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I recommend reading everything posted at the Alexandrian. This is a good start, and Getting The Players To Care has very good ideas on how to involve the players instead of boring them. I don't recall if I got this idea from there, but to improve your storytelling and description, the next time you're watching a television show, describe what's happening out loud as if the show were in your head and you were telling it to your players. That will give you practice in thinking on your feet as you try to keep up with the show.
Here are some things that helped me:
1) NPCs on index cards. The card had a picture of the NPC, any important stats I would need, and a single line that told me the personality. It may have been something as simple as "Zaric, weapons merchant, craft weapons +10, jolly fellow speaks like Gunn from Angel."
2) Know the rules or at least how to use the index and table of contents. If you have a PDF, know how to use the search function.
3) Ask the players what kind of adventures they want.
4) After each adventure, ask them how things went. What they liked and disliked. Write it down. Take it and learn from it.
5) If you make a mistake that doesn't cost the character his life, move on and make adjustments later. If it costs the character his life and the player is unhappy, then stop the game for a moment and see if you can rewind or make some concession to fix things. If it's just an inconvenience, then it isn't worth the game grinding to a halt.
6) Get the Gamemastery Guide. It has a lot of good advice.
7) Don't let any of us dictate how your games should run. Take our advice with a grain of salt. Your group and our groups are different and we can only tell you what has worked for us.
8) Have fun!
If you want to use maps, I'd suggest predrawing them first. Get that done before the game and you'll be fine.
Graphing paper and index cards are your two best friends. Graphing paper is great for making dungeons, towns, and anything that really needs to be mapped. What I like to do is I'll make a dungeon on my graph paper notebook with the bare bones legend on it, xerox it, then cut it up room by room. That way, as my PCs are treading through the dungeon/forest/sewer/whatever, there can be a gradual map that slowly builds up. Then, on the master copy, you can put notes on treasure, encounters, hazards.
Index cards are tops. $2, get a 100 pack. And you can use them for EVERYTHING! Initiative order, monster stats, NPCs, paper footballs to assault your players with, a deck of many things... I honestly could go on.
When designing encounters in a dungeon, be sure to put a good balance of combat, traps, hazards, an puzzles..
Combat: Usually, combat difficulty goes from easiest at the beginning of a dungeon to hardest at the end. It is a bit expected, but you can totally change it up a bit. Don't be afraid to throw some easy monsters (around two CR levels below Expected Party Level) so that your group doesn't blow through all of their magical resources so quickly. Make combat interesting. Add environmental dangers (Oh no, the room is flooding and there's this gator with us!!) to spice things up. Not every room in your dungeon should have combat since it does slow down exploration a bit, plus taxes the party's resources. It is good to have a couple empty rooms where they can catch a breather.
Traps: Traps come in two varieties. Resource wasters and actual encounter. Resource wasters are your average traps. They are usually here to take some of your HP and make you use a Cure Light Wounds. Things like Poison Arrow Traps and Pitfalls are like this. You can make them a bit more interesting by having two traps lead to each other, or to a monster. For example, a pitfall leads into another room below that begins to flood with water.
And encounter trap is, in my opinion, much more fun. These can be connected to puzzles, combat, or just be whole dungeon encounters. These kind of traps are experienced by everyone and can be disable in more ways than just Disable Device. For example, that pitfall leading to a flooded room? Suddenly, some eels get pulled in and now you are trapped here dealing with eels. Or, the party is trying to solve a puzzle by placing boulders of varying size into holes. But, if they don't do it in time, the boulders that have been placed already get ejected back at them. They have a change to dodge the damage luckily and can restart the puzzle. These kind of traps tend to be more memorable so use them sparingly.
Hazards: These are the environmental issues you have to worry about. Deadly molds, loose ground, darkness, and poisonous air are all good examples of hazards. They can be used in a variety of ways, from traps to combat to puzzles. Like traps, they are designed to sap a little bit of resources from your PCs. Something like green slime which can hurt your players. For combat, they can give the enemy or ally a tactical advantage. For example, your party of all humans are fighting in an underground lake against a devilfish. Or you are all dwarves and half orcs with darkvision and are ambushing goblins in the pitch blackness of the Darklands. And for puzzles, they can just be as simple as trying to leap across the tops of stone pillars to traverse a massive ravine.
Puzzles: Of the four main dungeon components, puzzles are the hardest to do in my opinion. I feel that physical, tangible puzzles are much better to do than logic puzzles. A lot of this is because not everyone is great at mathematical questions or logic puzzles or riddles. However, solving tactile problems and being able to manipulate tangible pieces are just a part of a sapient creature's innate ability to solve problems. Hell, it's how we learned to use tools in the first place, right? So, go for physical puzzles (like, say, a sliding tile puzzle that controls the rooms of a dungeon) over cryptic Sphinx riddles. That said, play to your player's strengths. If there is a PC who loves solving a good riddle and is great at them, by all means, go for it.
Remember these are all guidelines and not rules. This'll at least help you start off. And remember Rule 0... the REAL rule 0:
This is a game. As such, everyone needs to have fun, both GM and players. Don't be afraid to compromise and don't be afraid to talk to your fellow gamer if there is an issue. This goes for GMs and Players.
Make it clear to the group from the beginning that your role as GM is to create the game experience and move it along at an enjoyable pace for the entire group. That includes you.
One of the things new GMs tend to experience is a lot of rule discussion since they sometimes aren't real comfortable yet with the rules and the players may or may not be. Some of the rules are a bit of a pain to work out the first time you encounter a complex situation.
So let them know that you will sometimes make a rule based on your hunch, intuition, common sense or dramatic narrative and move on, even if a final determination has not been agreed upon. Tell them that you will note the situation and research it between sessions and report the "official" ruling back to them for future reference. There isn't much that causes the group to lose interest like a rules lawyering player arguing endlessly with a GM desperate to "do the right thing." The "right thing" is to keep the game fun for everyone.
