#gm advice

[lawfulgoodness]

#RPGs #NPCs #GM advice #also #show them a picture of the character #and just screencap somebody from LOTR or Star Wars

[dungeonmalcontent]

If you ever feel like maybe it's a little embarrassing to do voices in d&d, like maybe you won't do it good enough or people will think you're weird, you will never be more embarrassed than my college rhetoric TA. This girl was maybe 23, tops, pale white girl with red hair, stood out in the room like a sore thumb. She was smart, don't get me wrong. Had the course material memorized (probably better than the professor, honestly). But the first time we went through the "lineage" of Greek philosophers and got to Cicero she busts out with the best Cicero (TeS) impersonation I've ever heard in the middle of the class. Not much, just a "what?! Cicero?!" Like someone was accusing her.

No one expected it. The Prof looked bewildered. She mumbled her explanation about how she and her bf had been playing a lot of Skyrim lately.

Anyway. Tl;Dr. You will never be more embarrassed than Cicero, my rhetoric TA.

#d&d #dnd #dungeons and dragons #ttrpg #dm advice #gm advice #doing silly voices is a gift #treasure those silly voices that your players and gm do

[mindstormpress]

What can OVER THE GARDEN WALL teach us about creating adventures? A whole lot, it turns out! Let's break down the structure so we can use it for our own designs.

First off, a link to the post:

While the narrative of a television show doesn't translate perfectly to RPGs, each episode of OTGW could be easily reworked to a great adventure.

If we deconstruct them, we end up with four foundational pillars:

A familiar, recognizable situation.

A mystery, question, or strange unexplained circumstance.

A twist on expectations.

A non-reliance on violence.

A FAMILIAR, RECOGNIZABLE SITUATION. If we start with something the players can easily grasp, we can leverage all the baggage and expectations that comes with it to our advantage.

A MYSTERY, QUESTION, OR STRANGE UNEXPLAINED CIRCUMSTANCE. Players are drawn in when there's a known unknown that they can try and solve. 

A TWIST ON EXPECTATIONS. This is where you bring your own special sauce to the idea and make it truly yours. Twist the expectations when you're figuring out the answers to the mysteries.

A NON-RELIANCE ON VIOLENCE. Don't conceive of specific solutions to the adventure. But ESPECIALLY avoid violence being the only way to solve the scenario.

The advice here works for all types of adventure, not just for the setting of OTGW or D&D. The post goes into more detail and provides examples. A bonus section talks about how to bring the vibes of OTGW to your game. Check it out! 

#gming #over the garden wall #gm advice #rpg #ttrpg #indie ttrpg

[vixensdungeon]

As a GM you should generally ask for a roll in the following situations:

When the rules specifically ask for it

When the success/result of an action is in question

When dramatic tension demands it

When a very unlikely success or failure would be really, really funny

#ttrpg #gm advice

[stendra]

To all Game Masters with artist players

GMs may be unsure of why an artist is drawing during a game session. To avoid any misunderstandings, let me explain! What it really means: ♥ we're inspired and encaptured by the story (and we're in it!!) ♥ we're taming our scattering brains with a simple motor skill (drawing) to solely focus on the game What it does not mean: ⌧ the game is boring and we need a distraction I know that this might seem contradictory, but artist's brain focuses best when they're stimulated with their personal interests, and it's exactly what's happening in a ttrpg session! We love you. Thank you for allowing us to be in your game and develop one of those brainchilds we cherised and finally gave them a purpose. Eternally grateful, from the bottom of our hearts! ♥

#ttrpg #dnd #gm advice #ttrpg artists #pathfinder #shadowrun #starfinder #vampire #cyberpunk #warhammer #psa

[thehomelybrewster]

Stealth in TTRPGs - A Micro Essay

Who doesn't love having the option in games to sneak around, move around hostile forces undetected, and maybe get a potshot off against an unsuspecting foe for extra damage?

A lot of TTRPGs involve Stealth as a mechanic, and I just wanted to provide a small overview over how varying games do it and what that means for those games:

Dungeons & Dragons 5e - Varying Target Numbers

In 5e, you have a distinct Stealth skill, used for both hiding and sneaking around. Characters make their Stealth checks, add their relevant modifiers, and then the GM compares that to either an arbitrary target number/DC, often the Passive Perception of the most frequent type of enemy in a location. This means that player characters don't know if they succeeded or failed, while still performing their own dice roll, which creates a rather unique sense of dread about hopefully having rolled high enough.

