Answer: Yes.
The answer to "How consistent must I be?" is always "Enough to satisfy the players."
If you never run a non-ad-libbed game in your entire career as GM, that is fine so long as the players (and you) are having fun.
I myself am obsessed with consistency, to the point where it can actually interfere with the game. But it makes me happy. If you're more able to roll with it, I'm sure that will help you and your players have fun.
Sorry to bother you gamers who actually know what you're doing, but this has been sorta bothering me. It's not like my players are super particular or anything, or even necessarily know as much as I do about Pathfinder, but I don't feel very qualified to DM. I never put that much effort into figuring out what monsters are where currently and just add them as needed.
The only reason I DM at all is because no one else I know can, really. I was given several old miss-matched rulebooks by a family friend when I got interested in fantasy and have practically no gaming experience, and I'm pretty much learning Pathfinder.
I'm pretty busy with writing and school and friends and life in general, so is it essential that I map out the area my PCs are exploring (it's not a current setting, I'm slowly creating it)? and any tips if I ever get around to that (which i want to, eventually)?
If you are all having fun its perfectly acceptable to add-lib all you want.
As far as tips go, start small.
I find that doing a bit of background homework makes winging it easier. If you can build up a repository of encounters, NPCs and other situational events then it helps as a buffer against the times when you're just drawing a blank. You don't even have to think of them yourself, just cull them from other adventures/APs.
Zo
Mr. Fishy's first few games without the box were insane. Mad wizards, rescueing princesses, laughing at the players when they do something stupid, cheering for them when they one shot a monster on a crit.
You MOO at the minotaur...Twice...Yes he is pissed...Yes he is getting up to kill you.
The first couple games keep in simple you can add later. Mr. Fishy grew a world over years. So have fun and remember that today's random NPC could be tommorrow's campaign regular. Iago started as a random one shot that turned into a major campaign arc.
Good luck, and have fun. When in doubt make up something.
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I'm pretty busy with writing and school and friends and life in general, so is it essential that I map out the area my PCs are exploring (it's not a current setting, I'm slowly creating it)? and any tips if I ever get around to that (which i want to, eventually)?
one of the things you might want to loop into are:
Look into Paizo's map packs and flip mats. They are premade maps so that you don't have to map everything out. I would suggest looking at the city map pack and one or two flip maps.
I taught myself how to play 3.0 by just winging it with a few players who were all n00bs to the game. I still didn't know the mechanics myself. Don't be afraid to admit you don't have it all down, yet.
It was a "sandbox" kind of thing, and the players decided what they wanted to do. I'd send them a woman who lost her baby, or a mayor who was tired of the goblins who kept raiding local farms and ruining the harvest.
Start at first level and have some easy encounters so everyone can get comfy with how to play. A band of rabid goblins busting into the tavern where they've all just met will get them playing right away. If they don't do well, other people can pitch in at the last minute and save them.
A wealthy merchant will see them in action, and the town will pay them to drive out the ever-more-troublesome goblins from the area.
Don't be afraid to coach them a little, either.
"Well, you're the rogue. Your best bet is to try to flank the fighter so you can sneak attack. If you tumble and jump over that table, you'd be in position to do it."
The player is now motivated to do what rogues are good at. If he blows it, describe him slipping on the tabletop, and slamming butt-first on the ground as a crazed goblin comes right for him. Tense, but not too life-threatening. The goblin will miss, since they usually do. Keep the fight easy, with lots of description.
Use funny voices and humor to get everyone "into character." I had a bartender who always sang a dirty ditty whenever they went back to him. In a pirate voice.
"A maiden fair o' Waterdeep, I met her in Sea Ward!
I pierced her hard and pierced her oft, yet ne'er drew me sword!"
They hated his corny song, but it was a staple of the early adventures, and always good for a groan.
It doesn't have to be goblins or crude bartenders, but you get the idea. Have fun and ham it up. When the first fight starts, the players will be motivated to really learn the mechanics and have a good laugh even when they fail. Deus ex machina isn't a good idea, but get them through the first fight so they can get engaged and start learning the rules where they're not far from help if they roll really bad.
