Dungeons and Dragons

[hasdgfas]

I'm going to be running a Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures game for some of my friends starting around next week or so. Anyone have any general GMing tips(since I doubt anyone could give me specifics for the system)?

[Pine]

Don't start in a tavern or inn.

[Kcdaspot]

ahahahahaha

[Bella]

[GreyICE]

I'm going to be running a Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures game for some of my friends starting around next week or so. Anyone have any general GMing tips(since I doubt anyone could give me specifics for the system)?

1) Have at least 5 random plotlines for them to head off on sitting around prepared. If they wander off course, try and hook them to one of the pregenned hooks, or tailor a hook for them. Sometimes things don't flow smoothly, so have things prepared for when rails come loose.

2) Assuming the system is not combat light, so have at least 2 good combat encounters prepped. The enemies can be vague, but have a good piece of filler to whip out if the initiate combat for some random reason.

3) Have a list (or at least brainstorm) a few key details that you can graft onto NPCs. Take notes. The Mayor of Randomville is not memorable. The Mayor who always nervously takes off his hat and picks at the brim when asking for favors is memorable (and if you can't generate a character out of that one sentence description, you're not ready to DM).

4) Say yes first. Say no, but... second. Say no as infrequently as possible. If your players have an idea, it should either work, or materially help them out. This is the biggest way to prevent the feeling of being railroaded. Even the most asinine idea can be transformed into something useful ("Lets go ask the Dragon if he will give us the MacGuffin!" "The Dragon looks at you sorrowfully. 'Indeed,' he says, 'I might give that MacGuffin to you, if I possessed it. Sadly it, and all my treasure, have been stolen by a mere mortal, who has grievously wounded me. Fortunately, I can magically locate my horde, and if you would be so kind as to track it down, you can have said MacGuffin.")

Seriously, don't flat "no" players often, or they'll get discouraged.


Hmmm, other tips

5) Try and figure out what they like. Try and give it to them at least once a session. This can be combat, feeling like a badass, material advancement, forming deep connections, getting a good belly laugh, just putzing around and doing whatever, figure out what your players like to do, and let them do it.

[Nightson]

I'm going to be running a Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures game for some of my friends starting around next week or so. Anyone have any general GMing tips(since I doubt anyone could give me specifics for the system)?

Have everyone get together or email chain about their characters and figure how they know each other and why they are going places together. Step in make someone change if players have radically opposed goals.

Start the players with a clear and defined goal that ties into their backstory. This may be not as necessary in a pokemon game, where taking down the first gym leader might just be the default goal accepted by everybody.

Detail the immediate area. Given that this is pokemon, that probably means the starter town, a route and the town with the first gym. Have stuff prepared that you'll need. For example, have the statblocks of any pokemon at hand, whether opened in a different window, printed out, pages numbers written down on a sheet of paper, whatever. Keep in mind though that until you mention or show it to the players, nothing is set in stone.

Go through and make sure you understand the rules for the stuff that'll definitely happen. Finding pokemon, fighting pokemon, capturing, etc. You may again want to make notes as to what information is on what page or use sticky notes depending on how complicated it is.

Prepare names ahead of time. Obviously finding time to name your NPCs and detail them is nice, but make a list of twenty random names both male and female. This is to help you improvise an NPC on the spot if you need to.

If the players stall out and don't know what to do, it's okay to step in and say what their options seem like to you.

Playing off Grey's number four. When a player says they are doing something, they think that something will work. Most of the time this is just fine. The player says they use the ford to get across the river, the throw the pokeball at the weakened pokemon to try and catch it. No sometimes you have secret knowledge that their plan is going to fail, but sometimes there will be no secret knowledge and you'll just be scratching your head going "What?" It's pretty hard to keep track of all the different rules and flavor of the roleplaying game, which means plenty of times during the campaign. When a player takes an action that seems horrible, stop for a second and say that you don't get it like "I'm confused, you don't have a very good athletics check, how are you going to jump the fifty foot chasm?" or "Err, you want to demand the king make you a duke as part of the negotiations, you know that's the noble rank right below the king, there's only like five others in the kingdom?" Most of the time you are going to get "Oh, I thought you said it was a fifteen foot chasm." and "Oh, well I want to ask for the minor rank of nobility."

