Sometimes running a game feels like herding a group of toddlers through the glassware department of  a department store while carrying an armload of wet cats. While most of the time players act like the responsible adults they usually are, there are times that I feel I’ve got a table full of cranky toddlers. On those times, I’ve found the following parenting skills really useful:

1. Never give your players an option you hate.
2. Look for ways to say “yes.”
3. Don’t tell your players what their character thinks, just tell them what they can do.
4. Don’t give in to whining.
5. Never be afraid to say “no.”
6. Limit their choices, if need be, but let the players make their own choices
7. When everyone’s tired and hungry, take a break
8. Admit when you’re wrong.
9. Apologize when you need to.
10. Let players make their own mistakes
11. Insist on good manners.

How about you? What parenting (teaching, whatever) tips have you found helpful as a GM?

[Photo courtesy of fiskfisk under the Creative Commons 2 license]

Other Related Posts

• Fred’s Missing *Again*?
• Handling Problem Players
• Want to Be a Better GM? Ask Your Players

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• Nudging a Content GM (gnomestew.com)
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• How To Be A Confident GM, Part 1 (campaignmastery.com)
• First Time GM: Job Description (gnomestew.com)

11 GMing Tips I Learned from Being a Parent is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

I hate gaming dry spells. I think the longest period I’ve gone without gaming was two years, if you’re talking about actually sitting at the table, either as GM or player. If you’re counting game preparation and research, it’s more like, well, 6 months.

How to do I manage? Gaming is a priority for me: right after the important personal relationships in my life and equal to martial arts.  Which puts it way ahead of just about everything else, since rpgGM.com is my job as well as my love. It also helps that just about everyone in my immediate family are also gamers. I’ve been very, very blessed, especially with a fiancé who’s actively encouraging  me to (and supporting me while) I get my own game publishing company off the ground.

But this is about how to survive the drought. Like everyone else, I’ve had times when I couldn’t get a group together or couldn’t find one I wanted to play in. Here’s what I do when I’m game deprived:

• Worldbuilding. Number one top slot. I love worldbuilding, which is why rpgGM.com’s first series of products is the game world, Guang Keshar. But it’s not just building worlds from scratch. I also consider rewriting the background of existing game worlds as worldbuilding.
• Reading game systems. I try get my hands on and read as many game books as I can. This helps me keep the creative juices flowing, which leads to…
• Campaign creation. I’ll spend a lot of time fleshing out the bare structure of a campaign for a game I’m itching to run. That’s a bit trickier, since I have a very hands-off GMing style and tend to build my games around my PCs. But I can do a fair amount of preparation work so that I’m ready for character creation when it does happen. I often have three or four campaigns I’m working on (but not currently running) simultaneously.
• Reading about GMing. I’m always looking for ways to improve my GMing. I like reading game-related blogs, though right now I don’t have time to keep pace with more than a handful of my favorites. I also love reading books like Robin’s Laws of Good Gamemastering.
• Playing RPG computer games. For me, this is something of a last resort. I generally dislike the rigidity of computer RPGs (though they are getting better). I prefer gaming with real people who’re in the same room as me.
• Running “Play by Email” (PBEM) campaigns. This is actually one of my old stand-by’s when I can’t get a group together locally and the number one of the reasons my dry spells are so short.  They’re still not the same, but I find them a better substitute for a tabletop game than computer games. With the advent of MMOs, I know many people who prefer the other way around, though. To each their own .
• Writing about games (non-worldbuilding). Most of the game stuff I’ve written has happened when I was between game groups.
• Painting miniatures and creating game-related art.

What can I say? I’m a game junkie. Gaming is one of the things my family does together and that’s something I’m very grateful for.

[This post is a part of RPG Bloggers' May blog carnival].

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Games…Must Have Games… is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

Morality. A big topic, with even bigger answers. What is good? What is evil? Are evil actions ever justified? Can we ever truely overcome evil? If we can, should we? Do moral issues have a place in RPGs?

Undoubtedly, yes. One of the wonderful things about our hobby is that it allows us to explore the question of evil safely. It provides us a sandbox to try out actions, attitudes, and desires that are unacceptable in the real world.

