Questions tagged [system-agnostic]
For questions that are explicitly not restricted to any one particular system or rules, where the asker wants solutions to the question that are not directly tied to a game's mechanics.
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How do I get my PCs to not be a bunch of murderous cretins?
Most RPGs teach you that casual violence is the best solution to all your in-game problems. This is so well established a part of the vast majority of RPGs that there are entire satire RPGs like Greg ...
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How to deal with players who like to use the local authorities to solve their problems
The problem
I have a player in my group which tends to approach local authorities (may it be guards or churches) when facing a threat. He thinks that, given his role (a bard in a medieval world, so, ...
user1368
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How do you help players not focus on the rules?
Background — My Group's Gaming Style
When I GM, I run games loosely from a rules standpoint, and do not feel bound to adhere to what the rulebook says when it doesn't make sense in a given situation. ...
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How to deal with player MacGyver-ism?
Role playing is an excellent hobby to train your problem solving skills. You learn to look at situations from different view points (i.e. the characters) and you have various skills and resources at ...
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How can I make my PCs flee?
My players never run away or avoid conflict. Ever. I throw them ridiculous encounters, they will stay and fight. If I tell them, "You know you're not gonna make it, just run," they stay and fight and ...
user4000
104
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18
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How do I not cheapen death, while also respecting my players' time?
I DM for a group of very busy people, for whom the commitment of several hours a week is a real sacrifice: that’s a sizeable chunk of their free time for the week that I’m asking for.
Now,...
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96
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26
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Why is burying yourself not such a great plan?
One of my player is a clever guy. At night when the others are putting the camp together he digs a hole big enough for himself (between 3-4 feet deep) and asks someone to cover his body with dirt; he ...
user4000
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13
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How do I keep the game moving without undermining player agency?
In basically every game I've run or played, regardless of the system, I've encountered the same problem: things that should be quick decisions end up taking ten, twenty or even thirty minutes, and not ...
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Should I warn my players when they're about to do something stupid?
As a GM, I occasionally run into situations where the players want to do something very poorly thought-out. Honest mistakes, not intentional derailing. In these situations, I often feel the urge to ...
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My PCs have a plan that will get them all killed; how and why should I save them?
Related: How do I help my players figure out how to stay alive in a realistically-deadly sandbox campaign?
I am running a sandbox game for a group of players who are used to more traditional ...
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Is saying "Your PC wouldn't do that" to a player denying their agency?
In a comment to my answer to What would be the side effects on a Druid of wearing metal armor?, @Kevin asked:
"So, RAW a druid will never choose to wear metal armor or use metal shields, so the ...
- 203k
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How to fix a terrible lapse in judgement
Trigger warning: sexualized violence
In the gaming group I run, I said at the very first day that this was going to be a very "adult" campaign. I told them I wasn't going to pull punches, ...
user11008
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13
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As a GM, how can I stop killing my games?
Probably the worst issue I have as a Game Master is that I think of a game, I write a campaign plot for it -- End, Beginning and Middle, get hyped, hype my players, and after 2 months I get bored with ...
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How can I show-not-tell my players that they are The Bad Guys?
My players have an interesting habit of changing their behavior on a dime. Between objectives, they'll be trying to fix problems at small towns they pass through and helping the locals, but once they ...
- 1,067
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13
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Players playing weird characters breaking the immersion of my group
I have an issue with two players in my very large gaming group that I would like some advice from people who have perhaps dealt with players like these. In terms of age and experience, we're all ...
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As an unreliable player, how can I lessen the burden on my group?
I'm often unreliable, in the sense that something always seems to turn up at the last minute that draws me away from our current regular game. (It's happened before as well.)
Given that the reasons ...
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11
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What to do when a player character does something that seems suicidal?
Every now and then a player character does something extremely risky because "it would be fun." What are some good ways to handle this as a GM, for the different styles of play? I like ...
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How to deal with anti-authoritarian player characters?
One player I infrequently role play with (let's call him Bob) seems to have a bit of an issue with authority - or at the very least he likes playing characters who do. It's not that he does not ...
- 10.2k
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How to create a dungeon based on a realistic tomb, but still enjoyable to explore?
One of the typical location that is used as an excuse to build a dungeon is The Ancient Tomb (tm).
I often struggle building dungeons that are credible tombs, in terms of rooms disposition and type ...
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Dealing with "fearless" players
I have some "badass" players in my group who do not fear death, 4 out of 6 to be precise, which causes problems for the rest players as they feel they are always getting dragged into trouble, trying ...
- 1,131
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How do I make weather an important part of the game?
We're starting up a dark ages fantasy game, using some homebrew rules similar to D&D.
As the GM, how can I make weather an important part of the game?
To be clear, I'm not trying to just toss in ...
- 17k
57
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7
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What makes a character/creature/power/ability/etc. over-powered?
In generic terms, what makes something, regardless of what game it's being used in, over powered?
I hear the term a lot, and while I can recognize it when I see it in-play (often due to someone ...
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How to handle wealthy player characters as a GM?
One of the long-standing settings our group keeps returning to is classic medieval fantasy. (Examples are MERP, Rolemaster, The Dark Eye -- But this question is aimed to be system agnostic and is ...
- 10.2k
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Make the player roll even if there is no chance of success? [closed]
Let's say you're the GM for a a game that involves players rolling for success and the player attempts to do something, but you already know that given their current stats, it's impossible for them to ...
