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The GM Thread.

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11:18 / 18.10.05

Play by email takes ages, and it's really text heavy- I'd recommend running a political campaign rather than an action adventure.

16:18 / 19.10.05

It's an Unknown Armies campaign focusing on secret history and centuries-old mystical vendettas, heavy on research and investigation and light on making people's eyeballs explode.

So yeah, it should work out fine then.

14:01 / 02.11.05

So, I had a bit of a GM breakdown back at the start of September. After two weeks of only one or two people turning up for the regular Sunday session, no-one came. Most of them cancelled right at the last minute too.

So I thought "F**k it, I'm cancelling the game."

Luckily I decided to sleep on that decision before actually texting anyone. Drank a couple of glasses of good single-malt and watched Akira. Then emailed my two most loyal Players and explained that I was feeling a little stressed by the whole deal.

One of them (my brother) pointed out that the reason why I was getting so stressed might have something to do with the fact that I've been the GM unrelenting since 2001. So maybe all I needed was a short break. He opted to run a short-lived campaign based on the same system.

Now I'm back. Refreshed and reinvorated from two months as a Player. Plus I've laid a few ground rules for the guys that should hopefully cut down on the sudden cancellations.

Firstly I've dropped the rule that says nothing bad happens to your character if you're not there. If they dump their PC in the middle of a fight and then don't turn up the next week then I'll roll the dice. But if they get slotted then it's their own fault and they can look after their next character better.

Secondly, for the three guys who only come on an extremely irregular basis, I've made up 6 secondary characters. Less powerful and they don't get exp. But handy fictionsuits for people who want to play but don't want to play every week.

Got a fun-filled storyline too, embroiling them in the chaos of a posthuman-run corporation tearing itself apart.

14:44 / 02.11.05

Firstly I've dropped the rule that says nothing bad happens to your character if you're not there. If they dump their PC in the middle of a fight and then don't turn up the next week then I'll roll the dice. But if they get slotted then it's their own fault and they can look after their next character better.

This has recently come up in the D&D campaign I'm playing in, it's just got to the stage where people are getting attached to their characters. And when people haven't been able to make it others have played their characters which has resulted in character deaths before as people aren't as careful with others characters as they should be.

Luckily we always finish fights before stopping so there hasn't been the situation as you described. But understandable conclusion if it happens alot in your games.

What's happened with us lot now is if someone can't make it they either pass their sheets to other players to run or else that person isn't there and gets no XP.

In other GM-ish related news I think I have enough of my game to run for a couple of weeks, just need to finsh the maps now so I know where my players are going.

08:51 / 03.11.05

Luckily we always finish fights before stopping so there hasn't been the situation as you described.

Yeah, I try and do this as well. Although I'm something of a cliffhanger addict. But my adventures tend to sprawl out over several sessions. Plus combat is often preceded by an hour of planning as the guys try and work out the perfect way of stealthily entering the secret research facility of the week.

I think I may also put a time limit on planning. Give them twenty minutes to assemble a plan and then they're up. It will give them less freedom, but I don't think they'll actually notice that.

11:05 / 03.11.05

Nothing constructive to add, just wanted to say I'm getting ready to run the new Serenity game and I am a happy monkey.

11:23 / 03.11.05

Oooh, what's it like?

19:30 / 03.11.05

Yes. Please, do tell.

12:48 / 04.11.05

The system reminds me of Deadlands, since it uses all sizes of dice, as well as poker chips for Plot Points. Plot Points are earned through good roleplaying, and can be spent to improve rolls etc. Character creation is pretty simple (it's a point-based system). As far as actions go it's just roll (attribute die type) plus (skill die type), add them together and beat the difficulty. Really streamlined stuff, easy for even a nongamer to pick up. A really cool addition is ship creation -- you can make a ship just like it was a character.

As for the setting, well, it's FIREFLY man! There's lots of background information on the setting as well as an overview of all the moons and planets and everything! Am I gushing? I'm gushing.

11:41 / 07.12.07

Just a little update on my never-ending game of Aberrant for those who're interested (and also to maybe rev this thread back up a little).

With my brother moving to Australia earlier in the year I decided to wrap up the campaign we'd been running nearly non-stop since 2002. But the guys still wanted to play in the Aberrant world-setting so I've opted to do the old trick of moving things up the timeline by four decades.

I don't know how much anyone knows about the Aberrant setting. It is actually a spin-off from the sci-fi roleplaying game Trinity (also known as Aeon). The gameworlds descibed in the books are about (I think) a century apart and both refer to an event in the intervening years known as the Aberrant War, where the superhuman Novas begin to succumb to the mutating forces that grant them their powers and nearly destroy the world battling each other and the baseline human societies.

There's not a lot of info about the war itself (just snippets here and there in the other books). So I am essentially building the world as I go along (cribbing certain parts from Trinity as none of my Players have read it).

The Players are taking the role of a cell of Terats (think Magneto's Acolytes), recently recruited.

I've woven a little conceit into the game. See I have always thought that the Amnesia flaw was the sign of a lazy Player who couldn't be bothered to build a back-ground. But this time around I have made it an integral part of the story. The idea being that, in order to join this army of posthuman supremists the Players apparently willingly had their memories of life as humans telepathically erased and have been reborn as Homo Novus.

This leaves the Players with the option of trying to discover their hidden pasts (the tangible benefits of this come in the form of "unlockable" Backgrounds and skills).

Throw in highly unstable (and apparently sentient) artifacts that grant each Player incredible powers at an ever increasing cost, and we're cooking with gas.

How're the other GMs on the site doing?

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