>look up GM tips online
>it's all about "writing stories"
Why do people keep giving this advice? It's terrible. The best way of prepping a campaign is to make situations that the players have to interact with and solve and have the story emerge dynamically from there. Make NPCs with their own goals and throw the players in there, see what they do and let the world react accordingly. Prepping "stories" leads to railroad, prepping characters and situations let stories emerge organically in a way that let's the players feel free (and means less prep overall).

>>96276640 (OP)
Why are you looking up tips? You sound like you don't have the skills to criticize them in the first place.

>>96276644
I wanted to give some stuff to my friend who wants to try to run a game and I would do anything to escape being a forever GM. At this point I might as well just help them out myself since the tips online seem to focus more on being a failed writer than on being a good GM.

>>96276662
>I wanted to give some stuff to my friend
So he's too stupid to look anything up? And you're too unskilled to actually give him anything aside from what you can find on plebbit?
Sheesh. Sounds like his work is cut out for him with a friend like you.

>>96276664
>t. has no friends

>>96276667
Seems more likely that you're friendless and this entire spiel was to cover up the fact that you have no idea how to run a good game, but very strong opinions on how you should anyways.

>>96276640 (OP)
Where are you looking up GM tips and why aren't you using the Alexandrian?

>>96276674
>the Alexandrian?
Thank you, I will check him out.

>>96276640 (OP)
2nding alexandrian
as far as ive found he's one of the few who approaches it from more of a structural perspective instead of just a bunch of miscellaneous tips and 'vibes'. his book is worth reading as a primer since it's layed out in a way to build from zero, but if they dont want to buy or pirate it all the info is on his blog, just more scattered around

>>96276662
>the tips online seem to focus more on being a failed writer
Welcome to youtube/influencer space.

>>96276640 (OP)
>it's all about "writing stories"
You must suck at searching, because hardly any of the advice I've seen is about that.

>>96276640 (OP)
Wargamer fritz is pretty good

>>96276640 (OP)

Playoids always just dick around and get bored if there's not a plot. When they say they hate railroading or want a "sandbox" it doesn't mean anything. It's like girls saying they want a nice guy they can be friends with first or HR saying that the survey is anonymous. Don't listen to them.

>>96276640 (OP)
It's good advice if you know how to write stories. They function the same way that campaigns broken up into adventures do. Read any decent novel. Each chapter is about a moment of plot or character development (or both if the writing isn't abysmal). Then by the next chapter we've moved ahead to the next moment of development. That's exactly the way your campaigns and their adventures can be structured if you want a narrative-style campaign that'll get your players engrossed.

There are plenty of ttrpg styles that it doesn't work for. It's not a panacea that solves all possible problems. But it's good advice for teaching you how to structure GMing.

>>96276662
there ya go, spit out your talking point.

>>96277528
I've never seen that image before and really enjoy it. Thanks anon.

>>96276640 (OP)
Good post OP, you distilled proper GM advice in an effective way.

>>96277738
How dare you imply that OP is posting just to give his sour grapes a little sunshine!

Check out the book "So you want to be a game master" by Justin Alexander, the blogger of The Alexandrian

To understand the playoid you must understand the tiers >>96277528 is correct, but only for a single type. These tiers will be listed from worst to best

>Lemmings
They are "just here to hang", defined by their inability to remember the game system, events in the campaign or even their own character. You can safely ignore these players, don't waste your cognitive load on preparing for them. Their enjoyment is directly derived from how much fun the people around them are having, focus on the others. If you are saddled with a full group like this then you have fucked up.

>Wallflowers
While they do care about the more than just the social aspect, some part of their brain prevents them from engaging in any meaningful way. This is the upper end of stoner players, get them clean if you want them to advance out of being a shit-tier player. These players are defined by just being constantly silent, they won't do anything unless directly prompted. They will remember pieces of the system that are most relevant to them, and they may even remember game events. To prep for them just plan one encounter a session where you can directly look at them and say "_____ what do you do?". Usually this short circuits them, but they'll feel included and that happy fun time will keep the Lemmings happy and gain respect of higher tier players.

>Tards
You likely know one, the person who tries to "break" the game by being a nuisance either mechanically and rp wise. They can be fun to play with but become grating. The only thing keeping them above Lemmings and Wallflowers is they are easy to convert into better players. You can only "pretend" to care about something so long before you get actually invested. Don't prep for them, they take joy in ignoring prep.

>>96276640 (OP)
>and have the story emerge dynamically from there.
you still need to understand how to structure a story to avoid players going
>okay, that was something, let's not think about it ever again
>hey, anon, what was the deal with that thing we did a while ago? we though you were gonna do something
>can't we skip downtime? we just buy our stuff and get there, there's no point interacting with people anyway

>>96277879
Now to the mediocre players

>Normoids
This is the final evolution of the lower tiers. If you manage to convince them to actually care about the hobby this is where your average normie player will peak. That said, they are still exceedingly mediocre. Their understand of TTRPGs is "its like a choose your own adventure book, but a board game" and they will never be convinced otherwise. To them, a ttrpg story comes from the GM, not the players. It is something to passively enjoy, but unlike Wallflowers they understand that they need to be involved at some point. They will write a backstory, they will interact with NPCs if they think said NPCs are "plot important", they will even pay attention during combat and other intensive scenarios and offer advice, though limited and hardly useful. These are the players where basic prep such as NPCs and scenarios come into use. However they still think they are interacting with "plots" so if you lack any players of higher calibre you need to make it a railroad. These players are mentally incapable of understanding that they are in a ttrpg world with the ability to effect change as they wish. They view themselves as side characters to a story, prep for them as such.

>Main Characters
To the seethe of normoids but to the love of GMs, Main Characters are players on the first step to becoming truly good players. They have all the same trappings of the Normoids, but they actually have agency. They remember things, write longer backstories (not a necessarily good thing, but a sign of investment) and try their best to leave a mark on the setting around them. However they still view it as a story, not a setting, and it naturally caps them. These players must not be coddled, the most effective way to force them to grow is to roll in the open and be honest. Dispel the illusion of a story they are progressing through, make them understand that it is a game world to be immersed in. Prep as normal for them.