Rule #1, as always. Let us know how it went! :)
As long as everyone is engaged and imagining the scenarios, you're doing it right.
Lots of ad libbing in all of my campaigns.
I do set out a plot and theme, but sometimes , the heroes head off to do something else, then you ad lib.
(I normally have a few level-suitable encounters ready with stats and such. Sometimes they never get used.)
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Yes, you can ad lib, but you should have some idea of where you plan to go. I frequently adapt scenarios from other rule systems or even other genres into my games, so everything is pretty much ad libed until the campaign meets up with one of the ideas that I've been planning all along.
And I would agree with buying a published product to give you a starting point. Depending on the time you have available, you can add your own details or change things in case one of the players might accidentally read the source material you are using. The PC's need to be able to put down roots and having something defined to start with makes it easier for them to develop backgrounds.
Make notes of what you did, you may find they serve you far more efficiently than trying to come up with what you will do. Especially because players have a knack for throwing a large wrench in the gears of any plan you may come up with.
So you start with a small town, the village of Beginun. PCs want adventure, so you decide to look at a level appropriate monster.....ah, kobolds! With a level 1 kobold barbarian as their warcheif! Where do they live? In the hills! A cleric of Disgawdeir wants them to put an end to their banditry!
So the PCs head to the hills, which you say are north, to defeat the Dread Bandit Kneebiter and his mercilles minute miscreants. A few random encounters with a wolf, a viper, and a monstrous spider, and they find Kneebiter's camp.
After dealing with the kobolds, they return to town for their reward, reveling in the loot taken from their defeated foes.
What do you do now?
Write it down. Get a peice of blank printer paper. Put a dot in the middle. This is the village of Beginun. Draw a circle, whatever size you want, above it. These are the Northern Hills.
Now grab a spiral notebook (you've probably got one laying around, even if you might need to tear out a few pages of old homework or doodles). Write on Page 1: Village of Beginun. Write on Page 2: Northern Hills. On page 1, write: Killed Kneebiter the kobold bandit, got reward from Cleric of Disgawdeir. On page 2, write: Wolves, Vipers, Monstrous Spiders, Kobolds. Put a question mark next to the kobolds, since there might not be any more left.
Now put the map inside the notebook, put it away, and don't worry about it till you have time, or next game session comes up. If the PCs want to get another quest, you can have them get it from the Cleric again, and you could give him a name this time. If they want to go back into the hills, maybe something new has moved into Kneebiter's old campsite. Or maybe more kobolds have just shown up there. Either way, this asks a pair of questions: what is the new creature, and why is it there. The new creature may be a pair of orc brothers, looking for stray travelers to rob. Or it might be another group of koblds, from a warren deeper in the hills, and what the Cleric thought was banditry was actually the skirmish of a war the kobolds have declared on the village.
Or they may choose to go south (or you might direct them that way). In which case, start it up again, with a monster, a location, and a few random encounters.
Keep jotting down what you did, and you will see a full-fledged campaign world evovle in that humble spiral notebook.
Finally, WELCOME TO THE GAME, AND THE PAIZO BOARDS!
I'm pretty busy with writing and school and friends and life in general, so is it essential that I map out the area my PCs are exploring (it's not a current setting, I'm slowly creating it)? and any tips if I ever get around to that (which i want to, eventually)?
The method that The Black Bard suggests is great for getting started out. Right now, at the low levels where your group can't travel very far, this should be more than sufficient as a world-building resource.
However, as your characters gain the ability to travel further and survive more... as your plots take on bigger scopes... as characters are retired and new parties are created... eventually paper or even MS Word files start to become impractical. If you are committed to world-building (and as a writer, I suspects it may be one of your passions), then the best long-term suggestion I can offer is to make use of a wiki.
Just like how The Black Bard notes you only have to fill-in what you know, that's the beauty of how a wiki works. If you want to make reference to something that you haven't fully thought out yet, you just put [[double brackets]] around it while typing and that makes it into a link. Later on, when you want to detail that topic, you click on the link (or do a search on it), and it prompts you to create that topic. If JRR Tolkien were alive today, he'd be ecstatic!
