GMing?
Callan S.:
Then we demands actual play accounts!
Please? :)
AP accounts don't actually have to have any problem or such to work on to be posted here (as I understand the forge, anyway)
Daemonworks:
Best advice I can think of is this: Whenever possible, let the players do the heavy lifting.
Examples:
Don't over-script. Make sure you have a good handle on the main scenes you want to present, but don't put so much work into them that you can't handle the unexpected.
Don't over-describe. You don't need to spend 10 minutes describing a tavern the PCs will probably be in for less than hour. Provide all of the important details (and
Encourage the players to make characters that share enough of the same goals to be able to work together, but are different enough that they will actually have to talk things through to decide what to do, and how to do it.
Set up situations that will result in the players roleplaying amongst themselves. If they are interacting with you, only one can really do anything at a time. If they are interacting with each other, each gets a lot more play-time.
Other advice:
Where possible, set up the scenes to that all of the characters have a chance to shine in a given session. That said, having sessions that revolve mostly around one or two characters is fine, as long as it's not always the same one or two.
Use the least number of NPCs you can to achieve your purpose, especially when you are starting out. Too many NPCs, and you will have a hard time keeping them all straight - and so will the players. Feel free to use physical props (hats, shades, whatever), if it helps you capture the NPC's personality better. Try to avoid too many scenes where NPCs talk to each other - that can get very confusing, very quickly for everyone involved.
ampetry17:
A word on preparation: don't prepare detailed plot. When you decide that you want event A, followed by event B, followed by event C, you are assuming complete directorial control over the story. Or worse, your preparations are brittle and will not survive an encounter with players who will decide that event B looks dumb, so they're going to go straight to event Q, which you hadn't even considered. Instead, prepare characters. Think on what your NPC's might want to accomplish, how they will react (or won't react) to the actions of the players, and what they might be doing while the players aren't watching. This way, when your players decide that they want to do X, you can get into the character of the NPC's who might be effected by X, and react in character to those events.
In your example, with the halflings and duels, how might it have gone if the father suspected his son of trying to murder him for his inheritance? Would he have been forced to act against the players to protect his status and reputation, even though he was happy with their actions? Was he influenced by the player characters' other actions? Or was he blinded by grief and rage that they'd killed his son?
For your game, what were the motives of those three animals that were springing them, and what were their relationships? Just by working out that dynamic, they move from plot device to spring the PC and give him a mission into characters that the PC can interact with to try and shape the story. Maybe one hates the Pet Catcher and is only in this to try and destroy this evil human that must be stopped at all costs. Maybe another is secretly in love with that NPC, and is only along to try and prove his or her worth to them. How might that character respond if the PC is suddenly indispensable to the plans of the first? Suddenly, your story includes subplots, and complications without introducing new characters.
Finally, preparation like this allows the players to drive the story. Let's say that your PC decides, "Hey, I don't care about this Pet Catcher dude at all. Yeah, he caught me, but going against him just seems dumb. He's tough, and he's just doing his job." Now, the three animals that rescued him might become the antagonists. After all, they invested time and effort into that escape, and he's essentially stiffed them on the bill. Maybe they're going after him now to make an example of what happens to appeasers in the Pet Catcher/Animal Agent war. I've had more than one NPC that I thought would be an antagonist become an ally, just because a player decided that he was more interesting than the sympathetic NPC I had envisioned as an ally.
Mathew E. Reuther:
There are some methods of preparing plot which serve to tell an exciting and interesting story.
These are, however, not simple things to master, and I'd say that the ability to do so with style and consistency is rare. As a result, the suggestion to not prepare plot is a good one for people who are not able to guide a story by making the characters really want/need to follow the plot . . . without forcing them.
Noclue:
Quote from: Rush Wright on October 29, 2010, 04:55:08 PM
Essentially how I made the campaign work is that the player started as a wild rabbit. He was caught by the "Pet-catcher" (something along the lines of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), and put in a cage in a pet store. When the owner had left, three small animals burst in with high-tech equipment to free the PC. The rabbit then joined the group as a hacker (after he had read a Hacking 101 book that happened to be in the animals' high tech library). Unfortunately, from the point that the animals burst into the pet shop, my mind blanked, and I turned what could have been an interesting scene into a miserable failure.
So, there's this rabbit. You capture him, giving him purpose in life: "Escape!" Then you bring in three animals to bust him out. The rabbit's problem was created and solved by you. Now he has no purpose. No goal. And because you can't come up with one for him, the session fizzles.
What did the player do during this session? What does the rabbit want?
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