I am, by no means, a good DM/Storyteller. I want to become a better one, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around the basics.
When discussing DM theory with friends, I’ve come across two basic (mutually exclusive!) goals.
1) You want to give the players a tough story with real sense of risk/reward. Maybe this means them dying… but how much better is it when they succeed? Descent is just a warm-up: It’s you vs. them!
2) You’re all telling a story together. Sometimes you’ll have a good story to tell, sometimes they’ll have a good story to tell. Get together and work it all out! You’re there to have fun!
Now, my problem with #1 is that the DM can, effectively, destroy the party at will. Throw goblins and kobolds at them. Didn’t succeed? Throw a few more. Drop in an orc shaman. After (if) they heal up, give them a troll. You will, eventually, be able to grind them to dust. And, hey, if you don’t? How much better is that for them? Give the survivors some +2 armor and a +2 weapon that nobody in the party specializes in. Woo! The upside to this is that it’s fairly easy to do, if not exactly fun.
I’m trying to explore #2 more but I constantly get held up by such things as, yes, “The Dumpster” and get offended that the players are more interested in the scenery than the story… I’ve discussed this particular problem with a handful of friends and the best advice I’ve received (and I’m trying to incorporate this in my thought processes) is to ask questions.
“You guys don’t hear the sirens anymore. It looks like the coast is clear…”
“Where are we?”
“In an alleyway behind a bar.”
“What’s in the alley?”
“I don’t know… a dumpster.”
“What’s in the dumpster?”
*THIS* is the moment of truth! Instead of thinking “what the heck, guys?”, I am trying to train myself instead to ask “what are you looking for?”
This way, they can tell you that they’re looking for a recent newspaper, or a place to hide, or a secret passageway to the sewers, or whatever. This simple question opens up so many more possibilities than trying to railroad them. I’ve had people ask me what kinds of cars are in the parking garage and I got irritated because I thought that the cars were just scenery and forced them to move on… when, hey, maybe one of them wanted a taxi, or an ambulance, or a hummer. Something as simple as a “what are you looking for?” followed by a “roll a d10 and, on an 8 or 9 there’s one in the corner. On a 10, it’s unlocked and the idiot driver kept the keys in the visor.”
How much more fun for everybody is that? Of course, if the hummer just happens to be a bait car, then the *REAL* fun can begin… for everybody, of course. You’re telling a story *TOGETHER*, after all.
Any of you guys have some DM secrets?
I DM prolifically, my own suggestions:
-Have a story, try and make it cool but keep it flexible.
-Assume the players aren’t going to go the way you expect them to.
-Build a world. If you have a general idea of what the world they’re in is like this gives you a basic set of rules you can use when the players go zinging off in a direction you didn’t anticipate.
-For plot purposes don’t be afraid to cheat a little. If something important; a plot object or vital npc, was in an area they spurned then relocate it wholesale to be in their path again. You can justify it by making up in game reasons why it ended up in their path if that eases your guilt.
-Do not put yourself in your NPC’s too much. Your players are going to treat them like crap in out of character commentary if not in game. If you let yourself you could end up feeling hurt or worse, vengeful.
The basic framework that made most sense to me is “you start in LA, you want to go to NYC, you need to stop in Chicago along the way.”
Everything else is up to the players. Whether they go here or there or hither or yon is up to them. You gave them a starting point, you have an end point, and you nudge them to Chicago if they run out of steam.
And, yeah, I’m no good at that.
On an unrelated subject… is anyone else having trouble posting comments to the main site? I don’t get error messages, it just takes the comments and puts up nothing. I wonder if I got onto a ban list somehow? It seemed to happen right after I tried posting a link to Bartlette’s piece. Wierd.
Never mind, seems to be working now.
I find my own comments occasionally held back for moderation… and they’re not even particularly linky or verbose.
It’s a thing.
Well at least I’m in good company.
I start with a story. Create a few non-player characters and then try to think of sub plots that may arise with the course of events. Players really mix things up, make it mutable rather than static which makes me think on my feet. I’ve been told my best work is done when it’s spontaneous. With that spontaneity there’s greater control if it’s within a certain area which comes with preparation. The fine line one must not cross is micromanagement. Keep things broad so one can be fast and loose. Right now one of my biggest issues is having people ask me “Can I do this” and I wish they would just say “I do this” taking the initiative rather than seeking my approval.
