Game Mastery – Page 3 – Threading Carefully

2017-09-142017-09-14

Difficult players

Aka, OMG, why are you like this??!

Or, ‘How i stopped caring and learned to love the sauce’.

One of my biggest pet peeves at a table is difficult players. And i’m sad to say that this is still an ongoing struggle after 6+ years of being a GM.

Having a bad group or just any bad player(s) in your group can really demotivate you as a GM and personal experience has at times left a sour taste in my mouth. There can and likely will be points in time where you may question the reason for even showing up anymore.

Continue reading “Difficult players”

2017-09-132017-09-13

Theme and Flavor (3)

As we discussed two weeks ago and the week before, Themes can be a very powerful tool for structuring your campaign. Picking the right theme for your campaign can turn a mediocre idea into a tale of heroism talked about for years to come and drifting from theme to theme with no direction can turn the greatest campaign into a meaningless meandering soup of conflicting ideas.

So in our third installment of talking about themes, we’re going to tackle the one-two-three punch of setting up a theme, revealing its actors and smacking the characters with the consequences of what you’ve just done. This part will be focused mostly on story themes, although you can certainly apply what we learned last time about visual themes. I’ll be using two examples as a guideline for this article. Feel free to steal them for your home game.

Continue reading “Theme and Flavor (3)”

2017-09-072017-09-06

Building your world

Aka, Once upon a time…

Before you choose your system,
before you dream up your antagonist or end boss,
before there is even a mention of classes and sheets,
There is a talk you need to have with your players.

You may already have certain wants and interests for a possible campaign.
But to have an interesting and engaging game for your players, you will need to involve them in the creation of your world. Sit them down and spend some time on hearing them out. This can vary from group to group. From an hour to several sessions. If you can’t meet up in person, try and at least get a discord or skype call going. This will save you some trouble.

Continue reading “Building your world”

2017-08-302017-09-13

Theme and Flavor (2)

As we discussed last week, a proper theme can really help guide you in planning a campaign. Today I’d like to talk about using theme to not guide your own campaign but to guide your players.

You see, players are tricky creatures and will subconsciously pick up on the themes you’re putting down. You can use this to both make your game more compelling and to pull the rug out from under them for a surprising upset. How to do this, well, that’s what we’ll be talking about here.

Continue reading “Theme and Flavor (2)”

2017-08-222017-08-30

Theme and Flavor (1)

So you’ve decided to GM a roleplaying game. Awesome! You’ve got a system all picked out, your players are excited and you’ve started doing some prep for your campaign. You’re figuring out names for towns and what optional rules to use. You’ve read the rulebook again and are starting to draw up some NPCs and potential plotlines.

But now comes the hard part of creating and running a successful campaign. You somehow have to wrangle and wrestle all of your ideas into a cohesive whole and then herd the cats that are your players in the right direction to actually experience all that content you’ve made for them. And that’s not easy.

But fear not, dear reader. There are tricks to be employed, ruses to use and techniques to master that’ll make this if not easy, at least doable.

Continue reading “Theme and Flavor (1)”

2017-08-102017-08-09

The Wise old Wizard

Aka, Stay a while and listen.

There may come a time in your campaign, where you as a GM may wish to introduce an NPC to the game that could guide the party along the story.
Much like a quest giver or a contact/source of information. Or even as a companion that could join the party on their quest and help out.
How subtle you are about these things, is entirely up to you.

Consider the following Characters:

Elminster Aumar
Gandalf (The whatever color)
Merlin
Obi wan Kenobi (Space wizard)
Yoda (Space wizard Redux)
Ramirez from Highlander
Dumbledore Continue reading “The Wise old Wizard”

2017-08-012017-08-08

Searching for Treasure!

For many roleplayers and certainly many characters, treasure is one of the primary reasons for their adventures. Treasure is rarely the end goal (unless the characters are truly shallow) but fine quality loot is a mainstay of an adventurer’s diet.

Scrooge McDuck — The result of a successful adventuring career.

So how do you make finding ever increasing sums of gold and piles of magic items interesting? Well, that’s what we’re here to talk about!

Continue reading “Searching for Treasure!”

2017-07-272017-07-28

Bosses, alpha’s and memorable NPC’s

Aka, We meet again, Mr. Bond…

In games, we often see waves upon waves of minions (or often called ‘Mooks’). Even in tabletop and roleplay or even movies, we see a lot of unimportant faces creating an obstacle for our heroes. At times though, we notice a few characters standing out above the rest (even if they are still minions at the end of the day). These individuals may be slightly taller, larger, don’t wear a helmet, have a name, or are equipped better than their standard rank and file allies. Here we could immediately recognize these individuals as not simply standing out in presence but also in ability when compared to their comrades.
These characters have a much bigger chance to be remembered, depending on just how memorable they were. How much they stood out.

Memorable Friggin Catchphrase! Mr. Powers…

Continue reading “Bosses, alpha’s and memorable NPC’s”

2017-07-252017-08-08

What’s in a name?

Names. Names are everything. Names are a part of your identity and with the right name you can compel a demon to do your bidding and in some settings reshape the world.

Names are also really hard! Giving a character or NPC a name is a very tricky task indeed and requires you to carefully consider just what that name means for a person in your world.
Names tend to have meanings attached to them, implied characteristics and cultural baggage and choosing the wrong name for an NPC is worse than not naming them at all.

Discussed here are a few examples of doing this right and doing it wrong. Of course these aren’t hard and fast rules but I hope I can teach you a thing or two with regards to naming.

Continue reading “What’s in a name?”