Karak's Thread of Good Roleplaying Advice

[Karak]

So in my other thread about Fading Suns many of the people here had some awesome ideas. So I figured instead of making others read through my boring shit, I would start another thread.

The purpose is to post a couple excellent bits of roleplaying advice any of you may have.
Any system, any game, any idea. Leave nothing out. Something that has worked well for you in a game, to make it easier, to make the game more interesting. Anything.
I hope some of the guys post here because there were some good ideas coming up.
And....GO-

[Karak]

My entry pasted from the Fading Suns thread.
1 Take game prep seriously(because some of my players drive, and to be a good host I should...prepare)

2 No flavor text. Written blurbs are fine, and written in a color to depict what emotion or thought they should give, what smell is occurring, what the physical description is supposed to feel like so:

Red for anger-fury-rage. Or dynamic tension. Also it stands for bad smells, burning smells. It its something physical, red stands hooked, barbed, wicked, demonic and some such.

Blue for peace, humor, lightness. Also stands for good smelling things, foods, meals, home, comfort. If its physical, blue would be something I would describe as honored, old but strong, wise, proud.

I have usually 5-6 colors in the descriptions of things.
This way if I come back to it an hour or so later, it is not the same flavor text. Also its easier to describe things as people layer their own perception on it.

If they glance at an item, you say one or two things, as they investigate, smell, touch, thought, emotion.
Look at a gun, sitting on a table. Its nothing if not a item you know about. Until you get close. The smell of iron, a small hint of menace perhaps, the look of wear on the handle.
That kind of thing.

3 Movement of hands and body. Emotion and thought at all times shown by motion.

4 No pride. Don't get embarrassed ever. Don't say a character says something. I say it out loud. Don't say a character shuffles, explain it.

So basically I don't say "Karak thinks a moment and nods 'Ya I can do that'"

I nod slowly, think a moment about something perhaps about the game later, twist my head a bit and say "Ya...you know what....I can do that"

5 Players don't tell one another something EVER. They talk to one another.
So in the same way, one player doesn't say, "I tell Jimmy about the spaceship."
Instead the player turns to Jimmy and says "Ya...so...remember that ship last week that was on our tail...do you think it is bad that they are there again?"

[Karak]

My blurb about using cards instead of dice. If this one is confusing its in the Fading Suns thread.

Cards is pretty easy to do but a bit hard to explain.
Short explanation.
Fading suns has a Trait+Skill=success style. Each Trait and Skill has 1-5 points. Luckily this equals 10(I will get to that later)
So I will explain how cards work with this style of game. It can also be used in a D100 style game obviously.

So if you want to shoot a gun its Perception+Shooting and the difficulty is what I choose.
Now breaking from dice. We take a single deck of cards. Remove the jacks and queens, leave the aces and kings and joker's.
Aces=critical fail
2-10=their worth
Kings=success plus another card
Jokers=critical success(Basically like a king+another king)

Now lets say you want to shoot. You have 2 in perception and 2 in shoot.
Normally that would be 4 ten sided dice.
This time it is just a +4.
Then you(without looking) flash me a card.
I add the card+your bonus to find if you beat the difficulty.

It takes a couple minutes with whatever system you are playing to figure out base difficulty as it might be a bit higher or lower.

Nice things are this.
NO ONE KNOWS-what they roll.(I see the card they don't)
So when searching if they get a 2. They have no clue in real life if me saying "there is nothing" versus if they watched a dice roll. They simply know their bonus. Leveling up still matters, but also suddenly smaller skills become more important.

Have you ever seen a group watch someone fail a dice roll and start doing the same action just to succeed in it? As if the NPC won't notice that they are doing this in a barter situation or something?(OF course a DM can stop this...I am just using this as an example)
It leaves them with a cloud of doubt that is astounding for rollplaying.

Take the same example but you are at a door. If you want to see if someone is on the other side by listening. Perception + Listen
Did you succeed when I said, you didn't hear anything?
What if I said you did...were you sure? If it was a Joker then I would make sure you knew you were right. But if it's anything else, there is just a wee bit of danger and a bit more humanity.

