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Refs: How do you run your game?

I plan the encounters in detailed fashion, NPC's especially!--I then loosely apply where they will occur--so no matter where the player's dogo--there I am also!
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Thus I think stofsk, I fall in the middle. My details lie in what happens--and I let the players drive about as they will until something bumps into them!

Illustrations of machinery, aliens, scenery, etc and art are all utilized to best affect. Some of our gamers can illustrate quite well, or fashion deck plans I have discovered.

As I now game online, (we are scattered over ten states and two time zones)there isn't much call for mood music.

I do give XP to participation and enjoyment additions to the game.

I cannot be bribed.

Last, "Show all, explain nothing". Don't THINK for the PC's. Paint the picture, then let them add to the canvas.
 
Well he was a power-gamer. I run some DnD and Spacemaster campaigns with him, and always managed to stop him dominating everything. It became an enjoyable challenge. I was just fecked off with that game cuz I was only there as a guest and I was crippled straight away. BTW, I wasn't keen on the GURPS system anyway; that was just the final straw.

I like drawing up my pc's and npc's. I've got sketchbooks full of it from my uni days. Nowadays it's all done digitally, which is great cuz you can add scars, new equipment, clothes, kit etc to the character portraits on the way.

One thing that would be nice is a supplement with plans for non-starship situations, like all the fantasy city books you can buy, or download free. I did use a laminated grid sheet with wipe pens for a bit, but my hands got too inky...
 
Originally posted by Klaus:
sound effects CD's are useful too...
As per Liam's dilemma, go a site that advertises Abandonware take the sound files out of the programs then just broadcast over the Internet. Picked up a Traveller Clone game, FreeSpace, had all sorts of additional sound cues to enhance the play. For mood music, check out Midnight Syndicate and other assorted Horror related soundtracks, as music for RPGs has come a long way.
 
Top tips for mood music:-

Halo soundtrack (who'd've that digeridoo, celtic strings, gregorian chant, hippy ambient drums, and rock guitar would work so well?!)

new BSG soundtrack - really soft and doesn't get in the way.

anything by the Goblins, Dario Argento's band.
 
Originally posted by Ron:
All my stuff is created while comuting to and from the work by subway. Later at home I make some notes, which rarely take more than a single sheet of paper. That's all I need. No wonder I am fan of Traveller's simplicity as it fits nicely with my gaming style.
Also enjoying/suffering a long commute, this is pretty much what I do as well.

I spend weeks carefully designing the setting and background and NPCs, but once the players join in, I pretty much "wing it" as to the storyline.
 
“I spend weeks carefully designing the setting and background and NPCs, but once the players join in, I pretty much "wing it" as to the storyline.”

Interesting choice. I can see how this allows the players to interact with the universe instead of the other way around. With no “grand narrative” directly imposed by the ref the players have an exceptional amount of freedom. Do they develop a story on their own?
 
Originally posted by Kurega Gikur:
Interesting choice. I can see how this allows the players to interact with the universe instead of the other way around. With no “grand narrative” directly imposed by the ref the players have an exceptional amount of freedom. Do they develop a story on their own?
If they want to, it's wide open for them to. On the other hand, sometimes they're content to just get swept along at the whim of important NPCs' plots & purposes (perhaps until the PCs decide to start pushing back). Sometimes, like surfing, it's a little of both.

This allows PCs to be pawns or kingmakers as they choose... the key to such an improvisational style is having a good handle on the NPCs' backgrounds, motivations, and goals so that their reactions to PC shenanegins flow quickly and naturally...

Plus, of course, as a ref one must not be married to a particular pre-ordained plot outcome... one secret: if the PCs do something that wrecks a promising plot, quickly introduce an ad hoc NPC to fill the gap, provide the now-missing plot point, or whathaveyou. Likewise, if the PC insist on ignoring the obvious, preferred course of action, introduce a rival or rival group that runs with it... players enjoy rivalries much more than deathtraps, in my experience... and it builds cohesiveness among the PCs.
 
Also, I never use "random encounters". I refer to them as "color encounters", and the players are never sure which ones are just diversions and which ones are deliberately significant to the storyline(s).

(The beauty of it being that I don't always have to immediately commit one way or the other...)
 
Originally posted by Kurega Gikur:
^Hmmm … we may not be too far apart here. Do you have a website for your stuff?
Not really; that would require me to take the time to sit down and commit something to text... :D

I am sketching up notes and background for a new campaign, though; once I get it somewhat sorted, I reckon I can post notification in the relevant forum here...
 
