As the title implies, today we'll be jumping to the opposite end of character creation. How exactly should you handle death as a GM?
Well, to be honest, there's no good way. This isn't for fault of the players, however, but rather the GM him/herself. Here's why: The GM is a subtle creature, often having Joss Whedon Syndrome or Angry GM Syndrome.
AGMS and JWS affect countless PCs every session. During an attack of AGMS, you can expect irritability, an overabundance of useless NPCs, far too many traps, and ECLs four, five, or even ten levels higher than anticipated. For warning signs, see (1) Pining over a girl (2) Stress at work or in classes (3...
Seriously though and stepping back now... What I'd like to call JWS, though it applies to many other things, is a GM believing that to be taken seriously they must be willing and able to kill a character. In my personal experience, I've always really tried (though my players would likely disagree) to keep them alive. When they're at that all critical moment in a fight, I'll drop a nat 20 and tell them I critically failed, or admit when I actually did critically fail...
Even better was one fight between two monsters, which would've killed the party had both stayed alive, managed to fight to the death. The one that was left standing was more than enough to challenge the party, but guess what? He spoke common. A crazy bug demon from outer-freaking-space speaks common and one of my players had a charisma roll of over 25. So, what do you do? Improvise. That's a topic we're DEFINITELY coming back to.
In the mean time, death. To be honest, I don't think you have to kill a PC to be taken seriously because there are ways around it while making it SEEM like you can take shiny things from them, but if you feel you do then keep a couple of things in mind:
1. Never kill a character that the player is intensely attached to their character WITHOUT a way to resurrect them
1.a. Here's a clause: One of these things -> The party has to be willing too, if they're not, you may have to break game play for divine intervention (something I guarantee the players will hate, especially if you didn't do it for another player) or my favorite, a personal session.
--> I once had a player in the middle of a carnival tent of vampires enjoying a show at night. He wanted to super charge a sunlight spell by making a pact with a demon. The demon agreed and gave him {20 d10s} and all he had to get was 40. If he did, he succeeded... He didn't. The demon dragged him into hell and I told the player take 5, we'll do a special session, you're coming back. He enjoyed the rest of the night and had one HELL of a session... Okay, sorry, sorry, it wasn't that funny...
2. Never kill a disinterested player unless you 200% want them out of the game. There's always a way to bring them back in... Whether it's a secret mission given by a god or main villain, or a player specific quest, if you want this person to keep playing, remember that it's not the character that's causing problems, it's you as the GM who haven't given the player what his character needs.
3. Make the death epic. If you're going to kill someone, don't glaze over it. Remember, they've met {and hopefully not killed all} NPCs. People will remember them. NPCs aren't squirrels, they don't have a 5 second - SHINY!!!!
4. If you honestly feel that the particular character needed to die, don't start the player off at 1 or whatever starting level was {unless they still ARE starting level}. Here's the thing, to help someone cope with the death of their character {admittedly not as ridiculous as I'm making it sound}, give them something. A solid quest or purpose for a new character or a fancy little item that no one else has, maybe an exciting back story. The players are used to the current group dynamic, there's going to need to be a reason for this new interloper.
Keep rollin' 20s,
-DC
Monday, September 20, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Quick Notice
Sorry all! I'm not sure how often people check this, if indeed people do, but I just started a new job and have been focusing a little too much on my other blog (North East Ohio Beer Snob), but this weekend I plan to post at least one new topic here.
Comments, questions, or concerns, let me know!
Keep rollin' 20s,
-DC
Comments, questions, or concerns, let me know!
Keep rollin' 20s,
-DC
Friday, September 3, 2010
Chronology
This includes only the games I've run, rather than played in, but here is a basic list of my experiences:
1. 3.5 D&D with few maps and a heavy horror element, Illithid Campaign
2. Failed attempt at a 3.5 / Ancient Egyptian theme game with a Star Wars / Ancient Greek ending; broken by extremely experienced players
3. Star Trek, home written system; alpha tested, broken, never fixed, but still ended well
4. Re-run of 2 with a few modifications for a new group with less experienced players {College}
5. Game similar to 1 with the group at college
6. World of Darkness game, PCs played themselves prior to an apocalyptic happening on Earth roughly 4 years in the future
7. Star Wars campaign
8. 4.0 campaign, home brewed, enormous amount of maps and politics, heavy story line, modestly non-linear
9. 3.5 dungeon crawls with a fair bit of the first dungeon and pieces of the main story stolen from a GM back home.
