Text advice for GMs (split)

[sarendt]

I really liked where this post was going and was sad to see it die an early death, so I figured I would post some game exp. of my own so that maybe we could hear about some books that I might like to read.

My group:  I have a been playing RPG's for about 15 years off and on, I just recently moved to a new area in Jan. and found a group shortly there after.  This group started out quite large with a few players who were there mostly to be part of the group not to role play or even really play the game.  The person who was GM'ing stopped after a few sessions and another jumped up.  The later seems to be the primary GM who was taking a break and letting the other player GM a bit.  They were playing a high lvl group, about lvl 15 and planning on taking it to epic level.  All this was fairly new to me, as I was more into the low lvl game and roleplaying. 

They were leaning towards max/min chars. and its not uncommon for a single char. to kill a monster with a CR higher then their char. lvl in one round.  I was playing a Bard who had little to bring to the combat table and wanted to see more RPing.

Any who, I suggested that I would like to take a turn GM'ing and started up a alternative campaign once a month, we were meeting three times a month when possible.  This worked well for me as it gave me time to prepare.  I had GM'ed a bit when I was a teenager but never really had much success in my own mind with it.

I introduced the other players to my world by having their main characters meet a 'god' in their sleep and asking them to assist some less experienced friends of his, they excepted and found them selves 'possessing' adolescent children in a village in the middle of no where.  The adventure centered around the local river running low and having to determine why and solve the problem.  In the middle of this I through in a Tax collector and his body guard, who was in town to determine what the taxes would be for them.  At this point the players discovered that their kingdom had recently been conquered, much to the surprise of the village who didn't really remember belonging to a kingdom.  Not too long after they had traveled to the source of the river, discovered a band of goblins mining next to the river and using the river as power for their mining.  The goblins turned out to be friendly types and the adventure ended with the players creating an ad hoc treaty between the goblins and the village.

This seemed to go well for everyone and they decided to continue in my world.  I have since run another adventure which I can post here as well if any are interested.

As for the information I am looking for, I just want to read some more about GM'ing free form, I would like to include some 10,000 foot threw 1000 foot plots that move along while the players adventure, weather they participate in them or not, and would like some information and ideas along those lines.  For example I took the idea of the kingdom being captured from our current political situation in Iraq and wanting to see what the players would do with being on the receiving end of 'help' from a neighboring country.  I am planning on having a rebelion form in their country and possibly showing their old leader to be less than ideal.  Im curious to see where the players take this and have done a bit to create personal agendas between the players and various political groups.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Actually, your post is 100 times more worthy as a thread topic than the parent thread (Good books for advice for GMs, so I've split it into a new thread of its own.

Chime in, people! This is what the forum's for.

Best, Ron

[Andrew Cooper]

I'm going to ask a question or two just to clear some things up in my mind, then I'm going to post after a little reflection.

1.) You mentioned D&D as the game system you were using as a player.  Are you still using D&D in the game you are running?  I'm sort of assuming you are but it didn't say specifically.

2.) How many players are at your sessions?  (This can be an average if it varies a bit.)

3.) Have you been using the system a lot during the sessions (ie rolling skills, combat, etc) or has it been mostly free-form role-playing?

Also, welcome to the Forge!

[sarendt]

1. Yes, still running D&D, using 3.5 currently. 

2. There are two of us GM'ing and currently we have 4 players.  The ages varies abit, roughtly mid 40's for one, 30 ish for two of us, me included there and one under late teen, 18 I think.

3.  It various, but it tends to be heavy dice for the other GM and some where in the middle when I GM, not free form, but not all dice either.

Thank you!

-Scott

[Andrew Cooper]

Scott,

What you are calling "free-form" is a common way of GMing in these parts.  Ron Edwards uses the bass playing metaphor for this style of play.  I'm a fan of this but am a relative newbie when it comes to actual experience with it.  Since that is the case, I'm going to list some interesting links below so that you can peruse what others, who are far better GM's than I, had to say on the subject.

Questions about Bass playing
Theory 101: The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast
Drumming (yes, more bass stuff)

Now, I for one would love to hear some more about your game.  Not just the fictional events that took place but the stuff that went on at the table.  When did you roll for what and when did you by-pass the system and just role-play?  Who pushed the story in different directions and how?  What is your preparation before the session like?  These kinds of things interest me and will probably garner some good comments from smart folks around here.

Also, if anyone else finds some good links about Bass Playing techniques that'd be awesome.

