General GMing stuff

[Gigermann]

Interesting idea—wonder how much it would really help:

I've had fights with upwards of 25 combatants in them, and used the full tactical combat system, map and all (Plus spellcasting!). There are tricks to it, but it went quite quickly.

The situation I'm thinking of was players trying to stop a group of dark elf terrorists trying to pull off a Mass Zombie ritual in the town graveyard. I have no idea the millitary term, but there were about 20 skirmisher types, and the ritualists (who don't really count for this fight, because they were busy ritual casting - they're McGuffins, not combatants). They meant to raise what amounts to really light infantry via the ritual (they had sacks of cheap axes and assault the largely-undefended town with them. If the PCs didn't interrupt things, it probably would have turned into PCs fighting a running battle against zombies plus the occasional hit-and-run attack by elves.

Trick #1) the skirmishers were basically identical for the purposes of combat. 20 unique and special snowflakes? Nuh huh. Cookie cutter elves with shortswords.

Trick #2) Spreadsheet with a very simple dieroller macro duplicated 26 times, and 26 hitpoint and FP sum macros.

Trick #3) numbered miniatures. I happened to have 20 elf archers plus misc elf caster figures from my husbands Warhammer army. Each one got a sticker with a number on it. Removes ambiguity.

#2 came in REALLY handy when one PC caster pulled off an enormous Concussion and dropped it in the middle of the ritual... (26 HT rolls at once, ow) and then the other PC caster transfered a crapton of FP to Caster #1 so he could do it AGAIN and catch anyone who resisted. (26 more HT rolls augh, plus recovery rolls every turn)

The net result was PCs fighting groups of four to six skirmishers at a time as they recovered, struggling to keep ahead of their successful HT rolls. Of course the ritual was toast (and probably a big migraine to boot).
forums.sjgames.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=1024335

[Gigermann]

Good article about "tactical encounters" in D&D and their evolution

[Gigermann]

Aug 18, 2015 10:38:15 GMT -6 Gigermann said:

As a side note:
As I've been reviewing my other campaigns while deciding what to do, I realized that nearly all of the non-starters I have in the hopper suffer from the exact same issue—got lots of setting work done, NPCs, power-structure, miscellaneous plot hooks and ideas, but no actual "adventure" content…and real problems figuring out how to get that. I'd bet you guys have the same problem when not using a pre-written module. My old method was to rip off a movie/game and file off the serial numbers—worked well enough—but sometimes there isn't an obvious source to be found. Dispensables is easy in that regard—need bad guys, and a map, and a rough idea why you're fighting these bad guys on this map. Anything more than that and my mind goes blank for some reason—I don't think it's "real," just a stupid mental block.

It occurs to me now that I experienced the same problem with the official "Village of Hommlet"/"Temple of Elemental Evil" mods—they're a sandbox with really no specific adventure-pathing to them. They expected you to just dump the characters in town and react to whatever they do. I had trouble moving that one forward, too.

[WxMAN]

I think some of it could be that the PCs need to have an underlying motivation towards a certain action. "Survive" isn't good enough, it needs to be something semi specific and it needs to be relatively unified for the entire group. Each PC can have their own sub goals and whatnot, but the PC group needs to have some kind of obvious motivation they want to get accomplished otherwise it becomes paralyzing. Some of that may mean more roleplaying and getting into the heads of the PCs a bit more but also developing the aforementioned goals and motivations.

[Gigermann]

I've been going over my notes from other campaigns that I actually ran. The old way was fairly comprehensive: broken down into scenes; I set up the scene, say what happens, give some potential PC responses and how to adjudicate them, and give end-results for whatever possible outcomes I can think of. That all worked at the time, but it's a fair amount of work. With After the End, I just had a few bullet points for a couple of "situations," and that was apparently enough; NPCs didn't even have stats, for the most part. I'm still trying to sort out why that worked. I think part of it was that the setting was simple enough that a lot of explanation wasn't required—with Google Earth, I don't have to describe the physical scene much of the time—and the characters were known to me, well enough that I didn't need complicated notes. Plus, I've learned my way around the GURPS system now, to the point I don't have to have detailed notes on a lot of mechanical issues, or not as much, at least—more often than not, a page reference will do.