10. Re-run of 9 for the group back home with a new main story. This game has not been GMed yet, but has an entire world map, politics, international relations, government styles and country exports, city maps and special areas, dungeons and... Well, you get the idea.
1. 3.5 D&D with few maps and a heavy horror element, Illithid Campaign
2. Failed attempt at a 3.5 / Ancient Egyptian theme game with a Star Wars / Ancient Greek ending; broken by extremely experienced players
3. Star Trek, home written system; alpha tested, broken, never fixed, but still ended well
4. Re-run of 2 with a few modifications for a new group with less experienced players {College}
5. Game similar to 1 with the group at college
6. World of Darkness game, PCs played themselves prior to an apocalyptic happening on Earth roughly 4 years in the future
7. Star Wars campaign
8. 4.0 campaign, home brewed, enormous amount of maps and politics, heavy story line, modestly non-linear
9. 3.5 dungeon crawls with a fair bit of the first dungeon and pieces of the main story stolen from a GM back home.
10. Re-run of 9 for the group back home with a new main story. This game has not been GMed yet, but has an entire world map, politics, international relations, government styles and country exports, city maps and special areas, dungeons and... Well, you get the idea.
Intro Part II
One thing I forgot to mention in my earlier introduction is that I've GMed more than just D&D. I have run games in 3.5, 4.0, new World of Darkness {as well as playing in the old once}, QAGS games like Kobolds Ate My Baby {KAMB}, the newer Star Wars system, and created my own for Star Trek. I have been running games almost constantly for the past 5 years. So, those of you wondering about my credentials, there they are. Those of you wondering if I can answer questions about systems I've never played in, it's iffy, but give it a shot.
Most of my games are hand written worlds with overarching themes and their own magical items, specific questions about GreyHawk, Dogs In The Vineyard, or a Scion game, I can't answer. On the other hand, where else are you going to find someone with this much experience managing house rules, creating artifacts, and trying to figure out how to manage high technology with old magical epics?
A final note before I leave off here, if anyone ever has specific interest in maps, campaigns, or anything special I mention herein, leave me a comment on that particular post and I'll either email you back or {if it merits it} it's own session of: Ask The GM!
Keep Rollin' 20s,
-DC
Most of my games are hand written worlds with overarching themes and their own magical items, specific questions about GreyHawk, Dogs In The Vineyard, or a Scion game, I can't answer. On the other hand, where else are you going to find someone with this much experience managing house rules, creating artifacts, and trying to figure out how to manage high technology with old magical epics?
A final note before I leave off here, if anyone ever has specific interest in maps, campaigns, or anything special I mention herein, leave me a comment on that particular post and I'll either email you back or {if it merits it} it's own session of: Ask The GM!
Keep Rollin' 20s,
-DC
Interrupting PCs Early In A Game
While I don't anticipate going sequentially through things, these first two posts probably will be. When I get the chance, the next one will be about city building since I've been working pretty heavily on a new game that's meant to go into epic levels.
Well, as anyone who's played before knows, the first thing a player has to do is familiarize him/herself with the world and {y'know what? Who'm I kidding? I know very well the rules of grammar dictate I can pick him or her and not use both. For those of you few FEW female gamers, sorry, but I'll be using him} ...Now, where was I? Ah yes, you need to develop a character concept.
There are all sorts of play styles for individuals and overarching party styles that I'll eventually make posts on when someone reminds me later, but there are also party dynamics that can develop even prior to character creation... I'll go through a couple and mention ways a GM might handle it.
