a (rambling) cry for help
Okay, perhaps i should explain myself a touch before i begin.
In short, i'm about to make my first attempt at GMing, i've only been playing table top games(D&D) for the past couple of months, my main RPG "talents" come from MUDing and i'm at a bit of a loss as where to begin.
Why would i undertake this trial with such paltry expertise?
Well,
~The current GM of the game i'm involved in, has expressed a desire to step down on occasion and before even suggesting/offering my services i want to make sure i'm not going to put my foot in my mouth by doing so. My swain is kind enough to humor me in my trail run attempts.
~There were/are a number of ideas PC and otherwise that i adore but would only work in a one on one campaign setting. Thus imagination fodder for the brain storming engine.
~For a short period of time i was a builder/god of a MUD, so i am confident in my ability to create an environment. However not so much in my ability to run a proper campaign.
So where do all you lovely helpful people come in? (aka: "get on with it!")
From what i have read on this site and others, the best preparation for a GM is to talk it through. Whether that be for adventures, towns, world secrets, NPCs etc.
So what am i actually asking?
Pretty much anything and everything; for your input, to ask/point out questions i should be asking myself, if i'm overlooking logic errors, etc. etc.
[B]The world: Monkfish [/B](so far)
The sea has reclaimed most of the continents, leaving only a smattering of island holdings. Think Cuba, The Philippines, Indonesia etc.
There are only two surface city/civilizations left, the Gnome/construct run city of Whok and the former human city of Weaver, now run and mastered by Aranea.
Humans are little more then amusing pets to the Aranea, generally with alterations to their appearance for 'fashion.' Though how humans are used depends on what they've been taught to do and who owns them. This has been the norm for at least the past 500 years.
Other 'normal'(dwarves, elves etc.) races are thought to be extinct, though i've been tossing around the thought of water based societies i haven't gotten past the idea of them.
There are several fringe islands populated by free humans and other 'monstrous' races. Though most of them are just trying to get by and couldn't give two figs about what the 'political' cities are up to. The Gnomes function as the main traders between the fringe societies and themselves.
[B]The Player[/B] (so far)
A 7th level Warlock, half-celestial.
Summary: Grew up with his father, a farmer. Left home when he was 14 due to boredom, conflicts in ideas. Has lived with the Gnomes, who are fascinated by his wings, for the past 10+ years. Sees most everyone else as beneath him, aka cockroaches.
player 'secret': His father was selected to be the 'savior' of the human race by a God who was trying to reassert himself in a world that has slowly phased out religion to the point that they're simply amusing fairy tales. Unfortunately the angel he sent f*cked up her mission, in more ways then one... and had our Player, who she left with his father.
[B]Why are we here?[/B](so far)
The first reason for running this particular campaign was to be able to use "The Book of Vile Darkness".
So, our yet, unnamed Player's starting motivation will be training to be a mortal hunter. The first problem; who is his teacher, how do they meet? Possible answer: Kurlijk; Mortal Hunter, effeminate demon, posing as a gargoyle.
and that's pretty much all i've got thus far... so HELP?!
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Disclaimer: I do not know what the Book of Vile Darkness is bu it sounds like a d20 item. All comments following reflect this ignorance.
I would suggest answering the "Why are we here?" part first, then determine a world, then have players create characters.
Shameless Plug: I would also suggest reading "What I Bring to the Table" Parts 1 and 2 (and 3 and 4 when they are printed, they've been submitted).
Slightly less Shameless Plug: There are dozens of other gamegrene articles to address these problems.
Faulty Analogy: The campaign is a voyage. Youve picked a vehicle without knowing the destination. The sleek "Half Celestial blah blah..." roadster might look fine, unless the destination is under water, over the rainbow, or on top of that mountain. This is not a reference to Monkfish world.
Even the best of DMs can find it challenging to run a ready made adventure in a pre-fab world, to pull off a decent game. You sound like you want to cook up a whole world from bits and pieces of others, which is sometimes worse than starting from scratch for players because their expectations can be counterintuitive. Worldbuilding itself is a very tall order for a novice, involving a mountain of prep before you even play. That, I think is the fatal flaw of most campaigns, and a good way of sniffing out the DMs who would rather be world-building than actually facilitating a playable game.
There are a lot of differences between MUDing and RPG'ing, and I see it in your expectations from the post. Your players' motivation is so that he can "be a mortal hunter". That's fine in a MUD, because MUDS are mainly about "being" a character, and "inhabiting" an environment. The difference – with an RPG, you need a story. You need a sense of closure from time to time, and progress is marked by more than character advancement. What happens in the story?
Running an "evil" campaign – even harder. If it's D&D, much of the game is built around "heroic fantasy" – it's a lot easier to write a story about vanquishing the bad guys than it is to write one that justifies the actions of the bad guys. In most fantasy with good and evil – evil is an alien mindset, not to be thought about too much.
