How do you like things GMed?
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@2mspris said in How do you like things GMed?:
to me that is the point of running something for players
I agree and disagree with this.
To me, at least, the point of running something for players is for them to accomplish something. If they don't get to do something, and have a chance at succeeding, then they may as well have just read about the event in the newspaper. If I were the 'call 911 and leave' person, I'd probably think the scene was a waste of my time.
He/Him
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@Tinuviel said in How do you like things GMed?:
@2mspris said in How do you like things GMed?:
to me that is the point of running something for players
. If I were the 'call 911 and leave' person, I'd probably think the scene was a waste of my time.Yeah that’s where I was coming at it from. Not that calling 911 for an explosion or running away were unreasonable actions, but that it probably doesn’t make for a very interesting experience for the players who do those things. It’s a balance. The GM should give them reasons to be involved and the players should meet the GM halfway and not blow off obvious plot hooks (or if they do, then don’t complain about “there’s nothing to do” afterwards).
I agree with @Tinuviel’s point about catering scenes to the people involved but I’ve found it harder to do that these days. 12 years ago on BSP I would see a bunch of folks in a public area and be like “hey do you guys want to do some drama” and make something for them specifically and it would be cool. These days folks are more into their own agendas and don’t seem to welcome staff dropping things on them outside of scheduled events. Plus on many games the character concepts have so little reason to interact that it becomes hard to orchestrate something for a random group.
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@faraday said in How do you like things GMed?:
Plus on many games the character concepts have so little reason to interact that it becomes hard to orchestrate something for a random group.
I genuinely think this is a often an issue. I haven't seen a lot of staff on games do "Whatever you are doing, I'm going to drop in on you and something is going to happen." stuff since I was on Denver. Players don't seem to welcome the "random things happens" as widely as they once did, and any more character concepts are so widely spread all over the place that it is a struggle. I adore any kind of "group" over a dozen "lone wolf" concepts apping into a game, but there is not a lot of moderation and direction across the board on staff to make that happen generally.
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@2mspris said in How do you like things GMed?:
Players don't seem to welcome the "random things happens" as widely as they once did
These days, if there are people in a public space they're probably already RPing and don't want that interrupted on someone else's whim. That used to happen often, and it always annoyed me.
@2mspris said in How do you like things GMed?:
I adore any kind of "group" over a dozen "lone wolf" concepts apping into a game
I do as well, but that's not the point. If you gather half a dozen random people for an event, it's not guaranteed that those six people are going to be from the same group unless you specifically run something for that group.
He/Him
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@Tinuviel said in How do you like things GMed?:
@2mspris said in How do you like things GMed?:
I adore any kind of "group" over a dozen "lone wolf" concepts apping into a game
I do as well, but that's not the point. If you gather half a dozen random people for an event, it's not guaranteed that those six people are going to be from the same group unless you specifically run something for that group.
You're right.
That comment was specifically in regards to the overall difference in mushing now vs how it used to be - not specifically on "how I like things GMed".
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When I run a scene, I prewrite atmospheric things, descriptions of places they are likely to go, and I try to include enough relevant information that the players can pick up on and find their way to the hoped for outcome. This is so I don't keep players waiting, and don't forget anything important in the moment. I add to what I had prepared based on their IC actions.
But if they go off book, so be it, I still try to make it as interesting as if they'd done what I'd pre-planned for.
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I am bad at pacing and I am bad at plot. So I kind of just run scenes, if I'm being honest. You're in the bank, and it gets robbed, what do you do? A riot is on the verge of breaking out, what do you do? You've been hired to hijack a truck full of meat, what do you do?
I have some ideas for what's likely to happen, obstacles, moral dilemmas, etc, and I try to figure out how players may react to things, so I have some foreshadowing for complications likely to result from those paths. But if players just go off the rails or back out of the plot, or are just so overpowered that any realistic challenge for the scenario I set up is trivial, I just try to make it interesting in some way.
I'm not really providing the roller coaster highs and lows of a well thought-out plot with memorable villains and raised stakes and things like that, but I know my limits. I'm not trying to compete with those, I'm trying to offer an entertaining alternative to coffeeshop RP.
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@SG said in How do you like things GMed?:
As a player, I'd like a heads up about scenes like these so I can opt out.
Which is perfectly fair. It's certainly not everyone's favorite thing.
