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Help me not blow my first attempt at DM

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Thu, 2014-02-06 02:20

IronLung

Help me not blow my first attempt at DM

Long story short, after ~5 years of looking for a group and 3 of those for a group to play Eclipse Phase I have finally found one. I have a playdate with 3 charming east-bayers in a little over a week to see if we gel and can start a regular thing. We met once already, just to meet and schedule a time. Everyone was really into the material and the possibilities and I got a really good vibe from everyone. This whole thing happened pretty damn spontaneously, its my first time playing dungeon master (and my first opportunity for role playing in almost a decade) and I really really want things to go well. Does anyone have advice on running just the intro bit of the campaign from the core book? Advice on DMing for the first time? I just don't want my inexperience to get in the way of what I think will be some great chemistry. I have some money ($20-$30)that I can spend on an app for my android tablet and/or any recommended materials. Major Question's I have: What should I do for prep-work? How do I keep the game moving along without trying to steer my players? Should I be trying to do different voices? Things I do have: Binders Graph paper plenty of dice Core Book The aforementioned Tablet, an Asus Transformer Also a smartphone Index Cards Notebooks Spotify Subscription (mood music? maybe that's weird) I realize thats alot to respond to but even just a hint here or there would be much appreciated, thank you.

Thu, 2014-02-06 04:18

nerol-1

Take it easy :-)

I didn't prepare so much when I played EP for my first time. I don't even do it when I date a girl :-D In EP, there are too many damn good new concepts for both Master and Players. I suggest to play at least a short scenario with pre generated characters. In this way your players will learn which skills they use the most, how important is rep and that morph is just a piece of equipment. (it helped me also to memorize better some rules like favors and hacking) At the moment, I'm playing Know Evil with a group of friends but before this campaign, I played Ego Hunter and the Bump in th Night. These 2 adventures are really good to start with, so i suggest to take them. These adventures have a structure of events that is not in a strict order. As a Master, you should know the adventure more than well and be ready to improvise. This helps to make the things go smooth. A pad helps a lot. The pdf are well made and you can easily found what you need. I usually use a pad, a master screen and 2 d10 dices. I don't use much more, exept a map and some miniatures during big firefight. I'm lucky to have a player with tons of sci-fi 15mm minis, well painted :-) Minis help but are not mandatory I usually do voices, except female voices (because I sounds terrible), and try to imitate moves too. If you like it and feel confident, do voices. Ciao Luca

—

il NeRo www.sentinellefirewall.blogspot.it The blog about the adventures of 4 Italian Sentinels

Thu, 2014-02-06 09:29

Undocking

You can find all the official

You can find all the official Eclipse Phase modules here: http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/ And they are available from the Eclipse Phase store, as well as dtrpg. A fan made adventure series: http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/ And once you feel comfortable, some crazy ideas from Arenamontanus http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/ To answer your questions: 1. Know the adventure inside and out so you spend less time looking at print-outs. Also know the rules to the same ends, or know enough to say, "I don't know how this works, but this is how we will do it for this session". Science is an important part of Eclipse Phase; decide how hard your science is going to be played in the game. Print maps or display them on your tablet. 2. Playing with a premade adventure keeps it rather easy, because they usually have a set direction, goal, or sequence of events. Even when you start to craft your own adventures, you still want to have a backbone to rely on to make things happen when the PCs don't. 3. Different voices are fun, and your PCs may like them. What often has more impact is tone and diction. There is a difference between how someone speaks and how someones says. Body language is a must. When they meet the military fellow, sit straight with your back off the chair; the lazy petal-head lounges in his crash couch, so should you; the slyph diva often splays her hand to inspect her nails, do the same. Each important character should have a physical tell, because spatial memory is a human's best friend. edit: spelling correction

Thu, 2014-02-06 09:53

nick012000 nick012000's picture

Undocking wrote:1. Know the

Undocking wrote:
1. Know the adventure inside and out so you spend less time looking at print-outs. Also know the rules to the same ends, or know enough to say, "I don't know how this works, but this is how we will do it for this session". Science is an important part of Eclipse Phase; decide how hard your science is going to be played in the game. Print maps or display them on your tablet. 2. Playing with a premade adventure keeps it rather easy, because they usually have a set direction, goal, or sequence of events. Even when you start to craft your own adventures, you still want to have a backbone to rely on to make things happen when the PCs don't.

