Game Mastery

One of the more controversial topics in table top RPG gaming is the fudging of dice. Some GMs feel it necessary to adjust dice results. Other players would leave the table if they found out the GM even thought such a practice could ever be acceptable. There’s no right answer to this debate and it seems like almost everyone has an opinion, so here’s mine…

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Two games ago I decided I would never again attempt to run a game off my laptop. Ostensibly this was to keep me off the computer for a few more hours each week in a belated attempt to save my carpal tunnels. In actuality it’s because the computer was too damn useful and I kept finding new ways to make use of it when I should have been writing game.

Well, I’m between games now (that sounds a lot more depressing than it really is) and figured I could invest some time into coding up my own RPG tools.

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I’m conisdering starting up another game.  Ostensibly it’s because I’m sick of being a PC, but really it’s because I miss writing posts here.

The problem is that my last game ended pretty recently and I haven’t recovered from GM fatigue yet.  Published campaigns are looking more and more attractive.  If only I hadn’t already attempted one and utterly hated it.   The other option is to run a standard game instead of my usual type of game.  The sort of thing that’s stereotypical D&D where dungeons can be stupidly complex because you don’t ask “who would ever build this thing?”

Or if anyone else has suggestions for how to deal with GM fatigue I’m glad to hear them.

If I haven’t been posting lately it’s for two reasons.  Firstly, I’m not actively GMing right now.  The other reason is that I’ve been reading Gnome Stew and that has satisfied my need for GM blogging. I’d like to draw your attention to today’s Gnome Stew article, Mayhem, Squared Circle Style. (As noted in the GS comments) for years I’ve been claiming that everything I know about GMing I learned from pro wrestling. I’ve been trying to sum this up in a post here, but it never goes right and I scrap the post. Gnome Stew made the post for me so now I don’t have to.

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I’ve always defended D&D as a platform for roleplaying.  Sure it focuses on combat by providing an abundance of interesting combat rules, but that doesn’t prevent you from roleplaying in it.  I’ve run entire d20 sessions without even looking at dice.  A character is a character and as long as a system supports a setting appropriate for your character, you can roleplay in that system, right?

Well, I’m not going to talk about that right now.  I’ve been playing 4th edition lately and will be running a pre-written 4th ed module this weekend.  I wasn’t able to get through a full reading of the mod without finally understanding why people take exception to using D&D for role play.  This post is an airing of grievances (in full Festivus spirit) I had while reading through a single D&D adventure.  I’ll bitch and moan and maybe, if we’re lucky, figure out a thing or two about writing good RP by examining the bad.

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Alright, so Game of Thrones is finished.  It was a good game but had some flaws.  One of the biggest flaws wasn’t entirely my fault.  We had a player who had trouble remembering what was going on.  That player happened to be a spy.  When he got caught and was explaining himself, he fabricated some pretty wild lies.  The problem was that I couldn’t tell if the character was lying or if the player simply couldn’t remember.

Now, I’d done my homework and kept a pretty detailed log on our group wiki.  The information was there, if the players cared to read it.  There was actually a lot of content there, but it was by and large ignored.  With the exception of our “rotating DM” game, I’ve never seen a game’s website get any real use or serve any purpose other than to frustrate the GM.  Long story short, I’ve been discussing this online and somebody posted a very simple, elegant way to get your players to use forums.

Post experience and loot there.  Even if your players aren’t loot whores, nobody wants to miss out on some good magic gear.  Level ups even less so.  Use the loot to get your players into your forum or wiki, and once there they may actually use it.  I think the best part of this idea isn’t even that the players will use the forums, but that division of loot will happen outside of game time.

Sign my game is going well: added a new player last night and then had another player deal with backstory colliding with in game events for 90+ minutes.  New player was content watching backstory emerge.  I think this means I’ve done my job when it comes to making the story engaging.  Best of all, backstory came to light and nothing has been resolved.

Today I stumbled upon something I made about a year ago.  It’s a DnD 3.5 character sheet.  I made it because I wasn’t satisfied with the default one when playing Grimble, my overleveled gnome wizard.  Wish I published it earlier, as 3.5 is kinda obsolete these days.

Anyway, here’s the character sheet.  Description below the cut.

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As I mentioned in my Lessons of NaNoWriMo post, one of the things I learned about my writing is that a structured outline does not inhibit my creativity, it simply displaces it. Instead of coming up with crazy plot twists on the fly, I start filling in details when all the plot twists are set in stone.

My biggest problem GMing recently has been a lack of flavor. NPCs turn out bland. Locations lack description. Flavor exists in the world, but I don’t bother publishing it. My theory (which came at about 1am last night and kept me up till about 2am last night) is that if I stopped writing complex plots by the seat of my pants I’d take time to invest creative energy into juicy bits of detail. After I finish this game I’m going to try running somebody else’s published adventures just to see what happens. With any luck I’ll start leaving my mark as colorful NPCs instead of Lost-esque plot twists.

I had a thought.  My games tend to focus on story.  I like writing story.  Building powerful enemies feels like homework, but story is always new and exciting.  In all of GMing, nothing is more fun to me than spawning a new plot thread or tying two plot threads into one.

As much as I like story building, I don’t like story telling.  In my head I know that a story is about the journey, not the destination, but when I’m speaking (something I do frequently as a GM) I rush it.  And it’s not because I have a super cool ending that I have to show the players.  Far from it.  I rush to the end because I want to find out what happens.

If I’ve written a plot correctly, it’ll be up to the players to handle the conclusion.  So they’ve killed off the BBEG?  That’s not the end of the story.  The end of the story is what they do once they’ve stumbled into control of whatever power he was amassing.  Done correctly, I’ve given momentum to the plot and then set the players free to resolve the final conflict.

But when I get excited and rush it, the players don’t take over when I hand the game back to them.  What’s supposed to be the grand finale sputters and halts.  I’ve handed off the game to the PCs, but they’re left bewildered and don’t know that it’s their turn to take over.  I can’t blame them for dropping the ball.

Strange as it sounds I think my GMing would benefit if I hogged the spotlight just a little (this goes for NPCs as well as giving plots enough time to boil over).  I should take time to tell the story instead of pushing to see it resolved.  The more I steal the limelight, the more the players will want it back.  As it is, they’re used to taking control whenever they feel like it, and I let them because I want the game to be open and sandboxy.  Maybe denying them control is the best way to make them want to take control.