[Bella]

Also:

[GreyICE]

Playing off Grey's number four. When a player says they are doing something, they think that something will work. Most of the time this is just fine. The player says they use the ford to get across the river, the throw the pokeball at the weakened pokemon to try and catch it. No sometimes you have secret knowledge that their plan is going to fail, but sometimes there will be no secret knowledge and you'll just be scratching your head going "What?" It's pretty hard to keep track of all the different rules and flavor of the roleplaying game, which means plenty of times during the campaign. When a player takes an action that seems horrible, stop for a second and say that you don't get it like "I'm confused, you don't have a very good athletics check, how are you going to jump the fifty foot chasm?" or "Err, you want to demand the king make you a duke as part of the negotiations, you know that's the noble rank right below the king, there's only like five others in the kingdom?" Most of the time you are going to get "Oh, I thought you said it was a fifteen foot chasm." and "Oh, well I want to ask for the minor rank of nobility."

Well this is part of it, but part of it is that you should never just turn down an opportunity to make something happen. For example, suppose there's some great mystery (Someone is stealing Pokemon or something). One of the characters has a brilliant idea! They'll go ask a pair of members from Team Rocket if they know anything!

Now if it's a serious mystery, Team Rocket is useless. They're fucking memetically useless. I don't know much about Pokemon, but even I know how fucking useless Team Rocket is.

Okay, so the first instinct is to "No Sir" them. Deny that instinct.

Instead Team Rocket knows EXACTLY where to go! Of course! And it'll be easy! They're Team Rocket, OBVIOUSLY they know whose responsible.

Three battles later, including one curb stomp battle where our heroes and Team Rocket were forced to flee from hilariously overpowered forces, they manage to learn that not only was Team Rocket wrong about who was stealing Pokemon, they are incompetent and useless. BUT when they were running away they ran into the Pokemon thieves, who were being chased by some overpowered forces. The two overpowered curb stomp baddies ran into each other and started fighting, while you got to have a dramatic moment with the Pokemon thieves.

In other words, despite being totally useless and wrong about everything, their side trip with Team Rocket actually helped them out a bit.

Stuff like that is what makes a campaign. So don't No Sir them when they do something, unless it's really exceptionally very fucking stupid.

[hasdgfas]

That's the plan, I hope. I'm going to do my best not to railroad, improv'ing things that I didn't have planned into something somewhat useful.

[IH]

If you guys are going to do a scummer dnd session, I think it would be neat to record it at least.

[Bricktoes]

I just skimmed the thread, anyone want to work on D&D themed mafia?

[Kcdaspot]

so is anyone gonna do a roll20 campaign?

[AniX]

so is anyone gonna do a roll20 campaign?

I'm involved in two right now, actually: A standard DND campaign where I am playing a Muslim-themed Paladin5/GrayGuard1 with Pholtus and his Theocracy of the Pale refluffed as Allah and an Iranian-like nation respectively. And on Wednesday I am going to standard a Modernd20 zombie apocalypse campaign playing a Fashion Designer.

Thus far, roll20 is working out very nicely, although we were having a lot of trouble with getting the webcams to work and ended up just using Skype.

[Pine]

A standard DND campaign where I am playing a Muslim-themed Paladin5/GrayGuard1 with Pholtus and his Theocracy of the Pale refluffed as Allah and an Iranian-like nation respectively.

Very

interesting concept.

[AniX]

I'd like to give a very, very rough idea of a game I'd like to run in case anyone here is really super interested in joining up:

I plan to run the game in the World of Darkness system. It will a mystery game set in a modern day high school. You'll have to figure out on your own whether that mystery involves mere mortals or monsters. But you yourselves will be normal everyday people. I would encourage you to play high school students or someone who would reasonably know and hang out with high school students (ie. a parent of another PC who is also a teacher, a club advisor), but I will permit any concept you want to run within reason. Just be aware that the less likely your concept is to be in a high school palling around with High School kids, that much more exponentially harder for you it will be to get anything done.

I will give the general warning that while I am running in the WoD system, it won't be a particularly grimdark game. It won't be slapstick and serious issues won't be played for laughs, but it won't be too extreme in the other direction either. It will be as realistically dark as I can try and manage.

Bonuses will be given out for people who make an attempt to link their characters together with other characters, as to justify why they all hang out together. Best friends, relatives, dating, parent/child, being in the same club, etc. etc. I won't force you to do any of it nor will I penalize anyone who doesn't, but I will say that those who help me make it so I don't need to give all your characters detention in a library to get the party together will be rewarded.

For those who want to get an early start on character-building, all WoD books will be allowed but anything used that would make your character "more than human" will get your character rejected, so use your common sense.

If you know anyone else who'd want to get into a WoD game, let me know. This game lends itself to a bunch of people operating independently or even sub-groups that split up and rejoin depending on circumstances. It is high school, after all. I already have a few people definitely /in, but they are my normal crew so I'd love to get some free blood into this game to spice it up.

The game would be run online using roll20, which for those who don't know is a browser-based tabletop application. I've been using it for a while and it's been working pretty well.

