This has got to be the best (and the worst!) thing that players do. All of a sudden they think of something plausible that just isn't covered in the session notes and your on a roll, desperately trying to cobble together an explanation or a course of action. For example, TGS, a constant storm going on. One of my players decides to stand outside after dark and plot where the lightning strikes the most. A bit of triangulation and the result is the location of all of the lightning stones!

Anyone else got any examples

I disagree, I think it's the best they do, period

Thinking outside of the box, but inside of the world (so no meta-gaming), is what makes RPG unique as a game. Computergames & boardgames never have something like that, except where players are abusing loopholes or bugs, in which case it is no longer "in" the game.

A rogue, a grey, gold, jade wizard, ... all have several skills that can be used for something like that.

debuffing a fire-elemental with create water, hiring a ratcatcher for a planned ball because they needed a distraction (boy did they get more than they bargained for in Edge of Night ), magically disguising yourself as the captured leader of the cult and walking out of jail, to allow secret cult members to congregate at the planned ritual anyway, ...

It's those things that keep me playing

Letting players be creative and seeing where it goes is part of "my fun" as a GM, and being able to "think out of box" and try it is part of the fun of table top gaming as opposed to computer games etc.

In the example given, traingulating lightning strikes is tougher than it sounds. How high an Education skill does that character have? To actually "traingulate" as opposed to just "go in that general direction" one needs two points that are far enough apart, and even then you have no real maps more than sketches, you have no accurate measurement of distances. When you walk to point 2 for 2nd measurement, how far is that on your map? I would let a dwarf engineer or similar actually be able to do that, anyone else is "guestimating".

The most that gets you is "off to the general region you go". As GM, you then simply reconfigure "what was waiting there for them" to make sure necessary backstory is encountered. You can do that for all three sub-plots. Part of what I like about Gathering Storm is there's enough there for it to be a "big ol'sandbox" to play in.

Rob

While its always satisfying to solve the mystery ....running down the clues along the intended path it is also GREAT as a player when you feel really smart ... ofcause its not a contest players vs gm, but nevertheless it is quite satisfying to once and a while feel like you outsmarted the GM ... all in good fun ofcause, and if need be I have no problem with the GM just cheating 'behind his screen' to allow the bad guy to use hindsight and ofcause have thought of that possibility before hand .... even if the GM hadnt ... ie. sometimes its fun to solve a complex mystery by being clever ...and sometimes it just ruins the fun if the players are too smart or too lucky at the 'wrong time'

I love when my players help create a story.

Some GMs struggle b/c they don't know how to stay on story when the players do something unexpected.

Here's how you stay on story: Let the players play and then stay on story! If they murder the big bad evil guy in the first scene of the game, well then, who was his lieutenant? Story continues.

If the PCs go to the wrong town, show them a good time and go to the right town (by simply reviewing their clues).

When the PCs cause a cave-in that kills all the orcs in the first round, GOOD FOR THEM. Combats are not meant to be drug out into combat just for the sake of combat.

When the PCs cause a cave in that makes it impossible to get to the crypt with the guy and the thing that they need to recover to bring back to town so the merchant who hired them can pay them and then send thugs after them to get his money back because he's a lying snake..well, then you need to create another opening into that crypt that the PCs can find.

There is NO situation where the GM should not be able to 1) review the clues (either in character or out of character), 2) drive the PCs back on plot by whatever "new opening" you need to create.

There's always another bad guy. There's always another lieutenant who wants to take over in the big man's shoes. There's always another opening to the cave. There's always another messenger with a letter from a wealthy patron. There's always another set of tracks to follow..usually, another private investigator following the SAME lead as the PCs..only that private investigator is only there to die so that the PCs can still solve the mystery/problem.

..It's called "the back door." You can always get them back on track.