What do I mean by “safely”? I mean that we can act out these “dark desires” in a pretend world on pretend people. No one really gets hurt; no one real dies. But the concept of “safely” goes even beyond that — it helps protect us from our own darker natures. By channeling those shadow feelings into a fictional character, we can separate ourselves from our own dark impulses. We don’t need to carry the burden of guilt those feelings often bring. They become “not us”, to a certain extent.

Wouldn’t it be better to eliminate those dark desires? To purge ourselves of them? Unfortunately both psychology and history tell us that’s really not possible. The best we can do is to repress them and try our best to forget they even exist. But what we hide still remains and colors our actions in ways we don’t anticipate … or even, often, see. But those impulses and desires — our shadow — need a safe outlet. And RPGs, as purely mental exercises, can give us that outlet. We can safely project our shadow onto our fictional characters, giving us an alternative to projecting it onto the people around us.

This has an added benefit: the more we explore the dark part of our souls, the better we can relate to other people. Through roleplaying, we learn that we, ourselves can be greedy. We can be lustful, gluttonous, murderous. When we recognize these things in ourselves, I believe we become more tolerant of them in other people. Which is not to say we condone those actions, or think they’re appropriate. But what we can do is recongize someone else’s struggle with their shadow side. We may even find it easier to treat them with compassion.

Through roleplaying, we can gain a better understanding of the full range of human emotions and desires. By becoming some one else for a time, we find we’re not as different from others as we may have imagined.

Other Carnival Posts

• Everything I Know, I Learnt from D&D: 20 Life Lessons Gaming’s Taught Me [Topic: Dungeons & Dragons]
• Edition Wars [Topic: Dungeons & Dragons]
• “You Want to Do What?” [Topic: Dungeons & Dragons]
• D&D: the Future [Topic: Dungeons & Dragons]
• 9 Tips for Running Your First Convention Game [Topic: Conventions, Ren Fairs, Carnivals, Oh My!]

Dancing with the Dark is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

We all get them: the incessant rules lawyer who challenges your every call; the “loopholer” who will exploit everything not nailed down in the rules to gain that extra +1 advantage; the player who takes everything that happens to their character as an attack on themselves…

Dealing with problem players is never easy. Here’s a collection of resources to help you when you’ve got no idea where to turn:

• [Ask RPG] D&D 4e: Need Luck-type Rewards: Using in-game rewards to curb problem behavior.
• Dealing with a Player Who Wants It All: Dealing with a spotlight-stealing player.
• Dealing with Disruptive Players: A forum discussion. About half way down the page is a good checklist of things to do when dealing with a problem player.
• Dealing with Problem Players: Why GMs tend to make poor players.
• Dealing with RP Attention Hogs: How to deal with players who want all the spotlight.
• DM Advice for Difficult Players?: Dealing with a rules-lawyer.
• Friday Chat: Dealing with Aggressive/Jerk Players: Just what the title says. Be sure to read the comments for further ideas on how to deal with these players.
• Group Therapy with Dice: Identifying problem players.
• Happy Jacks RPG Podcast — Season 01 Episode 02: A podcast about dealing with players.
• How Do You Deal with Die Fudgers?: Tips for dealing with players who cheat on their die rolls.
• How to Deal with Competitive Players: Dealing with players who just has to “win”.
• How to Kick Out a Player and Respect Yourself in the Morning: A step-by-step guide for removing disruptive players from your game.
• The Next Level #13: Solving a Disruptive Player: Ideas for dealing with a disruptive player without booting them out.
• Problem Players of a Different Sort: Dealing with “Console Drones”, inattentive players and players who bring their personal issues into the game.

Handling Problem Players is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

Every GM has a weak spot — mine is running combats. I can manage all of the die rolling and number crunching and “who’s turn is it”, but I am woefully inadequate when it comes to describing combat so that it moves beyond “he hits you with a sword and does 8 points of damage.” I’m also “tactically-challenged” and have a hard time figuring out what the NPCs should do on their turns.

I decided to check for ideas on the web. Unfortunately, two hours of intensive searching uncovered only two articles that fit my needs:

• Colorful Combat Descriptions
• Descriptive Combat

So I’m turning to y’all for advice. How do you figure out tactics for your NPCs in combat and how do you keep combats interesting beyond “You hit and do 14 points of damage?”