>>96277925
Finally, the players that make GMing worth it

>Sandboxer
Many players ask to play a sandbox, but few actually know what that entails. Most likely to be a decent GM and actually understand the system, campaign and their character. They know what a ttrpgs entails, that the setting around them is something they can make change to and set real goals for themselves / their characters. These are the ones who will make complex plans and grab onto any hook they can find, any NPC is a chance to grow in power. While these can tend to be powergamers and ruleslawyers, usually talking them quells the issue. The powergamers and ruleslawyers who cannot be reasoned with cap at "Main Character" are likely poor GMs. For these you need to prep a well fleshed out world, or at the very least have conception about the setting and the elements you included to be able to improv drastic change well.

>Caller
An older DnD term that refers to the player who would wrangle the group and be the final decider on decisions. Many GM's can agree that this role still exists, though unofficially. The player that understands the work behind GMing, they have all the benefits of a Sandboxer but they understand the plight of the GM dealing with the lower tiers. They will chat with Lemmings, saying stuff like "Wasn't that crazy man?" or hyping them up whenever they do anything. They will push Wallflowers to engage when something obviously for their character shows up. They will indulge tards to a degree. They can enjoy and encourage the midwit shenanigans of the normoids and MC's, treating them as NPCs they themselves can bounce off of. If you ever get a game with more than one caller it is a true delight. For these players ironically you can prep less, they make running the game more player-centric and let the GM be what they were initially intended to be: A referee.

Following will be some examples

>>96277971
The dynamic is hard to pinpoint, but once you notice it is impossible to ignore.

My players are pretty easily defined
>2 Wallflowers
>1 Wallflower graduating to Normoid
>1 Normoids
>1 MC
>1 Caller (Recently graduated from Sandboxer)

Recently my caller had to leave for a few sessions and the rest of the players really suffered for it
>Without someone to grab hold of everything and make situations happen, the MC had little to react to and fell silent
>The Normoids and MC worked together to try to get things to happen, but were often confused and just attached to whatever idea seemed most obvious at the time.
>The wallflowers did what they always do, but a little more silent as nobody was telling them what to do
I realized that I had failed to make my game a railroad, growing accustomed to having a Caller to manage the group and grab hold of details.

When the Caller rejoined it felt like a breath of fresh air. Everything became engaging again, the players were all having fun and a Wallflower even displayed signs of becoming a Normie. It was amazing.

Remember, your players are a resource that need to be nurtured. Always push them to be more, but focus on the good ones first. The shit ones have a long journey ahead of them and many just don't have the cajones for it. Best of luck GMs!

>>96276644
>>96276664
>>96276672
I notice that you seem to just want to shut down the discussion of this topic, can you give a reason as to why? You didn't actually disagreed with what the OP posted, you simply objected to the existence of the thread.

>>96276640 (OP)
You are misguided. DMing is 50% making good combat and 50%...writing stories. The part where I assume your brain gave up is the fact that you have to write them with your players. Depending on the group that can mean...

• Doing your best to keep them immersed and invested, while they also do their best to influence the story in a good way.
• Straight up just writing parts of the story in advance, then playing it out. Note that doing this properly means also including a loss scenario. No rigging.

>>96276640 (OP)
Internet playoids almost exclusively "play" DnD 5e, usually without ever reading a single line in the rulebook. So when they talk about railroading, what they actually mean is
>my dm didn't let me 1 shot the level 20 bad guy with a level 1 spell even though i was really loud about it for half an hour

>>96276662
Ah, you're a playoid stuck in GM "duty". Explains why you don't know shit about fuck and just regurgitate what you read on reddit.

>>96276640 (OP)
One thing plot-focused GMs rarely seem to take into account is you can retroactively add a through-line to the party's adventures to give it weight and deeper context, if that indeed is what you and they desire.

>>96277879
>>96277925
>>96277971
>>96277999
Not very relevant to OP's question, but an entirely correct distillation of TTRPG players.

>>96278012
Where did he object to the existence of the thread?

>>96278100
I think it is relevant to explain why different styles of prep advice still exist, a tl;dr way of putting it is
>Low and mid tier players require a railroad
>High tier players can approach a game in OP's prep style

>>96277999
>>96277971
>>96277925
>>96277879
Exceptionally good posts for an otherwise shit thread.

I've recently been trying to grow the players in my stable by roping the promising ones into 1 on 1 games. Helps me learn their habits and tendencies better I've found, and it forces them to at least take center stage and graduate to Normoid or Main Character.

I haven't found any methods for pushing people to grow more than that though. Any tips?

>>96277971

>The player that understands the work behind GMing, they have all the benefits of a Sandboxer but they understand the plight of the GM dealing with the lower tiers.

I feel like most of us are Forever GMs glad to have a chance to play. Which is why I have so little tolerance for fucking around I suppose. I want to get in a plot point and a couple battles this session because I'm half-convinced the campaign is a mirage or dream and I'll be back to GMing next week.

And yeah, it's really helpful to have a sort of record-keeper/tard-wrangler/bonus-GM at the table. Almost essential at this point.

>>96278190
Depends, how would you define your players. As I noted in my posts there are several places where people "cap" and you just can't get them to get any better.

The only true advice to push players into improvement is encourage them to try running games. From my own experience
>Low tier players cannot run games
>Mid tier players can run one-shots or short little things, MCs can maybe run a long term game but it will be inconsistent in quality
>Top tier players are often already GMs
>>96278205
It has always been essential, but for some reason rulesets stopped telling GMs and players that such a relationship is vital.

>>96278164
Hmm, perhaps you are right

>>96276640 (OP)
because knowing how to set up characters, introduce them, leave clues (neither in excess nor scarcity), foreshadow events and creating meaningful conflicts are story writing skills that apply to hosting good games. Players can't read your mind.

