Hey, Veeky Forums

Here is a good book about GMing. I would like to add several things.
Remember, that roleplaying games are collaborative in nature, and because of that the key to great game is working closely with players on its every stage: before the game even started, during the game and between sessions. Make them feel the setting as their own, don't let them be just random bystanders.
Don't be afraid of little railroading. As much as Veeky Forums love to whine about sandbox being "The True and Only Way", it's not really the case. As long as players are on the same track with you Pun not intended, you are okay, just don't make a lot of plans ahead of time.
And my little personal gripe. Don't start with D&D or Pathfinder. They force a certain play-style that people unconsciously translate on other systems. And that includes GMs and players alike.
I don't play a lot of Apocalypse World, Dungeon World and the like, but as a lot of anons pointed that out, it's a pretty easy system to GM.

Thanks for the help from everyone giving, lots of good stuff here. Also, anyone have a link to a PDF of the Ryuutama core book, and other resources possibly? Seems like a good system to run at first, and my players will likely like it.

Here's Ryuutama.
mega.nz/#!8gAkGI6S!AQ6q5gDOC76SrChTz87RwrWPgPLKUIP8FTvzyBUfKYg
Check PDF-share thread, there are a lot of neat stuff.

youtube.com/channel/UCkVdb9Yr8fc05_VbAVfskCA
This guy is really cool and clear. He isn't a charisma fag like everyone else you'll find.

I want a good system for modern combat
im gonna gm friends and we are all /k/omrades.
im trying to write a system that would make sense to us, nothing more then that but if i could find an existing system that i think is great i'd prefer it.
i've GM'ed only once before but i think the "GM the games you want to play" is good because nobody else will make these games.

OP here, this is not me by the way

You may find this helpful

>gnomestew.com/category/game-mastering/

One of the most common mistakes that even experienced GMs often make, which you can easily avoid if you keep it in mind, is having people roll for everything. Before asking someone to roll for something, ask yourself first "is there a major consequence for failure here?" If not, then just let them roleplay it out. I can't tell you how many times I've needed to roll to: climb a 10 ft rope, lie to a stranger about something inconsequential, or break down an old decrepit door, even though most any fantasy character is more than capable of all of those things.

...

...

>Ops and Tactics 1st Edition.pdf
commence perusal.

Ironically, while they were jerking off about "failing forward", they forgot about "succeeding forward".

OP here, one of my (potential) players is insisting it be pathfinder. What do? Should I just go with it? Unsure if Pathfinder would be good to start with, never actually played in the system before. Guys says there's 'more customisation' as to why i should use it.

Pathfinder is shit, just use 5e. He only wants to play pathfinder because he's played it before and wants to use his incredibly broken furry build.

Yeah, stick with 5E or something a lot simpler. The main issue is that Pathfinder has a lot of fiddly bits that can cause a headache to new players, mostly a GM.

>First edition.

Please. PLEASE do not spread this bullshit.

OP, if you want to use Ops and Tactics, use the latest version, 6th edition.

There is a blog: opsandtactics.blogspot.com and a website www.opsandtactics.com

Download the latest version from THERE. DO NOT USE 1st EDITION. IT"S CRAP!

Shit. just read .

You. Look at this post.

Don't. It's a nightmare to run, thanks to being full of traps for players and GMs alike.

mediafire.com/folder/7llc83r2xf8bg/Barbarians_of_Lemuria_-_Mythic_Edition

My only advice is to play something simple; something that'll be easy for you to learn, and for you to explain to your players. Savage Worlds, Ryuutama, and Mouse Guard are all relatively accessible games of varying complexity. Witch Quest specifically could be tailored to your druids idea pretty easily. The important thing is to find something you yourself will learn easily so that you can easily explain it to your friends, and you can spend less time going over the rules and more time playing an RPG.

>good information/resources for learning to GM
Best tool I can suggest for a GM looking to create their own campaign, rather than run a prewritten module or such, is The Complete Book of Villains.

rpg.rem.uz/Dungeons & Dragons/AD&D 2nd Edition/Accessories/DMGR6 - The Complete Book of Villains.pdf

It is the single greatest characterization tool I have ever seen.
It really helps you design a campaign, too.
The advice works for any system.

I will never stop shilling this thing.

