#gm thoughts

[windrunner-rion]

Prepping for my very first armor astir campaign starting tonight

God I’m so excited.

[crimes-mckenzie]

I believe so strongly that creatives need to experience and analyze media outside their typical in order to grow. A new lens changes everything.

[dawn-appears]

Normally I hash out my plots with my partner before games, but he’s going to play in my current game so I’m throwing my thoughts into the void in hopes of getting some feedback.

Cypher System: Old Gods of Appalachia

Session 1 plan:

Start in the local tavern, players learn that a traveling snakeoil salesman has recently been in town and it started a near riot. He normally arrives every few weeks with a “special” medicine that has actually been making people stronger, but he claimed to be out and was trying to sell other items instead. Lots of folks are big mad about it. In walks a guy asking if anyone knows a local healer - his old pa has fallen ill and they don’t know what to do.

Pa is spitting up tar and muttering horrible things. Find out he was a regular customer of the saleman, but has been without his dose for a week now. Family begs the party to go find the salesman, who just left a couple hours ago, certain that he has to be able to get more.

If they comply they’ll find the guy’s wrecked car a bit down the road, with the guy hanging from a tree - dead. Searching will find a scrap of paper with a note to meet someone and directions on where to go. 

If they go to the place they’ll find a cabin with a doctor living there. He’ll admit to making the medicine, but say the salesman was wanting a bigger cut of the money and they argued. He’ll insist he was willing to make a deal and not to know about the murder.

Suddenly a horrible monster will appear. The doctor will insist it is his wife, nothing can change his mind, and he will fight to defend the monster. When its all over they can find a diary of the doctor basically saying he made a deal to create these potions in exchange for getting to see his dead wife again for a few hours every night. 

Now they’ve got to figure out who he made the deal with, what the potions are, and who else is involved. They’ll get hints that the potions are super bad, but they’ll also get a partial recipe. 

I’ve got a few extra things planned depending on where they go and what they do. A dead mangled bear in the middle of the road could lead to something horrible, maybe a blank-eyed man hanging around somewhere, etc... And a couple things related to backtories - one is going to learn a family member could be involved, another is going to learn that something they think is benign is actually dangerous. 

Going more for fear of losing your humanity/morality rather than losing your mind kind of creepy horror. Very monkey’s paw ish, where you might be able to get what you want but at what cost. Its just the opening, so I planned for it to be more learning that something is happening rather than jumping in to stop it. Planning for this to be a full campaign, or at least I hope it will be. 

[lacklusterhero747]

Working at Costco, a large portion of my job involves pushing shipping carts in the parking lot. Often for hours at a time.

Sometimes I like to let my mind wander as I walk up and down the rows, and I imagine I'm like one of those worker units in an RTS. Constantly back and forth with my valuable cargo as the dynamic of the map shifts and changes around me. Constantly harried by other units that are much larger, more armored, and flush with significantly more hp.

And then I like to imagine that somewhere, some low to mid tier player is just spam clicking away trying to make me move faster and I'm just flipping then off.

[typezerostudios]

Instead of perception checks, I want to give my players a hidden object picture and give them a time limit to find everything.  The more objects they find, the higher their effective roll.  Still trying to figure out other options for different skill checks.

[ouamotw]

It's weird to be working on the end of season 1/beginning of season 2 knowing that we are coming up to the half way point of season 1 release wise

"Halfway point" lol which is like February

Working on season 2 means having to share secrets and that is....terrifying. sharing your creative baby with people, going "I am trusting you with this because narratively we are here"

Recorded a flashback yesterday that will start in 9.5 and finish... well. You'll see it all someday.

But I then got into a state of anxiety. Not a full on attack, just mild panic for hours.

Trusting people is HARD.

But I am doing it. Because the group working on this podcast deserves that trust. They've let me start telling this story, putting trust in me to not harm any character, and they've earned that trust too.

It's a weird day in this GM's mind, but a great one.

[wraith-of-thiodolf]

dont know if ive mentioned it before but as far as speculative fiction (especially for gaming purposes) world-building i have no trouble or complaint about races and species that are evil by default. its a story/game, and you have to enemies some-how. my real complaint lies in how those evil societies are portrayed. even if we side-step the fact that in say dnd theyre all basically interchangeable, theyre not societies that could survive. for example if you take standard dnd orcs they are always at war with every-one else and killing each-other at the same time while simultaneously brutalising their women and children. how do they survive? what benefit does in-group loyalty have? its even worse for drow because a) the underdark is an extremely hostile environment and b) they take for-ever to mature because theyre elves. if it was played realistically the older generations would be killed off before they could even be replaced with the next. its no wonder they all became chaotic good rangers on the surface...so if you are going to have an evil race or what-ever, try and make the culture make sense in the fact that it can perpetuate itself. there should be in-group loyalty. there should be care for the future generations. you can still be evil, just be practical as well.

[flight-of-the-rankov]

On the escapism of RP

We’ve had a string of RP heavy games recently, which I’m cool with, it’s good to see my players step out of heir comfort zone and try and embrace the story and world and whatnot. (That said, they’re deffo in for a HUGE combat-heavy dungeon crawl in the near future. So We’ll consider this the calm before the ‘Moon-Dwelling Cultists and Illithids before the Eldritch Giant Ass Monster’ storm.)

That said, I do have to improv a lot more when the players go RP heavy. Last night, that led to some very real drama. Honestly I never intended for the game to get as socially heavy as it did, though given the makeup of the players it was probably a given. Regarding the sexuality of one NPC and the social perceptions on it. I was winging it, and there was a definite temptation to fall back on the ‘Muh Homophobic Fantasy Society’. The players deserve more than that. I’m more capable than that.

Turning the problem into one of consent rather than one of homophobia was probably the best I could have done. I was pretty clumsy about it, though, I’ll admit. For context, this NPC is a rare fertile member of a rapidly declining race. While that part specifically remained in fantasy, I could see on the player’s faces that something had registered.

I managed to joke out of the conversation (tastefully) but it did raise another question. How much can I exploit real issues in my campaign? I want my players invested but my games should be an escape, not a reflection.

I’ll likely try and spin it into revenge catharsis for them, that seems the best way to bring this full circle.