>>96278668
There are definitely elements of storytelling that are useful, but what is unhelpful and actively poisonous to the hobby is insinuating that a game must be framed as a story

>>96278807
You'd have a good point, if anyone was offering the advice of "write a shitty novel and then read it to your players."

But you're straw-manning the advice into a bumper sticker. And you're doing it to convince yourself that learning is for suckers. And you're doing that because you're lazy. No one is ever advising that you read your players a novel. They're advising that the skills of storytelling are transferable. And they are.

>>96276644
fpbp

>>96276640 (OP)
Because in order to make these situations or SCENES you need to know how a story works and how to make a story out of these scenes. And you do this by reading a lot of stories and writing a lot of stories.

>>96276674
>>96276707
Please stop giving people shit advice

>>96277879
>>96277925
>>96277971

Pretty well done! I would say you're missing a couple, but they have more to do with the mechanics and metagame, so it's fine. Did you come up with these yourself?

>>96276664
You're a retard. There is so much slop and low effort garbage when it comes to DMing advice that a friends recommendation is almost required for me to listen to any of that crap. GM advice givers are so up their own ass. Most of them aren't even good gamemasters. AngryGM and Fatt Coville, for example, are total shit. I remember listening to a Fatt Coville video once while driving and at the end I wished I'd just listened to NPR instead. It would have been less preachy and more intellectually satisfying. Fatts already dumped a dogshit rpg onto the market, looks like a low-effort 4e clone with auto hitting to avoid bad fee fees. Waiting for AngryGM to make his own bsatard blend of every DnD edition with a GM section full of more jargon than a US miltiary manual.

>>96277925
>>Main Characters
>To the seethe of normoids but to the love of GMs
Not universal in my opinion. I have experienced a few who don't view it as main characters plural and more like main character singular with a party of hanger-ons. They're usually very different from the other kind by outright demanding the GM make concessions to them so they can continue to craft a story suited directly to their tastes and disregard what the GM is trying to do. If you're lucky, it might be as minor as asking to have some kind of in-game renown amongst the populace or maybe npcs that fawn over them, something that doesn't take away from the general story. If you aren't, they'll be demanding to have secret lineages that declare themselves the "chosen ones" or outright demand you write certain planned encounters as their personal rivals, necessitating that the rest of the campaign must revolve around their personal conflict that they were destined to fight.

It's thankfully rare, since most players that would be called "main characters" I've seen do try to rope in others from time to time into the goings on for the game. But the selfish ones do exist. And sometimes you can't get it into their heads that they're not the only one at the table trying to have fun.

>>96277925
>>96277971
>Make characters with some local hook, focus on accomplishing objectives
>Avoid acting and defer to other players if my character doesn't have a good reason to pursue that objective
Am I Main Character or Sandboxer under this categorization?

>>96278911
No, a good amount of people recommend preping like you're storyboarding a book
>First A happens, then the players will react which leads to B or C, which all eventually lead to D
It encourages a very top down approach to prep that requires a lot of extra work
>>96279037
My categories were more in terms of investment and prep requirement per player type, an asshole is an asshole no matter the situation. But you are right, the more investment a player puts in the more their relationship with the game will matter. An asshole lemming or wallflower is about as impactful and a very kind one. Policing player personality is a whole other ordeal that falls more into socialization

>>96279141
Depends entirely how active you are in accomplishing those objectives, if you follow obvious hooks laid out by a GM then you are a normoid, but may be all the way up to a Sandboxer if you do more than wait for the GM to set a ball at the tee for you

>>96279145
>No, a good amount of people recommend preping like you're storyboarding a book
Storyboarding is a great skill to help you learn how to GM well.

>>96279160
Not really, it leads to a bad precedent of expecting specific events to happen in a specific order, leads to bad games as the GM (whether consciously or not) tries to steer his adjudications to match his preconceived plans. I've done it before and have found it usually leads to a less fun and more stressful session for the GM. Players can enjoy it, at least the types who love railroading (low and mid tiers).

>>96279183
Sometimes events do have to happen in specific orders, anon. That's how stories work. Again: none of the advice is ever "read your players a novel." It's "learn skills to tell stories and then transfer them to this other medium."

An important diagram regarding storytelling and railroading and RPGs

>>96279191
The order of events, and the events themselves are determined by your adjudication of the rules when players interact with the scenarios you create. You can certainly plan when scenarios occur, but it's a balance of keeping a world feeling alive and allowing the players their degree of control over it.

The problem with our dialogue here is we're both referring to nebulous advice, it's entirely likely we've heard entirely different things. I'm operating under the assumption that OP is complaining about people who prep "plots", not complaining about people who give advice on how to narrate in a way to create an evocative visual, or how to speak in a believable way for many different characters or how to write proper motivations. I will agree with you that yes of course those are useful skills, but the core of ttrpg prep is not storytelling, its scenario building.

>>96279145
Totally fair. I mostly commented that because I've had plenty of hanger-ons and people personally invested in the game, and I figured relating my own experience with the downside of the equation will help others learn from my mistakes, since I've had to pull the plug on a few who were more invested in the story forming in their heads than in the campaign playing out in front of them.

>>96279213
You do bring up a great point, proactive players have a bad habit of forming headcanons and trying to force them. There's nothing wrong with thinking "my character wants this" or "it would be cool if I could pull this off" but a player can often railroad their character's own story! It's times like this that being a GM can be challenging as you get the most enjoyment out of your proactive players, but they are quickly ignoring the game and just telling their own story.

>>96279141
I would recommend not giving a fuck about how some random guy categorizes the way you play a game

>>96279227
Precisely. And while I find it annoying, I also find it kind of sad since those sorts usually end up so busy trying to get their own story pushed through they basically ignore or sideline themselves from what the rest of the party is doing, especially when said party has stumbled into a far more organic tale of their own making that they're engaged in.