But at the same time, I have other factors to consider as well. If everyone in the scene is like this, and just wants things to go off in whatever direction they try and move it, that takes an incredible amount of overhead that I just don't have the kind of time for these days. That requires being able to re-jigger NPCs on the fly, or have a small stable of them already prepared. It requires knowing the plot hooks and quirks of all the characters in the scene. It requires that you have the kind of time to do the open-ended type of thing that it will almost assuredly become.
And these days, I have a full-time job and school obligations, etc. That kind of stuff was fine when I was younger and had not much else to do, but now that I am older? I can create a thing, and we can have fun with it, but you might find that if you push too hard against the boundaries of the story, you run out of 'give' at a certain point.
I think that, as a hobby, this has been hitting all of us a bit harder, which is why we have fewer people willing to do the full-time staffing thing and fewer overall stories being run, evident from how much we talk about exactly that sort of thing regardless of what game comes up.
So the 'everyone does whatever they want and screw the plans' type of RP, while perfectly valid, isn't as viable as it once was if for no other reason than "all of us have other things to do now." So I don't really feel as bad about it as I might have, once upon a time in my younger years.
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@SG said in How do you like things GMed?:
If a GM has an outcome that has to happen
I mean. Every story has an outcome that's planned. The result of that outcome (ugh, words) might not be what the GM expects, but every story has a rough beginning, middle, and end. That's not railroading, that's story design.
Your big badass end boss got one shotted, sure. But you had a big badass end boss for them to face. That's the outcome.
If a story (and by extension a game) doesn't have a goal in mind at the start (goals can be changed, but there really must be a goal) then it's going to go nowhere.
He/Him
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@2mspris said in How do you like things GMed?:
If it is an intro or some part of a long story arch, then I have specific points of information or occurrence that need to get conveyed and those will be planned.
I call this the "Gated" method, rather than on-rails, and it's what I use (and prefer to play within) as well. There are certain points that will happen, but how they happen, what order they happen in, and how that impacts future gates changes. It's a deeply reactive GMing style that works best with proactive players, so it can definitely be troublesome on a MUSH. Sometimes you have to nudge people to follow-up or work toward the next step (whatever they choose to have the next step be).
I want a storyline that shifts with the actions of the players, but still manages to follow a pathway that makes sense for the world and setting of the game. If someone can handle that without any pre-planning, more power to them. I can usually do it for a single-scene plot, or even two, but more than that, definitely needs some gating for me to be able to keep up with it.
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@Seraphim73 said in How do you like things GMed?:
I call this the "Gated" method, rather than on-rails, and it's what I use (and prefer to play within) as well. There are certain points that will happen, but how they happen, what order they happen in, and how that impacts future gates changes.
Yes, this. Exactly.
I was just talking to someone else about how much I hate the terminology "on rails," because I think that it's a dismissive way to marginalize a bigger concept, which usually is:
The part of the plot you are interacting with is only a small subset of the overall thing. When I run stories, several groups of players are usually simultaneously working on a thing from different angles, things are going on completely off-screen with NPC groups (some of which are working to undermine the players' efforts too), and the whole thing has momentum because the story as a whole has quite a bit of narrative mass to it. The actions of one playgroup do have the ability to affect it, yes, but there are other forces at work on the thing too, and players might need to take that into consideration as well.
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@Derp said in How do you like things GMed?:
People can talk about not liking things being 'on rails' or whatever, but sometimes you just gotta use that fiat.
Enh. No, you don't have to. If you have so much of a plan and detailed story you want to tell that players have to go through B, C and D, write a short story or novel. Most players don't play to follow a script or simply have an impact on a story - they can get that from video games. They RP to tell stories together.
And I don't mean to sound dismissive or anything - I used to BE that storyteller you're talking about. I've had my big bad get one-shot killed. I've had players hijack stories just because. I learned how to work around that. There are ways to work around just about anything, and every plot is perfect and fool-proof until it makes first contact with players.
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@silverfox said in How do you like things GMed?:
How do you approach GMing scenes? What's your way of putting method to the madness? Do you plan things out in depth, or just the broad strokes, or what? How do you decide what people @check and so forth?
The exact way of GMing, to me, isn't very important. It only becomes that for active characters with an existing, ongoing narrative you're trying to enrich and that's a bit of an edge case since most PCs don't fall into that category.
So if we're talking about people I'm not very well familiar with (say, a public +event everyone is allowed to join) my method is this: Give people stuff to do and let them have agency. Make sure to cover for passive players by hand-feeding them plot - you must never, ever be in a standstill where the GM is waiting on players to initiate something and the players are expecting the GM to 'start the next one'. There needs to always be a clear path to involvement. Always. No exceptions.