Of course, that's to say nothing about how to come up with the scenes in the first place. Again, I refer back to ATE: how did I do that?…

[LabRat]

Lets be fair here, we didn't play ATE that long, so it was easier to think of situations around the basic needs of the group. Where are we, what happened, where do we need to go, what do we need to do? The PCs were able to fuel at lot of those situations by trying to get oriented with the situation at hand (i.e. asking if there is any sort of communication, hey look, lets explore that radio tower. Oh no zombies...argh!)It was a relatively simple mechanic because it was still pretty new, and our needs were simple. Google maps did help but it had problems in its own right, and the only NPCs we did run into were clones of familiar characters. I would imagine it would have gotten harder the longer we were in the game because our goals/gameplan would have gotten more complex.

[Gigermann]

After comparing the recaps to my notes for those sessions, it does look like it was driven by player goals—which is a good thing; it was working. Much of what happened was either a random-event or something the players were trying to do/get, with a couple of things I threw in there on purpose. Yes, the NPCs were "known quantities" by design. I agree that the situation might have changed over time as things settled.

With Terra Nova and the "investigation" aspect, I think the same thing will happen, with the same potential for that changing as time goes on—but by that time, the machine should be churning along; "inertia." If I had to take a lesson from ATE it might be to trust the random-generator(s) to provide what's needed to move along, at least, at first.

[WxMAN]

Maybe I am remembering differently but weren't you generally unhappy with ATE and it died because the players were being too survival oriented?

[Gigermann]

Aug 19, 2015 11:08:43 GMT -6 WxMAN said:

Maybe I am remembering differently but weren't you generally unhappy with ATE and it died because the players were being too survival oriented?

That was more of a setting/theme issue, not a problem with generation of content. The whole thing was engineered to go easy on you so as to not overwhelm your lack of combat ability, and you(all) took the road I wasn't prepared for, and it would have been "logically-challenging" to walk it back. Lessons were learned, anyway.

What I'm trying to figure out here is how to get what I need to actually start a damned campaign (and not feel like I'm missing something).

[LabRat]

Maybe the problem is that you just think too much and just need to run something without all of your ducks in a row. I mean really, are all of these non-implemented campaign ideas, and spinning your wheels trying to find the "magic answer" worth it in the end? Best way to get over mental blocks and hurdles is desensitization, so I think you should just set yourself a date, do what you can, and run it for good or for ill.

[Gigermann]

Sure, that's all true. I don't GM often enough to get desensitized.

This is really a psychology exercise—what prep do I need to be comfortable? You ran once, and it was a from-scratch adventure. Did you feel comfortable with your level of preparedness? How prepared were you?

[WxMAN]

When I ran I had an average of 7 pages of notes per night, I still have them shared on drive. But I know I personally overprep because I know get very very nervous and don't improv well

[Gigermann]

Aug 19, 2015 12:43:54 GMT -6 WxMAN said:

When I ran I had an average of 7 pages of notes per night, I still have them shared on drive. But I know I personally overprep because I know get very very nervous and don't improv well

If you audited your notes against what actually got used, I wonder what the percentage of "excess info" would be?

[WxMAN]

Probably 50% or so. A lot of it also probably didn't "need" to be there, even if it was used, as it was just there as a safety net if my brain shut off in a panic.

[LabRat]

Aug 19, 2015 12:33:47 GMT -6 Gigermann said:

Sure, that's all true. I don't GM often enough to get desensitized.

This is really a psychology exercise—what prep do I need to be comfortable? You ran once, and it was a from-scratch adventure. Did you feel comfortable with your level of preparedness? How prepared were you?

I don't think I ever felt truly prepared. When I started my campaign. I had several (about 12 or so) loose outlines of certain adventures types and depending on where you guys were going I picked one out the week before and then spent an hour or two to flesh it out a bit. Most of my time was spent selecting monsters and big bads but that was because I liked to do it. I always felt like I needed more time but after a few sessions I knew it was just in my head and it would be fine. Even if there were holes missing, the PCS would usually do something I wasn't expecting and so most of the prep work didn't amount to much anyway.