Use index cards for your PCs too. You can use those to track initiative, note conditions that players may not be aware of, make notes about play situations, etc. If possible see if one of your players will volunteer to track initiative during combat until you get comfortable with all the details of combat.
Lay out your encounters ahead of time, make sure you have all of the NPCs stats, abilities, etc. in front of you. Make notes about tactical decisions each NPC might make (even things like "if down to less than 1/2 hit points, will consider running away").
Most of my players (and me too) use maps and find them very helpful, especially since the PF rules assume the use of a 1" grid and many of the combat rules are written with that assumption in mind. You can easily make a battlemap from paper, or you can purchase one from a game store. They are a huge help. Don't worry about how beautiful a map is, all that matters is that it shows the tactical situation accurately.
Finally, have fun.
As the Gm your word is law !! but clearing up rule questions before a tense moment always helps.
know the rules , but don't get married to them. I run a Home brew game and can make rulings on the fly .The trick is to be consistent. if the gm can do it so can the players.
try to care about the story! Keep players involved as much as u can. Even in slow times i go around my table and get some feedback constantly.
Don't split up the party for more than a hour.
Don't railroad players with only a rigid plot structure.
Don't award extra xp for running ahead and sneak slaying monsters solo ( unless that is what the players and you want)
Do Pace your story and game for the amount of time you have . ( My group meets once a week for 4 hours , because we have children and such )
Do let the group come up with unconventional solutions
Do let the group make mistakes hahahahaha! it's the only way you and them will learn.
Do run the game the way u want , after all it's your game.
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(3) How on earth can I become better with my story telling? I know I should be describing areas in detail and using a lot of adjectives, but my mind tends to just lock up when I'm presented with a blank canvas. Are there processes to go through to start to flesh out custom stories?
Focus on getting the important details out to the players. If you add too much detail or adjectives then players tune out while you describe it. Even with published adventures just summarize a room with one or two sentences.
A rich man's bedroom can be summarized as "A very nice bedroom". If the players ask follow up questions "What is in it?
"A bed with silk sheets, a gilded armoire, a desk, and a cedar chest. The stone is made from fancy Qadiran tile."
Then if they ask about a specific item you give more details about individual items.
You can use the same process yourself to flesh out the room.
What is the room? A bedroom for a rich man.
What is in the bedroom? and so on.
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Improv is very much improved if you have a few stock characters. I am running a game where my players are running all over Golorian and to make characterizing NPCs easier I try to give each nationality a hook related to something real world. That way if I need to role play someone I have something to base it on. For me Cheliax is italy, Andoran is england, Taldor is France, Mammoth Lords are Conan on Mammoths.
I also will write up some general use NPCs and use them whenever I need stats all of a sudden. I write up a fighter type, skill type, magic type, and cleric type. Then If I need an NPC with stats I can pair a stereotype with some stats and boom instant fully fleshed NPC.
edit: I also have a list of names for each nationality in case they ask.
As far as improving your story telling you should try to gear your adventures so that choices made by the players have real effects. I like to present obstacles and then leave it to the players to create a solution. If they are stuck I will have a solution or two up my sleeve to give them some direction but generally the players come up with a cooler more interesting solution and they are more engaged because the idea was theirs.
As an example last game I gave the group the mission of acquiring something from a bank in Westcrown in Cheliax. If they made knowledge or gather information checks I would give them hints to some of the solutions with which I had already decided. I also gave them general information on the characters involved with the bank accounts (bank officers, state court officers, family that holds the account).
My solution was that they would just do the regular process of claiming the account through estate rules with forged documents and then wait for the process to work itself through. That would take months. So I also had a back up adventure where I used and event involving the mayor's mansion (we had previously played though Infernal Syndrome) so that it would sync with the end of our last campaign.
In the end they decided to hurry up the process by bribing so we ended up playing how they found out information about people and how they contacted people. Eventually, they got the gold in days instead of months. They even stole a form from a courier so they would not need to pay one of the bribes. I thought it was very clever because I had not expected them to try and intercept a courier at all. They were just fluff to explain how documents got from the bank to the state offices and back to the bank. But the players wanted to do it so I used one of my skill type NPCs and a name from my list and boom I had a courier character.
Because the solutions where their own they were very involved the whole game.
Silver Crescent Publishing
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1) If you're looking for a setting to get a good base of information to use in order to create your own aventures and campaigns I would suggest looking at one of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting books like the Inner Sea or (stand by for a bit of a plug) the Realms of Twilight Campaign Setting.
If you want a pre-made adventure to help get your feet wet and see what both you and your players like any of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths are good for that. They are very well written and have solid encounters fo you to play around with and experience. It may help you figure out what you and your players like and inspire some additional creativity of your own.
2) With maps it depends on the group and the application. If your group is more story based they will tend to enjoy the description and using imagination to see combat rather than needing a grid work map. However some of the tactical rules like flanking, movement and relative position can be a bit tougher to keep track of. If you are creating an adventure, to me maps are a must. It makes it so you have some idea what lies around the next corner, where traps and encounters are, and similar things, even if the players never se the map.
3) As far as storytelling, practice. Try writing some short stories that only you see. Re-read them a few days after you write them and see if you can see the image you were trying to create. If something seems like it doesn't work, you can change it. If you have the prep time you can ever pre-write area descriptions before the game and read it to your players instead of coming up with it on the spot.
Storytelling isn't just a description, it is a performance. Make sure to modulate your voice, or use multiple voices if you are representing various NPCs speaking. Use props, or other tools to help bring your players into the scene (without beating them with a wooden sword or anything...)