For example:
1. A lawful good character
2. A racist or homicidal character
3. A non-RP player or player who's character is entirely ridiculous in a serious game
4. The reverse of 3
5. An overpowered character
Dealing with 1 is a bit of an issue for a lot of GMs because early in GMing, you don't really understand how to improvise or handle things terribly well. One of the biggest problems is that this probably occurs with a group of friends who have recently started playing. When a Lawful Good character is thrown into the mix of people who just want to have fun, burn taverns, and make corpse balls, this can be a serious issue. Handling it takes a lot of finesse. If you know to watch out for this, you may take the option of banning LGs from your game, the problem with that is that most clerics are LG and you've therefore banned an entire class. If you couldn't guess? This pisses off the players. It can be dealt with in other ways for example by limiting the amount of influence the PC {player character} has in the party. Another possibility is that you make sure the party is okay with the fact that there will be a character constantly being the angel on their shoulder and bringing the fun to a halt. A cleric may repeatedly try to convert people to their god. Trust me, this gets old, it's one of the reasons I steer people away from LG characters. Players picked their alignment and god {or lack thereof} for a reason, they don't want it changed. This is in stark contrast to the GM changing it, which we'll come back to in a later session of Ask The GM. There are a lot of ways to handle this, but I'm cutting this explanation short. If need be, I may revisit it.
Another problem concept is a character that is racist against a group member's chosen race or constantly trying to kill the party or themselves. It can be entertaining for a while when the 102 year old wizard senilely wanders into a mine shaft and casts a fireball against a challenge rating {CR} 4 levels higher than the party, but when it happens every session, well, you can imagine. Another interesting case is when one of the players actively tries to kill another. This. Will. Happen. It doesn't matter how many times you GM, every game will see some PvP at one time or another. Again, a topic for another session. Now, the interesting thing happens when the character is actively working towards the death of a character constantly or the entire party. Contrary to what I bet you're thinking, I believe this is legitimate. I love seeing a character like this. The character is almost always evil or chaotic and can really add a fun element to the game. That is... if it's properly managed. See, there are two reasons we might see this in a game:
1. The PC is so absurdly bored, it's all that can keep them entertained or
2. They actually want to try RPing a character outside themselves and think it would make for an interesting game dynamic.
Now, the way to handle 1 is simple. If this is happening, you've got serious issues. Don't take it personally. It is your campaign. I'm sorry, but it is. The difference is, it's not your fault. The problem is that the player {probably someone who prefers hack'n'slash games} is likely playing in a game that is outside their realm of interest. A Resident Evil zombie survival player in a 3.5 D&D game or a fantasy epic player in a World of Darkness. It happens. It isn't your issue, it's just that you'll have to make more of an effort to accommodate this player if you want them to stay in the group. The other players will appreciate the results and may be interested in the story hooks or combat you add to keep that player in check. The other option (2 for those of you with the attention span of- ooh look a kitty!!) is that the player has been playing a while and legitimately wants to RP a homicidal maniac. This can be taken care of in a number of ways. The simplest, but most frustrating, is divine intervention. Pretend it's a video game and turn off friendly fire. Another way is to force the player to be covert about it, work it into the main story somehow. Consider letting the game {or at least that character's lifetime} end with an ultimate betrayal, let that, and only that, PC know prior to the session you plan to do this. They'll be appreciative and more patient with the rest of the game as they surreptitiously plot the death of the party.
After that wall of text... HERE COMES ANOTHER!
With 3 and 4 you have a couple options. You can ask the player to leave the game, one of the worst and most unpleasant options. You can have that player leave the room and discuss things with the party. When doing this, it's all about politics. Who's friends with whom and where are you playing at, things like that, be gentle and diplomatic. During the discussion, remind the players what it was like to start out and assure them that roleplaying will come in time if its case 4. If it's case 3, have a similar discussion, but also come out and talk to the individual and remind them that these players don't have their level of experience and may be incapable of providing the game they're looking for. Offer the player some incentive to stay and keep playing, maybe a new character that's as ridiculous as the party with some special artifact or mission that gives them a reason to keep playing. It's all about bribes.
Finally we come to option 5. It's a wonderful place to be as a first time GM. This type of situation tends to happen as a result of a certain player style we'll come back to later... the min-max or power gamer. It may be intentional, it may not, but this PC is so absurd, the party might as well not be there. There may be a race that gives a +5 to strength... What about the person who's been playing RTSs and Magic their entire life and can't help themselves? There's even the case where there are just classes that ought to be banned... like Spellswords. Sometimes, customized races/systems can break you. I once created my own Star Trek d20 system which was broken immediately by experienced players, they turned Betazoids into mind controllers with the correct application of charisma and a few feats. Unless you can trust this player to behave with the not-so-ordinary amount of power they've been given, consider banning the character they've put together. This is especially hard with the magic player because they will inevitably put ten hours of work into a character most people throw together in an hour and a half. Another possibility is that you can give stricter guidelines with character creation for that player or special items to the other PCs. It's difficult to tell which option to go with... Only after you've been GMing for a while will you know the best way to handle this. It's certainly the hardest one. When you have enough experience, you can make better judgement and learn to say no. When you've had even more experience, you can learn to say yes and properly handle them in-game!