>>96278998
I read exactly one AngryDM article, where he claimed that actually, making characters roll several times to climb a wall was excellent game design that lead to gripping gameplay. Mind you, this is a just a wall, no one is attacking them or anything. I knew then I could safely avoid him forever.

>>96279295
I'm pretty guilty of that, I had a guy with a lofty goal and pursued it for a year and a half. Then he rolled poorly and got disintegrated and I learned to make characters with simple goals that can be easily applicable to a wide variety of situations. Hyper specific late game plans are meant to be formed over the course of the adventure, not decided before you even begin

>>96279235
It's just a fun thought exercise. Best way to be a shitty player is to think you're doing everything right.

>>96279331
Always a shame for that to happen, but good to see you learned something valuable from it. Simpler goals that can build up to other more higher ambition ones do tend to work out much better I've seen, especially since laying the groundwork over the course of a campaign gives you a far better foundation as well as a potential for creating a backup goal should their bigger plans end up failing. And much easier to ask the GM for requests to make leads and side work to help bolster said goals, too.

>>96276640 (OP)
Find yourself a copy each of So You Want to Be a Game Master by Justin Alexander for the concrete procedures and Arbiter of Worlds by Alexander Macris for the philosophy. I have yet to find anything better.

>>96279564
As much as I respect Macris for being a good game designer, he's absolutely pants on head retarded when it comes to GMing advice. Also, he's a Romaboo. And Alexandrian is also retarded.

>>96279591
My only issue with Arbiter of Worlds is that it doesn't have the concrete procedures, but Alexander's book covers that. Macris' breakdown of the nature of GMing and RPGs is superb.
>Also, he's a Romaboo.
You say that as if it were a bad thing.

>>96276640 (OP)
>The best way of prepping a campaign is to make situations that the players have to interact with and solve and have the story emerge dynamically from there
I wasted my time with a campaign like this. Every time I tried to challenge my players they shut the fuck up. By the end I was playing video games waiting for them to respond and I realized all they wanted was for me to tell them what to do.

You're the MASTER. Act like one.

>>96279640
>You say that as if it were a bad thing.
Weak men worship Rome, strong men yearn for the sea.

>>96279747
That's just because your group is composed of these types:
>>96277879
>>96278100

>>96279640
Yes, I do. There are fewer things more pathetic than someone who thinks about the failed Roman Republic daily. Or history in general. Real men study science and dream of the stars.

Also, again, his advice on GMing sucks:

>the world HAS to be in decay
>there HAS to be an external, internal, and secret foe
>you NEED rules to have agency
>you don't NEED story arcs
>just let random circumstance decide everything
and so on. What's even funnier is that if you follow along with his pirate campaign, he ignores his own advice consistently. Macris should stick to mechanics.

>>96279823
Every single player was self-admittedly autistic and nobody wanted to take charge. If I look at those tiers they were a mix between wallflower and normoid. It was sheer torture realizing my game was designed for a crowd that didn't exist. I'm glad to be done with them.

>>96279920
>Roman Republic
I'm pretty sure he thinks about the Roman Empire and not much about the Republic.

>>the world HAS to be in decay
>>there HAS to be an external, internal, and secret foe
You appear to be quoting advice from ACKS, which is for a specific sort of game. He doesn't say that in Arbiter of Worlds.

>>96279920
>>you NEED rules to have agency
>>you don't NEED story arcs
These are true.

>>96279920
>>just let random circumstance decide everything
>GETTING (HAND) CRAFTY
>That said, there are occasions when you should work out every detail of a particular NPCs’ moves. If the party’s deeds place them in active confrontation with a major antagonist, it makes sense to develop some hand- crafted content in response to the party’s actions.

>>96276640 (OP)
Unironically, you're reading advice from aggravating normies who treat TTRPGs as a video game, and their advice is for other normies who treat TTRPGs as video games.
They see the whole thing as a pre-scripted theater, some kind of play that everyone is just supposed to be attuned to.

>>96279956
Admittedly, yes, I am quoting from JJ, not Arbiter. But I can't imagine his advice being THAT much different, since ACKS II is his magnum opus.

You don't need rules to have agency - the GM needs to respect player choice and have those choices be meaningful - that's agency. And if you don't have story arcs, you just have a random events plot, and those are never interesting.

>>96277879
>>96277925
>>96277971
I don't think it's a linear progression. For example, I've been all of these people at one point or another, even recently.
For example, my current group is currently slowly dissolving because of various bullshit--one of the players was mind-broken by the election, and now he forces everything to devolve into sidebars about politics. The GM is recently divorced and is now just phoning it in while still expecting the game to continue, and I'm just showing up to get quietly intoxicated because I'm too much of a pussy to quit outright and I'm hoping things will just suddenly improve.
Why would I put care and focus into a game like that? Honestly, I don't even want to fucking be there anymore, I'm just clinging on because I've been with these people for years.
It's easy to blame the players, but honestly, sometimes you need to look inwards and imagine why someone might be completely checked out of your game. Sometimes it's actually just because the other players suck and the game isn't fun anymore.
I really do think most people will rise to the occasion if the occasion is actually good.

>>96279982
>Admittedly, yes, I am quoting from JJ, not Arbiter. But I can't imagine his advice being THAT much different, since ACKS II is his magnum opus.
He does use fantasy as his reference point when explaining building the playable region, but he takes the time to mention how that might be translated to sci-fi and other genres. However, he the only sort of tonal advice he gives is that the playable region ought be fit for adventuring, e.g. wilderness in fantasy, a lawless zone of the city in cyberpunk, etc.

>You don't need rules to have agency - the GM needs to respect player choice and have those choices be meaningful - that's agency.
If a player can't be sure that his actions will be adjudicated consistently, then he doesn't have meaningful agency. Meaningful choices require an informed understanding of how the world operates; otherwise, they may as well be random. If you counter that the GM can just adjudicate consistently without a rule, congratulations: he has created a rule.