The multiple layers of self-indulgent rationales – a demon that is effeminate (why?) who is posing as a gargoyle (why?) seems just weird and way too self-reflexive. If you are asking for advice, my advice would be to back WAAAAY up. Read Dungeon Magazine or try out some good quality published adventures – The Sunless Citadel is a good one, and see how you make a good adventure, because ultimately, players want to minimize the amount of time it takes between sitting down at the table and finding out what's on the other side of that door.
Of the two questions: what's the planet like, and what's on the other side of that door, the latter is the most important question because it's the only thing the players will play. I tend to choose a series of pre-made adventures that I think are good, and draw a narrative throughline to them leading to the final one. That doesn't have to happen right away – maybe level 5 or so, when you start seeing more of the big picture and affecting the world. Lower levels – you are likely just saving a farmer or a villiage, and don't need all the rest of it. It's nice when your players have some of the same source material, so you don't need to explain every aspect of the world to them, so they can use their knowledge of the same world and anticipate consequences and plan strategies with it. Spend the most time on what will be played, because your work has little meaning if the players can't interact with it.
If you like an island setting in a "smaller" world, I might suggest buying a ready made campaign set that focuses on something like that. Eberron maybe? It seems to have the curveballs you want as well. If you want to change things - make sure you have a reason for doing so - beyond just "personalizing" them. I once played in Cyberpunk campaign in which the DM thought, "Wow, what if we played in the same setting, but if cybernetics weren't cool and were hard to get?" Woo-hoo! What fun - just gutted the only thing that made it special.
Hey there, thanks for the replies/advice. An Whutaguy, i have/did read your articles, but due to the sporadic activity inherent in this site itself (and my own personal narcissism) i thought it might just go easier if i started a new thread.
Nefandus, wow, just the groin-kick from reality i was looking for. There's no question that i'm probably(99% sure) overreaching myself, regardless how i go about it, but that doesn't mean i'm not gonna try all the same. ::sheepish grins:: See the main reason i'm still gonna stick with this rough hewn, crackpot idea of a world, is that i know me. An while picking out/up a 'ready, set, go' campaign would be undoubtedly easier, i know my interest level in GMing would only hold so long as i feel that the world is 'mine.' Is that truly so 'terrible'?
Will i be eating these words in the weeks/months to come? I'm not gonna pretend it isn't likely.
But a few questions on your reply. "You sound like you want to cook up a whole world from bits and pieces of others, which is sometimes worse than starting from scratch for players because their expectations can be counterintuitive." Could you elaborate on this comment? Because i'm not taking/using anything that isn't in basic D&D(3.5) other then the classes found in "Vile Darkness." Do you mean starting a character at such a high level can lead to problems in adventures/encounters, or might cause my player(s) to kill first, ask questions later? Because i would agree with you in a general sense, especially if i was going into this not knowing the gaming style of my player. However, at the moment that is not the case.
Up until my descriptions of the main NPC i have in mind, all of this information (and some other pibbily details i didn't want to bore you guys with) has been in collaboration with my player, so none of it would come as a surprise.
"Worldbuilding itself is a very tall order for a novice, involving a mountain of prep before you even play. That, I think is the fatal flaw of most campaigns, and a good way of sniffing out the DMs who would rather be world-building than actually facilitating a playable game." Oi, don't i know it.
I've already spent a couple weeks muddling through this process. But how is world-building a flaw? If you neglect the story and only focus on things like say, "You are standing in front of the sweet shop, just on the corner of 3rd and Main. It is owned by Mable and Jack, who are recently married and love dogs. Would you like to buy some candy?" Of course it's gonna be a terrible, boring and we might as well watch golf.
I don't intend to neglect "what's on the other side of the door" but at this point in time my story/adventure idea is barely a worm of thought. Which is mainly why i'm here, to get an insight on how you guys go about building The Story and to bounce ideas off of those of you with practical, and might i add, extremely noteworthy experiences.
"There are a lot of differences between MUDing and RPG'ing, and I see it in your expectations from the post. Your players' motivation is so that he can "be a mortal hunter". That's fine in a MUD, because MUDS are mainly about "being" a character, and "inhabiting" an environment. The difference – with an RPG, you need a story." Again chem, i do understand, that 'motivation' isn't truly the main focus as i should have explained earlier. It's was more... lets give my player a reason to humor my efforts. To use a poor art analogy i hadn't even decided what i was sculpting yet, it was merely like asking the client if he wanted in done in bronze, marble, granite etc. even before doing the preliminary sketches. And yes, true/pure evil campaigns would be difficult to run which is why my representations/ideas of evil are more in the gray area of the spectrum.
