Do you have any pithy observations or mottoes regarding gaming? I just came up with this one in response to a thread on Facebook:
"Whether the PCs run roughshod over the world without consequences, or the GM refuses to let them have an impact on his precious plot, someone's masturbating."
I like this mantra for GMs from one of Jeff Rient's blog posts:
"Your NPCs suck and they are all going to die."
I try to keep it in mind when populating my sandboxes. Don't get too attached to anything or anyone, otherwise you will unconsciously start hampering certain courses of action the players should reasonably be able to take.
Easy one:
If your campaign's structure hinges on the players choosing options A, B or C, they'll choose Z.
Mine would be.
"What? that was a throw NPC not some huge plot point, but since your interested . . ."
This coming from making up an NPC and suddenly everyone wants to get to know them when originally they were just some guy selling noodles from a stand or a Crazy Cat guy.
And in a similar vein
"NPC's are suppose to be cool and interesting and disposable"
What didn't you detail? Because that's what the players will want, every single time.
Success and failure are Schrödinger's cat, both exist simultaneously until you experience them, and as GM, I plan accordingly.
If you choose who the PCs are "supposed" to ally with ahead of time they'll murder them every time. So don't bother.
I always make a plan for the most obviously stupid idea that nobody would ever choose.
I use those plans often.
I once had this dangerous magical artifact, a crystal skull that was used to siphon life from victims and enhance the user. I thought 'what if they just destroyed it without doing any research?' and came up with dire consequences (the skull was actually a valve on a rift to negative energy plane (more or less)).
So, sure enough, player immediately smashes the thing while everyone goes 'noooo!' Nothing happens at first!
Theeeeen everyone in the area starts spontaneously turning into zombies. Woops. (Half the party died, but of course the nut who smashed the skull managed to flee successfully. )
We also use the term 'hockey' to refer to distracting chatter not related to the game. IE: 'stop talking hockey, guys... game!'
"Let your players choose their own difficulties. And let the dice determine their fortunes."
I'm a bit laissez-faire when it comes to content direction and context creation.
Quote from: Necrozius;784663Easy one:
If your campaign's structure hinges on the players choosing options A, B or C, they'll choose Z.
Totally this. Oh, and is it wrong to yell "Yatzee, motherfuckers!" when you roll good? Just a random thought.
"It's not my job to tell the players what to do. It's my job to react to what the players do."
"Not gaming is better than bad gaming."
"If everyone is having fun, you're doing it right."
From my players on the games I ran...
"One mistake and you're fucked"
From my own DM experience
"Show not tell"
"You have 2 minutes to explain your setting"
but at the same time
"Setting is context and context is more critical than specifics"
Oh and
"It's the GM's job to roleplay the World"
I've personally taken to heart OG's line:
Get together with the players and talk things through.
If that doesn't work, kill them and take their stuff.
"Never roll the dice unless you are willing to pay the price."
Means never put a task into the game unless both failure and success are something that you are willing to accept in your game world. Frex, if you don't want PCs to die quickly, don't put "save or die" poisons in.
I don't kill you. The dice kill you.
"Be Crom."
I.e. root for the players but don't provide any miracles when things get sticky.
"The GM is a loot piñata. Each player holds an oddly decorated baseball bat."
Have fun, kids.
"I think we should split the party."
"If you can do it in real life, you should be able to do it in RuneQuest."
(or BRP, or Legend, or OpenQuest)
"Whatever I have planned as a GM, the players will do something else."
Quote from: Ravenswing;784845"It's not my job to tell the players what to do. It's my job to react to what the players do."
hahah I was just going to say something similar when I popped in here...
"Don't look at me. I'm the fucking GM. You tell ME what you do."
Doesn't matter how smart the players are, PC's are fucking morons.
Dice fall, everyone rocks.
No railroad survives contact with adventurers.
Don't give the PCs choices unless they have information to base their choices on.
Even really basic stuff like "do we turn left or right in this dungeon corridor" should have SOME information so it isn't just a random crap shoot. Maybe one corridor smells bad and the other one has a floor that looks more worn.
Quote from: Daztur;784691If you choose who the PCs are "supposed" to ally with ahead of time they'll murder them every time. So don't bother.
Or to put it another way:
"Should we kill the guy who hired us now, or wait until he betrays us so we can find out what he's really up to?"
These are all great, but I especially resonate with both of Daztur's.
"Lore is where design and chance intersect (and is, by extension, the reason we play the game)."
"Story is the unanticipated consequence of the players' actions, not the sequence of events dreamed up by an author."
No amount of GMing talent will engage players who don't want to engage.
If you don't show focus or enthusiasm when you run a game, don't expect it from the players. A gaming group is very much garbage in, garbage out; you only get what you put in.
Heroes are made, not born. PCs don't survive impossible odds because they're the heroes. They're the heroes because they've survived impossible odds.
You don't have to write notes on every nook and cranny but you should have a solid grasp on how your world works.
Player agency should not be curtailed by a "plot" agenda, but it can and will clash with the agendas and dictates of other, and sometimes more powerful, forces within the game world.
Quote from: Daztur;785172Don't give the PCs choices unless they have information to base their choices on.
Even really basic stuff like "do we turn left or right in this dungeon corridor" should have SOME information so it isn't just a random crap shoot. Maybe one corridor smells bad and the other one has a floor that looks more worn.
I disagree. In an old school exploration dungeon where fun shit lies down either corridor so it literally doesn't matter, let the players have no information. The game is ABOUT exploring the space.