>And if you don't have story arcs, you just have a random events plot, and those are never interesting.
There should be NPCs operating in the world to achieve their own ends, and their plots may result in something that could be viewed externally, after the fact, as a 'story arc', but the term 'story arc' denotes a scripted narrative, which is anathema to RPGs. Dealing with the connivings of a particularly loathsome foe may feel like an 'arc', but, unless it was railroaded, it was not.

>>96280012
Take over the GM seat and give the guy a break.

>>96280061
>but the term 'story arc' denotes a scripted narrative
Nope. See >>96279203

>consistency in adjudication
Yes but it doesn't require rules for that to happen.

>>96280076
>Nope. See >>96279203
Either you're trying to say that the story arc is a view of what happened after the fact, in which case we agree, or you're trying to call a node-based structure a story arc, in which case you are misusing the term.

>>96280076
>Yes but it doesn't require rules for that to happen.
>>96280061
>If you counter that the GM can just adjudicate consistently without a rule, congratulations: he has created a rule.

>>96280067
The campaign is his baby, we've been in it for about two years. I can't just take over.
I've already told him subtly then unsubtly that I think it's time he ended it, but he's not listening and we've been just two or three sessions away for months.
I really am at the point of either quitting or staying, there aren't really options outside of that. I'm choosing to stay, I just don't like it, and since I don't like it, I'm taking an edible and fucking zoning out the whole time I'm there.
I know you're not in my life and you don't know the exact context, so just trust me. I'm not looking for advice, and there isn't some big-brain ploy to fix things. It's just natural decay.

>>96280136
Ok. I understand not wanting advice on a tough situation you've already thought deeply about from people who haven't. I hope things improve.

>>96280012
I think it's a more or less linear progression when it comes to a person's raising of his ability. Someone who has the ability to be a Caller can fall to a different tier for many different reasons, such as the ones you described, but someone who has never risen above Lemming can't suddenly jump to being a Caller without passing through the other stages.

>>96280136
>stoner is a lazy wallflower
The tiers hold true

>>96280012
>It's easy to blame the players, but honestly, sometimes you need to look inwards and imagine why someone might be completely checked out of your game
This. Generally, players are easy to blame because they're generally less invested no matter how much effort you put in, but plenty of DMs don't approach things in a way that invites interest.
I had one game where the DM used AI for everything, and you could tell. NPCs were boring caricatures and he was using ChatGPT to write the script he would recite during the session. Best part was that NPCs would stonewall the group.

I was waiting for an excuse to leave. Then he got mad that my character was actually trying to accomplish goals, because he found the conflict too intense. I took the opportunity and left.
All in all, the whole adventure felt like a failed novelist type of DM who couldn't even write his own story.

>>96280248
When AI was new and novel, I was briefly fascinated with it. Key word, 'briefly.'
I still think it's good for generating character art and portraits, because realistically just peeling generic images off of google isn't that much of an improvement, so AI has a place in that regard.
But the more time you spend using AI, the more apparent it is just how corrosive it is. There's a certain kind of person who just genuinely does not want to think for themself. They don't see how ChatGPT is literally only capable of coming up with generic, boring ideas, it's too stupid to care about context, and it has no memory to speak of.
It is quite literally incapable of writing a good story because it's literally a hack simulator. It can only copy from other people. That's why, if you've ever tried to get it to right something, it always reads like RoyalRoad sloppa. Because it literally IS RoyalRoad sloppa; when you tell it to generate fantasy, that's all it can make. Hackneyed, tropey bullshit.

>>96280348
>They don't see how ChatGPT is literally only capable of coming up with generic, boring ideas, it's too stupid to care about context, and it has no memory to speak of.
On top of this issue, the other big one is that it can't make inferences. Allusions or subtle references go over its head to an extent that would make an autist look like a normalfag in comparison.

>>96280348
AI is complete poison because eventually you will find your own creativity hampered the more you outsourced it. I thought it a good tool for getting feedback on technical stuff like
>does this encounter contain things for all the characters to be involved
And it ended up just making a very formulaic system that made all the encounters very samey no matter the scenario. Glad I stopped using it a while ago

>>96280097
Yes but that's not what Macris was arguing. He's arguing in the case of simulationism and complex rules that allow the GM to adjudicate stuff in complex and yet consistent ways. My position is that a rule of "does the table think this is cool" also allows for agency.

And yes, a story arc emerges after the fact - a story can only exist when it's done BUT, in order for the story to emerge, it needs a node-based structure to act as a groove for a story. Otherwise you get something like "And then Conan fought another 24 goblins. Then he fought another 13 goblins. The next day it was 2 stirges. Then he saw another group of people, consisting of an elf, two fighters, a dwarf, and a cleric. Then he found an entrance to the dungeon, despite nothing indicating that there was a dungeon here beforehand. Then he rolled two nat 1s in a row and died to a poison trap."

>>96280472
I'm writing a novel, and I briefly got into the habit of sending chapters to ChatGPT for analysis and critique.
I did that for a while, but eventually stopped because I realized that ChatGPT is just a yes-man who says everything is great, but it should be more generic and shitty like self-published amazon garbage.
All it does is jerk you off, then it recommends that if you want to improve you should consider not having a soul.

>>96280507
>Yes but that's not what Macris was arguing. He's arguing in the case of simulationism and complex rules that allow the GM to adjudicate stuff in complex and yet consistent ways. My position is that a rule of "does the table think this is cool" also allows for agency.
If the table consistently things the same things done in the same way are 'cool', then the table has, knowingly or not, created rules, which are what allow for agency. If the table does not consistently think the same things done in the same way are 'cool', then there are no rules, and meaningful agency is destroyed. That's what Macris argues, and he's right.

