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I agree. I tried to present the cute lizard as a puppy myself. Tongue hanging out, bounding towards the first guy in the room, licking his face...and BOOM killed him in under a round. :'-(
murder hobos be murder hobos
My computer caught a bug, so I am catching up here with my two cents:
Character Info: Most games that I play in still have the players post their information in the discussion, but I prefer using my spreadsheet. Link it into the discussion and then copy and paste for both reporting and chronicles. IMHO, a spreadsheet is so much easier and more organized. I tried playing with a form, but that was a one shot wonder that I do not plan on continuing. *reminds me to post the spreadsheet for my new game*
Feedback: I have used a pretty simple feedback form since I first started GMing on here, and quite honestly it's not the negative feedback that bothers me.. its the no feedback. Statistically, out of an average 6 players per table, I MIGHT get 2 or 3 responses. I would say that in total up to now, I have about 1/3 or less participation.
For those that do respond, though.. its good. Really good. Constructive criticism that I can take and adapt into my future games. I have tried to make a lot of changes over the years in how I do things based on what I receive in the feedback, and routinely go back through reading the comments, especially if it is a game that I have run before. I will go back and read the comments from the last time I ran the game as a reminder of what to/not to do. I have not had one single response *yet* that was just a complete (&%T$#^#&! All of them (even when raising valid points) were respectful and helpful with their criticisms and offered not only points where I could improve, but most also offered suggestions or alternatives that I could take into consideration. 10/10 I will definitely continue doing this.
Circumstance bonus: I have been known to use this to encourage great RP and ingenuity.. I like to reward players for using their heads, and the more shocked/stumped/amused/WTH I am when I read their post, the better chance of getting a bonus. Sometimes its a +2 on what they were trying to do (or just enough of a nudge to meet the DC).. sometimes its a little something else.. whatever I come up with on the spot that I feel rewards the player and the character for amazing roleplay and critical thinking. I don't break the game, but by god, if a player makes me laugh so hard I am falling out of the chair, they deserve to get something out of it!
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Yeah, the circumstance bonus seems important to make us GMs feel like we're not in a straight jacket. Yesterday, I had a player cast sanctuary on herself and then run right through a swarm, waving her hands and yelling. She took damage since the swarm made its will save against sanctuary, but I did knock off one HP from the swarm, describing it as her scaring off some of the creatures in the swarm.
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...its the no feedback. Statistically, out of an average 6 players per table, I MIGHT get 2 or 3 responses. I would say that in total up to now, I have about 1/3 or less participation.
This is actually a really good response rate. I work in an industry where we are required by regulations to survey our customers and compile internal ratings based on customer responses. We consider it good if we get a 10% response rate.
You're doing well.
So another question while we're all doing our thing and ticking down to the end of Gameday VI:
As a GM, how do you determine what game(s) to run? Do you choose based on popular demand? Or do you go the opposite direction and pick scenarios that don't see the light of day very often? Maybe you pick based on the target audience, such as evergreens or quests for players new to PFS/PbP or both? Or do you run scenarios that you yourself enjoyed as player? (So far I've been doing the latter.)
...I've chosen based on all of these...
I prefer to run games that I have already played in, so I can get a feel for how it is supposed to be experienced and what it looks like from the players point of view. This also helps smooth out those hard to translate bits where it may be hard to convey the right information. If I have already found my way through a problem area, it makes it easier to set it up and smooth it out from the GM side.
Other than that, I really have no criteria. I have run a lot of stuff lately for new players because of the massive influx we have had this last 6 months or year. I also have run things based on need/request, other stuff just because I think its cool and wanted to share that experience with others.
...its the no feedback. Statistically, out of an average 6 players per table, I MIGHT get 2 or 3 responses. I would say that in total up to now, I have about 1/3 or less participation.This is actually a really good response rate. I work in an industry where we are required by regulations to survey our customers and compile internal ratings based on customer responses. We consider it good if we get a 10% response rate.
You're doing well.
Well.. yes and no. In the general population, I would expect that to be a fantastic reply rate. In a rather dedicated subculture such as this one, I would have thought to get a higher response rate; especially considering that the quality of game I am able to provide has a direct causation on another individuals enjoyment and fulfillment.