I don't know if any of this helped at all, but I hope so. Good luck with your new group.
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(3) How on earth can I become better with my story telling? I know I should be describing areas in detail and using a lot of adjectives, but my mind tends to just lock up when I'm presented with a blank canvas. Are there processes to go through to start to flesh out custom stories?
Don't start with adjectives, start with clear descriptions: clarity is better than elegance for this kind of storytelling.
As you learn to juggle all of the GM stuff in your brain more smoothly you'll find that the descriptive stuff will come more easily.
If you want inspiration for small details I would recommend Your Whispering Homonculus.
Thank you all for your detailed responses. I'm going to print this thread and start highlighting the ideas that I feel best suit my group. There's a lot of extremely helpful information here and I'm surprised at such deep responses to my questions, especially given my long initial post, what a fantastic community. I'll be lurking these forums to learn as much as I can. Thanks again!!
Don't lurk. Be active. The more you interact with us, the more you can learn. Ask questions. Don't be afraid to look like a fool. Heck, I've been running games since 1980 and I still post questions. I don't post to every thread. Sometimes I do just lurk a thread, but I try to be active. I love when I find out I was doing something wrong (reading a rule wrong) and by doing it right (reading it right), my game improved (there really isn't a wrong way to game as long as you are all having fun).
There are tons of resources for GMs and players alike to help them with the game. Feel free to ask if you find yourself in a bind.
A good author to read for how to do descriptions is Vladamir Nobokov. He wrote a lot of short stories and a few novels. You may be familiar with Lolita and Pale Rider. His stories are filled with great descriptions.
On a side note, he had a condition called synesthesia. It manifests in many ways, but basically it is a blending of the senses. Some people can hear colors, see sounds, feel tastes, etc. Nobokov used this to enhance his writing.
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So my friends *seemed* to be having a good time, but they were getting tired and a little bored by the end of it all and I realised that my story telling skills left something to be desired. This obviously wasn't an issue with the pre-written quest in the beginner's box, but during improv I found it very difficult but did my best.
The first thing to do is sit down with your players and ask them, "I notice you were bored. What was going on that made you lose interest?"
The absolute #1 piece of advice I can give you is TALK TO YOUR PLAYERS. Always be soliciting feedback. If you see problems come up, talk to them to find solutions.
Player boredom could have been because your difficulty with improv -- and that simply improves with practice. But maybe it was something else... maybe it was late (or they had a long day of work the other day...) and they were tired (I play in a game where we often play on Friday nights simply because it's the only time we can find--but after a long week of work, and a usual bedtime of 10:00-10:30 pm, I struggle sometimes to keep my energy up to engage with the game properly). Maybe they were expecting more combat, or less combat. Maybe someone felt they weren't getting enough "screen time." Maybe this kind of game isn't their thing. You won't be sure till you ask.
That's not to say disregard the advice here, which is excellent, but different players have different needs. What works for one will not work for the other, so the first thing you need to do is, again, talk to them and find out what they in particular want out of a game.
So I'm left with a few questions that I'm hoping the community can help me with. Firstly, I notice there are a *lot* of books.(1) Which books should I be looking at for a decent amount of content? Something as nicely laid out as Black Fang, formatting wise, would be brilliant - with maps of the current area printed up the top right, and the creature stat boxes on the page to save me flicking through the bestiary would be ideal for us while we learn.
I am assuming from your context you're looking for adventures. And do note that the Beginner's Box is relatively new and doesn't have a lot of adventures for it.
You can look at modules and adventure paths, but they are written for the core Pathfinder RPG, which has a lot of added complexity to the game presented in the Beginner's Box. But you may still get great use out of them for ideas and maps. I don't use a lot of modules myself but I would peruse the modules section of this message board to see what might look good to you. There are some free modules like Master of the Fallen Fortress and We Be Goblins that you can grab to take a look at.
For non adventure stuff, I'd suggest getting the Game Mastery Guide (the pdf version is only $10). A lot of the advice and such is left out of the Game Mastery Guide entries in the PRD, so you're not going to find it there, you'll need the actual book. There's a lot of excellent advice for new GMs about both handling players and adventure structure. It's all guidelines, if something in there doesn't work for you, that's fine--but I think it might be a good thing to have in your library.
If you move rules-wise from Beginner's Box to the Core PFRPG, you'll want the core rulebook and Bestiary (the near entirety of which is on the PRD). I would suggest ignoring the Advanced Player's Guide and Ultimate Books for now; they add a lot of complexity which can provide a lot of pitfalls for new GMs. But there's nothing wrong with sticking with the Beginner's Box! It's just again, new, so there's not a lot of custom material for it YET. That will change with time, I am sure. Someone else might be able to speak better as to how easy it is to convert Pathfinder RPG stuff to Beginner's Box rules as well---it may be pretty easy.
Oh, and PRD is Pathfinder Reference Document.
(2) Should I be bothering with maps? My experience with Vampire: The Masquerade was actually mapless, but was a lot of fun. I presume these maps help a lot with tactics, and if executed correctly will probably add a lot to the experience.
This is a matter that is very largely of preference. Personally, I absolutely prefer maps in Pathfinder and always use them--for me they speed combat immensely because people aren't ever confused about what's going on or arguing about their position. And me, the way my brain works, the visuals help me immensely keep track of what's going on. I'm always confused during combat in RPGs where we don't use maps and have to ask the GM a lot of questions to make sure I have the situation down right.
Some people are different though. They find setting up maps cumbersome and time-consuming, and/or just prefer being able to visualize things in their head.
Now, if you're playing with the Beginner's Box, they simplify combat and take out some of the tactical factors that make playing with a battlegrid less essential (things like threatened areas and attacks of opportunity). So it especially ends up being up to you.