How Do You Describe Combat? is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

Players aren’t the only ones who miss the occasional game session. Every once in a while the GM gets called into work at the last moment, or his wife (or the GM herself!) goes into labor early… there are numerous reasons why a GM might have to miss a particular session.

So with a missing GM, you’re going to have to cancel the game for tonight, right?

Not necessarily. Here’s a list of ideas for your group to try the next time your GM gets hit over the head with Real Life™:

• Run a “pick up” game. Designate someone else as GM for the night and choose another game system for a one-shot. You’ll want something with very quick character creation so you can actually get in some play time. Tales from the Floating Vagabond is a good game system for this.
• Have an alternate campaign. The GM for a D&D game I’m currently playing in has had more than his share of Real Life™ recently. Consequently, one of the other players has started up a dungeon crawl game we play when our regular game can’t meet. In some games, you can actually set up a situation where PCs can come and go, depending on who’s available to play any particular time. Everway can be good for this, as can any town or city adventure.
• Play a board game. Or computer game. Or whatever.
• Have a brain-storming session. Get as many of the PCs as available and sit down to discuss your current in-game situation and make plans for the future. My players tend to do this spontaneously… when we’re out to dinner, before/after a movie, at non-gaming parties…. They’ll do it even if I’m standing right there!.
• Have a movie night.
• Run a “It coulda happened…” session. My players did this once when I was called into work unexpectedly. They chose someone to be the GM and, based on what they knew of the game already, ran a session of  my game without me. Everybody knew that the events of this session wouldn’t “count” — i.e. nothing that happened during this game session really occurred in game. The players loved it and I was insanely jealous that I didn’t get to play that session.
• Have a back-up GM. I took this page out of Ars Magica and its “troupe-style” play. That is, the every player is both GM and PC, with the GMing duties rotating around the group. Each person is responsible for their own section of the world or game. For example, each person is in charge of a different country and takes over as GM when the group enters “their” country. This option is one you really can’t do “spur of the moment” — the game has to be set up this way from the beginning. If the regularly scheduled GM can’t make it, another GM takes over for that session.
• Run a “day in the life of” session. Pick some very minor characters from the game, such as Bernie the Shopkeeper and his wife Ethyl, their two kids, a couple of their cousins, etc. Or the members of a local sports team, a group of masons, the employees of a business… you get the picture. Run a session that showcases their daily lives.

What does your group do when the GM can’t show? What new roleplaying twists have you experimented with and how did they turn out?

Related Posts:

• Gaming with Ghosts: When Good Players Can’t Be There
• Fred’s Missing *Again*?

Missing You: When the GM Can’t Be There is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

Last week, I asked for your opinions on what you liked best about being a GM and what you liked least. A couple of you responded and here are your answers:

The Best Things:

• From Sean Holland: “… there is nothing better than seeing the world come alive through the players’ eyes and actions. It makes all the work worthwhile.”
• From ATerribleIdea: “Seeing a player gnaw their fingernail until it bleeds in a tense scene.”

The Worst Things:

• From Sean Holland: “… having your inspiration vanish is miserable.”
• From ATerribleIdea: “Defusing actual hostility.”

Thanks guys for your input!

What Do You Like Best and Least About Being a GM/DM? is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

Player Contributions was one of my earliest posts to this blog. I’ve learned so much about blogging since then, I’ve decided to update it.

What are player contributions?

The Amber Diceless RPG introduced me to player contributions. The idea is simple:

You get added points for your character if you agree to do something helpful for the GM every game session.

The exact details are left up to the GM and player to work out. Amber Diceless suggests things such as character journals, campaign logs, character portraits, etc. as player contributions. In that system, you get more points to build your character if you commit to a contribution for every game session.

It works great in theory

I tried using character/player contributions as written in the Amber rules, but soon met a major snag — getting players to follow through. Usually, I’d get enthusiastic contributions for 3-4 game sessions, then nothing. I tried giving giving out “luck” penalties — i.e. the player’s character would have strokes of bad luck for that game session — to those who didn’t live up to their agreement, but that seemed too punitive. Especially since most “non-contributors” weren’t being lazy– they simply found they didn’t have time to keep up with the obligation. Real Life™ would inevitably intrude.

