General GM advice for a new GM

[dbass]

Hey everyone. I know that this isn't the first person who has screamed "I'M NEW TO GMing HELP!" but I thought that maybe I could get a little specific advice.

I'm not new to 3.5. I played in high school with some friends. But I haven't picked up the game for years and only got back into it as a friend of mine was interested in starting a game. As I was the only one with any experience at all in the game, I became the GM. Now before I know it there are four other guys, mid-20's, who have never played before, all in my party.

I bought the core rulebook, advanced player guide, bestiary, and have pulled some stuff off this site to boot.

So here we go...

Seeing as how I am a dental student and strapped for cash, I decided against buying any more than I did. Which meant building a world from scratch. In short, here's what I've thought up.

The characters meet in a city about to hold a series of tests for the "olympics." The olympics are overseen by the officiator, who is the equivalent of the liason between the three main countries on the continent, who don't particularly like each other. Whichever country wins the olympics wins honor for his country, and holds a certain amount of political persuasion over the officiator.

So here's my problem.

Having met twice and had a great time gaming, it has come to my attention just how easily and quickly the players can do things that I didn't plan for. The first time actually ended up being a more or less good thing, as I had to improv two new NPCs on the fly, and one of them I've decided to make a recurring character. But I'm not so certain that my improvization skills will be up to the task to doing this repeatedly. So maybe this is a difficult question, but what do you do when your players decide to push forward, when you want them to turn around and head the other direction?

Problem number two.

As a result of creating my own adventure, I've taken upon myself the job of creating an entire world, complete with cities, various political interests, stereotypes, animosities, allies, and at least two major continents. Not to mention a main story arc that will bring in as many of these things over the course of the stroy as possible.

In other words, DAUNTING.

So any advice on creating a whole new world? How much detail do I do ahead of time and how much do I just do on the fly for simplicity? How much do I attempt to control my players decisions without infringing upon the freedom of the game (which makes it so very fun)? Any other general advice for a new GMer would be appreciated too. Thanks guys!!

[dbass]

P.S. If it would help you to know the main story arc that I've created, I can do so, but I would rather not get too into it as the guys I GM for might be reading these posts.

[AlecStorm]

The first thing to do is preparing more setting, it will help to improvise. Recurring npc are a great thing IMO.
Think about that for creating a new world.
There's magic?
Is common?
What's magic impact on the game?
Is secretive, or people use it in daily life? For example transport, healing, etc.
This questions are very important, because is like deciding the tech level in a non fantasy world.
Religion and nations should be defined. A tip: if all characters are from the same region you can develop other region after or in a superficial way.
Classes, order, guilds can be interesting for players.

[ub3r_n3rd]

There are plenty of free settings out there pre-made by other people as well. I'd probably use some google-fu and search them out especially if you are having a hard time trying to come up with your own. Another thing you can do is use an old setting you already have and insert your players into that so you don't have to come up with a bunch of stuff and build the world out of scratch.

[bfobar]

somewhere out there on the googles is a site with what is called "5 room adventures". Find it and save a bunch that you like and have them in your back pocket to allow improvization if your characters wander off on a tangent away from your main story arc.

[DigMarx]

Reffing an open world is challenging for just about any GM. Use the sessions as an opportunity to practice and improve your improvisational skills. You'll find you won't have to railroad your players if you plan your scenarios, encounters, and NPCs loosely. Don't kill yourself detailing corners of your world the players won't likely explore. Players will take it upon themselves to explore any obvious threads you leave dangling out there, and if they don't, use more carrot and less stick to get them moving in the right direction.

Zo

[WhipShire]

dbass wrote:

Seeing as how I am a dental student and strapped for cash, I decided against buying any more than I did. Which meant building a world from scratch. In short, here's what I've thought up.

Try this link guy i think you will find alot of help... with PF stuff. Gamemasters, Players, Classes, Monsters, Traps, 3rd party... just take a look.

Pathfinder SRD

[cranewings]

Dbass, I usually have two or three things ready to go, so if the players decide not to take the bait on something, I can recycle it and still play that night.

For world design, it is best for everyone if you draw on stereotypes and common knowledge. There is a lot of implied stuff in fantasy: kings, knights, serf or commoners, churches, and so on. The closer you stick to a real time period or standard fantasy idea, the less writing you have to do.

When it comes to getting started, all you really need is the starting town, a dozen or so npcs including some badguys, allies, and local useful people like shop owners. The you need two or three adventures or dungeons, and finally a page or so of notes about what the countries are, names of kings and capitols, just so the players feel like there is somewhere to go.

I like to preroll treasure and what magic items are for sale locally.

You can add more as you go, but I think this is enough.

[Chaos_Scion]

I always create my own worlds to i think it is a blast...Make the city small if possible the fewer NPC's, shops and the like the easier it is to prepare them in advance...don't be vague with plot hooks let the party know where you want them to go and don't be afraid to tell them out of game that you didn't prepare something(so they can either take a break while you do or make a different choice)

Making stock dungeons and building that you can just fill in with requisite bad guy also can help if they decide to go some where you weren't expecting.

True sandboxes take months or years of prep work if you want to make them happy in huge cities(or you have to be incredibly quick on your feet)

[Lightbulb]

I wrote out a massive stream of consciousness but I think I will just posted the basics:

1) You are creating the illusion of a real world. You only need the most basic information to make it believable. How much does your average adventurer know about lands 2000 miles away from him? Maybe he knows the best bows are made in a land out east. Spices are imported from the south. To the west is a sea across which no one has travelled on account of the sea demons.

2) Make characters for many situations and insert them when appropriate. The little village her doesn't need a name, let alone a bar tender, blacksmith and interesting plot hook. Its just a dot on a map that the players could go there. It barely exists until the players go there. Once they go there you can give it a little more detail. But if you don't develop it too much there should be little reason for them to stay there.

3) Railroading. There should (probably) be an opportunity for your players to be heroes. There are probably not that many things going on at once that allow them to do this.

If you wanted them to break curse which is keeping a whole city in a state of undeath its perfectly ok to have signs pointing to this.

This doesn't mean that everything they do has to be to do with this. Maybe if they want to go east to the land of the elves to gain some magic items to help them with the quest - this is ok. Go with it. They won't (shouldn't) expect you toi have a fully developed world just sat waiting.

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One final thing, and a lesson you have already learned I believe:

They will go off topic. Develop the high level stuff - fill in the detail when needed. Otherwise you will spend 2 days coming up with a cool character only for the players to ignore/kill only to go and speak to someone you never even thought about at all. :)

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One final thing. I have always wanted to try and use this cooperative world building rules set:

http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf.