Hot answers tagged gm-techniques
46
There's a two step process needed here.
Say to your players what you just said to us
Then mind your own business
Have they not noticed that imbalanced loot is throwing off their party balance? Or is it that they don't care? If they do not care and are having fun, it is not a problem. If they haven't noticed, then just telling them "Hey gear is ...
41
It sounds to me like an expectation problem. You should easily be able to resolve it by asking the player why they feel the need to say those things. Once you figure out why, you can do something about it. Although my suspicion is that the player is used to a GM vs Players style of gaming and thus covers all his bases because otherwise, they get picked on. ...
32
Look, the two of you are going to need to coordinate and manage expectations here.
Tricking the GM into giving you a kingdom? AWESOME. But the game still needs to run, and both of you need to take that into account. You want to give him what he wants, to have the game be fun for him - but if what he wants is to be an omnipotent monarch and do his ...
27
Tell them the consequences of the standing order, and ask if they really want that.
For extreme and unreasonable ones, they might go like this:
You're always on high alert, always searching for secret doors? Each piece of wall and floor takes ten minutes to search, so that means your progress will be very, very slow.
Also, you will eventually ...
25
Introduce NPCs and plotlines/quests to handle redistribution and to bring the "lagging" PCs up to "speed" via personalized rewards (and, if very, very badly needed, punishments.)
Examples:
If your ranger has barely any items, run a sylvan quest for whose completion he is given a magic bow made / customized especially for him by a dryad.
If it's your ...
23
There's no easy way to tell how long an adventure will last. Sometimes they'll run through several adventures' worth of material in an evening, and sometimes they'll spend forever on what you thought was a minor task.
Some reasons why material can take less time than you expect:
The party thinks of a solution you didn't think of. Maybe you assumed the ...
22
Let him try to impoverish his towns and take all their able-bodied workers to be killed in war. Two or three towns along he and his slow-moving treasure caravan and small mob of unarmed peasants will run into the collected forces of the armed rebels who object to this treatment, which will be numerous enough that he can't hope to fight them.
Maybe warn him ...
19
I think I'd be okay with the bolt recovery. I see that as weapon upkeep and it's part of the game I'm just not interested in spending time on. I don't ask the fighter to oil and sharpen his sword, nor does the bard change out the strings on his lute to get new string sound.
I would not be okay with the high alert standing order. A character that paranoid ...
17
On the one occasion we started a new group from scratch, we all went out to dinner together, during which we talked about what we were looking for in a game and did some basic worldbuilding. Also, it meant hanging out in a social situation and just getting to know each other. If it didn't end up working out, I believe it would be a softer rejection this way, ...
15
This always seems to be the answer, but...
Talk to the player first.
I'm assuming you have some means of contacting your players outside your normal game time, if only to set up game or let each other know of cancellations or emergencies. Send your player a message, something along the lines of "Hey, I've noticed that you seem dissatisfied at game lately. ...
15
Wraith's answer is absolutely right: Fate is designed to be open and transparent, and revealing aspects is crucial to the players' mechanical viability in the narrative.
Now, DFRPG itself occupies a rather peculiar niche in the Fate paradigm and its narrative style unfortunately led to a lot of engine philosophy being implied rather than stated. So I'm ...
15
The real way to spice up anything in a game is to give it some more flavor. Instead of merely escorting the princess through the forest, she's injured and needs medical attention beyond what the players can provide, and there's a rival kingdom seeking to take her for ransom. Give it more than just a "Do this." feel, give it a "Do this, quickly, or else ...
15
You say this makes designing encounters pretty hard for you. I say you care too much. You seem like this is your problem, though in fact it should be theirs.
If you design encounters that take into consideration their self-imposed handicaps, then they won't ever feel there is a problem. You nurse them overmuch. If you tell them the problem, they will not ...
15
This is an opportunity, not a tragedy. Running a kingdom, especially an evil kingdom is HARD WORK. Others have stated some of the reasons why. Here are some specific counters to things people THINK they can do when they are a king:
I want to take all the gold and stuff in the kingdom for my own.
Really? Firstly, anything in his coffers is already his. ...
15
Happily, you're playing 4th ed. Having a pet kingdom, like a pet dragon, means that you can adventure in new, and awesome places. It, however, doesn't impact actual encounters.
