No.385657 [View All]
This thread is for GM's to talk about campaigns they're running and Game Master experiences.
>running a game today
>start trying to take notes and get ready for it
>getting distracted
>decide "fuck it, i'll improvise the rest"
does this happen to anyone else every single time?
I used to meticulously plan my sessions and character stats and everything. Now I just take a few notes for events and outlines for sessions and improvise the rest. I've been doing this for all my sessions lately, I guess I'm past the "meticulous planning" stage of GMing.
What games ya running, lads? I'm currently ~24-25 sessions into my Legends of the Wulin campaign. PC's are getting ready to rally all the surviving Wulin fighters in the land in a rebellion against the Dynasty after the "Emperor was assassinated" and power assumed by a eunuch demonic sorcerer.
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No.403663
>>385657
No.
Sometimes? Yes
But I have a lot of stuff very expansively detailed
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No.403673
>>403629
I honestly look forward to seeing how much the players can add, so far every time it's been interesting and made the encounter more fun than I had originally intended. Plus I'm not bad at improvisation (and I should hope not given how long I spend prepping the game and memorizing the areas the players are going to be in).
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No.403710
>>403599
>it's quicksand
Did you watch the video? You sink much faster in it than quicksand, but still can't swim in it, and the whole mass can alternate between liquid and solid with the flip of a switch. A wizard up to his shoulders in it can't use somatic components, even with a penalty, if you solidify the space around him. It's not that it makes you sink that's dangerous; it's that the trap user can so instantly change the functional phase of the material. Like it's just sand. There's no give-away that there's a trap. It's an actual earthen floor, that instantly becomes liquid, and then solid again once you're inside it. And without a shred of magic.
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No.403926
Hey GMs, from your perspective, how much of a faggot is mine being right now?
>Player L wants to make a campaign, along with player J
>L really wants to play recently, since he doesn't get out that much
>Turns out guy we play commander with has experience DM'ing. Wants to run 5e campaign
>Not my favorite, but I'm not going to read any of the trannyshit anyway, and haven't played in years
>Guy invites his friend P over to play, and another guy B wants to join
>Start first meetup after a week of planning and scheduling or so
>Have a great time during character creation and all of that shit, take up first full session and everything
>DM comes up to me next Friday and starts asking if I think player L will actually play
>Explains that someone T who somehow missed out talks around the LGS wants to join all of a sudden, and DM is looking to cut one of the players
>Every time I mention that it's a dick move to cut someone now, he keeps trying to beg an answer and ask more shit like "okay, but is L going to play seriously?"
I really want to tell him "tough shit, all of your players already made sheets and set time, it's a huge dick move to just kick somebody out, and personally I don't want to manage the high school drama that will come of it" (and I'm probably going to use something close to that wording if he asks me again), but if this is the foot we're starting out on, I don't know if I should bite the bullet and avoid the impeding faggotry, or stay in and derail the game if he tries anymore of that shit.
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No.403929
>>403926
Either he adjusts his game to fit another player in it, or he tells this other person that the table is full for the time being, but he will let them know when a spot opens up. Chances are one spot will open up sooner or later, but you don't get everyone hyped up and invested in the game and then kick one of them out because some other cunt wants in.
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No.404595
>>403926
5e is for babies anyway, you really shouldn't need to cut anybody. Six people is nothing in an easy system like that. Tell your DM he's a faggot.
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No.404608
>>403929
>>404595
The DM ended up letting everyone join since T had experience before and could always help him out, but the game is still full of faggotry. Since this is more "DM and player faggotry" at this point, I'm not posting anything else on this thread about it.
>>>/404606/
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No.404652
>>403449
It's really only recommended that you plan the campaign in broad strokes and only keep the details 15 minutes ahead. You still have to record everything and reusing specific grid formations is recommended, only make new stuff for specific set pieces.
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No.404663
>>385657
>First session
>Did a couple of weeks of prep for art, map making in photoshop, plot, music etc
>Despite asking players to get me backstory, chasing them up days in advance about it, one player didn't do anything
>Meant to be a semi-cinematic intro to plot
>Decide to roll for some important things that I should probably not roll for
>Almost completely botch it
>Players having a hard time engaging
>Session 2
>Put almost no effort going into it
>Literally draw some lines on the ground to represent rocks and put in a couple of stock trees
>Generic goblin fight
>Ends up being a close fight, a little bit tense
>Two players convince the others to spare the goblin leader and they recruit him
>One of them is a wise martial artist who wants to turn the goblins life around
>This is followed by some even more great character interaction and important decision making influenced by the plot
Apparently things are going good now.