If you decide to stick with maps, I would echo the suggestion someone else made of predrawing maps you know you are going to use. Invest in a blank dry erase battle grid map (I prefer Paizo's Gamemastery Flip Mat to stuff like the roll up vinyl maps) or gaming paper (which is basically wrapping paper printed with a 1 inch grid).
If you've got the cash to spare, the Gamemastery Flip Mats and Map Packs are nice--they have predrawn artwork on them and are dry erase so you can add your own details--but it saves you time setting up drawing terrain and the like. (Note the map packs made before this year or so aren't dry erase though.)
(3) How on earth can I become better with my story telling? I know I should be describing areas in detail and using a lot of adjectives, but my mind tends to just lock up when I'm presented with a blank canvas. Are there processes to go through to start to flesh out custom stories?
Practice practice practice. Buy a module or two (or download a freebie, like Master of the Fallen Fortress) and see how descriptions are written in those--read them aloud even by yourself to get the feel for the words as you hear yourself say them.
Don't beat yourself up if you forget to describe something. You're the Game Master, you have a LOT to keep track of---all the NPCs, the monsters, the plot, all the various effects going on, etc. If you say "stairway" instead of "rickety wooden stairway" that is far from the worst sin you can commit as a GM. Again, it will come more easily with time.
The GMG has a cool page of "words every GM should know" which is at least amusing if not helpful for coming up with descriptive terms. :)
Welcome, good luck and happy gaming!
Don't be afraid of embracing the occasional cliche. If you are stuck for a moment and can't think- use a common cliched item for the genre (a greedy thief, an officious clerk, a dark and stormy night). After a few moments of using it, you will probably think of a good way to subvert it if you feel it needs to be. But throwing something, anything out there will get rid of the "blank canvas" problem and keep things moving.
Maps are good for tactical fights and people who thrive on strategy, but those who err on the acting/improv theatre side of things might get really slowed down. Doing an entirely narrative style of fight can make things go quicker (since range, movement rates and other square-counting isn't important), but it can also lead to confusion about exactly how people are arranged, which can be an issue with a lot of spells or teamwork items. It sounds like you have a bit of practice with this from Vampire, though, so it might be less likely to happen.
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I'm subscribed to a Role-playing newsletter full of short little articles about nearly every aspect of tabletop gaming from general to specific.
Anything I could say would be dwarfed by these articles. Here's a link;
Archive
Something to help you run your game is Kyle Olson's Combat Manager. The thread discussing it can be found here. I recommend not getting the latest release, yet. It seems to have a load problem. Version 1.3.7 is working pretty good right now. And best of all, it's free.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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(1) Which books should I be looking at for a decent amount of content? Something as nicely laid out as Black Fang, formatting wise, would be brilliant - with maps of the current area printed up the top right, and the creature stat boxes on the page to save me flicking through the bestiary would be ideal for us while we learn.(2) Should I be bothering with maps? My experience with Vampire: The Masquerade was actually mapless, but was a lot of fun. I presume these maps help a lot with tactics, and if executed correctly will probably add a lot to the experience.
(3) How on earth can I become better with my story telling? I know I should be describing areas in detail and using a lot of adjectives, but my mind tends to just lock up when I'm presented with a blank canvas. Are there processes to go through to start to flesh out custom stories?
1) It really depends on what you want to run. I suggest an Adventure Path. Which one? Look them over here on the site and make a list of the few that really interest you. Present that list to your group and ask if they want to play any of those. Help them understand that it could take about a year to a year and a half to play all the way through one of the APs if they want to go through all six parts. I highly recommend that you play through all six parts. Your group will not regret it.
As for the layout of the APs, they are pretty easy to read. If you have a tablet device with a great PDF reader, I cannot recommend using the PDFs highly enough. Use a program like Good Reader that lets you make notations, highlight, and so on. When you prepare for the games, you can set it up so the monster stats are already set up in a note on the side and all you have to do is click on the note and look at the stats. Highlighting, underlining, and margin notes will also help you with question #3.
2)Maps help in two ways. The first, and probably most important, is that you will be able to tell where people are in a combat. The beginner box probably taught you that already. The second way maps help is how they can be used as visual aids. Outside of combat, maps can help your players visualize the places they are exploring and that will help them make better decisions.
3) Read what you can when you can. Reading will help you with story telling in so many ways. Characters, dialog, descriptions, settings, moods, beats, etc. are all tools that storytellers use. Reading and paying attention to what you read will help you learn how to use them in your own story telling.
Telling stories is another way to help. Tell at least one story a day, and make them good. If you have to, read a story aloud or tell the same one twice. Try to not to tell the same one too many times, because that will become boring.
Observe your surroundings and the people around you. Sometimes, you will learn from life ways to make your stories even better.
Now my own advice to a new GM:
My three rules:
#1: Tell a good story.
This is not so easy at first, but you will learn in time. If you use an AP, most of the work is done for you and all you have to do is deliver the story well enough for it to be enjoyable. Try to take some time to add in a little bit of yourself though, as that will make the story move from good to great.
#2: The players need to have fun.
If the players are not having fun, then the game will not be fun. Sometimes there are trouble players that will never have fun at your table, so don't always feel like it is your fault, but be aware of them and how they are reacting. After a game, ask them how you did and ask them what they liked the best or what could be changed. Trust them, follow the advice as best you can, and the game will become even more fun.
#3: The GM deserves to have just as fun as the players.
If you, the GM, find that you are not having fun, stop the game and let the players know. Talk about it and find the cause and a solution. Do this before the game moves too far along. If you can't find a way to run a game and have fun, you need to try being a player for a while. If you are having fun, then keep it up!
