This blog is mainly meant for DMs, hopefully providing tips and tricks to help running a campaign and handling problems as well as providing plot ideas.
I am playing a heavily house ruled 3E campaign, but the entries should be applicable to other systems as well.
I am playing a heavily house ruled 3E campaign, but the entries should be applicable to other systems as well.
Don't overlook the "cheap and easy" solution
Posted 14th October 2008 at 11:42 AM by Fenes
For every problem a DM has, there is the perfect solution - elegant, intuitive, adding to the game experience, and allowing the players as much freedom of choice as possible. However, finding that perfect solution, especially on the spot, can be hard, and produce a lot of imperfect solutions instead, that do create more problems than they solve - especially if the DM is going for the perfect, elegant solution, and player/PC reactions start to escalate.
In such situations, DMing can be enhanced a lot by a not spurning the quick and easy solutions. That doesn't mean that one should always pick the easy route, but in a pinch, it's often better not to complicate things needlessly, as long as all are on the same page, and want the game to go on.
If your party suffered a PC death, and you need to integrate the new PC, you don't need to spend too much time on this - or have the player wait "until an opportunity presents itself" - unless you wish it. Even in the middle of a dungeon a PC can appear out of thin air - literally, in some cases, if there are telport traps. Could be captured, could be fighting the same foes, or carrying a message to the party. And a quick "you know him from before", coupled with a few retroactively inserted reasons to trust the new PC ("Parents worked together" "grew up together" "guarded a caravan together" "Same temple/school/academy class" goes a long way to keep the game going, and avoid stalls and pitfalls, such as the new PC getting told to get lost after a few gaffes. (Provided, of course, that your players do not like to play through such "pitfalls".)
Sometimes a group has trouble finding a reason to "accept a quest" even if all the players want to follow up on such an adventure hook because it's not really in character for the PCs. That can lead to frustration, and could be easily solved by the quick if heavy-handed approach "You've got a dream, which you can recognise as a divine vision, that ..." or "the poor farmer sees you're not going to risk your life for goodness alone, and digs out his uncles old ... to offer as a reward. He'd have really liked to keep it, but survival comes first." or "the poor farmer promises to pay you a reward, stating that he'll have his daughter accpet the marriage proposal from a rich neighbor".
If you need a PC raised, and no cleric of high enough level is available, you can come up with lots of plots and side quests, and have the player of the currently dead PC play an NPC, or another PC, etc. etc. Very fun if it works. But at times, it'd be better for everyone's enjoyment of the game if the party just stumbled upon a hermit cleric, or travelling bishop, or a similar deus ex machina, and the player can return to play his favorite PC without the party having to travel back to the capital (leaving the threat unsolved) or continuing without the dead PC (because that's what they would do to save the country/world).
This goes beyond IC solutions as well. If you're not ready yet for the party's arrival in a town, it can be better to simply tell the players so, and have them follow a detour willingly, instead of trying to trick them into a side quest when they really want to get to that town.
So, don't be afraid to use such "cheap" solutions - if they work, and keep your game fun for everyone involved, then they are a good choice.
In such situations, DMing can be enhanced a lot by a not spurning the quick and easy solutions. That doesn't mean that one should always pick the easy route, but in a pinch, it's often better not to complicate things needlessly, as long as all are on the same page, and want the game to go on.
If your party suffered a PC death, and you need to integrate the new PC, you don't need to spend too much time on this - or have the player wait "until an opportunity presents itself" - unless you wish it. Even in the middle of a dungeon a PC can appear out of thin air - literally, in some cases, if there are telport traps. Could be captured, could be fighting the same foes, or carrying a message to the party. And a quick "you know him from before", coupled with a few retroactively inserted reasons to trust the new PC ("Parents worked together" "grew up together" "guarded a caravan together" "Same temple/school/academy class" goes a long way to keep the game going, and avoid stalls and pitfalls, such as the new PC getting told to get lost after a few gaffes. (Provided, of course, that your players do not like to play through such "pitfalls".)
Sometimes a group has trouble finding a reason to "accept a quest" even if all the players want to follow up on such an adventure hook because it's not really in character for the PCs. That can lead to frustration, and could be easily solved by the quick if heavy-handed approach "You've got a dream, which you can recognise as a divine vision, that ..." or "the poor farmer sees you're not going to risk your life for goodness alone, and digs out his uncles old ... to offer as a reward. He'd have really liked to keep it, but survival comes first." or "the poor farmer promises to pay you a reward, stating that he'll have his daughter accpet the marriage proposal from a rich neighbor".
If you need a PC raised, and no cleric of high enough level is available, you can come up with lots of plots and side quests, and have the player of the currently dead PC play an NPC, or another PC, etc. etc. Very fun if it works. But at times, it'd be better for everyone's enjoyment of the game if the party just stumbled upon a hermit cleric, or travelling bishop, or a similar deus ex machina, and the player can return to play his favorite PC without the party having to travel back to the capital (leaving the threat unsolved) or continuing without the dead PC (because that's what they would do to save the country/world).
This goes beyond IC solutions as well. If you're not ready yet for the party's arrival in a town, it can be better to simply tell the players so, and have them follow a detour willingly, instead of trying to trick them into a side quest when they really want to get to that town.
So, don't be afraid to use such "cheap" solutions - if they work, and keep your game fun for everyone involved, then they are a good choice.
Total Comments 2
Comments
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Absolutely. The most important goal of GMing is to keep the game fun and interesting. Sometimes that means an obvious, "heavy-handed" choice that keeps the game moving.Posted 15th October 2008 at 03:39 PM by BrentNewhall
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My first campaign was derailed in the first session because my players stumbled upon an outside-the-box solution and I felt like I needed to prevent them from "cheating." Since then, I've embraced that form of thinking as one of the highlights of the game.
I took a page from improv players like "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" and adopted their "Yes, And" technique. I take the energy I would have expended on explaining why something cannot work, and instead making it work. Granted, it may not work the way the player nor the character intended, but the players walk away from the table confident that their actions have a real impact in the world (as opposed to merely walking through my script).Posted 15th October 2008 at 07:31 PM by RukiTanuki
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