A kingdom is a great source for treasure parcels, but the economics of 4th ed aren't. Soldiers are great set dressing, but as low-level minions in (what is likely at least paragon) ...
14
Writing a game with a military structure focus is somewhat difficult, but something that I've had to tackle several times with my players. Here are some things I've gleaned.
Military units tend to be symmetrical. This is because commanders typically appreciate it when every member of a fireteam is capable of serving as a rifleman, and any specialization ...
12
I do not know under which system you are running this, and the answer may stray from the expectations you might have from your system, but still:
I find it perfectly reasonable that a player may want to always search for traps and hidden stuff in enemy territory, such as a dungeon or hostile residence. It is not reasonable that he is upset about having to ...
11
The PC wants to keep adventuring. Ok, so who runs the store in his absence? Since this is an evil kingdom, I can imagine that there are several NPC's who are going to feel cheated out of their "rightful" shot at the throne, and would take advantage of any absence to further their claim.
And, I'm sure that he's not in control of the treasury personally. ...
11
Fights aren't played out on grids.
Well, they are played out on grids, on tables - but in "real" life they take place in dungeons and swamps and forests. Use this to your advantage. Make one fight in a tight hallway so your players have a hard time maneuvering or are trapped between two sides. This makes your players change tactics between fights.
If you ...
10
This answer is specific to burning-wheel.
Burning Wheel Gold, page 104
Basic, Naked Characters
Characters start the game naked and stupid. Literacy is earned through skills. Clothing is purchased with resource points.
Burning Wheel does not coddle the players. If they want something, they need to work at it. They'll fail along the way, but ...
9
Do not look at systems but at settings. If the setting is interesting enough, if the lure of the story to be told is captivating enough, and if each player can see a protagonist they would like to play then you have won them over. Then, if you must, find a system that match. There are several ways you can do this:
A commonly known setting: say Conan or ...
8
If I correctly understand the question being asked, you are asking us for effective techniquest to use in describing combat against multiple oponents.
I could answer this in an system-agnostic manner, as Im not very familiar with 7th sea, but Im sure you will be able to relate my advice to this system.
What is important for mass combat, I dont think you ...
8
Mundane is a pretty tricky word for Shadowrun. I'm writing with the assumption that you're asking for the elements of a "baseline" game of SR.
I. Don't try anything fancy.
Simple as that, keep to the core book for a while - meaning less options to manage. You'll have plenty on your hands already anyway. An interesting run will include varied elements from ...
8
The mistake you're making is in asking:
How do I keep him from...
You don't keep him from anything. If he wants to get all the gold, let him get all the gold, and once he's used all the gold to buy things, have his public servants come to him seeking payment for their services. Or, have the entire blacksmith guild leave to go seek a new kingdom when ...
8
It's OK to confine your players, and it's OK to have in place things that will thwart the easy outs that would be boring for everyone involved. The point where it will start feeling like railroading is when either A) The reasons why escape methods X, Y, and Z don't work don't make sense or B) The rules keep changing, specifically to thwart ideas that would ...
7
I'm restarting a campaign right now that is almost identical to this. It used and will be using Savage Worlds, with PCs being members of a fantasy frontier law enforcement paramilitary group.
Savage Worlds was designed from the ground up to do all four of your points. Have you looked at it? There's a free Test Drive PDF on the publisher's site. It's not ...
7
Find the interesting or salient points of each background story and put them in your campaign / adventure. These could be people, places, or things. If it makes sense, the same person, place, or thing could be matched to more than one PC's background info point, or points from multiple PC backgrounds could be combined into a single setting. For instance, ...
7
What I have done when I running games that don't have this built in is to introduce the concept of tags. In other games, they're called different things, and it's a fairly common technique, though perhaps presented in a different manner.
Each PC when writing his background, tags it with the most important parts of the background from his perspective. ...
7
For the first, it's not super duper difficult to say that it's unfair. Unless they have a feat or quality that says otherwise, they can't just "always be on high alert". They get the same chance to spot things as anyone else, unless they go to look. If they complain, simply tell them that they were too busy examining [shiny potentially deadly thing like a ...
7
Your group hasn't determined the expected behavours of a professional 'hero'.
In addition to taking the same page tool discussion, you need to discuss some additional bits of your social contract. Specifically, the expectation of professionalism in your shared narrative.
If all characters are professionals, then they should be treated as professionals in ...
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