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I've sort of noticed a bad pattern in my GMing style. I'm a huge control freak when it comes to narrative and characters. I find myself insisting certain character styles and archetypes to players that fit best with whatever Adventure Path I'm running with them (currently Rise of the Runelords, where I sort of cajoled a player away from being a cleric of the deity she really wanted, Arshea, to Desna, which I felt meshed better with RotRL's storyline, and basically dictated to another player their character, as they had no idea what Golarion was like and as long as they played a rogue, they'd be happy). It also compels me to play GMPCs if I feel the party's makeup doesn't include something I deem important to the narrative (like a wizard to be obsessed with Thassilonian stuff in Rise of the Runelords). I know that controlling aspects come from fear, and I believe I've identified mine as a fear of a lack of narrative cohesion. That if I just let people play what they want, the characters won't mesh with the Adventure Path's storyline or setting, and that as a result, certain themes or ideas I feel are essential to the AP's narrative structure simply end up not addressed, or that certain items don't reach their full potential as a result (Raven's Head in Carrion Crown, for example, only gets its best abilities when wielded by someone with the channel energy class feature who worships Pharasma. Many of the items or characters in Kingmaker seem to be geared towards a chaotic party, especially Briar, which as a CN weapon won't work in the hands of, say, a paladin in the group.)
What should I do to curb this tendency so I'm less of a jerk to my players?
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Don't run AP's, create your own stuff? Or modify the AP so that more stuff "fits."
Sometimes GM's take on too much work for them self. You can't guarantee that players will have fun, all you can do is learn what they enjoy and then try to create a campaign that incorporates those things. If things aren't working out, you tweak them.
I would highly advise not to use an NPC in the player group - it almost never works out unless you have a lot of experience GMing and your players trust you.
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APs are the only real thing I trust myself with, since in the past when I've tried making up stuff on my own, it comes off as very half-assed and spur of the moment, and my math is terrible, so having pre-made encounters and treasure lists is a godsend to me. Plus, the stories in the APs are phenomenal. I want to experience their stories and since I'm the only one who really knows Pathfinder inside and out on the forum to run it, I end up needing to be the one to GM it in order to do it at all.
GMPCs are just sort of an expectation on the forum I'm running this on, too. We have very, very few active members these days, so when someone starts a game on there (usually me or our forum admin), they're always playing a character as well.
APs are the only real thing I trust myself with, since in the past when I've tried making up stuff on my own, it comes off as very half-assed and spur of the moment, and my math is terrible, so having pre-made encounters and treasure lists is a godsend to me.
Well, you know what they say, if at first you don't succeed, never try again.
Plus, the stories in the APs are phenomenal. I want to experience their stories and since I'm the only one who really knows Pathfinder inside and out on the forum to run it, I end up needing to be the one to GM it in order to do it at all.
Are you not a creative person? APs may be phenomenal, but they all started as an idea and a blank piece of paper. The only way you develop the skill to create great adventures is by trial and error. Your first 2-3 campaigns might be terrible, but eventually you get good at it and make amazing adventures.
I've had players that played in my campaigns 5, 10, 15 years ago come back to me and say "Man, remember that time that we..." That's a great feeling of accomplishment.
GMPCs are just sort of an expectation on the forum I'm running this on, too. We have very, very few active members these days, so when someone starts a game on there (usually me or our forum admin), they're always playing a character as well.
Are you guys anti-social or something? If you're playing online, you shouldn't have a problem finding other players. Post on a few different sites and you'll have so many players that you'll have to weed some out.
If for some reason you only want to play with your immediate group, I still recommend against a GMPC. Even if you only have 2 players, you can run a great game tailored to those two character's and their back stories.
Bottom line - don't be afraid to fail. Take the reigns of the GM chair and go with it.
Our RotRL gm is very similar actually. He started out insisting we should go core book only and make a party that covered the core 4: fighter wizard cleric rogue....
I suggested that since everyone wants to play something funky we should do gestalts. The requirement would be everyone picks a core class so the core 4 are represented and then the other half of their gestalt could be 'freaky adventure time'....
We ended up with my evolutionist summoner/wizard, a thief/alchemist, inquisitor monk (not exactly a fighter but for our purposes) and a ranger cleric.
The gm first became frustrated that the party had easy answers to every problem. I mentioned to him that some problems would have been harder if the party were simply a summoner, inquisitor, ranger and alchemist. The gestalting did indeed make it so that every challenge the AP threw at us was well within our grasp. Our inquisitor monk volutarily dropped monk to show that it wouldnt adversely change the campaign. Then our ranger cleric died and replaced it with fighter only. I dropped wizard. We're down to evolutionist summoner, rogue alchemist, inquisitor and fighter... then the inquisitors schedule changed and we're down to a party of 3 with no dedicated healer. Our last remaining gestalt is the rogue alchemist and lo and behold, investigator shows up for playtest, so he's considering giving that a try and all of our gestalts will be gone.
Now that we no longer have easy answers to every question that comes up, the campaign has become more tactically relevant and challenging. We're playing what we want to play and suffering the consequences of less than the ideal party configuration and are having a great time doing it.