Quote from: Daztur;784879"Be Crom."
I.e. root for the players but don't provide any miracles when things get sticky.
That one has particular resonance for me. As a GM, whenever I'm tempted to soften the blows I have to remind myself how much I dislike that as a Player, where I vastly prefer tough-but-fair GMs.
Quote from: The Butcher;785266No amount of GMing talent will engage players who don't want to engage.
That's the core version of my own vow of "Do not play horror games with Players who do not want to be scared."
"Stupidity kills. It is not the GM's job to deus ex machinae the Players to success if they deliberately screw up."
"A GM is there to adjucate the rules. The GM is master of the rules, the rules are not the master of the GM."
Deus ex machina is a great way to get the party into trouble (= start an adventure), but a lousy way to get them out of it.
Quote from: Daztur;785172Don't give the PCs choices unless they have information to base their choices on.
Don't give the players choices, unless you want to kill half an hour watching them make their minds up.
One from Daddy Warpig in Bill's memorial thread:
Quote from: Daddy Warpig;785574To be fair, dreaming about making RPG's isn't crazy.
To actually try it? Bugnuts insane.
Another one my brother and I are fond of: "We try things. Sometimes they even work."
Quote from: Haffrung;785199Or to put it another way:
"Should we kill the guy who hired us now, or wait until he betrays us so we can find out what he's really up to?"
If you hire Machete to kill the bad guy, make damn sure the bad guy isn't YOU.
Quote from: The Butcher;785266Heroes are made, not born. PCs don't survive impossible odds because they're the heroes. They're the heroes because they've survived impossible odds.
This needs to be in the motherfucking players handbook!!! :cool:
Some of mine:
Be courteous to your players, even as you are grinding their PCs into meal.
The dice can often bring unanticipated fun. Listen to them.
One short list of named NPC's with some motivations can make it look like you are prepared for anything.
Quote from: Old Geezer;785294I disagree. In an old school exploration dungeon where fun shit lies down either corridor so it literally doesn't matter, let the players have no information. The game is ABOUT exploring the space.
I'm kind of in the middle here. I don't think it helps the game along if the GM feels straitjacketed by a rule that says he can't ever give the players a choice without information. But if the game is dungeon-exploration, say, then, you should gamify the exploration of the dungeon. And to me that means not just pure luck, but strategy and tactics and educated guesswork being involved. So I like the idea of one corridor smelling worse and the other looking more worn. That should flow to some extent from envisioning the game-world as a living place and thinking how its inhabitants will have impacted on it. So I basically agree with Daztur but I would allow some exceptions. Most choices should come with some info.
Let me put it another way. Maybe you don't have a grave need to put in extra info for the players' choice of corridor. But do you have a particular reason
not to put it in?
"How do you have a gaming company with a million dollars? Start with two million."
Quote from: Omnifray;786425Let me put it another way. Maybe you don't have a grave need to put in extra info for the players' choice of corridor. But do you have a particular reason not to put it in?
There are certain circumstances where this would be preferable. If the PC's are dumped into a maze that they need to escape, then everything looking ,hearing, and smelling more or less the same is part of the challenge.
In this case the burden of marking their way and/or finding their way out rests solely with the players.
- "We'll do the correct thing" does not constitute a plan.
- The dice are your enemy: if you low poorly, you die. If you roll well, all you achieve is that you get to roll again later. The wise man seeks to avoid rolling altogether.
As a GM, it's not your job to tell stories. It's your job to present situations, and let the players tell the story.
Quote from: Pat;786488As a GM, it's not your job to tell stories. It's your job to present situations, and let the players tell the story.
My version would be:
As a DM, it's not your job to tell stories. As a player, it's not your job to tell stories. You present to each other situations and react to them. Later you tell and remember the stories of what happened.
Quote from: Omnifray;786425I'm kind of in the middle here. I don't think it helps the game along if the GM feels straitjacketed by a rule that says he can't ever give the players a choice without information. But if the game is dungeon-exploration, say, then, you should gamify the exploration of the dungeon. And to me that means not just pure luck, but strategy and tactics and educated guesswork being involved. So I like the idea of one corridor smelling worse and the other looking more worn. That should flow to some extent from envisioning the game-world as a living place and thinking how its inhabitants will have impacted on it. So I basically agree with Daztur but I would allow some exceptions. Most choices should come with some info.
Let me put it another way. Maybe you don't have a grave need to put in extra info for the players' choice of corridor. But do you have a particular reason not to put it in?
Well the reason I said that was I was in a long campaign in which it was a lame player in-joke to always say "turn right!" at any intersection in a Dungeon since the corridors always looked the same going both ways so it was a complete crap shoot so why not always turn right?
Basically without having SOME information there the players can't make a decision, they just guess randomly and I like having outcomes driven by player decisions rather than random guessing unless there's a good reason otherwise (like with the featureless labyrinth).
Quote from: Premier;786479- "We'll do the correct thing" does not constitute a plan.
Likewise, "Charge!" is never a good battle plan.
Quote from: Gold Roger;786517My version would be:
As a DM, it's not your job to tell stories. As a player, it's not your job to tell stories. You present to each other situations and react to them. Later you tell and remember the stories of what happened.
That's not the advice I'd give players. I'd say:
Be an ass-kicker, a door-basher, and a risk taker.
Cautious and responsible people go home and farm. Don't be a farmer. This is an adventure!
Brooding loners sulk in a corner, until someone drags them along. Don't make your friends drag you along. They're not here to babysit. They're here to have fun!