Mastodawn

🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

Hey #Tabletop #RPG folx! I have an #AskFedi for ya!

GMs: What is your top tip for running good games (that *hasn't* been mentioned yet)?

Players: What's something your GM has done to make the game awesome that you wish more GMs would do (that *hasn't* been mentioned yet)?

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I'll start (with one of each).

As a GM, I use the 3-act play / 5-room dungeon style as often as possible. It keeps things tight, makes for satisfying progression, and can be scaled to work for almost anything.

As a player, I was shocked the first time a GM of mine rolled some dice and said "you hit, and it takes Blorp out of the fight, what does that look like?". Every GM I'd had previously would've just said "you kill Blorp". That one question has made playing characters *feel* so much more epic.

Estarriol, Terrorist Dragon Dec 23

as a GN, let the players go off the rails and make their own plans and stuff.

Tobias 🌒🌕🌘Dec 23

@alice Get appropriately enthused on die rolls in favour of the players. It lets the players know the DM is not out to kill them. It keeps things friendly, and makes the DM part of the story, not just a voice for NPC's and villains.

@catdad @alice I’ve been very consciously doing this lately, especially after a couple very tough fights where it started to feel like DM vs players. I want them to know I’m here for their wins.

Michael Gemar Dec 23

@alice Make failing die rolls as interesting as succeeding.

If some information or task is important to advancing the story, don’t let players miss it by failing a die roll. Let them succeed but with some consequence — “You are able to pick the lock, but your tools make enough noise that you think the guards have been alerted.” (This is advice borrowed from game designer Robin D. Laws.)

PalmAndNeedle Dec 23

@alice "How do you want to do this?" is an iconic phrase for a reason.

Jennifer 88 - ME🏳️‍⚧️Dec 23

@alice As a GM, I always follow the flow given by my players' decisions, and I build my canvas around it. Like, I bring the world, the narrative and the goals, but otherwise, it's their journey, and we don't have to be linear.

Also, I never limit the options they can find in the rules to make their characters, if one comes with a cool concept, I'm making the world, it's up to me to make sure it finds its place.

@alice I missed the previous thread so don’t know what’s been mentioned, but I have a note now at the top of each session’s prep page remind me to ask each player what their character is doing during rests/downtime. It has given them space to relax and grow their character even if they are up against a tight and stressful timeline in the world.

Pseudo Nym Dec 23

As a GM, if you have time, props are awesome. Even simple ones. Write out the note they find. If you don't have parchment, drip a bit of water on paper and dry it out in an oven. Gets a nice crinkly texture.

Need a wax seal? Cut a potato in half, carve a design, use regular melted candle wax, and press the potato to it.

The look on the players faces when you bring out even simple physical props is magic.

Players: build a character around a flaw. Easy way to have built in goals.

Evelyn Estelle Dec 23

@pseudonym @alice As a parent, I regularly pick up baby/toddler toys and think: "Would be a cool alien artifact", or: "the 8-piece seal of the forbidden crypt".

Of course, as a parent I don't have much time to organize RPG sessions.

@dragonfi @pseudonym @alice

Haha, in one of my campaigns I had this ultra important artifact crafted by a society of wizards that I called the "Orrery of many paths" which could allegedly alter timelines.

It was this:

Evelyn Estelle Dec 24

@fennix @pseudonym @alice I think this is a perfect prop.

neocat_thumbsup

@fennix
Those are cool! Some of these wooden beads have just the right size so that when you give them a hard twist with your finger, the friction is enough together with the centrifugal force to let them climb up the rod until parts of the momentum is used up and they fall down again. You just need to figure out which ones have the right size and weight. That was the kind of fun my kids had with these... 😅
@dragonfi @pseudonym @alice

Luke Ebersole Dec 24

@pseudonym @alice

My current GM has hand written all the special item requests from a merchant on little stapled together pieces of paper as well as written up a physical IRL contract that the party signed to be sponsored by a local merchant. They are some small things that have been delightful.