My advice is speaking directly from a position of having solved this trouble with trial by fire. We showed our gm that always having the answer was both too powerful and less fun at the same time.
He's off his core 4 philosophy and at the same time is no longer upset about the 'wierd' things we choose to play. When we lost the inquisitor he wanted to add a gmpc cleric to the party. I'm like 'don't do it man' it's ok. We've got 2 people in the party with a strong umd. We can handle our own healing... Let it go... And it's been great. I'm a 2e grognard who thinks d20 was the worst thing to happen to the game and feats are second place for the worst thing to ever happen to the game, so I can't say I'm pathfinders biggest cheerleader... That being said this has been the best character I've ever had and best campaign I've ever been a player in so far across 30 years of gaming. Thats pretty significant.
One thing I find interesting is that your avatar is a paladin and our gm also fancies himself a bit of a paladin... Maybe this is just a drawback of being 'lawful', heheheheh
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What should I do to curb this tendency so I'm less of a jerk to my players?
Don't do it?
You believe it's problem behaviour. You recognise that you are doing it. Do you have a compulsion to behave like this? Do you get anxious if you don't? Would not behaving like this in any way be detrimental to your life?
It isn't really hard to not behave like that. Especially if this is all being carried out through the medium of text. You can review what you've written and go "huh, I'm doing it again, better edit that"
This is me also, or at least it has been in the past.
I run all custom world/content and have been for over 20 years, all in the same world. This world has ben shaped by player actions, etc... Because of this I tend to be over protective.
We are just starting a new campaign and I have promised myself I am going to ficus more on what is fun and less on such control.
My suggestion is remember, pathfinder is all about having fun. The players and the GM should be having fun playing. If you are not, why bother?
Focus on the fun. Talk to your players. Maybe they enjoy some of the challenges/restrictions?
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Tranzor Z: why do you feel the need to control? Is it that you think your players are incapable of success w/out your guidance and experience? Or do you find yourself afraid of the unexpected variables of a game you don't have direct input into?
I ask because I've identified both aspects in myself.
I used to have a GMPC in every game I ran. I also "collaborated" with each player through the character creation process. Since I run only homebrew stuff I convinced myself they needed my direct input in order to be immersed in a world that was mostly in my head, not theirs. I was at times called overbearing. Eventually I forced myself to not GM at all but rather be a player or not game.
Watching other GMs I got the sense of what my players had talked about. There were random generators for backgrounds and these generic stories could then be adapted to any story, so I didn't HAVE to craft a specific story for each PC so they could fit into my world. Rather the players created everything themselves and then shoe-horned these into the world my buddy Dwayne had made.
Also Dwayne had a GMPC and that's where I saw a mirror image of myself. The GMPC knew everything, had every answer and succeeded at nearly everything he did. we players were basically functionaries of this guy. I had initially enjoyed the game but as time went on I got really frustrated with being second fiddle to the GM.
Nowadays I still have NPCs that travel w/the players but I purposely make them non-optimized. I also enforce a rule on myself: my NPCs never take an action unless they're directly threatened in combat or they're directed by another PC. In other words if I have a sword-crafting history expert w/a level in Fighter AND a level in Wizard, I'm not going to do anything with her but if one of the players comes upon a runestone, can't figure it out, and thinks enough to ask the NPC, she'll gladly make a Knowledge: History, Arcana and Spellcraft check alongside casting Detect Magic and tell the party all they need to know.
I have to constantly remind myself that the homebrews I run may be my initial concept, but they're OUR world, not mine. I'm not exaggerating when I say sometimes I even tell myself this out loud. Its a struggle every gaming session AP Z-man, but so far (knock on wood) I haven't gotten the "overbearing" thing in a long time.
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Here is my little control freak story,
Some things just didn't make sense in my book, some things were too easy, some things were too convenient, etc. But now that I think about it, I had some veteran players playing the game better then I GM-ed. Simply put, I didn't have enough experience to make game enjoyable for both me or my players (at least not all the time). Often enough, I would grind my teeth to the ground because things weren't going as wanted them to go.
After a year or two of GM-ing tho, I finally managed to accept players just being players. I dropped being a control freak for most part (there is still that bad guy lurking somewhere inside me!) and it not only made me a better GM, it made me a better person overall.
It takes time and effort and most of all, the support of your players. I am still proud of all my players today, and how they shared their time with me despite me being grumpy about the rules sometimes and of course being a control freak.
Malag
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I've never had a better experience in my life than when I collaborated with my players to build the campaign setting we currently play in. One player wanted to play a Grippli gunslinger. I hadn't planned to allow that race, or even to include guns. So my response was "Ok, which nation do you think might have developed the technology for early firearms? I think Redstone is the most technologically advanced - they're sort of nestled between two giant military powers and haven't really been threatened by either. What if that's because they've got the world's first guns and nobody knows how to counter those yet?" And with that, a tribe of Grippli in the nearby lake got established, and an industrialized nation with advanced weaponry became much more developed.
My world has morphed so much since its original concept with the help of my players, and it's become much richer and more alive as a result. And as a side bonus, the players feel utterly ingrained in its story, since they helped create it. They accept the world for what it is, and their characters feel very much at home within it.
