GM Tricks of the Trade

How to spice up your treasure from Troll Lord head Stephen Chenault

#1: Use More Potions: This is a treasure that does not appear at our Thursday night game nearly enough. Despite that, potions are unsung heroes of the gaming table. They are good for the GM, the character and game play. They are essentially one of spells. Characters can have them, carting them all over creation, then use them by drinking them. Suddenly they are healed, have more strength, turn invisible, or what have you. The player gains the benefit of the item (and the experience) and this is good for the player. But the effect is temporary, and soon enough wears off, so it has no greater impact at the table than at that moment. Also, the GM doesn’t have to worry about players hoarding too much magic, and can give other magic freely. This allows a good avenue for characters to earn experience points as well. It also has the added benefit of surprising the GM. You will soon forget what they have and when they pull it out of their pocket, it will catch you by surprise!

#2: Let Them Roll It: After a long grueling campaign, adventure, or game, it is often a bit of fun to allow the players to roll their own treasure. Have them roll whatever dice are called for on the various tables and shout out what they get. It sort of puts the game even more in the hands of fate. It's just a lot of fun too. It doesn’t always work as you may need to draw up certain treasures or they are pre-rolled for you in an published adventure or what not. But for a nice change of pace and in the spirit of letting the dice decide the character’s fate, let ‘em roll it themselves. This is especially fun for younger players, puts a whole new element of chance into the game, and as with rolling a critical hit, it can bring elation like you’ve never seen to the table (frustration too, but no one wants to dwell on that).

#3: Use Treasure as a Millstone: Use treasure to drive the game in directions players don’t expect. Too much treasure can weigh a party down, slowing their movement, allowing monsters to pursue or find them. It can be noisy and flashy, drawing the attention of NPCs or monsters still. A trunk of 4,000 gold pieces is heavy. Even after the party divides it up, it can be heavy and slow party members down. A magical lantern that shines wherever it goes attracts all manner of beasts. Couple this with terrain and you can build a whole night’s adventure moving treasure form point A to point B. Getting 10 bags of gold dust across a river can be risky and challenging.

#4: Mix Your Coin Up: Somewhere in the back of my head I remember that it was Lydian King (from the Anatolian Peninsula) who first created coins. It was done (and I’m scratching my memory plate here) in order to mark gold that was his and to allow it to be ported easier. Take this concept in every which direction. Mix your physical treasure up. Make it dust, rods, bars, raw chunks, flakes or coins of differing nations and kingdoms. A group I ran at Gamehole discovered long six-foot bars of gold they had to figure out how to cut up and carry (they left over half of it). Mixing the coin up into whatever shape and form adds another level of play to the game. It also, for those into world building, adds a level of realism to the game that helps ground players in the world you are sending them through.

#5: Make the Reaping a Whirlwind: Make gathering the treasure no easy task. Tie it to the monster, its lair, its habits or its abilities. Make it so that gathering the treasure is an encounter in and of itself. Or mix it up, allow the players to discover the treasure first and then they have to gather it before being discovered. The most ready example I have is what I did with a white dragon’s treasure. The party found it in the ruins of an old castle. They slew the dragon guarding it, but quickly realized there was more than one. But the treasure was frozen beneath a mound of ice. The dragons were not simply lying on a horde of gold and magic, but rather breathing upon it, freezing it beneath and into sheets of ice. It made for some frantic play as they extracted the harvest without destroying it, all before the creature’s mate returned.  But this can be done almost anywhere. Creatures tracked back to their lair where more of the creatures lie. Treasure hidden. Treasure trapped. Treasure stolen by others while a battle unfolds. Treasure scattered in fields of bones. It never hurts to make the last act of a heroic tale to be the scouring of the horde, so the reaping is all them more joyful.

GM's Tricks of the Trade

Courtesy of Troll Lord Games:

Being a GM, DM, or CK is a tricky business. You must be able to think on the fly, keep people engaged and lead them down the path to adventure. Bogged down in the minutiae? Stuck in a dungeon? It's important to lead the players to the best game they can have. That's why our CEO and founder, Stephen Chenault -- a gamer for over 40 years and CK that can keep a game of 20 plus moving smoothly -- has put together another 5 gems guaranteed to give you your best game.

