Messing with Players, Vibrant Cities and Funny Monsters

If you’ve never checked out TT’s GMing forums before, here are three incentives to do just that:

• Messing with your players: Have you done it?: Clayton opens what could be a Pandora’s Box for entertaining GMing stories — and his specific example is a good one.

• Funny monsters?: TT member phasedweasel is looking for oddball fantasy creatures. Suggestions so far include gelatinous dodecahedrons and were-marmosets.

• Making a city come alive!: Thread necromancy revives Craig’s discussion about creating vibrant cities — including tips based on his 25-year long urban campaign.

And as always, if you have a GMing question — beginner or advanced, for any system, about anything GMing-related that you need help with — this is one of the best places on the web to ask it.

Simple Pleasure of a GMing Binder

I started running a Mage chronicle this past weekend, and one of the things I did to keep organized was create a GMing binder.

It’s not revolutionary. It’s not as sexy as using a GMing wiki (PDF). It’s not a new idea in any way.

But you know what? It’s fun. I’d forgotten how nice it was to have a one-stop, hardcopy campaign reference, and to watch it grow as new material is added. (Maybe I’m just getting old.)

If, like me, you haven’t used a GMing binder in a long time — or if you’ve never used one before — I recommend giving it a whirl. It’s a simple pleasure, but a good one.

Ways to Handle Missing Players

When one of your regular players can’t make a session, you have a choice to make: Don’t play, play something else or play as normal.

The first two options are pretty straightforward — let’s explore the third one, playing anyway. When you find yourself in this situation, you can…

• Let their PC fade into the background. PCs can be called away, recovering from injuries or simply around but not part of the adventure (although taken to extremes, that last choice is a poor one — think The Gamers). Your group will help you out by suspending their disbelief — just don’t make them suspend it from a crane. This is the simplest approach, and generally the best one overall.

• Have another player take over their character. I tried this a few years back, and it worked reasonably well. I got buy-in from my whole group beforehand, and no one ever had a problem with what had happened in their absence. It did, however, require more work from whoever got stuck playing two PCs, and we had to make sure up-to-date character sheets were always on hand.

• Play that PC as an NPC. Personally, taking on a full-participation PC role isn’t something I want to do as a GM — but making occasional contributions and ensuring that the PC in question stays out of harm’s way is just fine. Unless there’s a compelling reason to go this route, I generally prefer either of the other two approaches to this one.

When I started writing this post, I expected to wind up with more than three options — but I really think it boils down to these three. What am I forgetting? And which option do you prefer?

How Do You Organize Past Scenarios?

Once you’re several adventures into a campaign, how do you organize the scenarios your group has already played through?

There are two components to this question: the literal, physical organization of material (using a GMing binder, for example) and the meta-level management of past events — keeping track of stuff that will impact future adventures, etc.

For the Mage chronicle I’m starting today, I’ll be using a GMing binder with numbered tabs to file my scenarios after they’ve been played. I’ve never been that organized in the past, so I’m looking forward to it this time around.

I’ll also be taking notes as we play, and then synthesizing those notes into my setting material, NPCs and future scenarios. I’ve used some variation on this fairly organic approach for most games I’ve GMed, and it sometimes gets messy. Thinking about it explicitly should help me this time around, though.

How about you?

Charity Gaming Event Brainstorming

Over in the TT forums, Kurt “Telas” Schneider is kicking around an idea for a breast cancer charity gaming event, and I thought it would be a good one to share here, as well.

Here’s an excerpt from the thread:

Anyway, I thought of doing a gaming event for charity. Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to put something together in a week, but this sounds great for next year. I’d call it “Quests for Breasts”. Ideally, we’d have a pay-to-play game day (sorry, the Irish blood makes me occasionally rhyme things), preferably hitting up someone semi-famous to author it, with volunteer GMs, donated door prizes, free food for the gamers, and such. Realistically, it might be something more like a “local mini-con” with pick-up gaming, scheduled tables, demos, drawings, silent auctions, etc.

Now, what would you pay to play in such an event? What would you like to see at it? What would be a deal-breaker? What door prizes would you want/not want? Do you consider it all a bit too tongue in cheek? (For the last, there are women wearing shirts on the walk that are far more risque.) Basically, I’m looking for ideas and feedback from the TT crowd.

Telas and his wife walked the Breast Cancer 3-Day in 2006, and they’re doing it again this year (here’s the donation page for Telas and Mrs. Telas’s walk).

