A couple of quick GMing Tricks
Just a couple of short ideas I’ve used recently. They both worked well, so I thought I would share.
Causing a little paranoia
I’m sure most veteran GMs are aware of the note-passing technique. (You pass notes out to players–some of them have useful information, others have fluff, but it gets the players wondering who’s got what.) I had an interesting and effective use of this technique during a one-shot horror game. There were four players at my table, two boys and two girls. At one point in the story, their characters each go back to their hotel rooms. I pass out a note to each player. The two I pass to the boys are fluff. The notes describe how it seems like someone has been in their room, maybe going through their stuff. The two notes I pass to the girls are each a big, juicy clue. Since this is a horror game, NPCs quickly start turning up dead. At the first discovery of a body, I pass out some more notes. This time, I only hand notes to the boys–each note had another juicy clue. Since the girls did not receive notes and their previous notes contained frightening information, the girls were very unsettled by this. Because the game was a one-shot, the possibility existed that one of the player-characters was the killer. The girls were distrustful of the boys for the rest of the session.
Choices and Consequences
I have a couple of good friends who live one state over. We make it a point to get together once every month or two. I run a D&D game for them. Because of the wide frequency of play (one game every month or two, as opposed to the weekly or bi-weekly events I am more used to,) I have changed my GMing style to a more truncated format. One of the thing I do is make sure that each adventure can be finished in a 4 or 5 hour session. It is important to complete the adventure in one sitting, because the players would surely forget everything in a month’s time. Another thing I do is present multiple adventure choices each session. This idea is an attempt to get the players invested in the world. We don’t have a lot of time to role-play the NPCs in town, and we don’t have a lot of time to waste with the PCs looking for adventure. Instead, at the start of the session, I present the players with at least two adventure choices. These are usually just small snippets: ”A local patrol of elf rangers have spotted undead activity near an old manor outside of town, and they have come to you worried that the restless dead might stray into citizen’s homes.” Or, “An injured, terrified man stumbled into town last night. He claimed he was part of a merchant caravan that was ambushed by kobolds.” The players talk about these events and decide which one they would like to pursue.
The adventures that the players do not pick don’t just go away. Unresolved adventures have consequences. They escalate. If the players ignore that kobold threat, no merchants make it to town. Until the threat is resolved, the party can’t buy anything, because all of the stores have run out of stock. If they don’t take care of the undead, some of the farmers who live near the old manor start turning up dead. Zombies start walking around the middle of town. People retreat to their houses and lock up the windows and doors. This clearly illustrates to the players that their choices have a direct impact on the game world. It also immerses them in the game world, because I don’t tell them what the consequences will be. They start analyzing the situation. They take the facts they have collected about the game world and try to make assessments and predict what will occur if a threat is ignored.
From a GM standpoint, this means I have to have 2 or more adventures ready to go each session. This game is using 4ed, so I try to make the adventures level-appropriate. (Although don’t think that level-appropriate means easy. I’ve managed a TPK already.) If the party manages to level up with an unresolved thread still around, I just go in and adjust the encounters for the new level. In most cases this just involves adding one or two enemies to each encounter. The treasure parcel system is also a boon in this regard. When I plot out adventures, I don’t place specific treasure awards. Instead I mark whether an encounter should drop money, a magic item, or some other permutation. When it comes time for the reward, I pull out my parcel list for their current level and select a couple of rewards.
