GM Tips, Tricks, & General Advice

[cailano]

Pissing off your players

Lets talk about how to make your players really mad.

WHAT? Why would we want to do this?

Because a good story - even one told in an RPG - is all about emotional engagement. If you do your job well, players will want to laugh, cry and rage right along with their characters. It is these emotional reactions that will make for the stories you will tell around the geek campfires for years to come.

Anger is one of the easier emotions to trigger in your players, and some GMs do it by accident. You'll be running your game, everything is going smoothly, but then quite randomly a description you use or a line of dialogue you throw in will seem to fire your players up. All of the sudden, they can't WAIT to roll that critical hit right into your NPC's kisser. They hate him. You've successfully pissed them off.

That is a very good thing. If you do something to make your players really hate an NPC (or generate any sort of feeling towards and NPC,) seize on it. Empathize it. Do it again. Then, when they finally face off with your villain, the sense of triumph they get on defeating him will be something real. A secondary emotional reaction building on the first.

So how do we do it? What makes for a villain that players love to hate? It depends on your group, but here are some ideas:

Cheating

Nobody likes a cheater. Villains who take advantage of opportunities to deny PCs a chance at a fair fight will nearly always earn their enmity. For instance, you might set up an early encounter with the villain in a dungeon room. Only when the players charge, the floor is an illusion and the villain retreats once the players fall in the pit to face a death trap of some kind. A more urban example would be a villain who frames the PCs for a crime, making their lives much more difficult.

Deviants

Make your villain a deviant of some kind and watch your players line up to relieve him of some of his extra hit points. Fantasy is a surprisingly conservative genre when you think about it, and those who shun typical standards of morality are sure to make your players eager to straighten them out. A particularly good one is a sexual deviant. A villain who molests children, or one who enjoys forcing slaves into orgies with unnatural creatures is one your players will know is evil. Taste must be exercised, of course, but a good tale from a sympathetic character about the horrors undertaken for a villains pleasure is usually more than enough.

"My lord... the baron asked us to do... things. Terrible things... one of the slaves would bring him... pleasure, while the rest of us were left in the pit with the ogre. The ogre would... would... only two of the women survived my lord. Two of six. I... always wanted a child... but now... now..."

COME ON, you know you want to roll a character right now just to go beat that deviant down. It's a great tool.

One thing I'd avoid though is "deviancy" that is actually insensitive sermonizing. For instance, just making a character homosexual isn't really deviancy. That might of worked in the 40s, but now it's just insensitive to cast being gay as equivalent to being immoral. A good GM isn't a racist, sexist or jerk. He just tells a good story.

Murderers

Killing off an NPC is sometimes an effective way to make your players hate a villain, but it can backfire if not done well. If your players think you are setting them up by making them care about a character, they will cease forming emotional bonds with your NPCs and that is no good. The trick here to to create a game wherein the players have many emotional ties to many NPCs. Then you can kill one off occasionally and they will pursue the villain responsible. However if you ONLY give them an NPC to care about when you want to manipulate them into heading to the next plot point, it will blow up in your face.

Spank the Babies

No one likes anyone who victimizes children or innocents. A dragon who demands a human sacrifice is an okay villain. One who demands a virgin sacrifice is better. One who demands a child be sacrificed is just asking to get a lance shoved through his evil heart. Again, taste is important, remember many of your players may actually have children. This is part of what makes this strategy work so well, but it can also make the whole thing backfire if you go too far. If you are nervous about this strategy, allow the players a chance to save the child. They will take that bait almost every time, especially if you portray a desperate parent's plea well.

The bottom line is a good villain is one that the players themselves love to hate, not just their characters. If you find your story needs some added tension, don't be afraid to make the bad guy badder.

[cailano]

By the way, if anyone is still reading this thread, and would like to see the DM training continue, please post and let me know. I'm really not sure what kind of an audience I have left after such a long hiatus and I hate talking to myself.

[paxiandreams]

I am still reading this :-) I am not GMing a game right now but if I ever (on the off chance) find myself with extra spare time, I would consider doing it. So I love reading this as a way to 'store up' knowledge for the future - and also having an amazing resource sitting here too.

Great job!!

[Baron Of Hell]

I'm still subscribed and would be ok with you going on.

[Perception_The_Night]

I actually just found this today and I most certainly want you to continue. With that said.......

Thing I have banned form my games. In one setting I had clerics completely banned. Brought upon by an age of atheism within the land. With clerics, I eliminated all healing magic. I did however create a combat medic class. The heals were not nearly as good as a clerics were but it added that extra tension to the game. I also had all forms of resurrection banned with the exception of through a wish. However, I did not allow my PC's the wish spell. A wish must always be earned in my games. The harder the wish was to earn the more powerful it would be.

On the wish spell, something else I like to do is grant a wish for a sufficient sacrifice to (insert whatever here). The sacrifice must always be immense though. You have a fighter that has spent the last 20 levels putting every resource he has into upgrading his prized sword Alicia....well if he wants a wish it will cost him his sword. Also for some added fun if you don't deem the sacrifice large enough give them the wish anyways and corrupt it as many of us like to do. Drop hints afterwards that a larger sacrifice is key to attaining a wish that stays true.