Do not use adjectives. People always think they help characterization, in reality it doesn't work likethat. Because they are unclear in how much, that is, HOW big is the house, humans can't relate to them. Adjectives are a shorthand we use for telling, and you want to show. Try to be specific, such as saying the sword is a two handed sword taller than you are, or compare it to something else, such as saying the villain's cape is the colour of fresh blood. Note that "fresh" here refers to a type of blood, it's not a victim of how much.
Most people find this hard to accept. Even so, every book people like to read does this.
Also, if they are not old hands at this, try one beer before you start. It makes it easier to relax certain reflexes about social rules that non roleplayers can be tripped up by. Once that relaxation has gotten in place, however, you are not likely to need it again.
'taller' is an adjective. 'colour of fresh blood' is an adjectival phrase. I presume that you didn't mean "don't use adjectives", so can you clarify, please?
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Sean's Guide to GMing
Introduction
This is a quick and dirty guide to pass along some tips that I've found helpful as a GM. A lot of people here have and will offer some excellent tips on understanding and mastering game mechanics, as well as tips and advice on organizing your materials and managing combat, and I'll probably touch on some of that as well, but what I'd like to focus on is more of the creative/artistic side of it. The storytelling side. As you suggested, the "improvisational" side. I hope any of this helps. Ignore everything that doesn't.
A first piece of advice before we begin, I actually don't like full on "improvisation" as a GM. Even an hour or two of thought and preparation before you begin will make all the difference in the world. Even with all the preparation in the world, there is still plenty of "improv" involved in running a game, but as with everything else, good preparation is key to good output. All the best professional stand up comedians and improv artists, who make it look easy, prepare like crazy. It's not a bad idea to follow their example.
The Five Most Important Questions EVAR
Who? Where? Why? What? When?
Basic journalism is just as important for a GM as it is for a reporter. Those five questions define literally everything you'll ever need to know, ever. Plus, they are super-easy to remember. The first three in particular are vital to every story you'll ever tell.
"Who?" starts with your PCs, includes their primary rivals and adversaries, and ultimately everybody in the world. But, you know, take it one step at a time.
"Where?" starts with the town, village, inn or convoy where the PCs meet, and eventually leads to everywhere and anywhere. Every cave, dungeon, castle, windswept cliffside, frozen mountaintop, sun-beaten desert and sandy tropical beach.
"Why?" is probably the most important question of all. The better you understand why anybody does anything, and why very frequently people do very surprising and unexpected things, the better your game will be.
The "What?" is, of course, treasure. When you get right down to it, it's always a game about killing other people and taking all their stuff.
"When?" might seem the least of all questions, but you'd be surprise. Start with the year, the month, the date, and the day of the week, but time marches ever onward, my friend. Things change, seasons change, day moves into night, and so on, and so on. Que sera, sera.
Character is Everything
This actually goes for both your NPCs and your players. In stories, character is everything. It's what we all relate to, and it's how we identify with a game or any story. What motivates us? What moves us? What basic wants and needs do we have?
Above all, remember that everybody, from the lowliest homeless urchin to the most vile demonic overlord, is the hero of his own story. In his head, he's the good guy. Understand why and how any given goblin, bandit, dragon or paladin views themselves as the hero of their story.
The best place to start understanding this is with your PCs. Each of your players will have their own vision of the game, STARRING! <their character>!
Start by discussing each character with your player. It doesn't need to be a long conversation, but get a feel of who they are, what they want, and who they want to be. Where are they from? What is their family? What does their family do for a living? Are they from here <wherever your game is set>? If not, where are they from, and how and why did they come here? Why did they become an adventurer?
Finally, is there anything they might want out of adventuring? This might be a magic weapon, or other magic item, or it might be a particular place the character wants to go, or it might be some motivation like revenge for some past wrong, or finding a lost love. Getting a grip on this for each PC will help both you and the players better visualize the main characters of the game.
Once you've done this, you'll have an idea how to do it for any and all NPCs you dream up, no matter how sudden. Even if you're making a character up on the fly, take a quick moment to think about who that character is, where she's from, and what she wants. You'll thank yourself for it.
In many cases, just asking a few of these motivational questions about your NPCs will be all the information you'll ever need. No need to write up a detailed character sheet for every character you make. Just a few questions and you've got your character portrait, enough for most any role playing situation.
Conflict, Conflict, Conflict
To really run great games and tell great stories, you need conflict. Conflict at every turn. This doesn't need to always lead to a fight, but it's as simple as "For everything anybody wants, there is someone else who wants the opposite." If the players are going after something, they should never be allowed to go after it unopposed. Somebody else wants that thing too, or wants to stop the players from getting it, or wants to destroy it instead.
Even just buying supplies and equipment can offer opportunity for conflict -- the merchant wants the players to pay more, the players want to pay less (although don't overdo this one too much). Over the long run, you'll ultimately want to give your players the things the want, but always make them work for it.
For any given scene, ask yourself if there is some kind of twist or complication you can throw in. And again for the next. Even in a fight, throw some kind of obstacle or difficulty in with it. If it increase conflict for all sides, even better.
Twist the Knife and Bring the Pain
One of the better favors you'll do for yourself is to get in touch with your cruel side. Whenever possible, make your characters feel pain. All the things that they want and like? Take it away from them. Steal it. Smash it. Destroy it. Kill it. Make them watch it wither and die. Make their loved ones and friends suffer. If they have a puppy, kick it. If they have a happy, squish it. In fact, give them happies and puppies, just so you can squish them and kick them.
You must make your players happy on a regular basis, and make sure to make them very happy. But always, always, always remember that player happiness exists only for you to take it away and destroy it, thus forcing your players to overcome/revenge/recover it and making them happy again, just so you can ruin it all over again. Pain is your best friend and your constant companion.
Pain is your happiness.