- 1,715
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Dealing with a Repeatedly Cheating Friend
I'm the GM of a long-running online Vampire: the Masquerade campaign. Three years ago, we had a new (and young) player who cheated on dice rolls. I kicked him out.
A while later, he messaged me to ...
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How to handle players who make unmotivated characters
I'm a relatively new GM, and I'm having trouble getting my (also new) players to create motivated characters. I don't mean that the players themselves are unmotivated, but the characters they create ...
- 1,573
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6
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Preventing saturation in a horror campaign
I am currently designing my first horror campaign and what I've come up with so far is pretty dark and gruesome. I worry that if it is gut wrenching the whole way through, eventually the players will ...
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How can I deal with a 'soft' alpha gamer player?
Alpha gamer is a type of player in cooperative games, who effectively makes a decision for another player. In this question I am asking how to deal with a 'soft' version of this player archetype, who ...
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How can I check whether an extremely adult/mature plot idea would be accepted by players without revealing any details of the idea itself?
I am running a post-apocalyptic zombie game with a dark and mature story, exploring a number of adult themes. I have complete buy-in from the players; some of them have stated it is their favourite ...
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What characterizes a "Modern" role playing game or gaming system? [closed]
I recently read about D&D clones in another question (I forget where I saw it) and noticed comments referring to gaming systems that were clones of D&D as "Old School" while others ...
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How do I deal with being envious of my own players?
I am the problem GM in question.
I haven't played for a long time. My last two attempts at it were with GMs that represented "no" rather than "yes, but" approach. Often railroaded to the point of ...
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How do I make interrogations interesting?
Throughout my gaming career, one type of interaction has consistently failed to engage me: interrogations.
All of the interrogations that I have seen in roleplaying games follow this formula:
...
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How can I convince players not to offload a seemingly useless weapon?
Before anything else, I do not aim to just make the PCs want to keep the weapon. I have rather specific criteria, and not following them will earn your question an avalanche of downvotes. Please read ...
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How can a GM prevent growing disillusioned with their own game?
I recently began a new game in which I gave the players much more free reign in designing their characters than I might have in the past. What I wound up with was a very morally-diverse party, with ...
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How do I make an unwinnable fight fun?
In one of my campaigns, it's possible that I'm going to have to pull off a Hopeless Boss Fight depending on the choices of my player (we're playing one-on-one). The gist is that they're interfering ...
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11
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How do you discourage "player knowledge" as a GM?
As a trivial random encounter is winding down, a player thinks "That was too easy... The GM wouldn't give us an encounter that doesn't give XP," and starts searching for hidden bad guys or other clues....
- 17.4k
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13
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How to secretly talk to one of the players while DM'ing?
To cut it short, the players (it's a 3 people party) are in some kind of a Secret Service of a rebel prince who wants the throne. One of my players is working for the current king secretly, feeding ...
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Is it fair to press the players for decisions during combat?
My group tends to over-analyse during combat, which slows everything down.
I press upon my players to make their decision and roll the dice quickly. My players are all experienced in the system and I ...
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Which Article Helped Get Rid of Technobabble in RPGs?
Some time ago I saw an article on the Internet about technobabble in RPGs, specifically about why and how to get rid of it and replace it with something better. While I'm inclined to believe that I ...
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How to get out of a story deadlock
As with most of my questions, this is more of a general "how to handle a special situation" and not a plea to solve an existing problem.
What is the best way to handle story deadlocks (as in: The ...
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How do I avoid clichés while improvising?
Tropes are not bad, but clichés usually are. Sadly, when I need to come up with something on the fly it's much easier and faster to use clichés: if I suddenly need a barkeep, he's probably fat with a ...
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How can I replace a player character with an impostor without alerting the group?
I recently picked up a book of example NPCs (the Pathfinder NPC Codex, incidentally) and came across an entry for a "master spy". In the flavor text, it describes how his "secret identities have ...
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What can I do to give the players the same feel their characters would have about wilderness travel?
I find that in a lot of our group's games, traveling long distances through wilderness is too easy. In real life, it's quite arduous traveling overland. No one who's just walked a hundred miles is ...
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Can party betrayal be done successfully?
After reading How much experience should a PC be worth? I was wondering if and how party betrayal can be done successfully, especially since it's a real possibility in my campaign.
Criteria for ...
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What to do when a player loses or forgets their character sheet?
Sadly, most of the games I play in have monthly sessions at best. Also, players travel from a somewhat greater distance to play. During the month, many players misplace their character sheets or ...
- 2,007
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Resources for Complex Puzzle-Traps [closed]
I'm looking for resources for designing complex challenges - something that's not quite a puzzle and not quite a trap, but somewhere in between. There are tons of resources for really complex or off-...
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How do you handle verbal exchanges between NPCs without taking the PCs out of the spotlight?
One of the assumptions I make as GM is that the players should always be in the spotlight. Sometimes the players find themselves in a situation where they watch NPCs speak to each other. I don't ...
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Storytelling with lie detection [closed]
Most of the fantasy systems I know have a spell to detect lies, speak with the dead, and the like.
Imagine how long great movies like The Usual Suspects or In the Heat of the Night would have ...
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44
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8 hour sessions require a meal! How can we incorporate meal breaks into the game itself?
Our group meets once a month for a long 8–10 hour session. There is always the moment at around 6–7 pm where we like to have dinner together. We have always just taken a break and came back to the ...
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Randomly-generating weather for a sandbox campaign
I'm running a sandbox campaign and I've been looking for a method of randomly determining the weather for the day.
Features I'm looking for:
Low-to-medium handling time during play. Big tables are ...
- 242k