I'm not usually "that guy," but your villain GM trap inspired me to fact-check it so that I could use a less-malevolent implementation of something similar. Vinegar is, generally, as dense as water, if not a bit more. Outside of the terrible stinging from being totally submerged in a mild acid, it wouldn't be any harder to swim in than water would. Something like a fine oil would be better; their lower density would result in a slow sink as the player frantically tries to swim. A pool filled with liquor would have them sink like a stone.
My favorite that a GM did once in a one-shot thing (where the idea was kinda just finding silly ways to die) was a pit filled with whipped cream. The first couple of steps were on solid floor, but, whipped cream is slippery. One failed dex check later, and someone drowned.
Acetic acid (the distinctive component of vinegar) is slightly denser than water as a pure liquid (~1.05 compared to 1.00); when mixed with water, it appears to form solutions with intermediate densities (not always the case for every mixture of substances). Common household vinegar is widely cited at 1.01 with at least some of that coming from other chemicals present in the mixture. So, yeah, with a higher density and significantly higher viscosity, a pool of malt vinegar would be, if anything, marginally easier to swim across than a similar pool of water, aside from the stinging (both from contact and from fumes).
Honestly, it wouldn't have mattered. He specified a "heavily armored individual sank to the bottom like a rock." If you're swimming while in heavy armor, it hardly matters what you're swimming in.
I think you've missed "The Observer" type of GM. They have some basics prepared, but they don't talk much and most of the time they just sit back and throw an enemy at the group, when things get too fast for them. 95% of the time - they won't try forcing an adventure on you and would only throw things, that the group are interested in / want to go exploring. A very chill style, though it can be boring for more active players, that love a good challenge / puzzle / mystery to handle. "The Riddler" is a fun GM style too, mostly a variant Villain Author - riddles, puzzles, mysteries and plot twist that Shamalan would masturbate to is their forte. Pretty much anything you interact with in a GM world - would have something mysteries about it. It's always challenging and never obvious, though can be fun for people with IQ of four numbers or more :D
I'm mostly falling into your "Observer" type, but with a spice. I don't have neatly wrote story with exact locations and NPCs, just the idea about the outcome and major events. But for the most time, I let the PCs decide what they do, where they go, ask them what they want to do before presenting the story hooks, just to know, what the characters want, and then I sew my events into their actions. So they have this freedom of "we do whatever we want", but somehow they always end up in a story, that piece by piece adds up to my Grand Finale. So basically, we have a story running for more than a year now (with weekly 3-4 h sessions), and now they started to see the scheme that was going on the whole time behind their actions, while they were the ones who wrote ~75% of the story by talking to each other and saying what they think is the story and what they want to do with it. And I've just added my puzzles and mysteries to link the smaller blocks of stories to avoid the lack of challenge part, that you also mentioned. And now the simple dream of my dwarf fighter-medic-lawyer-bartender (long story) to have his second tavern grew into a full fledged Old-God hunt (to cleanse his Castle owned 50-50 with a bard)
I understand that the four-figure IQ is hyperbole, but I don't think you understand just how hyperbolic it is - assuming the model of IQ as being normally distributed is still sensible that far out (which is highly suspect since there are at least a dozen people with recorded IQs over 200, when if the normal distribution applied, there'd be a less than 50% chance of there being anyone over 195 in the entire world) the world's population would need to be at least 10^350 to have a better than 50% chance of having anyone with a four-figure IQ. Put another way, it's more likely for someone to be struck by lightning seventy times over their lifetime than it is that there's anyone alive with a four figure IQ.
I think You don't know, that the IQ (especially above 17 years olds) is relative score, that You get if You measure, how far are you from the median. And the median is always set to 100, and the exact number You get is set according to the relative scores of the group. For example, there is a scale, that says, 100 is median, and the lowest score from the groups top 1% is 135, the lowest score for the top 2% is 130, and it goes like this. Because of the graph being Gaussian, more people will fit in the 5 score brackets near the middle part. And because of the nature of this measurement, the IQ scores need to be re-adjusted periodically, and is hardly be able to apply to the whole of the world, as different places have different education, culture, society, wealth, etc... So, anyone can have four-figure IQ, if I set the scale in that way.
10^350 looked like an interesting number, so I've researched it a bit. Mostly rarity scale to calculate ration across the chart. What I found out that on average - every 1 point in IQ increases the rarity of said IQ by 1.15-1.22 (lets ~it at 1.2 for convinience). In a sense, if you have 1/400 for IQ 95, for IQ 96 it will be a rarity of 1/480. And it gets more and more rediculous with every point thrown into IQ upon lvling up :D I used the sheet here: www.iqtestforfree.net/iq-score.html For a base (100 IQ being a rarity of 50% or 1/2) and from here I also calculated the ratio, which I ended up using 1.2 Then I plugged the numbers into excel (because excel is love), so that I won't have to calculate big angry numbers on my own. And went wild with it :D Just at 110 IQ - the rarity was already 1/12 At 120 IQ - 1/76 130 IQ - 1/474 140 IQ - 1/2939 150 IQ - 1/18200 At IQ of 198 - I've reached my first E, being 1/1,15E+08 12 IQ later at 210 - 1/1,03E+09 At 250 IQ - it was already at 1/1,51E+12 At 300 IQ - we are at 1/1,37E+16 At 400 IQ - we are getting some really big numbers with 1/1,14E+24 500 IQ - 1/9,41E+31 At 750 IQ - 1/5,87E+51 And FINALLY, at IQ of 1000 (first 4 didget number IQ) - we are at the nifty 1/3,67E+71 rarity! Now all we need to do is find out, how much population we need in order for this rarity to become a 50%+ chance. Which is tricky, but a fun brain excercise for me. So lets go to basics. Lets say, the chance of there being a 100 or more - is 1%. How do we raise that to being 50%? We need to double our initial ammount of course, so it will be 200. Now any random number we pick - has a 50% chance of being a 100 or more. Same goes for 500, 1000 and so on. Sounds good? Good. That said, we can try to apply it to our rarity. Which is 1/3,67E+71, of course :D Basically, what we need to do here - is to double our numbers (which, for the sakes of simplicty, let it be E+72, because I don't want to calculate... which I did anyway, 7,34E+71). That's in a perfect world situation, where statistics would work flatly. Now, realistically - this is not the case here. Realistically it,s a 0,71zeroes1% chance, so we need to multiply it by (10^72)*7. So lets do that :D Which gives us 2,569E+143 for there to be a good ~50% chance, that you are talking to someone with IQ of 1000. So yes, very close, even according to my loose approx, Mr rmsgrey, gg =)
@nohrjinn, every 8 years there is a balancing patch as far as I'm concerned. Also ABSOLUTELY FORGOT IT, thank you :D My calculations - are only applicable in a time freeze, when every individual test-taker is NOT influencing the overall data flow =)
It occurs to me that the Villain GM archetype is often similar to the big bad from every Power Rangers series. "Lets send the next batch of monsters at the heroes and hope they do better then the last one" only to be thoroughly displeased when they dont
A lot of these boil down to two GM Styles: 1.) The GM who is there to share the game with the players and have a good time together. 2.) The GM who is there to own the game and be the star of the show, regardless of the other players.
Id say thats another dimension one could apply to the different types. Any of those described could be a gm that is trying to share the game, or be the star of the show. Ex villain. 2.) Easy enough. He sees the players as opponents and therefore plays around with them. Basically a sadist with emotional pain. 1.) This is a bit more tricky, but lets take a board game that can easily end as an rpg, "space crusade". One player is the aliens, and the others are groups of marines. The alien player function very much like i gm, and the players as the good guys. Another example would be hero quest. You can easily be an inclusive gm by giving your players a deadly challenge, even as your are directly opposing them. The same way as a group of friends can enjoy games of competition. Its just very unusual for RP to be a competition game, but in a "villain" gm scenario, thats definitely the case for it to be a good experience. This is of course bad if your players dont like that kind of playstyle, but thats true for all of the gm types. I normally dislike this type of gming but i did it once with my group, because we wanted to run through tombs of horror, and we agreed that was more or less the only way to get the original experience from that module. Therefore we also agreed on them making min/max characters as long as they where inside 3.5 rule set.
Those two are not DM styles, those are DM experiences. They may be the general mindset, but I find the different subcategories very interesting. It's good to hear what others do and what players get out of it, n my opinion :)
I’ve had two GMs that I had different titles for, one I called the ‘Meta Mod’. They literally questioned everything your character did with ‘are you doing x and y because so-and-so said something out of character’, to the point where some players where afraid to investigate, explore and actually play, because the dm saw anything we did as ‘metagaming’. The other we called the ‘child’. That dm started us off telling us we could have literally anything, magical and non-magical, only to then nullify the items with some rule they devised. They tried to plant someone into the group as a pc specifically to kill their character, constantly changed their mind on what they were going to do (from the main villain to the setting) because we found out even a word of their plan, and if things didn’t go their way, they’d blame us. My least favorite part about that specific dm is they would force players to do things they didn’t want to (ie; kill specific npcs), soul-bind items to us (like the deck of many things and then force us to draw whatever number of cards they choose all at once), make us roll for simple things (opening an unlocked door or a letter) and give them impossible checks. I will openly admit I had learned something from both of those dms, and even though I didn’t enjoy my time at their tables. I’m still glad to have experienced them, even if all I got out of it was a list of ‘don’t do’s.
@Andrew K I've actually just come out of a game like that where the players had far too much control. Essentially a player created a mini plot for their characters to go on where none of our characters had any interest as they were they for the main plot. The whole session was just being stuck in this museum for ages. I know you are thinking that the DM should've stopped this, but I don't think that they realised how long and tedious it would be. Player input is fine, but I would prefer a control cap purely for pacing and not getting side-saddled to a plot that has very little convenance for the rest of the party.
@Andrew K Somehow it takes me out of the game as I realize that this is a fake world where anybody can change it. It's hard for me to describe fully. It's like playing on cheats or feeling like nothing really matters. Instead of asking the GM "is there a manhole I can jump into?" the player just says "so I jump into the manhole that's next to me". Some love it but I just think that it's somehow destroying the world and makes it a fake creation. I can't get immersed then.
I am doing this for a group of more...rigorous storyinterested players. That is, I let them come with ideas and I may be inspired to add it to the world, somehow. I don't let them GM themselves. That feels dangerous. Also, for the example given, if no other characters wanted or felt reason to go, why did they?
@@t.nysted4146 Yeah, letting players participate in creating plots and world, demands that you let the whole group participate not just let one player pulle everyone around after them.
I think there's a unique style that's somewhere between the narrator and the author: the Architect. Like the author, the architect plans an overall plot, but the focus is less on worldbuilding and more on political machinations, alliances and plans of villains and allies alike. And for the Architect the actions of the outsiders are planned - semi-scripted, but the story is, like the narrator, focused on the PCs. It has strong themes and a dramatic story focus. The Architect loves seeing the PCs interact with the architecture and they love watching how the PCs actions affect the architecture. Maybe the PCs don't notice things until they are too late as the PCs collide with the architect's plans. Maybe the PCs pick up hints and clues early on and start to act, causing a butterfly effect that changes the architecture. These are the GMs that write everything down and bring up details from a year ago back to haunt the PCs or hide clues about the true villain in notes the PCs find in the first few sessions. They are also the ones that have dramatic reveals planned months in advance, but will pull the curtain early if the PCs make smart choices. They tend to play long running games and enjoy a big scale to the drama.
Sir, I applaud you, that is me in a nutshell, with a little bit of actor in there cause I love describing things. Considering im an actual author, still though, love this view and this interpretation.
This is super-duper me my dude. I'm running my first campaign, and my players have put almost complete trust in a dude who was planning to betray them from the start. They got the dude's name and affiliation in the third session. They take on a mission which places them in the very city where they know this guy runs shit (he's a spymaster for their enemy). He introduces himself to them with a thinly-veiled nickname, because I wanted them to have a "gimme" clue to harken back on, and it's in character since he's an arrogant dick. The dude seems eccentric and frankly suspect, and he's ludicrously rich. They proceed to take on jobs for him in the meantime while they prepare their ultimate mission, and despite my giving them no real reason to, they begin to actually trust him. They proceed to LET HIM IN on EXACTLY what they are doing. They have contracted his HELP to provide bodies to execute the plan! Like, this shit could not have gone more perfectly, I have given them clue after clue after oh-so-obvious clue, and while I wouldn't consider myself a Villain GM, I leave every session cackling because they have no idea what's coming for them. I only have to hold it in for another couple months, then I will be able to unveil this bullshit and even if it prematurely ends the campaign, I think I'll be satisfied lol.
YES. One of my happiest moments as a DM was successfully pulling the wool over my players' eyes in a campaign like this! I don't have a good poker face so I have no idea how I pulled it off, but it went brilliantly, the betrayal really smarted, and the revenge they did was perfect.
Thank you, sir! I was disappointed that he did not describe anything that was my style. This is definitely it. I am a bit of an actor, but not to the extent he describes. I give every NPC some character, but I remember them and write them down, including a description of their voice. I have build a world, but my world is full of holes. There is a skeleton made of major places and players, but I don't map out every street or possible cave. I want the players to fill the details (which means I often have to do some improvisation). I have a story, but it is only as dramatic as the characters make it and it only reveals itself as the players discover it. Things move around them, but never without them. Their actions matter, but so does their inaction. My pleasure comes from how the PCs affect my world and how my world affects them. I spend more time after a session writing down what happened in it than I do before the session setting what will happen during it. (I find the latter mostly writes itself during the former) Anyhow, great comment and thank you!
I was a villain GM in only one circumstance, and I stand by it. Out of all our players in our West Marches-style game, we had three who only cared about being optimized, and using their optimization to disrupt storylines without actual character motivation to do so. They were set up as a rogue, support ranger and cleric, and together they could defeat literally anything they came up against. There was no challenge they couldn't overcome. When a group wanted to go run a dungeon that had been built up over months of exploration and investigation, these three would show up, not know what they're going in for, steal all the loot and leave, and their skills combined defeated everything the GMs had in their pockets. I built a monster that was designed to kill them, and a plotline that would steer them towards an inevitable fight. The encounter would take place in an enclosed space, the monster would have several AoE attacks that could counter the rogue's invisibility, and I placed this monster at the climax of a cthulhu-cult-takeover of a nation. Killing this thing would solve the conflict and save the day. They didn't take the bait. The nation fell. That encounter wiped another numerically superior party of high-level casters. When I built it, I only wanted to see these three taken down. That was my only goal. When they didn't run it, I was deflated, and then suddenly horrified that it's now someone else's problem. My moment of villainy, metagaming and lust for victory over these three created an amazing moment for those who had been playing along with this storyline the whole way, and content for future players. Being a villain every once in a while is sometimes necessary. After the fact, we had a little fun. We gave them the monster in its natural habitat in an OOC deathbattle. They won. It wouldn't have worked anyway.
TMAC King it gets boring. I was having a similar problem except it was mostly me. I didnt really know how to make harder battles besides more health and damage. Very recently Ive been trying to play smarter, have my enemies actually use feats and coordinate. And now its a bit more interesting
TMAC King Im going to take a shot using my own experience. I first have to state that I am not against min-maxing, and that under certain circumstances, it can be a lot of fun, but I will go into more detail later in the post. Let's say you have 5 players, 4 of which don't care too much about the rules (Players A, B, C, & D), and the other is a min-maxer (Player E). The GM has a story-arc planned out where it would be most beneficial to the narrative, and fullfilling for the entire table, if Player B kills the villain of said story arc, due to them being a part of their backstory. However, all Player E wants to do is kill stuff and get loot and experience. In order to do this, they build their character in such a way that they can deal out nearly as much damage per round as the rest of the party, among other things (high AC, lots of proficiencies, etc...). Due to this, Player E gets the killing blow on the villain. Player B feels deflated and disappointed that their character didn't get to kill the NPC that murdered their PC's entire family, village, and pet mongoose. Not because they are selfish or that they want to be the centre of attention, but because this has happened with Player E before in Player C & D's story arcs, and to Player B in another campaign. This causes Players B, C, & D to become less invested in the story, because they believe their PC's don't matter as much as Player E's. Player A just doesn't care either way. Now let's say that all of the players within the campaign/one-shot are Min-Maxers. This can be okay if the entire table, especially the GM, is up for running that kind of game. If the GM is not much into MIn-Maxing, but more into RP & Adventuring, both sides of the table are more than likely going to be let down and frustrated. Any time the DM throws something at the players, the PC's carve through them like a Flame Tongue Greatsword through an Ice Mephit. The players want more of a challenge and more combat, however, the GM believes that will disrupt the pacing of the narrative. As stated at the beginning of the post, min-maxing can be good under certain conditions. A person in my group is running a one-shot soon and we have all agreed that we can min-max a level 20 character. I believe doing that once in a while is beneficial to the group. It helps people be creative in their builds, learn more about the rules, and to let out any min-maxing tendencies in a healthy way. If you and your group like this as a constant way to play, all the more power to you! Optimizing a character in a general campaign I find a different case, however. Optimizing a character is done after you have made your character's backstory, to make your character strong at the things they are good at, and yet the player knows that they and their PC have to work with the rest of the table/party. Min-maxing, under certain circumstances, can be toxic if they don't care about the other players' and GM's fun. The same can even be said for some hardcore roleplayers. To summarize this post into one brief sentence." A session 0 will go a long way."
@@wuzzy41123it sounds like sometj8ng that cpuldve been role played put if it was a concern. Being optimized doesnt make you a bad player, being a bad player does. I'm sorry that you guys have had such negative experiences with players who optimize but like its not hard to be good at things and be challenged, or be good at things and also be a good party. None of that is mutually exclusive. It sounds like atleast the OP had trouble challenging his players. I'm also a DM so i know both sides of the screen, and I just dont think optimization is a huge deal.