[Gigermann]

If you do the right prep, and know your players well, you can run a session where they don't find your blind-spots. I've seen it happen. It's an ideal to strive for, certainly not a requirement, though.

Actually, I keep getting distracted here. There are actually two inter-dependent issues I've been trying to sort out. There's the prep issue—what do I need to be able to run right now? But the issue I noticed with all my failures-to-launch is actually a classic writer's dilemma—I've got the outline, and now it's time to fill in the story. That's what I'm trying to figure out right now.

With ATE, I wasn't pushing any kind of story, so it didn't matter what anyone did—and it worked better than I had anticipated—but it's not how I typically operate. If I'm not careful, I can get too invested in how the story progresses that I can cut the players actions out of it (I've learned lessons on that account, though; not to worry).

[WxMAN]

Well part of the problem, at least in my view, is that in general table top rpgs are collaborative story telling, as in the players have just as much to 'write' in the story as the GM. The more and more of the story the GM writes the more it feels like a railroad and the GM may as well just write a novel and let me read that.

[Gigermann]

True enough; I know that from experience. But you also don't want to give them too little, or they get that deer-in-the-headlights look. There needs to be "enough" information to allow them to make a decision (and the experienced GM is prepared for them to make the opposite decision from what he would expect—like a cat crossing the street in front of your car ).

In the Traveller, you can plop the PCs on a planet, give them a ship, and they generally know what to do—thanks to the genre/setting. In Terra nova, I plop the PCs in the colony—they have a mission to investigate something; at the least, I have to know what happened so they can find the clues—story needs writing.

[Rigil Kent]

Break it down into smaller, bite-sized chunks. Each chunk opens up more information. So I'd go with

• Session 1: PCs enter colony and get situated with their cover identities. Introduce Tier 1 NPCs. Don't bother with the investigation yet as the characters have to get integrated first. End session with a surprise that is linked to the main plot. Perhaps Person X is on a "Most Wanted" poster or a wall of "Dangerous: Do Not Approach!" in HQ or maybe PC3 discovers that s/he has been assigned Person X's old quarters and uncovers a concealed door or something
• Session 2: Presume some time has passed and PCs have integrated. Begin investigation and seeking out of clues. End session with a Major Clue.
• Session 3: Rinse and repeat. Maybe even do something completely unrelated to the investigation (Next week on "When Dinosaurs Attack!").

Personally, I find plots easy. It's all the rest that give me trouble.

[Gigermann]

That's actually the part I figure will work itself out.

The part that won't is "what's going on in the Colony right now?" and "what happened to the Alpha Team between 'they got here' and 'they're missing'?"

That's another difference with ATE—it was a "reactive" story; stuff wasn't really happening outside the PCs' influence. In TN, things are "actively" going on that the PCs will end up reacting to. I think it's the absence of the "active" element that made ATE easier.

I had planned to use Story Forge to work out some of the active storyline. I'm just not sure how to use it that way.

[WxMAN]

The few times I've run, what I do is kind of have a hybrid system. I generally follow these three steps:

1. Before the game starts I figure out what major players are going to be trying to do in a very abstract way during the time the next session is going to take place, unless they are expected to be involved in what the PCs are going in which case I get more fine grained with their actions.
2. Then the game happens and stuff revolving around what the PCs do get the focus.
3. After the game I then see what, if anything, the PCs did affected how the major players approach things or if their goals are affected, if so, they respond to the changes - even if they don't know the PC's exist.

Pregame: Let's say before the game the thieves guild were going to rob a stagecoach and a noble house.
Game: The PC's interrupt the stagecoach theft and kill the robbers.
Postgame: Thieves guild now investigating what happen to their men while staying low as their robbery on the noble house worked but alerted the guard.

[Gigermann]

Still thinking about this, whether I'm planning a run or not—gonna need to eventually.

Let's use a practical example, Generica.

