Posts made by Ghost

@Lotherio DYSLEXICS OF THE WORLD UNTIE!

@Ghost said in How do you like things GMed?:

I cannot understate the importance of great villains.

@Lotherio correction. UNDERSTATE. My phone autocorrected it to understand.

Villains are super important, I totally understand their importance. I cannot understate their importance.

@faraday is totally right. She and I have different approaches to GMing. She's also a fantastic GM and I recommend people pay attention to her games and play them. She's probably the fairest and most balanced GM in the hobby, IMO.

On BS:U, she did scenes involving her players the right way. IF your character is in the scene, then you have to put them on equal footing in terms of screen time with the other players. She never made the scenes about her characters in the scene; her character just happened to be a part of the scene. She never railroaded her character into being the one who solves the problem, and never used scenes she ran involving her own character as vehicles for driving her character's agenda. She shared the scene and seemed very comfortable letting the room of players be the deciding factor.

Personally? If I have a character in the scene, I tend to put them in the background or not in the scene at all, probably because the temptation to make them important is real and I just prefer to avoid it as a means to mitigate the risks. That was my preferred method on Mutant Genesis.

So in that? It's good to write a story and have an idea how you would like it to end. You can plot out things ahead of time. Faraday isn't wrong at all.

My preferred way of inserting railroaded content, if needed, is to treat it like a cutscene. I tend to use a lot of movie and tv methods, because Stephen King said: Good writers borrow, great writers STEAL.

So, say I want to implement a bad guy blowing up a building as a plot element. I could create a story where the characters have a chance to stop it from happening, but if I as a GM need that building to blow up due to future plot elements for the group, I don't put the PCs in a position where they can stop it. The PCs will always want to succeed, so if I send them through hours of RP to keep the building from blowing up and then mandate that they failed, they'll think I'm a motherfucker.

So? STEAL. In this case? Batman: The Dark Knight.

Joker put 2 bombs, one on Harvey Dent and the other on Rachel. Batman thought he was saving one, but he saved the wrong one. Right?

So I'll have the characters storm the building and fight their way down to the hostages and what they suspect is 2 tons of explosives that they have to disarm. I'll have them fight down to the mini-boss, perhaps beat the mini-boss, rescue the hostages and find...no bomb. Instead they might find a TV connected to a camera feed that shows the ACTUAL target. They won! They beat a bad guy, saved hostages, and then go "ohhhhh shiiii-" as...

...the other building blows up.

Now the bad guy is the motherfucker and I get to unveil that later plot point without railroading, and have just made my players really hungry for finding that sonofabitch. Like Pro wrestling...I would have just made the players really invested in Macho Man beating the Undertaker at Wrestlemania. They didn't fail and I didn't railroad; I just gave them more plot for future gaming, and players mostly want to be invested in the story. So, in a weirdly sociopathic way, through the lens of the bad guy, I would have done just that.

I cannot understate the importance of great villains.

Lots of good advice here. Here's another piece:

CHECK OUT OTHER GMs

Nothing is stopping you from asking another GM if you can tag along and help run parts of a scene for them, especially if they're a GM who does things that you admire. Find what seems fun, what would excite you as a player, and adapt these methods into what will be your comfort zone as a GM.

There are a lot of YouTube channels that show roleplaying sessions (Critical Roll, HarmonQuest, Acquisitions Inc, Geek and Sundry), podcasts (Role-Playing Public Radio, Fandible Actual Play), and websites/forums loaded with advice and examples of fun games and good GMing.

I personally recommend RPPR actual play podcast, Fandible actual play podcast, and Critical Roll/Geek and Sundry.

Oh and look, I've gone through the trouble of hunting down a web series of GM tips from Matt Mercer.

Matt Mercer GM Tips

@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.

@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.

I've done a shiiiitload of GMing, online and in RL, and here are the things I tell anybody who asks about GMing.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

When your office announces that they'll be having a Mardi Gras party at work that includes tossing beads from the 2nd floor down to people in the lobby...

Corporate train wreck waiting to happen.

Will I participate? FUCK NO
Will I witness? YEP.

@surreality oh. my. Gods.

Goofus and Gallant? Is nothing sacred?

@lordbelh Season 3 of True Detective is back to the Season 1 feel. To say whether or not 3 ties to 1 in any way would be a spoiler (e.g. to say it does or doesn't would be a spoiler), but I'm loving it.

I describe True Detective like this:

• Season 1 was like Se7en
• Season 2 was like Heat with Al Pacino
• Season 3 is back to poor country (this time Arkansas, not Nebraska) disappearances and thick, soupy drama.

However, Rachel McAdams was amazing in Season 2.

@TNP God Damn it Fan Fiction, the words you put together:

Hitler had become a Super Saiyan

@TNP OMG I love you right now.

All this talk about Umbrella Academy, it might be worth reposting the link to (IMO) the greatest fanfic ever written: My Immortal, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU WILL READ TODAY, SECOND ONLY TO ANNE FRANK AND GOKU

Every year my town has a Matsuri festival that is always awesome in theory. Haiku contests, Japanese food, culture, taika drums, etc.

Every year a shitload of anime cosplayers and furries storm it. It's a train wreck. Apparently Japanese culture is a purple furry cosplaying Dragon Ball Z.

And I'm loathe to admit that I hatelove this.

Just want to say that these shows are my shows right now, and they're awesome:

• Brooklyn Nine-Nine
• Orville
• Deadly Class
• The Magicians
• True Detective

Watch this stuff.

My apartment complex changed ownership, and apparently the new ownership wants to make it very clear that these are their homes; we just borrow them.

Updated for this year:

• No-smoking policy within vicinity of apartments
• Mandatory 50 dollar/month charge for optional trash pickup at door, but if we leave the garbage can out after 2pm we get a $50 fine per instance
• They want a picture of my cat and immunization records

What's next? Dental records, quarterly walkthroughs, requirement that my car is constantly washed, and no filthy language? They've come into my apartment 8-10 times last year for mandatory changes to my utilities so that they get kickbacks from their insurance that didnt lower my rent any.

Fuck this neo-feudal landowner's follow my decrees or be homeless power trip shit.

Surly, you can't be serious.

@Sparks A lot of good feelings?

@Goldfish Seriously, the YouTube videos and Newtimes picture journals from the Gathering are like XMas to me, too.

Would I ever go? FUCK NO

Is it the craziest WTF grade people watching? YES.