Pseudo Nym Dec 24

@soleluke @alice

I had a weekly newspaper (anachronistic, didn't care) in the players home town. It was a one page write up between sessions.

It had coverage of the local groups exploits, plot hooks for future adventures, and just silly NPC stories.

It also let me keep an in-game calendar for prophesied foretold events, it celestial happenings.

I had figured out when the two moons would both be full or new (figured something cool should happen) and it could have been figured out.

StarSloth Dec 25

@pseudonym @soleluke @alice

Thanks to this I am now joining the campaign my partner runs, as a friendly undercover journalist interested in the group's adventures as a source of income. We've worked out how I can get paid by letter through an early instance of banks, which the rest of the group won't have heard about, so as far as they know I'll be visiting suspicious dark-clad men and just.. get money? I look forward to the inbetween writing! Will probably come and go with the group (spoons).

Wulfy—Speaker to the machines Dec 24

@pseudonym @alice

Second the props: As a GM, I once drew a map, including the burned edges and crumpled paper.
That alone was very well received...
...but when they flipped over the map, they saw scrawled notes by the previous map owner. Including inventory management and hastily scrawled last will and testament.

As a player, in a one shot competition DnD, my most inspired move ever was to avoid the party forced to engage city guards by tossing a bag of gold coins into the air at the market square...
"Think outside the square"
Another example of that was re-routing a small stream and redirecting it into the dungeon drowning everyone in it.
GM was not happy.

Sin Vega Dec 23

@alice first and only dm (I got SO lucky) would do a one shot now and then with our characters, with wildly different settings. A christmas adventure, a cowboy town, a "school of hard knockers" type comedy adventure (I dunno what series inspired that bit in the simpsons), dinosaurland, etc, etc.

all unconnected to the campaign, typically if someone was unavailable, or a special occasion.

And then when we got to the campaign finale, he had them all show up to fight the armies of hell with us

Sin Vega Dec 23

@alice basically everyone we'd ever helped (including several villains). It was so great, he's a champ

Quixoticgeek Dec 23

"Remember it's supposed to be fun" religiously obeying the stats in the rule book at the detriment of a fun game isn't a good idea. The rule book is a guide at best. TTRPGs are cooperative storytelling. It's not GM Vs the players. It's everyone working together to tell a story and have fun.

Russell Phillips Dec 23

@alice for GMs: be the characters' biggest fan.

Jenniferplusplus Dec 23

@alice Ask leading questions. Specifically, when presenting a scene, phrase it so that they players can just say yes as much as possible.

For example:

😒 ✋ "There's a door. What do you do?"
😏 👉 "There's a door. Do you open it?"

@jenniferplusplus @alice This may be just me, but I don't like closed/limited options or it's not like real life. What about if I want to examine the door, ignore it, if there's a key, can I lock it, etc. Is there anything written on the door? Life isn't a series of simple yes/no options and I quickly get bored with games/surveys that treat it like that. Sorry, not trying to be awkward and I understand how your suggested terminology may help things along, but personally it puts me off interacting with anything written like that.

Jenniferplusplus Dec 24

gloriouscow Dec 24

@Prichy @jenniferplusplus @alice

I didn't get the impression that was a limited option. "No, I'd like to inspect it first" would seem to be perfectly reasonable answer.

Alyssa Coghlan Dec 24

@Prichy @jenniferplusplus @alice If their players are particularly new (or prone to forgetting their freedom of choice), the GM may explicitly add "Or do you want to do something else?" as a reminder that the PCs don't *have* to do the obvious thing immediately (or at all). But yeah, none of these tips will overrule the general principle GMs tailoring their approach over time based on what the players in that particular game appreciate.

