[Dresden Files RPG] Learning GMing skills

[Jay G.]

Hi everyone, I'm Jay, and I'm new to the forge.

I'm playing a Dresden Files game (over a chat program, if its relevant) in which I am the GM.  I am relatively new to GMing, having only done so on one previous occasion for a play-by-forum-post game of Dresden.  My purpose for this thread is to identify techniques and other ways for me to be as successful as I can be at GMing.  Part of this will probably involve identifying what "successful" means. 

To put this into context:  The play-by-post game I GM'ed went rather well, and the players all said that they enjoyed it.  Still, things fizzled out after a few months of play, and the game died.  One thing that I regret from the very start of that game is that I did not adhere very closely to the collaborative city creation process outlined in the book, instead doing much of the city creation on my own while taking small amounts of input from the others when they volunteered it.  This is not a problem in my current game, as the city creation was done fully as a group, and went very well.  I doubt that the city creation thing was the reason the play-by-post fizzled though.  Of course, most play-by-posts I've seen tended to prematurely fizzle, and the format of it seems to be a possible problem, but this isn't the whole thing.  I definitely got the feel near the end that things were loosing momentum, and I was having a difficult time figuring out what I was supposed to do in order to get more conflict into the fiction. 

I think that I may have been missing a solid idea of what "good GMing" actually was when I first started, and I'm probably still missing a few points.  The first scenario, which the group finished, and which received a lot of praise from the players, was a simple vampire hunt.  Each of the PC's had an aspect that tied into a motivation of protecting people in the community, so I started them off with the basic situation of seeing evidence of the vampires attacks, and used a compel on an aspect for each of them for their character to take an interest in finding out what was going on.  After a bit of clue hunting, they tracked the vampire down and had a big flashy showdown with it, killing it.  At the time, I was not personally proud of this scenario because I thought that is was overly simple.  I'd just decided to run something basic to start off with to make sure I knew how all the pieces of the system fit together.  For the next scenario, I put something along a dozen factions into motion, all working behind the scenes towards their own goals, and tied the players into various plots by compelling appropriate aspects.  This didn't go for very long before posting just died.

I know that some of what happened is my responsibility, even if I haven't identified what this is yet.  I need to learn which behaviors on my part will contribute to a fun experience, and which kind of behaviors will inhibit such an experience.  I've been reading a bunch of forge stuff recently, which has made me interested in zero-force play.  Should I be disavowing force for these games?  If so, then what should I focus on doing when coming up with scenarios?  What techniques should I use to make sure that I keep conflict moving?

(And yes, it occurs to me that I should reread the excellent GM advice in the rules.  But some extra person-to-person help will be rather useful as well)

If I need to clarify this, or put more concrete examples of actual play, let me know.

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi Jay,

Welcome to the Forge!

Two things to consider as you're getting advice from here, or elsewhere.   First, "Good GMing" is not universal- what works for one game may not work at all for another game.  Second, the social dynamics of a play-by-post game are very different than the dynamics of a face-to-face game (are different than IRC/Chat, are different than LARP, etc.).

That said, did you know your players outside of online interaction?  If not, the commitment factor is lower.

Was everyone into the Dresden Files fiction?  If everyone was, some, or only one person, all of this changes everyone's expectations.  If few people were, maybe the simple mission was exactly something they could grasp onto, while the more complicated thing was foreign to them.

Finally, did anyone give some reasons?  Family, holidays, leaving town, etc. for breaking off the game?

The Forge deals mostly with face to face games, so most of us will only be able to give some limited advice in that regard, but those three factors seem pertinent more than your ability as a GM.

Chris

[Callan S.]

Hello Jay,

I know that some of what happened is my responsibility, even if I haven't identified what this is yet.  I need to learn which behaviors on my part will contribute to a fun experience, and which kind of behaviors will inhibit such an experience.

My advice is to not inflict this upon yourself.

It may sound crazy to say this (though really it should sound anything but), but the activity, as in the instructions for it, should be able to accomodate some average human foibles on anyones part, and still be a little bit fun. There are thousands of board and card games that manage this every time.

Capes has a fairly robust and complete procedure and a free demo. 3:16, as I've read it, has a fairly robust procedure. Spione, as I've read it, does too. And there are probably more out there.

Now I haven't read Dresden files myself, and perhaps it's got a robust procedure too. Maybe not. If it does and you stuck to it's procedure, maybe instead of people not liking your game, they just didn't like the game?

[Jay G.]