I dunno. I've had a session where I walked in with no preparations other than taking a look at the NPC File Prime, and decided to basically go "Bioconservative terrorists are trying to blow up the station! You're sentinels, it's your job to stop them!" before running a series of combats with generic mooks and power armor pilots, and it actually worked quite well.

—

+1 r-Rep , +1 @-rep

Thu, 2014-02-06 10:51

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

Just be prepared that at some

Just be prepared that at some point at sometimes your players will take it off the rails and probably spoil all your best laid plans that took hours of prep time. That was a fun Summer :) Be careful on balancing the rule of cool and letting them get away with whatever they want since your group is so new to each other this is more of long term thing you will need to keep an eye out for. make sure people do not get to munchkiny. optimization is fine to a point but it will leave pc's on uneven footing if taken to far. this leads to encounter balance problems, ie how do i make this tough for the munchkin without obliterating or making useless the rest of the party, or other player resentment because the player who is not broke 5 ways till sunday can't do much. lol sorry a bit of a sore topic for me

Thu, 2014-02-06 11:04

thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture

nick012000 wrote:I dunno. I

nick012000 wrote:
I dunno. I've had a session where I walked in with no preparations other than taking a look at the NPC File Prime, and decided to basically go "Bioconservative terrorists are trying to blow up the station! You're sentinels, it's your job to stop them!" before running a series of combats with generic mooks and power armour pilots, and it actually worked quite well.

I have run games like this. And I have played in them. They can be truly awesome. But it is a technique that requires some real skill I would be very surprised to see somebody pull it of who was not an experienced GM and preferably experienced in the setting.

Undocking wrote:
3. Different voices are fun, and your PCs make like them. What often has more impact is tone and diction. There is a difference between how someone speaks and how someones says. Body language is a must. When they meet the military fellow, sit straight with your back off the chair; the lazy petal-head lounges in his crash couch, so should you; the slyph diva often splays her hand to inspect her nairs, do the same. Each important character should have a physical tell, because spatial memory is a human's best friend.

That is wonderful advice. I particularly like the idea of the physical tell, it had not occurred to me and I will try to incorporate it if my game ever starts again (stupid player dropping out, 2 is not a gate crashing team)

Thu, 2014-02-06 11:15

Decimator

Don't be afraid to kill the

Don't be afraid to kill the player characters. Death is not the end of a character. Ensure you fully understand the fray rules; they tend to confuse people. No character is invincible. Between explosives, nanoswarms, thermite, and disposable HEAP launchers there are ways to deal with any seemingly unassailable character. Called shots are also a good way to deal with armor, especially in melee. Understand them.

Thu, 2014-02-06 11:53

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

ORCACommander wrote:Just be

ORCACommander wrote:
Just be prepared that at some point at sometimes your players will take it off the rails and probably spoil all your best laid plans that took hours of prep time. That was a fun Summer :)

First rule of GMing: GM prepares for N plotlines. Players discover that there are N+1 plotlines available.

Quote:
Be careful on balancing the rule of cool and letting them get away with whatever they want

Yep. Especially hard in this setting, where a guy with a fabber can make anything. And nuking their toys tends to get people raised on D&D... irritated.

Quote:
since your group is so new to each other this is more of long term thing you will need to keep an eye out for. make sure people do not get to munchkiny. optimization is fine to a point but it will leave pc's on uneven footing if taken to far. this leads to encounter balance problems, ie how do i make this tough for the munchkin without obliterating or making useless the rest of the party, or other player resentment because the player who is not broke 5 ways till sunday can't do much. lol sorry a bit of a sore topic for me

Seconded. Thirded. N+1'ed. Lost too many friendships thanks to this.

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Thu, 2014-02-06 12:00

Lilith

A lot of good advice

I won't reiterate what's been said here so far, but as someone who's only been GMing a while—what, five years now?—I'll just offer what's worked for me and my regular gaming group: 1) Don't expect to know everything... 2) ... but act like you [i]do[/i] and the players won't question it. I tend to play fast and loose with rules, just because I can't be expected to remember everything (and if you expect that from me, the [i]prepare to be disappointed[/i]). When issues come up and I don't know the answer off the top of my head, I tend to make a judgement on the spot in order to keep the game moving rather than take the time to look it up. This isn't always the case, of course, especially if I just [i]know[/i] I've seen a particular table or paragraph about a situation in the book [i]somewhere[/i], but generally I prefer to keep things moving and keep the players engaged rather than worry about rigid adherence to the rules, and my players seem to appreciate that. Naturally, your mileage may vary.