The topic of GMPCs is one that is usually met with "ughhhhhhhhhhh", usually for the reasons you describe. But I've been doing it for more than a year now after our group's original gm bailed and I found myself taking over, but unwilling to part with the PC I had become attached to. And, well, we're still playing, so I must be doing okay. It helps that my system has skills for things like logic, observation, investigation. If my players can't figure out what to do, their characters roll a relevant skill check and if they pass I give them hints or tell them the solution depending on how well they've succeeded. I have my character roll too, and whoever passes, passes. I think the GMPC is unfairly maligned and deserves its own video on how to do it well.
Some systems are also built around a GMPC. I'm currently playing a system called Hell on Treads, where the players play as the crew of a WW2-era tank, and the rules specify that the tank commander is to be played by the GM. Our GM is flying by the seat of his pants a little, but he's got enough of a plot worked out for it to work so far, not counting one player who hasn't really put in much effort with his character.
It can work if the character is a little more reserved and deliberately knowledgeable or unknowledgeable. We recently had a day where half the group couldn’t show, and since we couldn’t move forward with the main campaign, I improvised a quick one shot in a not the forgotten realms sort of under dark. A few hours and a few random dice rolls later, they inspired a halfling village’s children to summon Khorne from the 40k universe, and Chaos Space Marines pour forth. They meet a wizard who’s raven familiar tells him of all that transpired, and he promptly escapes that plane, PCs in tow. A few more die rolls later, and we are set to either start up the Tomb of Annihilation or Dragon Heist modules, in the ACTUAL Forgotten Realms. Said wizard has ended up as my DMPC, but he serves as an accomplice to the mayhem that the players may cause. Also I have to add in the Children of the Khorne pun. I’m not at all sorry for this.
I have a "GM PC" basically it's the fact that we were supposed to have 4 players and the one that left was going to have this cool synergy/story with the cleric, he was a fighter escorting him and they were brothers. The PC's loved the idea of these 2 so much and when the fighter dipped after session one, everyone was heart broken and he didn't do it justice. So to respect their love for the character, I had him there anyway and played him. He didn't steal the adventure or combat from the PC's, but rather enhanced it and filled a roll that the party needed that he left behind. It was also a blast to RP with the PC's and I didn't meta game with him, sure he had his own set of knowledge and skills and was a respectable fighter but he didn't break the game. Overall me becoming that fighter in the group saved the game from being bitter sweet when the player left the table. BTW he left because his mother got cancer and later died so he was in no metal state to play :/
I'm not the kind of person to just accept PC/NPC divisions as existing ICly, so I have the tendency to turn NPCs into GMPCs. Not as a GM, but as a player, I'll charm the NPCs into unofficially joining the team. I've converted villains into lovers, would-be enemies into friends, actual enemies into temporary allies, and bad guys into begrudging father figures. For some reason, ACTUAL allies are more stubborn about actually helping out, but I've managed that a couple times too. All because it made sense to my character at the time, and because the GM rolled with it. For some reason, said friends I play with were surprised when I said I wanted to play a legitimate "face" character?
Like You I run a GM/PC but breaking it down there is litterally no function or knowledge in that PC. my PC don´t talk to strangers outside the party and is merely lending sword and skill to the party´s assistance, never taking point so the players have to do all that. who passes skillchecks passes and if my PC then pass, the other player get the information, that´s all. the reason i started having a GM-PC coz we are just a smal group, just 3 people, including myself. right from the beginning i said i only GM if some one else also would do from time to time, so i wanted a character for those times who the other players are familiar with too. The rules i use for my GM-PC are simple The character does know nothing, never takes point, just aid in battle and never talks to NPC´s unless the story needs it to move on. More i can´t do anyway since i am too busy keeping up with the players running around torturing each and everyone with pointy sticks just to see what happens ;)
Tbh. We got a pretty good gm. We used to give her a little crap for liking fanfiction, but it's apparently gives her a good story telling power. Great role player.
I'm kind of a module GM, as I love running modules. But I'm not strictly a module GM as I often spend weeks, if not months, changing the module completely to fit the ideas that I have. I also am a bit of the actor GM as the plan that I have at the beginning of the game and how things end up panning out are almost NEVER the same.
I don't mind a villain type GM if it's within reason. While I do think there is a certain level of fair play that needs to be expected, a tactical gm that can pull out some super deadly encounters specifically to target the PCs weaknesses isn't necessarily bad as long as there are some moments for the PCs to shine. If they are just a jerk about it, that's one thing, but diabolical traps and encounters aren't always bad.
We just had an encounter where the enemy was built with a bit of villain GM in mind, us the players had been stomping through everything with little effort, and had even killed one of the leaders of the enemy cult really early compared to when we were supposed to fight them. After that, the cult had pooled their knowledge(they worshiped a god of knowledge and secrecy), and called in the best fighters they had to counter us. The encounter was hard, hard enough that it ended up killing 2 PCs, and nearly killed 1 of the others, but we triumphed in the end, and it was a fun encounter. If your players put too much of their tactics out in the open, and make dangerous enemies, it isn't too much to have their enemies plan for them, it can be a quite enjoyable encounter.
For what it's worth... This treads awfully close to the "Hardcore GM"... Rather like Game Methusela's Channel... These aren't Villains in the sense of being GM-vs-PC's... They're just unafraid of running shorter term games and expecting the Players to PICK UP that it's full of deadly encounters. The "kid gloves" come off after you've had a fair dose of the system... You're used to it, so get the "big boy pants on" and go FIGHT. Truly remarkable encounters create truly remarkable stories and truly remarkable campaigns... BUT they're deadly. It's kind of the price of business for the Hardcore Gamer. It shows when the rest of the table consistently shows up with three or four "spare PC-sheets" in a folder... just conspicuously enough under their other wares of the game. They expect to lose a few PC's along the way, so there are spares, and it's not personal, nor confrontational, nor adversarial... It's worth pointing out that this Hardcore Type isn't usually the best fit for a first-timer or "noob" Player. It's not always a bad idea, but it's best (usually) approached with an ideal of clearing a seat at the table at a NEW game and at Session-0, so everyone can get the idea of playing with a noob' again... not that it's bad or a tough choice. Most are friendly enough. It's just too easy to see (through lenses of inexperience) that you're surrounded with adversarial Players and GM's when they're actually just Harcore about the game's in-game consequences. Taking a couple adventures "gently" isn't out of the realm of request, though... ;o)
I've never seen it done right. This is exactly why I hate the idea of it being the DM versus the players bc 9 times out of 10 someone will hear that and try to "win" as the dm. For gods sake make there be a reason for the encounters(the villain is meticulously studying them) and please dont make every encounter insanely hard(unless your players are masochists) it just makes the game incredibly stressful!
The mentality that compels the villain ruins the game. They've misunderstood the entire point of an RPG. A GM that allows players to shine while challenging them isn't a villain, they're being a good GM! You're absolutely right that there has to be stakes in a game for it to seem rewarding and an interesting story to flourish. I think it's the relationship between the GM and players the villian doesn't understand, to them it's an adversarial, "me vs them" mentaility. That person just isn't that fun to play games with because they're probably socially inept to begin with.
A Villain GM isn't in any way revolved around the PC's...the Villain GM is a villain to the Players. When you're acting out against the players that's a problem. Being tactical, using the PC's weaknesses against the party, putting the PC's up against super deadly or even unbeatable encounters isn't villainous, but doing so specifically to lord your GM power over the players is when it becomes a problem. You're not describing a Villain GM, you're describing a good GM. A Villain GM makes every (or near enough) encounter so difficult that the PC's barely scrape by and the players struggle to do so. That GM is a dick, who doesn't just antagonize the players, but gets pleasure from feeling superior for no reason. A GM that is mad at the players, or angry about a concept, or just generally being a dick for no reason is a Villain GM.
Great video! My GM keeps asking for feedback (beyond “great game, we had fun”) and this gave food for thought and a vocabulary for providing better feedback - he is great and deserves confirmation and inspiration, so your video was most helpful. I personally love a GM who is at least a bit Actor, as it inspires to to do more in character rather than through description. Thanks!
That vinegar trap is actually a fun idea if you don't take it too seriously. Imagine: the PCs come across a pool of what smells like vinegar. They test for magic, acid, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. "We swim across." They immediately sink because vinegar is less dense than water, and they now have to walk across the bottom of the pool. Maybe decrease movement speed because they're walking through a liquid and make them climb a steep wall at the other end to get out. Throw some loot at the bottom if they want to look around. In the end, no harm, no foul. Tell them that all their stuff smells like vinegar now. If your players enjoy a light gag and get into the roleplay aspect, it can be a fun way to lighten the mood.
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer I guess the acid detection would trip, but the smell of vinegar should be included in the description of you're doing it for a gag.
Oh the feels. I burned out from my first real game because I encountered that 'all this work for two seconds of playoff?' wall about half way through a year long campaign. It was my largest black mark as it ended the game just as effectively as a total party wipe from a villain storyteller. Still am haunted by this voice telling me that my current campaigns will end the same way... yet I still find myself making whole characters for people the party will never interact with mechanically.
Dunno, the chaotic uncertainty is one of the things that is driving me forward as a DM, since any encounter - is a potential TPK. Any hard trap - is a potential TPK. Basically any session - is a TPK :D And yes, two seconds playoff. Sometimes it's actually the other way around - something that took you two seconds to prepare is remembered by the party for years to come. To give an example - I had an npc, that used to be a witchhunter (basically, kinda like a witcher, hunting shit) and the party asked him about his story. I didn't have much, so in split-second I came up with a bullshit: he was tracking a wizard, while being new to the whole hunting thing, though the wizard wasn't there. He saw a cat, he wanted to pet him and the cat bit his finger off. Wizard was a druid, disguised as a cat in hopes, that the npc leaves, but when said npc reached to pet him - he snapped and bit off his finger. Surprisingly, that's how he became best friends with said druid. Remembered for years now, my players don't trust cats anymore in my games xD.
I've worked with GMs that opt for a Villain style, while simultaneously attempting to keep a balance with the overall story (Narrative/Author style). Finding that balance is difficult, but not impossible. It is not my own personal preference, as GM or player. But, I admire those who can pull it off and make the game fun. These GMs in my experience tend to be ultra-competitive individuals in and out of game, that or they are generally uncaring of what the players at the table think of him/her as GM. At least one GM I know combined rules interpreter and villain to play NPCs and monsters as uber-adversaries, taking secret delight when the rules, natural rolls, and/or combat circumstances allowed (in chess-like fashion) the PCs to corner and either capture or destroy whatever improbability he threw at them. The balanced villain GM style described above has been perhaps the most thrilling, intense, and frustrating (from a player's perspective) I have ever had the pleasure to encounter. And almost always resulted in TPK or a sole survivor.
When I used to gm regularly at a lan here I always wore a grumpy cat t-shirt that said " rocks fall, everyone dies" god it was fun making them think I was against them, made them feel more proud when besting my shit
There is an intersesting point here : Do you rather play, or do you rather GM ?I don't even know it myself... I love coming with stories and maps, and stuff... but playing is relaxing. You just have to show up and pay attention (and of course be involved).
Thank you for being the only youtube presenter to point out that good things can come from the Player GM style. I've seen other channels simply say, "DON'T EVER DO IT," but when I did it years ago (the campaign was meant to be rotating DMs, but the other guy dropped out after my PC was already in), it was the most amazing game for the entire group that lasted for years.
I have noticed that having problems with being an Anti-Villain GM. I end up explaining too much of the reasoning behind what is happening in the game, just to make sure that players don't feel that they are treated unfairly. I tend to strive for an unbiased way of running a game and deciding the outcome of some random events, which usually is bad.
I have both a Kobold Warlock and a Grung Bard ready to use in games, but sadly as Grung aren't Adventurer's League legal, that'll probably never happen!
There are as many types of groups as there are GM's. Empathy and awareness seem more important. Modular, for example, can make some great moments. Not my ADHD way, but my mate does it and it's great.
My Villain DM moment from high school: The players are investigating an underground stone hallway that is covered in spider webs. One of them tries to burn away the webs with a torch... I had it explode in his face. Nothing lethal, but he rightfully proclaimed, "What, did these spiders drench their own webs in gasoline!?"
Definitely a Narrator/player with a bit of rules interpreter. I became GM out of desire to form a group but ended up as GM for them since I was the most experienced player. Wasn't sure I was GM material but I came in with a firm grasp on the rules, a module for inspiration, and some character concepts for my PCs. Thankfully I knew about the pitfalls of being a player style GM and was careful to avoid the drawbacks by making my NPCs specialists in supporting roles (to set up the PCs for their cool moments). This all went very well with my players, they grew to like these characters, and would take their favorites along with the party so often that they were essentially additional party members. Honestly the fact that my players have been getting heavily invested in these characters has been extremely gratifying. it makes it easier to write compelling social drama, and increase tension in ways that will arise naturally simply due to concern for the PCs.
Yep, called it: I'm a Player GM who sometimes strays into Not-A-GM territory. Only thing not on the former is I don't make GM-PCs. MUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH prefer to be a PC (or assistant GM if pressed), but if there's no other option...I'll ask everyone else if they're SURE they don't have anything to run, and then yes, I'll step up.
I was a Not-a-GM/Player mix type of GM. Always improvising, letting it fun and etc. The players liked it since my improvised story (with some bases that I preprared 5min before we start) was very great, dense and with a lot of incredible plots and all of that interconected and without plot holes.... Well, then I saw that the story was already completely created by chapter 2 of a 5 chapters campaign and just needed to organize everything I improvised, and now I'm a Narrator GM. Anyways, I kinda have a little bit of each of 'em 9 GM styles. Starting chapter 3 by now :)
I find using a module is extremely helpful! The different styles are all traits of a good dm, each is a tool that works best in specific situations. Ex. Rules interpretation- character creation and monster creation, galactic force-dangerous non boss encounters during travel, narrator- always, villian- boss fights, player- downtime 🎉, not a gm- (when lines get crossed unintentionally, this style shift can be extremely helpful dming in sensitive situations) and step in gms for when main gm cant make it or wants to play, actor- always (ya gotta take the baton and paint a quick picture with it), modular dm- using modules or other external story components is helpful in making encounters feel more structured and thematic. Its the ability to adapt style seamlessly to elicit the greatest positive response that is the true goal for a great dm 🥳
As a proud member of the Player-GM caste I say that your description is accurate. Despite that's not my specialization I still make a half-decent GM, since I know exactly what my players are going to think and do I can plan accordingly. I set up my modules the way I would enjoy playing them myself. I also really enjoyed making my own PCs in the past, at one point I had like 4 my PCs against 3 players'. Was fun still, cause I managed to build up some reaaaaaaly cool fights since my party was extremely good at killing stuff, also had a fair amount of dialoge. I no longer do that, cause it grew kinda old. Also, GMing actually helped me to become better at playing. With knowledge from my GMing I can build characters with traits that I can actually play, cause before I had a problem with building a character that has a really cool trait, but I could never play it, cause the opportunity would never come. Experience beats everything in the end.
*I think I am a* Simulator or a Galactic Force, however my focus is on designing encounters that first of all, I know my players will find to be interesting, and secondly I design my encounters be challanging, but definitely achieveable. _(Not in the way of "fighting my players", but rather I want them to feel excited, slightly scared, brave, and ultimately victorious)_ I also like to have a lot of communication outside of the game asking about what they would like to see/find/learn so I can prepare bread crums leading to that in the future!
In the infamous words of Matt Colville, the bad guys want to win. I tend to run my monsters and bad guys that way. I dont run them as metagame knowledge or anything like that, and I try not to make it personal to me. But the bad guys wanna win to! And it makes it more realistic as well when you have villains who plan, or who use their resources to gather info on the party, or ambush them or prep magic items or traps.
I think a villain style is useful when you're making character moments with nemeses involved. You can really make the nemesis dangerous and recurring if you make them try their best to undermine the characters, within reason.
Great 2-part videos! Been playing D&D for so many years now, surely I have been practicing each and every one of these DM styles at one point or another, depending on my state of mind at the time. Nowadays I try to stick to the Narrator style mostly, your informative content has informed me as to why I feel its best serving the game I want to play. But there is always room for another style to take over if you don't think about it too much and just do what feels right in the moment (when playing or preparing).
As an actor style GM, I'd actually encourage you to try out a few modules that interest you. See where the restrictions of the module can work as a way to laser in your actor skills where they can really shine. I also believe that restrictive parameters can really help creative thinking
A good way to describe a good GM-PC is like Gandalf in Tolkein's works. I've actually had a GM take this approach before, creating a small ensemble of "significant NPCs" who stick with the main party at certain moments of the story. When they're present, these NPCs function more like GM-PCs, being just another member of the party who helps in combat and aids in driving the plot. When the party starts to dally, or needs a helping hand, Gandalf comes back from the off-screen to offer advice and counsel, or just to shove the players back in the right direction. Many people won't agree with it, but at one point myself and another player split from the party to go into a mine and find some rare ore that we needed to craft some magical weapons while the rest of the party dealt with a puzzle temple across town. In order to help us with what was effectively a dungeon, on a split party of 2(myself as a ranger and our sorcerer), the GM sent her GM-PC Bard along with us. Needless to say splitting the party for a dungeon was a BAD idea, and our sorcerer found himself unconscious with 0 HP at the feet of a phase spider while I was tangled fighting off a Troll. Now, I had no fire magic, so I wasn't going to beat this troll any time soon, and our sorcerer had two turns maximum before the spider would kill him for good. However, the GM-PC Bard who we had left behind at the entrance so we could sneak through the mine, appeared in the chamber in time to distract the troll, giving me enough time to kill the spider on the sorcerer's back. The sorc was still down, but stable due to the poison damage that knocked him out. Now, with the bard's heat metal spell and my ranger's twin swords, we made short work of the troll, with my ranger doing his best Legolas impression and mounting the troll's back, leaving one sword in as a handhold while the other sword kept stabbing. Needless to say, that gandalf-style GM-PC saved two of our characters from an untimely and anticlimactic death by appearing at the right time. Sometimes having a GM-controlled constant NPC is a blessing and not a curse.