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That's sort of the 'downside' of the otherwise excellent Adventure path stuff. Well, one of several things I suppose:
1)By following an AP in a sense it leaves little or less room of homebrew adventures, as simply following the path takes you to 15-18, and more recently, mythic tiers.
2)Storylines of the AP tend to use the "there's some significant connection with one (or all) of the PCs to a specific plot point/etc"
Consequently players interested in playing APs have to sorta accept that in general, their PC's are going to be kinda constrained and you won't really have 'free play' access with them until after level 18 or so. Similarly the framework of the AP storyline tends to prune out or lean against certain backstories, just for ease of access.
Honestly, the way I see AP stuff is just build the classes you want and then pull 'background' from the AP itself.
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What should I do to curb this tendency so I'm less of a jerk to my players?Don't do it?
You believe it's problem behaviour. You recognise that you are doing it. Do you have a compulsion to behave like this? Do you get anxious if you don't? Would not behaving like this in any way be detrimental to your life?
It isn't really hard to not behave like that. Especially if this is all being carried out through the medium of text. You can review what you've written and go "huh, I'm doing it again, better edit that"
Yes, it honestly feels like a compulsion. I get anxious if the characters in an AP don't mesh well with the narrative ideas or themes in it. Seeing a kitsune in a Carrion Crown or Council of Thieves game makes me cringe. It even makes me cringe in Jade Regent because that campaign assumes the PCs have lived in Varisia for most of their lives, and are unfamiliar with the strange creatures of Tian Xia. I almost "snapped" (in quotation marks because this was via personal message rather than face-to-face conversation) at a player (who's also the admin of our forum) because he wanted to play a Rahadoumi to take the Atheist feats from Faiths and Philosophies in Rise of the Runelords, and that AP doesn't touch on matters of faith or take place anywhere near Rahadoum, and I didn't want such a character to disrupt the story. He's now playing a half-Shoanti-half-orc with the Viking Fighter Archetype (which still makes me twitch because really it should just be a barbarian, vikings are from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings).
Tranzor Z: why do you feel the need to control? Is it that you think your players are incapable of success w/out your guidance and experience? Or do you find yourself afraid of the unexpected variables of a game you don't have direct input into?
A bit of both, depending on your definition of success. If success means surviving the tribulations of the campaign and such, then no, in fact I worry sometimes that the encounters in an AP are TOO EASY, as they're experienced in the ways of the munchkin and the homebrew (homebrew's something else that I instinctively flinch from). If by success means the cohesion and quality of the AP and setting's narrative, then yes, and yes to the latter as well. I get very touchy about Golarion's canon, especially when it comes to playing in an AP. I personally try to read an entire AP before ever making a character for it so I can create a character that will address what narrative themes or ideas I read, both out of a compulsive need for well-grounded and holistic narrative honed by my Bachelor of Arts in English with an Emphasis in Literature, and because I'm afraid that if I DON'T create a character that addresses said themes, no other player will, and the resulting narrative dissonance will drive me ape-s***.
You're currently running ROTL. I've only read book one and not had the opportunity to play the AP yet, but from what I understood a major theme is
No seriously, do a little exercise with me. Take a deep breath, relax, and think: "what if NONE of the players who rolled into Sandpoint for the festival had ANY arcane powers at all?"
Would that derail the AP? Would your players feel any more or less dialed into the storyline? What would honestly change, other than the way in which some enemies were fought?
Adherence to plot, theme and canon is good, if you can get it from your players. I run homebrews and let me tell you: you have it EASY by comparison :) In an AP, especially in Golarion you have a whole world w/cool art, maps, and in the case of ROTL even comics. I have to hand-make all that and my players STILL need help with immersion.
But when your decisions override or in any way force the players to make choices just to maintain immersion, then you've taken the game out of their hands. It's no longer collaborative; they're just watching you play.
So give them their choices back and see where it takes you.
I KNOW from first hand experience how frightening that is. You have a book, an AP, and several other sources that tell you EXACTLY what villages are near Sandpoint, what gods are commonly worshipped there and what to expect once the PCs arrive. You want to follow that to the letter and that is certainly admirable. But your players are just overgrown children. I don't mean that in the derogatory. Instead I mean they have that childlike desire to wander and explore and play make-believe. And what happens when dad comes along and says "No! Pick up your toys and do it like THIS!"
Now Vic above has a good point. Guiding your players into immersion in the gameworld is a good thing. But the key word there is "guiding."
Decide JUST how controlling your being by taking a pulse check from your gaming group. Ask them how they feel about your decisions, your play style. Be honest with them and yourself; ask for that honesty in return. If this is really an issue and you still want to do something about it, here's a simple solution to try; one that I'm STILL getting the hang of after 30+ years of gaming:
Say "yes"
Say it to everything, or at least say some version of it. Can I jump the pit, swinging on the rope hanging there, and ALSO draw my hand axe so that, when I land next to the kobold I get my 1 attack as a standard action? By RAW - no, but what the heck. Say yes and have the player make some rolls. Maybe he falls in the pit courtesy of a failed Acrobatics or Climb roll (whichever you make him use). But MAYBE he makes the swing, crosses the pit, and lands perfectly then crits on his roll, confirms it, and kills the kobold in one shot. AND, since you're such a nice GM, maybe when he pulls all that cool off in a single round the other 2 kobolds break and run out of sheer terror as a reward to the player for trying something so adventurous.