I know readership for the blog and forums doesn’t overlap entirely, and I’m sure Telas wouldn’t mind getting feedback in both places. As a GM, what kind of setup would you like to see? What if the event were run online, using virtual tabletops or in chatroom format? If you’ve got any thoughts or ideas about this one, share away!

Aleph Gaming, Theory Review and Player Matching

My crystal ball tells me you need…more gaming blogs to read…or…more players. Either way, I’ve got you covered:

• Game On: Aleph Gaming: TT reader Aleph recently started a gaming blog with a twist: He covers a different aspect of gaming each weekday, from video games to GMing advice. In the GMing tips department, check out Everyone Should Run a Diceless Session, Picking Up On Player Cues and Expectations and yesterday’s Personal Rules for Narrating.

• RPG Theory Review: Online since January 2006, RPG Theory Review has two goals:

To provide impartial, approachable, and informative reporting on current public advancements in the field of RPG theory.

To provide the RPG theory community with perspective and continuity in their work.

Mendel and Matthew, the authors, are performing a nifty service with this blog. There are tons of gamers talking about RPG theory in different places, and the roundup and review format is a good way to keep track of them.

• NearbyGamers: Why I am I pimping NearbyGamers again? Because a few weeks back, it worked for my group. A local gamer contacted me via NBG, and he joined our group shortly thereafter. Most player matching sites suck in one way or another; NearbyGamers gets it right.

Non-Mechanical Rewards for Powerful PCs

TT reader clem (who goes by clem in the comments, too) is running a seafaring campaign with advanced characters, and he’s finding that his players need different kinds of rewards for their PCs.

He recently shared this with me via email:

The characters are about as good at what they do as there is any need to be[.] Likewise, going the superhero/demigod route would ruin the swashbuckling vibe the campaign depends on. Since there are many stories yet to be told and many plotlines yet to resolve, retiring the characters or killing them off is undesirable.

Regardless of game system, genre or setting, this problem is going to crop up in any long-running campaign. So how does clem handle it?

Still, players like to be rewarded. What to give them? For one thing, reputation. In port, they overhear people telling stories about the legendary Sea Wolf. The powers that be seek their counsel. [NPCs] vie for the honor of being a redshirt on the ship. The [PCs] also gain rank and reputation aboard the ship for discoveries and accomplishments that add to the legend. In an individual case, a grateful sun god forced some of his arrogant paladins to seek out a player character and apologize for disrespecting him after he was instrumental in defeating a terrible darkness bringing monster. A clerical character received a promotion in clerical rank that gets him considerable respect and opens many doors.

That’s an excellent approach, and one that many players will enjoy — which is why I asked clem if I could share his email with other TT readers (thanks, clem!). He closed with this:

However, even this has limits. Now I am casting about for other ways to meaningfully reward players.

So how about it: What do you think of clem’s approach to rewarding powerful PCs, and what else can you do to keep your players interested in their characters once the mechanical rewards taper off?

For my two cents, one school of thought is that your players will stay engaged as long as they’re still having a direct impact on the aspects of the game world that they care about (large or small) — and those aspects of the campaign will nearly always be roleplaying-oriented, not mechanical. What do you think?

TT Layout Tweaks and One Last Problem

I’ve made a number of small changes to the site since the start of this month, but nothing major enough to announce on its own. Tweaks include:

I do have one lingering major layout bug, unfortunately, and I’m hoping a TT reader might be able to help me solve it. (I asked about it on the usually-helpful WordPress support forums two weeks ago, and haven’t gotten any feedback.)

Update: The layout bug has been fixed by John Arcadian of Silvervine Games — thank you so much for your help, John!

On posts with closed comments (for example: Being a Player is Like Using a Flashlight), the footer doesn’t expand to fill the width of the screen (like the header does). On posts with open comments, it works just fine.

I had a similar problem with the right sidebar that I was able to resolve on my own by changing where the sidebars appear in the code. Before I fixed it, the right sidebar would “fall” to the bottom of the page on posts with closed comments.

When I load other themes that have “expand-to-fill” footers, they work with just fine on all posts. I suspect this bug is theme-specific, but unfortunately the theme designer doesn’t take questions. If you have any ideas how I can fix this, I’d love to hear them — and thank you in advance!

And now that you’ve had some time to get used to the redesign, what do you think of it? I know I won’t be able please everyone (just like the old design didn’t please everyone), but my goal is to please as many readers as possible.

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