Hi Chris

Answers to your three questions:
1.)  We did not know each other outside of an online context
2.)  Everyone in the game was a big fan of the Dresden Files
3.)  One player gave a reason for not posting as frequently, the others did not

Hi Callan

Thank you for the thoughts.  I'm not thinking that they just decided not to like the game or how I handled it.  In fact, they were very excited about it during the middle of it.  But I do want to know if there are some things, even minor things, that I can do in the future to improve upon what I did in that game.

[Callan S.]

I'm not thinking that they just decided not to like the game or how I handled it.  In fact, they were very excited about it during the middle of it.

? I'm looking at your account

This didn't go for very long before posting just died.

Something happened? People aren't happy but then suddenly vanish? But you think it wasn't to do with them disliking the dresden files RPG? Okay, so I hear what you think on that. I'm skeptical about that, but I'll leave it there.

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi Jay,

We did not know each other outside of an online context

I have the feeling this might be the crucial factor.   

Online participation in general works on the idea of a community- either one that's face-to-face transplanted to online, or an online community that exists long enough to hold it's own and people develop relationships.  There's numerous forums and discussion blogs just from Forge-related folks, which, are dead, because they never managed to get the crucial number of participants to regularly post to -form- that sense of community.

Even though PBP games seem like very low commitment, you have to also consider what the personal reward is for playing a game - it's very often social.  Your game competes with any/every other game they might be playing (including with folks they know) which means we're also talking Counterstrike, WOW, Farmville, etc.

You may want to talk to GMs who've been running long-running PBP games about what they did and how that turned out for them.   If your GMing was a factor, it's probably not identifiable at this point - get some advice from PBP folks and run some more games. 

Chris

[oculusverit]

For the Dresden Files RPG (which for those of you who may be unfamiliar uses an adapted version of the FATE system) there is a lot of emphasis in the game text on using the city creation portion of play to determine what sorts of play and plot the players want to see. This may have had something to do with the fact that the simple, vampire hunt scenario got rave reviews and the complex behind the scenes string pulling caused the game to peter out. It's possible, but we don't have enough information to determine this.

Jay, you said that you and your players completed city creation. What sorts of faces and factions did your players come up with? What do you think they had expressed based on this city creation session as the type of play they favored?

--Kinch

[Jay G.]

Hi Kinch,

For the play-by-post game, I came up with 90% of the city creation on my own.  This may have had something to do with things, but for the game I'm currently running (which is just starting up) all the city creation was done as a group, so I've avoided that particular mistake this time around.

The themes for the play-by-post (the game that fizzled) were:
Up for grabs (threat) - Several supernatural factions are suddenly competing to gain primary influence over the city.  The faces included the leader of a smuggling ring and a red court vampire
some theme about the Summer court having power, with a summer court face
some theme about despair, with a white court vampire face

The themes for the play-by-chat (the current game, where city creation was done correctly)
The Gilding is Coming Off (Theme) - face is a corrupt warden of the White Council
Flooded With Hostility (Theme) - a face is a river fae that is trying to fill the city with strife.
Cult of an Old God (Threat) - the faces are the leaders of the cult, which is trying to awaken an old god.

[Clay]

The best advice I can give here is to keep things simple.  You see how simple most TV plots are?  That's too complex for an RPG.  People can't keep track of it very well, and it becomes a gigantic mish-mash and they can't be bothered to care. I've been down this road before, and those games suffered from the same problem.

GURPS Mysteries actually has a lot of good advice for running games where there is an investigative component.  Aside from the supernatural component, the Dresden books are straight up hard boiled detective fiction, so a book about running that kind of game is a solid idea.

If you can, I'd also suggest trying a face to face game.  There's a lot of human interaction you can read there that will make your life easier.  With an online game, it's really easy for the players to get distracted by facebook, funny cat videos, and if the game is going especially poorly, training their goldfish.

[contracycle]

I agree with Clay.  I've had exactly the same sensation, where I thought the plot was simplistic, but the players loved it (and made a bit of a meal of it).  Simple is good.  You have, as a player, very limited sources of information.  Almost everything you "know" is stuff you have imagined.  Under those circumstances it is very easy to get lost and confused.  One technique I have used in F2F play is to ask players to tell me what they thought was going on, after each session: it was illuminating how different their impressions were from what I thought/expected they would be.

Games fizzling out and losing momentum is, I think, a much broader problem which RPG as a medium has only partially addressed.  The best advice I can offer there is not to try running a game indefinitely, but to try to bring it to an end.  A few punchy games that actually have satisfying conclusions are much better than one long running game that falls apart without closure.  As in any form of entertainment, "always leave 'em wanting more".  In F2F play, I tend to aim for something to finish in the region of 4 to maybe 6 sessions.