That actually happened. It was awesome for all of us. Especially since that exact fighter then not more than 2 encounters later charged across a bridge, failed a jump, MISSED a rope and plummeted gracelessly into a fast, icy river and had to be saved by the rogue. It...was...HILARIOUS!
Anyway, that's my take on it.
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What if no one in the party were an arcane spellcaster? Well, for starters, no one would appreciate the fact that the PCs are uncovering ancient history and an empire that had magical powers that laid the foundations of the modern School system for wizards. It'd just be some creepy evil ruins with creepy evil things in them that need killing. The grandeur of uncovering ancient magic and stuff would be lost. Thassilonian history and magical theory is likely not all that interesting to people who can't already cast arcane spells themselves. One of my players already basically said "Who cares about ancient rocks and magicks? I wanna invent a way for people without magic to brew quality beer while on the road!"
Yes, it honestly feels like a compulsion.
This is starting to sound like battered wife syndrome. You realize this is just a game right? Really, my best advice to you is just to relax, you're over-analyzing things to an absurd point.
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Mark, you give great feedback in many threads, but could you start providing the Cliff's Notes version? :P When I see a post by you I feel like I should have a bowl of popcorn next to me.
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This is starting to sound like battered wife syndrome. You realize this is just a game right? Really, my best advice to you is just to relax, you're over-analyzing things to an absurd point.
Yes, it honestly feels like a compulsion.
It's a game I've spent hundreds of dollars on. I'd like that money to not have gone to waste.
You're right. Here's the highlight reel:
A to the Z: you say that NO ONE would appreciate the arcane stuff? What if you had an inquisitor bent on stamping out an attempted Rise of the Runelords for it would be a great heresy on the land? What if there was a fighter who was after rune power for a wizard to put it in his axe? What about an oracle of time who is obsessed with history?
Or what if it was just creepy ruins? Would you players have less fun?
I get it that you've spent time, money and other resources on. Your players respect that and if you talk with them they would probably thank you for your effort. They might want to feel like equals though, especially when its an AP (completely out of their hands).
- Talk w/your players
- Give in/say yes often
- Create other ways to infuse the plot/theme into your players
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You're right. Here's the highlight reel:
A to the Z: you say that NO ONE would appreciate the arcane stuff? What if you had an inquisitor bent on stamping out an attempted Rise of the Runelords for it would be a great heresy on the land? What if there was a fighter who was after rune power for a wizard to put it in his axe? What about an oracle of time who is obsessed with history?
They still wouldn't get the full implications of it and stuff like that. Thassilon was an empire built by wizards for wizards. A lot of their cool toys and stuff would be useless to PCs who aren't wizards. That was intentional on the part of the developers to showcase how arrogant the Thassilonians were and how dependent on magic they were.
Or what if it was just creepy ruins? Would you players have less fun?
I'd have less fun. All the while I'd be thinking "Don't you GET IT?! You're missing an important part of the story! Do you even CARE about the story?!"
I get it that you've spent time, money and other resources on. Your players respect that and if you talk with them they would probably thank you for your effort. They might want to feel like equals though, especially when its an AP (completely out of their hands).
- Talk w/your players
- Give in/say yes often
- Create other ways to infuse the plot/theme into your players
I'm working on that, but I'm really, really scared. This is the fourth time I've tried running an AP on that forum (the first three attempts were all Council of Thieves, and each time they failed before the meat of the first adventure really got underway).
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I'm thinking it might be because you're playing it fairly constantly (if it wasn't play by post, the equivalent would be if you were playing at least a session every week over several months/years).
It'd be helpful to step back from the game, despite the money you've spent on the books, and force yourself to take a good long break for a while, then come back to it and see if you're still feeling the way you are now. How long to break for depends on the person, but as a rule of thumb, when you start to feel the itch to pick up the game again, hold out a bit longer. Find something else to do in the meantime.
I'd have less fun. All the while I'd be thinking "Don't you GET IT?! You're missing an important part of the story! Do you even CARE about the story?!"
Heh. You're in pretty bad shape.
Part of the virtue of APs (at least good ones) is that there are many potential important parts of the story. Not all potential must, or should, be developed. The idea is to permit many different stories, not to tell an identical story ten thousand times, or else it would be a novel, not an AP.
I think maybe some of the advice earlier in this thread would be good - step back a bit. Maybe read some more traditional literature, get your fill of static storytelling. Definitely stop checking the pbp thirty times a day. That is too much for pbp (and may be a sign that you're finding the pace of pbp inherently frustrating? Pbp can be a fairly problematic medium when it comes to pace; it may be worthwhile to consider switching mediums?). If you stick with pbp, find something else stimulating to fill the time for at least twenty-five of those times. I honestly recommend reading - but then, that's what I enjoy, you may be different ;) .
My suggestion.
