Zooming in and out. This is always tricky, as I don't want to lead the players around and genuinely want to play to find out what happens. But battles tend to drag on for a while in my game, which is my turn off of traditional games with grid based battle mechanics. So what's the solution?
I think part of it is giving the players actions more weight. So when Irv the frog man jumps down upon 4 goblins poised and ready to battle, just go ahead and let his damage spread across them. When he rolls 9 damage, he kills 3 goblins, why the fuck not? He's the hero.
I think part of introducing interesting elements I have planned is to bring them to the characters. My characters were headed toward a colossus looking for a fight and I totally steered them away from it because I was trying to move a pre-planned adventure along. I didn't even mean to pre-plan it, but I did and I was fucking with the flow and the fiction (not to mention with the agenda & principles of the game). Their treasure was being held by goblins but they wanted to fight the golem; I should have let them. Boy wouldn't they have been surprised when the colossus didn't have the thing they were looking for, but now goblins are jeering and screaming at them! I fucked up, it would have turned an ok session into a kickass one. I forgive me though.
This goes back with my trouble with fronts. How do you plan dangers without preplanning the adventure? I think bringing the dangers to the characters is the real trick there. Robert pointed that out to me after, and I think I have a good handle on it now.
We'll have to see how next session goes! Rare is the session I walk away from without some regret, or seeing some crazy thing I did wrong, but hey. Uh. I don't know. Live and learn. Plus it's just a game!
Plus I just leveled up and I'm taking some sweet move.
When you're DMing and you bring your dangers to the players, roll +improvise. On a 10+ It makes perfect sense in the fiction: it's like you wrote it that way. On a 7-9 you choose: it seems out of place or it's too hard a move and the players are in over their heads. On a miss you kill one of the PCs by accident (it would be our third).
God, I'm such a fucking nerd. Here Are my GM stats:
Engaging +1
Descriptive +1
Improvise 0
Funny +2
Poignant -1
Multitasking +1
When you're 2 beers In take -1 to multitask but +1 to funny
I should probably stop I don't even think this is healthy.
I think that flexibility can actually allow you to be heavy handed in a way. Let the players go where they want, but remember they don't know what's there until you tell them. You can still get all of your desired events in while letting the players think they're doing what they want. Also, you have a racial plus one to funny, I'll let you decide what race.
ReplyDeleteAll the PC deaths in this game have been spot on. Humble Jack let us know death was there for everyone, just waiting. It set the tone for the whole campaign. Ajax let us know death for the PCs was a choice though, and a chance to provide sweet background whispers.
ReplyDelete"I forgive me though."
I forgive you too :*†
† :* represents a kiss
† frogs kiss with their cloaca‡
‡ i made that up