#dming advice

[dailyadventureprompts]

As much as I'm falling in love with Blades in the Dark, I'm still trying to what makes for an ideal setting for it, as I've had a few false starts bore hitting something that works with my current weird western.

Here's what I've figured out:

1) Systems of power rotten through with corruption and exploitation. The current order is a house of cards held up only by injustice, compromise, and brutality... and it responds with EVEN MORE BRUTALITY when it's threatened. People with power need to be desperate to hold onto it and so are more willing to take risks to hold onto it, which presents opportunities for the players (and other groups) to act when that deathgrip opens cracks in the facade.

2) A particular claustrophobia when it comes to the factions. everyone is in someone's pocket, owes a debt, or knows a guy. Can't swing a dead bluecoat without knocking against three different factions and at least two of them hate you. While this doesn't necessarily mean you need to have everything happening in one city things need to be close enough together that the crew is stepping on someone's toes no matter where they go. This keeps the crew playing the game of politics, trading favours for alliances while constantly risking the wrath of those higher than them.

3) Vice as societal lubricant. Just like the crew needs vice to unwind from their capers, the setting needs flow of vice to keep the wheels of power turning, no matter how greasy they get or who gets crushed underfoot. The masses need distraction, the elites need excess, the industries need fuel, and the strange need power. This gives the crew endless opportunities to find someone who's buying what they're selling, or piss someone off after their antics interrupt the flow of commerce.

4) Enough is NEVER enough. An organizing principle of any world using Blades as a system is that no one ever has enough of what they need, and so is driven to desperate action in order to get it. Even those on top of the pyramid lack the control they desire (see point 1), and everyone they squeeze to get it finds themselves grasping for something else too. NPCs who are rich in any one thing should be hungrily lacking in something else, be it material resources or ephemeral things like recognition or inner peace. When the debt comes due, the crew always owes more than they can pay off, meaning they must take further risks to try and stabilize, forcing them to bite off more then they can chew each time.

5) The Clock is Ticking. Whether or not they know it, every time the crew goes through the setup/mission/downtime cycle they're getting closer and closer to something big happening. One of the city's long standing tensions boils over into outright conflict, someone important dies and leaves a mess for others to clean up, something well and truly weird happens and it throws the system into chaos. Sometimes the party will kickstart this chain of events themselves, but it's always a good idea to have at least one in your back pocket, that way if they play things safe you can spring the unexpected on them and knock them out of their predictable pattern.

[sagesariadnd]

The Octopus Rule, or: So Your Druid Wants to Be an Owlbear

This title isn't going to make any sense until I get into it, so bear (haha) with me.

I was recently reminded of the discourse that exploded online when the trailer for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves came out, and featured Doric the druid wildshaping into an owlbear.

Objectively, that moment is radical as fuck and one of the most fun moments of the movie itself. But the reason it caused a huge stink is because: druids can only wildshape into anything categorized as a beast, while owlbears are categorized as monstrosities. So the rallying cry from rules purists is that this is impossible and inaccurate and a clear indicator that the writers don't know what they're talking about and the movie sucks! Baaaaw!

But if you're one of the many (potentially new) players who saw that scene and said "but I wanna be an owlbear!" fear not; this isn't as rigidly forbidden as these spoilsports say it is. There are absolutely ways to make this happen, and it starts with a DMing mindset that I call: the octopus rule.

In season 2 of Bluey (stay with me on this), there is an episode called Octopus, where Bluey and her playmate Chloe play the titular game, Octopus. It's a fairly loosely defined roleplay where Bluey's dad, Bandit, burbles and flails wildly while trying to fend the girls off from trying to get to the other side of the couch he's guarding to collect his buried treasure. Chloe has so much fun with this game that she tells her own dad about it, trying to get him to play, but her father is a very practical, reality-minded person - er, dog - and has trouble visualizing what Chloe is describing, and keeps asking "wait, do octopi do that?"

Chloe eventually gives up, disappointed. Her dad feels bad and spends the evening researching octopi, eventually showing her some of the more interesting things he found. It turns into them brainstorming some new rules for Octopus using the information they found - such as being forced to freeze if the octopus touches you, inspired by a particular type of octopus that had poisonous suckers. It makes the game accessible for Chloe's dad, and even more fun for the girls when Bluey comes over to play. And one of the rules they decided on was, that if the question "do octopi do this?" came up, the answer was:

Our octopus does.