>maybe a good system for a thing based on druidic lore or the age of exploration?
Sorry I can't make a better recommendation than what's already been mentioned.
I can say that a system should always be chosen by its proven ability to run the kind of game experience you want to have.
If you wanted to use Call of Cthulu to run a horror game set in the mid 1900s, but has classic movie monsters instead of elements of Lovecraftian eldritch abominations, it could still work with a bit of tweaking.
But if you wanted to use it for a thrilling fantasy action adventure, not so much.

Also a newfag to GMing, I'm going to GM a Fallout game and I already checked the mechanics and that's the easiest part.
The worst part is that I have no idea about creating a story, all I have are a couple of simple ideas, things like "the party gets kidnapped and put into arena to fight to death against other kidnapped people".
However I have no idea about the general story, what should they be? How the fuck do I give them a purpose to do something? What should be their goal?
I just have no fucking idea, I think I can manage if I at least have the basic story but I can't think of anything.
Could someone give me ideas? Everything that isn't "they're BoS/Enclave members on a mission" will do (and I don't want those simply beacuse they would be way too OP starting with power suits).
One of the players also wants to play as a robot (basically no one treats them seriously when it comes to talking since they're treated as objects, they're rare so they're expensive and all their stats besides Luck and Charisma are higher than humans' stats) so maybe some story related to him in some way?
Tl;dr: Could someone give me an idea for post-ap campaign story?

Pathfinder isn't the most pleasant thing to play and run. I feel like PF players suffer from some kind of Stockholm syndrome.
As for mentioned 5e, it's okay. However, a lot of people fail to realise, that D&D is build to play exactly one specific kind of game. If you want to play something Forgotten Realms-esque, there is not better choice, but if you want to deviate from that formula, use something different.

>the general story, what should they be?
The absolutely first thing that you need to do is make certain everyone is on the same page regarding what they are expecting from the game.
If one player is intent on Mad Max style violence and chaos, another is expecting careful resource management survivalism, and another wants intrigue between post-apoc factions, you're going to have trouble making a story.
Figure out the broad strokes of what kind of game/story everyone wants to play and if you all want to change it later, fine.

Now:
>How the fuck do I give them a purpose to do something?
Two main approaches:
Develop their characters first and tie their stories together with some important event in your world.
This is tricky, great when pulled off, and depends on the players both having characters that care about things and the players caring that their characters care about things.

>What should be their goal?
This depends entirely on the kind of story you all decided upon earlier.
Is it a heist?
Is it a rescue?
Is it a mystery?
Is it an adventure?
Is it an attack?
When they sit down at the table to play, what is it they want their characters to be spending most of their time doing, talking to NPCs, fighting enemies, solving mysterious puzzles, or seeking romance with mutants?
Answer that, then come up with a goal that would make sense to be on the opposite side of that.

>Could someone give me ideas?
Probably, but it would just be throwing spaghetti on the wall until something stuck.

>One of the players also wants to play as a robot, they're rare, expensive, and all their stats besides Luck and Charisma are higher than humans' stats
Sounds mechanically unbalanced, but I don't know the system.
>maybe some story related to him in some way?
It sounds like robots are rare enough that his backstory would be a major part of the driving plot, just be sure not to favor one player too much.

>However, a lot of people fail to realize, that D&D is build to play exactly one specific kind of game.
Your lack of imagination offends me.

>Two main approaches:
...and the second one is the Villain(s).
I like to pepper my world with dozen or so loosely developed potential villains of various factions and let the PCs encounter them in their general activities, perhaps aiding some, angering others, and making some stronger by eliminating their enemies.
By simply interacting with the world, the will draw the ire of someone who may anger them as well.
Once the party has focused on, or been focused on, a single villain, I flesh them out then have them drive the plot and become the true antagonist to the PCs until the final climax.
See the above post on the Complete Book of Villains for help there.

He's not wrong though, depending on how you interpret "exactly one specific kind of game".
D&D is great for D&D-like games.
It is not, however, for General Use Role-Playing.
D&D is not great for suspenseful mystery horror intrigue.