For me its battles though. Everything is sooooo much faster, people showing cards, putting them down, moving around, flicking cards, thinking about what I said.

Can you do it with dice? Of course.
But it requires more physical constraints such as hiding rolls and blah blah.
So I just went with this with an old cagey group of mini-maxers who thought every game they played was the same. These guys basically played dnd because...there was nothing else to do. They knew everything about the rules. I introduced this and actually had 3-4 of them giving high fives on the way out the door and that group with one 59 year old is still playing with me.

I do not claim its better. But this will now be the 9th group I have introduced to it who have instantly dropped their current systems to adopt it.
Warhammer, 4e, 3.5e,3e, WFRP(I use both their rules and cards at times by the way), and gurps are some of the game systems they dropped.
Rules can be found of all kinds of cards systems online that use normal poker decks.

I have also left out many of the tidbits but once you start its pretty easy to do.
Like I started to use some optional stuff where the suite of the card also mattered in how I was going to have something occur.
Just another optional rule that you can do with the cards.

[Laughing Penguin]

Back when I used to GM (haven't even played in a session for far too long, but that's another thread), I used to have players work up their character concepts and backstory before I let them crack a book to actually stat them out. Then I would build the character with them to make it game-ready. It did wonders to prevent players from just putting together a laundry list of the most effective skills and powers they could find. It really discourages min/maxing and occasionally you even find players choosing non-combat abilities!

[zarathstra]

The only advice I can think of off the top of my head is similar to Mr. Penguins up there...remind the players that these are CHARACTERS they're creating, not units in an RTS. They have backgrounds, families, quirks, etc.

[Lint of Death]

Sometimes an RPG has so much available content that Laughing Penguin's advice is necessary to keep your players' heads from exploding! 4e D&D is like this if you have access to everything. Here are two strategies for when you have more to share than your players can (or should) handle, but just know it could help or even inspire them:

Take a cue from films and television and slip the other cool stuff into the storyline, show it off.

For example, I've tied the Avenger class (holy assassins, essentially) into the backstory of a PC - a secret forest monastery devoted to the god of civilization smote his tribe, but he escaped. Weeks after this tragedy, fearing that he might reveal their existence to higher powers, a group of these avengers set to ambush the party and attempt to, well, assassinate him... just as soon as I can schedule the next session!

Sometimes it helps to deliberately restrict certain fundamental player choices (unless the player knows about these options and has an awesome justification for using them), like extraneous races, classes, or abilities, only to "unlock" them later with the passing of key story moments.

For a simple example, in a PbP with clark352, when we started, only the playtest version of the Artificer class was available, but now the full version has been released. Given the current setting, I've provided the option and opportunity for him to change to the full version by consulting an NPC who might be willing to teach him the art of "proper artificing".
Naturally, the combination of these strategies could work very well. Show off a new option, such as a race that wasn't in the available rulebooks when the game started (perhaps because you made it up), then, once the characters have achieved some level of progress, announce that congratulations! Now that you know about this new place, its people, their ways, future characters can use them! And, ideally, there would also be balancing incentives for people who keep their current characters.

late edit:I have DM'd precisely 5 times so far. That's sessions, not games. As much as I believe in the ideas presented above, I haven't had the chance to prove their potential.

[BigJonno]

Don't overestimate your players/underestimate your ideas!

That's not as douchey as it sounds, honest. :) We all know what it's like when you're planning a game, you sit down with your books and stuff and have a million ideas running around your head. You have grand plans and want everything to be totally cool and original and awesome. I've noticed a strong tendency among GMs to throw away perfectly good ideas because they seem too simple/cliche/boring. Here's the secret: they only seem like that because you thought of them. You know that you pinched the idea from an issue of Dragon you read seven years ago, or from an obscure 80s movie, but they don't know that.

I figured this out only a couple of years ago. I gave the players a simple puzzle (it was part of a puzzle box, if I recall) and they loved it. They just had to get the numbers one to nine into a 3x3 grid so that each row, column and diagonal had the same total (I'm sure you've all seen it.) I just swapped out the numbers for some symbols I made up and gave them a couple of clues to work out that the symbols were numbers. They absolutely loved it! It was just a throwaway puzzle I put in as a distraction, but it meant more to the players than any meticulously-planned combat encounter ever could.

