Preparing for my first session as GM

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Boggo
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Re: Preparing for my first session as GM

Post by Boggo »

I don't give any hints to the existence of Secret doors, if they don't search, they don't find, thats kind of the point of secret doors after all, to not be found. I don't like spoonfeeding my players, if they don't do the work, they don't get the reward, though as you saw above, my most favourite use for secret doors is for monster ambushes :D The real secret to avoiding the long corridor blues, is to make empty rooms and corridors, NOT empty rooms and corridors, for example this is an empty room from level 2 of my Ruined watchtower dungeon:

The twenty foot square room is filled with warm water, which is about three feet deep and slowly circulating through the room. The water seems to be entering from the Western side of the room and draining on the Eastern side, but there is no visible source or outlet. The room itself is constructed from smooth, close-set stone, which gives it a cool and sterile appearance. The walls and floor are made of the same stone, with no visible seams or joints.
On the Eastern part of the North wall, there is a door made of rough-hewn wood, with iron fittings. The door seems out of place in this otherwise pristine room. Inside the doorway, there is a stone platform about ten feet wide and eight feet long, which protrudes into the water. The platform has stairs on the South and West sides, leading down into the rest of the room.
The room is well-lit by a glowing blue crystal in the center of the ceiling. The crystal emits a soft, ethereal light that illuminates the room without casting harsh shadows. The light reflects off the surface of the water, creating shimmering patterns on the walls and ceiling.
It's unclear what the purpose of this room might be, but the warm water and smooth stone surfaces suggest that it may be a kind of bath or hot spring. The blue crystal in the ceiling could have some sort of mystical or magical significance, or it could simply be a source of light for the room.

It's a completely empty room, nothing in it no loot, no monsters no secrets, but it will keep the party occupied for ages trying to figure it out. Not every point of interest has to have any reward, it could just be something interesting for them to investigate for awhile (I guarantee 2 of my players will have a bath when they get here)
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Mars
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Re: Preparing for my first session as GM

Post by Mars »

Boggo, I take your point, and I can see your bath room being great for appealing to players interested in the exploration and wonder elements of the game. But for other players (like the players in my group) I think they'd feel uninterested because there isn't really much of importance that they can do there. If it doesn't provide some sort of challenge, or some element connecting to the story's plot, then it isn't as likely to really engage my group of distracted/burned-out workaholics. If they spend a notable part of one of our 2-hour sessions exploring/investigating this room, and then there's nothing really to show for it, they're likely to feel let-down, or even cheated.
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Boggo
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Re: Preparing for my first session as GM

Post by Boggo »

Then I'm afraid I got nothing for ya, I haven't ever really played with combat junkies, doesn't hold any attraction for me so I can't really give any advice on how to keep them engaged, sorry :(
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JugglinDan
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Re: Preparing for my first session as GM

Post by JugglinDan »

In a game of The Game That Must Not Be Named that I am playing, the GM hates random encounters, sees them as a complete waste of time. So, unless those long passageways relate to the story, he just narrates past them in a few words. It could be days of travel, or half an hour of walking in a dungeon. This is not my approach when I'm GM, but it's an approach to get the players to the next point of action.
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Boggo
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Re: Preparing for my first session as GM

Post by Boggo »

I tend to not use wandering monster tables, I actually narratively add wandering monsters to corridors and such when I'm creating the dungeon, though that approach is from very old trauma with wandering monsters way back in about 1980
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JugglinDan
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Re: Preparing for my first session as GM

Post by JugglinDan »

I use wandering encounter rolls but try to only use encounters that make sense in context. The last one I had was when the party were camped in a grove of trees about half a mile from the mine in Gold in the Hills. I had their camp discovered by a hunting party of goblins who saw the smoke from their fire and went to investigate. I figured that if the mines are overrun by goblins, they would need to eat.
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Boggo
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Re: Preparing for my first session as GM

Post by Boggo »

I tend to decide things like that rather than roll it
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Mars
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Re: Preparing for my first session as GM

Post by Mars »

It's been almost exactly a year since I started running the Olde Island Fortress for my group, and last night we finally finished it! We had some extended pauses while we played other games (Malefices and Achtung! Cthulhu), and if anything by the end our pacing slowed down even more than when we started--the last few sessions were barely more than an hour long each; we'd generally only explore one or two rooms and have some sort of encounter and that'd be it for the night. The party came down to the Olde Island Fortress on four separate descents, and I also threw in a mini side-quest (Saving the Broggin Children, linked here: https://basicfantasy.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4869) . All in all it was probably at least a dozen sessions on this one adventure! But we kept going, and last night the party was victorious!

I thought they were pretty clever in their approach to the final battle, too, and figured I'd share it here (spoiler alert for those who haven't played the adventure). I ended up running the Second Alternate version of the tomb (I know that at least two of the players have bought the basic rules, so I didn't want to go with the Standard Version because it's described in the "Intro Story" featured there). I imagined the undead chieftain as a sort of mummy without rot-touch. The party attached a grappling hook to the lid of the sarcophagus and had their pack pony pull the lid back while they all waited in different corners, so the gas didn't affect them (they didn't know about the gas, but their caution paid off). Then they took turns pelting the undead chieftain with burning oil-flasks and holy water. The chieftain focused in on the cleric (who tried to turn him, to no effect), but only landed one blow before the party finished him off.

The last few sessions, though each was very short, also offered me a chance to further develop and tie-in the story from my mini-adventure. I had the goblins in the Olde Island Fortress be leftovers from the Nosecutter Gang featured in my mini-adventure--after their leader is killed they're on the run, looking for a new place to hunker down, and they stumble upon the Olde Island Fortress, where they end up in a skirmish with the resident Kobolds.

All in all, this was an excellent dungeon for me to cut my DM teeth on. It offered an intriguing, atmospheric setting, with an environment rich with things to interact with, but it also worked well as a sort of mini-sandbox that allowed the party a lot of freedom to try out different things and to move in any direction they chose. My thanks to Chris Gonnerman for writing the adventure and for creating BFRPG to begin with. And thanks also to all the forum members who chimed in on this thread and offered me advice.

My group plans on running a Mazes and Minotaurs adventure next (I'll be leaving the GM duties to another member), but after a little while I'd like to continue onward with our group's BFRPG campaign. I like the look of the Fortress of the Iron Duke, another Gonnerman adventure. I'm also thinking about Monkey Isle by J.D. Neal, though it seems like a much bigger can of worms to crack open. I'd love to hear other adventure recommendations if anyone wants to suggest something. I'm hoping for something slightly more challenging than the Olde Island Fortress--by the time they reached the final battle my group had advanced to a point in which it didn't seem to offer them a serious threat. (Because players can dip in and out of the Olde Island Fortress, and because they also took on the side-quest, I haven't limited their XP advancement to one level. Currently the party consists of one second level human Magic User, two third level Halfling thieves, and one second level human Cleric.)

Anybody want to make a suggestion for what adventure I should run next?
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