A new GM coming to grips

[cal585]

Hello, new member posting for the first time. Apologies for the rambling!
I recently bought the game and have coerced a few friends into giving it a shot with me. All 3 have some sort of Drama background (except me) and are rather unfamiliar with RPGs (except one who’s played D&D once or twice) which makes it rather exciting (and all are relaxed Who fans!). Unfortunately however, me owning the books makes me GM. Rather daunted by that prospect. Anyone have some general advice for a newb?

I started off attempting to run Judoom!, however that didn’t work so well. We were pretty pressed for time and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing. It ended up with me railroading a fair bit and still running out of time. Despite that however, everyone’s still willing to keep going, so I suppose it was a success. I also learnt a fair bit about GMing.

A couple of questions about the concept:

1 – How much time should you allow for a game? Looking in the book, and it’s mentioning people healing 1 attribute an hour or day. That would seem like a long session.
2 – How much roleplaying is needed from the GM? With so many characters, and conversations, there seems to be a lot of stuff needed and I don’t have the quickest tongue for thinking up adequate responses. I found that in Judoom! I went into narrator mode a fair bit. Explaining/summarising what characters were saying rather than acting it out.

3 – The other thing that I wasn’t sure about was Observation tests. I’m assuming this is something that is picked up pretty quickly by people who’ve played RPs before. The way I thought to run it was to get people to make an observation test every time they asked me about something in the room. But a lot of things were getting missed. A bit of enlightenment would be good here

4 – Finally, how much work is required by the GM? Allowing players to do their own thing, I guess you split the story into 2 phases? Discovery and action. And within those phases you note down locations, NPCs, possible events and clue location and then just go with the story they create?


Sorry if I seem like a helpless newb .
The other issue is that my friends don’t have much time to meet at the moment, so I was thinking I might try a short introductory scenario via Email to see how it goes more than anything. How do mixes of PbEM and real time go? If I was able to organise short times to play through conflicts quickly. It just seems that would be the easiest thing to do.
Currently got a plan to have each start of individual for the first half and then meet for the second half. I'm working with the 10th Doctor, River Song and Captain Jack. Should be interesting. Also have come up with what I think is an interesting adversary. A Time Agent (hadn’t planned for them to be rogue but that could also work). Not evil as such, but maybe uncaringly planning something harmful. Do these sort of characters work well as adversaries? They don’t have the love to hate quality of villains, but might get the players sympathising with them a little more...

Anyway, I’d love some input from more experienced (or even inexperienced – though not sure that’s possible) players. Sorry for the length

[starkllr]

First, the questions:

1 - the 1 attribute oer hour or day is game time, not actual time. As for actual session time, my group usually runs 3-4 hours for a session. I think that's kind of a reasonable average.

2 - Quite a bit of roleplaying comes from the GM. I'm not that quick either, what helps me is to come up with one or two defining characteristics for my important NPCs and really rely heavily on them when roleplaying them with the PCs.

3 - I'd only have the PCs make Observation rolls for things that aren't obvious and/or are really important. You can also let the players' questions guide you - if you haven't figured out what's in that room, and they ask "Is there a Dalek control console in the room?", don't bother with the Observation roll - decide if the story would be more interesting if there was one there or not, and just answer accordingly.

4 - I think you've got the right approach. The best session I've run so far used that method - I had a general overall plot to be discovered/foiled, and index cards with a bunch of NPCs and a few locations, and I just went with what the players followed up on and showed interest in.

[Corone]

To a certain degree those are questions you might spend your life answering! Ask 6 different GMs you might get 6 different answers! :-)

Having said that I agree with Starkllr.
My gaming sessions are 'an afternoon' or 'an evening' and remember you don't need to finish the adventure in that time. Just carry on next time you meet (and if possible end on a cliffhanger for added Whoness!)

Whatever an adventure says, all groups tackle things at different rates. For instance, any convention adventure I write will take literally 4 times as long to run with my gaming group as it does at the con.

The best advice I can offer is to remind you that if you are having fun you are doing it right. Remember the GM is not the servant of the player's enjoyment, you are meant to be having fun too. Personally I really enjoy role-playing all the npc bit parts. Thats often where the side plots will come from.

GMing can take a lot of work, but that depends on you and your group. I've got lazy as I've got older and more experienced letting me wing it more often. Other GMs I know won't even consider beginning without copious notes. Having said that, the more you plot the stronger your adventure will be. But never plot so much you have already decided how everything will play out. Let the players run around the wrong corner and screw up if they are going to. You'll find the experience a lot more fun if you don't quite know what's going to happen next. You'll also learn better techniques as you go for herding players in the right direction without railroading anyway!

As to villains, full on evil can be lots of fun to play, but villains who aren't all bad are a lot more interesting. Time agents are brilliant for that. All you need to consider is what do they want and what is stopping them get it. Then you just need to decide how far they will go to surmount any obstacle, including the players.

For adventures, listen to what your players liked and didn't like. If they (and you) want to just go Dalek hunting then give them the guns and let them go for it. You don't have to have a mystery section if its not popular, the same goes for combat too. However, at the start its good to get a mixture so you can figure out what you all like to do best. Don't be frightened to ask them for feedback.

Otherwise, welcome to the GM community!
Great to hear or more people willing to take on the task of GMing and not be afraid to ask for help. There is no such thing as a Noob in role-playing, none of us know everything. Welcome aboard!

