2022-08-25T18:14:39Z
Iām 10 mins in, and so far Quinns has spent the entire time enthusiastically making VERY GOOD POINTS and heās totally right.
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[waits for the classic mid-video turnaround]
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Nope, the second half was also only made of ENTIRELY CORRECT STATEMENTS and was quite impressive. Itās all āHereās a tip: [Genuinely very good tip, huh]ā.
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Yes indeed. I might take issue with some of the specific examples but the core points are rock solid. Gatekeepers are just wrong: there are lots of ways to play RPGs, many of which I wonāt personally enjoy, but that doesnāt mean theyāre a bad way to play.
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Agreed. I think some new GMs might fare better with a pre-generated adventure that is more plotted and less improvisational. Being creative on oneās feet is a skill that takes practice and experience with some picking it up faster than others. Give the players the plot at the start, let them create characters with that plot in mind, and jump in. Some new players* can also benefit from being given clear directions on whatās expected of their characters. Freedom of choice can be paralyzing.
- As a roleplayer of 40 years, I still want some direction.
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I finally watched itāright after buying an RPG as a present for someone newly wanting to try RPGsāand I feel a bit vindicated. In this household we have two people who have GMed a lot over the years and weāve always had this debate about plotting vs just putting people into situations and see what happens.
I am the one who just loves to create a setting and wait for the players to mess with it. My partner needs to know the ending, needs to have his set piecesā¦ he wants the drama of it all. I gave up GMin because my āsituationsā tended to never quite resolve to a satisfying end. He stopped because he didnāt have the kind of time anymore to create those huge plots. (And I dislike being on rails a lot)
Maybe we need to āmeetā somewhere in the middle. The āsituationā Quins describes probably envisions several endings but these are implicit in the situation that needs resolution. So thatās my take-away.
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Iāve had some success thinking that this person is going to fight the PCs, and that room is where itās likely to kick off, so they get a bit more preparation. But if that doesnāt happen, I can always use them next time.
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Iāve had the most success with āthe bad guy is going to be in this room, so itās likely the party will get there because they want to. What are the 5 main ways this could resolve?ā and then planning for those instead of imposing one on them.
And if they do something else, I look at general resolutions that will be satisfying āis the bad guy alive yes/noā ādid they learn the thing yes/noā even if they never went to the room, and then thereās still a payoff.
Itās a lot of work, and Iām not good at improvising as a DM 
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Palladium Books (makers of great RPG universes and awful RPG rules) used to do these things called āHook, Line, Sinkerā adventures. The basic idea was simple: you gave the GM a Hook (āThe quiet rural town of St. Agnes is about to be occupied by a platoon of Coalition soldiersā), a Line (āThere is a family that asks the PCs for help fleeing the town because their daughter has psionic powers that the Coalition soldiers will kill her forā) and Sinker (āThe Coalition lieutenant leading the platoon is actually the biological mother of the psionic child, and her current āparentsā kidnapped her as a baby.ā)
The idea was always to present enough information that you had an idea where the story was going to go, but huge swathes of freedom to pursue that story however the PCs wanted. Is the Coalition lieutenant a cruel woman? Or was she driven to extremes in her search? Or is she actually not Coalition but has defected along with her platoon because everyone in the platoon has lost family members and theyāve teamed up together? Or is the lieutenant there because she is hoping for a promotion and canāt risk anyone discovering that she had a āmutantā child? Etcā¦ etcā¦ etcā¦
When Iām making adventures these days, I try my best to follow the same idea (except for Star Trek Adventures, but weāll come back to that). Just a Hook (something to lay the foundation), the Line (why do the PCs care? Why should they get involved?), and an exciting conclusion Sinker (maybe a twist, maybe a final villain, maybe a destination, maybe an opportunity for character growth, or whatever).
Star Trek Adventures is unusual in this sense because each āepisodeā is supposed to be structured like a mystery with the PCs at the core. As a result my usual improvisational style isnāt really a good fitā¦ there need to be 4 or 5 major plot points in an arc that form a coherent story (The Federation has a ship stranded in the Romulan Neutral Zoneā¦ which is carrying sensitive Federation technologyā¦ but one of the crew is a Romulan spyā¦ but the Romulans have come up with a sneaky plan to extract the spyā¦ can the heroes discover the truth fast enough to prevent their escape!?). As a result Iāve been using pregen adventures for the most part. BUT I did recently ask all my PCs for an idea for their own character-centric episodes, and Iām going to use those as sparks to play more improv-style eps. Just short one-off arcs (Moshi, our Ferengi engineer, is going to be approached by an FCA Liquidator because her biological parents, whom she has never met, have passed away and left their considerable fortune to herā¦ but maybe the FCA is lyingā¦ but maybe theyāre notā¦)
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Iām quite an improvisational DM and donāt do much planning, but a good approach Iāve found is whatās recommended in Monster of the Week: answer the question of āwhat would happen if the PCs werenāt here?ā
A recent plot in my long-running D&D campaign is that Iāve had an NPC rescue a child from some hags and take it to the party for protection. Main objective for the hags is to get the child back so they can complete their ritual and replace the other member of the coven.
Simplest resolution would have been the hags scrying on the child and coming to get her, but the party sorted out protection from scrying and other detection spells. Now the hags have to find her some other way, potentially tipping off the party about their plans.
Then the party decide to call one of the hags (as theyāve met her before) as they donāt yet know sheās involved and they want more information about hags. Now weāre back to the original plan.
But they manage to be cagey enough about what they want to have the hag offer them a deal for the information, thus resulting in her asking them to find the child for her. So now Iām left with the questions:
- What are the hags doing while they wait?
- How do they make sure the party follow through?
- When do they run out of patience?
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My standard investigative model is pretty similar. Bad guy wants to achieve X [become immortal] by means Y [bathe in the blood of young women]. Means Y leaves trace Z [blood-drained young women] which the PCs will find. Then add complication.
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Of course, my other much less clever method is when the PCs are diligently completing a mission theyāve been set and I find a monster that looks cool and I throw it at them.
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Yeah. the problem with mysteries is that you need clues for the PCs to find and for the clues to all fit logically together in a web that the PCs can explore. It is very difficult to improvise this. It is easier if the clues are mostly gleaned through interacting with NPCs (that you can improvise) rather than physical clues.
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There was an occasion when my steampunk campaign got accused of being boring. So I added a Martian invasion.
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