with extra qualities creeping in. For example I'm playing WBD at the moment whilst our DM wanted us to stick to the PHB he allowed us to take feats and some equipement from the Forgotten Realms book as our characters lived roughly in that world plus the dungeon's there as well. I personally think that there's enough 'goodies' in the PHB to keep most gamers happy.

*like dyrads of trees which survive in dark, dank conditions with only corspes for the trees to feed on. Although whilst their foliage is dark colours they look healthy as so the adventurers aren't too worried about walking in there. I'm thinking the dyrads and trees can have vampiric touch or something similar.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

10:54 / 06.08.05

[disclaimer about threadrot, because I fear the reaper]
Munchkin the game is based on munchkin the phenomenon (and general roleplayer jokes), which is basically horrific min/maxing and system abuse for the tremendous empowerment of the munchkin's character. Playing RPGs to win, rather than to create a story or what have you.

15:42 / 06.08.05

Think Red Mage from 8-bit Theater, who regularly re-allocates his stats to develop new abilities, "forgets" to record damage, and is generally the ultimate powergamer.
Anyone got special tricks for keeping players in line? One G.M. used meteorite impacts, leading to uncomfortable questions when we were "disciplined" in a underground cave. One would simply add monsters to an encounter- on one occasion, during a particularly long argument where I just wouldn't back down, he ran out of figurines for the skeletons that were attacking us and had to throw a few zombies and ghouls in... and one inspired fellow terrorised his players with his senseless "Wandering Damage Table". "You take Wandering Damage!".
To this day I am haunted by the thought of free-ranging Damage, floating around ready to manifest as random wounds...

uncle retrospective

17:45 / 06.08.05

At one point we started a card system for players wasting their time trying to stop something that was important for the plot or if Munchkinism was creeping in.
Cards with things like
"why waste your time?"
"Don't!"
and my fav
"idiot"

12:06 / 08.08.05

Munchkinism or min-maxing is the bane of my existence. In every gaming group there's always the guy (invariably a guy -- I've never met a female min-maxer*) who's more concerned with "winning" the game than, say, portraying an interesting character and actively participating in the collaborative story. I try to dissuade them from building a by-the-numbers ubercharacter and maybe try creating a character that would actually lend something to the group dynamic. That is, something other than "Twelve levels of Potence and a silver-bladed katana".

*I almost said "I've never met a female munchkin" but it made me giggle too much.

13:25 / 08.08.05

Munchkins are always a problem, in pretty much any game you play. Even in Aberrant, where Players start off with enough power to level a city-block, they aren't satisfied.

As long as the Player in question has some emotional maturity it's normally possible to get them to reign in their tendencies by talking to them. Otherwise I tend to respond with a sudden smackdown from local posthuman strike teams and a long stay in the Bahrain Correctional Facility.

Munchkins are pretty bad, but if you've got a regular group you can weed them out pretty well. Rules Lawyers are worse in my book.

14:21 / 08.08.05

Piece of advice to fellow DMs: if a player is on shrooms, kick them the hell out. Worst. Session. Ever.

Anyone else get a little too attached to NPCs, essentially making them PCs run by the DM? Happens to me all the damn time, but then again, I am a player at heart I guess.

Oh yes, and obligatory shout-out to fellow DMs.

rising and revolving

18:48 / 10.08.05

Systems by thier nature lead somewhat encourage munchkin tendancies - but by the same token, if you're the GM and your players are munchkin'ing it's largely your own fault.

One thing that a GM really has to be able to do (in my opinion) is evaluate what it is your players are looking for - and then provide it. Muchkin players get satisfaction from certain kinds of encounters, so you should endeavor to provide that player with that sort of interaction (or not play with them, I guess)

Given I used to run a lot of games for conventions, I've had to deal with every kind of player under the sun[1] and I don't believe there's *anyone* you can't provide a good experience for - not that I've always succeeded, but that's my fault not theirs.

More importantly, I think you can provide a good experience even when all of your players are seeking dramatically different things from the game, and still keep them all interested. It's exactly that balancing act which is most fulfilling when it pans out.

Anyways, a GM should be paying attention to the people playing and the ways they play. GM enough and you'll be able to pick types pretty consistently - so you'll be able to tell the difference between the person who's quiet because they're playing a lot of stuff over in their mind (and enjoying that) and the bloke who's sulking because you took away his magic flute.