A note to my players I am not the villain dm. No matter how brutal the session was, I want you to win. I want you to overcome the inconceivable odds stacked against you. Thanks for the awesome session last night. Your failure has given me an absolutely brilliant plot line to explore. I hope you enjoy the coming hell Long live the pigeon hero
Your part 1 explained the problems our group has been having very clearly, I simply run a different game than they want. They want story, I want combat, and I made the stories secrets to be found out, meanwhile the players want the campaign to focus on them and hand deliver them the stories and quests.
I have never seen a Villian GM done right, EVER. It's always been the kind of GM that wants to win against the players, and sulks and pouts every time the PCs overcome the encounter. I'm also a PC that likes story and character interactions, and I could not care any less about whether I "win" or not. They are also the Hardcore, Old School types of GMs where if there isn't a character death every encounter, then the GM failed- Even if the PCs didn't even ask for that level of difficulty. I had a prospective GM ponder about how to "win" against us, and I straight up told him that I'd just straight up leave the table and not play rather than deal with that. This deflated his ego, and that was never brought up again.
Watching the segment of villain DMs what came to mind was building it into the campaign itself. Have some powerful entity teleport players to an unknown dungeon and make them go through a gauntlet as a test for something.
Because a villain GM done right is called just a GM. This video is very misleading. A villain GM will ALWAYS want to win and be a general asshole. If you're not, then you're not a villain GM. Challenging your players with very hard/deadly encounters isn't being a villain. A villain GM is unfair and doesn't want to challenge, they want to tpk.
I'm a bit of an author world builder. My style to forum rp interest checks is to put out what I like and throw the line out for people who would be interested in it. But my style usually is to create a framework that's loose, but still there. Enough to be a plot but also to take place wherever my pc's go. But I'm also a dutiful gm who focuses on pleasing and making sure my pc's are having fun. There are times when I've thought, "X" sounds so cool, but refrained from doing so, because it didn't involve my players. And that is what I think all gm's should be doing. The common thread in all your examples really is, the gm is focused on themselves and not their players. They're not crafting their acting for the players or their world for the players. This 2 parter really helped remind me of what I mustn't do, in order to create a good experience for the players who joined my rp's and stuff with me. (:
I started off absolutely loving my current GM, but our group seems a bit... off... recently - and I couldn't figure out why. Until I heard your description of the the Author and Actor, and it was exactly right!! As new players, we were all entranced with his voices and descriptions and this detailed world and storyline - but now we often find ourselves like "wait, what are we doing here? why are we doing this? what were we talking to this guy about? well, we obviously are supposed to go here next, so that's where we go". So at least understanding that I think will help me be a better player within his GM style. I have never GM'd, but want to try running a one-shot soon, and being a noob I will probably lean towards Modular/Rules Interpreter, but now that I know that, I want to try to remember some flexibility and add in some Narrator.
We have just launched our Discord channel where you can chat and ask us and other awesome role players around the world questions and chat about all things role playing: discord.gg/greatgm
but Household vinegar consists almost entirely of water, but with some acetic acid molecules dissolved in it. In general, dissolving stuff in water makes it more dense.
Another one: Developer GM. This GM is not just running the system, but is also creating it. I run a completely homebrewed system, so I am one. The way I do it is a bit of a mix between rules interpreter and galactic force that actively rewrites the book in between sessions based on rulings and results, but in general running a game is as much about collecting data to refine the system further as it is about the campaign or session. Two of the more obvious weaknesses though are that I'm thinking about a lot of stuff outside the immediate game and am trying to probe the rules themselves for weaknesses or doing a certain thing simply because I want to see if it needs tweaked instead of focusing on making the immediate game more enjoyable, so player experience can suffer because it's taking a backseat to other goals. It's also hard to set up appropriate challenges because I don't necessarily know how whatever new thing I'm testing will work out. Maybe my completely unfair combat that I don't expect to be beatable turns into a cakewalk, maybe my moderately challenging one is completely overpowered, and I'm always a bit villain-like in that I'm constantly trying to kill my players but only just barely so I can figure out what an appropriate challenge even is. I'm completely upfront about this to my players and they're cool with it but I know that my plots and scenarios are generally weak and contrived, things get railroaded (though I try to play it comedically, stuff like "you run into a conductor who gives you a map with train tracks and an arrow"), and a wonky feeling is the baseline. Overall though I do find actually GMing a series of one-offs or mini-campaign to be more fun for all than saying "here's what's being tested, now let's do it".
This is kind of how I do it. I run a homebrew system based loosely on some of the basic rules of GURPS. The stats and abilities of every animal, monster, and NPC are designed by me. Last session I nearly beat the party to a pulp with half of the encounter I had prepared. In a forest they landed in a halfway underground place covered in mushrooms. The shrooms let out spores every time a loud enough sound was made. I had those spores deal 1 damage to all ability scores on a successful HT roll (basically constitution), and 2 on a failed. The danger from the spores escalated so much more than I had expected. Even before the combat some of my players were quite weakened. I had prepared a treant as damage dealer and a dryad as support, but I ended up only sending out the dryad. With it shrieking both on its turns and when it took enough damage at once, it was a formidable enough opponent alone, when supported by the mushrooms. The battle didn't change course before the group healer managed to roll a clutch 6 with 3d6 to cast a cleansing spell on herself. Due to her very lowered IQ score she had to roll 6 or less to succeed. After that she managed to turn it around. ... Anyway, it's easy to unintentionally overwhelm your players, when you're freestyling the encounters and introducing new mechanics that you haven't tried out. I liked the way the environment worked here, but it was way too harsh.
This is the kind of GM I'd need to ask for help from to actually implement my worlds due to the sheer level of difference between the rules I've established while writing them and standard D&D. In most cases it might even be easier to try and work off of a different system as a whole.
For the love of gygax, I can never get encounter balance down myself. I’m finally starting to accept that, and it adds a touch of realism I suspect. Life, especially for an adventurer, isn’t filled with perfectly balanced encounters. Some moments we were dreading turn out to be non factors. Challenges that should have been trivial end up as long standing nightmares that take months or thousands of dollars to deal with. These manner of moments come with the territory of adventuring in a maniacal magical world.
Well, you just summed me up as well. I'm actively creating my own game/system whilst GM'ing it to our group in a pro-longed "play test" campaign, essentially and this fits the bill really well. System is loosely based on the narrative dice from FFG. Cheers!
Done that one myself! Well, I wasn't the only one creating the system, the players were too, sometimes shooting ideas to me that I'd be like "Yeah, that's a good way of handling this, yeah I'll do that." I don't tend to have those kinds of plots though, but the "running the system and creating it at the same time, adjusting things fairly often based on data collected in game or occasionally to course correct something that ended up being completely broken" is spot on.
Id like to say that firstly this little series does a very good job at outlining alot of truths in the tabletop world. It also effectively inspires introspective thought is to how we GM. I can only imagine in playing in one of this man's game. I for one appreciate an actor GM because it requires an extra layer of skill. I wonder if he will reflect this concept for player types aswell.
I’m probably a narrator now, but my first few attempts were covered in this video. Last campaign I was made the villain the villain, to which I responded “ok you guys want a villain?’ They ended up loving the ending and I’m sitting here shivering every time I hear that pirates name...
I would put myself somewhere between Not-A-GM and Galactic Force, with a touch of Author. I have some over arching plan for the story and world, but the world doesn't need the players to be involved. I let that story exist, and then run what ever it is the players end up doing, leading the sessions themselves to be greatly unplanned and occasionally intersecting with the core plot. I like to run this way because it allows me to create strange situations that don't always have to be related to the plot going on.
The best trap I have seen goes like this, the party enters a room, in this room the party sees a tornado blocking the path ahead, and while the party tries to figure out how to get past it, they suffocate because the tornado was an illusion and the trap a vacuum chamber
I'm a modular DM, but never have run one all the way through. I've finally gotten a longer campaign going and I've found that as we go through the module, the more I start to modify it to add on themes that might be relevant to the player's characters. I once ran a homebrew campaign, but I didn't know what to do with it and it eventually went nowhere. I think if I were to homebrew another one, I would have each of my player's create characters and describe their hometowns and incorporate that into the world building. Build up the lore of the world as the PCs explore and hear about things. I think that might be fun and could be the next direction I take my style.
I'm mostly a player and narrator dm, with some author and actor thrown in. For all of us in our group, our favorite part of gaming is making a character and watching that character grow as they bond with the other characters. Technically, I suppose none of us want to dm, but occasionally my one friend and I come up with story and world ideas we think would be fun to take characters through. I'm working hard to become a better dm (hence watching videos like yours!) but I will never not be a player dm. Nearly all games I'be ever played in, even from before starting to dm, had dm with characters. It' kind of become expected at this piont.
The actor can be very effective if you reserve it for a "cutscene" in the aftermath of a major series of PC actions. I remember planning out a monologue from an orc captain where I ACTUALLY tore my shirt open as part of the "performance." In another I managed to shock the entire party in the aftermath of their rescue mission where their NPC commander sliced open a baby (they didn't realize it was a dummy) to retrieve smuggled microfilm. Choosing WHEN to act is important for making a memorable campaign.
Absolutely love the show. I think it has improved my game and my work honestly. One minor thing vinegar is 80 percent water and 20 percent acedic acid and is 0.05g pee cc denser than water alone. Actually easier to float in than fresh water.
I am mostly a narrator with a bit of author and galactic force (simulationist) mixed in. I became a not-a-GM when I tried running a homebrew sandbox style game while in grad school. I started off with an overarching plot, an outline of things I wanted to do, a map, preplanned sessions, etc. I quickly became a not-a-GM as I ran out of pre-prepped scenarios and didn't have time to make new ones. The campaign fell apart as I was focused on writing my thesis.
Seems like I am a moduler/rules interpreter type who also wants to be a player. Great thanks for helping me recognize it's actually not a bad thing. I just try to give my players the intended experience.
I'm primarily an Author. I use my own homebrew world. I twist the narrative based off what the players make and do. Definitely have a bit of actor in me too, but it helps to bring my NPCs to life and the players become more invested. Something I've learned to do, that has helped me grow as a GM and improved the games I run, is asking my players what they thought of a session. I don't ask everyone together or after every session, but every once in a while, I ask a player what they like and what they didn't like. This has allowed me to customize the games so everyone can enjoy them. So regardless of your GM style, if everyone is enjoying the games, then you are being a great GM.
I can't help but feel that I'm an Author and a sort of Simulator, but not quite the Simulator described here. I enjoy developing a world with it's heroes and villains, each with their respective motivations and plotlines, then let it all run in the background. The players become the "Unknown Entity" in the story, the wedge in the bad guy's plans and maybe the allies/reinforcements that the heroes sorely needed. Regardless, I focus a lot on making the players feel like they've stepped in a world that was already running and that their actions destabilize the other players in the plot.
Is there an opposite of the Actor? The Theatergoer? There is nothing I love more than engineering an extended improve scene between characters acting out their roles so intensely that I can just sit back and watch. It's hard to shut up sometimes, but it's wonderful to get to watch this improvised play springing out of the world you made for them.
I once played under an awful grandstanding "Actor" GM. The performances were powerful, but he was unable to ever move the action along. He is now an actor and scriptwriter.
I'm not really any of these archetypes. I'm more of what I would call a Designer: I spend a lot of time preparing for specific actions by the players, assuming that they will take said courses of actions. I often have multiple prepared outcomes. But when it actually begins, I get an element of stage-fright and entirely forget what I had planned, tossing my notes out the window and completely derailing the campaign, inevitably becoming the "Not-A-GM" and wasting all of my preparations. However, this is only from my first GM experience, and I have quickly realized that I'm going to need a lot more notes, and I need to remember to use them. Wish me luck for round two.
I sometimes find myself as a villain GM (although I never actively killed a PC), but I found a great little tool to mitigate the 'problem' of my NPCs being beaten by the players. Have a villain NPC that YOU as the GM dislike. Not the design or motivation, but the personality. Model them after a bully you knew, a celebrity you despise or just a general idea, you dislike. This way, when the players kill the villain, you can cheer with them! :) Also works if you are a player and want to laugh at your PCs misfortunes.
I spent a week designing a trap with a round tube tunnel and a huge stone ball that had 1 inch clearance that I thought was a sure TPK. One of the players put a steel wedge in front of the ball before triggering the release and of course, the ball was stuck.
I'm a very player centric GM, with hints of a narrator and almost certainly the Actor (the note taking element really hit home). I have a large plot in mind but I'll drop most of my plans at the drop of a hat if it will make for a cooler story for the players. I also absolutely love the story-potential component of a galactic force GM. It can often lead to interesting story developments because you allowed the system and rolls to generate your story, all it takes is the skill to notice the opportunity moments, it also makes it look like you've planned it all along for the players. And that is always true. A type of GM I think you forgot to mention is a "numbers" GM. I know that role because I sometimes slip into it when I'm in a hurry or I want to hit a particular timing too much. What a Numbers GM is one who will simply say "success/failure" "You take 12 damage" "7 damage kills the enemy". Completely forgetting to actually DESCRIBE the events. I hate it whenever I notice I slip into that role, it definitely makes things go faster and is sometimes a necessity if you don't want combat to take 5 hours on complex combat.
I've done Observer GM before. It was in response to my players. They spent far more time interacting with each other than anything else and so I set up complicated socio-economic environments with lots of political intrigue. When they occasionally took action the results of their actions could be massive, even where I could explaine the result in a sentence or two. Sometimes the players would play it beer and pretzels. Other times they would treat the game very seriously. I sometimes felt more like a referee, there simply to say if something worked the way that they expected or not.
The four in the first step I could recognize myself in all (with Galactic Force a bit more), in this I couldn't. I have run modules but have never struggled with going off the rails with the players there or leaving parts out cause they didn't fit the group. While I want it to be challenging for the players I still want them to win, just have to fight for it, a great scenario tension wise is when the players almost died but pulled through, and I try to go for it cause without tension and threat combat and traps are just filler (I personally hate it when I play and feel there is no risk involved, have had games where I've started seeing how death was out of the question and just got completely bored). The Player GM is probably the furthest away of all from me, and one I should probably work to be better at, I struggle with having NPCs be too much of Tag-alongs for adventures when the players drag them on and usually put them too much in the background to the point where I may forget them completely until a player asks if the sell-sword they brought shouldn't at least try to help in the fight.
Watched both of the videos. As it happens, I combine Galactic Force with Narrator and Author, but also have some elements of Actor, but I combine them in an unusual way - I usually only run in settings that I've already worldbuilt to a good degree, but I always leave some elements vague, so that there is room to even have a plot to begin with. I view the players and the PCs as different: the players are important, as without them there wouldn't be a game, but the PCs are not necessarily important to the plot unless they choose to be. I usually run darker, grittier games, so simulationist elements usually go hand-in-hand with the themes, including things like keeping track of resources, as there's definitely tension when those resources start running low and they aren't finding more of them. Everything the PCs do has consequences, some of them good, and many of them bad. But while I've had a number of PCs die for sheer stupidity (worst one being a PC who died in the first session because they decided to go for a swim in a lake they could see hundreds of wraiths swimming in - they failed a strength check and promptly drowned), I've also had PCs who became important in universe for their deeds. The only thing is, I do present a world where, at the end of the day, the world will keep turning even if the PCs die. Or worse. (And that worse has happened on more than one occasion. Usually because a PC did something they shouldn't have, and didn't listen when I asked "are you sure?") Unlike most Galactic Forces, I'm not 100% impartial between players and NPCs. I'll admit, I, on rare occasions, do skew a die roll here or there in players' favor if I feel they've earned it, though on rare occasion I've also put it in NPC favor if a player's been rolling good a lot lately and I want to create tension. (Never any skewing that I think might get them killed, usually just enough to make it so they won't walk away unscathed. Which helps the kind of tone I like to have at the table.) Additionally, while I do prepare, I don't prepare to the same degree as Galactic Force. I'll do research if I know the next session will warrant it (had players decide to have their NPCs fly to Romania, so I spent the next week researching Romanian history and geography in preparation for it), but most of the time I'm playing with little more than a handful of statblocks, names, and the occasional passage in front of me. Why? Because players are unpredictable little buggers, and I love that about them. I could come up with 20 different things the players could do, and they'd inevitably do a 21st thing I didn't plan for. As a result, I keep those things vague, and generally let my players do what they want, but never without consequences. I improv a lot of things, though I'm not quite as good with voices other than a select few. I can grand-stand as well, but I can't improv a grand-stand (usually that's the passage or two I'll have written ahead of time.) And where I differ from the Author one strongly is the delivery, I think. I'll gladly worldbuild the crap out of the setting, but 99% of the NPCs won't know the details. Hence, players never get an info dump from NPCs. I prefer presenting the information in other ways. E.g. if they find a castle that was the scene of an old battle, rather than an NPC telling them the history, I'll describe the worn down battlements, the rusted weapons and old skeletons, dried brown stains across the masonry, and perhaps an old, rotting ladder resting against a wall, and discarded battering rams, and let the PCs work the history out for themselves. If they show interest, I can suggest to them to research it later, in a library, and then, and only then, will I provide info dumps. Probably with a sanity check. XD I think, the most important I ever had the PCs starting out in the world was a campaign where they were one of six noble families ruling a backwater colony of a greater empire, but the campaign itself centered on that particular colony on that particular section of the continent, so it did still leave them important. Thing is, like most of my plots, I set it up that the plot happens whether the PCs choose to involve themselves or not. Though in this case I gave them quite the incentive from the beginning - "You all begin tied up in ropes about a ship. You've been captured by pirates..." When they got back, they found someone else on the throne, and a string of other things wrong with their fiefdom, all of which were plothooks to a conspiracy which itself was a portion of the greater, overarching plot. That plot was happening with or without them, but by investing in it, they could change it. I didn't set an ending in stone or anything, just more general "if this happens, this other thing will always happen". That way the players shape the ending. At the end of the day, I'm there to tell a story. Just not generally a heroic one. I'm here to tell a story where someone's probably going to die horribly or go insane, and we'll all have a fun time laughing about it afterwords. After all, it's not a good game unless something crazy happens that you'll be talking about for ages!