"The multiple layers of self-indulgent rationales – a demon that is effeminate (why?) who is posing as a gargoyle (why?) seems just weird and way too self-reflexive." Sorry, i seem to keep making statements without explanations, i was trying to keep it short and simple for the moment. I need to remember that people can't pluck the answers from inside my head, and giving you guys the sentence topic is not unlike the five blind men telling each other what an elephant is. So backing up, effeminate because i wanted him to by the yin to the character's yang, without the obvious boy/girl chart flow. Demon, again in the see above, he's meant to be the counter part to the character's mother and posing as a gargoyle because no one believes that demons, angels, gods exist anymore. Overly complicated? Yes, but not everything is going to turn out this way, most things will be pretty straight forward. It's only with him because i was/am trying to create a world secret that's inherent/tied in with this particular NPC.
"I once played in Cyberpunk campaign in which the DM thought, "Wow, what if we played in the same setting, but if cybernetics weren't cool and were hard to get?" Woo-hoo! What fun - just gutted the only thing that made it special." Wow, now that's just silly. Though it makes me wonder what you feel i am "gutting" from D&D, if indeed that is what you were implying or if it was just a warning?
Which brings me to the more specific questions i should have asked rather then the open ender in the original.
~Do you often/only use pre-mades as a starter, are they easily adaptable to environment a, b, c?
~How much, is too much in planing the adventures themselves, is there such a thing?
~How important are world secrets in a campaign? Because from what i've read elsewhere it seems that even coming up with 2-3 can provide you with a driving force behind the curtain that lends itself to the writing without even "trying".
~How often do you have a big "Why are we here" idea to begin with, is it better to just let it form naturally as the player(s) progress?
Thanks ever so!
1.) With one specific exception I've run pre-fabs start to finish as-is. When I want to use a part of a pre-fab I use geographic separation for clarity. I've not mixed more than that at one setting.
2.) I personally don't think too much planning is ever a problem but too much expectation the players will do a certain thing has tripped me up more than once.
3.) "World Secrets" are nice but this goes back to Whutaguy's comments. If the secrets are part of the "Why" in "Why are we here?" then you've got a start.
3a.) I've never had anything work without trying. Your mileage may vary.
4.) I always have a clear "Why are we here" even if it is only for a single stage or a smaller part of a bigger picture.
Submitted by st estlin:
Picking out/up a 'ready, set, go' campaign would be undoubtedly easier, i know my interest level in GMing would only hold so long as i feel that the world is 'mine.'
I'm just saying, picking up a ready-set-go campaign isn't necessarily all that easy because you generally need to make it your own anyway. You need to play the NPCs, and that is huge. You need to create the segway to insert the players into the story with a reason for getting involved. You need to seed the story with clues or secrets that lead to the next adventure. You need to place it within the overall story and geography and make it a real place.
A benefit in trying pre-fab adventures is that they may impart some of the discipline needed to help you *finish* the stories, to break them into something manageable, with a sense of temporary closure for characters. I've played under too many GMs with ambitious world-building ideas where they've dragged out the exploration too long, to the point that the characters have no other existence, and that there is nothing delightful in the world --no sense of home or groundedness. They lose plausibility.
Moreover, the details dropped on the players about things happening a continent away seem to take precedent over what's happening in this village, right now. How is this village different from the next? Who do I meet there? These are the things that differentiate a plot outline from a truly fleshed out environment. Think SMALL, not huge. In a world where the fantastical is mundane, you need to work twice as hard to make it plausible and familiar enough that the players can taste it and accept it as they would a story, rather than simply bearing with you for the sake of the game.
That, I think – is the happy median you are looking for. If you buy a pre-fab world setting, in backfilling the smaller details – the details the players will actually interact with when they play. Those things are almost never found in the world books. For example, you might find an entry that says a town's major export is iron. But how does a player interact with that? That's where you come in and instead of writing the whole planet, you think small – and you set an adventure around an iron mine, or protecting an iron shipment, or guarding a warehouse. You might mention a lot of dwarfs or smiths or furnaces there, or soot covered people, and give evidence of the economy in your commentary. These are the things the players actually encounter or witness, and they are the things that make this place different from the next.
"worse than starting from scratch for players because their expectations can be counterintuitive." Could you elaborate on this comment?
Sure, you mention below that in your world, people think angels, demons, gods don't exist anymore. In effect, you've just gutted the entire divine magic system – clerics and their pantheons, followers, and powers. This is a fecund source of creative material for the game that the players expect to be there, and one of the structural lynchpins of the gaming system. And for what benefit? Is it more fun to play in a world like that? Is it fun, as a player, to pretend that your character doesn't believe in these things only to later pretend to discover that they do exist? Or is it more fun to play in a world where demons, gods etc exert a real influence with tangible results. If they DO exert tangible evidence (ie through clerics) then why wouldn't anyone believe in them? Again, this is somewhat self-reflective game mechanism tinkering, without any apparent real game or narrative benefit. It's about fiddling with the way people play the game, rather than surprising them with any genuine plot twist.
