DM Dilemma - I Need Help, ENWorld! - *UPDATED* - Putting YOUR ideas to work!

[Barastrondo]

Please understand, this was all in good fun, and my players knew that. They laughed it up and all was well. I eventually just retconned it into existence anyways. Another faux pas on my part, but hey, it was STILL fun. This is NOT my normal behavior, and they know that.

Cool, good to hear it. Instinct drove me to post just in case.

 

[Gloomshroud]

Hmmm, all too often the starting point is a trip to a fast food restaurant.

Sometime during the meal I will have an idea, so I take the tray liner and turn it upside down. Then I pull out a pencil and either jot down the first notes, or a quick map.

I still have a stupidly large number of those tray liners.

If the placemat still makes sense a few hours later then I do a flowchart, or I pull out the Campaign Planners from Ronin Arts. If you have difficulty organizing things then this series might make a good starting point. Campaign Planner I, Campaign Planner II, Campaign Planner III. There is also a Campaign Planner Deluxe, but the individual sets are better - they have fillable forms, and can be filled out on a computer and printed out.

I am not exactly unbiased in my opinion of these sheets - my name is hidden somewhere in the credits and acknowledgments on two of them. They help a great deal in taming the pile of scraps and tray liners that I would otherwise produce. Phil Reed did a very nice job with these. There are a few similar sets by other companies, including one specific to Pathfinder.

You may want to dig around and see if you can find the very, very nice Storyteller's Notebook that used to be available free on RPGSheets.com It includes some sheets that are designed for creating flowcharts for adventures and campaigns. Unfortunately, a few years back RPG Sheets started, umm, sucking. They got rid of a whole bunch of sheets, some of which were better than much of what they kept. The Storyteller's Notebook was among them.

Another sheet that is useful for quick and simple flowcharts is the Chase sheet from the very, very old Dungeon Master's Design Kit from TSR. I want to say that it dates back to 1988 or so. The Chase sheet is also amazingly useful for designing, umm, chases. Essentially a series of circles with lines for labels and boxes around each circle that can be used for containing drawn arrows connecting the circles. Twenty years later I still use that sheet. (And another reason to be annoyed with the lack of legal TSR PDFs. I am so glad that I bought mine when you could still get them from Drivethru.)

The Auld Grump

Thank you for your feedback, it's much appreciated! And yes, I actually already possess two copies each of those wonderful, wonderful little books. And I have them both fullllllll of info from both the campaigns I am currently running. In fact, twas from THAT information that my Obsidian Portal site exists! I'm a huge fan. There's NOTHING those 3 don't cover.

 

[Hussar]

You also might want to check out Storybook It's a nifty little program that can really help organizing things. It's meant for novel writing, but, it applies here too.

 

[Gloomshroud]

Here's a status update:

I ran a demo/playtest game with just my girlfriend tonight. She's overly critical, so I figured it'd be a good chance to see where my theory has come along. She went so far to comment that my style was getting crappy, and I needed to step up my game - part of the impetus of the original post, truth be told.

I planned for a two hour session, which is EXACTLY what happened. That's a first. I used a LOT of the ideas presented here (plot, structure, railroad/sandbox, mind maps, etc) to make the adventure (which was a forray into political intrigue, torture, and trial by jury, in addition to heady combat, to boot!). I used the structure put forth by those here, and used more ideas here to generate plot and ideas for baddies, goodies and everything in between.

Long story short: My girlfriend said, and I quote:

"Best damn game you ever ran. What'd you do, take DM steroids?"

I just laughed, winked, and said "If I told you the secrets of the Ultra Secret DM Cabal of Doom, I'd have to kill you and bind your soul into my DMG."

So, this venture was a SMASHING success, ladies and gents. I am deeply obliged for your assistance, ideas, input, feedback and criticisms. They ALL paid off, and I gleaned SO MUCH information, and it was a BLAST. Let's keep this thing rolling. No telling what else we can do.