Stealth checks are also often made as group checks, meaning at least half the party must succeed on a roll to be successful, and if you play with a paladin wearing plate, chances are high the group will fail.

Dungeons & Dragons B/X - GM-Facing Roll w. Set Target Numbers

In earlier D&D editions, such as the Basic/Expert sets, stealth was handled with a d100 roll, with the player(s) telling the GM their odds, and then the GM rolls. If the results are below their odds, they succeed, but if not, the GM will soon describe how they failed. Officially the GM is not supposed to tell the players if they succeeded or not until the consequences of that roll reveal themselves.

Also, at least in the 1983 B/X rules, there are no stealth rules for non-thief and non-halfling characters. However, since the base "move silently" chance for thieves is 20 percent, most GMs might allow characters to also attempt it but at a lower percentage, with no improvements as a character gains levels (unless these levels are in the thief class).

While mysterious, this method removes the dice roll from the player characters, and is thus not ideal to emulate.

Call of Cthulhu - Roll Under w. Binary Success

The Call of Cthulhu games, using a d100 system, use a very simple system for stealth: You roll a d100, compare that result to your Stealth skill (in e.g. the 6th edition a minimum of 10), and if the result is lower, you succeed. The GM doesn't need to make any rolls or improvise a target number, it's very straight-forward.

OSR games that use roll under-systems also use this sort of system (e.g. Knave & Cairn). It significantly reduces the burden on the GM, but it gives players a sense of certainty that may be detrimental for suspense.

Pathfinder 2e - GM-Facing Roll w. Flexible Target Numbers & Degrees of Success

Pathfinder 2e uses a rather interesting system for stealth. Players declare that they intend to sneak, then give the GM their bonus to Stealth checks. The GM then rolls the Stealth check for the player character against the Perception DCs of any creature the player intends to sneak past, then narrates the result.

The trademark Critical Success - Success - Failure - Critical Failure system still applies here, though Critical Successes have the same effect as regular successes, and only Critical Failures result in you getting spotted. A normal failure just results in the creatures noticing you without being able to pinpoint your location or being able to see you but guessing your current location.

This system is mechanically pretty dense and offers suspense, but it, like the system used in B/X, doesn't involve a player-facing roll, at least not rules-as-written. However the player can probably still make this roll if the GM allows it. As with all things Pathfinder, the rules are very clear, but complex.

Anyway, just a small thought I had that I wanted to share here.

#thehomelybrewster #rant tag #ttrpg design #dnd dm advice #gm advice #dnd 5e #dungeons and dragons #call of cthulhu #pathfinder 2e

[the-ampersand]

Thoughts on the balance of narrative and combat?

Heya! Thank you so much for asking!

One of the coolest things Blades in the Dark showed me is that combat is just a different kind of problem solving. The traditional distintion of combat as a separate minigame inside of the game is completely arbitrary and not always necessary. Combat can (and maybe even should!) be as narrative as any other scene in the game.

That being said, I can understand the need to balance scenes focused on character interactions in which players are not using the games mechanics and freely acting like their characters (typically called Free Play) and scenes in which players are using the game mechanics as a tool to develop the narrative (which I am going to call Mechanical Play). And where lies the balance between these?

I'd say it completely depends on the players.

I've played with people that only wanted Mechanical Play because they didn't feel confident on their interpretative skills or just wanted the narrative load being completely handled by the game itself. And that's fine! I've also played with people who felt that the mechanics of a game (and specially the combat mechanics) were not allowing them to tell the story they wanted and only really felt comfortable when Free Playing. And that's fine too!

That's why it is important to talk about expectations about the game at session 0. Every player is different and the fundamental thing during a game is that everyone is having fun. So that's why all the table needs to come together and find the balance they would all have the most fun with.

Maybe everyone is all-in with Free Play, focusing on player to player interaction and acting their characters. Maybe you need a mix of both. You can only know when you have talked and worked together to find a common ground.

#ttrpg #rpg #ttrpg theory #indie ttrpg #gm advice

[pocgamer]

Cyberpunk Plus: The Sub-Settings of Cyberpunk!