I admire your approach to game mastering. I wish I had that kind of flexibility to create a living world that I don’t take for granted that everyone else will imagine it just as richly as it stands in my mind.
They’re all living worlds, the problem is that my definition of “fun place for adventurers to hang” and their definition of “fun place for adventurers to hang” match up rarely, if ever.
Just because it looks like the Vegas Strip at 11:30PM to me doesn’t mean that other folks won’t look at it and be reminded of the carnies who bring a ferris wheel to the K-Mart parking lot every May (in broad daylight, no less).
North is right, but I will add a couple of things.
-Build a good outline of the world, but let the player file in some pieces. That buy in helps keep their interest.
-When there is a Dupster, modify your story to make it important. Like moving the important clue, or what not, to the Dumpster.
-You have to be flexible. My worst times as a DM has been when I get annoyed with what the characters are doing. I get slopy and bad things have often happenned (like party kills).
– I find it is more that I get too invested in the story (not the NPCs) after a year plus and once that happens I can become less flexible with what the characters want to do. Just step back, take a deep breath and remind yourself to be flexible.
– I think the biggest problem will always be when the party splits up though. Slows the game down and makes it difficult to keep players into the game. There are few ways to really stop this though.
There’s probably an entire essay that ought be devoted to party splits.
My GM prayer goes “Lead me not into temptation to be a tyrant and deliver me from party splits.”
That is why one of the funnest plots is to have the team escape prison, but have them all shackled together. Then make it take a looooooong time to get those shackles off. 🙂 Evil DM.
Your probably right about the essay, but here are the cliff’s notes:
1)”Don’t Split the Party” is a rule for dungeon-crawling, not all role-playing
2)Treat everything like a combat round: Each character gets to do one important thing, and then move on to whoever is next.
I haven’t played a tabletop RPG in 15 years or so much less run one in that time.
The biggest annoyance I remember was several people in our group were metagamers. I was always trying to find ways to undermine that. One of my favorites was to make any dice roll for them if knowing what the dice showed would color their further decisions. So, they’d try something, I would roll behind a screen and tell them what happened.
So, looking for a secret door? DM rolls and says ‘you don’t find any secret doors’. Is it because there is one and you failed or there isn’t one and you succeeded? Now we’re role-playing!
On one level, there’s a philosophy that says that the players shouldn’t even know their own hit points (!) or stats (!!).
You just ask “how am I feeling?” and the DM says “you’re doing pretty good… maybe a scratch here or there but it’s nothing to write home about” for 5-10% damage to “pretty banged up” for a 50% hp loss to “WARRIOR IS ABOUT TO DIE” for 90%.
This strikes me as much more “realistic” but it also feels kinda less fun. Part of the reason to show up for the game in the first place is to throw the bones yourself. (It’s also about 400% more work for the DM.)
Yeah, I tried running all the mechanics myself. The players loved it at first but it was like 1000% more GM work. This in turn led to corners being cut and more corners being cut until I realized I was straying outside of the rule sets alltogether and just basing the outcomes on how the player made it sound… yeah anyhow, you have to be a savant or a genius or have a computer in your brain to run it all yourself.
I imagine that there’s easily a point at which a player could get frustrated that he can “never do anything right”. (I also imagine that the number of failed rolls for this is probably vanishingly small… like 3 or 4 in a row.)
Hey, if I throw my die and it rolls a natural 1, hey. That’s the way the die tumbles. Trade it out for one of your “good” dice. Or shrug and assume that the 1 has been rolled out.
If the DM does it, though? That’s just b.s., man. B.S.
I have always found the best way to stop metagaming is to have the player do his entire action before making any roll. For search doors and such, you only get one roll, succeed or fail. For finding traps, I normally ask, “And what will you do if you find no traps?” Then they will do that action as well. That way you do not have to worry about much metagaming.
The most diffucult one is illusion. The moment a character says, “I disbelieve because of X, Y, and Z.” It will not matter to them if they “failed”, they will think it is still an illusion. So, illusions are the one roll I make as a DM.
Well, you have to keep it to rolls where failure means something to the game. Obviously players roll their own combat (you hit the guy or you didn’t) and tests where success/fail should be obvious to the player. It’s only when a fail results in the character having metainformation that you pull that trick.
An alternative for White Wolf style difficulty rolls (most of my RPG life) was to let the players roll without telling them the difficulty target. You look at their result and tell them what happens, then they have an inkling but often they won’t be entirely sure of themselves.