Kyranicles's page

I frequently start with the beastiary. Choose some appropriate opponents then talk about the PC's goals. Pretty soon I've got a notion of where they want to go and what is in their way. Often the story just suggests itself or I seize one of the wild musings of the players trying to figure out why they just ran into a manticore in the middle of a busy urban street ;)

The time/energy metaphor isn't very bad, but remember that this is primarily a rules-based system designed to achieve balance. Following intuition is a sure way to make a mistake.

I visualize an outline with the action hierarchy along the left. Under full round actions you have different types: full attack, spell with full round casting time

Under standard action you would list things like; make an attack, concentrate to maintain a spell, begin bardic performance, initiate grapple.

Nested under attack actions I'd put the various things you can do with an attack action, trip, etc..

Talk to your players about what their character would know. Maybe use the example of a cell phone or some other piece of technology and explain how their character wouldn't know what to do with it even though the players would. These young players need to learn this key org concept now rather than have you go to a bunch of trouble to work around bad behavior.

Use the enemy special abilities and make it hard to catch the BBEG unaware.

I was running a LV6 party against some Barghests and my baddies were getting slaughtered. Then I realized these f*+$ers could blink AT WILL! This one ability use made the encounters significantly more difficult. Pretty soon my PC's were out of Kill/Loot mode and into Neutralize/Subdue/Escape thinking. It took them standing in one room for an hour as wave after wave of prepared baddies swept in and their resources dwindled before they adjusted their thinking, but pretty soon fleeing, securing doors, putting Grease and Web in the hallways became their definition of success and they were thrilled simply to get to a safe place without anyone dying.

Also, consider changing the victory conditions. Sometimes killing BBEG doesn't have to be the point. Create a situation where they need the bad guy alive and they have to go for subdual and non-lethal damage. Or put them up against the clock. So what if they can toast your BBEG in 3 rounds. They only have 12 rounds to get the magic MacGuffin to opposite side of the dungeon or the portal home will close for good!

I play such a different game from most groups. First, I have created a GMPC, not because I wanted to, but because I was initially going to be a player then our GM basically quit and asked me to do it. The group said they would like my character to remain in the group. I do observe a few rules to minimize the intrusive possibilities of the GMPC. Basically, I identify any ways I might be inclined to show favoritism to my character and then do the opposite. So i frequently fudge die rolls to ensure that the GMPC fails saves, takes damage, etc.. This does a couple of neat things, first, it keeps players from suspecting favoritism. Second, it ups the ante a bit by making dangers a little more real when the group might otherwise escape unscathed.

Another thing I did was design the DMPC to be a support character. He's a Bard. So party buffs, skill-heavy, utility spells, and esoteric skills are what he provides to the group. He is essentially incapable of stealing the show! Further, he's not very flashy. He fires arrows in combat. That's all he does and all he's good at. Other characters get options, heal, cast, sneak attack, smite, channel energy...but not the GMPC. His job is to be vanilla. In fact, I frequently have him remain silent during RP time too. He pops in with jokes from time to time, but he's rarely instrumental in building alliances or solving problems unless the PC's will really benefit from a knowledge(weird shit)check.

This has happened before too. I've had the group form a strong attachment to one of my NPC's and have them join the party. I'm proud I can create characters that they love, so I often end up with DMPC's even in games where I didn't have one to start. It's never been a problem so far, but I think that's because for me, it really is all about making sure the PC's have fun and that's all I use the GMPC's for.