It also compels me to play GMPCs if I feel the party's makeup doesn't include something I deem important to the narrative.
Ah GMPCs. Because everybody wants to watch the GM play with himself.
Seriously though, telling you PCs to make their story fit the setting is both reasonable and good for the narrative. Telling them to pick certain archetypes? Less so.
A GM may want to direct the PCs to making a balanced party, but a few PC deaths may make it seem more like advice rather than controlling.
*Letting your one of your players play a rogue? For shame! :P
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It also compels me to play GMPCs if I feel the party's makeup doesn't include something I deem important to the narrative.Ah GMPCs. Because everybody wants to watch the GM play with himself.
Seriously though, telling you PCs to make their story fit the setting is both reasonable and good for the narrative. Telling them to pick certain archetypes? Less so.
A GM may want to direct the PCs to making a balanced party, but a few PC deaths may make it seem more like advice rather than controlling.
*Letting your one of your players play a rogue? For shame! :P
Part of the problem is our forum has a very small roster. Any RP run by anyone has pretty much the same four or five people, including me, so everyone's had a GMPC in their RP on the forum at some point. We tend towards balanced parties anyway. One player likes playing rogue-types (What's wrong with rogues? They can do quite a bit with a little team-playing.), the admin likes playing meat-shields, his girlfriend and I both like playing divine and arcane casters, so things tend to work out. I haven't really TOLD anyone to pick an archetype. More like suggest. I recommend things based on the books I have. The problem arises when someone is interested in something that I worry will be too disruptive, like when the admin wanted to play a Rahadoumi atheist (what would such a character be doing in Sandpoint AT A RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL?!). He eventually agreed to dial the character back to something more local, and I ignored the use of the viking archetype. He wants to be a viking? Fine. He just calls himself something else anyway. They're telling me it's fine, but I'm scared that I burned bridges already with this. They're still playing and apparently having fun, but I don't know if they resent me or not.
Why would an atheist not go to a religious festival? It's not like atheist don't celebrate Christmas.
(When your rogue needs to fight an enemy out of melee range or one difficult to flank, problems will happen once base weapon damage is a useless amount.)
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The Laws of Man dictate "Let no man be beholden to a god." Religious festivals like the Swallowtail Festival are in praise and thanks to gods. Christmas is kind of a bad example, as the holiday's so highly commercialized and stuff that it's lost its original religious bent. A better example would be an atheist celebrating something like Ramadan.
But it's less that an more a matter that Rahadoum is hundreds of miles away from Sandpoint, and from what I gather, Rahadoum doesn't proselytize its ideals so much as hunker down and try to keep people proselytizing on THEIR turf. People from there seem to avoid travelling to other nations.
My char was in Sandpoint as a sleeper agent for the Cheliax empire. Who are you tell characters what they will or won't do?
While Marthkus makes his point rather bluntly its still a good point. So long as your players show up to the forum you've already got part of their buy in; you as the GM should let them decide for their characters why they'd be somewhere.
Your OP suggested you want all the themes addressed in the AP. While I think that's a lofty goal (the APs as said upthread are meant to be expansive for multiple plays), who's to say to what degree these themes are explored by the players? That's for THEM to decide. If you're narrating those themes directly you might as well just be telling them a story.
My suggestions:
- Take a break; give someone else a turn at GM
- Read a lot as suggested up thread. It'll scratch part of the narrative itch
- Force yourself not to play a GMPC; instead really inhabit the NPCs and sentient monsters of your game
- Set yourself a goal of collaboration, not narration for character gen
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As an atheist myself, I can attest that if a Ramadan festival had as much free food as the Swallowtail festival did, I'd keep my opinions to myself and eat! Not to mention his character may wish to experience the world. The fun is seeing how these random people come together and develop as characters while interacting with the story. Not to mention it gives the option of making ancient magic users terrifying to behold when they know nothing of the history but what Broderick Quint tells them.
Realistically, based upon the quality of the suggestions being given (which seem very good) and the intellectualized self rationalization in your responses, I think you may just have a degree of compulsive personality disorder. I am speaking as a psychologist with 20 years of experience, somewhat over candidly because of the implied anonymity of this site.
I would simply suggest a setting with less continuity requirements. Being compulsive, articulate and too familiar with the content is a formula for problems with your personality type. Indeed, it was likely more than cadual interest that lead you to pick a setting that would ingratiate your inner need to repeat certain behavioral patterns. If you adhere more to a generic fuedal setting or the untyped universe of the core you may just be able to make the shift towards a level of collaboration that optimizes the experience for everyone (though i suspect you would still be challenged to keep quiet and nuetral). Otherwise, and please do not misconstrue this as a label of brokeness, I suspect this is not behavior limited to GMing and it is tremendously unlikely to be curbed by (ironically) advice from strangers.
That said, it is both a perfectly normal and manageable issue with corrective methodologies that are approachable and well documented.
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I am speaking as a psychologist with 20 years of experience, somewhat over candidly because of the implied anonymity of this site.
Calling bull$%*t. Any decent psychologist wouldn't diagnose a person in a public area, considering things such as private messaging exist AS A FEATURE OF THIS FORUM!