[sarendt]

*** Warning *** Super LONG ***

Well to prepare for the campaign I thought about what kind of concepts I wanted to have.  My main ones were the previously mentioned war, also I wanted to have some political intrigue.  I really wanted to have some situations exist where the choices the adventures made would effect the world around them, but typically the adventures don't have much binding them to a particular area so I choose to start them from a small village where they could grow roots.  So thats where I started. 

I created a rough map of small continent and put in a 4 separate country's and a story line for why they were there.  I ignored the majority of the back ground for those as it wasn't useful information for the group.  They wouldn't have any idea what these country's were or their history so I didn't create it.   I then decided that one of these country's was the strongest and that it was republic, so as to mimic the US.  Then I picked its neighbor, said it was a weaker country, ruled by a hereditary kingdom of which the latest ruler was mediocre, not great or terrible.  I placed my village far from the capital of this area and started to create maps and ideas for what was there, trying to link as much of it to some history and give meaning to why places exist.  I hate to have a random tower in the middle of no where with out a good reason. 

I will give an example here of what I created, and how the players experienced it.

I created an old wizard tower, approximately 100 ft tall and 30 round.  it was surrounded by lush gardens and a semi circle of tall strait trees.  The tower is hexagonal in shape and appears to be made of smoothly polished white marble.  It has a balcony created by the roof of the first floor that circles the entire tower.  There are a number of oak tables and chairs on the balcony facing the tall trees.  The floors of the tower are connected by simple ladders and trap doors. 

Each floor has a purpose.  the ground floor is a storage room and treasure room.  It can only be accessed via a hidden trap door from the floor above.  The 2nd floor has single stone chair or throne, it faces away from the door to the tower, its main entrance, towards a back wall.  All the walls are covered in satin drapes.  The 3rd floor is a illusionary maze, ones entered you would walk around in circles until the illusion is broken.  The rest of the floors have various wizard type uses, with the top floor being a study for the owner. 

I like to draw small pictures of different objects/buildings to use as a visual aid during play and did so with this tower.  The major feature of the drawing is a large gapping whole in the building about 2/3s of the way up.  The concept for this building is that an illusion specialist would sell tickets to dinner and a show at his tower.  He would teleport guests here and serve them illusionary dinners (To keep his price margin up) and show them fantastic creatures and such not, sort of similar to a drive in theater of our times. 

The wizards tower was broken into by a rogue who discovered him and how much money he was making, but dropped a random chemical while acceding the tower when the owner accosted him.  The rogue blows a whole in the tower, sending the owner flying to his death, (his hand with a feather fall ring was blown off his body in the explosion) where he lands in the surrounding area of the tower.  The rogue also dies and simply falls into the tower buried by some books.  The ghost of the wizard remains in his tower where he morns the lose of a locket his corpse is wearing which contains a picture of his beloved.  All of the towers grandeurs is an ongoing illusion, meant to keep the place looking great at all times.  Some of his wild shows still run when ever anyone stands among the tables of the tower. 

The trick or interesting part here is that the body of the wizard and the rubble from the explosion aren't visible, they are being hidden by the illusions.  I was hopping my adventures would figure that out and search around for the rubble and find the corpse.  The ghost of the wizard asks for a locket of his beloved if the party gets to the top floor of the tower. 

As for play, the party really enjoyed the drawing of the tower and made quick note of the 'hole' in the tower as well as some of the grandeurs, such as the tables, odd illusions and throne or stone chair inside.  They tried to pry some gems out of the statues and such not, but all their attempts failed, I rolled here, hidden, but didn't really look at the results, figuring that if the believed the illusion they couldn't be successful.  They also explored the tables in the back at which point the illusions came to life.  They 'knew' as players that these creatures, such as blue whales, green dragons and herds of woolly mammoths weren't real, but their characters couldn't explain them, they played this part pretty well, checking the ground after the dragon left to see if it left marks on the ground.  I didn't role for any of these, as I had purposely created these illusions as nearly impossible to disbelieve, at least for their character level, they are all level 1 characters.

They were a bit nerves that maybe someone owned the place and was still living their due to its cleanness, they knocked on the door prior to entering.  As they acceded the floors they discovered various trinkets of information, found the corpse of the rogue, buried him (which I found interesting, but honorable). 
They didn't have too much trouble figuring out the illusionary maze, there is only some much room to walk around in a 30 foot tower floor before you begin to think something is amiss, after some simple attempts to prove the walls were illusions, such as closing their eyes and walking around blind, they succeeded, no dice roles here.