One last secret to being a popular gamemaster/ref is borrowed directly from improvisational comedy: never, never, never negate the actions & ideas of the players. Since the game is intended for enjoyment, it behooves a ref to bend over backwards to avoid saying "No" to what the players want to do; if it truly is a bad idea, find a way to introduce a better one and then seduce/cajole/embarass them into seeing the value of embracing it instead. And again, my NPC hangers-on and rivals usually do most of the heavy lifting in this department.
 
I like the idea of having a rival party that does the sort of things you want your players to do but they won't because they want to go off and do their own thing.

TAS bulletine comes in: crew of a Free Trader foil terrorist plot. Head Bad Guy quoted: "If it weren't for those darn kids I would have gotten away with it, too!"

Let the players, who are also crew on another Free Trader that was in the area, connect the dots. Reminds me of the D&D random encounter where you roll and get 'an adventuring party that's similar to the player group'. I never could figure out why they had that random encounter, until you guys crystalised it: it's there for the 'keeping up with the Jones'. To the players the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
 
Originally posted by stofsk:
Let the players, who are also crew on another Free Trader that was in the area, connect the dots.
And I suppose if they're reluctant to make the connections, one could always, when writing up the Adventure Log to post to the Internet for posterity, tell the story with the NPC heroes as the protagonists and the PCs as a bunch of colorful background characters...

:D

The other advantage in having a fallback adventure group of NPCs waiting in the wings is that the ref can always make sure any important plot points that are needed to set up future scenarios don't get omitted from the action... this might be essential to refs running more "linear" storylines...
 
I fly by the seat of my pants when refereeing. Most of the plotlines revolve around the PCs actions, though, which can be diverse so I keep the group small (about 4 players maximum). I keep a lot of one-shot adventure seeds and NPCs handy to give players a place to go once they get started. A lot of the adventures I tailor make for the players based upon what choices they made for their characters. Of course, there are some background things which the players may choose to get involved in or not, but the events will happen nonetheless in the campaign.

Sometimes the most complicated thing for me is keeping all the plates spinning in the air for the players. The last game I ran had a woman who enjoyed lots of role-play, a guy who enjoyed lots of problem solving, and a guy who loved lots of starship action. So the game had to combine all three in a way that would not bore anybody. For every hour of game I spent about 15 minutes with each one pursuing individual goals and then 15 minutes with them as a group. It was fun, but exhausting.

Alas, its been months since I've had enough time to game. I'm gonna see about changing that...
 
I think it's important to go to each player and get from them what their character's goals are in the short and the long term.

To reward good roleplaying you give XP bonuses if they remember what goals they have and act on them. XP bonuses apply to T20, obviously, but I don't know how it might work in other systems like CT or GURPS. In any case it's not hard to come up with some kind of positive reinforcement for good players who keep in mind their character's motivations and desires.
 
Originally posted by stofsk:
To reward good roleplaying you give XP bonuses if they remember what goals they have and act on them. XP bonuses apply to T20, obviously, but I don't know how it might work in other systems like CT or GURPS. In any case it's not hard to come up with some kind of positive reinforcement for good players who keep in mind their character's motivations and desires.
For CT, I give out "Fate Points" on occassion for good play that PCs can use to modify a die roll.

Can't say what I'd do for GT though. I've had the books since they first came out, I just haven't ever had a chance to play GT.
 
I'm about to embark on a new campaign using T20 and the Gateway Sourcebook, but I'm still a fan of CT. I plan on using the saem strategy I use for all my previous games.

Write out a synopsis of how the adventure "should" flow, make sure I have names of pertinent NPC's memorized, have the floorplans of any potential battlegrounds prepped, and be ready for the entire plan to fly out the window and improv as much as possible


Music, I would say, enhances our games alot. For some odd reason, I can only hear industrial/techno music when I think or read Traveller! Maybe it's just me.
 
Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
For CT, I give out "Fate Points" on occassion for good play that PCs can use to modify a die roll.
You mean "Hero" points? ;) I remember first encountering those in the James Bond RPG.

I have actually made players paranoid enough they won't follow obvious (and correct) clues to the storyline, because they are afraid it's a trap. But, keeping players jumpy (while still having fun) is a great side effect of my ref style.
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