Also, you have inspired me. I once tried to run a game hear and was extremely excited about it and life got in the way. However with your tips and some newfound free time I think I am going to give it another go. I have long wanted to run two separate games. One of which is based in an alternate timeline of Terry Goodkind's Sword of truth series. And the other I will be requiring multiple DMs to help me out, as it is a 20 player game.

Basic premise is the land has been ravaged by beings from the sky. Life as we know it is already past the brink. Extinction is inevitable. A wizard/scientist/God finds a way to send 20 people to the homeworld/homeplane/deep dark place/ on a one way trip. Nothing can be saved. There arn't enough left for a viable gene pool. This is solely revenge. The game won't end until every PC dies. I figure 4 teams of 5. Occasionally crossing paths or at least seeing evidence of the other teams throughout the game. It is an ambitious undertaking but I think it would be a wonderful game. It could even be competitive. Longest survivor, most kills, most grievous wound without dying.


That is the long response, the short one is.....keep up the good work. This thread is fantastic.

One last thing, could you link me to the game you are running. My God Kids really enjoy hearing these stories at bed time and we just finished the last game i read to them. This one sounds like it should keep up going for quite sometime.

[Baron Of Hell]

I think he has a few going but here is the one I am watching http://www.myth-weavers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=25307

[cailano]

I actually just found this today and I most certainly want you to continue. With that said.......

(snip)

One last thing, could you link me to the game you are running. My God Kids really enjoy hearing these stories at bed time and we just finished the last game i read to them. This one sounds like it should keep up going for quite sometime.

Oh good you didn't notice the multi-month absence then! Your ideas for games sound really good, but if you want to read along with mine check out the link Baron of Hell posted. I have two games over at Myth Weavers right now, which I started up when I returned to PbP about a month ago.

You sound like you run a brutal game and you definitely think like a game designer. If you remember to involve your players on an emotional level, you could do great things around here.

[cailano]

Let's talk about combat, and when to put it in your game.

Combat is an important part of pacing in a PbP game, or really any RPG. Combat gets your players fired up, gets them posting quickly, and keeps them interested.

Too much combat becomes a boring slog.

So how do you know how much is too much?

In my experience, I want to always have combat on the horizon. The characters always have to be moved towards conflict of some kind. They have to always be on the cusp of danger. I don't want to go more than a week of real time without getting my players in or at least near a fight. (Sometimes they avoid the fight, and that's fine too. It's their game, after all.)

However, I also try to keep dungeon crawls moving along and I don't always run every combat in a dungeon crawl. I'll even chop out whole sections of the dungeon. If the fights don't move the story along, you might not have time for them in PbP. Remember that even in a briskly paced game, a five round combat can take a couple of days. Beat your players up with those for two weeks in a row, and they will begin to forget their motivations for rolling so many dice. You don't want that.

To avoid combat slogging, I try to mix in other elements. Mystery solving (not puzzles, I'll write another blog on that some day) intra-party conflict with NPCs, plot exposition, B story interludes (I'll write a blog on B Stories, too) and anything else I can think of to break the monotony.

I think a perfect mix is a game that is about 3/5 role playing / exploration / mystery solving and 2/5 combat. Almost an even split but not quite. When we do combat, I try not to waste it. I want emotional involvement in every fight be it fear of death or a nice feeling of dispensing some wrath. That's still a lot of fights, and your players will stay tuned in for fear of missing one of them.

[cailano]

How do you feel about combat in RPGs? Do you like a lot? Just a little? What are the pitfalls you've run into with combat in your games?

Also, do you use battle maps? Why or why not?

[Baron Of Hell]

I personally like combat but since it can be a choking point I don't think it should be used more than 1/4 the time. However, the speed of combat depends on the players posting. If combat doesn't move fast enough I might remove all random combat from my game and only do combat based on how far the game has moved.

Right now this is how combat works in my game.

1. GM makes init rolls. Lets say PC =50 NPCs=30
2. PCs make their moves (include tactic block EX: Will always attack closes goblin, unless wounded.)
3. NPCs make their moves
4. PCs make their moves (provide new tactic blocks if needed)
5. GM or substitutes make tactical moves or for anyone missed in step 4 (kicks in after 4 hours)
6. Repeat at step 3 until combat is over.

I'm hoping to get all combat resolved in 2 days maybe 3 if players are slow on step 2

I plan to use battle maps depending on the situation. I'll probably never use a map for one enemy unless I already have a map made. I also wouldn't use it if there isn't much to describe and the enemy is cornered, but again if I already have a map made then I'll use it. Basically maps make combat better and easier to visualize. The only time I wouldn't use one is when the combat is so basic that making a battle map would be a waste of time.

[Guest]

This thread is freaking awesome... I plan to move it to a more noticeable place as it is quite buried here in the PbP forums. I will be placing the entire forum in the Member Created Gaming Content Parent forum so it shows up on the main page.

