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<blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 7653241" data-attributes="member: 3192"><p>You want to keep it simple. It used to be that was all the players need to track on their sheets as well as knowing a handful of stats. Now there are dozens (hundreds?) of game powers that get the focus and make everything else seem like a bother instead of the point. </p><p></p><p>As a DM you would track that stuff even though the players do too. They don't have to. Not doing so is a game strategy for them, though a poor one if they have hopes of accomplishing many goals. (Imagine not bothering to know how many HP you have). As DM, it would be your list which needs to be as accurate as possible, not the players'. But they should tell you if they traded items with each other when your attention was elsewhere. </p><p></p><p>In the end, running the game shouldn't be that hard. It should start small and slowly and incrementally get bigger through each session. It may look like a lot of work after 100 sessions, but break up by 100 and running a whole campaign setting is vastly more feasible.</p><p></p><p>I would say improvising everything and tracking nothing is pretty much where the majority is headed now. Most people I talk to don't have any idea why people tracked things early in the game ...or why players actually <em>wanted</em> to do so too.</p><p></p><p>Yeah, and that's really why I prepare the maps and lists of items, NPCs, and everything as a scenario beforehand. I'd get completely lost tracking that stuff with nothing behind the screen. But I feel I'm enabling players to engage in game play, as how poker players play when calculating the odds, or Bridge players, or eurogame boardgamers, or Magic the Gathering fanatics, and so on. It's to enable strategy. The massively interconnected web of experiences is a happy accident.</p><p></p><p>Plus, there is nothing wrong with GM fiat. But you probably want a game where the rules specifically state that is what will go on. Or, you could simply tell the players as a kind of house rule that's what you are doing. I've had players totally stunned that I tracked their characters (and everything else) behind the screen. Without being able to see the maps or what I'm tracking exactly it's kind of mind blowing for them. ...but in a totally awesome way. Of course, I've seen people totally turned off by early D&D too saying "it's not a role playing game" and had nothing to do with acting. But I've had other players who went red hot like they'd never been in a game before where everything they did had traction under their feet.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="howandwhy99, post: 7653241, member: 3192"] You want to keep it simple. It used to be that was all the players need to track on their sheets as well as knowing a handful of stats. Now there are dozens (hundreds?) of game powers that get the focus and make everything else seem like a bother instead of the point. As a DM you would track that stuff even though the players do too. They don't have to. Not doing so is a game strategy for them, though a poor one if they have hopes of accomplishing many goals. (Imagine not bothering to know how many HP you have). As DM, it would be your list which needs to be as accurate as possible, not the players'. But they should tell you if they traded items with each other when your attention was elsewhere. In the end, running the game shouldn't be that hard. It should start small and slowly and incrementally get bigger through each session. It may look like a lot of work after 100 sessions, but break up by 100 and running a whole campaign setting is vastly more feasible. I would say improvising everything and tracking nothing is pretty much where the majority is headed now. Most people I talk to don't have any idea why people tracked things early in the game ...or why players actually [I]wanted[/I] to do so too. Yeah, and that's really why I prepare the maps and lists of items, NPCs, and everything as a scenario beforehand. I'd get completely lost tracking that stuff with nothing behind the screen. But I feel I'm enabling players to engage in game play, as how poker players play when calculating the odds, or Bridge players, or eurogame boardgamers, or Magic the Gathering fanatics, and so on. It's to enable strategy. The massively interconnected web of experiences is a happy accident. Plus, there is nothing wrong with GM fiat. But you probably want a game where the rules specifically state that is what will go on. Or, you could simply tell the players as a kind of house rule that's what you are doing. I've had players totally stunned that I tracked their characters (and everything else) behind the screen. Without being able to see the maps or what I'm tracking exactly it's kind of mind blowing for them. ...but in a totally awesome way. Of course, I've seen people totally turned off by early D&D too saying "it's not a role playing game" and had nothing to do with acting. But I've had other players who went red hot like they'd never been in a game before where everything they did had traction under their feet. [/QUOTE]
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