Is Indiana Jones an arcane caster? No? Well, HE would be really into exploring an ancient civilization. Is Lara Croft ...? She also would go. How about Tarzan? He would not go to get arcane mysteries solved, but he would go to rescue someone or to keep some evil from escaping. So would John Carter. Sherlock Homes would go since he would be fascinated. Rambo would go to kick but. Conan would go to fetch something for his wizard buddy.
There are plenty of reasons to go arcane archeology. Look at the Dangerously Curious trait. It practically begs for this kind of AP.
The way to handle this, I think, is to tell the players the nature of the AP (usually with a free download for the AP), and tell them to make characters suitable for the AP.
For a Rahadoumi to be at a religious festival is fine. They are not there for a religious reason, but might be there by chance, or to see the fancy cloths brought out at such times. Also, fancy food is often available at any festival, and can be a reason in itself.
If anything sets off your radar, just ask the player to explain how such an unlikely character happened to be there for the AP. They can surprise you. The character you need to worry about is not the oddball one, but rather the one designed to beat/kill/win the specific AP. From what you have said, that is not a concern.
As to GMPCs, I agree, leave them out. Let your information flow from NPCs, and only what the players seek. If not enough information is flowing, you can always have some pickpocket put a note into someone's hand, or you could have a drunkard babbling, and the only clear words are <plot hook>. Believe me, it OK for PCs to be TPK'ed by poor planning, research, and/or tactics. Also, there are ways to avoid a TPK if the BBEG can be seen as leaving them down but not out, or having them barely restored to life but captured. As long as they are willing to go along with the plot, you can get away with nearly anything.
While I do not have experience with play-by-post, I think it's combat system is even more abstracted than tabletop. That gives you a lot of wiggle room to fudge the results while still giving a reasonable combat. Everything else is role-play or skills. Use you controlling nature on the NPCs to be sure they give sufficient information to the PCs.
Lastly, I recommend no more than once a week summary posts to all players to let everyone know what happened over the last week, and the choices and decisions needed for the next week. Let the players discuss things over the week, and give responses as needed during that time, but don't advance the clock on the adventure. Make sure everyone knows the schedule, and keep to it. This will make for a more easily followed narrative, as they can all look at just the summary posts to catch up. Likewise, a new player can join by reading the same posts.
/cevah
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I am speaking as a psychologist with 20 years of experience, somewhat over candidly because of the implied anonymity of this site.Calling bull$%*t. Any decent psychologist wouldn't diagnose a person in a public area, considering things such as private messaging exist AS A FEATURE OF THIS FORUM!
Well he never said he was a decent psychologist.
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Well, sort of. I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome as a child. As for the whole GMPC thing, it's honestly something the others on the forum expect from one-another. Kind of a holdover from our forum's origins back on the Wizards of the Coast boards over seven years ago. Then again, most of the roleplay has always been free-form, less D&D and more collaborative storytelling in a D&D setting. Everyone had their own character and could become instigate or become involved in some plotline arc as they chose. We just don't have enough people to do that anymore, though, and as I've become more and more interested in Pathfinder and the APs, the more I've wanted to do something with them on it, because I'm too chicken to apply to games here.
I am not a doctor/psychologist/therapist/counselor. I have only the barest idea of Asperger's and how it is affecting your GM style. However I think there is real power behind the words of bojac6 and Cevah. Your players will decide what their characters are, why they're adventuring and what connection they have to the story.
I have a lot of stories like B's. I do all homebrews, but over the last few years I've crafted overarching themes to my campaigns and communicated these to my players. The first time I did it my theme was a rising haunt on the edge of a well-developed empire. Monsters included undead, kobolds and the rumors of an ancient dragon in the nearby swamp. My first 2 characters? A barbarian and an ogrekin rogue.
The two of them had NO logical reason to be in this game. The barbarian's background was a single sentence. The ogrekin had more but it was fairly silly; it read like a Terry Pratchet novel. My game was serious, gritty and had lots of undead.
I rolled my eyes, gritted my teeth and rolled with it.
In the end I had a scrap from the rogue's background that tied him to a local noble. This also tied him to the dragon who was manipulating all the nobles. The barbarian ended up being mini-Conan and despite having a very low charisma was the party face - the player reveled in just being present at social situations and adding sage comments here and there. His lack of a background allowed me to tie him DIRECTLY to the arcane power the dragon was consolidating.
I liked the interplay between the players and me. We collaborated to make a reason for the characters to be where they were and to have the motivation to stay involved. Also such unlikely characters really changed the initial tone; after a couple game sessions it stopped being MY game and became OUR game.
As for the GMPC being a holdover, who says you have to fit a mold or a perceived expectation? If you WANT a GMPC, that's a different story. But you have an entire world of NPCs to inhabit. If your players want info or need extra skills for an adventure, have them seek it out and then have the world interact with them.
In our current game I'm taking this approach. The PCs lack a skills monkey. Their first adventure they needed extra muscle and they were partnered with a Halfling ranger. The next quest they were headed for a dungeon. The quest came to them from a rogue, so they asked her to accompany them. Currently they are headed for a fallen elf shrine in a haunted forest. None of the PCs but one has any Knowledge: History so they've tapped into the blind elf female that's traveling with them. She in turn has delivered much of the fluff and the players have made a good deal of their own conclusions which, in turn has fueled my crafting of the plot.