Alyssa Coghlan Dec 24

@Prichy @jenniferplusplus @alice If their players are particularly new (or prone to forgetting their freedom of choice), the GM may explicitly add "Or do you want to do something else?" as a reminder that the PCs don't *have* to do the obvious thing immediately (or at all). But yeah, none of these tips will overrule the general principle of GMs tailoring their approach over time based on what the players in that particular game appreciate.

gloriouscow Dec 24

@jenniferplusplus @alice

Then just occasionally get weird.

"There's a door. Do you lick it?"

mauvedeity Dec 24

@gloriouscow “Can I lick it?”
“Yes you can!”

gloriouscow Dec 24

@mauvedeity What do you roll to see how well you lick it?

mauvedeity Dec 24

@gloriouscow save vs. Dexterity, I should imagine. I am unsure of what happens if you roll a natural 20 though.

gloriouscow Dec 24

@mauvedeity an argument could also be made for either charisma (style) or constitution (splinters?)

mauvedeity Dec 24

@gloriouscow had just thought of the save vs Constitution as well! Perhaps if you make the save, the door unlocks.

Evelyn Estelle Dec 23

@alice I have many, but here's one:

If it makes sense in-universe (adventurer's guild, village square notice board, etc.) a job board is a fun and fast way to build a location while also foreshadowing and suppying possible options.

* Advising every traveller: The nearby mines are closed and off limits due to basilisk activity. Extremely dangerous.
* To celebrate a bountiful harvest, Mead in the tavern is 20% off.
* Billy, I know you stole my rake again, it is not funny, I have a job to do.

Cassandra is only carbon now Dec 23

@alice Keep a spare list of names behind the GM screen, so that you can seem *really prepared* even when players go in a wildly different direction than you'd planned for.

Toekneegee Dec 24

@xgranade
I had a list prepared based on ancestry, so they'd have appropriate names. If it was a potential quest giver, I had some of those prepared with quest hooks for the PCs.

I ran an open world for my players and I'd end up with one or two dungeons they could encounter based on the region they were in and a few side quests. If they didn't actually go through one of the dungeons, I'd just use it elsewhere and retheme the rooms/monsters.

There were very few main story dungeons for them to go through.

So, I guess my advice to GMs is this: don't let your prep go to waste, there's nothing forcing that NPC, dungeon or clue to be in one specific place, it can be where the players decide to go.
@alice

@alice the GM I've been playing with for years has us ask each other in-character questions before each session. That is, if A, B, and C are playing, then A asks B something, B asks C something, C asks A something.

And the questions can be anything!

"Where did you get your sword, and why is it special to you?"

"What's something you miss about home?"

"What is it about Earth that makes you not want to go there?"

"Who is someone you met in your travels that you still think about?"

"What is it about Earth that makes you not want to go there?"

<gestures at everything >

Quixoticgeek Dec 23

@alice for all players including the GM.

"You are not on critical role". do not compare your role-playing, voice acting skills, or game play in any way shape or form, with a bunch of voice actors doing it as a performance. All you'll do is remove joy from what should be a fun game. The GM is not Matt Mercer, and the players are (probably) not a group of professional voice actors, you're all just friends looking to have fun. Don't let comparison be the thief of joy.

Rotate between three kinds of encounters:
• an encounter they can solve with dice
• an encounter they can solve by interacting socially with an N.P.C. that is right in front of them
• an encounter they can solve easily if they just remember a specific piece of information you dropped for them during the immediately prior game session

Instead of doing voices, give each named N.P.C. a person you've known that will be how you're going to try to think and communicate.

@🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄) I only really GM PbtA games. Plan out your stories in terms of "this is what happens if the players do nothing, or fail". That way, there's always something exciting happening.

Doug Wade Dec 24

@alice as a gm, you have succeeded when people have spent quality time together. Das it. There is no other metric for success. Any insecurity you feel about your campaign plan, encounter design, improv, voice acting, planning, writing, anything, does not serve you at all if it impedes your ability to bring together people.