You forgot an important DM style: Noob. I took on this role way too quickly, and I find myself relying on player knowledge more than I should. Of your list, I'm definitely the most like narrator. I like the story, I like bringing in player input, and I like to bend rules, or change numbers behind the scenes to protect players. I also fear putting stuff down on paper, because I know that makes it harder to be fluid with the story. However, I did force myself to make a map. I gave it to the players, and this was a compromise. I created the physical world (admittedly, not super detail, but enough to show what is there), and then let them decide where to go. From there, I could put in what I wanted into the place they went. I had a villain set up they were going to face. Was it an orc or an elf? That depended on where they went. So...I'm far off from modular, but trying to get myself more that way. Also, I didn't realize that straying from the rules/hard stance on numbers took the danger out of the game. Now I feel I need to kill someone off, just make them feel that.
Im definitely a narrator-player. I very much prefer to be a player, I like immersing myself into awesome heros. I want to be that sneaky assassin rogue that kills a guard without being seen, I love that. My only problem is, im the only one out of my group of friends that really knows how to DM. A couple other friends of mine know how to run modules but not a real story or anything. I kinda hate it. I like being a DM but I hate ALWAYS being a DM. Im so damn glad I discovered roll20 like 2 weeks ago lol. Although I've realized you come across a LARGE variety of DM's. I just really want to play in one of your campaigns lol the amount of story and how much you allow the players to flesh out their characters are brilliant.
All my Non GMs keep up the good work, everyone needs a fun break once in a while including the GM...even if I run what is basically the dark crystal with puzzles (the greatest complement I've ever received). I do have too stop myself from making things to dark...but no one I know and like wants to play a full dive vampire the masquerade with me (I do a lot of awareness work so I'm generally very good at sensitively conveying difficult subject matter, but it does tend to bleed through).
Honestly, as a GM I'm not sure where I fall on your list. My focus when I plan is to make each session interesting and fun, and to make the actions of the PCs have consequences (positive and negative). I might have an overarching plot idea, but I don't set anything in stone that hasn't been presented to the players. I prefer sandboxes and to lean into whatever the PCs are wanting to do, then I prepare to continue along those lines so long as they are having fun. My weaknesses are description for sure. Often I'll forget to mention something, but I'll usually adapt. My players probably don't linger around or chat with NPCs as much as others, and that may have to do with my own pacing affecting theirs. I often skip most of travel, all uninteresting bits, pay little attention to inventory etc. But I also always have a few small one-shots prepared in case they go a little far off for me to improvise so then they run into one of these scenarios. I spend most of my time prepping between sessions based on what they did before, not before I start the campaign though.
Based on the presented GM types, I'd say that I'm an Author when I'm not at the table or actually in the process of running a game. It's fun for me to fiddle around with game worlds, especially the people who live in them, as something I do in my spare time. When it actually comes down to running a game, though, I take a deliberate deconstructionist approach to everything I've written, yanking it out of its authorial context and slapping it down, exposed and raw and completely at the mercy of the players to do with as they please. Strangely enough, the more I deconstruct my own settings (such as using a "grimdark alternate future" of what I've already written), the more fun my players tend to have. That, I guess, is the big hallmark of my style: I'm focused on everybody having fun, me included. My fun comes from making up stuff, while I see my players' fun coming from metaphorically (usually!) breaking the stuff I make. In that vein, when I make up stuff, I deliberately leave holes in its construction, places where I haven't filled in anything beyond the most basic information about a region, places where I can say stuff like "this is the place that's based on Western European fairy tales," or "this is where you'll run into Southeast Asian-themed monsters," and then fill in the rest jointly with my players as it seems most appropriate for the flow of the story being told. Add in some random dice rolls as well, to make things uncertain for everybody, keeping all of us from getting too complacent, and we're ready to go. Naturally, whatever happens, I always keep a lot of note paper handy to write it all down. Though I do my very best not to let it show, huge amounts of the game-behind-the-game is based on these very detailed notes, including the hard math of bookkeeping in order to make sure that the players get appropriate rewards for what they do, neither too much, nor too little. If I ever neglect this important part of the game, then the rest of my style rapidly breaks down, as the lack of attention soon starts to erode each aspect of the game, one by one, until it degrades into sound and fury, signifying nothing. My biggest flaw as a GM is that I'm a terrible, terrible Villain. I mean that I'm not very good at honestly trying to kill my players, and after a while, a lot of them start to catch on. For most of them, this is a good thing, since it helps them realize that we're all working together to tell a story, and their characters are the pivotal focus of said story, so their deaths need to really mean something, if they happen at all. For some, though, especially those with power playing tendencies, they regard my playstyle as a cakewalk in motion, and take full advantage, then sit back with smug boredom after they've destroyed whatever challenges I'd set up. When this happens, I start to get annoyed, and then shift gradually into steadily more nasty villainous mode, making my style more and more metagame-based. Soon the game starts to revolve around the conflict of me trying to compete against these sorts of players. This tends to make the game fun for the players who like these sorts of challenges, since I really can be a "good" Villain when I put my heart into it...and miserable for everyone else, including myself. Eventually, if I fall into this sort of mode, I tend to just call an end to a campaign, start a new one, and not invite the player who got me into that mode back to the table ever again. To close, I'd say I'm an Author away from the game, a mix of Narrator and Not-A-GM when I'm actually playing (or planning to play) with real people, and have a Rules Interpreter foundation to my style so as to try and keep things as fair as possible, and also to add in a few random elements that keep everybody guessing, myself included. I stink at being a Galactic Force, because I simply cannot bear to let events keep going when the players aren't there to get involved with them, and I actively hate, hate, hate being a Villain, because it sucks the heart and soul out of my enjoyment. I think I should work on being more of an Actor, because I get very self-conscious when I try, but think that it might make the game more entertaining. * The worst GM I played with (though this is a short list, since I usually end up as the guy running games; I have trust issues, and I'm quite picky about who I will let have that kind of power over me) was a Galactic Force Villain with a strong Rules Interpreter element, who tended to take few to no notes. Stuff kept happening, whether we, the players, involved ourselves or not, and everything was stacked against us, constantly pushing us to work harder and prepare to pit ourselves against the next challenge...without actually knowing what that challenge would be, especially since the GM was prone to metagaming so that we would almost without exception encounter something for which we hadn't prepared. The end result of this game style left me uncertain, fearful, and stressed out, not knowing when and where the next awful thing was going to happen, but knowing for certain that there was nothing I could do about it. I might have a temporary victory on a tactical level, but because events were going on far outside my sphere of influence, there was nothing I could do to impact the strategic level of the game, or whether I could get a "happy ending" through my actions as a player, which left me feeling insignificant and unfulfilled. While I did learn the rules well, and was able to develop some strategies for the game that I thought were quite kick-butt, and proved highly effective even when the odds were stacked completely against us, I didn't have any satisfaction from these little victories, and eventually just had to quit the game in order to save myself from unnecessary suffering.
i'd say i'm a mix of Author and Narrator, i do a tiny bit of acting with NPC's just to make them memorable, so they enjoy going to the merchant who's become their mate over the course of the campaign, just to hear his voice sometimes.
#3 OMG YES! Im cursed and can only find those on roll 20...3 sessions in and nothing hapens. It amazes me how they can stretch a 5 minute conversation with an npc over a 1,5 hour period. You trying to retell the tale of that "adventure" is something like: we heard something happened at Theatre Of The Mind Park, we drived to the park, we spoke with officer I DONT KNOW ANYTHING, and we found a bloodstain. Wow! i cant wait for episode 2. Me: can we have an encounter next time? or a map or some images, tokens, encounters, anything? GM: i dont use Roll20 when i use Roll20....i like to focus on RolePlaying.
I find there is a common theme among most of these "styles", especially the ones you don't like, and it's that it usually revolves around GMs that are all ego. Be it the villain, the actor, the worldbuilder... it's like your perception of someone who takes the mantle of GM is that they like to be the most important person in any room, so their "style" just basically makes their worse self take over. Being good at acting doesn't mean you have to take over the entire show, you can do a million voices and keep it concise so that players have fun and feel compelled to do so themselves. You can be a villain and give your players incredible challenges, be tricky and an absolute bastard and still always keep it fair and within the parameters of the rulebook - we used to have a DM that would turn into a villain when playing Call of Cthulhu one shots and he would be absolutely merciless but fair. Even not-a-gm works great with systems like honey heist and I've been pushed into this sort of light hearted mentality before by a group of players that just wanted to unwind after work and have fun rather than get an interesting challenge or plot. Ultimately... sure, some "styles" lend themselves to potentially bad situations more often than others but I don't see most of these as inherently bad as long as the GM remains humble and focuses the experience around what players want, not what they want. Again, ego seems to be the problem with your interpretations, not the style.
I love the wonder of the discovery of being player but I enjoy to gm a one shot on occasion but I do think it's a hard job. I am grateful that my friends have a fantastic gm.
The Player GM combined with a Narrator or Author style could be fun. Also, it could allow for a campaign to have multiple GMs. Yet this requires players to be aware of the world and should be done after doing one campaign within the world that you set up.
I'll say I'm a mix of a narrator, author and player. Though I've personally forced myself to only play a support PC as my character so my players can enjoy the game and I don't take too much limelight because he's just support and tends to have very limited combat capabilities or generally limited and focused to healing or buffing so I'm helping the players and they can enjoy my world I make and it keeps my ego in check. Many of my players tend to enjoy my games so I'd say it's pretty successful
4:50 This isn't true... Vinegar is about 5% denser than water (quick google search), so if anything floating would be easier. The point of the example still stands haha
My former DM fits the not the dm would actually explain a lot especially as he couldn't keep his story straight and thought nothing about co-opting another setting despite that shouldn't happen without checking first. Closest I got to this was involving the sidekicks of the rogue and an npc dragon event. They had to rescue one of those sidekicks and the dragon part was intended to show their foes could respond to their actions. Don't consider them particularly good, but I didn't let them take the spotlight as they were merely to advance the plot and the players' actions were far more important.
Vinegar is a water solution of acetic acid and as such it's actually somewhat more dense than water. But I like the way you think ^^. Alcohol tho - I'm so stealing this one for my next horror.
Last session i put in a room a really complicated trap that looked like the key to open the path, but when "solved" it exploded. They COMPLETLY fell for it... i just laughted for the next ten minutes straight!
The reason I know I'm not a Villain is because I spent two weeks working on a high level dungeon that was meant to really challenge the players, as it was effectively the penultimate boss of a 6 month campaign. The party is split and goes through a handcrafted dungeon that I built in Minecraft to better show them what they're seeing. There were timed traps that needed to be shut off by the other half of the group and neither could communicate with one another. It was difficult, but they got through relatively fine. They get to the roof of the dungeon and find themselves in an amphitheatre. On stage are two men, and they give some exposition before the fight begins. The party is holding their own, but they're also not really much damage at all. It's looking like it's gonna be a slog until one of the players manages to hit the bigger of the two bosses, which is the first time it's happened all fight. I look at his stat block to alter his HP and... There's nothing written in. He's supposed to have 350ish HP but there's nothing, and I hand rolled his hit points myself. I can't say, "Hey, wait a second, lemme roll his hit points up for a bit real quick." It would ruin the moment. So I laugh and say, "As the edge of your sword bites into his armor, finally stroking true, it merely passes straight through him. Roll a Will save." The outcome is irrelevant, but I just didn't wanna see a nat 1. "Uhhh... 28." "A sudden clarity comes to you: he was never real. He's merely an illusion. As it turns out, (main boss) has spent the past 3,000 years atop this spire. In his loneliness and constant memory of his brother, he eventually manifested an illusory vision of him so real that others could see and hear him, too." "Wait, so I can go back to full HP since he wasn't real, right?" "No, because, as far as you were aware when you got hit, it was very much real, so the damage is real. Good try, though." I ad-libbed on the spot and saved the day. I totally could've just put in whatever number I wanted, but felt that it was fate that had intervened and undone my saved progress. They managed to win the day, only to spit in my face and ask when the campaign was gonna end, demanding that it ended soon. So I just sighed, shrugged, and gave them the most unclimactic rendition of the end. "The artifacts you've gathered lift out of the sky and combine into a new god, who plunges his sword into the back of the lower god of destruction, casting him out of reality and restructuring the heavens."
I think I'm a cross between Modular and Narrator. I'm running modules because I like them and because I'm still a learning DM, but my inspirations are firmly Narrators and I've been bending the modules to fit the story the players want to hear.
I love to be a GM but love to play just as much if not just a bit more. I do have a few GMPCs but try not to use them if I can help it. Most of the time I use them to help get things back on track, like helping them figure out how to get past a certain obstacle or if the whole party gets caught or most does and help to free them or to give sound advice. But I try to let the players run through the story with as little intervention on my part.
I try to not be any extreme. Before I start a campaign I prefer to do some intense world building, and come up with some grand stories to tell. But once we get playing though I will present "my story" for them to pursue, ultimately it's up to the group where things go. But I have stories to fall back on, and a world already built so I can provide depth and character to the world without stepping on my own toes. Though I'm not afraid to add things as are needed. As for "Rules" I am of the mind that they are important groundwork. They provide the player stability. They have a good idea of what is possible (not accounting for actual magic) and can make choices based on that knowledge. That's not to say magic doesn't turn things on its head, both as a tool for me, but a "key" for the players to work around things in interesting ways. Death of the players can and will happen. It's like watching a show that you KNOW the main characters are in no real danger, you care less. If the players know they can die if they screw up, they put more thought into their actions. Now, I don't WANT them to die, and I will fudge things to avoid it sometimes, usually with some other serious detriment. In general I try to be a broad type of GM. Having lots of world, story, rules and structure, but flexible enough to do whatever is needed to have fun with the players and tell an overall interesting story. Until recently it was AD&D, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, 5th Dungeons and Dragons. I've run a small game in Cypher and am preparing for an Invisible Sun game, much more player story than GM story. Should be fun to really focus on the character stories and not just a grand one from me. Not to say I haven't done that, used to play with as few as 1 player. *laugh*
I have been a DM for over 30 years I am mixture of galactic force /narrator /author /rp. You left out the role play gm. The gm that lets the players truly become there character's and act accordingly. How i start my my campiagn's is to have a town/city with all npc planned out. Surrounding areas also planned out. 8 plot lines one for each possible direction the players may go. I let the player decide were they want to go. By what they find in town by talking to npc"s. I also give more exp for role play than combat. Even if they decline any of the plot lines then no matter were they go things are in place. The question I get most as a dm is "can i try/or do this" My answer is "I don't know can you. Try it and see." After about three session's they stop asking and just try stuff letting the dice decide.Also at the end of each session I ask the players how they feel about the game and any improvements that i can make. I ask about my dm'ing stile and across the the board i get stern but fair.
I’m the opposite of a villain. Well, save for the meta-gaming monsters to be dangerous part by homebrew ing the heck out of them so when the players beat them it still feels good to defeat that cr 1/2 monster that has been thrown at them in a group of 3 against 10 level 5 players. Let’s just say, when the chad wizard accidentally learns the power of a random red fungi with a vary painful toxic spear like top is very good for killing monsters, catapult becomes a deadly as all hell spell. That rebalanced grick was very much in pain for the next 10 seconds of it’s existence. The victory cry was glorious.
I feel as though I'm a narrator DM with hints of actor and author. The negatives of the author type are not things I think about typically but in my pursuit of being a better DM I think I'll cut back on a bit of it and lean more for narrating
The Not-a-GM is very accurate to my GM. His campaign can be very fun but since we are doing a sandbox it can be a bit much having no real throughline for the story.
Goddamn man. You were the Vinegar Villain.
Villainger?
I'm not usually "that guy," but your villain GM trap inspired me to fact-check it so that I could use a less-malevolent implementation of something similar.
Vinegar is, generally, as dense as water, if not a bit more. Outside of the terrible stinging from being totally submerged in a mild acid, it wouldn't be any harder to swim in than water would.
Something like a fine oil would be better; their lower density would result in a slow sink as the player frantically tries to swim. A pool filled with liquor would have them sink like a stone.
Sounds like your campaign needs to take place in "Totally not Russia." Where the rivers flow with vodka.
Glad I'm not the only one who fact-checked this.
My favorite that a GM did once in a one-shot thing (where the idea was kinda just finding silly ways to die) was a pit filled with whipped cream. The first couple of steps were on solid floor, but, whipped cream is slippery. One failed dex check later, and someone drowned.
Acetic acid (the distinctive component of vinegar) is slightly denser than water as a pure liquid (~1.05 compared to 1.00); when mixed with water, it appears to form solutions with intermediate densities (not always the case for every mixture of substances). Common household vinegar is widely cited at 1.01 with at least some of that coming from other chemicals present in the mixture.
So, yeah, with a higher density and significantly higher viscosity, a pool of malt vinegar would be, if anything, marginally easier to swim across than a similar pool of water, aside from the stinging (both from contact and from fumes).
