OffbrandGandalf

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

I talk only as much as is necessary to paint the scene and hurry to prompt player action.

There's an old bit of advice I read somewhere that the sooner you ask players, "What do you do?" the smoother your game is running.

Those really old AD&D modules with 3/4th the page taken up by boxed text? People tend to zone them out. WotC did studies on this and figured attention starts to drift after 2-3 sentences.

But it goes beyond boxed text. Any time the GM is sitting there talking, be it narration, exposition, or -- worst case scenario -- two NPCs having a conversation, that's time the players have to sit there trapped in an unskippable videogame cutscene.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I backed Mike Shea's last "campaign" type book, and it was a great setting and collection of adventures. It was designed for levels 1 through 5 (similar to Lost Mines of Phandelver), but then at the back he included an appendix with ideas for, IIRC, a level 5-20 campaign. It wasn't super detailed, but it was enough to give DMs an idea what to do if their players really liked the setting and wanted to stay down there.

You know how you can read a campaign book and be like, "Why is this so confusing and hard to understand? Don't they care how hard the campaign is to run?!"

Well, Mike does care -- that's his whole shtick, so I'm definitely going to back this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

a worldbuilding game such as the quiet year, for the queen or microscope, hacked to set up a concise and thematic noir mystery inspired by fiction like Disco Elysium, The City and the City or The Nice Guys

That sounds amazing. I love the thought of a Nice Guys-inspired campaign setting.

 

...and why haven't you run it yet? :D

 

What's your favorite tip or trick for running games?