The only caveat here is if you get the kinds of players (who I love) who like to take charge... let them. Don't railroad it, that's reserved for situations where it's necessary because of the rule above. But provided someone wants to be in the driver's seat then I let them - I want them to - and be ready to respond as needed to expand the overall plot to cover whatever they're trying to do.
TL;DR: My main objective is to give thematic stuff to do for players who might not be engaged in meaningful plot just yet. If that is accomplished and they want more, they get to have it.
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@Tinuviel said in How do you like things GMed?:
Your big badass end boss got one shotted, sure. But you had a big badass end boss for them to face. That's the outcome.
I disagree, in my opinion, the outcome of the endboss fight is the outcome, not that there was an encounter at all, that's just a setup.
I've played games where the players came up with a plan, executed it, and were robbed because, it turns out, batman can't be killed by mere goons despite the goons(our characters) rolled very well, and had a pretty good trap set up. Others where some other pet NPC shows up, does a monologue, and then the situation is resolved before the PCs can really do anything because the person running the plot has a specific outcome in mind.
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I've done a shiiiitload of GMing, online and in RL, and here are the things I tell anybody who asks about GMing.
- NEVER write a beginning, middle, and an end. This always creates railroads and forces the players to end the session your way. Instead, write a beginning (I.e. setup), keep in mind a few ways the middle might be approached, and also keep in mind a few ways the end of what is presented in the beginning might be met.
In any game, the GM is the referee who gets to play every single character in the setting except the PCs, but the PCs are the star of the show. It needs to be about them. This advice goes not only for a single night of gaming, but for a campaign altogether. REMAIN FLEXIBLE, because it's not about your story, but the gaming group's fun. Never simply walk players through your story. Bend. Flex.
- NEVER make your character or favorite NPCs the focus of a scene/story. NEVER run sessions involving your own PCs.
MU players can be notoriously bad about this, but so can tabletop GMs. I've played tabletop superhero games where the GM put a ton of detail into an NPC cop and voila, the cop saved the super heroes every scene and the game became a false front for his cop NPCs origin story. Likewise, on MU, some game-runners and players seem to always run game sessions involving background/scene elements central to their characters, and it's always such a bummer. If you're a GM, be a fucking GM, not a hybrid.
- ALWAYS make players throw dice. Players learn bad roleplaying habits over time, and RNGesus saves.
Players will almost always hive-mind through pages and table antics, and only a small population are cool with failure as an option. To avoid metagaming, roll their perception checks for them behind a wall of secrecy, and tell them what they perceive. If they roll their own checks and roll a 2 on a d20, they almost always assume failure, so the hive mind adjusts for that failure. Also? Not everyone can succeed simply because they want, and the G in RPG stands for game. Dice keeps decisions/success/failure a result of the game and helps avoid complaints of GM favoritism. NEVER get into the habit of hand-waving dice checks for anything that could potentially fail. When you do that, players will focus all of their energy to convince you that they succeed, and it all goes downhill from there.
- NEVER fudge dice for or against the PCs. If you don't want your players to fake dice rolls, then neither can you.
So long as pass/fail isn't a matter of favoritism, even if it means a character is knocked out of combat, then things remain fair. If you don't let your players fail, they will get spoiled and get huffy when they don't win. If you fudge rolls, then you're railroading, and when the time comes for someone to lose, they'll take it personally. Other side of the coin? If you fudge dice, then don't be surprised if players start to always roll 16 or higher on a d20 to control their chances of success.
There's also a good book called [The Lazy Dungeon Master](The Lazy Dungeon Master https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ADV2H8O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_t.iDCb5934SQ7) worth checking out. I dont agree with 100% of it, but it should make you a better GM and avoid the pitfalls many other bad GMs get into the habit of.
Just remember to be loose, flexible, and let the players explore. They'll lead you right up to the game they want to play. They'll show you what they think is fun. They'll say things like "Oh god, I just know at the end of the hallway is gonna be something freaky". Boom. Cues. Follow them. Flex in the direction the wind blows.
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@Ghost gh
So this was kinda the stuff I was looking for, but didn't want to limit it because I was curious for all the stuff ever being a 100% novice to GMing. (Aka, concrete do and don'ts, even if the advice doesn't agree with one another like the planning it all out vs planning bits.)