Nick Dumas Dec 24

@alice My big thing is never forgetting that your players are co-creators of the story. Working with them with that in mind produces richer stories and games with way less friction.

@alice As a GM, be the greatest fan of your players' characters. Test them, challenge them, drag them through mud, but cheer for them and try to give them plenty opportunities to shine.

edit: ah, it's been mentioned already, haven't noticed ^^'

Piper Thunstrom Dec 24

@alice my GM tip: Your fun matters, too. If your system or table is demanding in ways that are burning you out, consider making changes! D&D specifically is among the most demanding game systems for facilitators, but even it has low prep resources available.

Elle 💗Dec 24

@alice I've only DM'd one campaign, but the best thing I did differently than in the campaign I was a player was pre-making shops with inventory lists I could provide players.

Shop interactions were such a time sink with not very rewarding roleplaying. Getting that moving means more time spent on the fun parts.

@alice As a GM: add whimsy. I've added teleporting sheep, a goddess that protects bunnies (only), a little demon appears whenever a character swears in Abyssal, a bard in a tavern telling a tale which was one of their completed adventures.

Make sure to tag it as "Not Safe From Whimsy"

/j

draNgNon Dec 24

@alice when an ability check fails, the GM asks, what were you doing / focused on / distracted by to explain it?

That becomes canon, and might also enter the table session, or campaign later.

@draNgNon @alice
My recent post could be useful should you find yourself in this situation: https://myside-yourside.net/@StarkRG/115772491320068936

StarkRG (@[email protected])

How did you get up there? [ ] It was an accident [ ] I smelled chips [ ] There was a little man [ ] CHEEEEEESE

My Side, Your Side

@alice as a GM I try to always think about at least 2 or 3 ways the players can deal with the situation I'm putting them in. They often surprise me by coming up with something I didn't think of, but there has to be more than one way to succeed or move to the next stage of the story.

@alice let us resolve everything with goofy aah shit
im generally inexperienced
and the one campaign we had was very story light
so it was just us doing stupid stuff like i use move water to take this giant chunk of water out of a river and freeze it to smush some skeletons

Hot Cheeto 🧚‍♀️Dec 24

@alice I'm not a GM, but as a player, I have been overjoyed when a GM has said that if we aren't happy with our characters, we can change. Within a reasonable amount of times.

(I get extremely stressed when I feel trapped, and if I'm not having fun then I feel trapped.)

Also, I have a GM who likes to keep the campaigns shorter and has us level up a bit faster since he found that it was rare to experience high-level games.

Oh and I got asked how my GM could make the game more accessible for me, and made me promise that if I struggled to tell him so we could work the problem together.

I have 2 really good GMs. I am a lucky girl. 🤗

@alice GM headmates here: Ditch initiative. Run something sidebased, compress zhe combat time and let people all interact and not waste time on zheir phones waiting for zheir turn.

Player tip: Zhis is more group wide, but it was so much fun to explore more varied party dynamics zhan 'we're all in zhis togezher'. Give me intraparty drama, strife. Let unity be somezhing hardearned and bright.

As a GM, sometimes there's gold to be had in scene descriptions you didn't plan for. Improvising what the horses at a horse auction know (because the PCs were interrogating them) is one of the more memorable ones for me, and that was a direct result of the scene description presented to the PCs upon arriving in town.

As a player, make story choices that demand suboptimal gameplay. During one particular adventure, my Fighter essentially transitioned into being an Oath of Vengeance Paladin as a result of particular story elements. The GM supporting that move was great and luckily I was at a table that lacked min-maxers. Easily top 3 all time RP experience for me and that campaign lasted years.

Pseudo Nym Dec 24

Ahh, unexpected improv dialogue. Some of the best unplanned moments.

Gnome character casts "Speak with animals" to see if the cows in the field saw anything useful for their investigation.

My inspired, off-the-cuff first response "Holy shit! A talking gnome!"

Players cracked up.