Ratchet Up the Stakes
Closely related to the last point, for a truly memorable game, ratchet up the stakes every chance you get. Start with what's at stake in the first place -- sure, when the adventurers start out, maybe all they want is to find a treasure in a dungeon, or root out a band of orcs in the nearby forest. But once they're in there, what if a trap locks them in the dungeon? Now the stakes are more than just money, the characters have to get out if they want to live! Not to speak of spending the treasure.
While rooting the band of orcs out of the forest, what if they're kidnapped? By the orcs? Or maybe a nearby dryad who wants help with the orcs? Or maybe the dryad wants something else entirely, and the players have to do that first? Or what if the band of orcs is actually an advance scout troop for an invading army? Now the whole town is at risk!
For homework in this arena, watch Buffy, Angel and Battlestar, and read Game of Thrones.
General Advice
Keep it punchy. Brevity is the soul of wit and GMing. Read Ernest Hemingway and Harlan Ellison. Read them aloud (to get used to speaking aloud). For Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea. For Ellison, Repent Harlequin, Said the TickTock Man, or I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
Go to museums and look at art. Get in touch with how people relate to themselves and their religion and history.
Take some hikes and keep track of how long the distance is and how long it takes you to walk it. Now you have a much better idea what it's like for adventurers to go walking around everywhere (until they get horses/flight/teleport). While you're at it, go horseback riding sometime. Now you know what that's like. If you're really feeling adventurous, learn some archery or swordfighting.
As you go about your day, look at the things around you, and try to look at them from new angles if you can. Look up and out, don't always look just straight ahead. Look at architecture and geography. Get a feel for how cities and towns are laid out, and how things like rivers and hills affect that.
While you're at it, start collecting maps. Not just gaming maps, but real maps as well. I'm an avid collector of maps. Old National Geographic maps sometimes be found at Goodwill or used bookstores. Maps and drawings of old castles and forts are good too.
Try holding multiple competing, conflicting, contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time. This will help you get used to keeping track of multiple things at once. Or drive you insane. Either one being useful for running large, interesting, exciting combats and doing it smoothly and quickly. For example, try believing that you love ice cream, hate ice cream, and are ambivalent about ice cream. Believe all three at once. For a more blasphemous example, try believing fervently and with all your heart that there are no gods, all gods are true, and you are god. Believe them all at once.
Practice thinking in three dimensions. Any time you get around any kind of multi-level environment, even if it's just standing inside or outside a house, or next to a tree, imagine a battle in that area, with combatants positioned in different positions around the area.
Make sure you work constantly to give everybody equal time to shine around the table.
What's in a Name?
Names can be one of the trickiest parts of winging it. I've been writing and GMing for a very long time now, so names have (with quite a bit of practice) started to come naturally to me. But it takes plenty of work. Carry a notebook and jot down names when they come to you (or that you see, or whatever). Once you've got a name, maybe add a quick description, and ask some of the questions from earlier. Keep adding to the notebook all the time, and bring it with you to your games. If you use a character from your list, make a note of it.
KEEP NOTES! Stand ups keep notes, improvers keep notes, actors, lawyers, singers, dancers and performers all take notes. Not just to guide them and help them remember what they're doing, but also to study, critique and improve themselves and their performances. KEEP NOTES!
Thanks for reading, I know this was seriously TL;DR, but if anybody reads this and finds anything helpful from it, I really hope you enjoy it.
'taller' is an adjective. 'colour of fresh blood' is an adjectival phrase. I presume that you didn't mean "don't use adjectives", so can you clarify, please?
Okay. I thought I did, but... "Don't use adjectives" is the short form. The problem is that with adjectives, things get fuzzy, and harder to imagine. This is because "big" doesn't answer the question "how big?" Is the house as big as a Hollywood mansion, Versailles, Manhattan or the moon?
To solve this, you need to be exact. Adjectives are still useful, but only in specific ways to use them. If a sword is longer than you are tall, you know it's just at the upper limit for how long a sword can be. Fresh blood has a very specific colour that everyone can relate to. So: Don't say that his cloak is red, say what red colour it is. If possible, relate it to very well known colours, because it gives the audience specifics to hang all the unknowns on. Depending on your players, it may even be possible to refer to specific cuts of clothes and such. Still, how many players know what the difference between a 1750's and 1780's british ballgown is? =)
As far as helping the players to visualize there are two very important tips.
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Twist the Knife and Bring the Pain
One of the better favors you'll do for yourself is to get in touch with your cruel side. Whenever possible, make your characters feel pain. All the things that they want and like? Take it away from them. Steal it. Smash it. Destroy it. Kill it. Make them watch it wither and die. Make their loved ones and friends suffer. If they have a puppy, kick it. If they have a happy, squish it. In fact, give them happies and puppies, just so you can squish them and kick them.
You must make your players happy on a regular basis, and make sure to make them very happy. But always, always, always remember that player happiness exists only for you to take it away and destroy it, thus forcing your players to overcome/revenge/recover it and making them happy again, just so you can ruin it all over again. Pain is your best friend and your constant companion.
Pain is your happiness.
I assume Sean was engaging in hyperbole here. You do not need to take things away all the time or destroy them or kill all their relative. Then you end up with PCs that are all loners who only care about themselves and are true neutral.
Give things to your PCs. Things that are not game bonus improvements: houses, titles, small or large castles, a nice dining room set. I find players get very attached to these things and just the threatening them gets them to swing into action. You don't need to kill their family just send a letter from the PCs mom saying that goblins have been attacking and they are worried.
Don't forget to remind the player that it's ALSO their job to push the story forrward. I've seen players wanting to totally monopolize the DM
by stating that his or her character always sneaks off and does something different than what the group is doing...
