Hot answers tagged gm-preparation
22
Steal a couple and mash them up
Colleges and universities are actually, in general, remarkably good about putting their plans online. To make a believable college campus quickly, steal a couple, and mash them up. Then use the building plans featured in the street map for your internal plans.
Internal plans: MSU, LaTrobe Library, Melbourne, Colorado State
...
9
Generally speaking, if it is too much for a spreadsheet, chances are it's too much for human adjudication in the first place. In other words, if you can't keep track of it with a generalized computer tool like a spreadsheet, then it's a good sign that your campaign needs a redesign. An alternative might be a custom computer application, but if you're ...
8
I'd like to point out that with some good keying, it's a lot easier to keep track of everything. Make a note for each room or item what it can trigger, and then make a checklist for each room for everything that can be changed. Then when, for example, a lever is pulled you could read the key, go to say room 46, and tick a box.
This might take a while at ...
8
A mouse can not kill a bear by force of arms.
At least, not using Fighter nor Hunter. (See the size effect rules on page 223-225)
Animals that are two or more ranks higher
than you on the scale may not be killed
by your hand—not using Fighter or Hunter.
Use of Militarist requires more than 1 mouse. For a black bear, 6 steps up the scale, it's ...
8
As a GM, I love handing out props but I don't have a lot of time to build them. And as Melon points out (I've run some of his campaigns) portability and storage can be an issue. I've organically developed some question over the years, to help me analyse my props and make the most of the few times I use them.
Why am I adding this prop?
This is the big one. ...
7
I'd recommend the 5x5 method which discussed on the in detail on the critical-hits.com blog in the context of both adventures and campaigns
The basic idea of this technique, is that you take 5 ideas:
Overthrow the evil empire
Prevent the sorcerer from ascending to demon-hood
and 3 more...
and so on, and then for each idea create 5 milestones that will ...
7
Ooh, fun question. I'm having trouble even picturing 20,000 mice, but quick Googling lists the weight of a bear as 300 - 780 kg and the weight of a mouse as 16 - 27 grams, so to compare against a bear in terms of weight the mice would need numbers between 13,000 and 50,000. Frankly, even if this worked though, the number of casualties involved in such a ...
6
The Dresden Files, Your Story contains rules for City Creation which can be done by only one person. It's a pretty sophisticated system which can be used to create a city for any period and any setting without much work involved. Unlike How to Host a Dungeon it does not have a form of an actual game though, but it is a very broad tool.
6
I've played through my fair share of D&D campaigns, some with pretty heavy prop usage, some with slim to no prop usage (in some cases, we didn't even have room for a battle mat!) Generally in my experience, props that will actively help the PC's keep track of things (maps, notes/letters discovered, riddles and the like) are extremely useful. They give us ...
5
I almost invariably run sandbox games, what the players do is entirely up to them and the plot advances through NPCs no matter if they interact or not!
Before organising a big sandbox campaign where there are strategic targets I'd advise the following:
Talk to the players; see what they want from the game and enjoy. Do they like exploring? Fights? ...
5
Have you ever heard of Vornheim: The Complete City Kit?
It's a must-have if you find yourself GMing a lot in urban environments. It's a book about designing every aspect of a city on the fly, including streets, floor plans, rumors, NPCs, motivations, plot hooks, etc. It's focused on (a rather grim) medieval fantasy, but it's extremely hackable to suit ...
5
The first thing to decide (which I suspect you already know) is to decide what kind of campus the college has.
There's Rural, Urban, and Suburban.
Rural campuses tend to be all contained in a large plot of land with maybe 1 or 2 roads in/out of college. For example, my wife's college was on a mountain. There was 1 road that went downhill, and a footpath ...
5
I know of no tool that is actively supported that comes close to Masterplan for 3.5/Pathfinder/D20 style games. There are or were a number of tools that could be used in combination to do some of it.
PCGen is a good solid tool for some parts of what you are looking for. There are data files that can be loaded into it that are for D&D (3E, 3.5E, 4E), ...
4
You may have luck at Roll20
Roll20.net is a virtual tabletop and has a number of tools that make it effective for running combats in a multitude of systems, including 3.5, 4e, Pathfinder, etc. You can create a campaign and advertise it in the Looking For Group section with details about what you're looking to accomplish and the role the players would have ...
4
I think a straight combat scenario can be very appealing to people, as long as you make it clear that's whats going to happen from the start. I've reached out to people on Twitter and within the Gamer Assembly (their IRC channel is here) for this very purpose with some success.