However, I have not seen a mass exodus away from my sign up sheets or sudden bursts of crickets when I post recruitments, so I don't believe I am performing too badly! lol!
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I ran a gameday game of Crypt of the Everflame. We all had a good time, and the group clicked, so we're continuing to the next part of the trilogy. The characters will all be in level for part 2, but about half the party will be underleveled when we get to part 3, City of Golden Death. Can anyone suggest either a module or some scenarios that would be thematic to stick in there? The lowest experience character will need 3xp extra.
Perhaps run Murder’s Mark to get them to Level 3 and then do the rest of the series? I love Murders Mark. And Murders Mark being an investigation might lead well into the infiltration mission later in the series.
Hmm
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Even in PFS, players will take you slightly off what a scenario has planned. Quite frankly, some of the improvisation that happens when this occurs can lead to some of the most fun you can have with a scenario.
So my group is in an investigation in Gallows of Madness. Recently, my new-to-PbP (but decidedly not new-to-PFS) player Linda decided that her Leshy familiar wanted to speak to the apple trees in an orchard to see what they might know. Her leshy has plant speech, and can talk to trees.
In this scenario, a lot happened in the apple orchard that the trees would know about. But if they told everything, it might spoil the rest of the mystery. So... how do you handle this?
I decided a while back that the key to doing scenes like this where a player brings out an odd ball skill is to just go with it. Give the player a chance to shine and use their situational and oddball superpower, but also do it in such a way that everyone has fun and too many secrets are not revealed at once.
So... I thought about the trees. What would they care about? What would they be like? To my advantage, this was an apple orchard. Every grocery store has somewhere between seven and eleven different breeds of named apples in their produce section, all with distinctly different tastes and personalities.
I could take apples that I knew, and imagine the trees with personalities that were like their fruit. Then I could give them some good information, but from the perspective of what the tree deems important. They don't have the exact same concerns that we do, though apple trees would probably recognize regular visitors to their orchard.
The group is back where they should be, albeit with a slightly weird tree-focused perspective on the facts and we all had fun with the diversion.
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Wow, that was some impressive GMing. Thanks for sharing, that was a great read.
-Posted with Wayfinder
congrats Redelia!!!
Congrats!
Congrats! :)
Grats Redelia!
-Posted with Wayfinder
Congrats. Redelia!
Hmm
Grats Redelia!!! Keep it up!!!
That's awesome Redelia. Congratulations!!!
Help! I'm GMing my first PbP game, and it just finished. I rolled boons for the players and I. And two of them got a 19 or 20!
What do I do now?
EwokBanshee, you'll need them to PM you their e-mail address. When you report the game completed on the GD VI form, you'll add their e-mail after selecting the Boon they won.
Then the powers that be will e-mail the boon to the players.
Thank you! That is very helpful! New dumb question: what Gameday form? Do I not register the game like a normal real life game?
Typically, you would register it the same way. However, Gameday VI counts as a convention. The convention aspect is why there are special boons available.
The Gameday VI reporting form should be linked in one of the e-mails you received regarding the gameday.
Oh.. I haven't received an email. And it's not in my junk mail.. should I contact the new online venture person?
Awesome, thank you all!
I have a question for our experienced GM's. I see lots of GM's running two tables of the same game at once. How much more difficult is it to run a duplicate table? What are some strategies you use to make this easier?
^This is something I'd be interested in hearing answered as well. I've been getting some experience of running two different games concurrently but I've not tried two games of the same scenario and I'm curious if it would be easier or more difficult :)
I find it easier than running two separate tables as its only one prep. You have the maps, NPC's, tactics and story already in hand. How the different groups handle the same challenges is interesting to observe.
That said, you only get PFS credit for it once (unless evergreen) and too many of the same at once can become a little stale.
I agree with DM Doctor Evil regarding the interesting ways players handle the challenges, however I personally find it easier to run separate scenarios when running more than one game simultaneously.
Everyone has their own preferences though. I remember GM Granta running 10 tables of the same evergreen at the same time once...craziness!
