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So, for someone wanting to get into P&P Roleplaying Games...
- Thread starter ColCol
- Start date
catfood
AGAIN
I doubt anyone could pull off a good game of COC over the internet. It's one of those games that doesn't work well in an online environment because it depends too heavily on atmosphere. Pathfinder, D&D and their ilk? Yeah, no problem. Its wargames roots means that it can be easily run wherever there's a gridded map with tokens and some beer by your side.
roll-a-die
Magister
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2009
- Messages
- 3,131
Advice from an old hat. Go to a gameshop for a few weeks. Sit around, talk to the people painting warhammer models, engage people in discussions before their games start. Paint yourself as a reasonably creative, reasonably intelligent person, and inevitably, someone like me, who has at several points in time managed 20 member pen and paper games, not larps, dice rolling games with actual character sheets, will add you to their list, and get in contact with you, either at the game shop.
As for good games for beginners, depends on your mindset. My favourite one to give to people was generally my primer on oWoD, which was basically a pdf that I lost the files to a long time ago, that explained every fucking faction in the base pre-week of lol-what the fuck is this shit game and also included what had changed for 3rd Edition. I also included briefs on what the general gameplay was like. So a codex approved description of Mage the Ascension would be, "Mage is the game where you play a magical character who tends to debate philosophy with other similar characters at random. While in general fighting to faustian creatures that would put Pope Borgia to shame. And you know attempting to guide your faction to ruling the global consensus of magic. Or if you want and are LyricSuite, make an Orphan Mage with no tradition, that has the magical philosophy that is based off how much like the Nazi Ideal he is. Then go out of your way to kill Das Juden(The Sons of Ether), the homos(The Hollow Ones) and the Gypsies(Marauders/Nephandi)."
I had a player try to be lyricsuite once. the first son of ether he tried to kill kept his character locked inside a box for eternity, his avatar fueling a clock that kept track of the time till the end of time, only it did so in nanomicrominipicoseconds, which I arbitrarily decided was so a fraction small it would likely take so long to decipher it was practically worthless. Until a new player started a virtual adept that used mind magic and harvested brains to form into advanced forms of computers. That was around when I was starting to get out of gaming, and decided to just say fuck it and ran through Week of Oh My God HOW COULD YOU WW! I HATE YOU FOREVER. Until Exalted at least, and then the ToJ books. AKA, WHAT THE FUCK THIS SHIT WAS YOUR CASH COW! WHY!!
Honestly though that Virtual Adept was one of the characters I randomly decided the Nephandus didn't want to touch in case the conversion process some how changed how corrupt he was. Or perhaps it was how he was corrupt. I made sure to remark at the end of it all that the nephandus were commenting from their position atop the world that they ruled, that he was a fucking piece of priceless art to them. Anyway the first fucker I was talking about, had the gall to attempt PvP first session, then complain that I let the PvP happen1, then complain that there was differing power levels in WoD. Don't be that dude and people will probably love you.
(Because there was no way that Son of Ether would lose. I also knew he wouldn't kill the guy. He was a grandfather of six, the local grey beard, and genial as fuck if you gave him the respect he deserved. I knew also the guy, he built his characters in general to just be nearly unkillable in a direct conflict. In the indirect game though, because I was using the Influence system from the LARP books, he was brought down rather easily by my resident behind the scenes always plotting something monkey, who is currently staring at me wondering how the hell I can bounce a babby on my knee and type at the same time. And I... My god, I just realized she was like 16 at the time. And I was 10 years older and finishing a surgical degree, and getting ready for residency. I am a dirty old man...)
ColCol
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2012
- Messages
- 1,731
I decided today I'm down for a Codex PNP session of whatever setting.
ENWorld used to have a great Players Looking for Players section, but hakerz killed that part of the site. They are working hard on bringing it back to its former self.
Horus
Arcane
I have a couple of questions for our experienced bro's as a amateur DM playing with enthusastic group.
- How long does it take for one session to end on average?(Not talking about holidays ofc)
- How long does it take to prepare your sessions?
- How do you handle RP people in towns? Do you prepare their lines before or make it up on the scene? How many characters do you design for RP reasons?
- What do you do when adventurer party find a simple solution to the quest and make your dungeon unusable?(Like catching the villain before he escapes) Do you prepare the next session before hand?
- How do you drop hints subtlety? Like when you are trying to tell about hidden safe behind walls or secret doors?
- Do you describe every combat action? Like in "The warrior a striked with his great sword and chopped the arm of the mighty orc(for 10 damage)"
- Is there a good video source in the net that we can see and try to improve ourselves with?
