WotC articles on GMing

[Virel]

Also IMO it's absolutely fine - more than fine - for bad dice rolls to occasionally ruin the uber-BBEG's moment of glory. Secretly changing those so he can be more cool is terrible DMing in my book. No NPC is entitled to a moment of glory; if the PCs meet Sauron and Sauron rolls 3 1s in a row, that is absolutely fine by me. Never cheat to help your darlings.

Very very true...have seen a DM protecting his bad guys detected by players almost destroy a game. That's something that really irritates me as a player when DM's do that.

Once we had a DM with three pet NPC bad guy spellcasters who were gloating over razing a village. They were watching the people burn to a crisp. We were all supposed to be in awe of their power when a PC fighter blindsided them by leaping into their mist with a move that shocked the DM and players alike. This was a 1st ed AD&D game and the fully weapons specialized fighter managed to inflict enough damge on all three to kill them even if their their hit points were perfect based on the level of spells they had cast etc. Suddenly, all three got a massive hit point boostes, and psionic's and extra magic items like gasous form potions they were allowed to drink while being hacked down that allowed them all to escape.

Stoneskin wasn't in use as it was a PHB, DMG, MM type of game. Players were irrate that they had been cheated but the DM insisted and stayed the course, forcing the plot line as he envisioned it which turned out to be from a book he'd read.

To this day that DM's credibility is always suspect with every player that was at the session mentioned above. The issue has been discussed with him, if the players get lucky they get lucky...it's what the other DM's allow when it happens. He's had PC's get lucky and wreck stuff for other DM's but he will not allow his NPC's to suffer that sort of fate. He's not as blantant as before just sneakier with doing that sort of thing.

 

[Barastrondo]

Actually, I think today's "The Villain's Fault" makes a pretty eloquent pitch for villains as considerably less than omniscient and untouchable until Just The Right Time. It's good advice; at worst, it makes "pet" villains a little more bearable as they clearly aren't meant to be more perfect than the PCs, and at best it makes the players want to see more of a villain.

The value of that "at best" can't be understated. This is what GMs who want to emulate the popularity of Darth Vader or the Joker or Thulsa Doom are looking for. Villains that players are happy to have multiple meetings with, not villains that make the players feel like failures if the villain isn't dead at their feet the first time they come into conflict. Yes, you still want to beat them bad at the end, but the real victory is in making even interactions where you don't kill the villain enjoyable. Railroading and fudging dice rolls may assist those interactions if you have a plan, but of themselves they aren't going to guarantee it, and they can easily make the problem worse.

 

[Viking Bastard]

There's a difference between fudging and blatant fudging.

 

[S'mon]

Actually, I think today's "The Villain's Fault" makes a pretty eloquent pitch for villains as considerably less than omniscient and untouchable until Just The Right Time.

Now that's a good advice article.

 

[technoextreme]

:mild rant: I think the module designers at WOTC really just don't get it, Regardless of edition.

They need to go back and look at classics like B4, X1, T1, I1, etc. Make up a damn good location/s, and weave the POTENTIAL for many different stories in that location. Instead there seems to be this unwritten rule that a story must be presented from beginning to end in a fair to enormous amount of detail and the players merely connect the dots going from place to place, all the while having the DM work overtime to make it SEEM like it's * not* a game of connect the dots. Frankly, the adventure paths from any company fall into this category.

Doesn't make any frakkin sense to my grognardy ways.

/mild rant

That is because you are describing a campaign setting and not an adventure path.

 

[Neonchameleon]

:mild rant: I think the module designers at WOTC really just don't get it, Regardless of edition.

They need to go back and look at classics like B4, X1, T1, I1, etc. Make up a damn good location/s, and weave the POTENTIAL for many different stories in that location. Instead there seems to be this unwritten rule that a story must be presented from beginning to end in a fair to enormous amount of detail and the players merely connect the dots going from place to place, all the while having the DM work overtime to make it SEEM like it's * not* a game of connect the dots. Frankly, the adventure paths from any company fall into this category.

