General Chit Chat

This will be for general discussions about content threads. I will be locking the instructional threads and create additional discussion threads as needed or wanted. To get things started though say hi ;)

Hi, I have been playing rpg for.... about 25 years and done my share of GM'ing.

Great to hear I hope what I share will still be of use you to you. I will be discussing general Story Telling stuff as well as getting into specific game mechanics for some of the rule sets per the requests. But much of good Story Telling is fairly generic but I fine that many Storytellers (GMs) are not aware of them and others are.

Perhaps one of my biggest guide posts to Storytelling is that the Guidelines are not Rules -- they are to help Guide the Story not dictate it and even the designers of most games begin with that caveat and yet many Storytellers miss this or are not comfortable with stepping out and the game sometimes suffers because of it.

if nothing else, we might spark some interesting discussions

I hope so -- again I will be adding a few forums for specific topics Storytelling is going to be one of them start by trying to post a few Guidelines for StoryTelling that I learned myself from some other pretty good storytellers

Hihi. Well I'm torn on a couple games ideas I want to run. One is a Savage world post apocalypse. I'm also thinking of do legend of the five rings and star trek gamee.

All fairly good games to run but do not get to hung up in the mechanics nor dive to deeply into the story you want to run both of these are just going to ultimately frustrate the story element of the game.

I am going to try to start putting together some talking points and post them in a secondary thread so that we can discuss them here or within a separate discussion thread if we want to keep things separated. However, it is currently a work day and on these days my time is a bit more limited.

But in the vein of helping you -- what are your outlines for your 3 different games you want to run?

Oh and you might be surprised that I never actually have a game plan for my game until I get it started because one of the biggest elements to the game that many Storytellers seem to forget is that its the players that make the game because without them you have got nothing -- so you need to learn to strike a balance -- make it something fun to run but something that caters to the players as much as possible.

Hi all! I probably won't have much time to participate, but I am interested in trying out running my first non-published adventure so I thought this could be really useful :)

@CESN what do you mean by "non-published adventure" -- is something you designed or just a non-published module by someone else?

or did he beak into Wizards of the coast and steal the next adventure :D

well runekyndig that would be the same as -- just a non-published module by someone else -- would it not. Regardless of how it was acquired ;-)

Ah yes, I meant trying to put something together myself ;)

Awesome so do you want any input on that -- because you might -- like many do and I used to do -- is put too much into it

Also is this going to be a PbP or a FtF game?

it's long term plan to run here on GP once my current games end. I've tried GM some published materials to get some experience GMing first and give me time to think about my own game

Okay let me outline something for you that took me a while to learn -- it does not pay to create a bunch of stuff ahead of time -- all you need is just enough to handle the current situation and bit beyond...

For instance my current game started with this:
1) Tower in a swamp with undead around it that the PCs are asked to investigate by the Garrison they have volunteered to work with

I then said okay what do I need next
1) A map of the region would be helpful
2) A concept for the base of operations
3) The method to get the players there and working together more organically
2) A concept for their base of operations

That is all I had when I started the game -- I have added a bit to it since then but frankly only skeletal items nothing overly concrete as it is not needed -- and it all depends on the direction the PCs actually want to go -- or I feel seems to be the best direction based on player interaction

The problem with planning too much out ahead of time is if you need the players to go direction A to get to all that stuff you just spent hours and hours on and they choose direction B -- you either have to railroad them into direction A or create a direction B on the fly --- and then what happens if they never ever go direction A -- all those well spent hours have been wasted

I am very interested in this process. I have started my first two adventures as a new GM to get my feet wet and would love to run my own some day. I've already been falling into the not keeping it simple plan, when I think about the adventures I'd like to make and run. So following along....

So what I do is create a skeleton for direction A and direction B -- then I add a bit of flesh to them as the players begin to move in one or the other direction but I do not fully flesh either out until I feel a full committal has been made all I have to do is stay slightly ahead of the players in what I am doing -- this allows me to also change things based on what the players are doing -- sometimes the players spark a bit of inspiration that changes what I was initially going to do -- but since its not in concrete I can easily make the adjustment

Then all you have to do is make sure you record all that has occurred so if revisited you have all the details you need

Seems like a great plan to follow.

I have used it for a number of years and found it works extremely well even in FtF games it just works even better in PbP games because they tend to be slower -- for FtF games I always try to have enough flesh on all possible paths available to the players to get me through the session -- then between sessions I add more flesh where its needed for the next session

Also when I create adventures -- I tend to sprinkle in hooks to other adventure possibilities but because all I need is a skeletal idea of what that is -- these can be done fairly simply -- further I can apply time frames to these things such that they might be there and then disappear -- or be there and get worse -- or be there and just be there

The key is you want the players to feel that the world is NOT waiting on them and that if they wait to long on something it might go away or get a lot worse -- these elements which rely only on skeletal frameworks means a lot less effort and virtually no wasted effort because if the players never pursue one -- you take that skeleton and redress it a bit and then use it again else where

This method of adding additional adventure possibilities as the players go along has resulted in a semi-sandbox sort of game play -- this means while the players are actually making the choices as to what they want to do -- they never get into that horrible situation of -- well what do we do now -- which can happen in straight sand-box games

To me pure-railroads and pure-sand-boxes do not work well -- as both have issues that reduce the fun of a game. However if you can learn to mix the two you can get the best of both worlds -- players feel they are in control of themselves -- and they always have obvious paths that they can choose to take -- including ones that you as the GM may not have even considered

Sorry all who had requested to join -- it does not seem to notify you when that happens and no one mentioned it -- you are all in now.

Hey guys. One method that I learned that's pretty useful when making adventures is to make major events nodes instead of branches.

Read about it here. Person also has other good reads too.

This is intended for investigation adventures, but also works for other types of adventures as well.

Note -- I think the individual spoke against the Node approach actually and I concur -- a strictly linear approach is often bad as it removes the feeling of choice -- but then again a super-arc that lies over the player-arc outlining how things will progress with or without player influence is a good idea as it makes the world seem more alive and lets the players know it will not wait on them a rather important element that gets left out of many games

Yes in regards to the 3 clue rule they put forth I will often have even more than that -- some the players have to search for -- some that the players might just notice -- and some that walk up slap the players in the face and scream "I am a clue, wake up!"

Okay well maybe not quite that blatant but yeah at least one fairy obviously clue anyway

Further I had characters solve a mystery backwards before they found the last clues first and the first clues last -- it was a most perplexing game to say the least

@saevikas, good links! Thanks for sharing.

so ive been rewatching and will eventually re read the redwall series by Brian Jacques.

ive come up with my own original character a giant adder (snake) who is the older brother of asmodeus. im thinking his name is Shukhass posionteeth the sage of shadow thought? opinons? im thinking he come around when cluny the villain of the first book is lay siege to redwall and after Matthias the main hero has killed asmodeus. hope to hear feed back on this idea or questions

So is this to be a villain in a game or something you plan to play?

this more a fanfiction im working on. not sure if he is a villain or anything like that.

Okay so you are writing a story not running a game?

Jack are you in the Writer's Workshop? Your questions probably fit better there than here.