- How many details do you describe in an average room? What's your player's reaction to it? How do you avoid repeating yourselves in similar rooms?(Like corridors in dungeon or rooms of prison)
- How long does it take for one session to end on average?(Not talking about holidays ofc): 4-6 hours
- How long does it take to prepare your sessions?: Really depends on the game. Rules light with pre-made adventure, 1 hour to review. Rules heavy starting from scratch? Hours...
- How do you handle RP people in towns? Do you prepare their lines before or make it up on the scene? How many characters do you design for RP reasons? Better to just make up general personalities and motivations instead of entire lines of dialogue. NPC dialogues might not survive first contact with PCs as your PCs will act in ways you can't anticipate and your NPCs should react as normal people would.
- What do you do when adventurer party find a simple solution to the quest and make your dungeon unusable?(Like catching the villain before he escapes) Do you prepare the next session before hand? Reward them. Always have a small side quest ready on the side. The party just won surprisingly quick, but then go to celebrate. The dwarf is pickpocketed by street urchins and loses a valuable magic item or heirloom. Party gives chase, hijinks ensue. Etc...
- How do you drop hints subtlety? Like when you are trying to tell about hidden safe behind walls or secret doors? Subtle might go over their heads, so only leave extra gold and treasure behind secret doors and not items absolutely necessary to a quest. This way you reward characters for thinking and exploring. If you have to be subtle, try word hints. Like "You search the room, but haven't found anything valuable...yet." Then smile knowingly.
- Do you describe every combat action? Like in "The warrior a striked with his great sword and chopped the arm of the mighty orc(for 10 damage)" Yes!
- Is there a good video source in the net that we can see and try to improve ourselves with? Not sure, but the first two Fear of Girls made me chuckle and may be the wrong example..
- How many details do you describe in an average room? What's your player's reaction to it? How do you avoid repeating yourselves in similar rooms?(Like corridors in dungeon or rooms of prison) I usually describe visual dimensions (30 foot by 40 foot room) and lighting, then go over the other four senses of touch, taste, smell or hearing when applicable. Being near an underground water source may result in me talking about a trickling brook or roaring underground river. Likewise, a trash heap is going to have a nauseating smell, or walking on muddy ground will cause the players to feel the silt squelch beneath their boots... always think of the five senses and which may be appropriate per location.
Horus
Arcane
Mucho gracias. 
. Ah and couple question i forgot to ask. 
Sometimes it comes too unnatural for me to iniate the adventure because it doesn't come much natural seeking help in turkish. I try to improve that part but sadly i am still pretty lacking.
. Ah and couple question i forgot to ask. - how much do use general fantasy talking? How many times do you use words like "lords,liege,farewell,adventurers,heroes" and whatnot in conversations between adventurers and common folk?
- Do you try to voice npc's with an accent?
- Do you try to make sound effect's yourself?
- do you describe the notes,writings yourself or just give the notes to your characters?
- Do you try to describe every monster the party encounters or just tell them"you see orc coming straight at you"?
- How do you make your maps? As it is i'm drawing on paper myself.
Sometimes it comes too unnatural for me to iniate the adventure because it doesn't come much natural seeking help in turkish. I try to improve that part but sadly i am still pretty lacking.
Mucho gracias.
- how much do use general fantasy talking? How many times do you use words like "lords,liege,farewell,adventurers,heroes" and whatnot in conversations between adventurers and common folk?
- Do you try to voice npc's with an accent?
- Do you try to make sound effect's yourself?
- do you describe the notes,writings yourself or just give the notes to your characters?
- Do you try to describe every monster the party encounters or just tell them"you see orc coming straight at you"?
Sometimes it comes too unnatural for me to iniate the adventure because it doesn't come much natural seeking help in turkish. I try to improve that part but sadly i am still pretty lacking.
- How do you make your maps? As it is i'm drawing on paper myself.
- how much do use general fantasy talking? How many times do you use words like "lords,liege,farewell,adventurers,heroes" and whatnot in conversations between adventurers and common folk? => Not much, but I'm not into acting. I do it as appropriate, or if an NPC is trying to be polite to get in the party's good graces. I may just as well have a lord they are trying to meet be impatient with their presence.
- Do you try to voice npc's with an accent? => Rarely.
- Do you try to make sound effect's yourself? => I usually try to describe the sound effect. "You hear a loud clang in the nearby room, followed by some swearing..." I've had DMs bring in video and sound effect in games I played in, and I appreciate the effort but it doesn't change the game for me one way or the other. When we played the Temple of Elemental Evil, the DM actually played the introduction movie to the video game.
