12-19-2020, 10:14 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: How to game master, being an explorer?
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But my experience doesn't, alas, include AW/DW. The mechanically relevant bit seems to be "the system fights you if you try". Anyone have AW/DW experience that would care to explain a bit more about exactly how this works in terms of game mechanics? How does the game even know that the GM has "planned to far ahead" in order to punish them for doing so? Presumably they don't think worldbuilding or jotting down plot seeds earns Bad Karma points that absorb any later attempt to make a GM ruling. So what do they mean? |
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12-20-2020, 04:40 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Poland
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Re: How to game master, being an explorer?
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Yes it is, but I'm very wary of this advice since it's the same thing my usual GM told me – all while having metric tons of notes made casually as ideas came. He might not have prepared much for each session per se, but he had lot's of general material worked out in advance. Meanwhile, my improvised npcs feel flat and characterless, and same with locations.
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12-20-2020, 05:25 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: The Great White North
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Re: How to game master, being an explorer?
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12-21-2020, 06:07 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: How to game master, being an explorer?
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The closest I remember to what you are talking about is Source of the Nile (me and my brother still make jokes about "Chief converts but Witch-doctor tries to poison you"). Roll a die to see what the terrain is to be. With that base you have to fit in, random events, relations with locals, etc. The qualities of a given mode of transport can be found in books and manuals. Those are a necessity. From a vague framework like this you can get details. For instance you know Pundits (British spies on the border) are working in high country and Magellan is working on the ocean. In that case it is the specs of terrain features that you are surveying and not the general area. If it is fantasy there are more options. You can create monsters and wonders.
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01-20-2021, 11:39 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Ottawa
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Re: How to game master, being an explorer?
Wow very interesting, I may share similar views as you. I also enjoy some exploration but didn't have any time to prep games so came up with this set of procedures for running a hexcrawl for my friends as a randomly generated game on the fly.
It works like this: So the PCs roll up a couple random characters (Randos) who are meant to be loser peasants who dont have much going on for them and hence nothing to lose in taking up adventuring. We then march them out of town in search of forgotten dungeons and treasure in the wilderness. Using a blank hex map the GM and players descover the world together by rolling randomly for each hex. Random encounters are rolled for along the way. Sometimes a dungoen or cave etc. is encountered. We then randomly generate the dungeons as we explore too having the players AND GM mapping wilderness and dungeons as we explore. It's OSR style fantasy when we use the old D&D monster encounter tables and treasure tables and it is amusingly deadly. A lot of fun and a nice change form story/plot driven games. You can check out some basic examples of play and rules download here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...1C1qiJTXTp4KL1 |
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bartle, explorer, game mastering |
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