I had "sandbox" in mind, specifically referring back to old sandbox CRPGs (in specific, Darklands or Mount & Blade), but a pure sandbox is a totally "reactive" situation, which isn't ideal. In contrast, Dead Rising is a sandbox—you can do whatever you want—but there is also a story going on, that you can participate in or not, that, unlike most (Elder Scrolls comes to mind), will not wait for you to get around to it, but would actually go on without you and leave you behind. This is my ideal, but that's a bit more work.

But once you've decided you need an "active" storyline, then you have to work that out, and that's where I tend to stumble. Like I said, the old way for me was to pirate a movie/game story, but you have to find one that fits the campaign. In the case of Generica I really had nothing—NPCs all over the place, but what to do with them? I have a few timeline bullet points, but they're not something I want to lead with.

So here's the challenge:
You've got Generica; PCs have some known motivations. PCs are either sitting in the tavern, or you could start after the first mission when they return to the Capital. What would you do for the active part of the story? Note that I'm more interested here in "process" than what you actually might come up with.

[LabRat]

1. Determine event that would make them proactive in terms of wanting to adventure whether it be announcement from a governing body giving them a task (typical we are doing this for king and country), an event that no one could have expect (think half life here), Natural Disaster, etc.
2. Determine adversaries, if any. They will be the counter point to prevent or impeded the PCs from reaching their goals
3. Determine overall situation/status of the world (are they at war, are they a fledgling society, are they starving due to lack of food and a harsh winter, etc.) this will help with points 1 and 2
4. Determine "end game" goal based on points 1, 2, and 3
5. Start building situations that would entice the PCs to continue until "end game" goal (these are you quests/adventures)
6. Tie in PCs personal goals with main story so that they can feel like they are working toward something person
7. Allow downtime during gameplay so that PCs can go off and do something that they maybe would like to do but didn't have an opportunity to do so, adjust plot points due to new information.
8. Have a myriad of NPCs around that can be used to interact with the PCs during gameplay. I like to think of NPCs as being the GMs voice in character. NPCs can info dump or they can give information only if the PCs ask the right questions. Allow the PCs to establish relationship with NPCs at will so that they can feel like they are in control of their own story.
9. Stay fluid if you really want a sandbox. If the PCs want to open up an icecream shop in the middle of a war zone, then you let them do it.

[LabRat]

Addendum: Usually in order for the PCs to start something, you usually need to shake up their world. For example, they are sitting in a tavern. ::BOOM!!:: something happens and no one has a clue what is going on. Pandemonium ensues. The PCs are going to take a few sessions at least to figure out the who, what, when, where, why, and how, along with the rest of the city. Then your adventure can be around finding a solution to the catastrophic event. Just that situation can take at least 2-3 sessions if played right. This also gives you an opportunity to indroduce the PCs to the city and maybe some standby NPCs (merchants, Captain of the guards, Nobles, etc.) There is your segway: Cue adventure

[Gigermann]

Well, we have answers to most of those questions already.
1. Heroes' Guild orders (for starters, at least)
2. Got Nefaria at the meta level, and probably Lionhearts or somesuch at the local level; maybe also Thieves' Guild
3. At peace, all is bright and green and prospering; just waiting for the shoe to drop (and everyone knows it). Raiding season is starting, though—gearing up for that, a bit
4. What would you do with the endgame, here?
5. This is the nut, here
6. If you have the above, this one's not too hard
The rest is pretty well covered

[WxMAN]

In my mind, whenever I think about a campaign it is always the Dead Rising style. There is something going on, factions are always doing something, though I typically only concern myself with factions that may effect the PCs (even if it is only indirectly). The more easily they are could be interacted with the PCs, the more detailed and less abstract my focus becomes on them.