- do you describe the notes,writings yourself or just give the notes to your characters? => I usually describe the notes, but on occasion I've passed a letter on crinkled paper to give it an aged effect, or photocopied a picture of lettering on a scroll from a pre-made adventure because I liked how the artist made it look. The players usually appreciate it more because it shows them you are trying for them, and they in turn want to make an effort in play as a way to return the favor.
- Do you try to describe every monster the party encounters or just tell them"you see orc coming straight at you"? => No, I typically don't describe every monster in larger battles, though I may if it is a single monster or a pair. It would be tedious in large fights, though I sometimes try to have the monsters carry different weapons or wear different armor or even alter some of their physical stats so that one may be scrawnier and weaker in melee than the average goblin, but another might be burlier and take an extra hit point or two of damage. It's not just for the players, though. Sometimes vanilla encounters bore the hell out of me. Also, I like to add the occasional 1st level kobold/orc/goblin shaman or wizard to the mix so that the party doesn't treat every fight the same. Also, I have my monsters retreat when they take too many casualties or even attempt surrender. Basically, although I don't describe every single monster, I do try to at least make them more interesting.
- How do you make your maps? As it is i'm drawing on paper myself. => For dungeons, use graphing paper with the little squares. It really does help you and helps when describing room dimensions. I cheat when it comes to overland maps. I usually just grab maps of known territory, turn them to a different compass heading, and fill in the towns, country borders and other locations. Once I took a map of a portion of the United States circa 18th century, made each state a kingdom, and the counties inside each state a county or barony. Fantasy map done. If I remember right, Gygax once wrote to us in the ENWorld forums that when he made his campaign world, he took a globe, covered it with paper, and redrew Earth into Greyhawk.
About 4 hours, 5 in extreme cases. After that people usually start to get tired and stop thinking logically.
Well, in normal circumstances, it's usually sitting down for 2 hours every day for 5 days to get everything down - I never use premades, always do my own stuff.
But in practice it's usually 'HOLY SHIT there's larpan tomorrow and I still don't have a scenario, FFFUUUUU' which means non-stop turbodesigning for 2 days straight
Why bother preparing their lines when you don't have the clairvoyance to foretell how a conversation will go. Unless it's an infodump HERE ARE THREE PARAGRAPHS OF MONOLOGUE kind of 'npc', but you obviously want to avoid that.
'Designing characters for RP reasons' is not exactly needed when you can easily just take new ones out of the hat - you don't need to carefully prepare a random bum on the street that the players ask for directions. But you generally want to have established motivations and personalities for the important people in the scenario.
Either:
a) Reward them, improvise something quickly, recycle dungeon in later adventure
b) Skillfully put them on the rails again while cleverly manipulating them into thinking they are the ones in charge
Seriously, the single most important skill you need to develope as a GM is to shamelessly deceive the players and become the ultimate puppet master. They will keep following your story rails like good sheep, while actually saying out loud "man, I bet he totally didn't expect us doing that!" "yeah lul high-five!"
Players never pick up subtle hints. Never. Ever. You can have a castle with 100 rooms, you won't describe 99 in any detail and then drop a line that the 100th has a lot of funky vases and they will completely ignore it.
Either drop something blatant like 'it's got a funny picture on the wall' or just call for a search check or whatever and say 'you think that picture looks funny'.
It can tend to get old pretty quickly but applied in moderation is alright.
Videos are for suckers
I try to picture the room in my head and then write down what makes it stand out. And it's usually [general idea of the place] -> [important details] -> [disgusting stuff that leaves you appalled]. Reactions are always different, duh.
You avoid repetition simply by not overdescribing everything. You don't have to do extensive descriptions of every generic corridor out there. "You move into a corridor similar to the previous one" is enough.
As much as the situation calls for. A regular bum or a grunt won't be using that lingo at all, but scholars/priests/madmen/evil geniuses should use plenty.
Obviously
Duh
But no, not really. "You hear a loud explosion" is much better and MUCH less comical than shouting "BOOOOOOOM". Sound effects can be used as interjections of stuff happening suddenly.
If they are long - describe. If short - give.
If they've seen it for the umpteenth time, 'you see an orc. It has a big sword and sum armour, as opposed to its two bros who have axes'.
If it's the first time, leaving them in the dark and describing the creature without its obvious give-away features tends to be much more amusing in the long run.
In paint
Horus
Arcane
Thank you bros. One last question as it is hard for me to write long posts on the phone.
What was your biggest mistake when you were an amateur DM? How did you learn it was a problem and what did you to do fix it?
What was your biggest mistake when you were an amateur DM? How did you learn it was a problem and what did you to do fix it?
roll-a-die
Magister
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2009
- Messages
- 3,131
I've gamed anything from 1 hr to 12 hour sessions. As it is given your situation, aim for the 4 to 6 hour range, that's long enough to satisfy most gamers, but short enough to prevent fatigue on your part and on the players part.