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No.418688
>>404663
every campaign needs some time to find its footing with the group and the DM.
My original plan for my campaign was for it to my a globe trotting traveling campaign with the PC's traveling the world to save it.
Game starts with them on their journey to the first major city-state on the wild continent they're going to, but get shipwrecked. On their way to the city, they decide to adopt a street urchin, get a wagon, and start making plans to start a tavern in the city and getting themselves entrenched in the city.
Am I disappointed in this change? Not at all. The PC's have decided what they want from the campaign, basically explicitly told me, and I can still have fun with telling the story I want to tell.
The secret of being a good DM is letting the PC's go where they want and do what they want, but it just so happens that wherever they go and whatever they do happens to be related to the story and furthers the story. You have find what your PC's want and let them go after it, and use that to drive the story. When the PC's are going after something they actually really want, that's what gets them most engaged.
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No.419254
I've been GMing different games of Cyberpunk 2020 for 5 years now and this is one of my best stories.
Quick note, 2020 has a few strange rules that are integral to the story. One is that a character can take multiple actions, but each action makes the check harder, taking -3 off of all of your subsequent rolls.
The other is Cyberpunk's crit system. When you roll a ten, you roll again.
I also have a house rule, if the players kill somebody with a crit or get the final kill in combat I let them give their own description of the kill, keeps things fresh
>the group were doing some black work for Militech and had to Infiltrate a rival corporation to kill a head engineer
>out of 5 players, 4 of my players are new, the other one of them had been in almost all of my previous games.
>he was playing a fixer on the verge of cyberpsychosis who organized a group of car thieves who called themselves the Damned
>He also stacked his rifle and brawling skills to be the meanest fucker in town, he always goes for the flashiest kills and uses out of the box thinking.
>other players were a techie, a nomad, and two solos
>the crew infiltrate an office building and end up in a small shootout at the reception desk, escaping after the techie jimmys an elevator
>it takes them up about 20 stories before the override fails, only a few floors from their target
>the doors open and they are met by some tough corporate solos in heavy armor. 2 at the elevator, 2 behind cover in a cubicle that the players couldn't see, and 3 at the stairs to the next floor
>I roll bad, so does the party, but fixer doesn't
>starts by scanning the room and double crits, landing a nearly impossible task to notice the backup by edging it out with cybernetics
>I give him a short description of the goons and tell him that he can just barely make out a figure in the cubicle off the reflection of a monitor screen. also tell him about footsteps from the stairwell he can hear with his cyberwear, but don't tell him how many.
>he starts by shooting the bigger guy in front of him, rolls a crit and a 7
>fixer's using a heavy rifle so it cuts through the goon's helmet like a monoknife through butter
>says he's going to take a second action to kick the other guy with a heel spike, specifies the head before dice hit the table
>he double crits again and because his brawling was already stacked, he ends up impaling the smaller mook's head, then sends it towards the floor to be finished with a gruesome skull crushing stomp
>declares another action
>another fucking double crit
>other players are shocked at this point
>he's using IR cyberoptics now and can aim at the guy using his heat signature, wastes the dude and the corpse topples the cubicle wall exposing his buddy
>takes another roll to shot the guy next to him, this is his last shot before he needs to reload
>a crit and an 8
>goon gets shot in the mouth and drops like a sack of potatoes as he drowns in his own blood
>at this point every conversation at the table was about this mother fucker's crazy luck
>takes a fourth roll
>he wants to bank a white phosphorus grenade off of a wall towards the stairwell, he doesn't have much in demolitions and I let him know that it would be really fucking hard to do, but he persists
>other players and I freak out when we see him double crit again
>he had matched the check I made with a -12
>he's laughing like a mad man while another player rolls it to see if it's weighted (he rolled a 2)
>of course, the backup melted after the detonation, all three of them screaming as their armor fused to their skin
>After the floor was cleared, he looked at the party
<Don't fuck with the Damned
>mfw he ended up clearing the entire ambush in one turn of combat
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No.419320
>>419254
>Quick note, 2020 has a few strange rules that are integral to the story. One is that a character can take multiple actions, but each action makes the check harder, taking -3 off of all of your subsequent rolls.
