Three of the all-time best GM sections in tabletop RPGs - RPG Talk
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 มิ.ย. 2024
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The mothership GM section is really strong.
As someone who buys a lot of these books just to pull ideas from, I really appreciate this video. I would love to see more like this one. Thanks!
I second both points here. Appreciate the help in the ever growing collection to learn from and would also love to see more videos like this.
Great work!
I think the "don't plan solutions" lesson was (is?) genuinely the hardest lesson for me to learn as a GM.
Put a lot of prep into providing solutions to the problems you make and the players will promptly ignore them and rig up something that manages to bypass half the challenges you had planned.
My game prep is now, for the most part, able to fit on a single index card. This is part of why I don't like the D20 Frameworks anymore, because those are still pretty much impossible to get down to that size.
I don't know if it is something I'm at fault with, but the biggest problem I run into with the "don't plan solutions" mentality is that I find that my players don't tend to find the solutions themselves so I find myself prepping solutions so that I have a "default" option to "hand to" my players.
Probably speaks to a lack of faith in my players possibly but also a lack of engagement on their part, but balanced with my desire to make sure everyone has a satisfying game session which just doesn't happen if everyone spends three hours spinning their wheels.
@@schemage2210 If you see that the players are not having fun with the challenges you are presenting them, what is the purpouse of those "challenges"?
Sadly that's a common issue in the d&d and fantasy settings, that the game must be run in just one way, often this mentality being in the way of the enrichment of the experience.
Also, maybe you are taking away the opportunity from your players to solve a riddle in a way that they find exciting by giving them a solution or conditioning them into thinking that you will provide the answer in due time. I don't know you or your group so I don't really mean to offend, sorry it it sounds like it.
We have to remember that rules are just a suggestion in Tabletop RPG and we are all players who deserve to have fun, including GM's and player characters.
@@schemage2210 Unless your players are of below average intelligence, there may be some issue in your solutions rather than your players...
@@PeterKoperdan And clearly your an above average asshole for speaking trash about people and things you have no knowledge of.
Warden's Operational Manual became some sort of freaking TTRPG Bible for me.
I have never seen so much effort, wisdom and good advice in my ttrpg life.
I will never stop recommending this book to every DM.
I think TTRPGs should teach GMs and players who to "play a scenario with a TTRPG" and shows them how to resolve things. Mothership does a great job at it.
I think Mörk Borg having a stripped down approach with players making basically all the rolls really changed how I think about playing. I think the best I’ve learned is to unlearn most things, the best rule is just say yes and roll with it.
the idea of listing challenges based on people at the table if I understood it correctly looks a lot like the advice in fabula ultima's gm section that tells the gm how to challenge each character class in the book.
I got bumped! lol
thank you for what you've done with DM Scotty, EZD6 and ICRPG basically run themselves, I couldn't even read those in full because got too busy writing and GMing. Gotta find or teach more people to GM, so I get to play as player again
Really hyped for VDS and Crown&Skull too
HELL YEA.
Your last video on godlike GM sections is the best video on youtube. I recommend it in every breath.
I just picked up The Walking Dead specifically for the GM section. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it and the solo rules with the community connections is a great resource.
Id love to add to the reading list for some people, so here's 3 of my favorites i dont see mentioned too often: Best Left Buried, Monster of The Week, and Blades In The Dark. And here's why:
Best Left Buried is a fantasy horror game, like d&d if the monsters where meant to be feared not just hunted. And boy do they have some amazing advice for how to dial up the horror for a combat focused horror game. It's largely because of how they guide you through the process of describing the monsters and environments.
Monster of The Week is a little less versatile but if you are playing that type of game, investigative horror or anything with long form story arcs told in a fairly episodic manner, its really great. Especially the sections talking about how to build story arcs and string everything together.
And lastly Blades In The Dark has lots of great advice on how to keep a game moving when the dice just aren't on your players side and how to DM with minimal prep, just rolling with the punches and player initiatives. The most important part of it for me was making the rulings and systems behind the game less opaque for the players. Just straight up telling them, okay, you need 4 successful skill checks in this encounter or the guards are going to show up. Clearly laying out the stakes and rules for scenarios both raises the tension and keeps everyone on the same page.
The beat chart from Cyberpunk Red, which was pulled from the older Dreampark game, is one of the best adventure structure articles ever written, and I was thrilled that I saw it in Red, and was the solitary reason I bought the book.
I think it was your review for the Mothership Box Set that made me finally dig out the Warden's Operation Manual and going through it. I haven't gotten to run it, or anything, since I started reading it (curse my friend group for having two TTRPG groups both with loads of people who want to GM! /s), but I will definitely be using it the next time I run anything.
I always have "A" solution, not "THE ONLY" solution. There's a difference that really matters.
I hadn’t dived into the Cyberpunk Red GM section before…wow that is a lot of content!
In my opinion the GM section in ICRPG is worth its weight in gold. Don't overprepare, set timers, treats and threats (carrots and sticks) and design encounters and rooms, not combats. Simple, no nonsense, effective advice.
Agreed. I covered that in my last GM Sections video!
It's awesome that you bring more GM sections up like this! Please keep doing it if you find more.
It's hard to not talk about 5e and how big it is compared to every other TTRPG. Which is why I expect big things for the updated DMG. Looking at all this great advice from much smaller teams, WotC have a lot of things to improve from the 2014 DMG.
Narrator: WotC would not improve the DMG. Because they have no idea how people actually play.
@@opscontaylor8195 haha :)
Really excellent highlights here...also like the short style of the video here covering 3 RPGs in 16mins! Although I'm guilty of skimming GM advice sections of an RPG this kind of solid and super practical GM guidance advice can transform your confidence running a session and how much more fun you get out of it. Great stuff!
