Roleplaying Tips Weekly E-Zine Issue #42: 9 Game Master Tips From Valdron Inc. _______________________________________________________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ SENT BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY With Compliments From: Johnn Four, http://www.roleplayingtips.com mailto:feedback@roleplayingtips.com CONTENTS: --> A Brief Word From Johnn --> This Week's Tips Summarized 1. Build Party Chemistry Through Skill Sharing 2. Surprise Players Through Misdirection 3. Use Gifts As Plot Hooks 4. Create a Character Skill List When Planning 5. Use a Portable File For Organization 6. Spell Names Backwards For NPC Names 7. Use Insignificant Details To Mislead PCs & Spark Ideas 8. Use Specific Times & Distances Wisely 9. Keep "Stalling" Encounters Handy To Buy Yourself Time --> Readers' Tips Of The Week: More Law, Crime & Punishment Tips 1. Excellent Articles Available On-line written by Mark Young 2. Circuit Judges & Lawyers from Django Dunn _______________________________________________________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ A BRIEF WORD FROM JOHNN Mark J. Young provides us with some great tips this week from his Valdron Inc. and Multiverser RPG web site. He has a neat Tip of the Week banner program, which other sites are welcome to participate in (RoleplayingTips.com happily being one of them). And our tips this week come directly from a few of his banners. The link to all the other archived tips banners is: http://members.theglobe.com/Valdron/prev0006.html * * * For those of you who are hungry for even more GM tips and information, I have a new article posted on-line at http://www.fiction-fantasy.net The article is titled "How To Fix Botched Encounters In Mid- Game". It provides tips and advice on what to do if you get stuck in the middle of a session with no encounter/story ideas. And it also gives some tips on how to fix encounters that just don't feel right when you start them, or ones that you simply botch and want to fix in mid-game. Click on the Roleplaying Tips link on the right hand menu. * * * Roleplaying Tips Weekly is now being mirrored at the Fantaseum web site. Fantaseum is a collection of valuable resources for Dungeons & Dragons gamers abroad: searchable Core Rules exports, message forums, stories, databases, jokes & humour, Play by E-mail support, editorials, and news. It has a newly added 3rd Edition D&D section as well. I highly recommend visiting the site. http://www.rpgplanet.com/fantaseum/tips/index.asp Ok, enough chatter, on with the tips! Johnn mailto:johnn@roleplayingtips.com _______________________________________________________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ 9 GAME MASTER TIPS FROM VALDRON INC. 1. Build Party Chemistry Through Skill Sharing ---------------------------------------------- Party chemistry can be built if characters teach each other skills, such as trading martial arts lessons for language classes. 2. Surprise Players Through Misdirection ---------------------------------------- Ask for a character's score in a totally irrelevant, obscure skill, and you can misdirect player expectations and surprise them. 3. Use Gifts As Plot Hooks -------------------------- A gift with a mystery attached can start an adventure. 4. Create a Character Skill List When Planning ---------------------------------------------- Keep a special character skill list. Know which party members can open doors, start fires, operate equipment, see in the dark -- whatever might be useful. It helps when planning to know your resources. 5. Use a Portable File For Organization --------------------------------------- A portable file is ideal for creating referee papers, maps, descriptions, character info, each in its own section. 6. Spell Names Backwards For NPC Names -------------------------------------- Stuck for a name? Try spelling something backwards. Anutrof (Fortuna), Cire (Eric), and Lucard (Dracula) came from reversed names, and Remmils (slimmer) came from a word. 7. Use Insignificant Details To Mislead PCs & Spark Ideas --------------------------------------------------------- Create and describe insignificant details. Players will attach undue importance to some of them, and may even give you a starting point for a new idea. 8. Use Specific Times & Distances Wisely ---------------------------------------- Worry about times and distances only when they matter. A rough idea of how far or how long is probably sufficient for most purposes, especially if the characters have no way to measure. 9. Keep "Stalling" Encounters Handy To Buy Yourself Time -------------------------------------------------------- Stall scenarios are useful--keep something around which will occupy the players for an hour or so while you think of what you can do next. Minor combat encounters are good for this, but there are other possibilities. Bonus Tip --------- This tip, directed more at the players, gave me a good chuckle so I thought I'd share it with you too: "If pursued by an overwhelming opponent, evil characters can sacrifice an unwilling party member as a delaying tactic." That reminds me of the old joke: if you meet a bear in the woods, you don't have to run faster than the bear, you just have to run faster than the other guy. Perhaps some of your own bad guys can use this tactic when being pursued by the PCs? _______________________________________________________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ READER'S TIPS OF THE WEEK: More Law, Crime & Punishment Tips Excellent Articles Available On-line written by Mark Young ---------------------------------------------------------- How our laws and societies define each other: "The Source of Law" http://ptgptb.humbug.org.au/0009/law01.html The mechanics of police and court systems: "The Course of Law" http://ptgptb.humbug.org.au/0010/law2.html The theories and practices of punishment: "The Force of Law" http://ptgptb.humbug.org.au/0011/law3.html ==== Circuit Judges & Lawyers from Django Dunn ----------------------------------------- A strong government or other agency with legal powers may find that their resources are spread thinly over large areas. Often in remote areas there were no judges, but the citizens did have the right to be heard by a judge. This is where the circuit judges come from. A group of judges would circulate from area to area and hear all of the crimes along each stop (including Sci-Fi where the citizen may have the right to be physically visited by a judge). Judgments would be made and punishments or reprieves would be granted. There are some opportunities here for some interesting characters. Along with the circuit court comes the concept of precedence. If you have different judges traveling through the same area, each judge would require a benchmark of previous crimes and their outcomes in order to remain a fair judge. A ruling would be recorded and later recounted in court when making a ruling on a similar crime. When the legal system becomes complex, a new profession arises - the lawyer. This character is a sage of laws. Recording the law is an ongoing process - each crime and punishment may be recorded for future reference, the names of the criminals and victims may be written down somewhere too. There are a set of ten famous laws. One of which is: Thou shall not kill. I was watching a TV show where some scholars were debating the translation. Their translation was: Thou shall not murder. Changes everything doesn't it? One last suggestion about using laws in your games. Be careful about including an unusual law in your culture that isn't obvious to your players. For example, perhaps staring at your elders is punishable by a beating. There may be a specific reason for this law but if your players don't have some warning, they may decide to stare at everyone because the town's folk get all squirrelly and then 'pow' the characters are being attacked. Use foreshadowing here. Have the party come across someone who has suffered the punishment before the group reaches the town or country. If someone had the life half beaten out of them for even looking in the direction of a person with white hair, you can be sure the players will be watching their character's tongues very carefully (or looking out for people with rabbits). Django Thanks Django & Mark! _______________________________________________________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ That's it for this week's issue. Have more fun at every game! Johnn Four mailto:johnn@roleplayingtips.com _______________________________________________________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ MY PRIVACY POLICY & HOW TO SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE "Roleplaying Tips Weekly" is provided to you free of charge by RoleplayingTips.com. It is sent only to those who have specifically requested to receive it. My subscriber list has never been and never will be available to any third party. EVER! Your privacy is very important to me, therefore it receives the respect it deserves. 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