I mean, it's ok for a rogue/assasin player saying "Hey, in our downtime at the big city, I'll try to make some new contacts for (ahem!) future work...". When you start the next session you can simply state that in the two week that the group spent in the big city recuperating from the last adventure, the rogue made a contact (say, a mysterious woman named Celeste) who you can use somewhere down the line as an adventure hook, if you choose to do so.
But to constantly nag the DM by having his player seperate from the group in the middle of dungeons can become very boring for other players and, in my book, very counter productive in advancing the story.
Now I'm not saying that the characters should be railroaded into going everywhere they go, but the players have to somewhat roll with the story, if they want it to evolve.
They also have to seperate the player knowledge from the character knowledge. You're player may already know that the chest in that bedroom is most likely trapped, but his character (with INT 7) may not. Player 1's dwarf may not like player 2's elf, but player 1 and 2 should never get angry over that.
When the DM is prepared, either has read a pre-made adventure, or made up his own, has made a few hand-outs for the players like printed a map or pictures of a place where the characters are going, and brings his all of this to the table, and he has three to five players that push that story forward, THEN you have an excellent session of roleplaying.
Ultradan
Honestly, the beginner box is a great product but the intro dungeon is aimed at a younger audience, I think. Much like Crypt of the Everflame. Both of those adventures focus on being accessible rather than intense.
You have an older group. Invest in some of the better modules or an AP — they tend to skew more toward 'adult' tastes, with personal intrigue and unvarnished violence. It's those aspects of Paizo's modules and APs that keep my group interested. They're very into the overwrought prose from fiction like HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. If your players are fans of that stuff, you'll find it is very simple to bend Pathfinder in that direction.
I'd have a look at the Godsmouth Heresy... well, read the Pathfinder Wiki about the city of Kaer Maga and see if you like it. Paizo has a lot of grim, dark material suitable for older players who aren't so easily thrilled.
Sean, that was most certainly not a TLDR, thank you so much for your effort with this post. ....<snip>.... The worst part? Now I'm aching to get back in the DM chair! Starting to jot some notes down tonight to create some of my own scenarios for my players. I can't wait to see them start to have a great time with this. :D
Thanks. Hope it helps!
Twist the Knife and Bring the Pain
One of the better favors you'll do for yourself is to get in touch with your cruel side. Whenever possible, make your characters feel pain. All the things that they want and like? Take it away from them. Steal it. Smash it. Destroy it. Kill it. Make them watch it wither and die. Make their loved ones and friends suffer. If they have a puppy, kick it. If they have a happy, squish it. In fact, give them happies and puppies, just so you can squish them and kick them.
You must make your players happy on a regular basis, and make sure to make them very happy. But always, always, always remember that player happiness exists only for you to take it away and destroy it, thus forcing your players to overcome/revenge/recover it and making them happy again, just so you can ruin it all over again. Pain is your best friend and your constant companion.
Pain is your happiness.
I assume Sean was engaging in hyperbole here, for entertainment purposes. You do not need to take things away all the time or destroy them or kill all their relative. Then you end up with PCs that are all loners who only care about themselves and are true neutral.
Give things to your PCs. Things that are not game bonus improvements: houses, titles, small or large castles, a nice dining room set. I find players get very attached to these things and just the threatening them gets them to swing into action. You don't need to kill their family just send a letter from the PCs mom saying that goblins have been attacking and they are worried.
Yes, indeed.
As karkon notes, I am engaging in quite a bit of hyperbole. You do need to be careful about squishing player happies, because you want the game to be fun for everyone.
However, my attitude is that killing PCs should be rare (although some PCs seem to go out of their way to die... if they are trying that hard, oblige them).
But while killing PCs should be rare, everything else is fair game, especially all the NPCs that they care about. You can only kill any given NPC once, so use that sparingly, but suffering is eternal.
Finally, just as a reference (so you know how hard I am on my players and adjust down from there), I run my games on an Epic (25pt) point buy, four players, using the Slow XP track, and my average difficulty combat encounter is APL+3 (I've found that with my players, combat with anything less than APL+1 is too short and boring, and too easily defeated by my players). I do not recommend this for other GMs.
I often base NPCs on people I know (preferably NOT the players). This allows me to act them out relatively accurately, as well as to determine what their actions would be in a given instance.
Though serveral people already metioned these bits of advice I think they are important.
1) Don't get overly complexed desciptions. Keep it simple and precise. Write like Hemmingway...not Tolkien.
2) Talk to your players. While you can get great advice here....we don't know your players. After every session ask your players how you did, what they liked, what they disliked....etc. I am not saying you should not post and ask question on the forums...just also talk to your players also.
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But what if Hemingway bores your players to death? Some people want detail and verbal beauty. Going the Hemingway route is an extreme which will make them very, very unhappy.
I suppose what I'm saying here is to have balance. It sounds like John hates Tolkien's vivid, sweeping (and engrossing, in my so-not humble opinion) descriptions. I personally cannot stand Hemingway and wish he never took pen to paper. You're probably going to have both sorts of players at your table, as well as people in between (unless your group is comprised of people who affect a sampling bias, like English majors or MMO players). Going to any extreme, like Hemingway's sparseness or Tolkien's lushness, will disappoint someone. Seek the path of balance, and it will be the most enjoyable for most of your group. Unless you see reason to do otherwise, of course.
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But what if Hemingway bores your players to death? Some people want detail and verbal beauty. Going the Hemingway route is an extreme which will make them very, very unhappy.
I suppose what I'm saying here is to have balance. It sounds like John hates Tolkien's vivid, sweeping (and engrossing, in my so-not humble opinion) descriptions. I personally cannot stand Hemingway and wish he never took pen to paper. You're probably going to have both sorts of players at your table, as well as people in between (unless your group is comprised of people who affect a sampling bias, like English majors or MMO players). Going to any extreme, like Hemingway's sparseness or Tolkien's lushness, will disappoint someone. Seek the path of balance, and it will be the most enjoyable for most of your group. Unless you see reason to do otherwise, of course.