There are plenty of free an inexpensive sites where you can create your own wiki. I myself have a few wikis on GoDaddy.com. They and other hosting companies like them generally have automated tools that will install all the wiki software (MediaWiki is what Wikipedia runs on) and handle all of the setup without any technical know-how on your part.
It's then a fairly simple matter to search for formatting on MediaWiki.org to know how to make your articles. (If you can use the formatting code on a forum like this, creating wiki pages will be equally easy.) The only other thing that would be left is to restrict editing to only yourself or people whose accounts you create — and that's as simple as copying and pasting a few lines into a text file and transferring it to the site. :)
# Only the admin (i.e. you) can create user accounts
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;# Only logged-in users can edit or create pages
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
Have fun world-building and let your imagination go wild. Ad-libbing and improv is what it's all about! :)
I started a thread on the paperwork perspective here, discussing types of record keeping, etc.
Zo
Essentially ALL GMs ad lib anyway. Those pesky PCs NEVER stick to the script!
I agree! If you don't have a lot of experience, use some modules and guidebooks to get you started. If you are looking for local background color, TSR (before WotC) and Paizo have put out some great material.
Check the main PF book for inspirational reading. I would also recommend 'The Deed of Paksinarrrion' by Elizabeth Moon.
If you wanted to be really nasty, take a movie like 13th Warrior or Tears of the Sun and make it into an adventure. What would Bruce Willis do? Watch the shocked reaction when they hear, the 13th warrior must be no Northman . . . .
Definitely, ad-lib as much as you want.
Of all the games I've run, the ones that have fallen apart most quickly are the ones where I tried to stick to the script.
It's a good idea to keep notes on what you made up, though. Sometimes, the players will decide to go track down the old hermit they ran across on the kings road a month ago because they think he might know something, and you don't want to be sitting there asking yourself "what hermit? what road?, wtf?"
and any tips if I ever get around to that (which i want to, eventually)?
First off, welcome. "You've taken your first step into a larger world."
As others have said, ad-libing is a-ok.
But to this question, any tips. Here's a few.
- Don't burn yourself out. Its really easy to over-commit yourself. So I would recommend taking it slow and seeing how much time works best for your and your schedule.
- Have fun. I know that sounds obvious, but it is also easy for this to go from fun to mundane 2nd career. If it should turn to more work than fun, do something to make it fun for you.
- Build a mystery into everything. If it can be explained by any means or by everyone (even you), it starts to feel mundane. While some mysteries like "Why is this ice castle in the middle of the hot desert?" is fine, others could be as simple as, "Why did this minor god choose this random place for a holy site?" or "Why do the centaurs of this forest let the frog men ride them?" and lastly,
- Steal, steal, steal. Don't feel like you have to come up with something completely from scratch. If you like Rohan from the Lord of the Rings movies, steal it. Completely if you want. If you like the castle in Howls Moving Castle, steal it as well. Have it pass through Rohan. It makes life alot easier for you and your players might like the homage as well.
I hope these help.
Definitely, ad-lib as much as you want.
Of all the games I've run, the ones that have fallen apart most quickly are the ones where I tried to stick to the script.
It's a good idea to keep notes on what you made up, though. Sometimes, the players will decide to go track down the old hermit they ran across on the kings road a month ago because they think he might know something, and you don't want to be sitting there asking yourself "what hermit? what road?, wtf?"
He's dead Jim!
If you want to create paranoia, just start killing off the 'local color' NPCs.
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IS IT ACCEPTABLE FOR A NEW DM JUST TO ADD-LIB A CAMPAIGN?
Umm ... *rolls* ... uh, yeah that's fine, you can do that. Is there anything else you'd like to do this round?
:)
It's worked fine for me for years. I tend to sketch very rough outlines of adventures into my notebook and then forget to read them while gaming...
To build upon the excellent suggestions so far, the most important part of "sandbox" or "ad-libbed" campaigns is "what happens next?"
The PCs defeat Kneebiter. Is there anyone in the area that would be interested? Maybe a local merchant had hired them to harass the wagons of his rivals. Maybe a local goblin tribe sees the chance to expand into the area.