That's all for now, join us next session of Ask The GM!
Keep rollin' 20s,
-DC
Well, as anyone who's played before knows, the first thing a player has to do is familiarize him/herself with the world and {y'know what? Who'm I kidding? I know very well the rules of grammar dictate I can pick him or her and not use both. For those of you few FEW female gamers, sorry, but I'll be using him} ...Now, where was I? Ah yes, you need to develop a character concept.
There are all sorts of play styles for individuals and overarching party styles that I'll eventually make posts on when someone reminds me later, but there are also party dynamics that can develop even prior to character creation... I'll go through a couple and mention ways a GM might handle it.
For example:
1. A lawful good character
2. A racist or homicidal character
3. A non-RP player or player who's character is entirely ridiculous in a serious game
4. The reverse of 3
5. An overpowered character
Dealing with 1 is a bit of an issue for a lot of GMs because early in GMing, you don't really understand how to improvise or handle things terribly well. One of the biggest problems is that this probably occurs with a group of friends who have recently started playing. When a Lawful Good character is thrown into the mix of people who just want to have fun, burn taverns, and make corpse balls, this can be a serious issue. Handling it takes a lot of finesse. If you know to watch out for this, you may take the option of banning LGs from your game, the problem with that is that most clerics are LG and you've therefore banned an entire class. If you couldn't guess? This pisses off the players. It can be dealt with in other ways for example by limiting the amount of influence the PC {player character} has in the party. Another possibility is that you make sure the party is okay with the fact that there will be a character constantly being the angel on their shoulder and bringing the fun to a halt. A cleric may repeatedly try to convert people to their god. Trust me, this gets old, it's one of the reasons I steer people away from LG characters. Players picked their alignment and god {or lack thereof} for a reason, they don't want it changed. This is in stark contrast to the GM changing it, which we'll come back to in a later session of Ask The GM. There are a lot of ways to handle this, but I'm cutting this explanation short. If need be, I may revisit it.
Another problem concept is a character that is racist against a group member's chosen race or constantly trying to kill the party or themselves. It can be entertaining for a while when the 102 year old wizard senilely wanders into a mine shaft and casts a fireball against a challenge rating {CR} 4 levels higher than the party, but when it happens every session, well, you can imagine. Another interesting case is when one of the players actively tries to kill another. This. Will. Happen. It doesn't matter how many times you GM, every game will see some PvP at one time or another. Again, a topic for another session. Now, the interesting thing happens when the character is actively working towards the death of a character constantly or the entire party. Contrary to what I bet you're thinking, I believe this is legitimate. I love seeing a character like this. The character is almost always evil or chaotic and can really add a fun element to the game. That is... if it's properly managed. See, there are two reasons we might see this in a game:
1. The PC is so absurdly bored, it's all that can keep them entertained or
2. They actually want to try RPing a character outside themselves and think it would make for an interesting game dynamic.
Now, the way to handle 1 is simple. If this is happening, you've got serious issues. Don't take it personally. It is your campaign. I'm sorry, but it is. The difference is, it's not your fault. The problem is that the player {probably someone who prefers hack'n'slash games} is likely playing in a game that is outside their realm of interest. A Resident Evil zombie survival player in a 3.5 D&D game or a fantasy epic player in a World of Darkness. It happens. It isn't your issue, it's just that you'll have to make more of an effort to accommodate this player if you want them to stay in the group. The other players will appreciate the results and may be interested in the story hooks or combat you add to keep that player in check. The other option (2 for those of you with the attention span of- ooh look a kitty!!) is that the player has been playing a while and legitimately wants to RP a homicidal maniac. This can be taken care of in a number of ways. The simplest, but most frustrating, is divine intervention. Pretend it's a video game and turn off friendly fire. Another way is to force the player to be covert about it, work it into the main story somehow. Consider letting the game {or at least that character's lifetime} end with an ultimate betrayal, let that, and only that, PC know prior to the session you plan to do this. They'll be appreciative and more patient with the rest of the game as they surreptitiously plot the death of the party.