It really comes down to people tuning out if you put too much information out at once. Everybody does it. Have a friend read from Tolkien and see how quickly your mind wanders. It should be less than a minute. The benefit to sparse descriptions is that you can get out a sketch of an area quickly and then give details if the players ask about it. In doing so you can focus on details relevant to a small portion of the area.
So you start like Hemingway and finish like Tolkien.
DM: You enter a clearing in the woods. An strange giant of a tree stands in the center. A chill wind blows across the grass.
PC1: How big is the clearing?
DM: It is sort of ovoid being wider at one end and narrower at the other. You have entered on the narrow end so the clearing seems to widen out before you. You would reckon the total length is that of two ships placed end to end and one ship wide.
PC2: What about that Tree?
DM: This tree is by far the tallest in the area. It is easily twice the height of the surrounding trees. It stands near the center closer to the wide end of the clearing. You can see it's branches are thick and gnarled and the bark is unnaturally dark.
You can go on adding levels of detail. You can get into the grass in the clearing or the leaves of the tree. You want to grab their attention with one strong detail and give more as they ask. This keeps the players involved and does not tax anyone's attention.
If you go for a lot of detail at first people tend to remember the most recent detail or the last detail they heard before their attention wandered. Then you end up repeating yourself a lot. By sketching out the scene you can ration the detail and make it more likely the players will remember it.
I do box text as tooltips in MapTool. The players take turns reading them aloud, and that helps to keep them involved. At this point, I would consider printing the text for a live session. Being able to refer back to the description really helps them get into character.
Some groups love the purple prose, others do not. But every group needs some kind of scene description. Use the style you want as a GM and try them as handouts with players taking turns reading them aloud.
Something I did once was set up a dungeon with Power Point. I had each room and corridor hyperlinked to the the next area. Each page had a description that would always appear when the players entered the room so they knew exactly what was there. If they came back to a room, it was easy for them to remember everything. I had sound effects for some of the rooms, like water trickling or animal sounds. I just hooked my computer up to the TV and my laptop so I could have essentially 3 screens that I was working with.
It was a lot of work, and I won't do it again (although my players loved it). It took me hours to set it up. One thing I did take away from the experience was that if I can't describe the room and contents in a short paragraph, I may be putting too much information out there at once. After a while, we all figure out how much detail our players want.
But what if Hemingway bores your players to death? Some people want detail and verbal beauty. Going the Hemingway route is an extreme which will make them very, very unhappy.
I suppose what I'm saying here is to have balance. It sounds like John hates Tolkien's vivid, sweeping (and engrossing, in my so-not humble opinion) descriptions. I personally cannot stand Hemingway and wish he never took pen to paper. You're probably going to have both sorts of players at your table, as well as people in between (unless your group is comprised of people who affect a sampling bias, like English majors or MMO players). Going to any extreme, like Hemingway's sparseness or Tolkien's lushness, will disappoint someone. Seek the path of balance, and it will be the most enjoyable for most of your group. Unless you see reason to do otherwise, of course.
Sir, with respect, you have completely misunderstood the purpose of that passage, and fixated on the single most insignificant portion of the sentence (the specific author cited as an example).
The purpose of the advice is to keep things punchy not "boring, repetitive, uninformative" (or whatever it is you think I was saying) when you decided to latch on to a single word out of the whole post, and extrapolate something that never existed.
Also, I LOVE Tolkien. Please do not assume you have the slightest clue of what I like or don't like, just because I happen to offer a suggestion.
Also, my name is Sean, not John.
One of the most memorable moments in a game I played years ago was as a player in the 1e module Tomb of Horrors. For anyone not familiar it is VERY heavy with magic traps for upper level characters.
The other players and I were headed into a chamber with little of interest but a large chest. At this point we were sick and tired of having our butts handed to us by teleporters, glyphs and what have you and all looked a little bored.
GM: after checking for traps and ensuring that the chest is ok you pick the lock.
Thief: I open it
GM: ok, you open it and out comes... A FULL GROWN BENGAL TIGER!
Not what we were expecting, not what made sense, and later I realized not even what was supposed to be there. But it was a surprise, a curve ball.
Don't be afraid to look up from the screens, get a read from your characters, and try and guess at their moods. If they seem annoyed or bored, throw a surprise at them.
I was running a game and got up to grab a soda. From the kitchen I heard the party grumbling that the last treasure they'd gotten was a couple adventures back and that there seemed to be a big difference between what the book SAID they should have and what they had. I didn't realize until THAT moment that I had 5th level characters, equpped with 3rd level gear, and the dungeon I was sending them into had several 7th level encounters.
As I sat back down I had their NPC butler stop them and begin begging their pardon, but he had something important to tell them before they entered the castle ruin/dungeon. I'd hinted that the halfling had some skill as a tinkerer but no one'd ever really chatted him up about it other than to one time get a spontaneous Make Whole effect on a shattered sheild that they had barely questioned.
On the spot the butler/tinkerer explained he was actually an crafter Axiomite and that in his spare time he'd crafted some items for their upcoming battle. Unfortunately he was SUPPOSED to craft an Inevitable but he instead made instruments so that the players could settle their OWN disputes. Unfortunately this left him stranded here in the Prime and now he'd never get back.
The party took the items gladly but also swore to help the little fellow get back home (side quest). They enjoyed it and I had a little extra fodder for the next games.
Someone said Improv was a great skill to have and I second it. Combine that with knowing WHEN to surprise your party then...BOO! Your players will thank you.