Had to cap that to 3 in my homebrew rules after a cop managed to 1HKO a boss character by chaining 7 actions and then he complained when the boss tried to fight back and did more than two actions in her turn, one of those a non-action according to Cyberpunk rules.
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No.419394
>>385657
>>decide "fuck it, i'll improvise the rest"
>does this happen to anyone else every single time?
I've been running a campaign for three years like that.
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No.419435
I've been burned out on GMing for so long from dealing with a shit group, that I found a non-shit group, offered to host, and now I feel like I'm a fucking newfag and don't know what to even do.
Pro tip: If you ever host a campaign against your will because people really want you to, but you don't personally care, don't take any bait. Don't take the mental health b8, don't take the "we're friends, aren't we?" bait, and sure as fuck don't think about how if you charge money you might at least be motivated since hell, you can spend that money so you have some fun.
Don't fucking do it, it'll kill your interest in the hobby if you get forced into a shitty group or GM for a shit one, and feel like you have no other choices, then you'll get out of it eventually and just feel like you have no energy when it comes to this sort of thing.
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No.419489
How important do you guys think it is for you to maintain verisimilitude with your players? Do you explain to them how bosses work beforehand, so they know what they're getting into? Hint at it in character for them to figure it out? A mixture of the two?
How transparent should you be with your players about what's going to happen?
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No.419493
>>419489
Immersion is mostly everything for two of my four players. They don't know stats, hp or anything that isn't theirs and can't be explained ingame. When it comes to bosses I like hinting at what can happen in general first in a controlled environment before upping the ante.
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No.419495
>>419493
Have you ever considered that immersion is arbitrary?
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No.419496
>>419493
I'll explain this further. The boss will start out alone and use it's special abilities sparingly. But after it has cycled through them and the players know about them, combinations will be made.
There is also how I don't care one bit about sticking to books. Not that what I do is better, no, but I simply enjoy the freedom of it.
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No.419497
>>419495
It might be, yes. But they seem to be immersed. So much that they've somehow turned a 3.
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No.419498
>>419497
Fucking phoneposting. Sorry.
They've somehow turned a 3.5 campaign into a narrative one with their actions.
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No.419615
Anyone ever put meta-narrative themes, characters and stories woven into your campaign?
There's a gnomish bard in my campaign who is obsessed with the PC's (yandere-tier) and being the one who tells their story and writes their ballads. This is because he's not a normal denizen of the world they're in, but rather a meta-entity that is aware that they are the protagonists/main characters and their story is the story of the world. They've already killed him because they thought he was creepy (fucking ganked him expecting him to fight back lol), but he's gonna return because he's not actually a mortal entity of the world they're in, but rather he is a meta manifestation of the game telling the story of the PC's.
The campaign also ultimately ends (depending on the choice the PC's make) with the BBEG realizing that his existence is tied to the PC's, and that his ultimate destiny was to be defeated/saved by the PC's, and he realizes he is a villain in a story as he dies.
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No.419632
>>419615
>pre-planning the ending
Fuck your railroad.
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No.419685
>>419632
Is it really railroading if the PC's go where they want and do what they want, but wherever they go and whatever they do it also advances the story?
The PC's are the main characters of the world, the world is viewed entirely through their eyes. There is nowhere they can go that is not the story, because they are the story. That's not railroading.
Nothing wrong with having a general end condition in mind for the campaign, depending on the type of campaign you run. I use it as a guidepoint to plan the direction of the campaign's story, building to that final event.
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No.419692
>>419685
>Is it really railroading if the PC's go where they want and do what they want, but wherever they go and whatever they do it also advances the story?
Yes.
There is a way to get what "you" want without railroading, and it's by setting goals for your NPCs, and having them use the PCs. In this case, the PCs still essentially have freedom of action, since at any point they could decide they don't want to do fetch quests for Dr. Dipshit anymore. And at that point, you have to phone it in and find something else to do. Playing a tabletop game is not about telling a story, it's about playing a game. The story is created collaboratively as a side result. If the GM is a faggot trying to "tell" a story, or who has some sort of higher idea of himself as "storyteller" rather than the person managing the game, then you have a huge problem at the table.
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No.419693
>>419692
but if i am a faggot trying to tell a collaboratively written story, and everyone is having a blast, what's the problem at my table?
