Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

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Kaizer Ghidorah said:
To the fellow DMs here how many sessions ahead do you usually plan?
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Yeah like others have said, it depends on what you're doing. If you're doing a pre-written one at least read ahead and know where things go and the big events and past that you can wing it. If you're doing homebrew I don't think I've ever seen anyone plan more than one or two in advance at best, minus some big event or area they've had percolating in their brain.

If you're extremely "type-A" just make a simple flowchart somewhere that generally points you to where you're trying to guide players but they can and will go off the rails and end up taking way longer on the shit that you thought would take two seconds, and blast through your week long planned dungeon in an hour.
 
Brain Problems said:
Yeah like others have said, it depends on what you're doing. If you're doing a pre-written one at least read ahead and know where things go and the big events and past that you can wing it. If you're doing homebrew I don't think I've ever seen anyone plan more than one or two in advance at best, minus some big event or area they've had percolating in their brain.

If you're extremely "type-A" just make a simple flowchart somewhere that generally points you to where you're trying to guide players but they can and will go off the rails and end up taking way longer on the shit that you thought would take two seconds, and blast through your week long planned dungeon in an hour.
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Pretty much what happened in the last session of my game. Due to some slight misfortune, there's some inter-player problems, and I'm not sure how that's going. I trust they're being reasonable adults, but that's like trusting a Goldfish to remember the whole bible.
 
Kaizer Ghidorah said:
To the fellow DMs here how many sessions ahead do you usually plan?
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As a recovering "everything must be accounted for" type planner, I used to try and plan for everything the sugar powered squirrels otherwise known as players could possibly do. This caused a lot of unnecessary stress and nearly caused me to stop running.

Nowadays though, if it's homebrew, I hardly have the session planned out aside from relevant story points (if any) that I want to hit. For each arc I run I have a handful of bullet points and maybe some NPC dialogue written up, but there's no guarantee the party will hit any or all of that in a single session, so I have to be flexible with my running. I have yet to run a published campaign as most of my experience in that matter is strictly homebrew; however, if it's a module I tend to prepare all of it and pray my improv skills are enough should they do something I didn't expect.
 
I should also add, now that I'm getting into B/X "One week to stop the Lich is exactly 7 days" stuff where things happen when it happens* and not just a cutscene triggered when you enter town....I don't plan sessions, but I do spend a fair bit of time off the table "incrementing" the world - How wars and political struggles in the distance have progressed, etc. And then planning out how that will affect the PCs and when.

But again, that's not exactly what I consider session prep but some do.


*unless the players disrupt it, or I come with a good in game reason (gods) to have things take a more cinematic route; GMs exist to figure out when the rules should be bent and how much, not merely enforce them
 
Ghostse said:
I should also add, now that I'm getting into B/X
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How are you liking it? There's a few B/x modules I want to run, but I'm torn on what B/x compatible system to use. I like Knave, but my players don't, OSE (vanilla), Castles and Crusades (rave reviews that no one plays), and Dungeon World Dungeon Crawl Classics (randomness).
 
Judge Dredd said:
How are you liking it? There's a few B/x modules I want to run, but I'm torn on what B/x compatible system to use. I like Knave, but my players don't, OSE (vanilla), Castles and Crusades (rave reviews that no one plays), and Dungeon World Dungeon Crawl Classics (randomness).
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I use OSE just because there is so much helper material (since its just vanilla B/x)

I've been meaning to work on a potential pivot to Castles and Crusades, but that'll be a ways off. AS you imply, its hard to get motivated when its hard to find games/players. OSE is bad enough and its pretty easy to pick up.
 
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Kaizer Ghidorah said:
To the fellow DMs here how many sessions ahead do you usually plan?
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Back when I was in a situation where I actually could run a homebrew tabletop with flatmates, I planned two different things simultaneously: player stuff and world stuff.

Planning the overall narrative of the game world I could do as much as I wanted. I wrote significant things I had planned in a sort of 'modular' way where even if players did serious shit like kill a faction leader or destroy an important building, I would be able to introduce that plot element through another means instead. I was trying very hard to basically create a sandbox game, and making important stuff 'modular' like that helped a lot.

I didn't want to plan personal player stuff TOO far in advance, usually just their next session or two. In session zero I asked everyone to write down some critical things like their motivation and origin, so that I knew what the endpoint of their character arc would be, but how they got there could be very flexible and react to other players' actions. It was important not to let that creep too far out though, because I was actively trying to make player's actions result in world consequences. e.g. one player threw a knife at a wolf, it wasn't fatal but the wolf fled, and that wolf turned up in someone else's session as a levelled up miniboss and the knife still stuck in it was now sort of 'unique loot' in an ARPG sense.

