The Dungeon Masters' Foundation

[Evilhalfling]

Lets see I have found that unless I know the players really well planning anything specific more than a week in advance is a waste of time. If I do I end up discarding or rewoeking at least a third of everything I design. This can even show up in published adventures.
I am playing at the moment and my group met without me over X-mas, and in the middle of a published modual decided to spend 53 days ! creating magic items. There is no way the DM could have anticipated this, and had to drastically rewrite some of the adventure.

As a DM I will try to conserve planning and reuse things that have been skipped. But I try not to get overly attached. Like many of the posters I plan out the movements of imporatant NPC s and change their reactions based on the PC's actions. But if the players don't get inolved or miss a hook (or spend 2 months in town) some plots will shift in time, and others will be completed without interferance.
As for dungeoncraft - I try create small pieces of the world, built mostly around where the PC's are going to be. With a few Large or important things that they could hear about, like metropolis sized cities or legendary sites. imagine living in russia in the middle ages, you would still get occasional news of London and Rome.

 

[Y.O.Morales]

ChaosEvoker

I mean that we can actually make a sub-forum within ENWorld's forums. Here, check these links:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=118

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2620&

 

[ChaosEvoker]

@Lady Firehawk
Good Luck! Don't forget to kill your friends when it's over!

@Y.O.
Hmm...very interesting. So we would have to pay for it though? If so, We woudl need to figure out a way to pool money to pay for it each year. ($40.00 a year is very cheap but I woudln't want someone paying for it all themselves unless they just had all kinds of $$$ [you know, doctors and lawyers and such]) But if this could work out that would be great!

New Member!
derbacher

Welcome to the DMF!

 

[Mordmorgan the Mad]

Well, my friend is gone and my free-time is running short with the new job next week but oh well.

The game went pretty well, although we didn't get as far as I would have liked. I think we're gonna continue the game over AIM, so hopefully we'll get something done weekly.

Re: Planning, I completely agree with Evilhalfling. Unless you know your players really really well, planning more than a week is useless.

Re: Mysteries, they're really hard in a high magic setting unless the PCs are low level or the bad guy(s) have access to divination-blocking magic. Personally, I find that mysteries are most effective in Ravenloft (or other low-magic settings) where the effectiveness of divinations (especially Detect Evil) are reduced. Nightcloak brought up using a string of clues. That's the best way to do it, especially if you're going for horror or high suspence. The more the PCs know, the less they're scared.

In my games, I like doing mysteries every once in a while. Red Herrings are always good and should be used often. (Face it, if every clue the PCs get means something, they start paying too much attention to the red herrings: it's that old "Hey! I found a rock!"). I like to be surprised by the ending of the mysteries too, so I rarely decide ahead of time how they'll end. I give the PCs 3-7 possible culprits and see who they think whodunnit. Usually I decide who's guilty (based on which choice would be the most dramatic) right before it becomes obvious.

Anyway, I hope that helps.

 

[deClench]

Originally posted by Nightcloak
What I can say is be prepared for the PCs to use divinations to get the info they need. Don't discourage that or thwart it (after all, they earned the cool abilities and should be able to use them), just be prepared for it. A good trick is for it to answer some questions but lead to more questions, after all, divinations are usually vague. Like the answer implies many directions the characters could take. The PCs will need to gather more clues to get the specific divination they need, but by then... well the divination got them to the right place but then the mystery is on top of them.

The great thing about half answers is that the PCs will use their imaginations to fill in the rest (and that can be great in a horror based game).

Divination has indeed been a bane in the past. Luckily, starting a low level, I would be able to cut my teeth on the new campaign before they would be able to go nuts with the ol' divining rod o' magic.

Maybe for every mystery created, I can muster up an arcane and obtuse phrase to go with it. "Blue elf is about to die." I think your idea of half-truths will work well as long as I'm ready for them.

Or I could be a jerk... "I have no idea why none of your Divination, and only Divination, spells aren't working."

Maybe I'll just ban Diviners. "Ever since the emergence of Diviner-bane weapons..."

We'll just have to burn that bridge when we come to it.

 

[Mordmorgan the Mad]

Since most divinations reveal only cryptic answers, just give each clue you create a cryptic equivalent.

 

[deClench]

Originally posted by BardStephenFox
Tell you what, if you are interested in building story arcs, give the thread a quick read. If it is something people have interest in, let me know and I might put together a more coherent thoughts package on designing around story arcs.

I read that thread and found it very interesting and informative. It's something I would certainly be interested in reading more of. A kind of blow-by-blow DM design diary. You talked about how you developed your storyarc(s) and maintained the motivation of the BBEG(s) and then dealt with the inevitable PC-monkeywrench(es). These are the types of insights you can only achieve through real DM experience (20000 xp to be exact). That would be a great teaching tool!

 

[Blade of Desecration]

Alright, this is gonna' sound really, really dumb, but I can't seem to find any of the smilies except for the basic five. How do you find the other ones? *feeling really stupid right now...*

Greetings, durbacher!

 

[Nightcloak]

Alright, this is gonna' sound really, really dumb, but I can't seem to find any of the smilies except for the basic five. How do you find the other ones? *feeling really stupid right now...*

Greetings, durbacher!

They should be (all 15) to the right when you type in a reply.

 

[Blade of Desecration]

They should be (all 15) to the right when you type in a reply.

I've only got five of 'em.