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No.419694
>>419693
If a Chinese farmer who has never had contact with foreign (western) civilization is happy because he gets food every day and his clothes don't have too many holes, does that mean his quality of life is high?
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No.419731
>>419685
>>419632
I have a theory:
Railroading is a symptom of (but not exclusive to) bad games. If the mechanics, world, and equipment are exciting enough then railroading becomes unnecessary/too difficult to get away with.
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No.419781
>>419693
There is no collaborative storytelling when the story has already been decided.
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No.419813
>8 hour session today
>no combat encounters
>everyone had a blast
>mfw
>>419694
>>419781
the story hasn't been decided, a possible ending depending on the actions of the PC's is conceived of and used as a narrative compass to keep a consistency of narrative direction in the campaign.
It also makes integrating improvised plot elements into the story a lot easier. I don't think it detracts from the experience of anyone involved.
If you craft a story with the PC's backstories and goals in mind and they follow the plot hooks without any narrative coercion, is it really railroading?
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No.419814
>>419731
How is railroading a symptom and not a cause of bad games?
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No.419815
Treat your retarded players like the shit they are.
Whoops, you fucked up. Make a new fucking character.
Oh you want more characterization? Too bad. Eat shit.
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No.419837
>>419813
>bragging about doing the same shit for 8 hours
Don't do that.
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No.419842
>>419837
>people aren't allowed to have fun role playing and exploring for hours in a game
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No.419857
>first session
>players threw a bucket filled with piss and shit onto a bandit and let him fall down some stairs
>second session
>lizard player suplexed a bandit into a firepit
Are campaigns usually this wack
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No.419862
>>419857
Depends on the players usually or what you allow to setup, but yes typically players will try to go for creative solutions because of the nature of the game.
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No.419901
>>419842
No, it's about not being repetitive, cunt. Doing ANY ONE THING for an entire session is poor form. Don't brag because either:
>A. Your players fucked around on their own for 8 hours and you barely did anything
OR
>B. You actually planned for them to sit around doing the same thing all day and they did it
Neither of these makes you or your group look good.
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No.419902
>>419857
If you think that's whack, then you really need to get out more. Read a fucking book or something.
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No.419916
>>419901
so because there was no combat that means it was repetitive?
it's impossible to have variety in a session if there's no combat?
and makes my group look good to who? isn't the point of a tabletop rpg to have fun, so if we had fun doing it, what's the problem?
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No.419930
>>419902
Most stuff a player would do when given the opportunity typically isn't in a book, if he thinks that's weird just he waits until they really get going with the weird trinkets he'll throw at them.
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No.419989
Does anyone else have players who forcibly stop the music player on their own, regardless of what the others or the GM himself thinks? Because I have encountered at least two players like that, both good friends of mine, but they don't seem to be able to stand the music I play and continuously stop the player without asking.
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No.419990
>>419989
That happened to me once, but I was deliberately turning the music up every round because they were fighting sound-based opponents. Towards the end, we had to yell at each other just to converse. It was great.
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No.420291
I'm GMing a rather fast-moving campaign one-on-one with a player who I might describe as difficult to work with, when it comes to complexity. I don't mean to disparage them, you see. They're a good roleplayer and one of my best friends, but they don't like rules much, and more specifically I've had very poor luck getting them into "full" systems like D&D or GURPS. This is fine by me, because I tend to prefer simpler systems too, and especially with the pace at which we tend to host sessions I don't think I could keep up if we were using most such systems.
In any case, I've been using Dead Simple Roleplaying's "systems" (see pdf) for a while now, and while it's been going decently, it doesn't provide nearly the tactical options and structure that I'd prefer out of the game. I need a reasonably detailed tactical game suitable for fantasy (or maybe a generic system) that I might be able to use to replace this oversimplified mess that my games have become. I feel slightly obligated to mention XCOM as an "ideal" of sorts in terms of tactical options and feel, if not in thematics -- I know that they're also a fan of it, so it might sit well to have something close to that.
And, if nothing else, just some recommendations for good tactical grid-based systems would be nice, if just to cannibalize for ideas and spare rules.
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No.420345
>>420291
FUDGE with a grid system and cover/overwatch rules is probably what you are looking for. Cyberpunk 2020 is XCOM as fuck, but it's pure autism.
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No.420388
>>420291
4th edition Dungeons and Dragons unironically for grid based tactical fantasy combat.