The PCs return to town as heroes. Since the town now sees them as capable problem-solvers, what other doors could open for them? Maybe the mayor has a guard that's gone missing and he hires the PCs to find him. Maybe a merchant wants to hire them as guards for a caravan to and from a nearby town.
You don't have to decide this all at once. Think about it while you shower, drive, or do the more mundane parts of your life. If you have a good cellphone, you can take notes directly on that. Otherwise, it's helpful to keep a notepad at hand. You'll be surprised when inspiration will strike.
Also, the players will feel a better sense of connection to the world if their actions cause things to change. By keeping track of what they do, it becomes easy to come up with foes that want to oppose them or allies that want to help them. Maybe you don't have an overarching plot now and no BBEG picked out, but the actions of the players will directly show you what they're interested in pursuing. It should be easy from there to decide what or who opposes them and roll with it.
I love this style of campaign because it forces me to think on my feet and gives the players the story they're looking for. Done right, everyone has a lot of fun.
Ab-so-frickin'-lutely!
I'll follow this up with a HELL YEAH! Just be sure that the events and world that you stage as you go are internally consistent (as somebody else noted).
Honestly?
Don't ask the boards. Maybe we can tell you if it would be acceptable for us, or if it is generally accepted among the gaming community.
That doesn't count, however.
You really should ask your players if they are okay with you DM'ing this way. I mean, it has to work out in your home campaign, and nowhere else. Talk to the guys.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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Ab-so-frickin'-lutely!
I'll follow this up with a HELL YEAH! Just be sure that the events and world that you stage as you go are internally consistent (as somebody else noted).
Let me throw in with another Ab-so-frickin'-lutely! HELL YEAH!
I also want to throw in with the following sentiment:
Steal, steal, steal. Don't feel like you have to come up with something completely from scratch. If you like Rohan from the Lord of the Rings movies, steal it. Completely if you want. If you like the castle in Howls Moving Castle, steal it as well. Have it pass through Rohan. It makes life alot easier for you and your players might like the homage as well.
Steal from enough sources and you can call it "Research." ;D
Some of my favorite campaigns over the years had story threads and elements borrowed from a half dozen sources and run by the seat of my pants. The key to success is keeping after game notes and using your notes to remain consistent going forward.
I am going to politely argue with this post (kinda):
You really should ask your players if they are okay with you DM'ing this way. I mean, it has to work out in your home campaign, and nowhere else. Talk to the guys.
I'm normally a huge advocate of talking to your players but if you can handle it well, not telling your players can work to your advantage. In an freeform ad libbed game I find it easier to adapt to player expectations and either play to them or when dramatically appropriate play against those expectations. This works best when the players are uncertain how much is preplanned and how much is spur of the moment fiat. If your players know you're always flying by the seat of your pants they may not value their successes and may resent their failures chalking each up to you.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't seek feedback. Always try to find out what the players like and don't like about a session. If you discover that everything your players dislike about the game comes from your ad-libbing then switch gears.
Yes!
Like many others have said, have fun!
I think you'll find that most players aren't as particular about details that many of us DM's agonize over.
I often drive myself to detail the tiniest tidbits and come up with what's "just off the map" just in case the player's go there.
After 20+ years, I've come to realize they just want to play and have fun...the little details and advanced planning is nice, and certainly enhances the experience, but its not always required. :)
In fact, even in a highly detailed and planned out setting/campaign you might find that the occasional ad lib actually opens things up into avenues you never considered before.
Dude I was a player for 3-4 3.5 games that group fell apart. Then I started GM as a way for me and some other n00bie friends to haves some fun. At first it was a little daunghting but after a few sessions of playing premade quest I started to get the hang of it. Now I'm trying to get my friends into Pathfinder, and being the only one with exserpiance wiht PFRPG it's still a little changleing but were are getting the hang the the new rules one monster at a time. Now I am working on writing my own quest and campaigns. These boards are a invalueable resource for the new gamer you can ask rules questions, advice, and even the stoopid question you don't want to ask.
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I gave my PC's a shield of flying, thinking that no one would use it since practically no one would use a shield, but none the less, the PC's caught up with a fleeing villian who was supposed to be the center of the campaign the third session in, and beat her into oblivion. What to do next? Just roll with it. The artifact that she was escaping with now must be protected by the PC's against foes now.