The Fix

Finally, I came up with an idea that worked.  Instead of giving extra character creation points at the outset, I would hand out a small amount of experience points each game session I received a contribution. That way, no one would have to feel guilty if their child got the flu the previous week, or if term papers were due, or such. Also, if a player who normally didn’t turn in anything got a sudden burst of inspiration, she could make a single contribution, without having to take on a long-term commitment she wouldn’t be able to keep up.

Types of player contributions

What kinds of things make good character contributions? That really varies from game to game. What would be the most helpful to you as a GM? Some types of contributions that work well in my game include:

• Written, detailed character backgrounds
• Completed character questionaires
• Character journals — the events of the campaign seen through the PCs eyes.
• Campaign notes — the events of the game objectively
• Character portraits
• Maps or “landscapes” of important regions of the campaign world
• Creating game props
• In-game newspapers or “scream sheets” (for you Cyberpunks out there )
• Keeping the inventory of party loot and making copies available to GM and all players

On the extreme end, I once had a player turn in the equivalent of a Master’s Thesis on Gehenna lore (for a classic World of Darkness game), complete with fictitious bibliography and properly-formatted footnotes. Basically, I’ll give points for anything that takes some of the GM’s workload off my shoulders

How do contributions help?

Character Backgrounds: Most of my games are very character-driven. Character backgrounds really do matter and will have an effect on the game world as a whole, so the more I know about PC, the more I can tie him into the game. To help a player develop his character’s background, I generally hand out a character questionnaire to each player at the beginning of a new campaign. Players can either fill that out or write something of their own design.

Character Portraits: Yes, I do accept written descriptions or references to book covers or movie characters as PC portraits. I don’t think this contribution should be limited to those who can draw.

Character Journals and Game Session Notes: Character journals and game session notes are definitely my favorite contributions to receive. I tend to run “off the cuff” –  frequently, my game notes for a particular session are a list of NPC names and possible locations. I make up most of the details during the game session and I find that if I stop to take notes, I lose the flow of the game. So having someone else in the group writing this stuff down for me is a huge help. That way, I don’t run into a problem of Bill But-You-Said-Last-Week-His-Name-Is-Fred, the baker. As far as character journals go, each player can specify if his journal exists in-game (where another character may be able to find and read it) or out of it (just between the player and the GM).

These are just some examples. Anything you and the player can agree on as being helpful to either you or the game as a whole can make great player contributions. Of course, I’m the final arbitrator about what constitutes an helpful contribution. But in all cases, I have one overarching rule — a character can only get experience for one contribution each game session.

How much to award?

Generally, you want to make the award small enough so the PCs don’t jump power levels faster than you can keep up with them. On the other hand, you want them to be large enough to provide a real incentive.

How small is small?

In for games with low experience point values, such as Amber, World of Darkness, In Nomine, etc. where the PCs might get an average of 1-3 points per session, I hand out one experience point per contribution per game session. I require all written contributions be at least one page long. On rare occasion, I might give out two for something that the player worked really hard at (see the academic dissertation above).

For D&D and other games that use experience points in the hundreds to thousands scale, I usually award 100 – 200 experience points, depending on how useful and detailed the contribution is. That amount works great for low levels (all the D&D games I’ve run for the last 20 years have been low-level). But one of my readers, trashcondor,  pointed out to me — at higher levels, it’s way too small an amount to be worth anything. Trashcondor suggested, instead, that I give out a bonus amount of 20% of each session’s experience points. I’m going to try this in my D&D games from now on.

Give player contributions a try. You may find — as I do — that they really help make GMing a game easier. If you’ve got specific examples of contributions used in any of your games, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. What did the player do and what kind of reward did you give them? Share your thoughts and ideas!

Player Contributions, Take Two is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

[Inkwell Ideas has posted a blog readers survey. Please take a few minutes to fill it out; it helps us blog authors know a little more about the kinds of things you like to see in RPG blogs.]

What are the best and worst things about being a GM?