Thanks for the tips, I guess I'll can make something out of it.
Though so far my main idea is that they'll hear rumors about a pre-war bank vault filled with gold and the whole campaign would be mostly traveling the whole continent to get there with the last few sessions being the heist itself using the robot as their main tool to get insode (though I'm not sure about that since it's pretty damn similar to Dead Money DLC for Fallout New Vegas).

>Sounds mechanically unbalanced, but I don't know the system.
The downside is that robots don't gain perks which can be useful as fuck, for example crit damage chance is the same as your luck (so if you have 4 luck you only have 4% chance for crit if you're not aiming for precise shot) and there is a perk that requires high stats from you and a high level but multiplies your base crit chance by 10 so if you have 4 luck you have 40% base crit chance, it's extremaly useful since you can have 100% crit chance.
Also robots are capped at 1 charisma so it's hard to convince anyone to do anything as a robot.
And the system is made by few devs of the original fallouts (1&2), they said that they have no idea about designing a tabletop rpg so it may be pretty unbalanced at times.

I'm also pretty new to GMing, and I had a similar issue of having no idea what the overarching plot would be but have in a few ideas for single sessions.
What I ended up doing is tying together all the seperate little adventures somehow.
The easiest way is having some conspiracy working in the background. Eventually the players will notice some kind of pattern with the guys that keep causing them trouble. Revenge is an easy way to motivate PCs into action I think.

>Your lack of imagination offends me.
D&D is built to play heroic high fantasy. Heroic means that PCs have power-level akin to superheroes. High means that there should be a lot of different fantastical creatures, great reliance on magic, etc. Fantasy means exactly what it means.
Despite attempts to prove that D&D (d20) is somewhat setting agnostic, at the heart most of D&D settings have a lot of the same patterns and concepts. A lot of times GMs put those on subconscious level whether they like it or not. To be precise, instead of letting system support the setting, they make setting support the system. And if you truly want to do your own thing, you need to homebrew a lot. And if you're gonna to deviate from D&D formula, why to play D&D?
Sadly a lot of people don't understand that and misuse the system.

Just because it is a fantasy setting doesn't mean a variety of things do not happen in it.
Court intrigue, mysteries and the like are not genres, but events that the players must resolve within the setting.

Protip: you'll have an easier time GMing settings and themes that you know better by heart. I don't know shit about cyberpunk and I got overwhelmed as fuck by Interface 2.0's myriad of shit in the setting, but I am well versed in coming up with psychedelic shit, so my mindfucky spiritual campaign of Apocalypse World was a blast.

>Just because it is a fantasy setting doesn't mean a variety of things do not happen in it.
>Court intrigue, mysteries and the like are not genres, but events that the players must resolve within the setting.
I'm not even arguing with that. Though D&D is at the heart a wargame with focus on combat and dungeon crawling, nothing stops you from doing intrigue or mystery. However, it's not really the best fit for those kinds of games. It's like eating macaroni with spoon. Sure you can do that, but it's not really correct way to use spoon and there is a more fitting instrument for doing that.
What angers me the most, however, is blatant misuse of D&D.

>I want to make a game similar to Song of Ice and Fire
>I think you should just slap D&D on that

>I want to make gothic horror in Victorian-esque setting
>D&D should do the trick, I suppose

>I want to make a science fantasy
>Have you considered D&D?

It sounds absurd, but it happens a lot, even on Veeky Forums.

I didn't say use D&D as a stand in for other settings, only arguing against the demonstrably false idea that you can do nothing besides combat and dungeoncrawls in D&D.
It grates my teeth when people suggest that because D&D doesn't have finely tuned mechanics for social situations, it can't be done in a D&D game.

Shouldn't plan that far ahead. Start small. Hell, run a few smaller heists, see if your players will even care. Start with disjointed small adventures, and ramp up the stakes and rewards later on.

>Shouldn't plan that far ahead.
This is good advice.
I plot as far as the next session, with only a general idea for the rest of the campaign.

I didn't say, that you can't do this in D&D, only that it's not the best fit for those kind of games. I didn't say, that D&D is exclusively a wargame, only that deep at the heart it's the one.
Post-Gygax D&D is an instrument to play heroic high fantasy adventures in vein of Forgotten Realms/ Dragonlance novels. And while it doesn't restrict anyone from trying something different, most of the time use of D&D brings a lot of nasty D&D'isms whether they're needed or not. And while you absolutely free to do intrigue or mystery-based campaigns using D&D, running a social game based on combat-heavy system doesn't seem like the best idea.
No one stops you from eating macaroni with spoon, but in civilized world people use fork.