This is a long thread, so forgive me if somebody has similarly addressed or ninja'ed me (I read a good way in)... but my best advice is:
SURRENDER. Get Zen with it.
I used to feel similarly about parties in RL -- is everyone talking? Does this person know about that? Will there be maximum chemistry about this shared interest? What if there isn't!?
...The best advice I ever got was from a dear friend who said to me:
"Relax. We always have a great time. You're putting too much pressure on yourself for each get together to be the best time ever. It doesn't need to be."
And that's just it -- in your obsession with a fully realized narrative, you're closing the door on a million different perfectly acceptable possibilities. Perhaps the party never DOES realize important over-arching themes, but are still subject to them? That could lead to amazing plot twists or "Ta-da" moments when certain things previously ignored rear their heads or become obvious -- or perhaps a story interesting from a "God protects fool and drunks" perspective, where it's only after a series of important events that players realize what they are dealing with, or how they could do things differently...
...not even mentioning the satisfaction you are denying yourself by actually letting your players actualize all this stuff on their own when they do -- you'll be very happy if you have players that can activate these themes or ideas without you needing to pull all the strings. In fact, the pressure (and inspiration) to uncover all of this stuff is taken away from the players if they know and realize that you are going to bring all of this stuff to the fore anyway. That's what knowledge rolls are all about -- the chance to not have any idea. Please try to internalize this, and that it creates infinitely more interesting potential happenings than a world where everything fantastic in a cogent narrative is thrust to the fore. The party aren't readers, and don't have the luxury of that lens and long-view that brings everything together -- they are participants, and whatever gems they can bring to light should be theirs to discover... not something they MUST discover for the story to make sense. Humans make sense of their worlds knowing next to nothing all the friggin' time. Give yourself and your players some more credit.
If all the above doesn't work for you or fails to appeal, I ask you to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself if you wouldn't be happier writing a novel, or at the very least adapting novels you know back and forth into modules. It sounds like if you gave yourself more credit you might be very good at it -- because a great writer (unlike a great GM) is the guy who does work overtime to make sure every little bit of information is uncovered or comes to the fore, or at least the unanswered questions are there for their own narrative reasons and excitement.
Also consider putting a post up at the local game-shop. Running a game at your or a new friend's table may clear a lot of this stuff up, as it won't be in the old rut of a forum, and might be more satisfying.
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If you WANT a GMPC, that's a different story. But you have an entire world of NPCs to inhabit.
Well, that's jut it. I kinda do. I had this grand sweeping dream of playing through all of the Varisia-based APs together with these guys with each PC having some connection, whether familial or acquaintance or whatever to a PC from a different AP, where we could see our actions shape the wild frontier of Varisia and make it our own, culminating in a sequel with NO Adventure Path. Just PCs exploring Varisia and doing whatever heroics they found. I wanted to be part of that too, playing characters alongside them that could later become NPCs future PCs could consult or make cameos with...and I can't think of any way I could possibly set up something like that here.
And because I feel so insecure about auditioning for PbPs on other forums. I feel like I have to deliberately play something I'm NOT interested in playing, so that I can at least get in the game and play as whatever role the party needs to shore it up. When there's ten wizards submitted for a PbP, and no one's playing a cleric, then submitting another wizard will just guarantee that I'm NOT picked.
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I am speaking as a psychologist with 20 years of experience, somewhat over candidly because of the implied anonymity of this site.Calling bull$%*t. Any decent psychologist wouldn't diagnose a person in a public area, considering things such as private messaging exist AS A FEATURE OF THIS FORUM!
Honestly, the PM feature is FAR from obvious. And Storyengine is very new on the boards, as we can see from his posts' history.
Also his post seems mostly benevolent and respectful. Why bash it like this ?
Thankfully, I am not a psychologist so I can state very openly that the OP does indeed deal with an issue that I feel to be deeper grounded than what we can really help him with on the boards.
That said, all the advice given above is sound and useful. The difficult part just may be actually putting it in practice.
Hear-Hear, Black raven.
For the record, if you can just as easily bash or call somebody out for being nice as give them a pass -- I think the forum would just as soon see that helpful people not feel persecuted. If somebody starts repeatedly reasserting their expertise in a field and seemingly behaving in a manner otherwise suspect, that's another story entirely...
...But people of all professions and walks of life use this forum. Call Shenanigans or not, you can bet Psychologists are represented.
