The Gaming Den

When I'm reading messages on an RPG messageboard, sometimes I think to myself "Wow, that's really an idea that a novice GM would love". Here's a sampling of what I'm talking about:

* "There was a traitor in the party from the very beginning!"
* Unreliable PC abilities (e.g. "magic is dangerous")
* Plots that can only proceed after solving a puzzle
* Making the PCs take many sessions to get from point A to point B
* Character generation where the players don't get to make any choices (e.g. pre-gens, random generators)
* "Iceberg" campaigns where 90+% of the story is hidden from the PCs (e.g. elaborate mysteries or conspiracies that the PCs may never encounter at all)
* Throwing the PCs in jail
* Making the PCs poor so that they'll appreciate the few crumbs they get from the GM
* No-win situations (a la "Sophie's Choice")
* Fiendishly intricate traps
* Making large crowds of peons exponentially more dangerous than the same amount of peons individually
* Amnesia
* Adventures that are thinly disguised variants of popular stories (e.g. "Alice in Wonderland", "Game of Thrones", "Alien")
* Cutscenes
* Puzzle monsters
* Giant chess boards
* Villains that always manage to escape
* Cursed items

Any other favourite GM hobbyhorses that you can think of?

This list mostly makes me think of stupid ideas that most commonly present with novice GMs...

Penis insertion NPCs
PCs are not the main characters (often dovetails with iceberg)
Bartender is bad ass
NPCs want you to save their town but still charge for meals
Make PCs track minutiae in expenditures for raeilzm

That said, not all of the things you listed are bad per se (and perhaps they weren't all intended to be). Variants of popular stories and other gimmicks (even giant chess boards) can be fun.
Likewise well done cursed items can be entertaining. The best cursed items are ones where you still consider using them, or even better, find a way to make the curse a feature.

So... this isn't "List of bad ideas novice GMs love" it's a list of "ideas (no comment on quality) that GMs (in general) love"?

Because I'm seeing a list of things ranging from the horrendous to the meh to the "actually you CAN do that, but sure, certainly shitty GMs do it too much or too badly like all the time".

And at least on the "bad ideas bad GMs constantly do badly" side of the list there are still plenty of omissions like "low magic" and "realistic wounds and healing" and "hardcore high fatality gaming" and "dark and gritty themes" or "adult themes".

Yeah, most of these ideas aren't bad in and of themselves. Any idea can be done badly.

Yeah, icebergs and pre-gens are just another tool in the box as far as I'm concerned, especially if you're playing a point buy game like Shadowrun where both character creation and character progression can be a real bear and the setting is supposed to be a sandbox with all sorts of crazy bullshit happening at any given moment.

*rolls dice*
"It's nothing."

*one hour later*
"Josh, you were actually replaced by a doppleganger."

"And then the PCs are captured!"

"This is a low magic setting so your level 7 characters don't have any magical gear, it'll really show how valuable fighters are compared to clerics and wizards!"

PhoneLobster wrote:"bad ideas bad GMs constantly do badly"

That's the kind of thing I'm looking for -- not necessarily outright terrible ideas, but ones that should be taken with a big grain of salt.

PhoneLobster wrote:[..] there are still plenty of omissions like "low magic" and "realistic wounds and healing" and "hardcore high fatality gaming" and "dark and gritty themes" or "adult themes".

All worthy additions, especially "realistic wounds and healing".

I forgot another classic:

* Mazes (both actual maps and abstracted maze-wandering minigames)

hogarth wrote:
I forgot another classic:

* Mazes (both actual maps and abstracted maze-wandering minigames)

What's your beef with maze minigames? Is it an always-bad dislike or a shitty experience dislike?

rasmuswagner wrote:

hogarth wrote:
I forgot another classic:

* Mazes (both actual maps and abstracted maze-wandering minigames)

What's your beef with maze minigames? Is it an always-bad dislike or a shitty experience dislike?

Most people who make mazes are dumb gygaxian fucknuts who both a) make terrible mazes in which the secret is to read the DM's mind to think of the OMG CLEVER SOLUTION, because all standard methods of beating a maze, like hand on left wall, or literally mapping the maze fail because the maze is magic. b) Get really mad if you do anything smart to bypass the maze besides specifically think of the thing they decided you need to think of.

Teleport? Fuck you! Divination spells? DON'T WORK IN THE MAZE! Break the wall? The WALLS ARE ALL WALLS OF FORCE! Rod of Cancellation? STOP BEING SUCH A CHEATING MUNCHKIN! THEY ARE SPECIAL FORCE WALLS THAT IGNORE ALL THE THINGS THAT CAN NEGATE THEM!