[cal585]

Thanks both for your responses! Very useful and much appreciated. Hopefully I can get the next game I run right and completely hook my players in. I must admit to finding an evil satisfaction to knowing what's roughly happening while the players attempt to unravel it.

[Craig Oxbrow]

Good luck, and have fun.

[ugavine]

All excellent advice given above. I'll just add a couple of things to try and help.

May 20, 2011 14:55:12 GMT cal585 said:

1 – How much time should you allow for a game? Looking in the book, and it’s mentioning people healing 1 attribute an hour or day. That would seem like a long session.

As mentioned, this is in-game, not real time. Also this is a general rule, feel free to heal characters when you think enough game time has passed or if a reasonable Heal check has been made.

2 – How much roleplaying is needed from the GM? With so many characters, and conversations, there seems to be a lot of stuff needed and I don’t have the quickest tongue for thinking up adequate responses. I found that in Judoom! I went into narrator mode a fair bit. Explaining/summarising what characters were saying rather than acting it out.

This is a personal choice. I enjoy acting out the NPCs and doing the silly voices - I caught one player off guard once, he was drinking when I started talking as Alpha Centauri in a high squeaky voice, player spat his drink out with laughter ;D

3 – The other thing that I wasn’t sure about was Observation tests. I’m assuming this is something that is picked up pretty quickly by people who’ve played RPs before. The way I thought to run it was to get people to make an observation test every time they asked me about something in the room. But a lot of things were getting missed. A bit of enlightenment would be good here

You can ask for Observation tests at any time. I find it fun to ask for checks when there is nothing there replying with something like, "For a moment you thought your saw something in the shadows, but now you can see nothing there." It adds to the tension and keep splayers on their toes. And if there is somethign there and they miss it still tell them something. So if they are searching for the Graske in the old house and know there was movement, but fail the check, maybe have a cat jump out.

Works for most skills, give infomation at differeing levels depending on the levels of success.

4 – Finally, how much work is required by the GM? Allowing players to do their own thing, I guess you split the story into 2 phases? Discovery and action. And within those phases you note down locations, NPCs, possible events and clue location and then just go with the story they create?

I can wing it, but I much prefer to plot out an adventure.
I use a sort of flow chart method. I have several encounters planned - A, B & C. I let the group wander into these encounters picking up clues in a random order that is appropriate to where the PCs go. then they move on to ecounters D, E & F in any order before reaching a planned conclusion.

I try to come up with a way for the PCs to win the adventure but are always open to their suggestions, it's more fun for the players if they 'win' with their own ideas.

I also like to plan my major NPCs.
Main Villain - eg. Dalek Emperor, Davros
Major lacky - Daleks
Minor lackies - Robomen

I tend to wing other NPCs. But I do find it important to have friendly NPCs, not just villains. And a few Red Shirts just to emphasise the threat.

Have fun. This is first and foremost the most important thing about RPGs.

[cal585]

Thanks, this games seems fairly flexible and quite fun. I'm now struggling to plot out my first adventure, trying to work out why Rory is travelling with the 10th Doctor (I'm going with some vague timey-wimey reason).

Another quick question, how do you introduce major villains while keeping suspense and mystery?

For example, the Weeping Angels are a favourite, and part of their charm is how hard they are to discover in the first place. I can try and introduce them subtly so the players may not realise what they're up against, but as soon as something mysterious happens in a place with statues in it, everyone's going to immediately come to that conclusion, even if it's not what their characters would initially expect.

What's the best way to play this? Introduce so many instances of say statues, that after the initial false alarms, they won't suspect the real occasion?

[Craig Oxbrow]

That would work, but knowing Doctor Who fans they'll be jumping at every statue referenced, no matter how casual.

"Down at Hyde Park, by the statue..."
"Statue? Aaaaagh!"
"... of Mountbatten."
"Oh, okay... I'm keeping an eye on him anyway."

I'm generally very upfront about using classic monsters (to the extent of announcing "next week... Shadow Of The Daleks" at the end of a session) but either run straightforward-ish adventures with them or put a twist on them.

I haven't used the Weeping Angels, but I've had Daleks in hiding assassinating political figures, more Daleks disrupting an archaeological dig, Cybermen going mad, Sea Devils hunting for technology thieves in Victorian London and Judoon making sure people complaining about an end-of-series apocalypse formed an orderly queue.

For the Angels, maybe don't mention statues... maybe it's dark where they are, allowing them to move more freely, and to appear as figures in the distance (but if you look closely enough you realise they're not moving at all... and do you want to get that close?) glimpsed through darkness, mist, dirty windows or some other obscuring material.

(And I had this idea for them recently which I might run sometime.)

[cal585]

Hmm true. I suppose being upfront about monsters is the easiest thing to do. After all, the players don't know when/where exactly they'll appear or how they'll act.

[ugavine]

The best way to put players off the scent of your main villain is to use a diversion.


Some examples I've used;

PCs are on a spaceship replica of ancient Egypt ruled by Cleopatra - THEN the Daleks show up!

PCs are trying to stop Judoon blowing up the Earth, loads of bureurcratic nonesense with the Shadow Proclamation, Alpha Centauri and other aliens - THEN it turn out to be Slitheen!

PCs are chasing a time meddling Graske - then a Weeping Angel turns up and the PCs end up in pre-historic times running from dinosaurs and Sycorax!