And for this thread, in things, I mean specific things you can point to in a game book.  Bits of advice, rules or whatever that you read in a game book and that improved your gaming.

Here's three from me.

The map is not your friend.  Source is Feng Shui.  This section of the book talked about how maps did not always help, about how improvving the scene could make it fly better and about how you could have a kickass fight scene with no maps.  I'm considering reusing them a bit currently, but I think I would now use them better since I am confident in not using them.  I think not using them did improve my gaming.

Let it ride.  Source is Burning Wheel.  This is incredibly obvious, if you have a player roll for something let the roll stand for the duration of that scene.  So, if you roll stealth to sneak into a camp, let that one roll stand for the whole camp sneaking thing.  Don't reroll every 100 yards or whatever.  If they fail, they need to try something else, if they pass let them.  Making people reroll just massively increases the failure chance.  Obvious, but I have found it useful for all that.

Create the setting around the players.  Source, Sorceror and Sword.  I was doing this a bit already, but the GM advice in that book (for a game I don't even particularly like ironically) really helped me see that I could run a great fantasy game without first having a lever arch file of notes describing the setting.  Instead a vibrant setting could be created as we went along, around the players and focussed on the stuff they were interested in.  Very helpful.

So, that's three from me.  Two are indie, one isn't, but that's not the point.  I play mostly BRP based games, those are just where those bits of advice were when I found them and no doubt other games have similar advice.

Still, three things you've encountered in published games that have improved your gaming.  Your turn.

Barley + hops + water.

Points 4-6:

- Maps are great. No, I'm not just being contrary. Before D20, I've mostly flewn by the seat of my pants for a few years. When I started gaming, I used lots of maps from pre-made adventures. Most of them were pretty unreadable and not very inspiring. Most scenery was pretty mundane, too. But once I got comfortable with the increased power level of D&D 3 and the tactical nature, I used plans a lot. Not neccesarily for miniature-like movement, but as a help to design locations. Often some interesting twists come up when you doodle on bits of graph paper.

- NPC + locations > plot. When I didn't run bought adventures, I always was rather free-form. But some games required more planning for decent NPCs (MERP was probably the first, D&D 3 the most notable). So after creating maps and NPCs, I didn't have enough time for elaborate plots. Which actually made everything better. Now I occasionally do the odd mindmap or connection diagram, but no rails in my game...

- Don't ask your players too much. This might sound completely awful to some, but there are just too many options to present to your group when you're planning a new campaign. Either they come to you, asking you to run something specific or you just turn up with the right material. No more testing game systems in short combat sessions or trying every setting once. Some stuff you can't grasp with one session, so they players have to trust your opinion a bit.

Note that most of that has come from experience. I don't like the hard and fast rules some modern RPGs present you in their GM sections, especially if they have odd and/or flowery names. Games were better when they were done by engineers, not by art and lit majors

Nobilis's Restrictions:  People should be rewarded for playing limited characters when the limits come up.  Something that is on the character sheet, but never comes up in the game, isn't real.  Recognizing that gave me access to a wealth of ways to see what's actually happening in the game.

Amber's rules for mundane skills:  Let the players play the characters they want right out of the gate.  The experience does not suffer from their having chosen not to play the character from infancy through first level, etc.

PTA's fanmail economy:  Flags, flags, flags.  If you can help people pay attention to each other's cues (often by making them explicit) you get a pile of benefit.

From FUDGE:

Just fudge it.

Make your best judgement of a rule instead of spending a bunch of in-game time looking it up in a book.

Roll once per story element. (Instead of rolling for every 10 seconds of action.)

1) First and Foremost learning to listen to my players and not just do what I as a GM wanted to do. As an aspect of this I learned to encourage feedback and find out what things they like or dislike, or want more of---they may not always get it without twists and turns and PC pain. But I DO listen.


2) Letting PC's do cool stuff. Worrying less about "do the rules allow this" and more about 'would it make a cool moment, in this campaign at this time' surprisingly if the last part is a yes, that rule overrides any written one.

3) Saying no. Surprisingly this is connected to the above two. Sometimes "no" is important in giving players what they're really wanting, as well as giving one player a cool moment  at a specific point in time, sometimes means delying another PC's cool moment, or not letting them have one "this session".