And that line is what altered my brain chemistry when it comes to discussing D&D rules, rule of cool, and all that paperwork that gets in the way of doing something interesting in the game. The rulebook might say one thing, but you might think that it makes more sense or is more fun to be another way. Or someone might ask a question about something that might work one way in reality, but maybe your world works differently. So, the answer is: if it's more fun, tells a better story, and keeps you from bickering with your players all day, then yes, it does work that way.

Example: In Forgotten Realms, drow quite famously live primarily in the underdark, most likely in the city Menzoberranzan. But what if you're not playing in a Forgotten Realms module? You don't have to adhere to that. "I want to play a drow who lived in a little village in the deep dark woods." "Do drow even live in the woods?" "Our drow do."

I even invoked this during my mom's campaign. My bardlock got a warning from a higher power that doesn't really understand how the world works that asked if she knew that her brother "was involved with a fiend." This was a scary plot point for a while because she had recently broken her pact with a fiend, and was worried that this meant someone was manipulating or hurting her brother. But when we went to visit him to make sure he was okay, it was a false alarm; his boyfriend was just a werewolf, and one who was aware of his condition and had safety measures in place. And as I say that you may notice a flaw in that: werewolves aren't fiends - they're only listed as humanoid and/or shapeshifter in the books. Turns out my mother had misread or misremembered their classification. But none of us criticized her or argued or even demanded any sort of retcon; her game is set on an entirely different planet, how do we know that werewolves aren't fiends in this world? So I simply stated: "our werewolves are."

"BUT SARIA!" I hear some of you cry, "THE RULES ARE THERE FOR A REASON! CHANGING THE RULES JUST CAUSE IT'S FUN WOULD CAUSE ANARCHY! ARE YOU SAYING WE SHOULD JUST LET A DRUID PLAY AN OWLBEAR WITH FULL MONSTER STATS?!"

No, not at all. Of course there would be reasons not to give your druid full owlbear stats. I'm just saying that if you let one word in the book deny your player something they're excited about, you could afford to think more creatively. If your character wants to be an owlbear, find a way to make it happen! The easiest way would be a cosmetic change; they can say they're wildshaping into an owlbear, and in game they LOOK like an owlbear, but mechanically they have the stats of a brown bear - similar, but lower CR, and an actual beast. Maybe you can have them go on an epic quest to unlock a more powerful form and become an owlbear, but with tradeoffs such as limited use or giving points of exhaustion. Maybe you could make or find a PC build to play an ACTUAL owlbear (those builds exist, ask your local furries) that wildshapes into other forms. Be creative! Don't let the word 'monstrosity' be the end of the conversation! Your players want to do something fun, and you as the DM are the facilitator of fun.

Can druids wildshape into owlbear? Maybe your druids can.

[iamthedukeofurl]

I feel like at this point the conversation has pretty thoroughly debunked the idea of the “Matt Mercer Effect”, where new TTRPG players exposed to the hobby through actual play shows like Critical Role end up expecting their random local game to be run with the same degree of focus and production value that they saw online. That said, I think there ARE some bad lessons that somebody whose primary exposure to the Hobby is actual play streaming might learn, mostly for GM’s. 1) A lot of the big Actual Plays I’ve seen tend to feature around six players. Critical role started with seven, and has a base cast of six with fairly regular guests. Six is generally considered to be the MAXIMUM amount of players for a TTRPG for a variety of reasons. It varies depending on group, GM, and system, but D&D at least tends to center on four players. 2) Actual Play shows are entertainment, players and GM are cast members trying to create an entertaining experience for the viewer. In an actual game, The GM’s goal is to entertain the players, not some hypothetical audience. A lot of actual play GM’s spend a lot of time and effort on lavish descriptions and NPCs, which are good things, but remember that the more time the GM spends talking, the less the players get to actually do stuff. If you’re watching an actual play it’s fine, since your experience doesn’t change that much based on who is talking, but for a player at the table, sitting there while the GM reads out six paragraphs of descriptive text or acts out some wacky NPC can get boring. 3) In an actual play, the players are financially incentivized to make the game an experience worth watching, this means they’re motivated to put thought an energy into the game. A local table game isn’t going to necessarily be that way, your players are often looking to relax and have a good time, they’re not necessarily going to write gripping backstories with lots of dramatic reveals, or show up with the energy, or even the theatrical skill, to do the sort of big dramatic roleplay scenes that form the highlights of a lot of actual plays. A GM first exposed to the hobby through actual plays might expect that a decent amount of a normal game is just players RPing with each other, and while that can certainly be the case, it’s not necessarily so. Even if that’s what your players want out of the game, they’re not necessarily going to be very good at it.