Preparation is improvisation's greatest ally.
The more material you have prepared before hand, the easier it will be to deal with your player's unexpected choices.
+1
Personally, I'm not a fan of the 'improvised' game. Not because I have a problem with improvisation, but because people tend to use the word as a synonymous term for 'too lazy to prepare.'
In my opinion, there is no substitute for preparation. The more prepared you are as a DM, the more interesting your adventures and encounters will be, because you can do things like tailor your monsters and NPCs to fit the encounters you imagine in your mind, and use things like terrain, and environmental effects to make combats more challenging. You can also use the time to work out things like plot holes, character motivations, and overarching story arcs.
On the other hand, 'preparing' means different things to different people. Some people think of it pejoratively as forcing PCs to follow a particular story arc, even if they would rather do something else. Personally, I don't see that as preparing. I see that as railroading. For me, preparation means accounting for the most likely possible outcomes and creating story arcs that accommodate those options. For example, if you want to give your players the option of allying with an evil NPC in order to complete a quest, prepare for what happens if they decide to kill the NPC, and/or go it alone. Does their decision make later encounters harder? Are the PCs more likely to get lost? Whatever it is, don't make it impossible for them to complete the quest if they don't do exactly what you expect.
One last thing: Preparing doesn't mean you have to write up a full fledged adventure module, or create a fully developed campaign setting. You can write up your stat blocks, have a general idea about what encounters you want to run, and hold a general sense of the overarching plot in your head. In fact,I've played in some amazing games where that's all the DM did.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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The one thing you must never, EVER do as a GM is ad-lib.
Just kidding. Even the best-prepared GM runs stuff off the cuff sometimes. You have to be able to roll with all the crazy stunts your players will pull.
S. John Ross's Big List of RPG Plots can give you some good ideas if you're having a hard time coming up with an adventure.
Finding a good resource for location maps such as WotC's old Map-A-Week feature can help you out if you need a quick location.
There are dozens of resources out there for NPCs on the fly. If you need a quick NPC, grab a name generator or find a name from a list resource like Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names, think of somebody you know (a teacher, family friend, etc.) and play them with that personality.
Plenty of people have pointed out, though, that the more material you have handy, the easier it will be to adapt. Really, you only need to have a general idea of what your PCs might be able to do, and what that might entail. At first, their reach will be small, but as they gain levels, they will be able to do more things, go more places, talk to more people, etc. and that means more work for you to be able to react to what they do.
For instance, in the most basic area of D&D/PFRPG, the dungeon: if the PCs are in a room with 3 exits, you need to know where those exits lead. If they're in a village in a valley, with woods on the east, a river on the west, and a north-south road, what are they going to find if they explore the woods? Cross the river? Follow the road? And if they're high level and can use magic like teleport and plane shift, what are they going to find if they decide to plane shift to the plane of Elemental Fire, for instance? The good news is that by the time they get to high level, you'll have had plenty of time to think about the big picture. But at first, you do need to think about the small picture stuff, and have some general ideas. You don't need to have a map of every farmhouse in the village and a name and backstory for every NPC, just some general ideas to serve as a starting point for your winging it.
NO! Absolutely not!
Just kidding. Yes.
Of course, it depends on the degree to which you plan to ad lib. If you're obviously rolling dice to see what they fight next (is there even a table for that?), and then opening the Bestiary to that page and running it out of the book, and rolling treasure after they've killed the beast, then they're not going to be very involved with the adventure. Unless they're the kind of players who don't want to do anything but fight monsters in no particular order.
So, SOME degree of preparation is encouraged. I had a long campaign that ran over the course of about 10 years, and some of the most enjoyable sessions were almost totally adlibbed, but the players never knew that. But I had a general plan for where I wanted them to go, or they were on a course of action that brought a relatively small set of possible encounters into their path.