Honestly, it wouldn't have mattered. He specified a "heavily armored individual sank to the bottom like a rock." If you're swimming while in heavy armor, it hardly matters what you're swimming in.
I think you've missed "The Observer" type of GM. They have some basics prepared, but they don't talk much and most of the time they just sit back and throw an enemy at the group, when things get too fast for them. 95% of the time - they won't try forcing an adventure on you and would only throw things, that the group are interested in / want to go exploring. A very chill style, though it can be boring for more active players, that love a good challenge / puzzle / mystery to handle.
"The Riddler" is a fun GM style too, mostly a variant Villain Author - riddles, puzzles, mysteries and plot twist that Shamalan would masturbate to is their forte. Pretty much anything you interact with in a GM world - would have something mysteries about it. It's always challenging and never obvious, though can be fun for people with IQ of four numbers or more :D
I'm mostly falling into your "Observer" type, but with a spice. I don't have neatly wrote story with exact locations and NPCs, just the idea about the outcome and major events. But for the most time, I let the PCs decide what they do, where they go, ask them what they want to do before presenting the story hooks, just to know, what the characters want, and then I sew my events into their actions. So they have this freedom of "we do whatever we want", but somehow they always end up in a story, that piece by piece adds up to my Grand Finale. So basically, we have a story running for more than a year now (with weekly 3-4 h sessions), and now they started to see the scheme that was going on the whole time behind their actions, while they were the ones who wrote ~75% of the story by talking to each other and saying what they think is the story and what they want to do with it. And I've just added my puzzles and mysteries to link the smaller blocks of stories to avoid the lack of challenge part, that you also mentioned.
And now the simple dream of my dwarf fighter-medic-lawyer-bartender (long story) to have his second tavern grew into a full fledged Old-God hunt (to cleanse his Castle owned 50-50 with a bard)
I understand that the four-figure IQ is hyperbole, but I don't think you understand just how hyperbolic it is - assuming the model of IQ as being normally distributed is still sensible that far out (which is highly suspect since there are at least a dozen people with recorded IQs over 200, when if the normal distribution applied, there'd be a less than 50% chance of there being anyone over 195 in the entire world) the world's population would need to be at least 10^350 to have a better than 50% chance of having anyone with a four-figure IQ. Put another way, it's more likely for someone to be struck by lightning seventy times over their lifetime than it is that there's anyone alive with a four figure IQ.
I think You don't know, that the IQ (especially above 17 years olds) is relative score, that You get if You measure, how far are you from the median. And the median is always set to 100, and the exact number You get is set according to the relative scores of the group. For example, there is a scale, that says, 100 is median, and the lowest score from the groups top 1% is 135, the lowest score for the top 2% is 130, and it goes like this. Because of the graph being Gaussian, more people will fit in the 5 score brackets near the middle part.
And because of the nature of this measurement, the IQ scores need to be re-adjusted periodically, and is hardly be able to apply to the whole of the world, as different places have different education, culture, society, wealth, etc...
So, anyone can have four-figure IQ, if I set the scale in that way.
10^350 looked like an interesting number, so I've researched it a bit. Mostly rarity scale to calculate ration across the chart. What I found out that on average - every 1 point in IQ increases the rarity of said IQ by 1.15-1.22 (lets ~it at 1.2 for convinience). In a sense, if you have 1/400 for IQ 95, for IQ 96 it will be a rarity of 1/480. And it gets more and more rediculous with every point thrown into IQ upon lvling up :D
I used the sheet here:
www.iqtestforfree.net/iq-score.html
For a base (100 IQ being a rarity of 50% or 1/2) and from here I also calculated the ratio, which I ended up using 1.2
Then I plugged the numbers into excel (because excel is love), so that I won't have to calculate big angry numbers on my own. And went wild with it :D
Just at 110 IQ - the rarity was already 1/12
At 120 IQ - 1/76
130 IQ - 1/474
140 IQ - 1/2939
150 IQ - 1/18200
At IQ of 198 - I've reached my first E, being 1/1,15E+08
12 IQ later at 210 - 1/1,03E+09
At 250 IQ - it was already at 1/1,51E+12
At 300 IQ - we are at 1/1,37E+16
At 400 IQ - we are getting some really big numbers with 1/1,14E+24
500 IQ - 1/9,41E+31
At 750 IQ - 1/5,87E+51
And FINALLY, at IQ of 1000 (first 4 didget number IQ) - we are at the nifty 1/3,67E+71 rarity!
Now all we need to do is find out, how much population we need in order for this rarity to become a 50%+ chance. Which is tricky, but a fun brain excercise for me. So lets go to basics. Lets say, the chance of there being a 100 or more - is 1%. How do we raise that to being 50%? We need to double our initial ammount of course, so it will be 200. Now any random number we pick - has a 50% chance of being a 100 or more. Same goes for 500, 1000 and so on. Sounds good? Good.
That said, we can try to apply it to our rarity. Which is 1/3,67E+71, of course :D Basically, what we need to do here - is to double our numbers (which, for the sakes of simplicty, let it be E+72, because I don't want to calculate... which I did anyway, 7,34E+71). That's in a perfect world situation, where statistics would work flatly.
Now, realistically - this is not the case here. Realistically it,s a 0,71zeroes1% chance, so we need to multiply it by (10^72)*7. So lets do that :D
Which gives us 2,569E+143 for there to be a good ~50% chance, that you are talking to someone with IQ of 1000. So yes, very close, even according to my loose approx, Mr rmsgrey, gg =)
@nohrjinn, every 8 years there is a balancing patch as far as I'm concerned. Also ABSOLUTELY FORGOT IT, thank you :D My calculations - are only applicable in a time freeze, when every individual test-taker is NOT influencing the overall data flow =)
It occurs to me that the Villain GM archetype is often similar to the big bad from every Power Rangers series. "Lets send the next batch of monsters at the heroes and hope they do better then the last one" only to be thoroughly displeased when they dont
In a way... that is every GM
Because we do keep sending stronger groups of monsters.
@@fhuber7507 Not really. Most GMs want their PCs to do well in the story, while the Villain GM wants their PCs to do badly.
A lot of these boil down to two GM Styles:
1.) The GM who is there to share the game with the players and have a good time together.
2.) The GM who is there to own the game and be the star of the show, regardless of the other players.
gosh, that scares me
Id say thats another dimension one could apply to the different types. Any of those described could be a gm that is trying to share the game, or be the star of the show.
Ex villain.
2.) Easy enough. He sees the players as opponents and therefore plays around with them. Basically a sadist with emotional pain.
1.) This is a bit more tricky, but lets take a board game that can easily end as an rpg, "space crusade". One player is the aliens, and the others are groups of marines. The alien player function very much like i gm, and the players as the good guys. Another example would be hero quest. You can easily be an inclusive gm by giving your players a deadly challenge, even as your are directly opposing them. The same way as a group of friends can enjoy games of competition. Its just very unusual for RP to be a competition game, but in a "villain" gm scenario, thats definitely the case for it to be a good experience.
This is of course bad if your players dont like that kind of playstyle, but thats true for all of the gm types.
I normally dislike this type of gming but i did it once with my group, because we wanted to run through tombs of horror, and we agreed that was more or less the only way to get the original experience from that module. Therefore we also agreed on them making min/max characters as long as they where inside 3.5 rule set.
Those two are not DM styles, those are DM experiences. They may be the general mindset, but I find the different subcategories very interesting. It's good to hear what others do and what players get out of it, n my opinion :)
I’ve had two GMs that I had different titles for, one I called the ‘Meta Mod’. They literally questioned everything your character did with ‘are you doing x and y because so-and-so said something out of character’, to the point where some players where afraid to investigate, explore and actually play, because the dm saw anything we did as ‘metagaming’.
The other we called the ‘child’. That dm started us off telling us we could have literally anything, magical and non-magical, only to then nullify the items with some rule they devised. They tried to plant someone into the group as a pc specifically to kill their character, constantly changed their mind on what they were going to do (from the main villain to the setting) because we found out even a word of their plan, and if things didn’t go their way, they’d blame us. My least favorite part about that specific dm is they would force players to do things they didn’t want to (ie; kill specific npcs), soul-bind items to us (like the deck of many things and then force us to draw whatever number of cards they choose all at once), make us roll for simple things (opening an unlocked door or a letter) and give them impossible checks.
I will openly admit I had learned something from both of those dms, and even though I didn’t enjoy my time at their tables. I’m still glad to have experienced them, even if all I got out of it was a list of ‘don’t do’s.
You missed the co-creator GM, who lets the players participate in the creation of npc's, worldbuild and storytelling
I hate those.
Pulls me out of the immersion.
@Andrew K I've actually just come out of a game like that where the players had far too much control. Essentially a player created a mini plot for their characters to go on where none of our characters had any interest as they were they for the main plot. The whole session was just being stuck in this museum for ages. I know you are thinking that the DM should've stopped this, but I don't think that they realised how long and tedious it would be. Player input is fine, but I would prefer a control cap purely for pacing and not getting side-saddled to a plot that has very little convenance for the rest of the party.
@Andrew K
Somehow it takes me out of the game as I realize that this is a fake world where anybody can change it. It's hard for me to describe fully. It's like playing on cheats or feeling like nothing really matters.
Instead of asking the GM "is there a manhole I can jump into?" the player just says "so I jump into the manhole that's next to me". Some love it but I just think that it's somehow destroying the world and makes it a fake creation. I can't get immersed then.
I am doing this for a group of more...rigorous storyinterested players. That is, I let them come with ideas and I may be inspired to add it to the world, somehow.
I don't let them GM themselves. That feels dangerous. Also, for the example given, if no other characters wanted or felt reason to go, why did they?
@@t.nysted4146 Yeah, letting players participate in creating plots and world, demands that you let the whole group participate not just let one player pulle everyone around after them.
I think there's a unique style that's somewhere between the narrator and the author: the Architect. Like the author, the architect plans an overall plot, but the focus is less on worldbuilding and more on political machinations, alliances and plans of villains and allies alike. And for the Architect the actions of the outsiders are planned - semi-scripted, but the story is, like the narrator, focused on the PCs. It has strong themes and a dramatic story focus. The Architect loves seeing the PCs interact with the architecture and they love watching how the PCs actions affect the architecture. Maybe the PCs don't notice things until they are too late as the PCs collide with the architect's plans. Maybe the PCs pick up hints and clues early on and start to act, causing a butterfly effect that changes the architecture. These are the GMs that write everything down and bring up details from a year ago back to haunt the PCs or hide clues about the true villain in notes the PCs find in the first few sessions. They are also the ones that have dramatic reveals planned months in advance, but will pull the curtain early if the PCs make smart choices. They tend to play long running games and enjoy a big scale to the drama.
Sir, I applaud you, that is me in a nutshell, with a little bit of actor in there cause I love describing things. Considering im an actual author, still though, love this view and this interpretation.
This is super-duper me my dude. I'm running my first campaign, and my players have put almost complete trust in a dude who was planning to betray them from the start. They got the dude's name and affiliation in the third session. They take on a mission which places them in the very city where they know this guy runs shit (he's a spymaster for their enemy). He introduces himself to them with a thinly-veiled nickname, because I wanted them to have a "gimme" clue to harken back on, and it's in character since he's an arrogant dick. The dude seems eccentric and frankly suspect, and he's ludicrously rich. They proceed to take on jobs for him in the meantime while they prepare their ultimate mission, and despite my giving them no real reason to, they begin to actually trust him. They proceed to LET HIM IN on EXACTLY what they are doing. They have contracted his HELP to provide bodies to execute the plan!
Like, this shit could not have gone more perfectly, I have given them clue after clue after oh-so-obvious clue, and while I wouldn't consider myself a Villain GM, I leave every session cackling because they have no idea what's coming for them. I only have to hold it in for another couple months, then I will be able to unveil this bullshit and even if it prematurely ends the campaign, I think I'll be satisfied lol.
YES. One of my happiest moments as a DM was successfully pulling the wool over my players' eyes in a campaign like this! I don't have a good poker face so I have no idea how I pulled it off, but it went brilliantly, the betrayal really smarted, and the revenge they did was perfect.
Thank you, sir! I was disappointed that he did not describe anything that was my style. This is definitely it. I am a bit of an actor, but not to the extent he describes. I give every NPC some character, but I remember them and write them down, including a description of their voice. I have build a world, but my world is full of holes. There is a skeleton made of major places and players, but I don't map out every street or possible cave. I want the players to fill the details (which means I often have to do some improvisation). I have a story, but it is only as dramatic as the characters make it and it only reveals itself as the players discover it. Things move around them, but never without them. Their actions matter, but so does their inaction.
My pleasure comes from how the PCs affect my world and how my world affects them. I spend more time after a session writing down what happened in it than I do before the session setting what will happen during it. (I find the latter mostly writes itself during the former)
Anyhow, great comment and thank you!
You just described my GMing style to a T. lol
I was a villain GM in only one circumstance, and I stand by it.
Out of all our players in our West Marches-style game, we had three who only cared about being optimized, and using their optimization to disrupt storylines without actual character motivation to do so. They were set up as a rogue, support ranger and cleric, and together they could defeat literally anything they came up against. There was no challenge they couldn't overcome. When a group wanted to go run a dungeon that had been built up over months of exploration and investigation, these three would show up, not know what they're going in for, steal all the loot and leave, and their skills combined defeated everything the GMs had in their pockets.
I built a monster that was designed to kill them, and a plotline that would steer them towards an inevitable fight. The encounter would take place in an enclosed space, the monster would have several AoE attacks that could counter the rogue's invisibility, and I placed this monster at the climax of a cthulhu-cult-takeover of a nation. Killing this thing would solve the conflict and save the day.
They didn't take the bait. The nation fell. That encounter wiped another numerically superior party of high-level casters.
When I built it, I only wanted to see these three taken down. That was my only goal. When they didn't run it, I was deflated, and then suddenly horrified that it's now someone else's problem.
My moment of villainy, metagaming and lust for victory over these three created an amazing moment for those who had been playing along with this storyline the whole way, and content for future players. Being a villain every once in a while is sometimes necessary.
After the fact, we had a little fun. We gave them the monster in its natural habitat in an OOC deathbattle. They won. It wouldn't have worked anyway.
VD913 damn
How did their optimization disrupt the narrative? Like how does being mechanically good stop the story? I don't understand.
TMAC King it gets boring. I was having a similar problem except it was mostly me. I didnt really know how to make harder battles besides more health and damage. Very recently Ive been trying to play smarter, have my enemies actually use feats and coordinate.
And now its a bit more interesting
TMAC King Im going to take a shot using my own experience. I first have to state that I am not against min-maxing, and that under certain circumstances, it can be a lot of fun, but I will go into more detail later in the post.
Let's say you have 5 players, 4 of which don't care too much about the rules (Players A, B, C, & D), and the other is a min-maxer (Player E).
The GM has a story-arc planned out where it would be most beneficial to the narrative, and fullfilling for the entire table, if Player B kills the villain of said story arc, due to them being a part of their backstory. However, all Player E wants to do is kill stuff and get loot and experience. In order to do this, they build their character in such a way that they can deal out nearly as much damage per round as the rest of the party, among other things (high AC, lots of proficiencies, etc...).
Due to this, Player E gets the killing blow on the villain. Player B feels deflated and disappointed that their character didn't get to kill the NPC that murdered their PC's entire family, village, and pet mongoose. Not because they are selfish or that they want to be the centre of attention, but because this has happened with Player E before in Player C & D's story arcs, and to Player B in another campaign. This causes Players B, C, & D to become less invested in the story, because they believe their PC's don't matter as much as Player E's. Player A just doesn't care either way.
Now let's say that all of the players within the campaign/one-shot are Min-Maxers. This can be okay if the entire table, especially the GM, is up for running that kind of game. If the GM is not much into MIn-Maxing, but more into RP & Adventuring, both sides of the table are more than likely going to be let down and frustrated. Any time the DM throws something at the players, the PC's carve through them like a Flame Tongue Greatsword through an Ice Mephit. The players want more of a challenge and more combat, however, the GM believes that will disrupt the pacing of the narrative.
As stated at the beginning of the post, min-maxing can be good under certain conditions. A person in my group is running a one-shot soon and we have all agreed that we can min-max a level 20 character. I believe doing that once in a while is beneficial to the group. It helps people be creative in their builds, learn more about the rules, and to let out any min-maxing tendencies in a healthy way. If you and your group like this as a constant way to play, all the more power to you!
Optimizing a character in a general campaign I find a different case, however. Optimizing a character is done after you have made your character's backstory, to make your character strong at the things they are good at, and yet the player knows that they and their PC have to work with the rest of the table/party. Min-maxing, under certain circumstances, can be toxic if they don't care about the other players' and GM's fun. The same can even be said for some hardcore roleplayers.
To summarize this post into one brief sentence." A session 0 will go a long way."
@@wuzzy41123it sounds like sometj8ng that cpuldve been role played put if it was a concern. Being optimized doesnt make you a bad player, being a bad player does. I'm sorry that you guys have had such negative experiences with players who optimize but like its not hard to be good at things and be challenged, or be good at things and also be a good party. None of that is mutually exclusive. It sounds like atleast the OP had trouble challenging his players. I'm also a DM so i know both sides of the screen, and I just dont think optimization is a huge deal.
The topic of GMPCs is one that is usually met with "ughhhhhhhhhhh", usually for the reasons you describe. But I've been doing it for more than a year now after our group's original gm bailed and I found myself taking over, but unwilling to part with the PC I had become attached to. And, well, we're still playing, so I must be doing okay. It helps that my system has skills for things like logic, observation, investigation. If my players can't figure out what to do, their characters roll a relevant skill check and if they pass I give them hints or tell them the solution depending on how well they've succeeded. I have my character roll too, and whoever passes, passes.
I think the GMPC is unfairly maligned and deserves its own video on how to do it well.