Example: In the scenario in The Adventure Begins, there's a good chance that the PCs will find the painting early. Guess what. It gets moved. It disappears. POOF! When they turn their back on it, suddenly it's gone..it's a trick of chaos! (The demon inside the painting moves himself or somethign). Later they see some figures moving pictures around the house..new lead! But no tracks yet! Their insane, ranting companion (usually the thief), swears it was there just a minute ago! Suddenly, they're back on task. Oh, there's an apothecary in the party who taste-tests everything? Poof, suddenly the Cook says she was just there poisoning people she didn't like and plainly takes the blame as a crazy killer..but it's obvious it's not her...back on track.

Another example: I ran Dog Eat Dog World combined with "Howls in the Night (Ravenloft)." The priest of Ranald in the party cast the "find whatever the hell you want" spell and quickly took the PCs to the site where a woman's corpse lay in a pool in the bog. They would have bypassed much of the story..except that I simply moved those parts of the story closer to the PCs (in their way), and sped up the timeline (and told the players that they were on a time crunch). It all worked out beautifully..and mysteriously, the priest of Ranald (and his find object spell), met with a sticky end in the next scenario.

3rd Example: The Doppleganger spell. Easily abused. Someone here came up with a nifty house rule about first: can't imitate voice, second: the difficulty (purple and or black, according to the GM) is increased by the number of opposing traits of the career to be imitated and is REGULARLY AND LIBERALLY checked. Not to screw over the player but to keep it a challenge. We want them to succeed..we just don't want it to be easy..and we want the climax of the scenario to be suspenseful and right down to the wire. That is where you as the GM have to fudge monster statistics, ACE dice, and teh surrounding environment (and conditions) to make it that way. Therein lies the skill of GMing that you learn by doing

jh

The easiest solution to this "problem" is to stop designing a box to keep the characters in.

Frankly, I'm less interested in running games that are of the "everyone sit back and watch my story happen" variety. I'm finding much more enjoyment in sitting back and watching the players make the story. It's much easier to prep for too.

Emirikol said:

Wow really? I have absolutely no interest in playing in a game where the story progresses through the same basic plot no matter what the PCs do, why do you need other players if that's the case? If the PCs do kill the cult leader in scene 1 then the plot should change dramatically, the new plot could revolve around the second trying to get hold of something the Leader had in his possession that the PCs have picked up, whether by fair means or foul is up to the GM and how cunning the NPCs are. Perhaps it's time for a power struggle within the cult itself and the PCs are now investigating why respectable people suddenly turn up dead, or maybe it's the PCs on trial for killing the cult leader who happened to be the local Liege Lord.

Anything less than changing the story is just not rewarding/punishing the players for their forward thinking/hideous errors.

To flip this around, if your PCs went on the run abandoning their supplies would you not make getting enough food to feed themselves at least part of the plot?

reg said:

It will still be hard to pinpoint the locations, let alone go straight there and actually know what to look for. Plus a few beastmen may discourage them.

But I think it's the best they do. If they intentional go out of their way to sabotage the session, then I'd just end it. But if they think outside the box and come up with ideas that may spin of entire adventures then it's awesome. But then again I think I could run an entire session from a bit of background and improvisation, so I love it.

What I do is that the background, setting, NPCs, locations etc. are really fleshed out on paper and in mind. Lots of interresting stuff. When reading the scenarios and writing my notes all kinds of different scenarios go through my head. I sort of play test it in my mind while preparing. But having a rich background means they can mess about as they wish. The world is there and they can just fool about in it.

I love sandbox based campaigns, where the players add as much as I do. Sometimes players come up with a silly idea or say something interresting. They may not think much of it, but later in the campaign that idea is fleshed out and suddenly they get the feeling of: "What? I was thinking that earlier"

To be honest, i'm actually really impressed the players even thought of it, though it does show a rather modern scientific approach. I'm guessing it came from the adventure tie I'd worked out (investigating the abnormal storms around Stromdorf). I'd thought using the prepared adventures would in some ways make it all a bit more worked out than the home-made scenario's I'd been using; in fact it is a bit harder, as you don't know the material so well.

Ah well, maintaining the narrative momentum, that's the trick.

I get a lot of what you're saying Emrikol... just one thing I strongly disagree with.