For me, the best thing is watching my players take my game and run with it. Nothing gives me more enjoyment then watching a mini-game session spontaneously break out. Frequently at a party, during the break of a different game session, or even at restaurant, my players will slip into character and start making plans or holding a gab-fest. All it takes is for someone to say “Dude!” (the favorite phrase of one of the PCs) and they’re off and running.  That’s when I know my game’s come alive and the players really enjoying it.

The worst thing is when I run out of inspiration or I just can’t get my own head into the game. Some days and some games are like that — no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get interested in what I’m doing.  Those are the days and games that fall flat. If I’m not completely engaged in the game, I know my players won’t be, either.

How about you?

What do you love about being a GM and what do you hate about it? Leave a comment and I’ll address this topic again later this week with your answers.

Question: What’s the best and worst thing about being a GM? is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

Every player has days they can’t make a game. Sometimes, a great conjunction of events happens and a player has to miss a session at the very last minute. It happens to all of us.

These aren’t the players I’m referring to.

It can be one of the most frustrating things about a running a game: having players who are chronic no-shows. My ex-husband and his brother are players like this. My ex was once 8 hours late to a game (without calling) and couldn’t figure out why everyone was mad at him. I usually found out that his brother wasn’t going to make a game when my father-in-law announced it on the way in the door for the game session itself.

Unfortunately, I’ve only found one cure for it — boot them from that game and don’t accept them into another. I don’t like to be mean. I understand real life — I’m a single parent, I work, take care of a house and deal with a chronic and sometimes dehibilitating illness. I try very hard to warn the GMs of any game I’m going to be in that I may have to “no-show” at the last minute for health reasons. But I try very hard to call and let the GM know as soon as I can. Most of my players are IT people and are frequently on-call. I have one great player who hasn’t been able to make it to character-building sessions for my new game because he’s been pulling 10 hour days at work dealing with server issues. I can work with this.

But the chronic “I just don’t feel like coming” or the person who habitually turns up 1+ hours late with no call and no explanation infuriates me. It’s rude. It’s unfair the GM who’s usually put in a lot of work for each character in the game and is basing that game on the fact that certain PC’s are going to be there. It’s unfair to the other players, especially if the MIA player is a crucial character for an upcoming encounter or situation. In my opinion, it’s a sign of supreme selfishness.

I make allowences for real life; I don’t make allowances for selfish indifference.

Fred’s Missing *Again*? is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

Randall, in his blog RetroRollplaying, wrote a post about the idea of doing away with “to hit” rolls. His post was inspired by a post at Eleven Foot Pole titled No Roll to Hit: Rationale. Both Randall’s and Eleven Foot Pole’s posts focus on “to hit” rolls in 4e D&D, but I’m going to comment on dice rolling in gaming generally

I have the worst dice luck in the world — just ask any player or GM I’ve ever played with. The DM of the main D&D (3.5) campaign  I play instituted point-buy for creating character stats after watching me roll 6 (or was it 8…can’t remember) sets of stats with no score over 10 in any of them…and that’s using the 4d6 method. I ran a Vampire game with a Sabbat pack that missed every single attack role — usually botching in the process.

So as you can imagine, I’m a big fan of dice-less games. I run Amber Diceless and my Storyteller games tend to run very “dice light”. In fact, my World of Darkness players used to tease me that the one game they forgot dice would be the one game they actually needed to use them! However, there are certain games I feel need to be played with dice and AD&D tops the list. Maybe it’s tradition. But a D&D game just doesn’t feel complete without lots of dice rolls.

Especially in combat. Yes, it’s disappointing to miss. Yes, it’s frustrating to come up with a great idea for an attack, then roll a 2. Yes, it can be boring and lonely watching all the other players dealing damage when your dice won’t even let you connect. Believe me, I know. I’ve gone through many combats in my gaming career (both as GM and player) where I missed every single roll.

But guess what? I wasn’t bored. Just because I missed (even all the time) didn’t mean I wasn’t involved in the combat. I respectfully disagree with Eleven Foot Pole’s statement that:

Having waited a full round of initiative and then achieving nothing is functionally identical to skipping your turn.