Some systems are also built around a GMPC. I'm currently playing a system called Hell on Treads, where the players play as the crew of a WW2-era tank, and the rules specify that the tank commander is to be played by the GM. Our GM is flying by the seat of his pants a little, but he's got enough of a plot worked out for it to work so far, not counting one player who hasn't really put in much effort with his character.
It can work if the character is a little more reserved and deliberately knowledgeable or unknowledgeable.
We recently had a day where half the group couldn’t show, and since we couldn’t move forward with the main campaign, I improvised a quick one shot in a not the forgotten realms sort of under dark. A few hours and a few random dice rolls later, they inspired a halfling village’s children to summon Khorne from the 40k universe, and Chaos Space Marines pour forth. They meet a wizard who’s raven familiar tells him of all that transpired, and he promptly escapes that plane, PCs in tow. A few more die rolls later, and we are set to either start up the Tomb of Annihilation or Dragon Heist modules, in the ACTUAL Forgotten Realms. Said wizard has ended up as my DMPC, but he serves as an accomplice to the mayhem that the players may cause.
Also I have to add in the Children of the Khorne pun. I’m not at all sorry for this.
I have a "GM PC" basically it's the fact that we were supposed to have 4 players and the one that left was going to have this cool synergy/story with the cleric, he was a fighter escorting him and they were brothers. The PC's loved the idea of these 2 so much and when the fighter dipped after session one, everyone was heart broken and he didn't do it justice.
So to respect their love for the character, I had him there anyway and played him. He didn't steal the adventure or combat from the PC's, but rather enhanced it and filled a roll that the party needed that he left behind.
It was also a blast to RP with the PC's and I didn't meta game with him, sure he had his own set of knowledge and skills and was a respectable fighter but he didn't break the game. Overall me becoming that fighter in the group saved the game from being bitter sweet when the player left the table.
BTW he left because his mother got cancer and later died so he was in no metal state to play :/
I'm not the kind of person to just accept PC/NPC divisions as existing ICly, so I have the tendency to turn NPCs into GMPCs. Not as a GM, but as a player, I'll charm the NPCs into unofficially joining the team.
I've converted villains into lovers, would-be enemies into friends, actual enemies into temporary allies, and bad guys into begrudging father figures. For some reason, ACTUAL allies are more stubborn about actually helping out, but I've managed that a couple times too. All because it made sense to my character at the time, and because the GM rolled with it.
For some reason, said friends I play with were surprised when I said I wanted to play a legitimate "face" character?
Like You I run a GM/PC but breaking it down there is litterally no function or knowledge in that PC. my PC don´t talk to strangers outside the party and is merely lending sword and skill to the party´s assistance, never taking point so the players have to do all that. who passes skillchecks passes and if my PC then pass, the other player get the information, that´s all. the reason i started having a GM-PC coz we are just a smal group, just 3 people, including myself. right from the beginning i said i only GM if some one else also would do from time to time, so i wanted a character for those times who the other players are familiar with too. The rules i use for my GM-PC are simple The character does know nothing, never takes point, just aid in battle and never talks to NPC´s unless the story needs it to move on. More i can´t do anyway since i am too busy keeping up with the players running around torturing each and everyone with pointy sticks just to see what happens ;)
Tbh. We got a pretty good gm. We used to give her a little crap for liking fanfiction, but it's apparently gives her a good story telling power. Great role player.
For villian GMs, I read somewhere when I first started DMing was "aim for 4 to 5 combat rounds regular 10 for a boss fight." If I hit that then I win
I'm kind of a module GM, as I love running modules. But I'm not strictly a module GM as I often spend weeks, if not months, changing the module completely to fit the ideas that I have. I also am a bit of the actor GM as the plan that I have at the beginning of the game and how things end up panning out are almost NEVER the same.
I don't mind a villain type GM if it's within reason. While I do think there is a certain level of fair play that needs to be expected, a tactical gm that can pull out some super deadly encounters specifically to target the PCs weaknesses isn't necessarily bad as long as there are some moments for the PCs to shine. If they are just a jerk about it, that's one thing, but diabolical traps and encounters aren't always bad.
We just had an encounter where the enemy was built with a bit of villain GM in mind, us the players had been stomping through everything with little effort, and had even killed one of the leaders of the enemy cult really early compared to when we were supposed to fight them. After that, the cult had pooled their knowledge(they worshiped a god of knowledge and secrecy), and called in the best fighters they had to counter us. The encounter was hard, hard enough that it ended up killing 2 PCs, and nearly killed 1 of the others, but we triumphed in the end, and it was a fun encounter.
If your players put too much of their tactics out in the open, and make dangerous enemies, it isn't too much to have their enemies plan for them, it can be a quite enjoyable encounter.
For what it's worth... This treads awfully close to the "Hardcore GM"... Rather like Game Methusela's Channel... These aren't Villains in the sense of being GM-vs-PC's... They're just unafraid of running shorter term games and expecting the Players to PICK UP that it's full of deadly encounters. The "kid gloves" come off after you've had a fair dose of the system... You're used to it, so get the "big boy pants on" and go FIGHT.
Truly remarkable encounters create truly remarkable stories and truly remarkable campaigns... BUT they're deadly. It's kind of the price of business for the Hardcore Gamer. It shows when the rest of the table consistently shows up with three or four "spare PC-sheets" in a folder... just conspicuously enough under their other wares of the game. They expect to lose a few PC's along the way, so there are spares, and it's not personal, nor confrontational, nor adversarial...
It's worth pointing out that this Hardcore Type isn't usually the best fit for a first-timer or "noob" Player. It's not always a bad idea, but it's best (usually) approached with an ideal of clearing a seat at the table at a NEW game and at Session-0, so everyone can get the idea of playing with a noob' again... not that it's bad or a tough choice. Most are friendly enough. It's just too easy to see (through lenses of inexperience) that you're surrounded with adversarial Players and GM's when they're actually just Harcore about the game's in-game consequences. Taking a couple adventures "gently" isn't out of the realm of request, though... ;o)
I've never seen it done right. This is exactly why I hate the idea of it being the DM versus the players bc 9 times out of 10 someone will hear that and try to "win" as the dm. For gods sake make there be a reason for the encounters(the villain is meticulously studying them) and please dont make every encounter insanely hard(unless your players are masochists) it just makes the game incredibly stressful!
The mentality that compels the villain ruins the game. They've misunderstood the entire point of an RPG. A GM that allows players to shine while challenging them isn't a villain, they're being a good GM! You're absolutely right that there has to be stakes in a game for it to seem rewarding and an interesting story to flourish. I think it's the relationship between the GM and players the villian doesn't understand, to them it's an adversarial, "me vs them" mentaility. That person just isn't that fun to play games with because they're probably socially inept to begin with.
A Villain GM isn't in any way revolved around the PC's...the Villain GM is a villain to the Players. When you're acting out against the players that's a problem. Being tactical, using the PC's weaknesses against the party, putting the PC's up against super deadly or even unbeatable encounters isn't villainous, but doing so specifically to lord your GM power over the players is when it becomes a problem. You're not describing a Villain GM, you're describing a good GM.
A Villain GM makes every (or near enough) encounter so difficult that the PC's barely scrape by and the players struggle to do so. That GM is a dick, who doesn't just antagonize the players, but gets pleasure from feeling superior for no reason. A GM that is mad at the players, or angry about a concept, or just generally being a dick for no reason is a Villain GM.
Great video! My GM keeps asking for feedback (beyond “great game, we had fun”) and this gave food for thought and a vocabulary for providing better feedback - he is great and deserves confirmation and inspiration, so your video was most helpful. I personally love a GM who is at least a bit Actor, as it inspires to to do more in character rather than through description. Thanks!
That vinegar trap is actually a fun idea if you don't take it too seriously. Imagine: the PCs come across a pool of what smells like vinegar. They test for magic, acid, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. "We swim across." They immediately sink because vinegar is less dense than water, and they now have to walk across the bottom of the pool. Maybe decrease movement speed because they're walking through a liquid and make them climb a steep wall at the other end to get out. Throw some loot at the bottom if they want to look around. In the end, no harm, no foul. Tell them that all their stuff smells like vinegar now. If your players enjoy a light gag and get into the roleplay aspect, it can be a fun way to lighten the mood.
The one problem I have with the vinegar trap is that it IS an acid. Surely acid detection would have SLIGHTLY clued them in?
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer I guess the acid detection would trip, but the smell of vinegar should be included in the description of you're doing it for a gag.
Oh the feels.
I burned out from my first real game because I encountered that 'all this work for two seconds of playoff?' wall about half way through a year long campaign. It was my largest black mark as it ended the game just as effectively as a total party wipe from a villain storyteller. Still am haunted by this voice telling me that my current campaigns will end the same way... yet I still find myself making whole characters for people the party will never interact with mechanically.
Dunno, the chaotic uncertainty is one of the things that is driving me forward as a DM, since any encounter - is a potential TPK. Any hard trap - is a potential TPK. Basically any session - is a TPK :D And yes, two seconds playoff. Sometimes it's actually the other way around - something that took you two seconds to prepare is remembered by the party for years to come. To give an example - I had an npc, that used to be a witchhunter (basically, kinda like a witcher, hunting shit) and the party asked him about his story. I didn't have much, so in split-second I came up with a bullshit: he was tracking a wizard, while being new to the whole hunting thing, though the wizard wasn't there. He saw a cat, he wanted to pet him and the cat bit his finger off. Wizard was a druid, disguised as a cat in hopes, that the npc leaves, but when said npc reached to pet him - he snapped and bit off his finger. Surprisingly, that's how he became best friends with said druid. Remembered for years now, my players don't trust cats anymore in my games xD.
I like to make my PCs think I am a villain but I am not, I just know they get happier if they think I am actively trying to kill them
Same! Secretly I'm cheering for them.
I've worked with GMs that opt for a Villain style, while simultaneously attempting to keep a balance with the overall story (Narrative/Author style). Finding that balance is difficult, but not impossible. It is not my own personal preference, as GM or player. But, I admire those who can pull it off and make the game fun. These GMs in my experience tend to be ultra-competitive individuals in and out of game, that or they are generally uncaring of what the players at the table think of him/her as GM. At least one GM I know combined rules interpreter and villain to play NPCs and monsters as uber-adversaries, taking secret delight when the rules, natural rolls, and/or combat circumstances allowed (in chess-like fashion) the PCs to corner and either capture or destroy whatever improbability he threw at them. The balanced villain GM style described above has been perhaps the most thrilling, intense, and frustrating (from a player's perspective) I have ever had the pleasure to encounter. And almost always resulted in TPK or a sole survivor.
When I used to gm regularly at a lan here I always wore a grumpy cat t-shirt that said " rocks fall, everyone dies" god it was fun making them think I was against them, made them feel more proud when besting my shit
There is an intersesting point here :
Do you rather play, or do you rather GM ?I don't even know it myself... I love coming with stories and maps, and stuff... but playing is relaxing. You just have to show up and pay attention (and of course be involved).
Thank you for being the only youtube presenter to point out that good things can come from the Player GM style. I've seen other channels simply say, "DON'T EVER DO IT," but when I did it years ago (the campaign was meant to be rotating DMs, but the other guy dropped out after my PC was already in), it was the most amazing game for the entire group that lasted for years.
I have noticed that having problems with being an Anti-Villain GM. I end up explaining too much of the reasoning behind what is happening in the game, just to make sure that players don't feel that they are treated unfairly. I tend to strive for an unbiased way of running a game and deciding the outcome of some random events, which usually is bad.
"you want to play a kobold paladin, thats fine" my 1st character was a kobold paladin lol
I once saw a grung monk. One of my favourite unexpected combinations.
I have both a Kobold Warlock and a Grung Bard ready to use in games, but sadly as Grung aren't Adventurer's League legal, that'll probably never happen!
There are as many types of groups as there are GM's. Empathy and awareness seem more important. Modular, for example, can make some great moments. Not my ADHD way, but my mate does it and it's great.
at minute 15 you came through as the most honest, and self-aware GM I've ever seen. Thank you, you're giving us quality in these videos :)
Those 2 vid about GM are definitely one of your best video !
Very insightful, every GM should watch this
My Villain DM moment from high school:
The players are investigating an underground stone hallway that is covered in spider webs. One of them tries to burn away the webs with a torch... I had it explode in his face.
Nothing lethal, but he rightfully proclaimed, "What, did these spiders drench their own webs in gasoline!?"
Definitely a Narrator/player with a bit of rules interpreter. I became GM out of desire to form a group but ended up as GM for them since I was the most experienced player. Wasn't sure I was GM material but I came in with a firm grasp on the rules, a module for inspiration, and some character concepts for my PCs. Thankfully I knew about the pitfalls of being a player style GM and was careful to avoid the drawbacks by making my NPCs specialists in supporting roles (to set up the PCs for their cool moments). This all went very well with my players, they grew to like these characters, and would take their favorites along with the party so often that they were essentially additional party members. Honestly the fact that my players have been getting heavily invested in these characters has been extremely gratifying. it makes it easier to write compelling social drama, and increase tension in ways that will arise naturally simply due to concern for the PCs.
Yep, called it: I'm a Player GM who sometimes strays into Not-A-GM territory. Only thing not on the former is I don't make GM-PCs.
MUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH prefer to be a PC (or assistant GM if pressed), but if there's no other option...I'll ask everyone else if they're SURE they don't have anything to run, and then yes, I'll step up.
Yep, right there with you on that unfortunately, haha.
(Hint for members of my group if any of you read this: DM SOMETIME, DAMMIT.)
I was a Not-a-GM/Player mix type of GM. Always improvising, letting it fun and etc. The players liked it since my improvised story (with some bases that I preprared 5min before we start) was very great, dense and with a lot of incredible plots and all of that interconected and without plot holes.... Well, then I saw that the story was already completely created by chapter 2 of a 5 chapters campaign and just needed to organize everything I improvised, and now I'm a Narrator GM. Anyways, I kinda have a little bit of each of 'em 9 GM styles.
Starting chapter 3 by now :)
Been waiting on this part 2
I find using a module is extremely helpful! The different styles are all traits of a good dm, each is a tool that works best in specific situations. Ex. Rules interpretation- character creation and monster creation, galactic force-dangerous non boss encounters during travel, narrator- always, villian- boss fights, player- downtime 🎉, not a gm- (when lines get crossed unintentionally, this style shift can be extremely helpful dming in sensitive situations) and step in gms for when main gm cant make it or wants to play, actor- always (ya gotta take the baton and paint a quick picture with it), modular dm- using modules or other external story components is helpful in making encounters feel more structured and thematic. Its the ability to adapt style seamlessly to elicit the greatest positive response that is the true goal for a great dm 🥳
As a proud member of the Player-GM caste I say that your description is accurate. Despite that's not my specialization I still make a half-decent GM, since I know exactly what my players are going to think and do I can plan accordingly. I set up my modules the way I would enjoy playing them myself. I also really enjoyed making my own PCs in the past, at one point I had like 4 my PCs against 3 players'. Was fun still, cause I managed to build up some reaaaaaaly cool fights since my party was extremely good at killing stuff, also had a fair amount of dialoge. I no longer do that, cause it grew kinda old. Also, GMing actually helped me to become better at playing. With knowledge from my GMing I can build characters with traits that I can actually play, cause before I had a problem with building a character that has a really cool trait, but I could never play it, cause the opportunity would never come. Experience beats everything in the end.
*I think I am a* Simulator or a Galactic Force, however my focus is on designing encounters that first of all, I know my players will find to be interesting, and secondly I design my encounters be challanging, but definitely achieveable. _(Not in the way of "fighting my players", but rather I want them to feel excited, slightly scared, brave, and ultimately victorious)_
I also like to have a lot of communication outside of the game asking about what they would like to see/find/learn so I can prepare bread crums leading to that in the future!
In the infamous words of Matt Colville, the bad guys want to win. I tend to run my monsters and bad guys that way. I dont run them as metagame knowledge or anything like that, and I try not to make it personal to me. But the bad guys wanna win to! And it makes it more realistic as well when you have villains who plan, or who use their resources to gather info on the party, or ambush them or prep magic items or traps.
Well said, that's how you do a good villain GM
I think a villain style is useful when you're making character moments with nemeses involved. You can really make the nemesis dangerous and recurring if you make them try their best to undermine the characters, within reason.
This was really helpful! An easy way to think about different styles and focus on what is good and bad in my personal style!
YOU where a villain GM? Now that is something I did not expect.
Great 2-part videos!
Been playing D&D for so many years now, surely I have been practicing each and every one of these DM styles at one point or another, depending on my state of mind at the time. Nowadays I try to stick to the Narrator style mostly, your informative content has informed me as to why I feel its best serving the game I want to play. But there is always room for another style to take over if you don't think about it too much and just do what feels right in the moment (when playing or preparing).
Dude had me DYING during his "not a GM" descriptions. 😂 Guilty as charged. ✋😇
As an actor style GM, I'd actually encourage you to try out a few modules that interest you. See where the restrictions of the module can work as a way to laser in your actor skills where they can really shine. I also believe that restrictive parameters can really help creative thinking
A good way to describe a good GM-PC is like Gandalf in Tolkein's works. I've actually had a GM take this approach before, creating a small ensemble of "significant NPCs" who stick with the main party at certain moments of the story. When they're present, these NPCs function more like GM-PCs, being just another member of the party who helps in combat and aids in driving the plot. When the party starts to dally, or needs a helping hand, Gandalf comes back from the off-screen to offer advice and counsel, or just to shove the players back in the right direction.