[sarahscritfail]

the best piece of dming advice I ever got, which is not mentioned almost at all in most advice videos. this one piece of advise has made me leave tables because dm’s didn’t do this. It is to ALWAYS be your players #1 fan. this doesn’t mean that you make their lives easier, because normally our favorite characters / hero’s go through hell, but it centers your relationship to your players/their characters in a very healthy way that keeps moral and storytelling up at the table. celebrate their successes , revel in those nat 20’s even though it took you three hours to plan for this boss fight and it’s done in 20 minutes, find them and the stories they come with interesting. the most overwhelming part of dming is thinking that you’re the one telling the story, and this takes a lot of the pressure off of you and can also make the story you’re telling 10x better.

[open-hearth-rpg]

One of the good things about running the community feed is that I get to boost some of my own work.

Age of Ravens: Volume I: Running

I've now released the first two volumes collecting work from AoR from last 14 years. This first one brings together my general and specific advice for GMing and running ttrpgs. This clocks in at 196 pages with 27 pieces.

You can pick this up on itch or DrivethruRPG

So what do we have in this book? The first part "Strange Things Seen Close Up" covers game specifics:

1. Mook Methodologies: how rpgs handle troops, minions, and masses 2. Teamwork Tactics: how rpgs handle help, aid, and support 3. Considering Complexity: thinking about how we judge crunch in play 4. Building and Setting Settlements: How recent games handle community building 5. Running Mysteries: planning and executing mystery scenarios 6. Factions in Action: using factions as a campaign cornerstone 7. Conspiracies: using conspiracies in rpgs 8. Conspiracy Sandbox: building an rpg campaign around open world conspiracies 9. Newb's Guide to Imaginary Wrestling a non-wrestling fan learns stuff to play WWW 10. Suikoden, RPGs, and Imaginative Space: lessons we can take from this jrpg series

Section two is "Pulling Back the Lens"

11. Seven Starter Stories: go-to inciting incidents 12. Running One Shots: tips & tricks for running these at cons or beyond 13. Selling the Setting the challenge of deep rpg setting 14. Hack the Table: the joy of quick hacking games and getting them played 15. Open Table: What the What: challenges & rewards of open table play 16. Gaming the Online Medium: ideas for making use of what playing online can offer 17. Multiversal Campaigns 1: conceiving and planning these campaigns 18. Multiversal Campaigns 2: more lessons 19. The Quickening: best practices for publishers presenting product 20. What I Like in Games: Saying Please: a wishlist of stuff in rpg books 21. Online Con Management: lessons for running large online events

Section three is wide range stuff "The Eye in the Sky"

22. Five Faces of the GM: a quintet of game facilitator roles 23. Pandemic Brain: Breaking the TTRPG Reading Block : how I stopped worrying and learned to grok rpgs again 24. Community Lessons: key lessons learned from running for my online community 25. 23 Lessons from RPGs: what I learned from every rpg I ran in one year online 26. 33 Tips for Running Online: specific advice for running rpgs online 27. How To Run 200+ Sessions With 25+ Systems In One Year: a run-through of my process

If that sounds interesting to you, I hope you'll check it out.

[artandstarstuff]

Since my Kofi goal got completed, we reveal the goblinoid name tables! For all your gobby needs. My Kofi.

[dungeonqueering]

A Discord servers for DMs

Do you ever feel so excited about your game, but everyone you would talk about it to are in it?

Do you ever struggle with coming up with a puzzle, making a plot element work, naming a place or item, or any other myriad things that make running games hard? Do you enjoy bouncing ideas off of other people, and helping them in kind? There’s now a Discord server geared entirely towards collaboration between DM’s called the DM Round Table The mods (myself included) want to foster an inclusive space just for DMs free of bigotry and hate. (This includes soon-to-be-DMs, DMs between campaigns, and DMs of all experience levels)

We’re accumulating resources, teaching workshops, hosting discussions, and helping each other solve all the problems that come from being a DM.

We are an 18+ server and geared toward adult DMs. There will be mature, respectful discussion of adult themes and topics here so please be aware of that if you join.

There are channels for minis, maps, homebrew content, discussion, naming, and way more!

We would love it if you would join us! https://discord.gg/aHJjHrNvKB

[rabidchilde]

I rarely put overt puzzles in rpg games I run, but I decided to try one for tomorrow's Goblinville. The only other time I've done it, I made little cards the players had to put in the right order and they had fun.

So I'm not sure how much I want to pull away the curtain for this, since it might take away from immersion. It's a logic grid puzzle, and it's meant to show that they need to allocate their supplies and workers correctly to dig themselves out of a collapsed tunnel before it collapses completely. Each failed try would mean a character would take a condition.

Have any of you tried anything like this? How did it work out?