After that wall of text... HERE COMES ANOTHER!
With 3 and 4 you have a couple options. You can ask the player to leave the game, one of the worst and most unpleasant options. You can have that player leave the room and discuss things with the party. When doing this, it's all about politics. Who's friends with whom and where are you playing at, things like that, be gentle and diplomatic. During the discussion, remind the players what it was like to start out and assure them that roleplaying will come in time if its case 4. If it's case 3, have a similar discussion, but also come out and talk to the individual and remind them that these players don't have their level of experience and may be incapable of providing the game they're looking for. Offer the player some incentive to stay and keep playing, maybe a new character that's as ridiculous as the party with some special artifact or mission that gives them a reason to keep playing. It's all about bribes.
Finally we come to option 5. It's a wonderful place to be as a first time GM. This type of situation tends to happen as a result of a certain player style we'll come back to later... the min-max or power gamer. It may be intentional, it may not, but this PC is so absurd, the party might as well not be there. There may be a race that gives a +5 to strength... What about the person who's been playing RTSs and Magic their entire life and can't help themselves? There's even the case where there are just classes that ought to be banned... like Spellswords. Sometimes, customized races/systems can break you. I once created my own Star Trek d20 system which was broken immediately by experienced players, they turned Betazoids into mind controllers with the correct application of charisma and a few feats. Unless you can trust this player to behave with the not-so-ordinary amount of power they've been given, consider banning the character they've put together. This is especially hard with the magic player because they will inevitably put ten hours of work into a character most people throw together in an hour and a half. Another possibility is that you can give stricter guidelines with character creation for that player or special items to the other PCs. It's difficult to tell which option to go with... Only after you've been GMing for a while will you know the best way to handle this. It's certainly the hardest one. When you have enough experience, you can make better judgement and learn to say no. When you've had even more experience, you can learn to say yes and properly handle them in-game!
That's all for now, join us next session of Ask The GM!
Keep rollin' 20s,
-DC
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Introduction
I had originally intended to be doing this as a webcomic, but as graduation is now upon me and I feel myself becoming more responsible and strained for time, I don't think it's going to happen. So here's the deal:
I'm starting this as a way to keep friends up to date on D&D sessions and entertaining anecdotes that arise because of it, but I've been GMing for a really long time and here's the thing: A lot of people want advice. I only have about 5 years experience making and running games, but so many people don't have any that I wanted to put this out there for them.
My sincere hope is that this will grow beyond the hilarious and horrible in-jokes like "Space Pirates" or the "Corpse Ball" that disarmed a dungeon trap into a place where people I don't even know in real life can ask me questions about how to handle the ridiculous things that crop up in this generations sessions. Where Gygax's generation grew up on super linear games like Zork, ours has grown up with WoW and Morrowind. If we're not supposed to be in an area, we cower in fear, get killed, or {and any GM will tell you, this is far more likely} pull off some ridiculous rule bending, but not breaking, feat that stuns you cold and provides a story for years to come.
Keep Rollin' 20s,
-DC
I'm starting this as a way to keep friends up to date on D&D sessions and entertaining anecdotes that arise because of it, but I've been GMing for a really long time and here's the thing: A lot of people want advice. I only have about 5 years experience making and running games, but so many people don't have any that I wanted to put this out there for them.
My sincere hope is that this will grow beyond the hilarious and horrible in-jokes like "Space Pirates" or the "Corpse Ball" that disarmed a dungeon trap into a place where people I don't even know in real life can ask me questions about how to handle the ridiculous things that crop up in this generations sessions. Where Gygax's generation grew up on super linear games like Zork, ours has grown up with WoW and Morrowind. If we're not supposed to be in an area, we cower in fear, get killed, or {and any GM will tell you, this is far more likely} pull off some ridiculous rule bending, but not breaking, feat that stuns you cold and provides a story for years to come.
Keep Rollin' 20s,
-DC
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