Great video Dave! Love this sort of informational stuff.
I will have to dive back into Cyberpunk RED and give that GM section another look, honestly the pages full of beats kinda made my eyes gloss over the first time I saw it.
The Mothership section though looked amazing. Not sure if I would be able to stick to the formula presented but seems to detail everything you could possibly need in a very methodical manner.
Walking Dead is so short compared to other Free League core rulebooks... and yet it is so packed with good ideas for the tabletop compared to their other recent releases. Some other Free League titles have become overburdened by fluff, but the Walking Dead didn't go down that path. The universe of the fiction was kept vague... it doesn't kill you with the backstory, the lore, the fluff that becomes too common in these licensed games. Like, I'm missing some of the heart in Blade Runner. Maybe it's because Villeneuve's movie is nothing like Ridley Scott's movie, and 2049 feels like it's missing the soul... but I feel like you need to escape Blade Runner, read some Noir fiction & games before you can get through all the mess of the setting to actually play Free League's Blade Runner.
I could use that section in Cyberpunk for Blade Runner instead of what we did get. I could use those concepts from Mothership instead of the extreme amount of fluff in the ALIEN line from Free League. (Like... the actual rules expansion in Building Better Worlds could be a staple-bound pamphlet, with the remaining 90% of the book being fluff.)
As much as I love Free League's presentation, they need to step up their game for the game aspects. The Walking Dead was a good return to that feeling for their Year Zero Engine stuff... I hope The Electric State gets them back towards what they did right in Tales from the Loop, especially since Electric State is my favorite of the Simon Stahlenhag books.
I'm no trying to defend the Free League games here, but I think that with both Alien and Blade Runner the setting (or fluff as you call it) plays a major part in the reasons why you might want to play those games. If I don't want to play in the Alien universe, I might rather play Mothership instead... Blade Runner was never exciting enough for me to want to play in that universe so I can't comment on that one. I think that many Free League games are about the setting as much as anything else.
Awesome video, man. Love seeing this channel grow and get the love it deserves. I can tell you really put a lot of work into each of these videos… and it shows! Keep it up. It inspires me to be more creative and better with my own tabletop ideas. Maybe even jump starting and making some TH-cam videos. This video is particularly Intresting to me, I was thinking of passing up the walking dead free league set, but now I might just pick it up.
"Only describe the horror a little at a time. Never give a complete picture" I think this is what made Daggerfall the Computer Game so creepy. You would never see the faces of enemies so the could never really become too familiar. Also you could never fully explore a complete dungeon, leaving them always uncanny and mysterious. Also the Kingshouses were really suspicious and full of intrigue and quests for them would always involve messing around with deadras etc which gave this extremely uncanny impression, you always felt there was something sinister and profoundly wrong with the nobility, you just couldn't put your finger on it. Later elderscrolls completely took the mystery away, but you would find out, it was all by accident and somewhat because of the limitations of the time. So the advice is sound, never let the players become too familiar with the mystery.
And then you have games like Candela Obscura, which is an awesome set of rules and setting and a very good game overall (my tables, plural, are really enjoying it) but that has so little help in it for GMs that I had to go to the ancestor, Blades in the Dark, to get proper ideas how to run 'the opposition.'
It seems to me that GM advice as an area of the game that was helpful in running the game itself and detailed stems from Apocalypse World. I recall reading that game's GM section and thinking that it really is a way to run any game, regardless of system. I think games that have come subsequent to that like Blades in the Dark and Dungeon World have added or expanded on this advice. As result, these games seem to be using their GM sections in the tradition of those other games.
One of my favourite Gm guide is the Infinity GM guide from the Infinity 2d20 published by modiphius. It's an overall greatbook full of tips for new and experienced players. While part of it is geared toward it's own universe (somewhat realistic scifi), most of it is usable for any system and universe. Not often i praise a Modiphius product, but i'll give credit where credit is due.
About 20 years ago, only a few years into being introduced to D&D, I was sick of D&D. I'd tried running it, and was never happy with it.
Then I got some of the books for the then _New_ World of Darkness. And in the "advice" section for the GM (Storyteller) it had sections about how to run the game, that were very different from what I'd encountered with D&D and some of its copies I'd looked at by that point. I eventually internalized that advice because I had followed it when running my first World of Darkness game and it went amazingly. My players loved it, I loved it, and it was far easier and more interesting. More or less, it was the same sort of advice I'd run into about writing and structuring stories -- much of which I already knew because I at the time thought I'd be able to make it as a writer... alas I was never well off enough to not have to sacrifice my time and energy and physical well-being to more mundane jobs.
But anyway, it was great advice and it did a good job of altering the advice to specifically work with a TTRPG (narrative-focused) and players, and how to get them invested in RP.
I'll check out some of what's listed here. I _am_ often a bit disappointed that I don't usually see that caliber of advice, and in a way that is well laid-out and easy to grasp.
I'm waiting on my copy of Mothership, but I definitely agree on Walking Dead. That game far exceeded my expectations, and the GM advice and tools are top notch.
Awesome video!
For me, Electric Bastionland has the best GM section.
Have not read Walking Dead yet, but I feel like Electric Bastionland might have the best GM section.
It depends. I always scheme through it.
Could you link that previous video you start out by mentioning - I went thru the past year of thumbnails and didn’t see it
th-cam.com/video/YD06aKOf_ok/w-d-xo.htmlsi=NE3_Rlgn_n8CMdG5
@@DaveThaumavore thank you very much ❤️
Love these videos where you compare multiple books that cover similar material. Also, first?