The best improvs were mostly NPC encounters. But I did have a very few fights were I would describe a creature that I was making up on the spot, or pull from some work of fantasy literature (I recall stealing the Fire Lions from some Elric book for the road leading up to my Fire Giant volcano lair) and I would reckon their AC to be about so much, and their HD to be about that much, throw in some oddball special effect (like a poison bite, or an aura of weakness), and run the fight for a few rounds until the party looked to be about at the peak of intensity, and then let the next blow drop one of the monsters, and then let people pile onto the other monster to take it down. I rolled behind a screen back then, so I would just roll, and look at the chart, and announce hits or misses depending on what I thought was the most dramatically interesting. The party had the best time when they took a fair amount of damage, nobody died (I never killed on an impov fight), they used a few spells to good effect, and emerged victorious.
It can be fun that way, but if you do it, is VITAL that they never know this to be improvisation. Make up stats after the game and figure the XP from what that looks like. And don't overdo these. They're for dramatic purposes only, to let the players see what their characters can do when everyone gets the optimal conditions they built their characters for in the first place. Never make it a major plot point, and never make up new abilities on the fly that are specifically added to foil all the PCs' special powers.
If you're a dramatic type with a flair for improvisation, there's no reason you can't wing it for much of the game, especially if you have an outline of the major plot arcs you want to explore. If your players are very involved in the RP aspect of the game, and have characters with their own independent motivations beyond "get hired to go into dungeons for loot" then you will almost certainly be forced to improv to some degree, because you can't prepare for every single possible course of action they come up with.
A few maps and notes for the world are a good idea, and definitely keep track of the "facts" you do give them, so you don't contradict your own campaign rules later on.
The degree to which you'll be improvising depends a lot on your ability to do so, and your players' ability to go with it. But if you think you can do it, I say go for it.
The one thing you must never, EVER do as a GM is ad-lib.
Just kidding.
Damn you! I typed mine before this was posted.
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Ad-lib = good imagination = good DM.
If you and your players are having fun (as it sounds you are) then you have succeeded as a DM.
Well done!
Also, starting small with not all the rules is a great way to get use to the game. The mechanics of combat don't make a role-playing game a better role-playing game, they just add a tactical layer to the game.
Cleric and ego, they are like that - something to do with having a god and all :)
Good luck with your gaming,
S.
Essentially ALL GMs ad lib anyway. Those pesky PCs NEVER stick to the script!
+1
...Make notes of what you did, you may find they serve you far more efficiently than trying to come up with what you will do. Especially because players have a knack for throwing a large wrench in the gears of any plan you may come up with.
So you start with a small town, the village of Beginun. PCs want adventure, so you decide to look at a level appropriate monster.....ah, kobolds! With a level 1 kobold barbarian as their warcheif! Where do they live? In the hills! A cleric of Disgawdeir wants them to put an end to their banditry!
So the PCs head to the hills, which you say are north, to defeat the Dread Bandit Kneebiter and his mercilles minute miscreants. A few random encounters with a wolf, a viper, and a monstrous spider, and they find Kneebiter's camp.
After dealing with the kobolds, they return to town for their reward, reveling in the loot taken from their defeated foes.
What do you do now?
Write it down. Get a peice of blank printer paper. Put a dot in the middle. This is the village of Beginun. Draw a circle, whatever size you want, above it. These are the Northern Hills.Now grab a spiral notebook (you've probably got one laying around, even if you might need to tear out a few pages of old homework or doodles). Write on Page 1: Village of Beginun. Write on Page 2: Northern Hills. On page 1, write: Killed Kneebiter the kobold bandit, got reward from Cleric of Disgawdeir. On page 2, write: Wolves, Vipers, Monstrous Spiders, Kobolds. Put a question mark next to the kobolds, since there might not be any more left.
Now put the map inside the notebook, put it away, and don't worry about it till you have time, or next game session comes up. If the PCs want to get another quest, you can have them get it from the Cleric again, and you could give him a name this time. If they want to go back into the hills, maybe something new has moved into Kneebiter's old campsite. Or maybe more kobolds have just shown up there. Either way, this asks a pair of
Paizo actually does have a couple of free adventures you can download. Now, you don't have to use the adventures as written, you can just use them to get some ideas, and it will have some maps you could use.
In addition, wizards of the coast has a bunch of Old 3.0/3.5 adventures for free in the archives. Plus they had the map a week series, which gives you free blank maps also in the 3.0/3.5 archives.