Do you mean starting a character at such a high level can lead to problems in adventures/encounters, or might cause my player(s) to kill first, ask questions later?
I mean that playing evil characters running around to kick kittens and make babies cry does not offer the player much of a sense of satisfaction of a job well done. I'm not making a self-righteous point here. I'm just saying that it's easy to cause mayhem ("I randomly stab someone") and difficult to thwart it ("oh no, someone is about to be stabbed!"). Thus, the greater accomplishment comes in doing the difficult thing, where the reward is intuitive. I feel, as a player, like I've done something that day if I stop someone from being stabbed. I need no further explanation to get that. Not so much for being a bad guy.
how is world-building a flaw?
Because it isn't the same as facilitating a game. It isn't playing, and it is generally several steps removed from playing. A good-enough analogy would be in painting figures to play in the game. Beautiful painted figures that any player would be proud to have represent his character on the map. But is it playing? No. And if the GM spends most of his finite time painting figures, to the point that the actual game is neglected, then how can that be a good thing? That's not to say that world-building or figure painting isn't something you should do, or that it isn't appreciated – I'm just saying that it isn't playing, and it isn't something that necessarily brings you any closer to playing.
my story/adventure idea is barely a worm of thought. Which is mainly why i'm here, to get an insight on how you guys go about building The Story and to bounce ideas off of those of you with practical, and might i add, extremely noteworthy experiences.
The best practical advice I can give is to use good, prefab adventures, at least at first. If you want, set them within a wider geography that you've developed or adapted. The biggest problem with The Story is that DMs rarely understand when to END it and start the next one.
And yes, true/pure evil campaigns would be difficult to run which is why my representations/ideas of evil are more in the gray area of the spectrum.
Again, if you are using a D&D setting, this is going to be cumbersome and confound player expectations. Good and Evil are hardcoded right into the DNA of the game – certain abilities and spells hinge on absolute alignments, and the pantheon, the monsters, part of the magic system are built around it. I would recommend that you use a different system if you want more grey areas.
Though it makes me wonder what you feel i am "gutting" from D&D, if indeed that is what you were implying or if it was just a warning?
I mentioned that on the hunch, based on what you wrote, that you would likely try to tinker with the foundation of the game, not just the setting. And now I've cited two examples (moral absolutes, and divine intervention) of you proposing just that.
~Do you often/only use pre-mades as a starter, are they easily adaptable
Yes, so long as the environment is consistent – as long as it is the same game. I find, in adapting them, I insert known NPCs, known environments, subplots from future pre-mades, likely strategies and personas for NPCs, likely tactics. I've played the same pre-made that I've dm'd, and it was a very different experience, despite the similarity in the encounter stats and places.
~How much, is too much in planing the adventures themselves, is there such a thing? It's a rabbit hole. You want to plan enough that the game moves faster and so the game is richer. If you can't get the background into the game in a way that the players can witness with their senses (rather than just narrating it to them), it's likely not useful. Nearly all campaigns will die or take a left turn before your "world secrets" are exposed. DMs need to be extra careful of self-indulgent crap.
It's not how much you plan; it's what you plan. A good DM will facilitate the players' game, and will feel just as eager as the players about finding out what happens next - how the challenge he has set up will be resolved. A bad DM frequently focuses too much on conceptual material that that offers no player interface, introducing changes to the game without understanding why. A bad DM ends up making the PC's passive witnesses to his world, while a good DM tries to find ways to help PCs affect it.
~How important are world secrets in a campaign? Because from what i've read elsewhere it seems that even coming up with 2-3 can provide you with a driving force behind the curtain that lends itself to the writing without even "trying".
I like to think about them, but in honesty, in many years of playing – the only way I've found out about them was from dm's either narrating them or telling the players what was "really" happening, years after the playing group disbanded or moved on to a different game. It's nice to fantasize about throwing The One Ring into Mt. Doom, but most of the time you'll be mucking about in the Barrow Downs.
How often do you have a big "Why are we here" idea to begin with, is it better to just let it form naturally as the player(s) progress?
If players are starting small, I like to keep it small. The Big Bad doesn't usually hit them for a long time. I like the idea of just having them try to make ends meet for a while. Saving the world doesn't make a lot of sense when you can get killed by a rat.
I hope I'm not coming off like a creativity killer. I'm going on the assumption that you are doing this so you can PLAY a sustained campaign. If that is not your intention, if your goal really is that you like to create worlds and such, then by all means, continue with the research. On the other hand, there is plenty of room for creativity and personal flair even in a string of pre-fab adventures within a boxed setting.