Thu, 2014-02-06 12:13

#10

Undocking

nick012000 wrote:

nick012000 wrote:
I dunno. I've had a session where I walked in with no preparations other than taking a look at the NPC File Prime, and decided to basically go "Bioconservative terrorists are trying to blow up the station! You're sentinels, it's your job to stop them!" before running a series of combats with generic mooks and power armor pilots, and it actually worked quite well.

Sandboxes are awesome, and I often run them, but Iron Lung is GMing for his "first time". I've had many sessions where all I have are faction/character motivation in a setting—but it takes a bit of experience in the GM seat to juggle all the information with PCs in the mix. Even then, they still have a goal to follow (stop the terrorists) and the other factions have a goal (destroy the station) to rely on.

thezombiekat wrote:
That is wonderful advice. I particularly like the idea of the physical tell, it had not occurred to me and I will try to incorporate it if my game ever starts again (stupid player dropping out, 2 is not a gate crashing team)

There is an old story of an actor in a threatre playing a character with a limp only needs to limp for the first act. Do it convincingly enough and people's brains will just associate it with that character. I've also found the players remembers NPCs as "the rubbing hands guy" or "the chick who checks her nails" or "the octopus that smokes cigars". Something that is super cool with EP: when the chick who checks her nails sleeves into a cybersleeve for her nightly anarchist bashing and is caught, the PCs may not be able to confirm the brainprint but sure as shit they recognize her the moment the cybersleeve inspects her nails. Not a team but it's a gate crashing DUO! :D

Thu, 2014-02-06 14:05

#11

IronLung

So I've decided (with a

So I've decided (with a little player input) to run the Ego Hunter adventure if that helps any potential advice-givers. Also thank you for all the responses! Sounds like I should mostly just focus on reading up and making important concepts/characters/lore easily accessible for me once we start playing.

Thu, 2014-02-06 14:54

#12

GreyBrother GreyBrother's picture

I'll be running Ego Hunter

I'll be running Ego Hunter too. I'd advise you to give Nkeka to the most experienced player in the setting, or the one who is most familiar with it. Also, look if you really want to have the other two non-forks tag along. Otherwise, just cut them out of the setting entirely or make them into one-scene wonders.

Thu, 2014-02-06 15:56

#13

Lilith

Ego Hunter

If you're going to run Ego Hunter, I heartily recommend Justin Alexander's [url=http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/20441/roleplaying-games/eclipse-phas... Hunter Prep Notes[/url] to help streamline things and help your players get into the heads of their characters. Also his [url=http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/33780/roleplaying-games/eclipse-phas... Sheets for Eclipse Phase[/url] are unbelievably useful for GMs and players alike as well.

Thu, 2014-02-06 20:11

#14

nick012000 nick012000's picture

Undocking wrote:nick012000

Undocking wrote:
nick012000 wrote:
I dunno. I've had a session where I walked in with no preparations other than taking a look at the NPC File Prime, and decided to basically go "Bioconservative terrorists are trying to blow up the station! You're sentinels, it's your job to stop them!" before running a series of combats with generic mooks and power armor pilots, and it actually worked quite well.
Sandboxes are awesome, and I often run them, but Iron Lung is GMing for his "first time". I've had many sessions where all I have are faction/character motivation in a setting—but it takes a bit of experience in the GM seat to juggle all the information with PCs in the mix. Even then, they still have a goal to follow (stop the terrorists) and the other factions have a goal (destroy the station) to rely on.

Hardly a sandbox. It was more along the lines of "terrorist over there!" *dakka dakka dakka* "more terrorists!" *dakka dakka dakka* "This time, the terrorists have a giant robot with them!" *dakka dakka dakka* *look at time* "Even more giant robots, guarding the antimatter bomb!" *dakka dakka dakka* "Congratulations, you saved the station! Have some @-rep and i-rep!"

—

+1 r-Rep , +1 @-rep

Fri, 2014-02-07 03:19

#15

Wolfgar

I started my first game in

I started my first game in the inner system, and then moved outward, since Mars is both compelling and not too weird. Then I tried to ease people into new concepts bit by bit. I regret not killing someone earlier in the game, as I feel my players are now to attached to their morphs. I recommend having a fairly deadly - fair, but deadly - first few sessions so they understand how impermanent their morphs are, with the caveat that you do this with full disclosure.