Here's to not telling other folks their experiences.
Purchased modules have been saving me time for years.
Planning, prep, motivation and you?
- Thread starter payn
- Start date
Here's to not telling other folks their experiences.
Purchased modules have been saving me time for years.
payn
I don't believe in the no-win scenario
I buy lots of things.
They save time on some things, add to others. To me this is a good add as I work best off a foundation.
I've had GMs that just buy a module and vtt set up and just yell "roll for initiative" but I'm not that kind of GM.
John Dallman
Hero
Not fantasy. What I'm running is GURPS 4e, in two demi-historical settings.
One is "Cold War Pulp," use of a pulp style for games set in the early Cold War period, as a deliberate defiance of current real-world political trends. The current scenario is based on the activities of Ronald Richter in Argentina.
The other is an occult WWII campaign set in British-ruled India. It's a spin-off of a precious campaign run by someone who's now a player in my campaign.
I think you are imagining some of these challenges to be bigger than they are. I'm going to stick to home games as publishing is beyond my expertise.
Organizing play is easy: I am an advocate of the tried and true set in stone game time. Whether you set it weekly, fortnightly or once a month is up to you.
Creating rules documents: what rules documents? The published game should have rules documents you and the players can refer to. This may be more in the publishing sphere.
Developing campaign material: if this is a challenge for you, run published modules/adventures. For me having a place to start and build on works way better than running full homebrew.
Prepping sessions: Lazy DM eight steps may be the structure you need to work through your prep. You can move the steps around or skip some entirely if you don't find them useful.
Ultimately you need to figure out the method/s and/or structure/s that work for you, since everyone has such different tastes and styles.
payn
I don't believe in the no-win scenario
Oh if it were so easy... First, I am a big proponent of campaign players guide and often have to write them up for my players. These are one part setting flavor and one part rules based. Second and this is a monumental second, im a Battletech player. The rules of the game for my mode, called Classic, are unfortunately a mess. Imagine poor organization, with various levels of rules are intermixed, as if they are balanced with one another and no real way to organize them in an easy to understand for newcomers position.
Now, a lot of folks locally have looked to me as the guy to wrangle this. I dont mind as I love the game and want to make it more approachable for my local community. It's a lot of work to organize though. Pick up games, tournaments, campaigns, etc..
Again, im not complaining about doing these things, and its not too much for me, I just want to get better at actually completing stuff so I can move on to new stuff. Often, feels like treading water and I want to get into making progress mode.
I dont find published material to be much easier than homebrew. As I mentioned, I think a GM needs to devote a lot of time to the material to make it come to life. If you just toss the material out there and run on auto pilot it shows. Im not that type of GM.
Im not looking for methods of doing things, Im looking for methods of staying motivated to finish what I started.
aco175
Legend
I like to take the shell of Forgotten Realms (FR) since there is soooo much information on it online. All the background and locations and gods and such is done, leaving me to focus on the game and the current campaign. Since 5e came out, I have run several campaigns around Phandalin or Leilon with the exception of the Princes of the Apocalypse book that took place not to far from the others. Each campaign is building on the others in terms of local history and flavor. It seems to be getting easier when I can reuse NPCs and some locations.
Here's to giving folks the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they are talking about their opinion when on a discussion board and not requiring every post to come with a disclaimer.
payn
I don't believe in the no-win scenario
Im more of a Golarion and Third Imperium guy when it comes to game settings. I definitely lean into whats available as a launching pad.
In a word: No.
Reasons:
(All uses of "you" below are generic, not Reynard, specifically)
1) Knowingly making folks assume things about your writing is a recipe for misunderstanding. Folks should be able to depend on you saying what you actually mean. If you mean it is an opinion, clear writing calls on you to position it as such.
2) If thinking for a moment more is too darned much work for you, maybe the point you are making isn't all that valuable to us, either. If you can't be bothered, maybe you shouldn't bother.
3) How one phrases an opinion has a strong tendency to impact how one defends that position when there is pushback.
4) Requests to give "benefit of the doubt" effectively allows the speaker to claim more rhetorical ground than they ought, but then deny and claim victimhood when pressed about it, which is bogus.
1) Knowingly making folks assume things about your writing is a recipe for misunderstanding. Folks should be able to depend on you saying what you actually mean. If you mean it is an opinion, clear writing calls on you to position it as such.
2) If thinking for a moment more is too darned much work for you, maybe the point you are making isn't all that valuable to us, either. If you can't be bothered, maybe you shouldn't bother.
3) How one phrases an opinion has a strong tendency to impact how one defends that position when there is pushback.
4) Requests to give "benefit of the doubt" effectively allows the speaker to claim more rhetorical ground than they ought, but then deny and claim victimhood when pressed about it, which is bogus.
Committed Hero
Adventurer
I don't think any rpg material has ever promised this in the 50 years of the hobby. But plenty of materials have bits and pieces that can be used for your campaign. I would look towards things that are geared towards sandbox or even improvisational play.
For my part, I prep situations, and if there are dynamic NPCs present, their responses towards things the PCs might do. And a lot of it can be done walking.
