A lot of these rules remind me of the rules of improv, which makes a lot of sense.

I could never GM for my girlfriend. My wife is one of my players.

Kidding aside, I actively avoid favoring my wife over my other players. In fact, you could even say I pick on her. It helps that I know exactly how far I can push her characters before they break, since after 10 years of playing together she still prefers me to build her characters for her. I guess that's one way that I favor her, by always building her a character she will enjoy.

As for the article, it's pretty good stuff. Basic, but not bad for that. I know I have a problem both as a player and a GM of keeping too much in my head and not saying or doing it at the table. It doesn't matter a hill of beans if I know the motivations and goals of every NPC in the fight if I can't find some way to make that information known to the players. If I can't, then they might as well be fighting Brigand 24601.

First of all, Howdy! Welcome to the site! Secondly...

But yeah, I too now find myself dating a player...well, let me rephrase that I suppose...I'm dating someone, and teaching that person to play RPGs. Luckily, and by luckily I mean unluckily, I dont actually have a real life game currently in progress. I'm teaching her to play by doing random solo practice combats which are easy on the rules and lite on the RP using 4e to break the ice (its a really good system for that). Otherwise all of my games are currently played over Skype or here in the Play By Post section, so I've not had to actually worry about it. I have however just introduced her to play by post as well, but considering that the game is a 'teaching game' its expect that thinks will be focused on her and on another totally new player... so I dont think Squinty Eyes will mind to much if they get a bit of extra attention, but there wont be any cheating of course.

I'm running into the information problem a lot in play by post. At a table game everyone hears the DM explain something to a player and usually no matter how hard people try not to a bit of player knowledge will bleed over into character knowledge. With play-by-post there are tools in place that when a single player would be given information you can do so without the others having access to it, but getting players to actually roleplay sharing that information has become some what of a hurdle. In one game my character has a magical sword that talks to me in a private chat outside the game, but normally in game things keep happening in a manner that dont allow me to actually roleplay out "Look guys, long story short, my magic sword says we're on another plane now and that other than that we're screwed cause he knows nothing about this place. Oh yeah he also muttered some stuff about X, Y, and Z". I'm definitely trying to improve it though.

Number one's certainly a big one in the game I'm playing at the moment. Nobody seems to want to do anything that isn't casting spells or using weapons. One of the players in particular actually seems quite aggressively opposed to the whole role playing aspect of the game; another is the most passive player I've ever seen, although he is brand new to the game, so that may be why; another is playing a berserker with low intelligence stats, and seems to be using it as an excuse to never interact with anything other than to kill it (here, in particular, I feel that an opportunity is going begging to play the always amusing meathead dumbass). The result of this is that after several sessions our characters still show absolutely no signs of, you know, having characters. Not being the most confident role player myself, I'm struggling to stop it from basically becoming a game of Descent.

Anyone got any tips on how to bring my group out of the roll dice, kill monsters, find monsters, roll dice mindset, at all?

@Trousers: I know you asked the question a month ago, but I wanted to offer my advice anyway. I would say that the first step would be to just ask your players why they want to play the game in the first place. If all they want is hack'n'slash, I don't think there is anything directly wrong with that.

If they are not opposed to roleplaying, but just don't know how, try to find situations that would be fun and entertaining, and would fit their characters. Or put them in a situation where they have to behave. Like, after a successful mission, have them be invited to a royal or a noble, who considers hiring them for a big adventure. If they turn rude or violent, they get thrown in the dungeon. This scenario can be a good starting point for a longer campaign, where they either have the noble as a benefactor and employer, or as a mortal enemy whom they have to eventually overthrow.

We should start a thread like this for DMs.

I'd write a mini blog if I had the time... we could even put it on the front page.

I like this list and the discussion it has prompted.

I know this thread is old now and the post I'm quoting was like six months ago but I wasn't hear then so I figured I'd throw in my two cents and disagree. PvP, when done right, can be excellent. for instance, once, I was playing a neutral evil gnome sorcerer who was following the party around for his own gain and just generally being a dick to people. after a fight, I was mouthing off again because the character was a cocky bastard, and the barbarian walked over and one-shotted me. the character I'd been building was dead, and no one in the party gave a ****, because he'd been a dick to all their characters. we hadn't discussed pvp beforehand, so I had no idea that could happen. and it was one of the best experiences I'd ever had roleplaying. this is years later, I don't even roleplay at all anymore, and that still sticks with me. I wound up rolling up a new character who was a druid from the barbarian's tribe and his childhood best friend, there were no hard feelings, and it was awesome. part of party dynamics has to be conflict. you can't all get along on everything, that's not realistic. and sometimes, the tension is just gonna boil over. as long as it's character-driven, it's all good. it can get irritating when the players are actively just looking to start ****, though, I guess.



PS: in fact, of the three D&D events that will always stick with me, two involve my character being murdered. the other time, I was playing an assassin who had cut out his tongue so he couldn't speak, and the party misinterpreted an action and since I couldn't explain myself they killed me. the third event is a joke.

But were both times being murdered by the party?

Garnet will soon be murdered by Kronos.

Personally, I won't count it as a good thing.

~SE++

yep. well, the first was being murdered by an individual party member, the second was the whole party ganging up and killing me.

Hmmmm. Seems like there's a trend then.

No way... Kronos cant even see whats coming.

hey it was only twice. most of my characters were jerks who lived long, happy, jerk-ish lives.

Razor playing a jerk? Couldn't see that happening. /sarcasm



~SE++

And yet he claims to, you know, after I did my rolls for it.

~SE++

All my jerk characters live long happy lives thus far too.

The only character thats been killed because of something not-enemy-combat related is when the DM of a PBP game got so mad that a character didnt fit into his little plans like he wanted that he just straight mod-killed them.

Maybe he'll "see" my shield coming and decide to chill the hell out.

Do shields come up on Magic 8 Balls? Because that's what it looks like he uses.

~SE++

I have a particular set of skills

probably because you're not as good a jerk as me.

I'm not saying go around killing other characters willy-nilly. I'm just saying that, if it makes narrative sense for you to do so, you shouldn't not do it because you don't want to hurt the player's feelings. and I also think that saying "you can't play a character that might make the other characters want to kill you" cuts off huge swaths of character options that might otherwise be fun. roleplaying is collaborative storytelling, and storytelling, especially character-driven storytelling, is at its best when it's honest, and sometimes the honest truth is that the raging, adrenaline-soaked barbarian is going to kill the scrawny gnome sorcerer who insulted him one too many times.