What's your GMing style?I'm more of a 'deal with it as it comes' type of GM. I'll write up the major NPCs (BBEG, town mayor, so on) and their motives/goals. I then come up with the general setting and how NPCs in the area would act and react. After

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Anonymous 11/05/14 (Wed) 21:42:55 89ff2f No.28

What's your GMing style?

I'm more of a 'deal with it as it comes' type of GM. I'll write up the major NPCs (BBEG, town mayor, so on) and their motives/goals. I then come up with the general setting and how NPCs in the area would act and react. After that I let the PCs come in and go with what they want. Often times this means coming up with new NPCs on the fly, but that's pretty fun to do.

Any of the NPCs plots and plans will remain in motion even if the PCs are ignoring them. So if there was some Evil Necromancer trying to summon a giant horde of undead they'll work at that and if not stopped, get it done. The PCs will then have a larger issue to deal with, but it also gives more openings to how they will, when they will, and if they'll even be against it (if not join up with the BBEG).

I find that I'm pretty bad at riddles and puzzles found in dungeons. Because of my methods I don't spend much time writing up future encounters leading to the more complex types of encounters being tougher for me to come up with.

Anonymous 11/05/14 (Wed) 22:12:35 a7cdcd No.29

>>28
So in layman's terms you're the best kind of GM.

Anonymous 11/06/14 (Thu) 02:22:00 6f4a70 No.32

Basically how I do it:

I fill in the sandbox in such a way that everything within two sessions worth of travel is totally done before the game starts. I also like to reuse a sandbox if I can, and most of the players seem to like that so long as your games aren't all apocalyptic in scope.

I write a bunch of dungeons, forests, castles, houses, puzzles ahead of time and just write "fly baddie" instead of something like Giant Bat so that I can conserve time.

As far as NPCs go I write a bunch of character personalities and names for the setting and assign them a number. I then use a dice roller to attribute a personality to the npc at first encounter. Some of these "personalities" include a quest, an interesting piece of information that the players could make into a quest, etc.

For "big plot" stuff I do the same thing and write a bunch of "happenings" for the setting and just roll at the start of the game to see what will get the characters engaged. They are usually pretty small scale geopolitical or local level such as; A corrupt mayor is embezzeling funds, a tribe of raiders has been harassing caravans, there is a succession crisis in the kingdom, etc.

The players usually go with this or reject it and I can begin to write from what they want from there.

Anonymous 11/06/14 (Thu) 22:13:48 89ff2f No.36

>>32
How do you go about making these puzzles? Do you have a couple room set-pieces that are pre-made puzzle rooms? Like I've said, I'm terrible at dealing with puzzles.

Anonymous 11/07/14 (Fri) 00:16:32 6f4a70 No.37

>>36
Depends on your group. If your group is stupid you can pretty much make a bunch of set "you gotta move/do the shit in the right order" puzzles and be done with it.

I always had a set of word puzzles, riddles, and some more abstract puzzles on hand but every time I used them it would invariably stump the group and they'd just try to smash it or get someone from town to roll and solve it for them.

If you have trouble making physical puzzles just think of making booby traps and shit. Then just layer them until it becomes a puzzle. For example, you can't open the door because the lock is stuck but you can't undo the lock until the poison dart trap is undone but you can't disable that until the trapdoor is disabled, but you can't disable that until etc. As long as all the traps are visible and can be activated repeatedly, it's a really easy (to make) puzzle.

If you really want to stump them and you think they are dumb enough do a levers puzzle like this:

5 levers before a door.
There are 5 iron gates in series blocking the hallway.

Have a set pattern for the puzzle no matter what they pick. Say any lever they pull the first time makes the first one open. The second one makes two other ones move. Make it take about 24~ tries until it actually solves it. They will be seriously confused and you can have a laugh to yourself later.

Anonymous 11/07/14 (Fri) 01:33:26 07393d No.40

>>36
Whatever you do, don't copy puzzles from a book or a website. Nothing says bad DM like copy pasting a puzzle you couldn't solve yourself.