Zousha, try to break out of chicken-dom if you can and throw in with more active forums or games here. Between your own issues and concerns and trying to breathe life into a community you yourself proclaim to be in decline -- you're stacking the deck against yourself! Bring your buddies here! ;D
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I've sort of noticed a bad pattern in my GMing style. I'm a huge control freak when it comes to narrative and characters. I find myself insisting certain character styles and archetypes to players that fit best with whatever Adventure Path I'm running with them (currently Rise of the Runelords, where I sort of cajoled a player away from being a cleric of the deity she really wanted, Arshea, to Desna, which I felt meshed better with RotRL's storyline, and basically dictated to another player their character, as they had no idea what Golarion was like and as long as they played a rogue, they'd be happy). It also compels me to play GMPCs if I feel the party's makeup doesn't include something I deem important to the narrative (like a wizard to be obsessed with Thassilonian stuff in Rise of the Runelords). I know that controlling aspects come from fear, and I believe I've identified mine as a fear of a lack of narrative cohesion. That if I just let people play what they want, the characters won't mesh with the Adventure Path's storyline or setting, and that as a result, certain themes or ideas I feel are essential to the AP's narrative structure simply end up not addressed, or that certain items don't reach their full potential as a result (Raven's Head in Carrion Crown, for example, only gets its best abilities when wielded by someone with the channel energy class feature who worships Pharasma. Many of the items or characters in Kingmaker seem to be geared towards a chaotic party, especially Briar, which as a CN weapon won't work in the hands of, say, a paladin in the group.)
What should I do to curb this tendency so I'm less of a jerk to my players?
I easily could have written this very post a few years ago, when I was DMing my first game back in college. It was a flaming disaster. The story was disjointed and weird; the players were confused and not following things; and, worse, I was screwing up the natural party dynamic by adding in DMPC's to push things in the "right" direction. My friends only stuck around because they love me and, when it finally died about 6 months later, it was years before they'd let me DM again. My best friend, who was in that original group, refuses to play games I DM to this day.
Here's what I didn't realize at the time (which is funny because usually much more considerate than this): I wasn't thinking about what the players wanted; I was thinking about what the story wanted.
My philosophy now: to hell with the story; the story won't buy me a beer when I have a bad day or (if I ever make the dubiously wise choice of bringing a significant other into the game again) sleep with me. I let players do whatever they want, constrained by the rules and the greater story.
One of my players told me he wanted to play a badass, bloodthirsty, take-no-prisoners, cut-your-face-off Chaotic Neutral gunslinger in our Kingmaker game. Our party at the time was various shades of Lawful and Good. He inevitably came into conflict with the rest of the party and they came to the bleeding edge of killing each other. You know what I did? Absolutely #$@! nothing.
And it was awesome. After that moment of crisis, the characters eventually came to a basic level of trust and affection for each other. The Lawful Good cleric even "went emo" and stopped worshiping the LG Ragathiel in favor of his TN mom Feronia. Turns out, being flexibly moral fire priestess *cough*thenightisdarkandfullofterrors*cough* is a lot more her style than being an LG goody-two-shoes anyway.
Also, he worships Cayden, to the extent he worships anything. There is virtually no presence of anything Cayden in KM. None of the characters, in fact, worship the main KM-relevant gods: Erastil, Gorum, Calistria, Hanspur, Gyronna. His character is wearing the Stag Helm now. He uses its special ability only once per day, even though he could use it 3/day if he worshiped Erastil. But he doesn't. Because that's less fun for him. And that's totally OK.
What happens if they decide to go completely off the rails and go off into the wilderness for no reason and ignore the story? If they're going somewhere dangerous I'd throw some shambling mounds at them. If they're not, I'd do the worst GM thing imaginable: "Nothing happens and your character is, like, super bored." But it never gets to that. You know why? Because I focus on what motivates them and use that to help the story along, not use the story as a railroad track ZAT YOU VILL COMPLAI VITH AT VONCE!!!
Here's the main reason my players appreciate me: it's a fantasy world and I help them achieve their fantasies. Gunslinger wants to blow up an enemy fortress or wants to poison the Stag Lord til he's mega dead? I start doing math on how many kegs of black powder or doses of Chokeberry are necessary and then either let him craft or place an order with DaggerMart(TM). Fire priestess wants to be more front-line combat focused? I alter her sheet to channel negative energy, give her channel smite and now, when she hits someone, she can also melt off his face with the power of pure unlife. The party wants to fly around in an airship? No sweat, as long as they cough up 50kgp. There's no guarantee that it won't be destroyed sometime, but I'll always make sure to warn them about any situation that could cause that in advance.
The kingdom wants a Large army of griffon riders? Ooo... that's a tough one, partner. See, griffons are sentient beings and if you enslave 200 baby sentients in the River Kingdoms that's not only moral bad mojo, it's incredibly bad PR. How about you get an army of hippogriffs instead? They're animal-level intelligence and it'll cost you 5BP for the lot of them (yeah the mass combat mount purchase rules are weirdly cheap) and a couple months to a year for your army of rangers (level 4 sable marine company archetype with boon companion feat) to be bonded and trained with them.
Get it? At the end of the day, in order to get my friends to play my favorite game in the world with me, I've got to make it at least half as fun for them as it is for me. Because FRIENDSHIP! =D (Bonus Wisdom bomb: it helps if you introduce large amounts of beer/margaritas/screwdrivers to your play sessions. Just sayin'.)
That said... it really sounds like you might not be in the right state of mind to be a solid GM. No offense, bro, but I definitely wouldn't play with you. Railroading and DMPC's just aren't something I deal with anymore. Ever. Not even for my friends, much less some guy I never met who wants to play by post.