I was going to place it in the subforum Behind the DM screen but that too was quite buried and this thread should be in a place where folks that aspire to DM/GM can come across it easily.

Thanks for being awesome guys and gals! This is the kind of shit I live for!

[Baron Of Hell]

Interesting game concept. I've seen it before. Do people play more carefully without clerics?

[Guest]

I'd have to say that it would depend on how generous th GM is with healing potions and similar devices. In the past I've seen games wherein the PCs had a healing spring discovered beneath their base camp and purchasing cure wands to offset a lack of clerical power in the party.

So, if you're playing in a setting where healing items are few and far between then hell yeah they're gonna be a little more cautious. An exception might be 4ed D&D where healing was changed but I forget the exact details and since I'm not interested in 4ed I don't feel like looking it up. Perhaps someone familiar with it could enlighten us.

[cailano]

This thread is freaking awesome... I plan to move it to a more noticeable place as it is quite buried here in the PbP forums. I will be placing the entire forum in the Member Created Gaming Content Parent forum so it shows up on the main page.

I was going to place it in the subforum Behind the DM screen but that too was quite buried and this thread should be in a place where folks that aspire to DM/GM can come across it easily.

Thanks for being awesome guys and gals! This is the kind of shit I live for!

Thanks for reading Ao! It will be interesting if the D Academy flares back to life in its new home. I always thought it was a fantastic concept and I'd like to see it continue to bring new players - and especially game masters - into the PbP branch of our hobby.

[cailano]

Subplots and the Campaign Arc

Ever watch Firefly? I'm willing to bet about 75% of this board has, and the other 25% are just late to the party. It's one of the best TV shows of all time, and this is coming from a guy who can barely stomach most of whats on TV.

In Firefly, each episode has its own plot. The crew of Serenity might have to go steal some medical supplies in one episode, and go rescue the captain from being tortured on another. Those plots are usually self contained.

There are, however, other plot lines throughout the all-to-short series. What happened to River? Are Mal and Inara ever going to get together? What about those crazy Reavers out there on the edge?

Those are subplots, boys and girls. Sub-plots work beneath the main plot and can be anything from a love story to a danger building in the background. Elsewhere on this thread I've talked about designing campaigns using a simple three act plot. That can be fun, but its also pretty basic. If you want your fictional worlds to live and breathe one way to do it is to add depth to the campaign by layering it with subplots.

A great place to draw these from is the PC's backstory. Never let a PC join your game without a rich backstory! Mine those suckers for subplots and your players will love you for it. It is a part of the campaign they are actively involved in because they wrote it. They made it up. It wouldn't be there if not for them. That is a rare gift for a storyteller. It's a straight line into what your players want to see from your game.

If their backstory doesn't work organically in your campaign (for instance, if the PC has a background in a country very far away) then work to give them a subplot of their own. Try to base it around what your players seem interested in.

For instance, in the game I ran here, I had a monk from very far away, a rogue who really, really wanted to steal stuff from NPC merchants, a sorcerer who was being RP'd as someone not comfortable with his own bloodline, and a cleric who had a sort of infatuation with his goddess.

Brilliant stuff. I gave the rogue a hint about a huge score that could be had from the house of a very wealthy crime lord in the town, but it was a complex job that would require a lot of intel to pull off. I gave the monk a love interest who shared his heritage (and also filled the role of a trainer.) I gave the sorcerer a lot of cryptic hints about where he had come from and that his true bloodline was actually being hidden from him. I gave the cleric ongoing visions of faith and frightening prophecy, and his personal vision of his goddess came through in those visions. There was also a fighter in the group being built out as a swordsman, and it so happened the AP we were running had a good subplot for that built in, so I made sure he got it.

Layer it on. It can be anything from simple lines PCs through out, to something they stumble onto in a book, to a bit of dialogue with an NPC to an innkeeper telling a PC that someone was looking for them. There are as many hooks as there are subplots.

The trick is to let them stay as backstory most of the time, but then let them come to the fore every now and then. When they do, it should be one PCs real moment in the sun, but make sure that the other PCs have something to do as well, and that they get their own moment in the sun later on.

Always be looking out for ways to add more subplots as well. You can have too many... but several isn't always too many. Did the PCs let an NPC escape? that could be a revenge subplot, or a rivalry, or even a love story. Did the PCs take a powerful magic item? Who owned it in the past? Can the owner come looking for them? Did the PCs do a big favor for a local lord? What happens when he decides that he wants a PC to marry his daughter?

Subplots can arc over an existing campaign. Much like the Firefly series. Each adventure you run should have its own plotline, but those subplots need some attention to. Don't let the PCs forget about them, but advance those plots slowly over the course of multiple adventures. You will find that this can tie otherwise unrelated adventures together, and make your world seem more like a real place.

One last note: Don't be surprised if your subplots become the most meaningful part of your game. Ever see the Princess Bride? Was anything in that story better than the revenge tale of Inigo Montoya and the Six Fingered Man? Not in my mind. That was a subplot, and not even for the main character, but it was great.