It’s a simple reality that some tabletop RPGs can become associated with a particular setting or part of a setting. In Shadowrun, it’s Seattle. For D&D, it’s Forgotten Realms and specifically the northwest bit of Faerûn. Cyberpunk also has this challenge, as it’s almost inextricably associated with Night City. But there’s a much wider world out there, and it’s time to look at it. Continue…

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#Cyberpunk #Cyberpunk 2020 #Cyberpunk 2077 #Edgerunners #GM Advice #ttrpg #world building

[setup-wizard]

hoho! art thou making battle maps? fantasy world cartography, perchance?

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frequent user of dungeon draft? they have +30 000 free objects available on their starter pack as well!

#websites #dnd #dm tools #tech tips #wizardblr #dnd maps #dnd resources #ttrpg #ttrpg community #pathfinder #worldbuilding #gm advice

[dice-wizard]

Hey traditional TTRPG game designers. Hey, you. Yeah you. Look at me.

Stop including mechanics that remove player engagement.

What do I mean by this? I mean shit like stunning effects that prevent a character from taking actions and therefore remove a player's ability to continue to participate, abilities that knock out a player character and therefore remove the player from participating in a fight, effects that instantly kill a character (therefore removing a player from participating), and literally any other effect you can think of that ends in the player no longer playing.

Trad designers, our artform is dependent on player participation. People enjoy maximalist, crunchy, tactical games because they're fun to engage with. What's the point of having all these rules if you're going to include things that stop your players from using them??

You're gonna say "oh, but only D&D does this" - no it fucking does not. These rules are everywhere. They're even in Blades in the Dark. Stop it.

Here are some cool alternatives. I'm trying to present these as open ended as possible:

Force a choice between two actions

You can't attack this enemy, but you can attack another, make a movement action, or any other non-attack action

Present a hard bargain

Attacking this enemy means you choose between taking a certain amount of damage or accepting emotional attachment to them, causing issues later.

Present high risk and high reward

Attacking this enemy means incurring extra damage against you if you hit, but if you succeed, you gain a stat boost for the rest of the fight.

Consider stakes other than character death

In many instances this will require rules reconfiguring, but that's a topic for another post. Besides that, remember that if someone's character gets instantly killed in the first round, that player must then sit on their hands for the rest of the session.

Yeah I know "let them play an NPC" is often a "solution" to this problem, but why do that when you could just implement a rule that lets other PCs get the downed character back to the fight - like in Borderlands or Left4Dead (or Gears of War or Vermintide, or...)

Consider how much more exciting that is, and how much energy won't be lost by someone having to literally sit out while all their friends have fun. Furthermore, players make much more interesting and risky decisions when they aren't at risk of losing their blorbo.

The point is to play. Nothing else. Stop shooting yourself in the foot with your own rules.

#ttrpg #dnd #d&d #tabletop #tabletop rpg #ttrpgs #ttrpg design #dm advice #gm advice #dungeon master #dungeons and dragons #Dungeons and dragons advice #Dungeon master advice #storytelling #game design #Traditional game design #Trad games #Trust me I'm a professional

[poisoned-salami]

So. I've heard, in my time, complaints that people in TTRPGs never have any downtime. (And this is particularly true in a game like Pathfinder 2e, which really wants you to have downtime.) How can the heroes be expected to spend a week doing no adventuring when the evil wizard is threatening to destroy the world in a month?

Well, GM, why is the wizard's plan going to come to fruition in a month? Why not in a year? It's OK (and, personally, desired) if your campaign's time span is long. You can stretch out the steps of your game into longer spans.

Instead of it taking three days of travel to reach the Dark Spire of Evilness, what if it took a month? A month of grueling overland travel through the frozen wastes while evading the Dark Lord's enforcers? That could be an entire adventure by itself.

Maybe the PCs have bad information to go off of, and they have to research where the Spire is in the first place. Maybe the local Oracle is willing to scry for it, if the PCs do her a favor. And even then, it might take two weeks before she can interpret her visions coherently.

Add enough time-consuming steps like that to the campaign, and that once generous-sounding one year deadline now looms with perhaps not enough time to get it done. And the PCs will still have had downtime.

#fantasy #TTRPG #Dark Spire of Evilness #d&d #Dnd #pathfinder #pathfinder 2e #gm advice

[brewerssupplies]

When you come up with a game you want to run and play, just clone yourself. Problem solved! That easy!

#ad speaks #ttrpg #game master #gm #gming #gm advice #shitpost

[dungeonmalcontent]

Rather than have your player's characters organically form a unified goal/group within the game of your adventure based TTRPG, or have the contrived and uninvesting "you've all been adventuring together for a couple years now", start them all in a specific place. Regardless of their background and backstory and everything else about their character, you can invent a reason for them each to be stuck there. And once they're all in the same place, curse them all.

