Wait, no. I know why. I love being able to surprise, and be surprised in turn. Surprise players, that is.
What sphere someone played was never a surprise, not after a while. We'd pick up on it. But being able to pull a clutch super duper power out at the right moment that nobody knew I had? Perfect, every time.
Communication is key. Most of the time it seems that we plan an event (or whatever you're calling a scene/plot/shindig) first, and gather players to that.
I think we also need to try and focus on the opposite: Get a group of people, and then do a thing. Not to imply that this isn't already done, but it definitely needs to be more prominent in our organisational minds. You need to find out what kinds of stories the players are interested in, and how best to accommodate each of their specialnesses in order to best bring their character to the fore at various points.
With this in mind, railroading to such an annoying degree as in @faraday's quoted example won't need to happen, as you'll already know what the players want to do, and will have constructed your story (or whatever) accordingly. They don't want to fight bandits, but want to investigate x, y, and z? If they successfully evade the bandits, they get to investigate a crime scene, or whatever. If they don't, then they can connive a way out of combat.
Construct a story in a way that the players will want to follow your breadcrumbs, and give plenty of ways for them to gather those breadcrumbs, and you won't need to worry about railroading or fighting ogres or anything else.
@auspice
Almost night
A crimson horizon
Painting thousand lakes red
An additional issue comes from the tendency for discussion to happen on the Public channel, and that being counted as 'informing and including the players' in decisions like this.
@TiredEwok said in Legends of the Old Republic - In Progress Star Wars Game:
dropped her because a self-professed 'expert' on Mandalorians ruined her for me
To be fair, that's what people said about Karen Traviss...
@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.
@auspice During the week I get up at like four am, don't get home till eight pm on a good day. Like fuck do I want to cook.
@tempest They also have my occasional snarcasm in the discord! I take full responsibility.
I've played it quite a bit, but as others have said... definitely not for MU. At least not large-scale fast-paced MU. Could potentially work for a MU-based-online-tabletop thing, though.
@silverfox said in How do you like things GMed?:
What do you usually do to start a scene, or if you are building something larger than one scene, how do you begin that?
The first step, I would say, is to learn all you can about the characters and players you want to draw in. You're designing the scenario (be it one scene or a long-lingering plot) for both their fun and to tell your story. There's no use in running a plot full of investigation and intrigue for people that only like hitting things, for instance.
Once that is mostly done I usually start with thoughts for the plot or scene's end. Sort of.
What is the ultimate goal for the scene/plot/whatever? That goal might never be reached, and might change as things move on, but it helps to ground the middle bits and the beginning - as having far too much freedom can send my mind mind racing, so that I obsess over the middle but never get to the end - and planning (not setting down a definitive plan, just planning) helps to establish reasons for why the players and characters involved will want to keep telling this story with you when things go wrong.
@auspice I have one, but his cooking skills extend to pasta with premade sauce.
@warma-sheen Since when does what people vote actually matter?
@L-B-Heuschkel said in What do player-STs need?:
I need to not feel that anything I do may result in angry forum posts
Well. There's absolutely no way to ever guarantee that.
@Ghost I can also recommend Matt Colville's Running the Game series. It's rather longer than GM Tips, but good if you want detailed information on worldbuilding, dealing with adversaries, and so forth.
@aria Well. I'm in a Fallcost discord chat talking to someone I TS'd with ten years ago.
Sooo. It's possible.
@stabby S'long as it doesn't run into copyright infringement territory.
@Auspice Wolves and vamps duking it out and mortals stuck in the middle. Sometimes all three work together. Staff are mostly hands-off.