>It's like eating macaroni with spoon.
>No one stops you from eating macaroni with spoon, but in civilized world people use fork.
Please end this meme now.
Spoons are fine and this is just a terrible analogy.

This is what amerifats think macarroni looks like

>Some heathens actually use spoon
>Pic related
If you're offended spoon-eater, then here are alternative analogies, choose whichever you like the most:
Nailing with pliers, shoveling with rake, sewing cloth with wire, typing with legs, making a hole with drilling nozzle attached to hand-mixer, turning pages with sticky fly trap, playing Crusader Kings to learn geography of Europe, installing UNIX-based system to play games.
You can do all of that, almost no one will stop you, but there are more effective methods to do the job.

Jette mes macaronis.

>then here are alternative analogies
Those are all fine, thank you.

But your senpai, your pic is macaron, not macaroni.

>But your senpai
*But senpai

Always start with a session 0
Use this to explain the type of campaign you want to run, the rules/mechanics you want to change, ignore or introduce to the campaign. You can do literally anything you want and as long as everyone understands the deviations from the rulebooks you are making before the campaign begins it is all gravy.

Try and find forgiving players, try and be a forgiving GM.

Not for everyone but I've had a few rules lawyers in my campaigns (I find D&D to be have most of these guys but not exclusively)

One campaign basically ended with a level 2 barbarian saying to me "Where in the rulebook does it say I cant fly".

All but one of my current players has GM'ed or is currently running a campaign, they've seen behind the curtain and know how to feed me by adding to my campaign setting rather than trying to cut it down.

When I say add something that seems odd to my campaign they start theorizing good explanations when I like the theory it is cannonised.

When I start making up rules and abilities unique to my campaigns unique creatures my players always roll with it, I've had people ask what book I got that monster from or what the ability it is using is called I often reference the novel I used for inspiration rather than a rulebook.

Try and find players that suite your playstyle.

Some helpful user directed me to the 6th ed already, thanks for writing all of this down.

Any tips and tricks for this system as a gm?
Also something to point out to my players?
Also also character creation is not too clear, but i am a bit of an impatient reader.

True enough.

>it's pretty damn similar to Dead Money DLC for Fallout New Vegas).
And it's okay! I wrote this post and I think you should be perfectly fine with stealing ideas from whichever is your favourite medium, so long as you give it your own personal touch. Remember: if you give your players a Dead Money-ripoff, they're still not going to be playing as Courier, Dean Domino and the rest of the crew, and the final villain isn't Father Elijah. Just the player input might be enough to make it your own story. Players might in fact *appreciate* that it is derivative, because I'm sure many players enjoy relieving experiences they know from other media and putting their own personal twist on it - just look at how many character concepts are something like "literally Drizzt but with X and Y" - if Vin Diesel's favourite D&D character can be like this, why can't you do the same?

If nothing else, you are the GM, and if they're going to do OOC comments along the lines of "lol this is just like X", well, they're rude. I'm assuming you're playing with friends. If they're not jaded fucks and are open and receptive to having a good time, I'm certain you can make your sessions based ENTIRELY on classic Fallout tropes - running caravans from Hub to the Brotherhood; a prosperous city built on drug money and ruled by feuding mob families; a super mutant community struggling with racial tensions. All that matters is that you put your own input into it and let the players interact with it. Don't railroad them through the storyline of Fallout New Vegas - put them in Fallout New Vegas and let them build their own perspective, unrestricted by the Gamebryo engine.

Worrying about whether you'll write a good storyline made me extremely anxious about GMing because I never understood that there's nothing new under the sun. Don't fall into that problem. Your group is unique; you will tell an entirely unique story even if the chassis is superderivative.