Easy solution is put them all in a prison or dungeon where they can have been "captured" and their universal motivation is usually to escape. It helps to have them framed for a particularly heinous crime or be abducted by a particularly sinister individual, that way the more lawful characters aren't interested in waiting around for due process.

The "curs them" part is pretty easy. Just afflict them with something incredibly powerful, like a two-sided coin ability (like baal spawn or tadpole) or something they can overcome or delay by accomplishing specific tasks like a curse that kills them in 30 days unless they eat a diamond or just give them massive debt.

#d&d #dnd #dungeons and dragons #5e #ttrpg #fantasy #gm advice #dm advice

[farmergadda]

My technique for GMing any ttrpg is as follows: 

1. Consume as much source material as possible. Only vaguely remember pieces of it 2. Bullshit specifics if challenged. Vehemently defend whatever leaves your mouth 3. Lie awake at night grappling with the sense of impending doom

4. Accept praise and accolades for how creative and diverse your worldbuilding skills are

#ttrpg #gm advice #9.profit

[thelibraryofthacey]

On Knowledge Checks

In my experience as a player and a GM, I find that in the vast majority of cases, rolling a knowledge skill to know something is not particularly engaging gameplay.

While the knowledge skills reflect what you know, checks using those skills should be less about whether or not a hero knows something and more about applying that knowledge. A check should involve action, having an effect on the world or the characters in it. An Arcana check might be used to reactivate a damaged automaton, or a History check might be used to impress the Duke by citing his brother’s valorous deeds in a recent skirmish - regardless of whether either the brother or the battle existed before the player made the check!

If the narrative requires that the heroes know something, then the heroes should simply know it, or the PC it makes the most sense to know such a thing knows it. If they don’t need to know it, but it would add color to the world or help to characterize an NPC, then they should know it. If they specifically ask a question they would reasonably know the answer to, but it’s not important or interesting, you can make up an answer or simply tell them “you know the answer to that question.” The latter signals to the players that the information they seek is not important, allowing them to spend your collective time on more interesting things.

#gm advice #the librarian speaks

[castle-ravenloft]

that other post did some numbers, huh. well here is some advice for the GMs out there.

communicate obstacles and consequences.

a common trap i see lots of GMs fall into, and me more than most, is the idea that mystery and secrecy brings drama. oh you want to jump this chasm? well try and see what might happen nyehehehhe!

it’s terrible, and stop that. conflict resolution in most tabletop rpgs is a game of chance, usually in the form of a dice roll. a good player-facing conflict is a clear if -> then | else statement. drama comes from knowing what’s at stake and understanding the challenge, and overtly telling your player that jumping the chasm is DC 21 creates tension that is then resolved during the success/failure. if you don’t set the bar for the player, they have no reference point for how well they did, and thus the tension being resolved is much lower.

this includes enemy hit bonuses and AC. we have these abstract numbers to in a simple fashion model the natural ability, skill, and gear the creature possesses. the characters within the fiction can tell that another character is very skilled by the way they wield their rapier, but us telling the story can’t see that, so we say that it has +9 to hit.

further, by announcing the stakes of a conflict you also paint a narrative picture. if the chasm is over lava, you may state that failure will not necessarily mean death, but might cause impairment. it is also a good tool for table cohesiveness. if you have already communicated that failure in crossing the bottomless pit chasm will mean death, the player will have accepted those terms when their character falls to their death. it feels unfair - and is unfun - if you as a gm just sprung “well, you’re dead now” from what feels like nowhere.

to further illustrate what i mean, consider the game blackjack. the tension comes from knowing that you need to approach - but not exceed 21. each additional hit makes your heart beat just an increment faster... just one more hit and! shit. 22... imagine if that number was hidden, or random. you would have no clue what was going on, and would seemingly win or lose at the dealer’s whim. overtime you could of course intuit what the target number is, but suddenly the dealer announces that the target has changed. and what if you were just sat down at the table by a friend, and no one told you you were playing for money - suddenly the dealer just takes your cash from you. that’d fucking suck.

tl;dr - proclaim the DC, as well as the consequence of failure, before resolving a conflict to create tension and fun

#dnd #ttrpg #dm advice #gm advice