>Otherwise you get something like "And then Conan fought another 24 goblins. Then he fought another 13 goblins. The next day it was 2 stirges. Then he saw another group of people, consisting of an elf, two fighters, a dwarf, and a cleric. Then he found an entrance to the dungeon, despite nothing indicating that there was a dungeon here beforehand. Then he rolled two nat 1s in a row and died to a poison trap."
Yes, that would be very boring. That's not what Macris advocates, though. I already addressed above that Macris doesn't think everything has to be random, and even about the random stuff, he says this:
>The key is to interpret the random event in the context of what’s come before it.
>...
>Sometimes this led to a quick battle - such as a “call to arms - town is under attack” result that I interpreted to be a counter-attack by an orc tribe the party had recently raided. Occasionally these random events triggered an entire session’s worth of play, such as when a “pestilence” event led the party’s cleric to travel from town to town trying to stop an outbreak of the Black Death.
If a wandering monster is rolled in the vicinity of a dungeon, the GM can reason that it came from that dungeon.

>>96277971
All factually true. Damn, I miss my fucking group, we were all GMing different games, sometimes at the same time, I didn't know how good I had it until I had to move and I'm now stuck with a bunch of normies.

>>96280348
AI turned me off of using character art completely. not sure why

>>96280348
Not even royalroad deserves that mark of shame.
>I still think it's good for generating character art and portraits, because realistically just peeling generic images off of google isn't that much of an improvement, so AI has a place in that regard.
AI has completely corroded search results for images. There are so, so many ideas I have for "anime girl" that AI doesn't understand because nobody has drawn a character like that yet.

>>96281005
I bring up RoyalRoad because, you have to understand, AI scrapes data from somewhere. 'Somewhere' in this case means readily available stuff posted to the internet, so when ChatGPT is simulating writing, it's generally not pulling from actual published works that would be protected by better layers of copy protection, it's pulling from stuff that's easy to access, and it's sampling the most common shit.
Fanfiction or fanfiction-tier shit like what you'd find on RoyalRoad is the majority of the fiction AI has access to, so if you ask it to crank out fiction, it's going to be similar to that.
I'm not saying what gets posted to RoyalRoad is AI generated--though I WOULD bet a lot of it is--I'm saying AI generates stuff that's supposed to fit in on RoyalRoad, except even worse.

>>96280869
My group used to all run games too but now I’m the only one who runs a game other than one guy who can only run it once a month due to inviting normie friends that regularly plan over session and don’t tell us until the day of

>>96281005
>Not even royalroad deserves that mark of shame
Reminds me of how em dashes (—) are now associated with AI because it steals from Fanfiction sites where people copiously use em dashes. I hate it because I like using em dashes in my formal and creative writing.
So now, unless I'm writing casually or in extreme slang, there's a chance people think I use AI to write.

>>96281005
>Not even royalroad deserves that mark of shame
Reminds me of how em dashes (—) are now associated with AI because it steals from Fanfiction sites where people copiously use em dashes. I hate it because I like using em dashes in my formal and creative writing.
So now, unless I'm writing casually or in extreme slang, there's a chance people think I wrote that message using AI. Pisses me off, because the entire point of writing (especially in TTRPGs) is to convey tone and character.

>>96281005
>Not even royalroad deserves that mark of shame
>>96281005
>Not even royalroad deserves that mark of shame
Reminds me of how em dashes (—) are now associated with AI because it steals from Fanfiction sites where people copiously use em dashes. I hate it because I like using em dashes in my formal and creative writing.
So now, unless I'm writing casually or in extreme slang, there's a chance people think I wrote that message using AI. Which sucks when half the point of writing for TTRPGs is inspiration and evoking a mood for the actual session, and the stink of AI can sink the session's mood.

>>96277879
>This is the upper end of stoners
are you retarded, they are constantly the guys leading the group conversation.

>>96281385
It hurts me because I know the only way for me to get myself out there is web publishing, which means... yeah... the slop machine will reach for me too.

>>96281386
I've never seen a stoner who could lead any conversation unless it's about what brand of poison they like to smoke up. They're some of the most brain dead and unaware creatures I've had the displeasure to deal with.

>>96281386
My experience with stoners have been
>total wallflower
>another wallflower
>a guy who was so stoned he would abruptly say “guys I have a plan!” And then not say anything for several minutes

>>96281386
That guy that takes a few puffs before the session and when you break for a meal isn't any more of a problem than the guy who downs a few beers over the course of the evening; the problem is the guy who's leaving the table to hit his dab pen every 15 minutes and is blitzed the entire time because he's just along for the ride in the same way that he would be while playing vidya - nuke a few goblins, grab some loot, see you next week. Not necessarily offensive but not very interesting or proactive.

>>96282336
I had a player once who would smoke and eat edibles every day ("for his anxiety", of course) and he was pretty much just a wallflower that was aggressively unaware he was one.

The worst of it was when he tried to run a campaign of his own. He prepared almost nothing and after the first session insisted we swap to a homebrew system he'd been working on for "years", and it was basically just runequest (Coincidentally the last system we'd played) but with skyrim-style leveling and all of the combat rules stripped out and replaced with vibes. We humored him for a month before putting the brakes on it.

He then accused us all of ruining the game and making his mental health worse and we learned he'd been going to each player in secret and shit talking the rest of the group between sessions. It pretty effectively convinced me that the weed and psychosis/psychosis studies are accurate.

>>96282382
I take edibles on very rare occasion. Overdoing it is a real issue, but the benefits are there too. Nobody understands how to moderate.