And also - there's no point to writing an over-arching story. At best, I'd recommend outlining some source of troubles. Let's pretend I'm writing Fallout 2 as a tabletop game. Outline a few regions, give each of them some overarching important NPCs, and there you go, here are my "notes":
>Klamath, classic "starting city":
>After Session 0, our friend Jeff asked if he can play. He makes a sturdy tribal man named Sulik. Work him into the next Session, give him a sidequest that motivates him joining party.
>Local populace has minor problems. Save a trapper, fix a still, kill a giant, dangerous rat; minor "quests" to give money from and let the players get acquainted. Everyone is characterized in some way to make them stand out.
>The Den - characterized by slavery. Shady merchants. Kids try to steal items, have players roll perception checks. (Possible "detective" story about who their "caretaker" is?). Two gangs have a feud over who will be the right hand of the big slavery head honcho. Note to self - guy playing Sulik lost his sister to slaves, add something about that.
>Oh shit, my players decided to become slavers themselves. We're gonna end the session at this point, I need an idea. Let me think of something. OK, the focus of the campaign is now running slave raids, since that's what the players want. Let me outline a few random locations, dens and villages to collect slaves from. Some of those villages are prepared and won't yield easily; they will set defenses against natural terrain.
>Now the players are slavers. This got the attention of the local guard. They became notorious. Let's add some minor plots. Maybe let's give them a recurring antagonist, a NCR ranger tracking them down and trying to extinguish their process. He should be hard to kill and make the players hate life, but he should be a fair encounter.
(cont.)

Agree to play Pathfinder only proceed to ignore the written rules and use ones you make up on the spot instead, completely invalidating that player's overpowered "build" with your nonsense :D
Post results here.

>
>Players are now mid-level the right-hand of slaver organization. But they are more ambitious. They kill their own boss and set up shop. Now they rule The Den and the slavery business.
>Focus of campaign goes on furthering their crime empire. They further their contacts with New Reno. They go on a delegation to make business there. They're given offers from Mordinos and Bishops, and they also find out what their boss was eavesdropping on - the Salvatore deal on laser weapons with an organizaztion called "The Enclave". Hmm...

And so on, and so forth. We started off ripping off Fallout 2 at the start, but our imaginary players decided suddenly to become slavers - something that you could do in Fallout 2, but the business was never this expanded, it was just a fairly minor quest. So this is your chance of suddenly turning the campaign focus around and have the players play very, very immoral businessmen, because that's where they decided to take their story.

And we didn't even have to write a whole story around it. We wrote a few locations, the players took the reins and took the story where they wanted, and you can now respond to their desires and needs. The Mordinos use Jet to subdue the populace, so allying with them might be a great idea, but so can be raiding Stables and claiming Myron, their wonderkid, for themselves. The Bishops have grand political ties in the NCR and Vault City, so it should be telegraphed to players that allying with them might be a chance to play some political intrigue. Maybe the players will hijack the Salvatore deal with the Enclave and claim laser pistol technology for themselves? Or maybe they will fund the Wright clan from the shadows and tip the balance of power in such a way to at least put New Reno into disarray, then push in all their chips from the outside and become a dangerous, fifth family (or even just wipe out the opposition, if enough Yojimbo is played).

Bottom line is - do not write a whole story. The players might at any point decide to take it somewhere else, and forcing them back on rails will be frustrating. Rather, if there's an overarching villain - the Enclave in this case - the players might come across them in a vastly different way, because all that you wrote in your notes is, perhaps, a big milestone point in the chronology - i.e. "Enclave patrols start showing up more aggressively and encroaching onto the East". However you show off this plot point, it didn't necessarily have to focus any rigid story structure - it just happened because you figured it will happen at some point. Having a big note that says "and now, enters Enclave" lets you segway them into anything - your players, who are corrupt slavers, might decide that the Enclave is dangerous because they start strong-arming their high tech and decide to rip you off on your growing, burgeoning slave business by simply taking your slaves, barely giving you any compensation, and fucking off to nowhere. This is enough reason for the players to despise the Enclave and maybe want to tear them apart. Maybe instead of a heroic venture on a tanker to the Enclave Oil Rig, the end game is players deciding to gather their manpower from The Den, the Unified New Reno Families, maybe Lynette from VC or a corrupt politician they installed in NCR, and lead the invasion of Navarro. The ransacked tech from Navarro lets them take the war further, and then they can, for instance, take Vertibirds and invade Enclave that way. Everything gets nuked down, the President dies, Frank Horrigan is killed in an epic standoff, and the players become *the* most powerful force in California.

And all of that started as a ripoff.

I appreciate your help, user.