Nick Hendriks

GMing Tricks

I've had a busy summer and my autumn does not promise to be any different, so my blogging habit has fallen by the wayside. I'm not sure I had much to contribute to many of the fun bandwagons happening over the past few months but my brother Christian Hendriks brought to my attention a bandwagon (or stagecoach as Tamás Kisbali on Eldritch Fields calls it) that I can probably squeeze into my schedule: Lists of good GMing advice (started by Phlox over at Whose Measure God Could Not Take with the post More Cheap Tricks.

A caveat before proceeding: lately I've been neck deep in the OSR, hexcrawling, tracking inventory items, and rolling on encounter tables. If that's not your style of game you may not find all of these tips useful.

Without further ado, here are a few tips that work for me:

  1. Maintain a list of consequences: The players have saved a trader from goblins or something. Write on your list "The rescued trader remembers the party and treats them to something nice." The players accidentally release a giant spider from a dungeon. Write on your list "some folks are tearfully carrying their friend's desiccated husk home from the woods, shrouded in spider silk." Then whenever you would have a random encounter (maybe add "Story Consequence" as a line item on your encounter tables) roll 1d4 on the list and count that far down from the top. Resolve the encounter and strike that off the list.
  2. For each region, prepare a random encounter list. Stack the front half with things that live off the beaten path (animals, monsters, etc.) and put NPCs and other path-following creatures (traders, faction patrols, opportunistic bandits, etc.) nearer to the end.
    • Traversing the woods in an unoccupied hex (no settlements): roll twice on the encounter table and take the lower result.
    • Traversing the wilderness in an occupied hex, or traversing a path in an unoccupied hex: roll once on the encounter table and use the result.
    • Traversing a path in an occupied hex: roll twice and take the higher result.
  3. Be generous with knowledge. Discovery is one of my favourite parts of the game but on the flip side, locking too much information behind knowledge checks can really bog down the game. Besides, as a player it feels good for your dude to stick up their hand and say "oh I know this!"
  4. Don't be too precious with procedures. Sometimes players will attempt something that falls outside the scope of your procedures. They don't want to travel a full hex at once. They want to use their down time for something that isn't listed on your handy charts. They are doing a weird thing while resting. Don't change the player's intentions to fit the procedure. Change the procedure to fit the intentions.
  5. Shorten your history timeline. Focus on events that still matter today. Your world-shaking event from 1000 years ago now happened 100 years ago, and the big consequence of that happened 10 years ago instead of 200. Bring it all into living memory. Populate your world with both the bitter people who still remember how good things were before, and the greedy beneficiaries.
  6. Graph paper is not just for maps. It's great for tracking hp. Monster has 25 hp? Mark out a box of 5x5 squares and check them off as it takes damage.
  7. Monsters can do stuff outside of their stat block. Picking someone up and hurling them out a window isn't just for players.
  8. Roll your dice while the players are doing their turns. If possible be ready to leap into the narration. Of course you run the risk of your players doing something to make your prep irrelevant, but if that's not GM prep in a nutshell then I don't know what is.
  9. The 1-in-6 chance roll is a crude but useful tool fit to solve many problems. In nearly all cases it could be replaced by some elegant mechanic that compliments the rest of the design, but sometimes you just gotta quickly decide if a thing happens.
  10. For interesting NPCs, pick two: Capable, Friendly, Accessible. It makes allyship a challenge or a mixed blessing. Hire a friendly knight who will gladly ride with you but trips over his own sword? Seek out the knowledgeable druid who never camps in the same place two nights in a row? Coerce the evil wizard's brow-beaten lackey into helping you defeat her once and for all?