I think that's just a subset of a more general problem: obstacles that arbitrarily have only the one solution. I.e. that thing that the DM wants you to solve one way and all other solutions are Wrong and Terrible.

My problem with mazes is that they either end up being so abstract that they become a skill check or fail to progress, or concrete in a really obnoxious way. Nobody likes drawing little twists and turns all over a battle mat, or an interminable series of "you come to an intersection, which branch do you take?" It's tedious.

OgreBattle wrote:"This is a low magic setting so your level 7 characters don't have any magical gear, it'll really show how valuable fighters are compared to clerics and wizards!"

Wait, wait, you forgot the punchline.

"This is a low magic setting so your level 7 characters don't have any magical gear, it'll really show how valuable fighters are compared to clerics and wizards! But don't worry, if you die - there's a high level cleric in every town. Also you'll be accompanied by a fifteenth level wizard NPC quest giver."

rasmuswagner wrote:

hogarth wrote:
I forgot another classic:

* Mazes (both actual maps and abstracted maze-wandering minigames)

What's your beef with maze minigames? Is it an always-bad dislike or a shitty experience dislike?

Pixels hit the high points: writing the minigame or drawing the maze is more fun for the GM than the fun players get (if the implementation is poor) rolling dice twenty times in a row or having the GM ask "Left or right?" twenty times in a row. Plus with the minigame version you probably don't even end up with a nifty diagram written on graph paper afterwards.

For what it's worth, every tabletop RPG game I've been in with a maze, my feeling has been "meh" rather than dislike.

----

Doppelgangers and bad-ass NPCs are more great examples of what I'm thinking of.

hogarth wrote:When I'm reading messages on an RPG messageboard, sometimes I think to myself "Wow, that's really an idea that a novice GM would love". Here's a sampling of what I'm talking about:

* "There was a traitor in the party from the very beginning!"
* Unreliable PC abilities (e.g. "magic is dangerous")
* Plots that can only proceed after solving a puzzle
* Making the PCs take many sessions to get from point A to point B
* Character generation where the players don't get to make any choices (e.g. pre-gens, random generators)
* "Iceberg" campaigns where 90+% of the story is hidden from the PCs (e.g. elaborate mysteries or conspiracies that the PCs may never encounter at all)
* Throwing the PCs in jail
* Making the PCs poor so that they'll appreciate the few crumbs they get from the GM
* No-win situations (a la "Sophie's Choice")
* Fiendishly intricate traps
* Making large crowds of peons exponentially more dangerous than the same amount of peons individually
* Amnesia
* Adventures that are thinly disguised variants of popular stories (e.g. "Alice in Wonderland", "Game of Thrones", "Alien")
* Cutscenes
* Puzzle monsters
* Giant chess boards
* Villains that always manage to escape
* Cursed items

Any other favourite GM hobbyhorses that you can think of?

I'm not gonna lie, hogarth, there's probably a half dozen things on that list that I at least like.

Kaelik wrote:

rasmuswagner wrote:

hogarth wrote:
I forgot another classic:

* Mazes (both actual maps and abstracted maze-wandering minigames)

What's your beef with maze minigames? Is it an always-bad dislike or a shitty experience dislike?

Most people who make mazes are dumb gygaxian fucknuts who both a) make terrible mazes in which the secret is to read the DM's mind to think of the OMG CLEVER SOLUTION, because all standard methods of beating a maze, like hand on left wall, or literally mapping the maze fail because the maze is magic. b) Get really mad if you do anything smart to bypass the maze besides specifically think of the thing they decided you need to think of.

Teleport? Fuck you! Divination spells? DON'T WORK IN THE MAZE! Break the wall? The WALLS ARE ALL WALLS OF FORCE! Rod of Cancellation? STOP BEING SUCH A CHEATING MUNCHKIN! THEY ARE SPECIAL FORCE WALLS THAT IGNORE ALL THE THINGS THAT CAN NEGATE THEM!

I was thinking more along the lines of:
"Okay, so you enter the Labyrinth of Doom [Insert flavor text]. Gimme a marching order, your two front guys are gonna need Perception/Survival/Knowlege (Architecture), and your ideas for navigating it. You've got chalk, that's a +2 if your front guys can make a DC 10 perception...oh, you got glow-in-the dark paint? Solid +3 instead. You're spamming Know Direction? Fine, +2. Okay, you got a +5, front guys make your skill checks. 20 and 26? You wander for 10 minutes, then you come across a 20' by 20' room with a statue of...."