I can and have run multiple tables of games.. and even at different tiers. On one hand, yes. The prep is easier, maps are just copy and paste, and a lot of the canned text can just be copied from one thread and posted in the other.
Some pitfalls to watch for:
Two groups, telling the same story, in two completely different ways. It can be easy to get mixed up when posting, and give the wrong table information. You can get timelines, character names, effects/abilities, and room contents mixed up very easily if you are not astute and double checking yourself.
If playing two tables of the same game at different tiers, it can be very easy to mix up what tier you are looking at when beginning an encounter. If both tables are in the same combat, simply reading one line wrong could lead to some disastrous consequences!
Burnout! Especially evergreens! I learned recently that three tables of a three part beginners arc is very high on my "never again" list. I would rather GM 3 completely different games than run three tables of the same game again, and this triples when considering Evergreens that have already been virtually memorized.
IMHO: Running two tables of the same game is half the work, but twice the attention, of running two separate games.
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Just saw this thread! Figured I'd stop by.
(mostly 'cause I wanted to chime in on this question!)
Though admitedly, I've only GM'd 10 scenarios in PbP format to date (with 2 more in progress) .. for only 12 players! (excluding backup GMing for two specials)
So another question while we're all doing our thing and ticking down to the end of Gameday VI:
As a GM, how do you determine what game(s) to run? Do you choose based on popular demand? Or do you go the opposite direction and pick scenarios that don't see the light of day very often? Maybe you pick based on the target audience, such as evergreens or quests for players new to PFS/PbP or both? Or do you run scenarios that you yourself enjoyed as player? (So far I've been doing the latter.)
It seems to me that this is entirely a factor of DMing style.
For me, I have a number of criteria for deciding what to GM. First and foremost of which, I have to have played it before! To date, with 100 GM credits (mostly live), the only ones that I've GM'd without playing first were an adventure path.
It gives me an idea what the scenario is about, and some thoughts on what I thought were cool, to include, or what I thought wasn't so cool, to modify, when I run it. And of course, it avoids the whole spoiler issue when I do get to play =)
(and the really bad personal player experiences I do indeed view as a GM challenge! )
From there, it makes a difference if I'm GMing live or for PbP...
Live I try to avoid any of the more RP interaction heavy ones, as I freely admit I don't work too well at that on the fly. I wouldn't be worried about them in a PbP format though, though they can really bog down in that format.
Otherwise I look for ones with cool backdrops, or descriptive stuff going on... If you describe a scene right, you can really draw the players into it. Don't cut and paste box text, paraphrase!
Something like the final room in the Golemworks Incident, or the entirety of Traitor's Lodge, can go from cool to awesome if the GM takes the time to really describe the scenes and atmosphere! And PbP is the perfect medium for doing just that!
Of course, not every GM will be comfortable with the level of paraphrasing I'm talking about. It can easily take me an hour just to post a summary post for a single round of combat, sometimes! Not to mention I've derailed my whole game on more then one occasion by being a little too descriptive about non-relevant things.
(And of course, it helps if the players aren't walking over everything... sucks the life out of your efforts, if you describe some big nasty critter crawling up from a pit, only to have one of the PCs one shot it before anyone has a chance to be worried. But that's a different discussion =))
I have a question for our experienced GM's. I see lots of GM's running two tables of the same game at once. How much more difficult is it to run a duplicate table? What are some strategies you use to make this easier?
I would never do it.
Contrary to other folks experiences, I'm pretty sure it would take me more work, the way I typically run things.
But again, this is another one of those that might depends entirely on your GMing style.
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For me, it depends on the scenario. If there's a lot of RP or investigative type stuff going on, I try to avoid running multiple tables of it. I'm not the most creative person, and I find I really have to put a lot of effort and thought into those types of scenarios. On the other hand, if it's pretty straightforward like a dungeon crawl, I don't mind it, especially because you can just copy and paste a lot of your posts. And if I do run multiple tables, I tend to run one classic and one core, so that I'm getting credit for both of them.
The first scenario I GM'ed here was Prince of Augustana...it's a short scenario and I think it might be good for new GMs since it was good for me...
I've played that one. It was awesome.
I started with The Veteran's Vault.