Many people won't agree with it, but at one point myself and another player split from the party to go into a mine and find some rare ore that we needed to craft some magical weapons while the rest of the party dealt with a puzzle temple across town. In order to help us with what was effectively a dungeon, on a split party of 2(myself as a ranger and our sorcerer), the GM sent her GM-PC Bard along with us. Needless to say splitting the party for a dungeon was a BAD idea, and our sorcerer found himself unconscious with 0 HP at the feet of a phase spider while I was tangled fighting off a Troll. Now, I had no fire magic, so I wasn't going to beat this troll any time soon, and our sorcerer had two turns maximum before the spider would kill him for good. However, the GM-PC Bard who we had left behind at the entrance so we could sneak through the mine, appeared in the chamber in time to distract the troll, giving me enough time to kill the spider on the sorcerer's back. The sorc was still down, but stable due to the poison damage that knocked him out. Now, with the bard's heat metal spell and my ranger's twin swords, we made short work of the troll, with my ranger doing his best Legolas impression and mounting the troll's back, leaving one sword in as a handhold while the other sword kept stabbing.
Needless to say, that gandalf-style GM-PC saved two of our characters from an untimely and anticlimactic death by appearing at the right time. Sometimes having a GM-controlled constant NPC is a blessing and not a curse.
A note to my players
I am not the villain dm. No matter how brutal the session was, I want you to win. I want you to overcome the inconceivable odds stacked against you. Thanks for the awesome session last night. Your failure has given me an absolutely brilliant plot line to explore. I hope you enjoy the coming hell
Long live the pigeon hero
Your part 1 explained the problems our group has been having very clearly, I simply run a different game than they want. They want story, I want combat, and I made the stories secrets to be found out, meanwhile the players want the campaign to focus on them and hand deliver them the stories and quests.
That vinegar trap was brilliant. definitely gonna use that at some point (without the player murder probably)
I have never seen a Villian GM done right, EVER. It's always been the kind of GM that wants to win against the players, and sulks and pouts every time the PCs overcome the encounter. I'm also a PC that likes story and character interactions, and I could not care any less about whether I "win" or not. They are also the Hardcore, Old School types of GMs where if there isn't a character death every encounter, then the GM failed- Even if the PCs didn't even ask for that level of difficulty. I had a prospective GM ponder about how to "win" against us, and I straight up told him that I'd just straight up leave the table and not play rather than deal with that. This deflated his ego, and that was never brought up again.
Watching the segment of villain DMs what came to mind was building it into the campaign itself. Have some powerful entity teleport players to an unknown dungeon and make them go through a gauntlet as a test for something.
Because a villain GM done right is called just a GM. This video is very misleading. A villain GM will ALWAYS want to win and be a general asshole. If you're not, then you're not a villain GM. Challenging your players with very hard/deadly encounters isn't being a villain. A villain GM is unfair and doesn't want to challenge, they want to tpk.
I'm a bit of an author world builder. My style to forum rp interest checks is to put out what I like and throw the line out for people who would be interested in it. But my style usually is to create a framework that's loose, but still there. Enough to be a plot but also to take place wherever my pc's go. But I'm also a dutiful gm who focuses on pleasing and making sure my pc's are having fun. There are times when I've thought, "X" sounds so cool, but refrained from doing so, because it didn't involve my players. And that is what I think all gm's should be doing.
The common thread in all your examples really is, the gm is focused on themselves and not their players. They're not crafting their acting for the players or their world for the players. This 2 parter really helped remind me of what I mustn't do, in order to create a good experience for the players who joined my rp's and stuff with me. (:
I started off absolutely loving my current GM, but our group seems a bit... off... recently - and I couldn't figure out why. Until I heard your description of the the Author and Actor, and it was exactly right!! As new players, we were all entranced with his voices and descriptions and this detailed world and storyline - but now we often find ourselves like "wait, what are we doing here? why are we doing this? what were we talking to this guy about? well, we obviously are supposed to go here next, so that's where we go". So at least understanding that I think will help me be a better player within his GM style.
I have never GM'd, but want to try running a one-shot soon, and being a noob I will probably lean towards Modular/Rules Interpreter, but now that I know that, I want to try to remember some flexibility and add in some Narrator.
We have just launched our Discord channel where you can chat and ask us and other awesome role players around the world questions and chat about all things role playing: discord.gg/greatgm
but Household vinegar consists almost entirely of water, but with some acetic acid molecules dissolved in it. In general, dissolving stuff in water makes it more dense.
Another one: Developer GM. This GM is not just running the system, but is also creating it.
I run a completely homebrewed system, so I am one. The way I do it is a bit of a mix between rules interpreter and galactic force that actively rewrites the book in between sessions based on rulings and results, but in general running a game is as much about collecting data to refine the system further as it is about the campaign or session. Two of the more obvious weaknesses though are that I'm thinking about a lot of stuff outside the immediate game and am trying to probe the rules themselves for weaknesses or doing a certain thing simply because I want to see if it needs tweaked instead of focusing on making the immediate game more enjoyable, so player experience can suffer because it's taking a backseat to other goals. It's also hard to set up appropriate challenges because I don't necessarily know how whatever new thing I'm testing will work out. Maybe my completely unfair combat that I don't expect to be beatable turns into a cakewalk, maybe my moderately challenging one is completely overpowered, and I'm always a bit villain-like in that I'm constantly trying to kill my players but only just barely so I can figure out what an appropriate challenge even is.
I'm completely upfront about this to my players and they're cool with it but I know that my plots and scenarios are generally weak and contrived, things get railroaded (though I try to play it comedically, stuff like "you run into a conductor who gives you a map with train tracks and an arrow"), and a wonky feeling is the baseline.
Overall though I do find actually GMing a series of one-offs or mini-campaign to be more fun for all than saying "here's what's being tested, now let's do it".
This is kind of how I do it.
I run a homebrew system based loosely on some of the basic rules of GURPS.
The stats and abilities of every animal, monster, and NPC are designed by me. Last session I nearly beat the party to a pulp with half of the encounter I had prepared.
In a forest they landed in a halfway underground place covered in mushrooms. The shrooms let out spores every time a loud enough sound was made. I had those spores deal 1 damage to all ability scores on a successful HT roll (basically constitution), and 2 on a failed. The danger from the spores escalated so much more than I had expected. Even before the combat some of my players were quite weakened.
I had prepared a treant as damage dealer and a dryad as support, but I ended up only sending out the dryad. With it shrieking both on its turns and when it took enough damage at once, it was a formidable enough opponent alone, when supported by the mushrooms.
The battle didn't change course before the group healer managed to roll a clutch 6 with 3d6 to cast a cleansing spell on herself. Due to her very lowered IQ score she had to roll 6 or less to succeed. After that she managed to turn it around.
...
Anyway, it's easy to unintentionally overwhelm your players, when you're freestyling the encounters and introducing new mechanics that you haven't tried out. I liked the way the environment worked here, but it was way too harsh.
This is the kind of GM I'd need to ask for help from to actually implement my worlds due to the sheer level of difference between the rules I've established while writing them and standard D&D. In most cases it might even be easier to try and work off of a different system as a whole.
For the love of gygax, I can never get encounter balance down myself. I’m finally starting to accept that, and it adds a touch of realism I suspect. Life, especially for an adventurer, isn’t filled with perfectly balanced encounters. Some moments we were dreading turn out to be non factors. Challenges that should have been trivial end up as long standing nightmares that take months or thousands of dollars to deal with. These manner of moments come with the territory of adventuring in a maniacal magical world.
Well, you just summed me up as well. I'm actively creating my own game/system whilst GM'ing it to our group in a pro-longed "play test" campaign, essentially and this fits the bill really well. System is loosely based on the narrative dice from FFG. Cheers!
Done that one myself! Well, I wasn't the only one creating the system, the players were too, sometimes shooting ideas to me that I'd be like "Yeah, that's a good way of handling this, yeah I'll do that."
I don't tend to have those kinds of plots though, but the "running the system and creating it at the same time, adjusting things fairly often based on data collected in game or occasionally to course correct something that ended up being completely broken" is spot on.
That vinegar room Is a awesome idea. Though making the room that large was a little bit of overkill
Id like to say that firstly this little series does a very good job at outlining alot of truths in the tabletop world. It also effectively inspires introspective thought is to how we GM. I can only imagine in playing in one of this man's game. I for one appreciate an actor GM because it requires an extra layer of skill. I wonder if he will reflect this concept for player types aswell.
I’m probably a narrator now, but my first few attempts were covered in this video. Last campaign I was made the villain the villain, to which I responded “ok you guys want a villain?’ They ended up loving the ending and I’m sitting here shivering every time I hear that pirates name...
I would put myself somewhere between Not-A-GM and Galactic Force, with a touch of Author. I have some over arching plan for the story and world, but the world doesn't need the players to be involved. I let that story exist, and then run what ever it is the players end up doing, leading the sessions themselves to be greatly unplanned and occasionally intersecting with the core plot. I like to run this way because it allows me to create strange situations that don't always have to be related to the plot going on.
The best trap I have seen goes like this, the party enters a room, in this room the party sees a tornado blocking the path ahead, and while the party tries to figure out how to get past it, they suffocate because the tornado was an illusion and the trap a vacuum chamber
I'm a modular DM, but never have run one all the way through. I've finally gotten a longer campaign going and I've found that as we go through the module, the more I start to modify it to add on themes that might be relevant to the player's characters. I once ran a homebrew campaign, but I didn't know what to do with it and it eventually went nowhere. I think if I were to homebrew another one, I would have each of my player's create characters and describe their hometowns and incorporate that into the world building. Build up the lore of the world as the PCs explore and hear about things. I think that might be fun and could be the next direction I take my style.
I'm mostly a player and narrator dm, with some author and actor thrown in. For all of us in our group, our favorite part of gaming is making a character and watching that character grow as they bond with the other characters. Technically, I suppose none of us want to dm, but occasionally my one friend and I come up with story and world ideas we think would be fun to take characters through. I'm working hard to become a better dm (hence watching videos like yours!) but I will never not be a player dm. Nearly all games I'be ever played in, even from before starting to dm, had dm with characters. It' kind of become expected at this piont.
Lol damn! That vinegar trap is crazy
that vinegar trap was brilliant, and it's very good that you aknowledge your failing.
The actor can be very effective if you reserve it for a "cutscene" in the aftermath of a major series of PC actions. I remember planning out a monologue from an orc captain where I ACTUALLY tore my shirt open as part of the "performance." In another I managed to shock the entire party in the aftermath of their rescue mission where their NPC commander sliced open a baby (they didn't realize it was a dummy) to retrieve smuggled microfilm. Choosing WHEN to act is important for making a memorable campaign.
Absolutely love the show. I think it has improved my game and my work honestly. One minor thing vinegar is 80 percent water and 20 percent acedic acid and is 0.05g pee cc denser than water alone. Actually easier to float in than fresh water.
I am mostly a narrator with a bit of author and galactic force (simulationist) mixed in.
I became a not-a-GM when I tried running a homebrew sandbox style game while in grad school. I started off with an overarching plot, an outline of things I wanted to do, a map, preplanned sessions, etc. I quickly became a not-a-GM as I ran out of pre-prepped scenarios and didn't have time to make new ones. The campaign fell apart as I was focused on writing my thesis.
Seems like I am a moduler/rules interpreter type who also wants to be a player. Great thanks for helping me recognize it's actually not a bad thing. I just try to give my players the intended experience.
I'm primarily an Author. I use my own homebrew world. I twist the narrative based off what the players make and do. Definitely have a bit of actor in me too, but it helps to bring my NPCs to life and the players become more invested. Something I've learned to do, that has helped me grow as a GM and improved the games I run, is asking my players what they thought of a session. I don't ask everyone together or after every session, but every once in a while, I ask a player what they like and what they didn't like. This has allowed me to customize the games so everyone can enjoy them. So regardless of your GM style, if everyone is enjoying the games, then you are being a great GM.
I can't help but feel that I'm an Author and a sort of Simulator, but not quite the Simulator described here. I enjoy developing a world with it's heroes and villains, each with their respective motivations and plotlines, then let it all run in the background.
The players become the "Unknown Entity" in the story, the wedge in the bad guy's plans and maybe the allies/reinforcements that the heroes sorely needed. Regardless, I focus a lot on making the players feel like they've stepped in a world that was already running and that their actions destabilize the other players in the plot.
Is there an opposite of the Actor? The Theatergoer? There is nothing I love more than engineering an extended improve scene between characters acting out their roles so intensely that I can just sit back and watch. It's hard to shut up sometimes, but it's wonderful to get to watch this improvised play springing out of the world you made for them.
I once played under an awful grandstanding "Actor" GM. The performances were powerful, but he was unable to ever move the action along.
He is now an actor and scriptwriter.
Do you know if he's good at those? If he's not great at moving the action along, I have my doubts about him being a great scriptwriter.
I'm not really any of these archetypes.
I'm more of what I would call a Designer:
I spend a lot of time preparing for specific actions by the players, assuming that they will take said courses of actions. I often have multiple prepared outcomes. But when it actually begins, I get an element of stage-fright and entirely forget what I had planned, tossing my notes out the window and completely derailing the campaign, inevitably becoming the "Not-A-GM" and wasting all of my preparations. However, this is only from my first GM experience, and I have quickly realized that I'm going to need a lot more notes, and I need to remember to use them.
Wish me luck for round two.
I really enjoy your videos Guy! They are very helpful!
I sometimes find myself as a villain GM (although I never actively killed a PC), but I found a great little tool to mitigate the 'problem' of my NPCs being beaten by the players. Have a villain NPC that YOU as the GM dislike. Not the design or motivation, but the personality. Model them after a bully you knew, a celebrity you despise or just a general idea, you dislike. This way, when the players kill the villain, you can cheer with them! :) Also works if you are a player and want to laugh at your PCs misfortunes.
I spent a week designing a trap with a round tube tunnel and a huge stone ball that had 1 inch clearance that I thought was a sure TPK.
One of the players put a steel wedge in front of the ball before triggering the release and of course, the ball was stuck.
Love your videos, thank you for thousands of amazing thoughts
I'm a very player centric GM, with hints of a narrator and almost certainly the Actor (the note taking element really hit home). I have a large plot in mind but I'll drop most of my plans at the drop of a hat if it will make for a cooler story for the players.
I also absolutely love the story-potential component of a galactic force GM. It can often lead to interesting story developments because you allowed the system and rolls to generate your story, all it takes is the skill to notice the opportunity moments, it also makes it look like you've planned it all along for the players. And that is always true.
A type of GM I think you forgot to mention is a "numbers" GM. I know that role because I sometimes slip into it when I'm in a hurry or I want to hit a particular timing too much.
What a Numbers GM is one who will simply say "success/failure" "You take 12 damage" "7 damage kills the enemy". Completely forgetting to actually DESCRIBE the events. I hate it whenever I notice I slip into that role, it definitely makes things go faster and is sometimes a necessity if you don't want combat to take 5 hours on complex combat.
I think your Numbers GM is a "Rules Interpreter".
Not gonna lie that Vinegar trap is pretty cool
I've done Observer GM before. It was in response to my players. They spent far more time interacting with each other than anything else and so I set up complicated socio-economic environments with lots of political intrigue. When they occasionally took action the results of their actions could be massive, even where I could explaine the result in a sentence or two.
Sometimes the players would play it beer and pretzels. Other times they would treat the game very seriously. I sometimes felt more like a referee, there simply to say if something worked the way that they expected or not.
The four in the first step I could recognize myself in all (with Galactic Force a bit more), in this I couldn't. I have run modules but have never struggled with going off the rails with the players there or leaving parts out cause they didn't fit the group. While I want it to be challenging for the players I still want them to win, just have to fight for it, a great scenario tension wise is when the players almost died but pulled through, and I try to go for it cause without tension and threat combat and traps are just filler (I personally hate it when I play and feel there is no risk involved, have had games where I've started seeing how death was out of the question and just got completely bored). The Player GM is probably the furthest away of all from me, and one I should probably work to be better at, I struggle with having NPCs be too much of Tag-alongs for adventures when the players drag them on and usually put them too much in the background to the point where I may forget them completely until a player asks if the sell-sword they brought shouldn't at least try to help in the fight.
Watched both of the videos. As it happens, I combine Galactic Force with Narrator and Author, but also have some elements of Actor, but I combine them in an unusual way - I usually only run in settings that I've already worldbuilt to a good degree, but I always leave some elements vague, so that there is room to even have a plot to begin with. I view the players and the PCs as different: the players are important, as without them there wouldn't be a game, but the PCs are not necessarily important to the plot unless they choose to be. I usually run darker, grittier games, so simulationist elements usually go hand-in-hand with the themes, including things like keeping track of resources, as there's definitely tension when those resources start running low and they aren't finding more of them. Everything the PCs do has consequences, some of them good, and many of them bad. But while I've had a number of PCs die for sheer stupidity (worst one being a PC who died in the first session because they decided to go for a swim in a lake they could see hundreds of wraiths swimming in - they failed a strength check and promptly drowned), I've also had PCs who became important in universe for their deeds. The only thing is, I do present a world where, at the end of the day, the world will keep turning even if the PCs die. Or worse. (And that worse has happened on more than one occasion. Usually because a PC did something they shouldn't have, and didn't listen when I asked "are you sure?")
