Calling all GM's

[Stone Angel]

So you've no group eh..And you want to DM.

Everyone has had a little burn out espicially at being a DM. One way I keep motivated and fresh is read the Story Hours here. Heck I ran an Epic oneshot. What inspired it? A name from Piratecats story hour. The whole thing was derived because of that name.

Also play a few video games, any Final Fantasy, Zelda, The Mark of Kri, Legend of the Dragoon.

Try playing a different type of roleplaying. Like at GenCon two of the best times that I had was playing a RAW d20 and playing X-Crawl. They were both d20 and D&D just not fantasy D&D.

Good Luck

The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[mps42]

I have no group to GM *or* play.


So very sad.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

From the brief bit I got it sounds like it was kind of creepy - golem at the city morgue? Kind of neat, really.

Have you considered having the new party pick up where the dead characters left off, weaving some kind of mystery into it?

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I have no group to GM *or* play.


So very sad.

Oh crap. I didn't see this part. This is kind of sad. Did they get totally alienated after the TPK?

 

[BSF]

Music is great! I love the symphony. Partly because it helps just get me creative.

I use a lot of things to get inspiration.

Story Hours always have great stuff to snarf. Go read some of those.
But my favorite is coming up with a "scene" and then working backwards to try to bring that about. Artwork, movies, raw imagination, all sorts of things that grab me and shout "I'm Cool". Whether it is something that the hero's attain, or something the bad guys want to attain, that is the goal I am working toward. Just don't get too devoted to the idea. The PCs will throw all sorts of wrenches into the equation. The point is you had the inspiration.

Dungeonmastercarl, you already have a great hook sitting in front of you on your .sig. Wrap a theme for a campaign around that song. Whether it is the PCs helping an NPC, or if you have to cajole, plead and beg with a player to go with that song as a focus, do it! Maybe there is a God that has been downgraded to mortality and the focus of the game is to re-elevate that God back to divinity? OK, that's a little epic in proportions.

Instead, how about a cleric or priest that has to deal with somebody else spreading vicious rumours? These rumors lead to the PC(s) being cast out of the church. The PC(s) now have to find out who is spreading the rumors, why, and then prove them to be wrong. They need/want to be brought back into the church, to be made holy again.

Lyrics have always been fun potential storyhooks. In fact, I am pretty sure there was a thread on here about it a while back. One of the ones I have been toying with lately is from Iron Maiden.

"I'm coming back, I will return,
I'll posess your body and I'll make you burn.

I have the fire, I have the force,
I have the power to make my evil takes it's course"

Or thereabouts. I keep thinking this would be a nice way to integrate an Effigy (From MMII) into a higher level game.

 

[The Grackle]

I find the best thing to do when suffering from DM burnout is to spend some time as a player. Every adventure makes me think of the ways I would have run the encounters or where I would take the plot if I was the DM. After awhile your writing finger will start to itch, and if it doesn't- then don't DM. Just have fun as a player.

 

[mps42]

Ideas

SInce I currently have no new ideas, I've decided to finish an adventure I started a while ago. I've got a location, I've got political, social and economic drivers figured out and a solid start on the first adventure. When I was fleshing this out, I came up with 2 ideas that I want to run past others.

Plot Points: These are given typically for creative play, ideas and such and build at a rate of 2 Plot Points to 1 regular experience point.
Example 1: A character surprises a baddie and dispathes him in "normal" combat. This would result in straight experience points.
Example 2: A character is surprised and does not have his "real" weapon available, he improvises one and proceeds to subdue or kill the baddie. This situation would result in not only experience points, but plot points as well for improvising the weapon and using it effectively.
Example 3: A group of adventurers is delving in an abandoned crypt and set off a pit trap. There is not enough of a ledge to walk acroos and they cannot find a way to close the trap or a way around it. One of the characters comes up with the idea of using the wooden sarcophogas lids as a makshift bridge and the group proceed to figure out a plausible way to make it workable. This would result in Plot points exclusivly, for the idea, figuring out a way to make it work and the teamwork needed to execute the idea.

Weapon fatigue: Since weapons of high, or even above-average quality, are rare and difficult to come by due to the limited resources available and the extended war that has just ended, I am giving EVERY metal weapon a quality rating and fatigue points. Each fatigue point equates to 10 points of damage dealt to an opponent, once the fatigue point is fully "gone" it can only be restored by someone with the "Craft - weapon" skill, such as a Blacksmith. An untrained person may attempt a repair, but will only be able to restore "partial" points. If a weapon drops to zero fatigue points, it will be unusable and will only be able to be repaired by a trained blacksmith.
It takes a pesron with the "Craft weapon" skill to identify weapon quality reliably.

Those are the ideas and the reasons behind them. If you were a player or GM, would this be a good thing, a bad thing, fun, frustrating or what?

 

[JoeGKushner]

The old blue DMR series for 2nd edition is a good help for things like this.

For 3rd ed, Kenzer has the Villain's Handbook, very useful. Johnn For has a book on NPC generation, also very cool.

No mention would be complete without Robin Law's Guide to Game Masterign. Excellent resource if not a tad small.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I'll second the endorsement for the Villain Design book. Very good. Just flipping through it may be enough to casually spark something.

 

[Piratecat]

I would find the weapon fatigue rules to be really frustrating and NotFun (tm). On the other hand, your plot point idea reminds me a lot of the highly inspiring game Feng Shui. Go read a few posts of this thread to see if it would be a good fit for you.

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3454

I find that I gain inspiration from envisioning highly cinematic scenes. For instance, I once got this image of the PCs climbing UP a massive waterfall - which led to a quest into an underwater dwarven city that had been sunk under ground water, and trying to escape away from the current.

If you want, it might be fun to brainstorm something similar in this thread. Folks, throw out some disperate plot elements - a place, some people or things or organizations - and let's see what we can do.