Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[kisame12794]

My whole RTD is me making it up as I go along, and eight turns in I have seven people on the waitlist, one town completely massacred, someone who can explode at will, and a trio of evil trudging off to create a morally ambiguous empire. Just roll with it.

[monk12]

My whole RTD is me making it up as I go along, and eight turns in I have seven people on the waitlist, one town completely massacred, someone who can explode at will, and a trio of evil trudging off to create a morally ambiguous empire. Just roll with it.

Just roll with it.

roll

i c wat u did thar

[Theifofdreams]

I don't know how.
Because obviously all of you guys keep detailed notes laying around about dungeon layouts, potential loot, and semi-winged plot.

My tips to being a good DM:
1: Have a basic 4 point plot, going back to front. Literally just set 4 scenes you plan out in detail, and just nudge the players toward them. counting the 5th step (Gather party) as optional, of course.
2: Have 2 basic fall-back ploys in the wings in case they go in the opposite directions.
3: Maps are optional.
4: Loot can be anything. It's up to the players to figure out how to use 10 Inches of Unbreakable Twine, but believe me, they will.
5:There is no tip 5.
6:Do not work with keeping the players alive as your final goal. Work with doing something cool and hilarious, and let them struggle.
7: Dungeons are dungeons are dungeons. If you can't come up with a pseudo-labrynthine death-trap filled with horrible monsters and semi-valuable random junk, you... probably shouldn't even be playing anyway. Just grab random hallways, pick some cool monsters and stick them where it makes sense, throw treasure in the alcoves near the hard ones and at the very back, and there you go.
8: Never tell your players anything if you can avoid it.
9: Practice your Indy Ploy. If it's an RTD you've got a couple extra hours to work in anyway.

[Gatleos]

I don't know how.

Because obviously all of you guys keep detailed notes laying around about dungeon layouts, potential loot, and semi-winged plot.

Fully-winged, actually. I only have vague ideas of things I want the players to encounter along the way; most of my plot is derived from running gags, obscure references, and occasional soul-crushing irony. That ridiculously complicated and 109-page-long RtD of mine had absolutely nothing planned out when I started, and now I do have pages of notes on it just from incidental plot exposition and world-building. What I'm saying is that in a RtD, your players are your co-writers. Just guide them forward and the story will write itself.

And hey, you can use that Cult of Hellbinder idea for it.

[freeformschooler]

What Gat and Thief said. Technically I have a plot document just to make sure I don't create plot holes, but I make over half of it up as I go.

A nice thing to have, even if you're winging it without maps, is a roll table, like this:

1 - Enemies
2 - Non-enemy Danger
3 - Nothing
4 - PLOT EVENT
5 - Item
6 -

Or you could have a multi-tiered roll table like I use to create dungeon rooms. Even if you don't want to make one of these, there's some nice free ones in RPG Rulebooks.

Alternately, if you lack inspiration, there's random generators which you can adapt to your needs.

I'm still beating myself up over not having the time to run a Zelda RTD myself, but I think you would be good at it Derm. It would be way rad as a first (?) RPG.

[monk12]

What I'm saying is that in a RtD, your players are your co-writers. Just guide them forward and the story will write itself.

That right there is so true, I'm tempted to sig it. Not just for RTDs, either- pretty much any GM-Player relationship is like that.

[kisame12794]

Another thing I like to do is to spend time during the day just idly thinking on what I would like the players to do. Want to go to a Haunted House? Imagine it in full detail, down to the cliche'd demonic runes in the wall. It really helps if you have an active imagination.

[mcclay]

I'm not sure if this is the right thread for it but I would like some advice on my receantly created forum game Roll to Screw up History. This is my second RTD and I want to know what you guys think of it.

[Tarran]

Well, it's not an RTD I'm interested in. The first post is very small in my opinion (showing that the RTD is bare-bones simple) and the genre is not one I'm interested in.

Do note that this is just my opinion, though. I'm but one person.

[mcclay]

Well, it's not an RTD I'm interested in. The first post is very small in my opinion (showing that the RTD is bare-bones simple) and the genre is not one I'm interested in.

Do note that this is just my opinion, though. I'm but one person.

Do note that I am doing all this on my Kindle and that if it gets started up hopeflly it will get more complex as time goes om

[DinosaurusRex_x]

Phew.  I wanna update 2 of my games (haven't posted in over a month due to moving/getting internet/moving again/blah blah blah).

Does Necro'ing work here?

I kind of figured RTD as an ADD version of gaming.   The update post prolly just has to be awesome enough to lure in the attention that the game needs to thrive...

[lawastooshort]

Yeah probably but it wouldn't hurt to also PM players if you're worried about it.

[Tarran]

PMing is very important. I've found that--in my experience--players, even to my active RTD, sometimes do not post for no reason at all. So PMs are very important.

[Gatleos]

I say every RtD on the forum should go on strike and stop updating until Derm starts his RtD.

[lawastooshort]

I say every RtD on the forum should go on strike and stop updating until Derm starts his RtD.

We could use cryptic PMing.