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Hi everyone !
First, let me introduce this thread concept : Yesterday, I talked GMing with a colleague, and gave him this solution to his problem (which I'll talk later in this post) and he was very happy with it and said it would help him a lot, because he never GMd like that and was always frustrated with that situation. I thought about it and saw no reason not to share it with others. I don't know about you, but I always feel like I've grown as a GM in the last 20 years or so, but I still have so much to learn and am still so far from my (unreachable?) goal of quality.
I didn't see any thread like this, so I'm sorry if something like this already exists. Usually, someone has a problem and asks a question and people answer, but I thought : what about just creating a thread where all GMs give general advices, tips, tools for other GMs, no theme, just ideas that made life easier in their games that others could use, you know, just sharing experiences and good results, something they didn't see in rules books, but just tried because they had an inspiration.
So I came up with two of my own (for now). It's nothing fancy or revolutionary, just little ideas that maybe could benefit other GMs. It's not a thread to ask questions about a problem (there are plenty of those), but rather to give general advices for others to use...
Idea # 1 : Perception checks and players that know something is coming because they have to roll :
This was my colleague's problem. He tried to bluff (make them roll when there was nothing around them, but he found it irritating in the end). My two cents : What I do in my games, I ask for players to roll 5 "passive" checks before the game and I note them in a spreadsheet. Every check that can be made without the character trying to do it is rolled and noted, with their bonuses of course if they have some... So for example, if the character wants to find something, I make him roll because he is actively trying to perceive something, but if it's for an ambush and he is not aware that his perception is sollicited, then I use their passive rolls and the players don't know about it. When those 5 rolls are expired (it can be 2 hours later of 6 sessions later), I ask them to do another 5... My colleague found it really interesting, not very long to do and 100% transparent for the players. It can be used to perception, but I found it rather useful for social interactions also (the check VS bluff)... Players don't have to know that the NPC is trying to bluff them...
Idea # 2 : Knowledge of characters in the long term :
Sometimes, as a GM, I tend to forget details about previous sessions, and if you play for a long time, you forget a lot of details. One of them are knowledge rolls you made them do for XYZ situation. It happened in the past that a player asked me if he knew of that beast, that location, etc... I didn't remember if I told him or what roll he had on his dice, or even sometimes if he did indeed encounter that creature at all. My solution : A spreadsheet in which I note all the knowledge checks I made them do and the result they had, with the info I gave them about that roll at the time. So when 6 months later the same creature pops up in front of them, I just go to my spreadsheet and tell them that either "no, you don't know that because you rolled a 5 the first time you encountered it", or "yes, you know ABC", or "roll me a knowledge check because you never did before for that creature"...
So that's it for now about me, I hope I helped a little, and I would be very interested in knowing what you do in your games to make it easier, what you find works with your players...
I just tell my players, "Don't metagame, it's cheating, and it makes the game less fun for everyone." They're adults. They behave as such.