Doesn't make any frakkin sense to my grognardy ways.

/mild rant

Congratulations. You've just described the difference between a sandbox and an adventure path. No Adventure Path is going to suit your tastes (from my experience, Kingmaker and the old WHFRP The Enemy Within Campaign will come closest). Because that's not what you are looking for - you're looking for settings and small open ended modules and then things spiralling off.

You've also been completely ignoring a fair amount of the WoTC output. HS1 The Slaying Stone has the potential for a number of different stories. With Monster Vault: Nentir Vale there's almot exactly what you want - a good location (the Nentir Vale/PoLand) with the potential for a hell of a lot of good stories. Drop HS1 into the Nentir Vale and you have almost exactly what I think you want.

 

[technoextreme]

Congratulations. You've just described the difference between a sandbox and an adventure path. No Adventure Path is going to suit your tastes (from my experience, Kingmaker and the old WHFRP The Enemy Within Campaign will come closest). Because that's not what you are looking for - you're looking for settings and small open ended modules and then things spiralling off.

Actually, I've seen adventures from WoTC that actually are decently written adventures that run off in multiple directions. I actually picked up the 3.5E Shadowdale book because its premise was one where you were trying to incite a riot to overthrow an occupation by doing activities to actually gain infamy in the city itself. It was open ended in the regard that what you did to actually gain favor was up to the party.

 

[CharlesRyan]

that other WoTC writer who spent years on articles advising DMs how to create a campaign, only to eventually reveal that his own campaign had folded after 3 apathetic sessions!

I'd be very curious to know who you're talking about. There's been a lot of staff turnover since my years there, and WotC employs some freelancers for its web content. But in my experience with the staff writers, they are virtually all the sorts of GMs I aspire to be, running highly imaginative games that keep their players talking between sessions and the rest of us wishing we could be involved. Most had very long-running campaigns, with lengthy waiting lists of friends who wanted to join if ever there was an opening.

Some of the games I played with those guys are among the best and most vivid gaming memories of my career--and some of my biggest gaming regrets are that, in my six years there, I never gamed under some of those GMs.

 

[S'mon]

I'd be very curious to know who you're talking about. There's been a lot of staff turnover since my years there, and WotC employs some freelancers for its web content. But in my experience with the staff writers, they are virtually all the sorts of GMs I aspire to be, running highly imaginative games that keep their players talking between sessions and the rest of us wishing we could be involved. Most had very long-running campaigns, with lengthy waiting lists of friends who wanted to join if ever there was an opening.

Some of the games I played with those guys are among the best and most vivid gaming memories of my career--and some of my biggest gaming regrets are that, in my six years there, I never gamed under some of those GMs.

It was the writer of the lengthy series of articles about a planned campaign - Greenbriar Chasm? Can't recall which of you it was! He eventually said the campaign had failed after 3 lunchtime sessions. He'd spent far too long in abstract planning when he should have been gaming! I've done that myself, but it was ironic that the 'how to' guide was really a 'how not to' guide, all along!

Edit: It was indeed James Wyatt - http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dudc/2010September

 

[MrMyth]

It was the writer of the lengthy series of articles about a planned campaign - Greenbriar Chasm? Can't recall which of you it was! He eventually said the campaign had failed after 3 lunchtime sessions. He'd spent far too long in abstract planning when he should have been gaming! I've done that myself, but it was ironic that the 'how to' guide was really a 'how not to' guide, all along!

Edit: It was indeed James Wyatt - Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (What More Can I Say?)

You may have misread, er, the entire explanation. It didn't fail after 3 sessions - they "played for a while, long enough for the characters to hit 3rd level"... which, given they had 1-2 hour lunchtime sessions, one would assume took more than 3 sessions alone.

Similarly, the failure was not in the advice or the planning or, from the sounds of it, anything other than scheduling alone. A one hour session at lunchtime was hard to make work, especially in a campaign more focused on character goals and background.

But... sure, feel free to mock him for the campaign falling apart and make assumptions about his GMing skills and players, that seems a much better attitude.