So looking at #3
"If they roll their own checks and roll a 2 on a d20, they almost always assume failure, so the hive mind adjusts for that failure"What does that mean? What is the hive mind?
And going further, what does it mean to roll their checks for them?
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@silverfox I normally use some kind of GM screen if it's tabletop, but you can do it easy in MU, too.
Here's what you do: Before starting you ask your players for what their perception roll dice are. (I.e. in D&D it might be the +# to a d20 roll, or in WoD might be their wits+composure totals). Basically, gather everything the player would need to roll for those rolls; you roll it for them.
Then, say the PC is alone in a dark alley. If you have them roll perception and they fail, and then you tell them they see nothing, then the player knows that they are missing something. This usually leads to all kinds of weird role play because the player knows the character missed something. So, then, why does the character act like they see nothing but just in case they decide to put on a helmet, kevlar vest, and draw their gun?
So you avoid that crap this way:
While role-playing, the GM rolls the dice. You've already told the players that you will be rolling their perception-type skill rolls. THE GM rolls when they enter the alleyway to see if they detect the stalker creeping behind them. If the roll succeeds or fails, you tell them what their character perceives, but don't tell them if the roll passed or failed.
This method can also apply for when they want to roll to see if their characters are being lied to. Now, by THE HIVE MIND, I mean the way players in a session tend to share information Oocly and act on it as if the characters are telling everyone what they see or hear. If you, The GM, tell a player that they succeed on a perception test, due to HIVE MIND, other players will naturally not search themselves out of assumption that since Player1 succeeded, it's a wasted effort.
So, say a player is talking to an NPC and rolls to see if they detect that they're being lied to. If They know they've failed, they will often not react immediately, but due to OOCly knowing they failed, will play it cautious. Often because of the HIVE MIND, all of the sudden another PC might suddenly cross the room as if cued to ask the same questions and attempt the same rolls. Large groups of players tend to do this until one of them succeeds.
So, using this method? If a player wants to know if they're being lied to, you roll in secret, tell them what they perceive, and the OOC element of pass/fail knowledge stops being a factor altogether.
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@silverfox Sorry to double post, but since you're a novice GM, I thought I'd give you another piece of advice:
ALWAYS APPROACH GMing LIKE YOU'RE NARRATING AN AWESOME BEDTIME STORY
See, players want to give creativity and receive it in return. The player fulfills the role of making the awesome knight in shining armor, and the GM fulfills the role of making the evil knight really scary so that if and when the knight wins it feels great. If the evil knight wins? Make it so that the good guys can't wait for the next episode to see how they get back on the horse to defeat evil.
Weirdly enough? Pro Wrestling is great at this. Pro Wrestling is a constant give and take storyline of heroes vs villains, and can be a fun resource.
All in all, though, good stories are rarely: The good guy hits and deals 10 points of damage, but descriptions of how the heroes and villains react. Get into campfire story mode, emotionally.
When Legolas rolls a critical hit, he doesn't just do 20 points of damage: He stabs an orc through the throat with an arrow, then nocks the same arrow and uses it to shooy another orc. Aragorn doesn't dodge a thrown knife. He swings and bats it away with his sword like a badass.
Have fun with it. Let them have fun detailing some successes, and you can have fun detailing both their successes and those of the bad guys.
After all, Infinity War didn't end with a loss; it ended with a snap that left the players hungry for part 2.
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@silverfox said in How do you like things GMed?:
So this was kinda the stuff I was looking for, but didn't want to limit it because I was curious for all the stuff ever being a 100% novice to GMing.
@Ghost has good advice to consider and I presume it's been successful for their groups.
On the flip side, my style is pretty much the polar opposite. I script things to a modest degree (while still allowing player influence), I run scenes involving my PC all the time (though not as the star), I fudge dice rolls to make a better story (though never to screw the PCs), I let PCs make their own perception checks, and I've had reasonably happy players in both TTRPGs and MUs for decades.
I don't mean to imply that I'm right and Ghost is wrong. Not at all. I think it just illustrates that there isn't just one 'right' way to GM. What works well in a TTRPG often doesn't translate to a MU, and what works on one kind of MU often doesn't translate to another. You have to figure out what works for your own personal style and the style of the people you're running for.
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@SG said in How do you like things GMed?:
I disagree, in my opinion, the outcome of the endboss fight is the outcome
If the entire story was about the endboss fight, sure. But I'm also not likely to play with a GM/ST/whatever that does that. So we're both right.