I'm afraid I don't know of a group specifically for this.
4
I've never played a WtF game that's gotten to lodges, but I've run Mages with Legacies, Vampires with Bloodlines and Changelings with Entitelements, so I have experience in this realm, and I can report on what I've found.
It probably goes without saying, but by choosing these Lodges, the players are telling you three things: I want the story to involve X, I ...
4
Successfully using props or cards from board games/card games (all kinds) to run a campaign
Not to run a campaign really, although pieces from a Monopoly game or other game serve as more enjoyable map counters than pennies and nickels.
Ease preparing for a session
Definitely. I love my Tarot deck, and find that including it where randomness is ...
4
One system that I think is great for this is the Mythic Game Master Emulator. I find that I can use it to generate not only a plot for a solo off the cuff adventure, but also generate the details of a world and its NPCs as I do so. By the time I am done playing my solo session (even if all I have is a couple of scenes), I feel like I have a living world that ...
4
A little longer than I felt comfortable with a comment is my answer.
Universities can have extremely haphazard setups. For example, the one I graduated from just bought up an old HS to use as a campus building a few years ago about a quarter mile from the campus proper. So as long as you're consistent you don't need to worry terribly about the exact ...
4
Essentially you are looking for players. I suspect most players in an online one shot game won't care if they are doing the DM a service by playtesting something for the DMs regular group.
There are many online games played and organized on Google+ these days.
G+ RPG Hangouts: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/101466247068767710475 is a good place to ...
4
I could see two ways that you go about creating NPCs based on real-life people as you describe:
Make the NPC so that his or her abilities, appearance, and general combat effectiveness match those of the person in real life
Make the NPC an idealized version of the person in real life, such that they are recognizable, but may have unrealistic abilities, ...
4
This can be a tricky thing, if a group is used to a certain playing style, for example following quests along a more or less straight plotline in which the next step is somehow obvious and usually agrees on using violence with slightly hostile characters it may be difficult to transform that group to a more open environment where the player's decision is as ...
3
As far as I know, the biggest/most currently active PbP (Play-by-Post) forums are
Giant in the Playground
Paizo
each maintains some sort of a community relating to the D&D 3.5 family.
Relevant for you, the GitP recruitment forum maintains a guide for those who are new to PbP gaming, mentioning critical topics such as
Game pacing
Dealing with ...
3
I'd suggest to use monster types/appearances as indicators of where the PCs are. Terrain can be useful, especially if you make it appropriate to the monsters, but the players will tend to focus more when you're describing stuff that's threatening or fighting them.
In my largest (fantasy) sandbox, I had a safe area in the middle, then surrounded it with ...
3
I've found that certain pieces from various games can be of excellent use in getting ideas for play.
The best example is that the location and adventure cards from Fortune and Glory are a wonderful inspiration for Spirit of the Century.
The location cards from Risk or Supremacy are excellent for generating places for post 1700 AD adventures and/or origins, ...
3
It's pretty simple but it is challenging if you haven't done it before, here is my advice.
An adventure is solving a problem, so come up with a problem, that problem will be the basis of a quest so let's say "The Earl's daughter has been kidnapped." that is the problem, then you come up with a villain so let's say " Cultists of Orcus (I'm using him because ...
3
It is always best done in an assertive way. To be honest, pointing the players to this question would not be a bad starting point. You could give examples from $media that you like and want the game to be similar to as well as $media that you do not wish to emulate.
For example: I want to run a game set in the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem based on a ...
3
You may want to back up a bit and involve the players in a discussion of why you are interested in making some changes for this new campaign. It may begin with something as simple as, "Hey, we've been doing things the same way for a long time, and I'm interested in shaking things up. What do you think of doing X, Y, and Z for a change?"
If they're involved ...
2
I don't know about "ease preparing" a session, but I had a three year game where I used all kinds of things like this (board games, card games, dice games, games I just made up off the top of my head...). Almost every session we would have some "downtime" where we would all eat dinner in character, and we would usually have a mini-game. In my experience, ...
2
Giant in the Playground has a play-by-post section, and I’ve seen numerous tests run there. Their homebrew forum is also often quite solid and may be able to help with more customized ideas (and may also be a way of drawing interest to playtests).
The unofficial #giantitp IRC channel also has quite a few players in it, some of whom might quite enjoy a ...
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