[Karak]

These are very good.

A couple more I use:

Game Threads:
Usually on a very large scale mission or enconter I have a rating of say 1-10. If it is a large battle or large ship battle its a 10. A 1 on 1 encounter it's a 1.
When the battle/game is over for the day I look at what the characters did and draw a card. If it is UNDER the number of the encounter that encounter gets a thread.

The thread is up to me but it could be-

-To create minor friends/enemies for the players, from a single mistake they made. Perhaps they flew their spaceship super quickly out of a tight situation, down a city street. Their celebration was long and they were successful.

-I might create someone, just a minor NPC who's father/mother/friend was killed when this occured, perhaps the good guys shot down a ship as they flew away. The NPC blames the players for shooting the ship down and killing his loved one.

-Or perhaps, the NPC(A rogue style character) was in a tight situation, perhaps a jail. The shot down ship crushes one half of the jail, blowing a hole in the wall and cieling allowing the NPC to escape. He vows then and then to "buy those fellas a meal" if he sees them again.
Little things.

-A family member hears of the event and sends someone to make sure the player is ok.(this is good for those players who always seem to go through games as a single man in the world without any ties)

-Something so dire happenes that newscasts/holovids or otherwise people talk about this

[Karak]

Another rule we use is Encounter Adjustment. For some encounters I give them a random number that can assist me with some gameplay devices later.
When I want to throw a loop in things I draw a card and compare it to the random number I gave the encounter.
If it is far below the encounter number it means either reinforcments arrive for the enemy or forces can not arrive for the players.
If it is far above the random encounter number it means the enemy is someway negatively impacted for the characters catch a break.

For example:
Our Decados ship is flying fast towards a jumpgate with our stolen booty. I have it set up that a frigate and some fighters will be waiting for them, recently having completed a circuit of the star system.
I draw a card and it is an ace and the encounter I gave a random number of 9 to.

So there is an 8 point difference. The card is black so I decide that means its a bonus to the bad guys. The color doesn't always mean something, or it can always mean something. It's up to you.
Just as our ship flies to the gate, the frigate and fighters arrive, but also another frigate and two fighters jump in through the humpgate on a return trip.
The players have a difficulty choice and they had planned for a small force, but this is double the size.

It can be harsh, and I don't use it all the time. But sometimes it adds to the drama of an encounter when situations begin to fall apart and the players have to make hard choices. It also helps me sometimes as it keeps me on my toes.

[Panthera]

As I've mentioned here before, I'm in a Dark Sun campaign that's pushing two years old. This is by far the longest I've had a running campaign and I've learned a whole lot about what works and what doesn't in D&D. We've had a lot of fantastic sessions and a few comically bad ones. It's always a work in progress, though, as D&D is a game that vastly changes as the players become exponentially more powerful, making my job always difficult.

Here's what I've learned, and every one of these through painful mistakes:

1) Play to your players. Don't put pressure on the guy who isn't a good actor and doesn't enjoy improvising dialog. Learn what sort of encounters and challenges they do and don't enjoy. Figure out how much higher (or lower) the CR of the beast has to be to challenge them. My guys are unbelievably good at this game.

2) Watch the clock and identify what slows down the game. Then, mercilessly excise those elements or find a satisfactory way to speed them up. For my group, it was impossible for them to encounter a trap and take less than an hour to get past it. I wish I was kidding.

3) Come up with interesting challenges, and let the players come up with interesting solutions. I discovered a long time ago that trying to 'script in' a solution to a problem is worse than useless. Of all the points in this list, this is the one that I found to be most important.

4) Do a lot of prep, but keep the NPC interaction and plot in your head. Make notes of time-saving numbers, stats, DCs, maps, etc, but the best way I've found to be ready for the game is to spend my prep time reading setting books and coming up with interesting things to happen. This makes me much more able to keep the narrative moving without checking my notes, which is not only slow and obvious to the players, but are often invalided anyway as soon as the players do anything.