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No.420406
>>420345
I've had a lot of difficulty getting into systems heavily reliant on freeform descriptive elements like what FATE/FUDGE does, but thanks for the suggestion. I'll check over them again for anything useful. And, yes, 2020 is thematically close, but I'd have better luck winning the lottery than getting them to play it.
>>420388
I've never actually tried 4th Ed. I'll take a look at it.
Here's a more general question that's bugging me, now that I'm making some Egyptian-themed pyramid dungeons and the like. How does everyone handle secret rooms and puzzles? I don't want to simply have them roll perception for every entrance and door, and most of the time room searches are only prompted by my mention of it or through a direct perception check, and hiding them behind puzzles just causes me more headaches with puzzles (namely, having to think more up, amongst others).
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No.420408
>>420406
The power of puzzles, and a suspicious empty space in a grid map.
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No.420422
>>420406
>secret rooms
You can literally steal from video games.
>notes explicitly or implicitly talking about secrets
>like history of all architects and their families killed after completion of the project
>giving them a weird ass key/crystal/"klaatu verita nektu" magic phrase that unlocks a treasure chest/lock/portal
>that doesn't just takes up space if they didn't find the secret
>literally give a tutorial floor
>only way to proceed is to find the secret passageway
>or Indiana Jones' father's journal, that gives hints to what is to come
Secret rooms are like traps. Sometimes, they need to be downright be shown to let the players know what they are getting into.
If its the single player you're talking about. You can also play with passive scores. Normally, people only use passive perception to notice small details, or enemies. A passive intelligence check can mean that the layout of the floor doesn't make sense. A passive equivalent to survival or tracking can notice tracks that lead nowhere. A dwarf might notice stonework is weird. A thief might know rumours about treasure. A bard might know legends or songs about said treasure.
>>420408
Worse is a properly detailed map, with a portion blacked out or covered, and stays blacked out.
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No.420436
>>420406
>Here's a more general question that's bugging me, now that I'm making some Egyptian-themed pyramid dungeons and the like. How does everyone handle secret rooms and puzzles?
I do OSR-style play so it's pretty easy:
For generic secret doors that I don't care about (i.e. just ways for the baddies to maneuver easier and to hide a little bonus treasure) you can passively notice them if you have a racial bonus (elves, etc.), but otherwise, it's by searching. If you spend a turn searching a 10ftx10ft area, it's 1-in-6 chance. Each turn is a chance for a wandering monster, and eats up your time (10 minutes), so you can't afford to just scan ever space; you need good reason to suspect something is hidden (i.e. a suspicious gap in the map).
However, that's just for generic secret doors. For special ones, or ones that hide important things, I designate a mechanism in advance. You have the same chance to find it by just rolling the device, but if you specifically call out an action that triggers a result ("I wist the deer's antlers") then you don't need to roll; you figured it out by being clever enough. I tend to accomplish this by putting in things that can be interacted with, like statues or bookshelves, and using them as the basis for the trigger. The combination of these two mechanisms rewards clever thinking, but still lets you stuff like secret passages all over that just use basic 'press the wall lever' tricks, and the like.
On that note: When the players enter the room, I tell them what they see. If they see, they see it. No rolls to say 'you notice X in the corner' if it's in plain sight; let them fiddle around and mess with stuff. This helps out a lot with puzzles and the like, since it turns everything into a sort of puzzle to interact with.
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No.425680
I'm trying to draw a fucking map (which I am not posting since my players fucking browse this board) and I have no clue how to make a mass of fucking trees. It's a large city in a wetlands sort of area so they're going to be instersped with rivulets and bogs and lakes. I tried the tiny triangles router and it looks like a bunch of mountains, hurried attempt attached.
Any thoguhts on how to properly get across a good amount of foliage that I can't just do a big fuzzy cloud since there are some things in the middle of it I have to show?
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No.425682
>>425680
you gotta remember that things get smaller the futher away from you they are. What you have there is like an isometric view of trees all roughly at hte same distance. Instead of putting them ontop of one another lay out your horizon line, and draw the closest trees the biggest (probably extending well off the page ) and then behind them draw smaller trees (roughly putting the eye hight of the viewer aka the 6ft mark on each tree increasingly smaller in size tree on the horizon line). Continue until you run out of blank space (try to get two of three good layers in and a little shading should do the trick).
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