Sure, it is… if all you’re doing is waiting until “your turn”. Players focused on getting “their turn” miss the point of having a party. If all you have to contribute to the game is points of damage, why are you there, instead of an NPC? This isn’t intended as a snide remark, but a genuine question. What can your character give that goes beyond damage points? An important thing to remember is that role playing doesn’t stop when you start rolling dice. Okay, how did you miss? Why did you miss? Can something be salvaged from your attempt to try next turn? Did your miss unexpectedly aid one of your teammates? Missing as frequently as I do, I’ve learned to think beyond the numbers.

Granted, the responsibility for some of this falls on the already overburdened shoulders of the GM/DM. Players will be able to think beyond the numbers better if the GM gives them something more than numbers to think about. Sure, things are going to get really boring if, as a GM, all you say is, “You miss.” But if as a GM, you say “Your stroke goes past his shoulder as he reflexively jumps back. As a former soldier [if the PC is],  you can tell this was a skilled counter-move — you’re definitely fighting a highly-trained opponent.” Here, the PCs blow may not have done any damage, but they’ve learned something about their enemy, something that may or may not become important later, depending on what you decide to do with it.

If you want to make every action a PC takes be useful, I have an alternate idea: rather than making every attack hit, make every attack worth something, even if the PC misses. For example, the first PC misses, but in doing so, he causes his opponent to duck into the swing of another PC’s sword. Okay, the second PC gets to inflict the damage, but the first PC also contributed to that damage. If you can stress damaging and overcoming an opponent as a team effort, the entire party can be brought into the action on every turn and not just when they happen to hit.

I agree with Eleven Foot’s concern over introducing new players. I think we do need to take the extra step to help new players learn to be good players. Especially if a brand-new player is entering a group of experienced players. But I disagree that allowing a player to hit every single time is a good way to do that. I think it sends the player the wrong information about how RPGs work. Sure, you’ve eliminated the “to hit” for your game, but what’s going to happen to that player when they join someone else’s game? Or play at convention? They’re going to be in for a shock and probably even worse frustration if they don’t know that misses are part of RPGs in general.

Now don’t get me wrong — I’m a big one for changing a system to suit your style of play. If you want to play without “to hit” roles, more power to you! But if we’re talking about bringing new players into the hobby, or making automatic hits the default standard, I think we need to take a closer look at why we want to eliminate hit rolls and find another way to solve those problems.

“…and you miss!”: Roleplaying and Rollplaying in Combat is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

I’m taking a break from Meadowbrook for a few days; I don’t want this blog to become “all Meadowbrook all the time”. I’m considering starting another blog devoted to world-building that would chronicle my development of Meadowbrook and it’s surrounding world; if this is something that would interest you, please leave me a comment. Now, onto your regularly scheduled post.

For years, I’ve used information as a commodity in my games. I generally run “limited information” campaigns, where I try not to give the players any more knowledge about the situation and/or world than their characters would know. This isn’t about “cheating”; I have excellent group of players who are well-skilled at separating character knowledge from player knowledge and playing accordingly. What I’ve found, though, is that when player knowledge matches character knowledge, the players can relax more. They don’t feel like they have to police themselves to stop and think Hey, would my character actually know this? before they take action.

An useful outcome of this is that information becomes its own reward. Especially when it comes to a PCs individual goals. For example: if the party does a favor for a prince, as a reward he may be able to tell them the location of the tower belonging to the evil wizard that killed their team member.  You don’t always have to give out money, treasure, spells, or what-not to your PCs. Information can be just as valuable and won’t ratchet up your PCs experience level or ability to obliterate your bad guys; this can help you keep the PCs from rising in power earlier than you’re ready for them to.

You can make choices about how secretive and hard to gain information is in your game. Do all party members know everything any other member knows? How closely do they guard their own backgrounds from the rest of their party? This can vary between one GM to the next. I’ve known many GMs who don’t like the PCs to keep secrets from one another; they feel it causes divisiveness among character who are supposed to work as a team. I err on the restrictive side: more often than not, I tightly control information in my games. I usually set up their character’s background with her player separately, then let the player decide how much information to give the others.

During the game itself, I generally give information out based on PC had access. If one or two of the PCs wander ahead and overhear a conversation between a vampire and her childe, for example, I usually take them aside or write a note (if it’s short) to describe what they hear. I then leave it up to the players to reveal the information as the characters see fit. If, on the other hand, I know that the scouting PC is going to go and immediately relate what he overheard, then I’ll go ahead and describe the conversation to the whole group, so neither the player nor the GM has to repeat themselves, particularly if the conversation is long or complicated. So it’s purely situational — think “Will the other PCs also hear this or will they know about it in the ten to fifteen minutes?” If so, it’s a lot easier to tell the whole group what transpires.