PS: If you're interested in the details of the game, I'll gladly share. I ran her through an adventure set in my own homebrew world. Just didn't want to make a long post for nothing.

You also might want to check out Storybook It's a nifty little program that can really help organizing things. It's meant for novel writing, but, it applies here too.

Well, I've discovered a thing or two in the past week and a half. One of these things is that if I am given electronic media outside of a simple word processor, I get all caught up on the program itself, and lose all focus and never get anything done. So, I shy away from those. It looks AWESOME, but I dare not dig in. Masterplan caused me to lose a month of my life just playing with it, never really using it.

I'll take pen, paper, random tables on paper, and Word. lol! It's old fashioned, but it does the trick.

 

[LostSoul]

Blah.

Players want to make certain choices. What choices they care about depends on the type of player. The game they are playing informs those choices. (Look at the differences between Pendragon, D&D, and Call of Cthulhu.)

If you take away choices players want to make, that's bad. If you don't, that's okay.

You don't need to railroad to have a story; you need to railroad in order to tell your story to the players. If the players don't care about creating the story that comes from play, all's good. If they do, it's not good. There are lots of way to have a compelling story and allowing players to create it.

 

[WizarDru]

Long story short: My girlfriend said, and I quote: I just laughed, winked, and said "If I told you the secrets of the Ultra Secret DM Cabal of Doom, I'd have to kill you and bind your soul into my DMG."

So, this venture was a SMASHING success, ladies and gents. I am deeply obliged for your assistance, ideas, input, feedback and criticisms. They ALL paid off, and I gleaned SO MUCH information, and it was a BLAST. Let's keep this thing rolling. No telling what else we can do.

Glad to hear it! And for reference, the cabal is known as the Rat Bastards Dungeon Masters Club. Not that you heard it from me.

 

[Rel]

Glad to hear it! And for reference, the cabal is known as the Rat Bastards Dungeon Masters Club. Not that you heard it from me.

HEY! What is the FIRST RULE of the RBDM Club?

 

[Gloomshroud]

First Rule: There is no RBDMC.
Second Rule: Violation of the first rule results in a grisly, gory, gruesome death by grue.

Blah.

Players want to make certain choices. What choices they care about depends on the type of player. The game they are playing informs those choices. (Look at the differences between Pendragon, D&D, and Call of Cthulhu.)

If you take away choices players want to make, that's bad. If you don't, that's okay.

You don't need to railroad to have a story; you need to railroad in order to tell your story to the players. If the players don't care about creating the story that comes from play, all's good. If they do, it's not good. There are lots of way to have a compelling story and allowing players to create it.

A good point. That is one of the take-aways I got from this. The trick is to allow for some structure while not beating the players over the head with it. If that's your style. I loved your sandbox ideas, and incorporated them into my random encounters, hexcrawling, and combats (great concept, btw). Granted, while I didn't use ALL of any one person's thoughts, I did find an amalgamation that worked DRAMATICALLY well for me. I, quite frankly, was SHOCKED that it turned out so well.

 

[Storminator]

A good point. That is one of the take-aways I got from this. The trick is to allow for some structure while not beating the players over the head with it.

I haven't seen PirateCat chime in here, so I'll repeat one of his campaign structure ideas - narrow/wide/narrow.

He gives the campaign a kick start, then lets the players choose from a wide range of possible adventures, then based on their choices/successes/failures narrows the focus again. Keep repeating that structure over and over until the end of the campaign.

PS

 

[Gloomshroud]

I haven't seen PirateCat chime in here, so I'll repeat one of his campaign structure ideas - narrow/wide/narrow.

He gives the campaign a kick start, then lets the players choose from a wide range of possible adventures, then based on their choices/successes/failures narrows the focus again. Keep repeating that structure over and over until the end of the campaign.

PS

Oooohh, I like that. Any chance I could get some links or something. Just a bit more in depth info?