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D & D RPG Review Closed - Page 7

You can know how 'into' a game your players are by the way they interact with each other. Sometimes I like to sit back and listen to them get to the point of almost arguing over a possible stream of actions. In this environment you'll get that from their posts I guess, not sure.

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Here is so different from being a Dungeon Master around a table! Everything takes ages.... What puzzles me is that, even if here you can make more detailed descriptions and they have the chance of reading them over and over, misunderstandings are far more common.
Another strange thing is: almost nobody ask anything. Around a table, at least in my experience, players ask about the surroundings, make strategies, make sure of the distances and so on. Here no. Is not only my game. I'm the Game Master in one, I play in other two and I always read Kittenpunk's game (if I didn't join doesn't mean I don't like it, Kit). Everywhere is the same.

In Kit's game in particular, sometimes she plays like a party member instead of the enemy they have to beat (the Dungeon Master should play against the party, not help them). But she has to do that because her game is difficult and they would all be dead if she didn't ask every time: "Do you want to search?", "Do you disarm the trap?", "Will you roll on this or that?". My players would have abandoned me after one day if I did that when Dungeon Mastering, but here is necessary and I was thinking about starting to do that too. Sometimes, here is like people just post the first thing that comes to their mind, whatever it is. Not everybody of course. They are better than my old players in Role Playing but when it comes to strategies or organization...

I almost regret I made a complex game instead of a "Fight 7 goblins one after the other and gain a level and a magic sword". Maybe is a generational problem.
Ok, sorry for the rants. Maybe it's just me expecting too much. I'm having fun and that's the most important thing.

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No, no I concur with you. I ask the "Basic questions" because I'm in the beginning of the dungeon and I want to hint/train the players to roll as often as they like and take actions. As I get them in to the more complex rooms I will stop dropping hints and hopefully they will still get it. Also I don't know what players are new to Dungeons & Dragons, and [which] are advanced. So in order to be fair and help new players, I have to try to be clear and soft handed for everyone. Once I see people taking the actions on there own without me asking if they blindly walk in to the room or not, I will stop with the "Kid gloves".

Page 7 Closed Review RPG and D

I didn't realize there was so much going on with the Dungeon Masters here. Maybe what you guys are missing is that we have to come back here with varying thoughts from the day, read the story, [then] get into what [your] character was doing at the time whereas around a table you're in the game all the time and don't have to focus on anything else.

Closed Review RPG and D

The risk is that they could just become passive when you will stop ask them. She didn't say anything so there's nothing to do. Let's hope no. Is not about being experienced or not, in my opinion.
A good example is Krusten, since she is participating here also (sorry, K, if I use you as an example). She knows nothing about the rules but she asks and she is active. I mean, she does things. She doesn't know which skill she has to use but she knows she wants to do "That" thing. Is easy for us just answer "If you want to do that, you have to roll on this skill". But is her playing, not us telling her what to do. No player gets it always right or never makes mistakes or silly things. When we play, we are probably worse than them. If everybody played like Krusten we would have to explain the rules more often ((laugh)) but the games would be much more alive.

D & D RPG Review Closed

Hey now, I'm new to Dungeons & Dragons!

That's why I love to interrogate your characters hoping to force the info out of you.

D & RPG Review Closed - Page 7

Kitten, I just wanted to let you know how much I'm enjoying your campaign. I am very impressed, especially considering it's only your third time Dungeon Mastering. Thank you.

D & RPG Review Closed Board Card & RPG Reviews - Page 7

Happy someone likes it! I am still trying to get my story line hooks into 2 of my players, whom are less active. I know all to well that if the players are disconnected from he story then they will not have fun.

When I think up a storyline I tend to take a couple of things into account;
Things will never go as you had thought they would.
The players need emotional connection with the world.
Let the players be one of a kind, everyone wants to be the only person with X, or that did X, or who is from X.

And, your storyline needs to have small holes in it where you can let the players added details shine.
Weather this means a man is the only person to service an encounter with a deadly force and is left with a red eye, or a man with out a family is abandoned as a baby with a cursed birth mark and race related hair and skin tone that he should not have, or perhaps a woman has a deal in her blood line with a dragon or demon giving her a sight she souled not have, or maybe a man walks through life with many gods and somehow the luck of all of them. Its up to a dungeon master to take what the players want to make themselves stand out and run with it. If you fight against a players consent before game even starts there is no way they will have fun in the game, yet at the same time putting limitations in such as state caps can help balance a game from letting any one person be over powered.

That is why I make my games very player driven. I want the role they play in it to be like the leads of a book, each hero is not form the same origin, or cut from the same cloth as the rest of the world. But, at the same time they are far from the most powerful people in the world, they are just not the same as everyone. This can make up for so much in a story. A level one can topple a arch-mage if he was born with the oddity of immunity to magic. A level one mage with the odd ability to double cast can kill an army in a round with the right spell combination and the feats quick cast. A thieve that can change there gender at will can slip in and out of places past guards because there looking for a man in a cloak, and not the wench that walked past with the kings coin bag hidden a way out of sight. (most examples are characters I have played in other games)

Meanwhile as a kid I read a lot of chose your own path books, where you the reader resided what you did from a list of options then turned to the corresponding page and the story was built and changed with your choices. I try really hard to add this o my games. Exception what a player dose even if I had nothing planed for the choice they made and running with it as if it had hallways been planed to happen that way never looking back or making the player to take another action.

I set a couple of key factor but really let the pages in-between be filled with player actions.
I also leave holes in my main plot that can be filled with details players offered in there back story.

A good dungeon master can read in to things to and take them for account.
Example: I have a player that wanted to have a close encounter with a deadly substance that one ones lived encountering. That's one hell of a way to stand out! Even with my original listing that the red mist was something that no one had ever survived coming in to contact with, I said "Okay" when a player wanted to have this in there back story. The fame from such an event would haunt a character as much as it could benefit them. And, characters are often built more on there flaws then there strengths. Yes I dictated that his contact with it changes one of his eye colors because such an event would of left a visible mark of some kind, so he was given a red eye for it. In my world red eyes are things only demons and evil things had, there for he likely was looked at oddly or whispered about behind his back, perhaps bullied or treated oddly as a kid. I factor this in to the game, even if the players don't see it. If a towns person that did not know him saw him on the street they would likely have an obverse reaction to meaning a man with a demons eye. Someone dealing him will be less trustworthy, or something of this kind of line where as his oddity is as much a RP factor as it can be.

You never know where it will come in handy to think of something as small as that, but the opportunity for players creativity to affect ones game is endless. You just have to be open to it.