Any where from a day of thought to, oh my god how do I work this awesome idea in moments where I spend 3 days constantly scrapping and reworking previous plots because PC's are fuckwits.
In general I think of NPC's on the fly unless they are plot NPCs and then I'll design general lines, and then a personality and knowledge base for them.
Always have a buffer of bullshit for the party to do. Let them make mistakes, prepare the villain to exploit said mistakes. Make them properly villainous, they always have a trick up their sleeves. Oh they left the EVUL WIZARD PLOXPLOT, alive and not dead, he's got help in the form of a rogue. Oh they killed him, but didn't burn the body. His temple resurrects him. Et cetera, it comes down to being a bastard, because that's what the villains in most stories are.
I use chekhov's gun in a lot of cases. If there's important details, I'll go out of my way to describe it in just slightly more detail than other things. EX: "Around you lie 3 statues, and a myriad of portraits."
If they are really dumb I'll roll perception for them, and then do the pointing out of the thing they missed.
In general players want to feel like they are "Teh awesome", so for systems like DnD, I'll vaguely describe hits, in a "You hit him on his arm bruising for 10 damage." But for systems like WoD where it's a very horror based game and death arrives quickly to the unawares. I'll go ahead and describe out what the player is doing in a fashion that sets the mood of exactly what they are doing by killing someone or even just fighting them. I do so generally in a narrative fashion.
"You bash him on the fist, though you are skilled at boxing, you notice small lesions opening on your skin the pain making you realize just what is at stake here. You hit him again striking his throat, as you watch as he begins to panic, he's staggered and having difficulty breathing, but you know if you stop now he'll just run away to kill again. This man is a killer, and somehow though your strikes are filled with your faith and the power of your ancestors, you still see his wounds healing. He appears fatigued, but still ready to fight. Your mind readies itself for the next exchange, as you are filled with a sense of duty, and honor, as if this is what you want to do, you need to do, to protect the innocents from this vile corruption of gods will. As your next strike rings out you are so consumed with your fury that when you hear something break, you are unconcerned if it is you, or your opponent, you notice that he's fading into dust, the leech like images that have been assaulting you since you started your hunt of this creature start to fade. You notice that you have a broken finger, but it doesn't seem to pain, not as much as the thoughts that there could be more out there. More that could be hunting people like your daughter or your wife. And you know, more than ever now, that your cause is right. It's what your father would want, it's what his father would want. This is your hunt, this is your Vigil."
The Gentleman Gamer, on youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJM55rrXM_0&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL5787AC90DD90D21E is an example, not sure how much you might be able to follow it.
I generally pick a theme, and then as the party goes I give a general description to the players, and then give a reminder description. I call this the text adventure model.
DM- "The mansion is all too quiet as you enter, you notice dust has build up on the white cloth placed over the furniture. The house is old, and the windows seem to have fogged in the humidity. A foyer is before you, 3 chairs sit around a table, covered in that omnipresent white cloth. You shiver, the airconditioner seems to have been on all this time, by the draft that follows the midsummers outdoor heat."
We enter the foyer and procede inwards looking for signs that people have been here.
Discreet rolls follow.
DM- You follow the path around, and those of you who got 2 successes note that some of the dust is lieing awkwardly, like it was placed back meticulously in the pattern that the dust should lay but doesn't normally.
Those of you with three here something coming from below you. As you look around the all too quiet halls, the sound however minute is something you pick up on.
This can be a common problem.
Having an NPC you like as DM continuously outshine the characters. Worst mistake you can make. The heroes are the stars, not some character you've grown to like yourself. On the flip side of this is Sewer Rats...
In Sewer Rats the characters can only play the shorter races, like dwarf, goblin, kobold, gnome and halfling NPCs. That means no pretty humans and elves. In the game, elven and human parties are constantly fighting the evil necromancer in the underground catacombs or fighting abominations in sewer tunnels, but their attacks weaken the infrastructure, and union labor needs to be sent in to fix the pipes. Sewer rats are cheap labor from the less admired races that are non-union and are paid low wages to provide armed escort to the union workers whose organization will take the majority of the meager pay through Byzantine union loop holes in city laws. By the time the party of Sewer Rats return to the surface, they are grimy, smelly and miserable. They never are appreciated, and often they'll return to see the humans and elves still being feted by the local community. In this case, the human and elves hero NPCs outshining the Sewer Rat player characters, at least in terms of the admiration of the local populace, is the running gag.
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Sewer_Rats_(3.5e_Campaign_Setting)
L'ennui
Magister
That Sewer Rats thing is a frickin' cool idea, I'll have to try that someday.
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