They had to perform some interesting acrobatics to continue climbing past the blast hole, as the ladder was destroy as well.  Here I pointed out to them that if they fell they could possibly fall outside the tower onto the ground, which they understood but didn't pay much attention to.  Some basic skill and ability roles here, heavy modified by intelligent thinking, basically after the rogue had climbed up they tied the rope to each of the following adventures, that way if they fell they wouldn't fall all the way.  The rogue was too weak to pull them up, so they still had to climb on their own.  They took some minor damage if they fell, as the rope broke their falls, but didn't have too much trouble getting the group past this point.

As they climbed each floor past the maze, the wizards familiar played pranks on the group, such as dumping water, ink, tar and feathers etc. on who ever was climbing the ladder first.  (as the wizard was dead, his familar shouldn't be alive, but I figured that was boring and also the ghost was still around so that was my reasoning)   This was amusing and the group got a kick out of it laughing together as I described what horrors took place, as it was our rogue who kept having to role a reflex save to dodge the item, even though he knew it was coming (I gave a bonus here but he still ended up tar'ed an feathered) 

When they reached the top they meet the ghost, who spoke simply that he was seeking his locket of his beloved but no more.  After all this they were about to leave and I was some what frustrated that they hadn't figured it out yet, so I had one of them trip on a invisible stone, they still didn't get it so I asked them where they thought the stone might have come from, which helped the lights go on. 

I understand this was a pretty tough 'trick' or what ever to figure out, but I didn't know what else to do during the adventure other than to just tell them what happened someplace to make it more obvious to them with out just giving it away...

After this they took the locket back to the wizard and buried his body.  The wizards ghost came back to reality, talking coherently about his life a bit, he gave them a magical staff as thanks, and then asked them to help his other beloved friend, his familiar find a new owner.  The group didn't ask any questions of the wizard at this point about the staff, so they have a magical staff they can't use as they have no way to identify the object at this point.  I try to role play the various characters the group meets but tend to fall back into 3rd person as the group tends to play their characters that way.  Such as saying, "OK, we reach the wizard and give him his locket, what does he say?"  I would prefer to role play this out, and sometimes I do, but as a group it tends to get left by the way side more than used.  I would like to improve that aspect of my GM'ing as well, weather the players follow suit or not doesn't bother me.

Hope that helps describe more of what went on and such not.  I have more examples, but they seem very long to describe. 

Thank you for the links, I will be looking over those in depth!!

-Scott

[Andrew Cooper]

Scott.

Let me preface this response with a little disclaimer.  I basing my thoughts on your game and your play on what you've written here.  I obviously have not been at your table and experienced what you do.  Thus, if something of what I'm saying seems off, it may very well be.  I acknowledge that up front.  So, if I say "you" and it doesn't apply to you just imagine a "you" out there it does apply to. 

Okay, let's talk about Bass Playing as a style of GMing because I think it might be a little different from what you are imagining.  I believe my description of it is accurate but Ron or Sydney or someone brilliant can jump in and correct me if I go astray.  First, let's think of a garage band.  Imagine you've got a pretty good group of musicians that like to get together and jam once a week or so.  Now imagine you're sitting there listening to the band.  Listen to the bass player.  What does he bring to the group?  What does his instrument do that the trumpet, the keyboard and the lead guitar don't do?  Let's see...

1.) He helps drive the tempo.  The bass player is key (along with the drummer but we aren't talking about the drummer) in establishing a rhythm to the music.  He can speed the tempo up or slow it down based on how he's playing.

2.) He provides emphasis.  It's stupid easy to pick out the base parts and his playing will make portions of the melody hit harder and with more impact.

3.) He does not play the melody line (very often).  Every great once in a while the bass player will carry the melody but the vast majority of the time he's doing #1 and #2 above and the other instruments are doing the melody thing.

So, what does this mean in terms role-playing and GMing?  The first thing it means is...

Melody = Plot (story)

Just this much should tell you how different Bass Playing is from traditional GMing.  In traditional style GMing, as the GM you control the plot or the story.  You move the players through your plotline and try to keep them from screwing it up too bad in the process.  GM sections in traditional games are full of advice for how to do this.  Generally you try to do this without letting the players on to the fact that they aren't really in charge of the story.  You provide an "illusion" that they have some control over how the story plays out.

Bass Playing requires that the GM give up his control over the plot.  The story is something that is created right there on the spot by the players.  No steering them in one direction or another.  No preconceptions of how the game should play out.  No personal investment on certain key decisions being made one way or another.  So, what do you do, as the GM, if you have to give up control over the story?   You push the tempo and you provide emphasis, just like a bass player.  There are lots of really cool techniques for doing this but I'm going to concentrate on two of them that I'm most familiar with: Scene Framing and Bangs.