Schwarzkopf wrote: I'm not gonna lie, hogarth, there's probably a half dozen things on that list that I at least like.

As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.

It's time for this.

LMFAO

Retro gaming; levels and classes mean something

*Powerful characters stomp smaller foes; teams of powerful characters can stomp massive foes

*Once you're lvl 6, you get Leadership & Stronghold; your party can pool their stronghold values

*[an interesting hack our group came up with for 2e in the 1990's] You can forge weapons together of the same bonus in order to get a higher bonus in a single newly forged weapon; the remaining material is the slag from teh purification of the magic item. We were so subconsiously offended by the notion that weapons didn't neatly tier up, that we literally handwaved that part of the game away {while simultaneously maintaining that a Wizard with 1 hp at level 1 was "totally fine" (even if they tried to melee w/ a dagger in their first encounter; and got predictably hit & dropped by a luck 1 damage hit), we had some good ideas, but weren't cagey enough to realize everything that was bullshit, as players & refs been spoiled on computer games for so long at the time}

Stupid gaming; the action goes where you want it; but what you see is often the unexpected

*Totally Randumb Quest-giver Plane/NPC, quest, Quest Plane, Encounters/Loot ((the last part tends to be the worst, but I'm these are ad libbed adventures run seat-of-the-pants))

Pretentious gaming; the PCs are special snowflakes who will be remembered forever.

*Giving the players enough levels &/or magic items to be able to alter the fundamental aspects of the setting. It's Zciense Phantazy at volume 11 baby! Swords! Planets! Aliens! Feudalism! Armies! Epic changes in the setting enacted by the players!

On the Pathfinder reddit someone was asking for DM advice on how to prep for PC's that do unexpected things like attempt to mind control the king.

One of the top voted replies was "the moment the PC attempts that is the moment the king has a magic ring to stop them"

rasmuswagner wrote: I was thinking more along the lines of:
"Okay, so you enter the Labyrinth of Doom [Insert flavor text]. Gimme a marching order, your two front guys are gonna need Perception/Survival/Knowlege (Architecture), and your ideas for navigating it. You've got chalk, that's a +2 if your front guys can make a DC 10 perception...oh, you got glow-in-the dark paint? Solid +3 instead. You're spamming Know Direction? Fine, +2. Okay, you got a +5, front guys make your skill checks. 20 and 26? You wander for 10 minutes, then you come across a 20' by 20' room with a statue of...."

If your players find that rolling a die adds a zesty piquancy to the simple joy of entering a 20' x 20' room, I shan't gainsay them.

--

Other GM favourites:

* Nigh-omnipotent beings with ill-defined powers over reality (cf. various episodes of "Star Trek")

* Using unbeatable enemies to teach the players valuable lessons about running away from fights or using diplomacy

hogarth wrote:

rasmuswagner wrote: I was thinking more along the lines of:
"Okay, so you enter the Labyrinth of Doom [Insert flavor text]. Gimme a marching order, your two front guys are gonna need Perception/Survival/Knowlege (Architecture), and your ideas for navigating it. You've got chalk, that's a +2 if your front guys can make a DC 10 perception...oh, you got glow-in-the dark paint? Solid +3 instead. You're spamming Know Direction? Fine, +2. Okay, you got a +5, front guys make your skill checks. 20 and 26? You wander for 10 minutes, then you come across a 20' by 20' room with a statue of...."

If your players find that rolling a die adds a zesty piquancy to the simple joy of entering a 20' x 20' room, I shan't gainsay them.

I think your comment here isn't fair. rasmus's example sounds like an efficient way to run a maze: give the PCs a chance to have an input into how they explore without spending hours on it, while showing off their ideas and their skill choices. And it's done fairly quickly and with a minimum of fuss (rolling).

I mean, rolling for skills like Perception/Survivial/Knowledge(Architecture) is almost never gonna be sexy. You could argue for getting rid of rolls for skills like this, but that's a different argument.

Nope, I'm with hogarth, rolling dice and then entering rooms is not a maze, and pretty much eliminates what few possible good things could come from a maze.

The PCs were secretly the villains all along. The game was deliberately set up to obscure the actual morality of the situation by invoking game tropes that the players would accept unquestioningly.


The PCs were secretly the villains that they were fighting against all along, because of Total Recall style memory gambits. Quaid is Hauser.