Sometimes even players will get into the limited information act. I once ran an Amber game where two of the PCs decided to marry and all of the players kept it secret for a couple of weeks, real time. They didn’t want me to find out about it beforehand so I wouldn’t have time to plan something to go wrong with the wedding. Other GMs might hate being in the dark about any aspect of their game, but I loved it.

Some games lead themselves to secrecy better than others. Amber and Vampire have secrecy as a core concept and I rigidly control the flow of information in those games. I tend to be more free with information in a D&D game, for example, but I still allow the players to determine how much of their character’s knowledge they share. It all depends on your style and preference.

What Your Players Don’t Need to Know is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

There’s a continuum about character backgrounds. I use detailed character backgrounds in my games; in fact, I warn players that I reserve the right to fill in any character history they don’t. Other GMs don’t bother with backgrounds at all — a sentence or two at the top of the character sheet. It really depends on the individual GM’s game style.

I can’t even begin to building campaign until I know the PCs involved; for me, the PCs are the campaign. Player-written character backgrounds provide me with a wealth of ideas I would have never come up with on my own. I give my players free reign to create NPCs in their background, with the caveat that all NPCs need to approved by me. This takes some of the background work off of my shoulders; I can use the PCs backgrounds to help flesh out the population of my city/world/setting. Frequently, I find I can substitute someone from a PCs background for one listed in the adventure, thereby helping to get at least one PC more invested in the current story.

Sometimes I can even tie NPCs from one character’s background to those of another PC. This makes a connection between those two PCs, right off the bat. These connections don’t have to be friends, or even like each other. Having an NPC from one character hate the NPC from another character has led to some great role-playing in past games. Even better is when I can actually use the same NPC for at least one additional PC. Locations are something else I mine character backgrounds for. Usually, the player has given me some idea of what that location is like, even if it’s just “small farming town”. Businesses, towns, homes, farms from character backgrounds have all become integral to various campaigns I’ve run.

I always have players give me written copies of their background. That way I can go back and look up details I may have missed the first time through. If a player is having a hard time coming up with anything for a background, I sit down with the player and walk her through a series of questions. I’ve found character questionnaires can really help a player get “unstuck”.

Even really basic stuff like “how old is your character” or “what color is his hair” can trigger ideas for the player. Every player I’ve ever dealt with has at least an idea about what his character looks like, including clothing. If a player seems really stuck, I’ll ask questions about that: “why are your character’s colors red and blue?”, “why would she wear that hat?”, etc. And if a player is really, really, stuck for ideas or is looking for a challenge (I’ve had players who said “surprise me”), I’m more than happy to take over. But in that case, I warn them they’re going to be stuck with whatever I give them.

Usually, a PC only needs their background tweaked; in that case, I’ll make my revisions and hand the player a copy. Maybe I swap out the town in their background for one that already exists, or maybe I change their childhood friend to an NPC already in the game — I try to keep as much of the player’s work as possible.

Next post: character questionnaires

Character Backgrounds is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

Said while making snacks for the group …
Dave [player]: Hey, can I have experience points for baking cookies?
GM: Sure, Dave can have 200 experience points; Billee [his character] can’t.

[12 Aug 2009 Note: There's an updated version of this post at Player contributions, Take Two.]

I first ran across the idea of player/character contributions when I started running the Amber Diceless RPG. The idea is simple: you get more points to build your character if you agree to do something helpful for the GM every game session. The exact details are left up to the GM and player to work out. I tried it as written in the rules, but soon met a major snag — getting players to follow through. Usually, I’d get enthusiastic contributions for 3-4 game sessions, then nothing. I tried giving giving out “luck” penalties — i.e. the player’s character would have strokes of bad luck for that game session — to those who didn’t live up to their agreement, but that seemed too punitive. Especially since most “non-contributors” just found they simply didn’t have time to keep up with it. Real Life™ would intrude.

