GM Interviews – The Questions

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Now that the player interviews have been conducted, the players noted that turnabout is fair play, and so I find myself here, typing out the questions (and my answers) to a different kind of interview.

This time we’re looking at things from a GM’s perspective.  So, without further delay, let’s get to the interview questions, and my answers to get the ball rolling.

Campaign Creation:

How do you go about formulating a campaign, what influences your choice of system?

In making a campaign, my thought process begins with genres.  In choosing a genre, I start laying the ground work for the game I run.  Picking a system comes next, often cleaving to which system is best able to handle the genre I’ve chosen.  Should there be a genre or concept that doesn’t seem to fit any published product, I default to working it in as a conversion to HERO 5th Ed. Revised.  I find that HERO fills the niche of the “catch all” game for whatever oddball concept I have.

Most of my other campaigns are inspired by the games themselves.  NWoD, Cthulhutech, Metabarons, Legends of the 5 Rings and Deadlands are all prepackaged.

Do you prefer pre-built settings, or settings that you come up with on your own?  Why?

At my current state of being stressed at work, I find myself working better with pre-built settings, rather than building one from scratch.  I’ve done a setting from the ground up with the HERO supers campaign, but I’ not sure if I have enough free time to build something like that again anytime soon.

How do you generate NPCs?

NPCs are defined by their functions.  I think of the role they’ll serve in the game… Mentor, confidante, best friend, rival, villain, and then work from there.  I also take a look at the characters that the NPCs are meant to be tied to.  It’s an odd thing, but I noticed that in my campaigns each player has a stable of NPCs tied to them.   I rarely generate an NPC to throw in “just because.”

Once these functions are defined, then I get to statting them out.  Of course, only combatants are statted out completely… everyone else has a few notes  regarding their most common skill rolls and powers.

What are your preferred Genres?

I’ve gone through this list before, but to put things briefly:

• Horror
• Space Opera
• Cyberpunk
• Espionage
• Westerns
• Supers

Running the Session:

How much preparation / effort do you put into a session?

I put a lot of work into planning a session, but it never really seems to be enough.  For each session I try to draft a list of goals that I want to hit for each character, whether it’s an internal goal (ex: Make character X realize the gravity of her responsibility as a Noblewoman), or an external one (ex: Get character Y his magic sword.)  These serve as milestones that I cleave to just so every session ends with a positive step forward for both the plot and the characters.

How do you plan plot hooks for your campaign?

I usually have a goal for each character, a growth plan as to where they should be by the time a given story arc or campaign is over.   By forging a major catalyst that will push all the characters to move forward in their progression.

Of course, I can’t push everyone forward all the time, so I try to alternate, mix things up a bit so that all the player characters get their turn.

Do you fudge dice to help your players when they’re in a bind?

I might, depending on what the campaign is like.  I don’t fudge in D&D.  Neither do I fudge in nWoD.  However I’m more flexible for genres like Supers since there’s an assumed (and accepted) amount of bias towards the heroes winning as a part and parcel of the setting.

What’s your opinion on Player Characters dying via PvP and TPK?

PvP is a sticky issue for me, since I’ve already had players get into a real life fistfight over a game due to it.  It was stupid and immature, and I don’t really have the patience to deal with that kind mismanaged pvp conflict anymore.  I don’t think that it’s necessary to tell a good story.

As for TPK, I try to avoid having that as well.  A TPK ends the narrative, disappoints players, and ultimately puts all of my campaign planning out of action.  Nobody wins in a TPK.

Other Questions:

Do you have any bad habits as a GM?

Definitely.  I tend to hold empty scenes, and break a little too easily when people throw me a curveball that breaks my suspension of disbelief.    I’m working as hard as I can to make sure that I don’t have empty scenes in a game, but it’s sometimes difficult to manage the campaign’s pacing.

Do you cleave strongly to the rules, or do you view them as guidelines?

I prefer to cleave as much to the rules as possible, with slight deviations when making on the fly rules calls.  I feel that I’ve grown used enough to GMing to be able to make relatively fair rules calls for even the oddest of situations (like the Fire Beetle Mating Call.)

What kind of players are the most difficult to run for in your experience?

I have the hardest time running for 2 types of players:

1) The Min Maxer - I have issues when someone deliberately uses a rules loophole to gain a mechanical advantage that cannot be justified in game.  Such characters don’t work well with my campaign conception and I personally feel that they’re being deliberately unfair to other players by doing this.

2) The Passive – When a player character decides to do nothing.  No personal goals, no plot drive, no nothing.  I find this to be the toughest inertia to overcome.  They usually come without NPCs, without drives beyond “I like golf” or even no actual purpose in being in a campaign.   I work hard to make plot hooks, but if the character concept is as smooth as teflon, nothign’s going to stick.

What’s your most rewarding GMing experience?

I’d have to say that the most rewarding GMing experience for me would be running my HERO supers game.  It was my first effort in running a campaign built from the ground up, my first time running HERO, and the first campaign where people’s concepts just worked so damn well.

I measure success by how much fun the group had, and the happy memories they bring with them when a campaign or a session ends.  I value feedback, and work hard to make sure that every campaign I make is one that will be more than just one where people brag that they found a rules loophole… but rather that they got to play a kickass character.