Scene Framing is introducing the characters to a (new) setting and situation.  You do this all the time as the GM but might not have had a term for it before.  For example, you tell your players, "After traveling to Doomspire you enter the huge cave of Flamestrike, the Dragon of Doom.  Gold, silver and gem stones sparkle in the low light.  On top of a giant pile of treasure, Flamestrike lifts his head and regards you.  He doesn't seem happy."  You've just framed a scene.  You've taken the characters from wherever they were and whatever they were doing in the previous scene and you've dropped them into a new location with a new situation.  Like I said, you do this all the time.  Player says he wants to go see the Duke and you frame the scene to the Duke's castle, or whatnot.

Scene Framing is a great way to control tempo.  Frame to several tense actions scenes in a row and the game feels like it is barreling through the story like an out of control train.  Frame to a scene with thoughtful discussion or something slower and you can give the players a breather in the action.  Take The Fellowship of the Ring.  There's hiding from the Crebain, then fighting the blizzard on the mountain, then escaping the watcher at the gates of Moria.  Lots of action.  Movie is moving quickly.  Then there is the quiet talking scene between Gandalf and Frodo that gives the audience time to take a breath and reflect on the story thus far.  You can do that with judicious scene frame as the GM.

Bangs are a technique introduced by Ron Edwards in Sorcerer and are defined as "The Technique of introducing events into the game which make a thematically-significant or at least evocative choice necessary for a player."  Bangs are just events dropped in by the GM that force an interesting (thematically) choice by the player.  The key here is that the GM can't have a preconcieved notion of what choice the player ought to make.  Also, there should be more than one available choice that is actually feasible.  A choice between "Going on a date with a girl I like." and "Certain death for everyone on the planet." isn't really a choice, ya know?

Bangs add emphasis to the game.  They underline important thematic statements by the players about the story and about their characters.  One really good thing to do with Bangs is to drop one on a player and see how he answers the question.  What decision did he make?  Take note of it and look for a place to drop another Bang that escalates the previous decision.  It's basically saying, "So, your character thinks duty is more important than love.  What about now?  Even when this happens?"  Couple that with agressive scene framing and you get rising tension and quickening action.  Good stuff.

So, that's Bass Playing, at least as I understand it and a couple of techniques you can use in that style of GMing.  From your example of game play with your characters in the Illusionist's Tower, it seems to me that you're running a fairly standard "GM controls the plot" style of game.  Switching over to something like the Bass Playing model is a pretty radical change in mindset for a GM.  Letting go of that contol is harder than you think sometimes.  At least it was for me.

Where would you like this thread to go from here?  Do you have some specific questions?  I've explained the general idea but I might have just confused part of it (or all of it).  Feel free to hammer away with questions if you like.

[sarendt]

I think I understand the basic idea of Bass playing, but I'm not sure where my ideas fall with all the different styles.  Again some of the core concepts that I would like to keep for my world is a history that has meaning, and future events that are moving, with or with out the players actions/involvement.

I am not totally sure here, but I truly don't believe that I am creating a story in which the characters have no impact.  For example I want to have a type of war happen, where kingdom one rises up and tries to rebel against their last conquering kingdom.  The characters can choose to help either side, or not at all, maybe they will travel to a completely different part of my world and never return to this one, but they will hear about a war in this part of the world at some point, even if its just as a rumor, and if they return as some later date, cities will be ruled by new people, and friends and family may not have survived the war.

Now if the players choose a side in the war, I just want to explore how this decision effects their characters, do all the characters choose the same side, do they explore which side may be right or better?  What if both are shades of grey?  Do the characters stick around after the war and help create a new kingdom that is right and just?  These are the questions I want to have in the campaign but I don't feel I can just free form through the whole time and have the same kind of twisting intrigue I want.

For history I have started to show various buildings from the past, that were inhabited and used for various reasons.  What those reasons are/were is not clear, and I haven't defined them per say, I sorta make them up, usually prior to the game play, and try to weave them into a continues story, so the dwarves abandoning building A, that they use to use as a look out tower has some meaning to the elves hiding in this world, even if its not apparent to being with.  Thats just a random example, and if I find some other interesting link between those two ideas, or some third idea, I can change things, as my players are in the dark to most of this.

I guess what I see my self as doing is creating a virtual world, one that has history that the players are a part of, but don't directly effect, but one with a future where the players can interact and have a meaningful influence on.  Does this idea fall into one of the various styles?  It doesn't sound like the illusion creating one to me...