5) If you're going to have a war scenario with tactical battles, it's probably going to suck in D&D. Low level monsters or warriors have exactly no chance against characters or other warriors even a few levels higher. Unless there are tens of thousands on each side and the war scenario is abstracted instead of using accurate mass combat rules, magic is going to be ridiculously dominate. This would probably have worked better for me if the characters were still low level.

6) Another one specific to D&D: Learn the magical metagame inside and out. Know what powers the players have available and what powers their wizardly opponents should have. Learn what the powers actually do - Wind Walk was the one that I didn't properly read up on, which turned the wizard into a low-flying fireball bomber in the previously mentioned scenario until I realized it didn't quite work that way.

7) Think twice before using a 3rd ed conversion to a 2nd ed-only setting. If I had been thinking straight, I would have just run it as 2nd edition AD&D and used a light sprinkling of house rules to iron out the really strange elements of AD&D (like maximum levels) instead of needing a conversion for everything. Using stuff straight out of the original books would have saved me a lot of time, and made the classes and races more characterful.

8) Don't have expect the plot to go where you think it will. Keep several possible leads open at all times. When things get dull, you'll always have a plot thread handy to make itself violently reappear.


Wow, that was more than I planned to write.

[Karak]

Excellent post Z.

Building on the post above mine concerning understanding players and characters.

Know the players versus the characters. Some people will play a character that is...let's face it, smarter than they are.
Feeding data to them through witty thinking, observation and speech can be a godsend and trully elevate their thinking.
The same thing occurs with someone who is intelligent playing someone with an INT of 2.

Allow players to think things through, ponder, focus, concentrate(whatever game your playing has this kind of skill) and assist them. Wrap your answers around their past.

Its far more interesting to hear
"You remember a Hawkwood story of a farmer walking the badlands of Pandimonium who was faced with a challenge just like this"
Then to hear "It dawns on you that the red level makes the most sense."

And if they are not intelligent, reverse that, so that thinking things through makes them antsy, bored, ADD basically:)

[Panthera]

Its far more interesting to hear
"You remember a Hawkwood story of a farmer walking the badlands of Pandimonium who was faced with a challenge just like this"
Then to hear "It dawns on you that the red level makes the most sense."

Very good example.

[Karak]

Another that I hit on before which is Prepare.
However-I think I will break it down.

Location: Usually the best kind of place is a place with few distractions(that would be why most DND players are stereotyped of playing in the basement). Someplace where visitors won't walk in on someone, or in a used area...like your bathroom.

I like to make sure that I am sitting the highest(true storyteller freak:)). I have 19.99 beanbags, and nice chairs and couches. But I pick the central station. Its not a greed thing, its so that everyone can see and hear clearly.

Lighting: If you believe in that kind of thing, you can do some mood lighting or something dark and dreary if that's your feeling. I usually just turn on a single light that is on the side of the room.

Food:Stuff that doesn't cause issues. We usually skip on big meals during a game and instead have things like crackers because they don't break like chips, french fries, that kind of thing. Fingerfood that is not too messy but still good. If we do eat I found that storebought wraps are awesome. Not messy, cold(no cooking) and tasty.

Drinks:I usually have a bag for the empty can's and 20 ouncers and we go for it. Never seems to be an issue. Only rule I have is no alcohol(long story but its one day of gaming so no one ever bitches)

Sound/Music: We have audio visual blinds in the room I use so outside sound and light are cut a large amount. Sometimes people like to have a stereo playing in addition, something light just to break the silence. I find stuff without words always seems to work best.
Some stuff I have used-
The Outcast Soundtrack. For me hands down the best soundtrack to a game ever.
Advent Rising Soundtrack. So close to the awesomeness of Outcast that its hard to pick.

Anything else with orchestral music.

[Lint of Death]

Anything else with orchestral music.

Jeremy Soule is where it's at for orchestral stuff. Several of his game soundtracks are sold digitally at directsong. Guild Wars: Eye of the North is ideal for any cold setting, Supreme Commander is great for any military setting to name a couple examples.

For exotic soundscapes, Brian Eno's ambient music is fantastic.