I started with Phantom Phenomena and Confirmation. Reaping What We Sow might not be a bad one either; there's no unusual mechanics or subsystems and it all takes place in and around one little town.
Decline of Glory, was my first!
So many ghouls...
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New Topic!
So Gameday is winding down, which means that we will be running a GM mentoring game over the holidays. So I would like to talk about a topic near and deat to my heart:
I think that most of the groundwork for success is laid down before the first Gameplay post. So... Let’s look at the things that can make a game more successful.
It doesn’t hurt to have a few people that you know will provide good RP and move gameplay as reserved seats in your game. Having two people who you know will post and help get others involved can be useful trick in your GM pocket.
I like to set up expectations in my game either in recruitment, or in the very first post of discussion. I collect people’s day jobs and reporting information up front so that I don’t have to track them later. Sometimes I have a pre-game questionnaire so that I can get some key information.
More importantly, I set forth expectations about communicating, absences, and my botting policy. I want everyone to buy into my pacing. I require botting spoilers on my players, mentioning that the botting spoiler is often most used as a time saver by the player themselves, because all their key combat rolls are right there.
I talk about how fun it will be, and I try to get them premustering.
I’ve written elsewhere about how I prep for games. My early prep was time-consuming, but it was a process that I needed to go through in order to grok a scenario. My current process is more streamlined. I still check reviews, PFS Prep and the PFS GM Forum for people ideas and for any issued that might arise in the scenario. I still concentrate on the Story of the Scenario. Who are the key players? What is the background and plot? Where do the PCs fit in? I often research the setting, looking for fun details that I can fit in.
As a GM I want to play to my strengths. My strengths are pacing, story, quriky NPCs and setting. I love to study the NPCS, and find ones with good bones and whose quirks and personalities I can bring out.
I enjoy setting up things like handouts, maps and a few premade posts in advance. I’m not organized enough to lay out everything in advance, but getting a start on it helps ground me in the scenario and makes me more confident when dealing with the players.
I use Goodreader for all my prep, underlining Skill DCs and highlighting key stuff and looking for hidden information that may appear in one part of a scenario or module (like in an appendix) far from the main action of the acts to which it pertains.
I also like to study the success conditions and then go back through the scenario and make sure that I am including clues and other details that might help my group have the infromation they need to acheive their missions.
I am in the earliest stages of prep for True Dragons of Absalom right now. Today I set up my google drive folder for the scenario, and started converting the special pregens to BB Code, so that my players have something to cut and paste. I checked PFS Prep, and found nothing I could use this time, and started looking through scenario reviews.
I’ve also started telling myself the story of this scenario and the plucky kobolds within it. I will be doing this over and over as I prep, and learning new things each time I do it.
Hmm
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The best advice I've seen for handling dungeon crawls is to have a plan for doors. For whatever reason, the action can stall with each new door as the party tries to work through the process of listening, checking for traps, opening the door, and entering the room.
So talk to the party early and establish a "standard door procedure." Figure out where party members will be positioned, who will perform what actions, and how they'll enter the room and in what order. Then, when the party encounters a new door, as GM, do all of that for them, making all the rolls and moving them into the room.
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Dungeon crawls do seem like they pose a few challenges for PbP. I have never ran a dungeon crawl, but I am prepping for one and was considering doing the following.
- Ask for a standard door procedure like Zin Z'arin just suggested.
- Automatically describe walking and searching through empty uninteresting rooms and move the players straight to interesting stuff.
- Give the denizens of the dungeon personalities (make them scared of, or hate the PCs,) and do unexpected things (within the creature's given tactics block) to break up the monotony of combat after combat.
I'm not sure what to do if there are multiple rooms branching off a single corridor though. Maybe ask players for their preferred order of exploration and go with the majority?
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When I run a dungeon crawl and things branch, I wait either for a day or else until everyone has posted, and then the majority wins. Sometimes, I know one room is a side trail, and I just send them there without waiting for input, but I try to only do that once or twice in a module.
Also, I ask for several marching orders of different widths so that I can move the party as a whole.
I also ruthlessly bot after 24 hours so things can't bog down. (site problems are clearly an exception, as are holidays)