Questions, comments, concerns, character ideas will be welcomed here or by e-mail (anix@11thhour.net for those not in the know)

[bv310]

I'd be interested. Do you have a link to the WoD system online?

[Battousai]

That's a cool theme... I'd like to join, but alas... no webcam/mic. Plus, I am a DnD nooblet.

[Bub Bidderskins]

Wow, I forgot about this thread. Anyway, I finally started that DnD campaign that I created this thread for, and it went great. Our DM did a great job, especially considering it was his first time DMing. I decided to play as an Elf Ranger, and I love how my character turned out mechanically, but I feel like he's a really weak character RP-wise. Everybody else seemed to have much more interesting characters. Does anybody have any general tips for RPing an interesting character?

[Battousai]

Umm... grab a bunch of roles/races/and weird facts into a hat and randomly draw?

[BBmolla]

Wow, I forgot about this thread. Anyway, I finally started that DnD campaign that I created this thread for, and it went great. Our DM did a great job, especially considering it was his first time DMing. I decided to play as an Elf Ranger, and I love how my character turned out mechanically, but I feel like he's a really weak character RP-wise. Everybody else seemed to have much more interesting characters. Does anybody have any general tips for RPing an interesting character?

Write a background story.

I have a character who I made and didn't get a chance to play, but basically the name on his character sheet is fake. He came from an all human cleric chapel that was lead by his father. His father decided that it was time to stop discriminating and allowed other races to join. The other elder clerics were displeased about this and killed the father. My character was blamed, and quickly fled. He changed his name and hopes he can manage to become powerful enough to defeat all the elder clerics.

Backstories will definitely help your character, especially finding "what is driving my character to go on adventures."

[AniX]

Wow, I forgot about this thread. Anyway, I finally started that DnD campaign that I created this thread for, and it went great. Our DM did a great job, especially considering it was his first time DMing. I decided to play as an Elf Ranger, and I love how my character turned out mechanically, but I feel like he's a really weak character RP-wise. Everybody else seemed to have much more interesting characters. Does anybody have any general tips for RPing an interesting character?

Write a background story.

I have a character who I made and didn't get a chance to play, but basically the name on his character sheet is fake. He came from an all human cleric chapel that was lead by his father. His father decided that it was time to stop discriminating and allowed other races to join. The other elder clerics were displeased about this and killed the father. My character was blamed, and quickly fled. He changed his name and hopes he can manage to become powerful enough to defeat all the elder clerics.

Backstories will definitely help your character, especially finding "what is driving my character to go on adventures."

100 percent agree. For the Islamic Paladin I mentioned earlier, I had 5 pages single-spaced of backstory that basically the DM is going to take and use as a primer for an entire "book" of the campaign.

[Mr. Flay]

Thirded. Story should trump mechanics in basically any situation you can do so, at least until the dice actually start rolling.

[IH]

I'm going to be running a Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures game for some of my friends starting around next week or so. Anyone have any general GMing tips(since I doubt anyone could give me specifics for the system)?

I helped a friend of mine run a campaign once (which I later ended up playing in), and being on both sides of the campaign, it is alot more fun to let players do whatever they want. The interesting part of the whole thing, is that while you have a story to tell, the players have every right to say... "No" walk away, and affect the story you are telling in a completely different way than intended. Don't hesitate to let events unfold in the background and bring up consequences to missed chances from your players. Letting the story flow and being able to change the world (or choose not to) is the fun of dnd.

TLDR; The players have the option to say no and just walk away and eat a sandwhich, try not to tell them they can't do that.

[BBmolla]

Wow, I forgot about this thread. Anyway, I finally started that DnD campaign that I created this thread for, and it went great. Our DM did a great job, especially considering it was his first time DMing. I decided to play as an Elf Ranger, and I love how my character turned out mechanically, but I feel like he's a really weak character RP-wise. Everybody else seemed to have much more interesting characters. Does anybody have any general tips for RPing an interesting character?

Write a background story.

I have a character who I made and didn't get a chance to play, but basically the name on his character sheet is fake. He came from an all human cleric chapel that was lead by his father. His father decided that it was time to stop discriminating and allowed other races to join. The other elder clerics were displeased about this and killed the father. My character was blamed, and quickly fled. He changed his name and hopes he can manage to become powerful enough to defeat all the elder clerics.

Backstories will definitely help your character, especially finding "what is driving my character to go on adventures."

100 percent agree. For the Islamic Paladin I mentioned earlier, I had 5 pages single-spaced of backstory that basically the DM is going to take and use as a primer for an entire "book" of the campaign.

I did this for my current adventure.

[Sudo_Nym]

So, what do people think of the DnD Next thing going on?