>>96277879
>>96277925
>>96277971
>>96277999
Quality posts that this thread doesn't deserve!
I think you're missing the competative Mary Sue types (I call them winners) that should go to worst tier. They are the worst kind of regression of MC players which you described.
>powertrip/ego bigger than quasar
>the types who try to win in ttrpg
>they see the GM as the enemy and the other players as competition.
>they always produce munchkin characters with the worst personality that does not work in group environments
>"I tell the king to go fuck himself but my charisma is 16 so he doesn't get mad, yeah?"
>they have knowledge of the system, which they use to take advantage of newbie GMs and players
>they correct and direct other players to do what would make the Mary Sue's character stronger, regardless if it makes sense or not story-wise "Yeah my character hates drinking, but he'll drink that for +1STR"
>they constantly stress test the table, the story and the system to it's limits in order to be the best
>"how much hp exactly does he have left?"
>when paired with wallflowers and lemmings, they start playing a single-player game

>>96282438
Moderation with such vices is a meme because it just amounts to destroying your body/brain more slowly.
A moderate smoker is likely to get cancer than a heavy smoker, but he'd be best off never smoking in the first place. In the same way A moderate stoner will be less insufferable and brain damaged, a moderate alcoholic is less likely to get cirrhosis, etc.

>>96276644
Only a fool would assume that he has no more to learn

>>96282482
You have much to learn if you're going to reddit for advice, on that much we agree.

>>96282482
Are you the type to come to a library and say to a librarian "Hey, bro, got any knowledge for me?"

>>96282454
Smoking activates longevity genes. You destroyed your own argument in no time at all. Congratulations.

>>96282507
>least brainwashed junkie

>>96282515
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4888382/
Every single time you lose. I'm right, as always.

>>96282522
>We checked long-lived smokers and found they were long-lived and other smokers were short-lived.
Amazing, I never would have expected such a conclusion.

>>96282554
Awful quick to rush to reply. Sounds like you need a chill pill. Maybe... an edible is what the doctor ordered. Just a hunch.

>>96282522
>If I don't die from smoking, I might live to 110 from smoking

>>96282560
Nah sorry I don't like self-induced schizophrenia.

>>96282572
You sound rather non-White. Learn to moderate.

>>96282568
You won't be able to do it unless you smoke.

>>96276640 (OP)
>Why do people keep giving this advice?
Because a lot of people give advice without knowing what they're talking about.
>>96278164
This is essentially true, there is no one way to prep well, it's very group dependent and I would argue also systems dependent.
For a new GM with a group of new players it's actually not a bad idea to try running a published adventure, but to prepare to adjust if the group does something the scenario writer didn't expect.

>>96282573
t. Schizophrenic

>>96282522
>studies suggest

>>96282584
You've been seething about that link.
>>96282586
>doesn't know what ncbi is
Okay retard. I'm giving you good advice, up to you to follow it.

>>96282592
Why would I seethe at something that literally agreed with me?

>>96276640 (OP)
Ok, anon. Give me advice on how to successfully run a hexcrawl. Ut seems really overwhelming and I don't know where to begin.

>>96282615
Not OP. So You Want to Be a Game Master has a chapter on hexcrawls, both designing and running. I recommend it.

>>96282615
The OSR thread and trove thread have links to truckloads of excellent resources for running hexcrawls.

>>96276640 (OP)
I honestly think story is the easiest part of an rpg as long as you're not trying to be a novelist. The real challenge is interesting (combat, puzzle, social) encounter design.

For example, look at Temple of the Twelve for Starfinder. Storywise, "the players trek into a deep jungle, fighting off monsters, find an ancient temple with a map to an alien superweapon" is a neat plot. But encounterwise, "The players make multiple Survival skill checks in a row interspersed with fighting a series of single CR4 dinosaurs and a couple fights against snipers" is boring as hell.

Or the ever so lovely "Players sit on a wall and watch metaplot NPCs do everything" that ruined Deadlands adventures.

>>96277999
Making a screencap of this to save for later usage.

>>96280822
Yes, I agree that consistency is important, but consistency doesn't imply agency (though it benefits) and nor do rules = consistency. You can have agency without consistency (meaningful choices that impact the game world) and you can have consistency without rules. I do admit that both make it easier, but it is not necessary.
And as far as the other thing is, that's called telling a story. Not even post-facto, you're just telling a story and tying shit together, to avoid it being a sequence of random events.

>>96282615
Don't.

>>96284621
>but consistency doesn't imply agency
Consistency itself isn't agency, no. If the GM consistently ruled that the party couldn't do anything but follow his adventure, that would be consistent, but it wouldn't grant agency. However, without consistency in mechanics, there cannot be agency. To take it to an extreme, if the GM just applied fiat however he felt in the moment, and no two actions of the same type were ruled the same way, it would be impossible for the players to make any meaningful long-term decisions because they would not be able to predict how difficult or easy each option would be and what results could or could not be achieved.

>You can have agency without consistency (meaningful choices that impact the game world)
Disjointed, momentary agency, sure. If the GM presented a choice and honestly outlined the consequences of each option, then a player could make a single meaningful decision. The problem lies in the inability to make a sequence of meaningful choices that build upon one another. If one choice leads a player to believe the world works a certain way, and he operates with that in mind, then his agency will be undermined if the same situation comes up but is ruled entirely differently. It becomes impossible to meaningfully work toward any goal.

>nor do rules = consistency
The very purpose of rules is consistency. If a rule says X action in Y situation has Z difficulty and results, and the rule is applied faithfully, how is that anything but consistent? If there is no written rule, but the group nevertheless adjudicates the same action in the same situation the same way, then the group has de facto created a rule.

>And as far as the other thing is, that's called telling a story
/tg/ really seems to struggle with what 'story' means. No, determining the origin of a group of monsters randomly rolled is not telling a story. It's providing context. The closest you could say is that it's creating a history.

>>96284621
>you're just telling a story and tying shit together, to avoid it being a sequence of random events.
Furthermore, you've now contradicted yourself. You first asserted that Macris is against story arcs (which he is), but then you've gone on to state that contextualizing random encounters and events (which Macris advocates) is telling a story. You can't have it both ways.

>>96284363
I'll also need this screencap for later usage

>>96276640 (OP)
>>96276662
Justin Alexander has both his Gamemastery 101: https://thealexandrian.net/gamemastery-101 and, if you're willing to shell out cash, So You Want To Be A Game Master. It's very prep situations not plots, to the point I read your OP and assumed you were complaining not every GM advice column is in his style.