#1: When setting up and preparing a game, manage your expectations. Chances are you can see a whole tapestry unfolding in your mind. In it is an epic adventure with nuanced moments bound in with chance and choice. How can it be anything but fun? Remember that you can see the tapestry, the players have no idea what to expect. So, manage your expectations, orient on getting the quest/adventure started and the players involved. Everything beyond that is gravy. If you try to push it on them or explain it to them as this that and the other, you are likely to cloud the whole game. Its much akin to overselling a movie you like. I love the Walking Dead, but if I talk about it too much, people who don’t know the show, just think I’m nuts. Just don’t expect too much. Once they do buy into the narrative and the whole of it is revealed, the moment will be that much better. #2: Much of the game is interacting with players, but a bit of it is behind your screens -- or if you don’t use screens -- on your end of the table. One of the simplest things to do, to prep, concerns your dice. Too often dice sets are all the same color. They look pretty and you can showcase the matching feng shui one with the other, but they are actually unpractical. Several of the dice are shaped alike, and when you have 30 dice, pencils, miniatures, note books, crib sheets, books, food and drink piled around you, the last thing you want to do is break the stride of a game…whether combat or other…by trying to sort through your dice and accidently picking up and rolling a d8 instead of a d10, then having to reroll. Just put different colored dice behind the screen. Your d8 should be a different color than your d10 and so on. It leaves one less thing you have sort through. Sadly these sets are hard to find and you may have to buy several to get different colored dice. #3: This is something my good friend (Mac Golden co-Designer of C&C) reminded me of, or rather I was reminded of when listening to the Crusader Podcast he was a guest on. Do not require an attribute check for everything. I go to the Spring River often, I swim in it and I don’t drown (I did dive into a ball of water snakes once). I can swim decently. The river is slow moving and relatively shallow and not very wide. Though I could drown in it (knock on wood), mostly I don’t. A check isn’t really required. As the GM just allow them some things. If they try to climb a wall. “Yes, you climb the wall.” If they try to swim a river. “Yes you can swim across the river.” Save the checks/saving throws for important things.   #4: Go easy on the traps. Having your character killed by an orc with a huge battle axe while you are defending a group of orphans is kind of heroic and lets you sleep at night. Having your character fall into a pit and become impaled on some stakes and die of rot disease that was on the stakes keeps you up at night just mad. Traps can be fun and challenging but they can be extremely irritating. There is next to nothing the player can do aside from one saving throw/attribute check or they become maimed, wounded or dead. In combat they can keep fighting after one, two even a dozen wounds. But for traps, you get one roll. They can be fun, just limit them and try to avoid the “you fall, you die traps. As an aside, they can be fun and funny sometimes, so don’t toss them altogether. #5: We have a saying in my family: “No is a complete sentence.” Don’t be afraid to tell players no. They are going to try all manner of things, describe all manner of characters, role play things, act out, attack, etc. Just say No. You don’t have to explain yourself. You are the GM. Adjudicate. You can explain yourself, but you don’t have to. If pressed say “Just, no.” Now it’s not something you want to do too often, players have as much vested interest in playing in your game as you do running it. But when something is beyond the pale or makes no sense or is just crazy, don’t hesitate to say No.

Tricks of the Trade

Every so often, Troll Lord Games post some ideas for GMs. Here is the latest:

Being a GM, DM, or CK is a tricky business. You must be able to think on the fly, keep people engaged and lead them down the path to adventure. Bogged down in the minutiae? Stuck in a dungeon? It's important to lead the players to the best game they can have. That's why our CEO and founder, Stephen Chenault -- a gamer for over 40 years and CK that can keep a game of 20 plus moving smoothly -- has put together another 5 gems guaranteed to give you your best game.

#1: Encourage inter-party role playing and don’t interrupt it when it happens. There are hosts of benefits. Players have more game time and feel like they are doing something more often. They develop characters more and create a more cohesive party or group. It has the added benefit, always important to me, that allows you to make quick adjustments to NPCs, encounters, or situations. It can also be used in recapping adventures and bringing players who weren’t paying attention up to speed. #2: Weather governs our lives in more ways than we realize. Use it. Whether rain, snow, wind, mist, heat or no weather at all, describe it. I often begin a game session with a comment on the season and what that day is like. “It's late summer, the air is warm and still. The sky is a pale blue, with only a few clouds here and there to block the sun.” Everyone at the table can relate and they immediately conjure images of weather they have lived through (more than likely). It’s the primary reason I went into such detail with the Codex of Aihrde, creating weather patterns. If you are in the Darkenfold and it's raining, you know it's because the Anvil Wind is bringing the moisture off the Amber Sea. These details anchor people to a time and place. It is true even if they are going into a dungeon. Begin the dungeon outside so you can get your weather description in. #3: When getting started, particularly as a new GM, but also for the veteran, don’t over prep a game. It is very easy to do. You’ll get caught up in your own notes and stories, write out a dozen pages of finely tuned material and be insanely fired up for the game. You are setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration. Likely as not the players aren’t going to be as excited as you are when play begins. They don’t know what cool stuff is planned and are really focused on their characters and not your story. You also run the risk of over-obsessing and when things don’t go as planned you’ll see your finely tuned game start to derail, like a slow-moving train wreck. This forces your hand into forcing player hands which rarely ends how you want it to. Better to make light notes and scribble down intentions. I’ve said it before, be flexible. Work your overall stories into the ongoing campaign, over time. This allows you to adjust the game as it develops, and tell the story as it develops. On average about a half page to a page of notes is all I start with.   #4: Remind players to equip their characters and let them know if they don’t have it written down, they don’t have it. I cannot stress enough how important equipment is to game play. It allows players to create an image of their character and set a tone almost immediately. The GM (as noted in a previous Trick of the Trade) can use equipment to deflect damage to characters by destroying it. It is used to absorb excess gold by giving players something to actually spend their rewards on. Some players take tremendous joy in equipping their characters, others do not…this latter group is why we created the Adventurers Backpack Equipment Cards…pick a card, pay the price and you are equipped and so on. At start of play, while you are organizing, they can equip. Also, be sure to let them have some idea of what they are getting in for, i.e. overland, dungeon or city. #5: Get some names for NPCs together. Either get a book like our Gary Gygax’s Extraordinary Book of Names, or a baby name book, or a name generator online and get yourself a list of about 10 names for each gender and few for demi-humans and hang them on your screen. The characters are going to want to talk to someone, somewhere and usually when you least expect it. Have a name to give them!