I never fudge anything. I really dislike it. For me it just ruins the consistency of the world. I know many GMs and books say that fudging dice is part of being a GM. For me it's not. That is destroying the Game part of Role Playing Game. I have never been in a position as a GM where I thought fudging something could make the session better never. For me it's just a bad GM habbit, but I know I'm a bit alone with this opinion as it's a very commonly accepted practice among GMs. As a GM I have full control over the world. I just don't think a GM should have full control of the mechanics. As a GM I have to accept that the die rolls are out of my control. It's the random element I have to plan for. What if they kill the boss in the first round. YAY awesome. I can't think of a single reason to fudge anything.

For me it's about planning and going with the flow of the session. I try to make my encounters fit the players as one of the following.

1. Easy encounters, where the party win easily

2. Average encounters, where it's a good fight, but not a big challenge.

3. Hard fights are a really good challenge and a player might die if they aren't careful.

4. Run away fights, where the players better just run or come up with an alternative solution to a head on confrontation. It's very likely that several and possibly all characters will die if they face this challenge head on.

I have a few easy encounters, but many of those are encounters the players can skip, by role playing or using other means. I have a few average fights, they tend to be over quickly, but may still result in injuries. The main encounter is most often hard. I have very few RUN away fights, but sometimes if the players are foolish, they may put themselves into such a fight. I'll stress the fact in my description that this fight will most likely end badly. But sometimes it doesn't because the players are lucky and/or smart. Like the time my players met a chaos troll. A truly fearsome beast with terror 2, 30 wounds, 8 toughness and 6 natural armor. It has a range of nasty attacks, regenerated at twice the normal rate every round and on all cards. Still they managed to kill it, by using range to their advantage. I never thought they would try fighting the troll and I certainly never thought they would kill it without any deaths. But I loved it.

I never fudge NPC wounds, A/C/E or die rolls. Never. When combat has started it is decided by what happends. If the main NPC is killed in the first round so be it. It will be epic. I never fudge anything. I make all checks open and players are free to check it out.. They know I don't cheat. This goes both ways. They know that the NPC won't suddenly get +10 wounds, but they also know I won't fudge a check that kills them. It's been close a fre times, but for me it's a matter of balancing the encounter. It's hard to control completely, but that's ok, because I like the world to be an organic place where every encounter isn't tailored to their rank, so it feels like a computer rpg.

That said, the NPC may cheat by doing something to escape, or enemy reinforcements may arrive. But that's the world reacting and not fudging of mechanics.

For me the game mechanics are like laws of physics that must not be tampered with. Between sessions we can house rully stuff we find offensive. But the rules and dice are the natural order, the laws ´that holds the world together. It's the random elements that make helps make the world its own living entity. If we start controling that we mess with the natural order. Not good.

Matchstickman said:

It's always an option to make stuff up as you go everyime a player comes in and deliberately turns left when he knows full well the gm prepped otherwise. That leads to GM burn out and shallow, uninspired sessions unless the player isn't doing it deliberately and "accidently" does something really smart I'm just saying that if a Gm wants to still "salvage a plot", he can do so

Also, most of us GMs dont' have all the time in the world to create and maintain sandboxes even though players oftentimes think we do (b/c all they have to do is 'show up.'). I personally agree with the above poster that if you can encourage the players to pick up more of the story work that's great. You can then have a rough framework and still present a game.

Not saying you shouldn't roll with it (woe to any GM that can't make up at least something on the fly), but if your players are perpetually getting off track, you need better hooks BEFORE the fact, rather than as a clean up act. ..and sometimes, players just come in and dispicably mess with your game just to say "I borked' it because I'm an a-hole" and then gripe because you're not creative enough to make up crap on the fly at that point..but that is an other topic

GALLOWS: I agree, that it's important not to fudge (too much) in a game. In my games I attempt to create the illusion that I'm not fudging because otherwise players quickly realize that if they died, it was b/c you were in a bad mood and not because of bad dice rolls or uncreative thinking.

jh

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Gallows said:

This says it all for me as a GM. I do have lots of details and plans in place, but my enjoyment is seeing where the story goes, not where it is planned to go.