If you're in a campaign game as a GM (rather than a single session) you should already know what it is your players enjoy. If you don't, ask them after each session. You should also know what *you* want from the game, and encourage that - by smiling, by complimenting, by giving XP.

Ultimately, being a good GM means being a good people person - because the ultimate reason you're doing this is because people enjoy it - and hopefully you enjoy people enjoying themselves.

[1] To give some background, I've run about 600 hours of convention games for (I'd say) approx 500 different players. This mainly due to spending about 8 years GM'ing for 2-3 cons a year (generally running one game for about 5-10 three hour sessions of different players).

08:37 / 11.08.05

We're all Players at heart.

Some wise words there rising. I don't personally feel I do too badly at regulating my Players. They're a good bunch and I'm lucky to be able to GM for them.

Our step into the world of pulp adventure is going well, the boys managed to foil the kidnapping of the German ambassador by zeppelin. One of them managed a frankly amazing shot with a service revolver that took out a good chunk of the zep's engines.

I'm liking the Dramatic Editing rule so far too. Essentially, in order to simulate a pulp hero's amazing luck, the Players can spend points to alter minor details of the game (like there being an extra parachute, or an enemy forgetting to load their gun, or conviently knowing a local).

It's a good game. Next week, the Players go up against Lord Bleakstock, and the Midnight Royals. What ho!

14:04 / 12.08.05

Regarding Mage: Bloody good game, but does need flexible and imaginative Players (Misguided-but-with-idealistic-utopian-visions-of-the-future* Scientist)

So true. More than any other game the PCs (that's Player Characters to you non-geek readers) are assistant storytellers. That seems to have leaked into your pulp game as minor editing (akin to Warhammer 'fate points', remember them?) which is a great idea.

What was the cliffhanger in the last pulp game?

*mad scientists get a bad rep, they're not evil just misunderstood. Except in 30s pulp games.

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

17:45 / 12.08.05

I've just started a game with my group that begins in an archetypal High Fantasy kingdom with goblins and feudalism, which then turns out to be a sort of nature reserve in a lovecraftian/steampunk sort of world. Being as they're so used to FR campaigns and the like, I'm looking forward to serious culture shock when they get to the train station. Also, Elder Gods.
/cackles for a bit

09:18 / 13.08.05

Heh, give them some Sanity points and pretend it's in case of Shrieker Dementors or maddening spells or something. How are you handling magic?

12:23 / 18.08.05

Sounds good Withiel, let us know how it gets on.

Now here's a question for GMs. How do you handle PC fatalities?

There are certain games systems which seem to be custom-designed to promote fatalities in combat, Shadowrun being one I've experienced. The Storyteller system, or at least Version 1.0 of it, is highly lethal if you aren't playing a supernatural being of some kind. Then of course there are games like Paranoia which actively encourage PC death at every opportunity.

But it all comes down to the GM in the end. So how do you play it? Let the dice decide? Or do you only kill Players when they're outright stupid? Or some other way? Informatise me.

I tend to steer towards Player stupidity for losing characters. I know from personal experience that losing a PC you've worked hard at building and role-playing can be a quite traumatic experience. Players invest a lot of emotion in these meta-personalities.

However there are occasions when it's all down to the dice.

The last PC that died in our Aberrant game was my brother's. A superhuman called Momento, a teleporting momentum controller. The team were in the Kashmir warzone trying to rescue some people. He tried to stealth up a ramp to scope out the approaching enemies. Botched the roll (big time failure) and essentially walked out into the desert waving his arms. A flying superhuman saw him, swooped, and took his head off. The team were too far away from civilisation to do anything.

17:23 / 18.08.05

How do you handle PC fatalities?

I give dice-death fatalities a second chance, however small ('There's a small hillock of sand you could conceivably dive behind in the nick of time if you're lucky') as it seems to disrupt the narrative structure for blind chance to knock off a story's hero with no warning.

'As Holmes leaped from the bridge to the moving train to confront his archenemy Moriarty, a double botch sent him between carriages to die screaming under the screeching steel wheels of doom. The end.'
It's somehow unsatisfying, never mind frustrating for the player.

Stupidity death though, they deserve everything they get- make a new character. I believe most PC deaths should be dramatic, martyring themselves to save the world, heroically tackling the demon, trusting the evil turncoat etc. so in my games they tend to clump near the end of story arcs, in the den of the villain/falling from a zeppelin/battling hordes of zombies.