Secondary Things:
I've node used a map beyond a quick sketch on paper when  people really seem to want more information than a description gives, most of the time the description is enough. I don't worry about things like facing/reach blah blah blah, unless the situations specifically plays to that concern.


Art,
I draw both villains and PC for my games, as well as weapons, objects, and sometimes scenes--this can add to the information given a great deal, visual images can help cement a more solid feel to the game. Even if you use pictures from magazines or books, I highly recommend using some to help set the visuals.

Mate I'm drawing a blank here. All the most useful things I learned about gaming I learned from other gamers...

Quote from: JimBobOzMate I'm drawing a blank here. All the most useful things I learned about gaming I learned from other gamers...

Damn you Jimbob, do you ever not make sense?

The thing is, I've read some ideas from some books that seemed to make sense in theory, but I've learn't more stuff from the reactions of my players which in theory would sound pretty dodgy.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RDamn you Jimbob, do you ever not make sense?

Heaps of times. Why, just the other day, I think it was Gabriel telling me what I'd posted was "an enormous crock of shit."

Quote from: David RThe thing is, I've read some ideas from some books that seemed to make sense in theory, but I've learn't more stuff from the reactions of my players which in theory would sound pretty dodgy.

Well I don't know about that. All I know is that the practical gaming advice stuff seems to get cut from the text to make way for more charts of gun statistics. There's good gaming sense in a lot of books, and Balbinus is quite right to try to bring some of it out with this thread. I think I could have learned a lot from some of the better game books - I was just lucky, I learned it from another gamer first. And of course, the most I learned, I learned from fucking up in a game group. "Woops, don't want that to happen again..."

It's hard to pick out any particular bits of advice from game books for me, but I can point out some stuff I found useful.

Rolemaster's Campaign Law had some good stuff on campaign design, making up your own game world. Everyone does it from time to time, so it was nice to have some guidance on it.

Jorune was the game whose beautiful and evocative illustrations, and interesting text, awakened me to the idea of having alien worlds; alien worlds are good because so many people roleplay to explore, to get a sense of wonder.

Ars Magica with its focus on "troupe style" play - having a couple of major and minor characters each, and swapping around who GMed - and the place of residence of the characters - the "covenant" - as a character in itself. This made me think of the game group as a group, building something together, not just a bunch of individuals rolling dice.

Quote from: JimBobOzWell I don't know about that. All I know is that the practical gaming advice stuff seems to get cut from the text to make way for more charts of gun statistics. There's good gaming sense in a lot of books, and Balbinus is quite right to try to bring some of it out with this thread. I think I could have learned a lot from some of the better game books - I was just lucky, I learned it from another gamer first. And of course, the most I learned, I learned from fucking up in a game group. "Woops, don't want that to happen again..."

Actualy the last part of this paragraph (with a little more elaboration from my players off course) has been the most help I've ever received in terms of making my games better.

An example of  an idea that in theory sounds pretty dodgy would be (don't anyone lynch me ) rail roading. From what I've gathered from my players over the years, done right it could be pretty fun. Done right is more alchemy than science, if you know what I mean.

QuoteJorune was the game whose beautiful and evocative illustrations, and interesting text, awakened me to the idea of having alien worlds; alien worlds are good because so many people roleplay to explore, to get a sense of wonder.

Okay, I think everyone knows what I think of this game

The other two games for me are :

In Harms Way - That the game system can inspire players (who are already interested in roleplaying ) to take it up a notch further.

WFRP (TEW) - TEW campaign esp the first three books taught me a lot about campaign planning.

Regards,
David R

1) Forget the Random Tables.
My friend Paul laughed out loud at me once when I consulted a random encounter table to decide what business his character encountered on a busy street.  He was right, it was retarded.  If there was something important that should happen on the street, as GM I should simply decide so myself.

2) Classless, Level-less Gaming.
I first started gaming with 1st edition AD&D, and from the very start I knew there was something wrong with the fact that I couldn't develop skills outside of my starting class without penalty, and that all of my abilities inexplicably jumped as a group as I levelled-up.  Traveller helped me realise that it could be done differently, and RuneQuest cured me completely.

3) Relaxation and Improvisation.
Fretting and plotting about how I intended to run a game never did me any good -- it just made me abandon the game out of anxiety.  The realisation that my best games arose on the fly truly helped make gaming fun.

!i!