Unlike most Galactic Forces, I'm not 100% impartial between players and NPCs. I'll admit, I, on rare occasions, do skew a die roll here or there in players' favor if I feel they've earned it, though on rare occasion I've also put it in NPC favor if a player's been rolling good a lot lately and I want to create tension. (Never any skewing that I think might get them killed, usually just enough to make it so they won't walk away unscathed. Which helps the kind of tone I like to have at the table.) Additionally, while I do prepare, I don't prepare to the same degree as Galactic Force. I'll do research if I know the next session will warrant it (had players decide to have their NPCs fly to Romania, so I spent the next week researching Romanian history and geography in preparation for it), but most of the time I'm playing with little more than a handful of statblocks, names, and the occasional passage in front of me. Why? Because players are unpredictable little buggers, and I love that about them. I could come up with 20 different things the players could do, and they'd inevitably do a 21st thing I didn't plan for. As a result, I keep those things vague, and generally let my players do what they want, but never without consequences. I improv a lot of things, though I'm not quite as good with voices other than a select few. I can grand-stand as well, but I can't improv a grand-stand (usually that's the passage or two I'll have written ahead of time.) And where I differ from the Author one strongly is the delivery, I think. I'll gladly worldbuild the crap out of the setting, but 99% of the NPCs won't know the details. Hence, players never get an info dump from NPCs. I prefer presenting the information in other ways. E.g. if they find a castle that was the scene of an old battle, rather than an NPC telling them the history, I'll describe the worn down battlements, the rusted weapons and old skeletons, dried brown stains across the masonry, and perhaps an old, rotting ladder resting against a wall, and discarded battering rams, and let the PCs work the history out for themselves. If they show interest, I can suggest to them to research it later, in a library, and then, and only then, will I provide info dumps. Probably with a sanity check. XD
I think, the most important I ever had the PCs starting out in the world was a campaign where they were one of six noble families ruling a backwater colony of a greater empire, but the campaign itself centered on that particular colony on that particular section of the continent, so it did still leave them important. Thing is, like most of my plots, I set it up that the plot happens whether the PCs choose to involve themselves or not. Though in this case I gave them quite the incentive from the beginning - "You all begin tied up in ropes about a ship. You've been captured by pirates..." When they got back, they found someone else on the throne, and a string of other things wrong with their fiefdom, all of which were plothooks to a conspiracy which itself was a portion of the greater, overarching plot. That plot was happening with or without them, but by investing in it, they could change it. I didn't set an ending in stone or anything, just more general "if this happens, this other thing will always happen". That way the players shape the ending.
At the end of the day, I'm there to tell a story. Just not generally a heroic one. I'm here to tell a story where someone's probably going to die horribly or go insane, and we'll all have a fun time laughing about it afterwords. After all, it's not a good game unless something crazy happens that you'll be talking about for ages!
You forgot an important DM style: Noob. I took on this role way too quickly, and I find myself relying on player knowledge more than I should.
Of your list, I'm definitely the most like narrator. I like the story, I like bringing in player input, and I like to bend rules, or change numbers behind the scenes to protect players. I also fear putting stuff down on paper, because I know that makes it harder to be fluid with the story. However, I did force myself to make a map. I gave it to the players, and this was a compromise. I created the physical world (admittedly, not super detail, but enough to show what is there), and then let them decide where to go. From there, I could put in what I wanted into the place they went. I had a villain set up they were going to face. Was it an orc or an elf? That depended on where they went. So...I'm far off from modular, but trying to get myself more that way. Also, I didn't realize that straying from the rules/hard stance on numbers took the danger out of the game. Now I feel I need to kill someone off, just make them feel that.
Im definitely a narrator-player. I very much prefer to be a player, I like immersing myself into awesome heros. I want to be that sneaky assassin rogue that kills a guard without being seen, I love that. My only problem is, im the only one out of my group of friends that really knows how to DM. A couple other friends of mine know how to run modules but not a real story or anything. I kinda hate it. I like being a DM but I hate ALWAYS being a DM. Im so damn glad I discovered roll20 like 2 weeks ago lol. Although I've realized you come across a LARGE variety of DM's.
I just really want to play in one of your campaigns lol the amount of story and how much you allow the players to flesh out their characters are brilliant.
All my Non GMs keep up the good work, everyone needs a fun break once in a while including the GM...even if I run what is basically the dark crystal with puzzles (the greatest complement I've ever received).
I do have too stop myself from making things to dark...but no one I know and like wants to play a full dive vampire the masquerade with me (I do a lot of awareness work so I'm generally very good at sensitively conveying difficult subject matter, but it does tend to bleed through).
Honestly, as a GM I'm not sure where I fall on your list. My focus when I plan is to make each session interesting and fun, and to make the actions of the PCs have consequences (positive and negative). I might have an overarching plot idea, but I don't set anything in stone that hasn't been presented to the players. I prefer sandboxes and to lean into whatever the PCs are wanting to do, then I prepare to continue along those lines so long as they are having fun. My weaknesses are description for sure. Often I'll forget to mention something, but I'll usually adapt. My players probably don't linger around or chat with NPCs as much as others, and that may have to do with my own pacing affecting theirs. I often skip most of travel, all uninteresting bits, pay little attention to inventory etc. But I also always have a few small one-shots prepared in case they go a little far off for me to improvise so then they run into one of these scenarios. I spend most of my time prepping between sessions based on what they did before, not before I start the campaign though.
Based on the presented GM types, I'd say that I'm an Author when I'm not at the table or actually in the process of running a game. It's fun for me to fiddle around with game worlds, especially the people who live in them, as something I do in my spare time. When it actually comes down to running a game, though, I take a deliberate deconstructionist approach to everything I've written, yanking it out of its authorial context and slapping it down, exposed and raw and completely at the mercy of the players to do with as they please. Strangely enough, the more I deconstruct my own settings (such as using a "grimdark alternate future" of what I've already written), the more fun my players tend to have.
That, I guess, is the big hallmark of my style: I'm focused on everybody having fun, me included. My fun comes from making up stuff, while I see my players' fun coming from metaphorically (usually!) breaking the stuff I make. In that vein, when I make up stuff, I deliberately leave holes in its construction, places where I haven't filled in anything beyond the most basic information about a region, places where I can say stuff like "this is the place that's based on Western European fairy tales," or "this is where you'll run into Southeast Asian-themed monsters," and then fill in the rest jointly with my players as it seems most appropriate for the flow of the story being told. Add in some random dice rolls as well, to make things uncertain for everybody, keeping all of us from getting too complacent, and we're ready to go.
Naturally, whatever happens, I always keep a lot of note paper handy to write it all down. Though I do my very best not to let it show, huge amounts of the game-behind-the-game is based on these very detailed notes, including the hard math of bookkeeping in order to make sure that the players get appropriate rewards for what they do, neither too much, nor too little. If I ever neglect this important part of the game, then the rest of my style rapidly breaks down, as the lack of attention soon starts to erode each aspect of the game, one by one, until it degrades into sound and fury, signifying nothing.
My biggest flaw as a GM is that I'm a terrible, terrible Villain. I mean that I'm not very good at honestly trying to kill my players, and after a while, a lot of them start to catch on. For most of them, this is a good thing, since it helps them realize that we're all working together to tell a story, and their characters are the pivotal focus of said story, so their deaths need to really mean something, if they happen at all. For some, though, especially those with power playing tendencies, they regard my playstyle as a cakewalk in motion, and take full advantage, then sit back with smug boredom after they've destroyed whatever challenges I'd set up. When this happens, I start to get annoyed, and then shift gradually into steadily more nasty villainous mode, making my style more and more metagame-based. Soon the game starts to revolve around the conflict of me trying to compete against these sorts of players. This tends to make the game fun for the players who like these sorts of challenges, since I really can be a "good" Villain when I put my heart into it...and miserable for everyone else, including myself. Eventually, if I fall into this sort of mode, I tend to just call an end to a campaign, start a new one, and not invite the player who got me into that mode back to the table ever again.
To close, I'd say I'm an Author away from the game, a mix of Narrator and Not-A-GM when I'm actually playing (or planning to play) with real people, and have a Rules Interpreter foundation to my style so as to try and keep things as fair as possible, and also to add in a few random elements that keep everybody guessing, myself included. I stink at being a Galactic Force, because I simply cannot bear to let events keep going when the players aren't there to get involved with them, and I actively hate, hate, hate being a Villain, because it sucks the heart and soul out of my enjoyment. I think I should work on being more of an Actor, because I get very self-conscious when I try, but think that it might make the game more entertaining.
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The worst GM I played with (though this is a short list, since I usually end up as the guy running games; I have trust issues, and I'm quite picky about who I will let have that kind of power over me) was a Galactic Force Villain with a strong Rules Interpreter element, who tended to take few to no notes. Stuff kept happening, whether we, the players, involved ourselves or not, and everything was stacked against us, constantly pushing us to work harder and prepare to pit ourselves against the next challenge...without actually knowing what that challenge would be, especially since the GM was prone to metagaming so that we would almost without exception encounter something for which we hadn't prepared. The end result of this game style left me uncertain, fearful, and stressed out, not knowing when and where the next awful thing was going to happen, but knowing for certain that there was nothing I could do about it. I might have a temporary victory on a tactical level, but because events were going on far outside my sphere of influence, there was nothing I could do to impact the strategic level of the game, or whether I could get a "happy ending" through my actions as a player, which left me feeling insignificant and unfulfilled. While I did learn the rules well, and was able to develop some strategies for the game that I thought were quite kick-butt, and proved highly effective even when the odds were stacked completely against us, I didn't have any satisfaction from these little victories, and eventually just had to quit the game in order to save myself from unnecessary suffering.
i'd say i'm a mix of Author and Narrator, i do a tiny bit of acting with NPC's just to make them memorable, so they enjoy going to the merchant who's become their mate over the course of the campaign, just to hear his voice sometimes.
#3 OMG YES! Im cursed and can only find those on roll 20...3 sessions in and nothing hapens. It amazes me how they can stretch a 5 minute conversation with an npc over a 1,5 hour period. You trying to retell the tale of that "adventure" is something like: we heard something happened at Theatre Of The Mind Park, we drived to the park, we spoke with officer I DONT KNOW ANYTHING, and we found a bloodstain. Wow! i cant wait for episode 2. Me: can we have an encounter next time? or a map or some images, tokens, encounters, anything? GM: i dont use Roll20 when i use Roll20....i like to focus on RolePlaying.
I find there is a common theme among most of these "styles", especially the ones you don't like, and it's that it usually revolves around GMs that are all ego. Be it the villain, the actor, the worldbuilder... it's like your perception of someone who takes the mantle of GM is that they like to be the most important person in any room, so their "style" just basically makes their worse self take over.
Being good at acting doesn't mean you have to take over the entire show, you can do a million voices and keep it concise so that players have fun and feel compelled to do so themselves. You can be a villain and give your players incredible challenges, be tricky and an absolute bastard and still always keep it fair and within the parameters of the rulebook - we used to have a DM that would turn into a villain when playing Call of Cthulhu one shots and he would be absolutely merciless but fair. Even not-a-gm works great with systems like honey heist and I've been pushed into this sort of light hearted mentality before by a group of players that just wanted to unwind after work and have fun rather than get an interesting challenge or plot.
Ultimately... sure, some "styles" lend themselves to potentially bad situations more often than others but I don't see most of these as inherently bad as long as the GM remains humble and focuses the experience around what players want, not what they want. Again, ego seems to be the problem with your interpretations, not the style.
I love the wonder of the discovery of being player but I enjoy to gm a one shot on occasion but I do think it's a hard job. I am grateful that my friends have a fantastic gm.
The Player GM combined with a Narrator or Author style could be fun. Also, it could allow for a campaign to have multiple GMs. Yet this requires players to be aware of the world and should be done after doing one campaign within the world that you set up.
I'll say I'm a mix of a narrator, author and player. Though I've personally forced myself to only play a support PC as my character so my players can enjoy the game and I don't take too much limelight because he's just support and tends to have very limited combat capabilities or generally limited and focused to healing or buffing so I'm helping the players and they can enjoy my world I make and it keeps my ego in check. Many of my players tend to enjoy my games so I'd say it's pretty successful
4:50 This isn't true... Vinegar is about 5% denser than water (quick google search), so if anything floating would be easier. The point of the example still stands haha
My former DM fits the not the dm would actually explain a lot especially as he couldn't keep his story straight and thought nothing about co-opting another setting despite that shouldn't happen without checking first.
Closest I got to this was involving the sidekicks of the rogue and an npc dragon event.
They had to rescue one of those sidekicks and the dragon part was intended to show their foes could respond to their actions.
Don't consider them particularly good, but I didn't let them take the spotlight as they were merely to advance the plot and the players' actions were far more important.
Vinegar is a water solution of acetic acid and as such it's actually somewhat more dense than water. But I like the way you think ^^. Alcohol tho - I'm so stealing this one for my next horror.
Last session i put in a room a really complicated trap that looked like the key to open the path, but when "solved" it exploded. They COMPLETLY fell for it... i just laughted for the next ten minutes straight!
The reason I know I'm not a Villain is because I spent two weeks working on a high level dungeon that was meant to really challenge the players, as it was effectively the penultimate boss of a 6 month campaign. The party is split and goes through a handcrafted dungeon that I built in Minecraft to better show them what they're seeing. There were timed traps that needed to be shut off by the other half of the group and neither could communicate with one another. It was difficult, but they got through relatively fine.
They get to the roof of the dungeon and find themselves in an amphitheatre. On stage are two men, and they give some exposition before the fight begins. The party is holding their own, but they're also not really much damage at all. It's looking like it's gonna be a slog until one of the players manages to hit the bigger of the two bosses, which is the first time it's happened all fight.
I look at his stat block to alter his HP and... There's nothing written in. He's supposed to have 350ish HP but there's nothing, and I hand rolled his hit points myself. I can't say, "Hey, wait a second, lemme roll his hit points up for a bit real quick." It would ruin the moment.
So I laugh and say, "As the edge of your sword bites into his armor, finally stroking true, it merely passes straight through him. Roll a Will save." The outcome is irrelevant, but I just didn't wanna see a nat 1.
"Uhhh... 28."
"A sudden clarity comes to you: he was never real. He's merely an illusion. As it turns out, (main boss) has spent the past 3,000 years atop this spire. In his loneliness and constant memory of his brother, he eventually manifested an illusory vision of him so real that others could see and hear him, too."
"Wait, so I can go back to full HP since he wasn't real, right?"
"No, because, as far as you were aware when you got hit, it was very much real, so the damage is real. Good try, though."
I ad-libbed on the spot and saved the day. I totally could've just put in whatever number I wanted, but felt that it was fate that had intervened and undone my saved progress. They managed to win the day, only to spit in my face and ask when the campaign was gonna end, demanding that it ended soon. So I just sighed, shrugged, and gave them the most unclimactic rendition of the end. "The artifacts you've gathered lift out of the sky and combine into a new god, who plunges his sword into the back of the lower god of destruction, casting him out of reality and restructuring the heavens."
I think I'm a cross between Modular and Narrator. I'm running modules because I like them and because I'm still a learning DM, but my inspirations are firmly Narrators and I've been bending the modules to fit the story the players want to hear.
I love to be a GM but love to play just as much if not just a bit more. I do have a few GMPCs but try not to use them if I can help it. Most of the time I use them to help get things back on track, like helping them figure out how to get past a certain obstacle or if the whole party gets caught or most does and help to free them or to give sound advice. But I try to let the players run through the story with as little intervention on my part.
I try to not be any extreme. Before I start a campaign I prefer to do some intense world building, and come up with some grand stories to tell. But once we get playing though I will present "my story" for them to pursue, ultimately it's up to the group where things go. But I have stories to fall back on, and a world already built so I can provide depth and character to the world without stepping on my own toes. Though I'm not afraid to add things as are needed. As for "Rules" I am of the mind that they are important groundwork. They provide the player stability. They have a good idea of what is possible (not accounting for actual magic) and can make choices based on that knowledge. That's not to say magic doesn't turn things on its head, both as a tool for me, but a "key" for the players to work around things in interesting ways. Death of the players can and will happen. It's like watching a show that you KNOW the main characters are in no real danger, you care less. If the players know they can die if they screw up, they put more thought into their actions. Now, I don't WANT them to die, and I will fudge things to avoid it sometimes, usually with some other serious detriment. In general I try to be a broad type of GM. Having lots of world, story, rules and structure, but flexible enough to do whatever is needed to have fun with the players and tell an overall interesting story.
Until recently it was AD&D, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, 5th Dungeons and Dragons. I've run a small game in Cypher and am preparing for an Invisible Sun game, much more player story than GM story. Should be fun to really focus on the character stories and not just a grand one from me. Not to say I haven't done that, used to play with as few as 1 player. *laugh*
I have been a DM for over 30 years I am mixture of galactic force /narrator /author /rp. You left out the role play gm. The gm that lets the players truly become there character's and act accordingly. How i start my my campiagn's is to have a town/city with all npc planned out. Surrounding areas also planned out. 8 plot lines one for each possible direction the players may go.
I let the player decide were they want to go. By what they find in town by talking to npc"s. I also give more exp for role play than combat. Even if they decline any of the plot lines then no matter were they go things are in place. The question I get most as a dm is "can i try/or do this" My answer is "I don't know can you. Try it and see." After about three session's they stop asking and just try stuff letting the dice decide.Also at the end of each session I ask the players how they feel about the game and any improvements that i can make.
I ask about my dm'ing stile and across the the board i get stern but fair.
I’m the opposite of a villain.
Well, save for the meta-gaming monsters to be dangerous part by homebrew ing the heck out of them so when the players beat them it still feels good to defeat that cr 1/2 monster that has been thrown at them in a group of 3 against 10 level 5 players.
Let’s just say, when the chad wizard accidentally learns the power of a random red fungi with a vary painful toxic spear like top is very good for killing monsters, catapult becomes a deadly as all hell spell.
That rebalanced grick was very much in pain for the next 10 seconds of it’s existence.
The victory cry was glorious.
Ah the greatest rule of a player GM, the "Rule of Cool", if its awesome it flies.
I feel as though I'm a narrator DM with hints of actor and author. The negatives of the author type are not things I think about typically but in my pursuit of being a better DM I think I'll cut back on a bit of it and lean more for narrating
The Not-a-GM is very accurate to my GM. His campaign can be very fun but since we are doing a sandbox it can be a bit much having no real throughline for the story.