[Karak]

Jeremy Soule is where it's at for orchestral stuff. Several of his game soundtracks are sold digitally at directsong. Guild Wars: Eye of the North is ideal for any cold setting, Supreme Commander is great for any military setting to name a couple examples.

For exotic soundscapes, Brian Eno's ambient music is fantastic.

Oh I second that.
And he is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Seriously awesome.

[Lint of Death]

Oh I second that.
And he is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Seriously awesome.

I remember that EvAv exclusive interview, it was one of the best gaming-related things I've ever read.

[Karak]

I remember that EvAv exclusive interview, it was one of the best gaming-related things I've ever read.

I randomly bumped into him long ago and struck up a convo when I found out who he was. Its always nice to know that someone uses the same tools as you. In this case for mixing music. Also to hear how he makes things and goes about it is really great.
Just a gentleman.

[Nameless]

Here's my little bit of advice: Avoid telling the players 'no.'

It happens often that GMs get lost in the rules; after all, it's what we see as our bread and butter. Especially for rules-heavy systems like D&D, it can become almost too easy to tell a player they can't do something because they don't have the right feat, or it's just not possible by the rules as written. In those cases, be creative!

Your player wants to climb onto a giant's back? Let them try! Maybe they can even get a sneak attack off since they're in close range to the creature's vitals! Make sure they watch out if the giant falls, though...

Not only does allowing creative solutions make for fun situations, but it encourages creative thinking in your players, which you'll see not only in combat but when they're trying to solve puzzles and mysteries. And as most of us probably already know, any GM with creative players is a happy GM.

[Karak]

Here's my little bit of advice: Avoid telling the players 'no.'

It happens often that GMs get lost in the rules; after all, it's what we see as our bread and butter. Especially for rules-heavy systems like D&D, it can become almost too easy to tell a player they can't do something because they don't have the right feat, or it's just not possible by the rules as written. In those cases, be creative!

Your player wants to climb onto a giant's back? Let them try! Maybe they can even get a sneak attack off since they're in close range to the creature's vitals! Make sure they watch out if the giant falls, though...

Not only does allowing creative solutions make for fun situations, but it encourages creative thinking in your players, which you'll see not only in combat but when they're trying to solve puzzles and mysteries. And as most of us probably already know, any GM with creative players is a happy GM.

Excellent advice

I also remember a couple DND 3.5 games where we let people TRY specific feats even if they didn't have them. Basically they saw someone do something so why can't they try.
Ha, good times.

[Superman's Dead]

From the player's perspective, I think the most important thing to do is to go for it. You don't want to try to see if you can twist the rules or ruin the DM...but, dammit, if you want to try dressing up as an old man and walking into Mordor, give it a shot.

I'm running on empty, but you guys are giving some awesome ideas up. =)

[Lint of Death]

Here's my little bit of advice: Avoid telling the players 'no.'

Incidentally, both the first and second DMGs for 4th edition - which are treasure troves for DM advice - really do everything they can to hammer in this point. They even go so far as to give advice (and funny examples) on how to deal with abusive or work-heavy suggestions without simply saying "No".

[Nameless]

Incidentally, both the first and second DMGs for 4th edition - which are treasure troves for DM advice - really do everything they can to hammer in this point. They even go so far as to give advice (and funny examples) on how to deal with abusive or work-heavy suggestions without simply saying "No".

Yes, I've heard the 4E DMGs are great! I really should check them out; I realized quickly that 4E was not for me, but that doesn't mean I can't mine the DMGs for ideas. I think it's already been mentioned in this thread, but there is absolutely no shame in a GM stealing ideas.

Hell, I'm thinking of running a game involving a bandit group that is throttling a region's iron supplies at the whim of a powerful political leader who is using the shortage as a platform to gain more power. Thankfully, I'm the only one in my group who has played Baldur's Gate. :D

[BigJonno]

I reckon 4E would have been much better received if the books looked more like the 3/3.5 ones. They're so completely sterile and soulless, but they're very well-written and the DMG does actually contain good advice.

[Karak]

Another bit-o-advice:
When dealing with rules lawyer roleplayers sometimes its best to discussion the situations beforehand.
I spend about 1 hour with people before the game. Reminding them that it is a game and to be taken lightly.