Taking Generica - My planning goes as follows (this will be stream of conscious so you can see my process):
Alright. Noble houses are constantly being dicks to one another, vying for position. Let's say two of the big noble houses are just going at each other while the other, more minor houses egg them on, hoping to weaken both of them in a protracted battle. Thieves guild know these two houses are going at each other, so they've been offering services to each to weaken the other house, playing both sides against the middle. The Wizard Academy has been stagnating lately but have uncovered writings in their archive that point to a potential cache of ancient magics lost many centuries ago and have decided to work with the local fighters and adventurers guilds to seek this cache out. The city guard is stretched to its limit due to the increase in crime (thieves guild having extra work with the noble houses fighting) as well as goblins constantly testing the outskirts of the city because goblins are dicks and always do this shit, though the vulnerability testing has been increasing lately because the guard has been stretched so thin.

That was just all off the top of my head figuring out the basic 'active plot' or whatever you want to call it. Now I go fill in some of the major NPCs - but roughly. Such as what two houses are warring - let's say it is House Greene and House Pureple. I'll fill in their general motivations and characteristics, but that is it. I'll do the same with the major players of the thieves guild, especially those primary people working with the two houses. And on down the line. The first adventure is a bit harder because there is no direction, so I'll over prep with NPCs. If the PCs had been playing a couple weeks, I could get their trajectory down and build a few more NPCs in the direction they are heading. ie if they are investigating the houses and thieves guild I'll build NPCs and motives around those areas and keep the wizard, fighters, and adventure guilds a bit more abstract.

I then follow the three steps I outlined above. Let's say the PCs are starting in the tavern, they hear talk of all of the above, so whichever way they decide to go I'm good - I have the outlines of what I need and won't need to make up too much stuff on the fly. I'll have stat blocks ready for each direction. One for goblins, one for thieves, one for the city watch, one for nobles, etc etc and adjust them accordingly. The PCs, with proper motivations should jump at one of those things, but if not, then that is a PC or player motivation problem and requires a bit of out of character - "alright, what's up? Do you guys just want to sit and drink at the tavern all night?" from the GM. Again, most of these problems are specific to the first and only the first session since after that the PCs will have more of a known direction. Worst comes to worse, the first session becomes a railroad where you force encounters with each of the main plots I outlined about and then let them decide which of them they want to follow (or none, maybe they want to build a better tavern with black jack and hookers) for session 2. So it is a railroad for session 1 and then session 2 is now a sandbox, but at least by session 2 you know more what the PCs want to do and can see what part of each of the 'plots' would affect them. Maybe House Greene are abolitionists, so if they win the power struggle that'd really screw the PC's building a tavern - will the PCs get involved to help tip the scales in favor of House Pureple? Etc Etc.

One final note is I never want my games to be a sandbox or a railroad. I want them to be a theme park. There are a lot of things going on and the PC's can go to whatever place in the theme park they want, but each of the places have their own feel and stuff going on. To me a sandbox is much more lifeless and require you to make up the story, a la Minecraft. Any and all story you get from Minecraft is up to the person playing because there is no real story going on - it tends to make the game feel lifeless.

Hopefully that helps, ask away for any clarification.

[Gigermann]

Okay, that's pretty helpful. So you lay out all the major players and map out who's messing with whom; figure every party is doing at least one active thing—I had actually started developing some of this for Generica. I presume once you have those "activities" mapped out, you can start asking questions like "how?" which leads to breaking up the answers into individual event-chunks—I had not started this process for Generica, which is a bit of a derp, in retrospect.

BTW, I wish I had thought of green v purple

[WxMAN]

Glad it helped. Is there anything else I can do?

[WxMAN]

Here is a question for the group.

I've been thinking of PC-NPC interaction lately. What is the best way to handle PCs sussing out lies from NPC?

In D&D and Pathfinder the appropriate skill is "Sense Motive", but how do you handle it? Only having PCs roll a sense motive when a npc is lying kind of gives away that they are lying. Having the PCs roll for every single sentence stated is silly and tedious. Requiring the PCs to declare themselves wanting a roll seems odd too, and on the extreme could end up being rolling for every sentence just to make sure.

Any ideas as to how best approach this?

[Rigil Kent]

A couple of options:

• Use a "Passive" approach ala the Passive PER checks in 4E where you calculate the check as 10 + modifier and use that unless a PC actively declares an intent to sense motive.
• Prerolls. Everyone rolls 10 or so d20 rolls for you and you use those as needed.