Ideally the player of a character who dies should say 'It was a bloody good laugh and I was fabulous!' a la Plunkett & McLean.

21:25 / 29.08.05

Christ I used to GM and DM for yonks, variuos systems from AD&D, Golden Heroes, Warhammer (for Fantasy Wargaming), Car Wars, etc.

Used to play Space Crusade, Blood Bowl, etc. Was never too sure of the foothold that board gaming had when it reassimilated itself into the avenues of Virtual Worlds and Gaming.

It's like playing God, ah them were the days of spending days in and days out at eying up a voluptuos troll or dwarf or more recently an Imeperial Dreadnought at little indie gaming shops (I recall one opposite Goldbergs in Glasgow and at the West End in Glasgow). The experience of getting admitted into an Indie Gamer's shop was like an iniation into something else.

Hah, do you play nasty God or nice God? Warhammer was so piss easy you had to start scrapping the game to start up new games as the d6 emphasis just did not cut the mustard with AD&D and Middle Earth Role Playing which sucked but ruled if you were a JR Tolkien Fiend, with your Bakshi copies of LOTR before it got nicked by a Kiwi.

We played "Conspiracy" as well (like Gurps) and played "Star Trek" though I always wanted to get into the "Illuminati" RPG though we played the Card Game.

Sometimes I acted a softy and let the players get away with it, and sometimes (evil grins) I slayed the bastards for all they were worth, you gotta be a hard GM to affect a brutal envoirenment.

I'd still play the "Cyberpunk" game for sure, I liked Steve Jackson Games, "Car Wars" is a penultimate game for enthusiasts of all "Mad Max" Scenes.

RPG is good for you.

09:19 / 30.08.05

Well thanks for that list microphage:

Hah, do you play nasty God or nice God? Warhammer was so piss easy you had to start scrapping the game to start up new games as the d6 emphasis just did not cut the mustard with AD&D and Middle Earth Role Playing which sucked but ruled if you were a JR Tolkien Fiend, with your Bakshi copies of LOTR before it got nicked by a Kiwi.

I don't quite get what you mean here. 'Piss easy'? The actual system shouldn't really matter when it comes to the narrative flow of an RPG. And why shouldn't it cut the mustard with AD&D fans, whose system is traditionally level based and quite dice heavy? The beauty of Warhammer, was, at the time of its release, that it had a clash of middle ages and renaissance themes set in a dark fantasy backdrop. It had the stong base of an evocative setting with a gothic mood. A sort of Maelstrom with orcs. The system was simplistic to help game flow, but there was certainly ewnough scope to ignore dice altogether.

Never thought I'd become an apologist for WFB.....

With character deaths, I used to alternate frequently between 'when yer dead yer dead' and being a little more generous.

Quite often its good have that possibilty of death hanging over the PCs. Firstly it adds tension and makes them think a bit more before rushing at things to attack for their exps. It also adds to the world their in as a violent and random place where life is hard and short.

Of course, it can be a bit harsh to let things come down to dice rolls, so before sessions I often used to keep 'fate points' hidden and use them when appropriate, rather than leave them with the character. This allows you to fudge a death and slip in plot threads.

09:48 / 30.08.05

I had a tendency to fudge deaths unless they occurred at a dramatic point, though this was dependent on the game I was running. So in my cyberpunk games I'd let death be a fairly regular occurence as it fitted the ethos of the game, but when I was running a Star Wars campaign PCs tended only to die at suitably climactic points.
Of course if the players were being idiots then I just used to let PC deaths stand. It's the only way they'll learn.

13:56 / 31.08.05

Of course, in the Star Wars RPG, you get bonus points for half-arsed, hare-brained plans and lunatic swashbuckling...

A beautiful tunnel of ghosts

14:59 / 31.08.05

Macrophage, although the Gamesmaster on Great Western Road closed down many years ago, the RPG shop opposite Goldberg's, the Dragon & George, relocated to Parnie Street, where it still trades.

*sucks on pipe thoughtfully*

23:07 / 08.10.05

I know that no one has posted in this thread for a while. Is anyone still interested in this discussion?

08:38 / 10.10.05

But of course!

I'm trying to run a play-by-email game with some friends. Sadly, I've never done so before and I don't really know the best way to go about doing it. Anybody have any tips? Past experience? Amusing anecdotes? The group will be two to four people. I'm thinking either Nobilis or a free-form Mage so dice-rolling isn't a problem.

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