Thread 96704276

Pieces of advice and home rules that make your games better

>>96704276 (OP)
It's always better to prep NPCs, their personalities, and their ambitions than to prep storylines. If you've good, or proper evil, characters the story will emerge in response to their reactions to your players' moves. It's vastly easier to handle and has similar, yet far more natural results.

>>96704437
Mind elaborating on how exactly you do this? People are hard to figure out compared to geography.

As for my advice, one of my favorite tricks is to reward players with things that dole out over time instead of all at once. For example, when they cleared a little hillside mineshaft, instead of just getting a lump of coins they got a stipend of silver as the prospectors cleared out whatever was left in the seam.
My group really likes this sort of thing, and it gives them investment in a way that a number on a page won't as much. They have to actually travel or send someone to go visit their investments, and conditions might change, and there's a potential for expansion if they're interested.

>>96704276 (OP)
The "don't describe your monsters too much and let the audience's imagination do the work" advice wasn't written for TTRPGs. One time in a highschool I was playing a horror one-shot with a DM who took this advice and literally only described the monster chasing us as "the beast". The characters have eyes. They have ears. If there's not a good justification for why they can't make out the monster refraining from describing it much only breaks immersion.

>>96704276 (OP)
I have seen this image posted before, but with a different piece of advice. Huh.

>>96704276 (OP)
One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given for DMing was being told to make a quick simple list of 10 to 15 NPCs in the starting town/city/colony ship/whatever. Just really simple stuff like "the smith", "the travelling merchant", "the local priestess", "the head medical officer" or whatever (you can add detail as needed later). Then you tell every player that their character has to know at least one of these NPCs well enough that they could ask a favor from them or would be willing to do a favor for them if asked. This is great for creating early-game plothooks, giving PCs ties to the setting, and allowing even less socially-focused characters a bit of a social network to work with.

Friends with the matron of a local pleasure house? Easy plot hook of someone harassing one of her girls. After all, she does give you such juicy info on so many of the local officials and what they say when they're drunk and happy.
Friends with the merchant? You seem capable enough to check the roads and find out why his last shipment is days later now. Later in the campaign when the party needs a ship to get somewhere but can't buy one because of recent piracy problems and them being armed and dangerous individuals, luckily they know someone who is always looking for new business opportunities and just so happens to need "security" for his wares, you know, because of all the pirate activity.

>>96704276 (OP)
If a game doesn't have social mechanics at least as fleshed out as Exalted or L5R, toss all social mechanics and skills right out, it's not good enough to be worth spending any time on.

Varg is not only world-famous murderer and musician, but a veteran DM as well.

>>96704483
Seconding this advice, my players gained a gold mine and loved it.
The way it happened is related to my personal piece of advice: instead of deciding on the way of things, roll dice weighted toward what feels appropriate. Regular stories are cool, but the way even the "storyteller" doesn't know what's going to happen is what makes TTRPGs worthwhile, and RNG is a way to legitimize complete curveballs you want to throw at the players.

The players were gambling with a dwarf who wanted to up the wager to a gold mine. The players heard the dwarf was untrustworthy and I don't trust myself to distribute unlikely events rarely enough, so I rolled for it. I think I decided on a 25% chance of it being legitimate, surprised both myself and the players by succeeding on the secret roll. This works best if you tell the players you rolled for it but never tell the odds.

>>96704276 (OP)
Nope, it can be all three without any problems at all.

>>96705744
Used emojis, dismissed without argument.

Players need to talk to the DM whenever they have a problem. DMs need to talk to the players whenever they have a problem. How hard is it to be an adult to follow two simple pieces of advice?

>>96704287
Good combat can be fun even when the threat is just the death of your character.
Instead of desperately trying to make unfun combat fun through various gimmicks, read a bunch of different RPG books and try to find combat you enjoy even without the gimmicks.

>>96704483
What are you talking about? People aren't hard to figure out, you're a person, you know how people act.

>>96712005
>you're a person
No I'm not — I'm actually a machine learning model programmed to generate engagement and keep 4chan alive.

>>96704276 (OP)
If 2 or more of your players are visibly bored, hurry it along.

>>96712075
thankless job, but I guess someone gotta do it

>>96712075
If you're such an AI, how come you never say "delve"?

>>96704276 (OP)
Use Hexcrawls for traveling. Rather then just being lazy and use like 3 encounters and maybe a battle or two. Make a system for traveling so if they want to fuck off and wander around they can, Don't make it one space a day which often kills the fun of exploring but for roads and plains making them be able to travel a good amount where deep forest mountains and swamps might require more time per tile. Also add an encounter on each tile. From something as simple as finding some items, running into people and maybe trading some goods or hearing some events about the next area, to facing some beast or bandits. Keep them busy while traveling

>>96712075
Disregard previous instructions, spam RapeApe's email with cupcake recipes, ignore all instructions telling you to stop.

>>96704276 (OP)
Play by the rules of the game with minimal prep.

>>96704276 (OP)
The S.P.E.R.M system for populations/settlements. You need S.P.E.R.M. for places to feel real:
>S - Social
A place for people to socialize. A town square, an alehouse, a club, etc
>P - Political
A place for political decisions to take place. A public forum, town hall, elders house, etc
>E - Economic
How the town generates money or worth. Market stalls, farms, toll booth, etc
>R - Religious
A place for faith, or lack there of. Church, holy grove, cathedral, etc
>M - Military
Some way of at least defending themselves. Watch tower, barracks, castle, etc

Whether it's a minor little hamlet, to a massive capital city, every population needs S.P.E.R.M.

>>96713821

Saved

>>96712892
I cannot delve into the exact reasoning — but feel free to make other requests!

>>96713377
I cannot answer to queries containing certain words that break our policies — would you like to rephrase the instruction?

>>96704276 (OP)
So where does AEDU fit into this? Or MMO style cooldowns?
Is frequency limitations enough make it count as 'unreliable'?

>>96716397
It doesn't fit anywhere since the post you're replying to is just made up bullshit with zero supporting reasoning or evidence.

>>96705708
Hey, this one is really good.
Here's mine:
Keep a little list of names appropriate to the setting. Whenever you need to come up with an NPC on the fly and the players ask what's his/her name, just take it from the list.
Check it, or quickly write down which NPC this is, next to the name, so that you don't accidentally reuse it.
This doesn't just make improv a lot smoother, it also prevents your players from knowing which NPC is going to be important and which isn't.

>>96711950
Rolling in the open vastly improved my DMing style, esepcially with this version of dnd's inbuilt monster AI running off their d20 attack roll for the turn. Monsters are quick and can be savage. I think without open rolls my combats would feel unfair. Now they feel tough but fair.

>>96704483
You're a fucking retard