Finally, I came upon an idea that worked. I honestly don’t remember if someone else gave me the idea or if I thought of it on my own. Instead of giving extra character creation points at the outset, I would hand out a small amount of experience points each game session I received a contribution. That way, no one would have to feel guilty if their child got the flu the previous week or if term papers were due, etc. Also, if a player who normally didn’t turn in anything got a sudden burst of inspiration, she could make a single contribution, without having to take on a long-term commitment she wouldn’t be able to keep up.

What kinds of things make good character contributions? Most of my games are very character-driven. Character backgrounds really do matter and will have an effect on the game as a whole. So the more I know about someone’s character, the better I can include them in the game. I generally hand out an optional character questionnaire to each player at the beginning of a new campaign. Filling that out and returning it to me is a favorite contribution for my players. Character portraits also count and, yes, I do accept references to book covers or movies as character portraits, as well as written descriptions; I don’t think this contribution should be limited to just those who can draw. As far as character journals go, each player can specify if his journal exists in-game (where another character may be able to find and read it) or out of it (just between the player and the GM).

Character journals and game session notes are definitely my favorite contributions to receive. I run “off the cuff”; frequently, my game notes for a particular session are a list of NPC names and possible locations. I make up most of the details during the game session and I find that if I stop to take notes, I lose the flow of the game. So having someone else in the group writing this stuff down for me is a huge help. That way, I don’t run into a problem of Bill But-You-Said-Last-Week-His-Name-Is-Fred, the baker.

I’ve also given out experience points for writing in-game newspaper articles, making topographical maps of an area or architectural drawings of important buildings, mapping genealogies of a country’s royal family, creating game “props” (such as a treasure map), … even writing an in-game academic dissertation complete with fictional bibliography and proper footnotes, penned by one of the PCs.

Basically, I’ll give out small amounts of experience for anything that is pertinent to the game and helps decrease my workload. How small? In Amber, World of Darkness, etc. games, I hand out one experience point per game session. On rare occasion, I might give out two for something that the player worked really hard at (see the academic dissertation above). For a AD&D game, I usually award 100 – 200 experience points, depending on how useful and detailed the contribution is. But in all cases, I have one overarching rule — a character can only get experience for one contribution each game session.

Of course, I’m the final arbitrator about what constitutes an helpful contribution and how much experience a PC gets.

Player Contributions is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle

I’m a big fan of recycling. I recycle everything I can, from cans to bottles to magazines, cardboard, etc. Heck, I even use blank areas of junk mail for game notes.

I also recycle games. I don’t mean putting game rulebooks through the shredder (they can have my books when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers); I recycle actual campaigns. I’ve moved extensively in my life (including three cross-country moves), which means changing gaming groups every three to four years. As a single parent, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to work on my campaigns. So, if I’m starting with a new group of players, I dig out my notes from a campaign I ran successfully in another place, have my players create new characters, and off we go!

One caveat with reusing old campaigns: you can’t expect the story to play out the same. Don’t force your new PCs to stick with the storyline created by the old PCs. I usually rename my campaigns, to remind myself that this is a different game with different characters. I usually end up reusing the first adventure, the NPCs, and the events that happen in the larger world (the parts outside of the PCs’ control). And be prepared for the new campaign to vary wildly from the old one. In one Vampire game I ran, the PCs were charged with the job of selecting a new Prince for their city from a set group of NPCs. The second group  chose the Gangrel I’d originally thought was one of the three top candidates on the list. The first group to play that campaign chose a Malkavian loner, who’d be selected because he wasn’t even present! As you can imagine, the two versions of the game had drastically different tones.

Still, it saves me a major amount of work. I already know the NPCs, so I have a pretty good idea of how they’ll react to new characters and new situations. This is one thing I particularly enjoy about reusing old campaigns — for me, reusing the NPCs feels much like visiting with old friends I haven’t seen in a long time. I know what’s going on in the world at large, so I only need to focus on changes made by the characters. This approach doesn’t work for everyone and it doesn’t work for every campaign. I’ve retired entire storylines because the last group to play them out created events that became so integral to the world, I couldn’t imagine events happening any differently than they did.

But if you’re pressed for time, it just might work for you.

Recycling is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2009 by Cherie Arbuckle