Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Check your fly before returing from the john.
What is the #1 most important thing to remember about DMing?
Oryan77
Adventurer
I usually leave mine open on purpose. I figure, if I can make it a fad, then it not only saves time from not needing to zip up, but I'll look cool in the process. Win/win if you ask me.
That's an incredibly good counter-point to my style of GM-ing. If the GM is not comfortable/capable/experienced - not sure which is the best word to use here - with running games in the style I preach, the campaign is probably going to fail. So yeah, I preach it, but I also acknowledge it's not for everyone.
buddhafrog
First Post
Don't meant to hijack this great thread, but would you mind giving an example of your "string of pearls" style - maybe a short sentence per pearl so I can see how you progress? And, you plan these before the campaign starts, right? Do you end up having to change these "pearls" b/c of the players actions - the whole point is to have your pearls in place regardless of the players, right? I think this is a solid idea and probably not too uncommon. I'm quite new to D&D, adventure paths and DM'ing (regardless of what my status says) and would really benefit seeing your "pearls" thought progression.
Please hopefully, thanks.
Oryan77
Adventurer
If I understand the string of pearls terminology correctly, then I do the same thing.
I prefer to be prepared. I can wing it when the players go off track, but overall, I'm of the opinion that a game is much more fun when the DM has some sort of plan just in case the players don't move things along themselves.
So to start, I come up with the big plot. Maybe the PCs need to find an artifact and deliver it to someone or have it destroyed. I write out some notes that I can refer to. The notes consist of environments I'd like the PCs to travel to and NPCs & monsters I'd like the PCs to encounter.
Then I figure out which published adventures I'd like to run and I figure out if I can work it into this big plot. I may adjust the adventure so it takes place in one of my noted environments, and I may change the encounters to ones that I also made note of. I may also need to adjust the difficulty level of the adventures and convert them to 3.5 if they are from a different edition.
Then I figure out the order that I would like to run these adventures. While deciding this, I come up with material that I can work into the adventure so the adventure will be linked to my big plot.
This isn't necessarily done all at once, I may start the game without really having the big plot really thought out or know what published adventures I will run later on. But I'll have enough to get the game going. Sometimes the players actions will give me an idea for where to steer the campaign.
As the players play through these adventures, I come up with side quests that I also run during and between the published adventures. The side quests are based off of the PCs actions and their histories. I usually handle the side quests the same way that I handle the published adventures that were inserted into the big plot. Except the side quests are really short published adventures (usually from Dungeon magazines) that I tweak & tailor to the PCs backgrounds/actions.
So I have all of these scenarios (the pearls) that for the most part, link to each other one after another. I still provide the players with hooks that allow them to choose which scenario they play out first so they feel like they are making their own choices, and I rearrange my adventures (pearls) accordingly. Everything is planned out, but the players interact with them their own way and it still feels (to them) that it is a sandbox game. Technically it's a railroad, but it's all about giving the illusion that it is a sandbox.
That is how I do it. In all honesty though, I'm considering doing things different from now on. As cool as I think my way of running adventures is, it's meant to be for a long running campaign. And as often as players keep leaving & joining the group, it just doesn't work well when that's the case. I think I may just focus on running published adventures as they are and not come up with a grand plotline with personalized side quests. I waste a lot of time coming up with side quests for players that end up leaving the game. And it's difficult for new players joining the game to feel invested in the big plot when they join an adventure that has already been running.
JoeGKushner
First Post
Understand your play preferences and your players and find a group that matches them. All of the talk in the world about how you enjoy roleplaying means squat if your group is into serious min-maxing and just wants on with the quest. Efforts to force them into roleplaying out encounters with the town guard, the maid at the inn, and the wandering vagrants looking for change will just piss them off and slow down their enjoyment of the game.
Know your enemy and know yourself. Two good taste that go great together.
Know your enemy and know yourself. Two good taste that go great together.
Macbeth
First Post
There's definitely a playstyle element, there's also a rules element. D&D, particularly recent editions, makes it a lot harder to just organically react to the players. I can't, off the top of my head, make an interesting level-appropriate encounter.
There are games, and methodologies, that make running without a planned scenario not only easy, but (in my experience) incredibly rewarding and fun. Mouse Guard and Apocalypse World most notably, but Blowback and some others too.
AW's method is particularly genius: you prep by creating and maintaining Fronts, where each Front describes some person, group of people, or location, that has a fundamental need that puts it into conflict with the PCs. You also plan, if the PCs don't interfere, what horrible things will happen as the front progresses. Now you've got all that adventure-type stuff, but without planning out scenes or encounters or rooms or anything. It's great.
In D&D a Front could totally be a horde of orcs who want their ancestral lands back. Assuming the rules make it easy enough to represent whatever orcs cross the player's paths, you've now got an adventure without extensive planning. You know what'll happen if the PCs don't act, but everyone gets to find out together what'll happen if they do act.
This may be a playstyle thing, but I care a lot more if the game is interesting than what level we play at, or how long it's already been going.
buddhafrog
First Post
Liar.