>>96285284
It's Macris contradicting himself. If you're logically tying your random events together, you're making a story.

>>96285255
Prediction is NOT the sole criterion of agency. Agency, to put it simply is "Do my actions impact the world in some way?" If the answer is "yes," then you have agency. I do agree that having rules and consistency does make agency easier - I'm not arguing against it - but I am arguing that you do not NEED it.

A story is a linear sequence of scenes that tie together to form a cohesive narrative. I think that in order to REALLY have this conversation, we'd need to firmly establish what
>story
>narrative
>history
>structure
mean, but also, I don't think we're really opposing each other's opinions, but rather focusing on the details.

This is far and away the worst thread on /tg/. It's filled with so much trolling bullshit.

Congrats, and I unorinically hope something kills you all, prefetably the crushing weight of realization of your own faggotry.

>>96279747
>I wasted my time with a campaign like this. Every time I tried to challenge my players they shut the fuck up. By the end I was playing video games waiting for them to respond and I realized all they wanted was for me to tell them what to do.
>
>You're the MASTER. Act like one.
Nah. I would rather never play a game again than have to lead players around by the nose everywhere. I might as well write a novel at that point.

>>96279966
They're worse than normies, they're D&D brain damaged. Actual normies who have never played a TTRPG generally try engaging with it more creatively/openly, it's only ones with the brain damage who start acting this way because it's a completely unnatural way to act.

>>96281005
>There are so, so many ideas I have for "anime girl" that AI doesn't understand because nobody has drawn a character like that yet.
Depending on what you want, you may be able to use img2img for this. For example, if you want some type of wacky colored hair, just scribble the hair over an image, then feed it through img2img. I do this for swords and guns because the AI's brain is dogshit with weapons, probably because of the Woke Mob or whatever.

>>96282615
Buy Mythic Bastionland and use its hexcrawl rules.

>>96285566
As much as I appreciate the olive branch, I think we are opposed, not necessarily on the topic of how a game should be run, but certainly in our definitions and our interpretation of Macris' advice (and hence in our evaluation of the quality of his advice).

>If you're logically tying your random events together, you're making a story.
Stories are more than a series of causally related events. If I listed all the things that happened to me yesterday, that would not, by itself, constitute a story. Stories have intent; they have a message; they have arcs and acts and all sorts of things not present in plain recording of events, which is what a history is. The type of contextualizing that Macris advocates is no more than figuring out the sequence that most likely led up to the randomly generated event. It's the same as seeing a man going to a fast food joint and reasoning that he did so because he was hungry. That's not a story.

>Agency, to put it simply is "Do my actions impact the world in some way?" If the answer is "yes," then you have agency.
No. You have to be aware of the probable results to have agency. If you have a choice, but you don't know what either option is likely to result in, then it doesn't matter whether the the results impact the world; you may as well choose randomly. Being allowed to choose between mystery boxes A and B does not constitute agency in any meaningful sense.

As for the terms,
>history
A record of a sequence of events.
>structure
An abstraction by which the GM can conceptualize and adjudicate player navigation between different elements in the game world.
>story
A record of a series of events, factual or fictional, consciously arranged and explicated as to educate or entertain.
>narrative
In RPG discussion, essentially the same as story. Hence, narrativism.

And yes, I am aware that there was no distinction between story and history in their oldest uses, but the distinction exists now and is useful for clear discussion.

>>96285773

>Stories are more than a series of causally related events.
At their most baseline, that's exactly what they are. All the other stuff you're listing is, strictly speaking, unnecessary. It won't make for a riveting yarn, but it'll have the bare necessity. And your example is absolutely a story. There are motherfuckers asking shit like "Did I violate simulationism because I made a call as a GM instead of consulting the tables?" The OSR movement as a whole worships the tables like a bunch of drooling imbeciles - to them if they roll up "man in fast food joint," it is HERETICAL to to tie it to the story that the PCs are participating in.

Agency is not predicate on knowledge. You CAN be forced to choose between two unknowns! It's not an ideal situation, but nonetheless, you still have agency.

I disagree with your definitions, btw:

>story
An ongoing sequence of causally linked events.
>history
A finished sequence of linked events.
>structure
This one I agree with
>narrative
The ongoing emergent sequence of causally linked events

>>96286693
>At their most baseline, that's exactly what they are.
I have already acknowledged that in their oldest, most imprecise use, there is no difference between history, story, tale, narrative, and so on. However, using all of those interchangeably doesn't exactly make for useful discussion. In real life, nobody is going to call the minutes of a meeting a story. These terms have developed different uses.

>to them if they roll up "man in fast food joint," it is HERETICAL to to tie it to the story that the PCs are participating in.
This is precisely why the term 'story' should be avoided when referring to history and contextualization. 'Story' carries with it the implication of plot. The people you're talking about are confused because because they are failing to make the vital distinction between story and history.

>You CAN be forced to choose between two unknowns!
Yes, and when you are forced to choose between two unknowns, your agency is meaningless; it is literally just as (un)meaningful to roll a die instead of choosing. If there were a hypothetical game that was naught but a series of choices between unknowns, it would be absurd to say that the players had agency.

>>story
>An ongoing sequence of causally linked events.
That is a very peculiar definition of story. A story is usually understood to be complete. That's why we say things like 'an ongoing story' or 'an unfinished story'. That's why 'The Neverending Story' stands out as a title. That's why describing the events of an ongoing campaign as a story makes it sound like the course has been charted already.

>>narrative
>The ongoing emergent sequence of causally linked events
Since you've already described exactly this as a story (see: 'the story that the PCs are participating in'), I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make.

>>96282615
>>96285717
No need to buy it, the free version contains the full rules and enough content to generate a complete sandbox
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NpWh9Du7XnNsGZf38rW7KVVn6gKOpTVT/view
The paid version just adds more player backgrounds, campaign content, and has the "ending"; if you intend to play in your own setting then you don't need that at all