This was mostly a byproduct of having individualized sessions with players, as everyone having different work hours and stuff meant multi-player sessions were rare and had to be specially organized.
 
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Kaizer Ghidorah said:
To the fellow DMs here how many sessions ahead do you usually plan?
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It really depends. When I start a campaign, I already have a series of events that will occur laid out in my head. This can change of course, sometimes things get cut for time or I have to add something based off what the group wants or as a result of their actions. I will generally only prepare for the next session, unless whatever is coming up is particularly important or involved. For most other things I rely on improv.

I will prepare special items and custom enemies in advance though. I really enjoy designing set peice combat encounters and cool loot. For my Darksun game as an example, I have a entire document of custom magic items and "boss" enemies that are already designed and ready for when they come up.
 
i want to get into TTRPGs but dice rolls and character stats put me off
are there games where you just talk to the DM and other players without being retarded
 
bird.up said:
i want to get into TTRPGs but dice rolls and character stats put me off
are there games where you just talk to the DM and other players without being retarded
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Son its TTRPG. You are pretending to be elves, knights, or insane/dead 1920s flappers. The entire thing front to end is being retarded.
 
Or a straight narrative game like... shit what's the Heist game all the (((usual suspects))) were crooning about a couple years ago.
 
bird.up said:
i want to get into TTRPGs but dice rolls and character stats put me off
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I'm going to assume you're not being dumb and are looking for gateway games.

There are lots of board games that do the TTRPG thing without the complexity of TTRPGs.

Two I've played recently are Descent and Mansions of Madness. Descent is basically a TTRPG without the RP parts. It's just the tactical combat tied together with a loose plot. Mansions of Madness has the 1920s Cthulhu setting with an app that acts as the game master and tells you the results. I don't like app based board games, but if you like them, it's an option.

There are also a number of tactical skirmish games. Most TTRPGs are tactical skirmish games with a plot around it. I liked the sound of Infinity as it used colour coded cards instead of dice rolls, but I never found anyone willing to play it. Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team is a popular choice, but never played that either. If you live in the UK Kill Team is basically your only option.


On the other side of the coin, there are games that are story focused without being RPG-like mechanically. A friend of mine used to be a big fan of Talisman (we played the digital version a lot on Steam). The Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror games are full of flavour text that build a story as you play, though I recommend house ruling a few things.

Some thematic games. ie. Board games that kind of tell a story based on how things unfold at the table. Nemisis is basically Alien. Pandemic Legacy is interesting if you can get a group to commit to it, and liking base Pandemic is a must. Unfathomable is a traitor game where you're on a cruise ship being attacked by deep ones (there's a minor amount of wokeshit with an out of place trans character, but is easily ignored). Firefly has characters who are moral and some that aren't, and this effects what jobs you take and choices you make. eg. Moral characters aren't going to be happy stealing medicine.

Finally, some games with RP potential. Robin Hood is a bluffing game where each player is trying to smuggle contraband into Nottingham, while not my cup of tea, lots of people like getting into character as the sheriff. Red Dragon Inn is about RPG characters getting drunk in a tavern trying to see who can be the last one standing. People like getting into character as they play the various cards on each other.


I wouldn't recommend Hero Quest. I know that's a popular option for a gateway RPG, but when I played it I found it boring. I did play the Ravenloft board game once years ago and I don't remember much about it, but I remember it being okay.
 
MISTER-CREEPMAN00 said:
Any Tabletop Games that isn't D&D or Pathfinder?
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There's always Rifts and other Palladium stuff. I know the system is super clunky and not for everyone but I've had a lot of fun both as a GM and a player.
 
bird.up said:
what if i dont want to do math
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Some of the most insufferably retarded people I know can handle the level of math required of you in your average TTRPG.
Now I don't know you, you may be even more retarded than them. It's extremely unlikely but still possible. But as long as you can add/subtract one small number to/from another, you are overqualified for a system like DnD 5e, not that I recommend you play 5e.

My actual recommendation is, try and find someone who already knows whatever system you want to try and just give character creation and a simple adventure a shot.
Any system can seem overwhelming when you are only reading about them but in most cases standard play isn't too demanding until players/the DM start to try and make it more complicated.
 
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