Which are (some of) your favourites GM-tips/technique ? And how do you use-them in your games ?
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art.
All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your game
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art.
All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your game
Wow, you guys are actually giving really good and useful advice.
I was about to comment โWhen one of my players asks whether they can do something completely unreasonable I look at them, roll a D20 openly on the table and without checking the result, say โnoโโ
But now I just feel bad
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art.
All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your game
The players won't care about how pretty you make your maps. Make them functional and ugly, and you'll save up so much time for other prep.
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Wow, you guys are actually giving really good and useful advice.
I was about to comment โWhen one of my players asks whether they can do something completely unreasonable I look at them, roll a D20 openly on the table and without checking the result, say โnoโโ
But now I just feel bad
I was about to comment โWhen one of my players asks whether they can do something
completely unreasonable I look at them, roll a D20 openly on the table and without
checking the result, say โnoโโOh, GM Fiat... I always preferred the GM Camaro, but you do you...
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art.
All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your game
Let them look cool.
Too much time is spent working around the playersโ abilities to make a fight challenging. Some fights should look hard but have a player ability break them. Let them use the powers they earned.
This slightly ties to the idea that the game is not the players against the DM, it is the players against the world, while the DM narrates.
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art.
All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your game
For depth in world-building I use a rule I call "Y-cubed". (I got it from somewhere else but can't recall the source anymore.)
For every detail you make, you ask the question "Why" three times.
So a village the characters have reached stop all work every 77 days for a festival. Why? It celebrates an ascended local hero who saved the village from a magical blight. Why 77 days? It took 77 days for effort for the blight to be defeated. ... And so on.
This is a rapid way to both build depth in your setting quickly, as well as inspire possible mysteries and intrigue for investigation later.
A slight modification works also for giving NPCs depth.
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R rpg@ttrpg.network shared this topic
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Many of us, have read GM-sections in RPG, RPG blogs, forum discussions, and sometimes books about the storytelling art.
All of these contains tons of interesting tips/techniques (and some will contradict each other, you don't GM a gritty mega-dungeon and high-school drama game the same way), so I am curious which ones are your favourite and how do you use them in your game
Read George Polti's The 36 Dramatic Situations. It's a list of plot elements that have a snappy title, a list of participants in the plot element, a brief discussion of how it works, and then (unfortunately dated) references to dramas that used them.
Using this when building a world, or a campaign, or a local setting, lets you quickly set up a bunch of conflicts (ideally with interlaced participants so that single NPCs (or PCs) can be in different roles in different dramatic situations. Then you just let the events flow logically, and as the dramatic situations get resolved you get a plot. PCs can interfere with these dramatic situations and thus have an impact on resulting plots even if the overall setting is far larger than they are.
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I was about to comment โWhen one of my players asks whether they can do something
completely unreasonable I look at them, roll a D20 openly on the table and without
checking the result, say โnoโโOh, GM Fiat... I always preferred the GM Camaro, but you do you...
What's... What's GM camaro?
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The players won't care about how pretty you make your maps. Make them functional and ugly, and you'll save up so much time for other prep.
Also make maps that people in universe would use, not a god or modern satellite images. Romans used maps that showed main roads and villages, why would a random adventurer need a super detailed map with borders on it.
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M MrJafo shared this topic
