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DM sign-ups

Unread postby icycalm » 08 Dec 2020 11:46

So at first I planned to DM everything on my own. Then dan volunteered and I figured many ways to use his help, and he's been an enormous help already, especially with the VTT stuff, and I am sure he'll be even more helpful in the future. And his obvious skill inspired me to want to play as player, which I never did, and I never thought I would do. And it was awesome! I actually played for half an hour on Saturday, just me and dan, and it was incredible.

At the same time, I know that several people in the clan have DMed before, and I suspect several of the new guys wouldn't mind trying their hand at it either. So I thought: why not give them the chance? When you realize how much material we have (which even dan and I fail to do btw, that's how much it is: it's unfathomable, and more is produced every year), we have nothing to lose by giving the new and untested guys a 0-1 level adventure to run and try out that side of the game too. Both dan and I want to play too, we decided this recently, and don't think that 0-level adventures are crap! There's a special kind of pleasure at having only 7 HP and being too poor to afford a decent weapon and armor, and walking around not knowing if the next sword thrust is gonna kill you dead. A pleasure that disappears as you level, even as it's replaced by the pleasure of the increasing complexity of the tactics.

At the end of the day, we'll be running the largest fictional world in history. Even the best professional DMs haven't run a world as big as ours. So there's plenty of space for us to slip into that world in various places and times and capacities, and try out whichever roles we want, and that should include the referee's and director's. So if you're up for it, post here and we'll arrange it. And if you enjoy it, and do it well, I am up for giving you progressively bigger and tougher adventures to run, as high up as you can handle. Everyone will have to prove themselves though and start from the bottom, no matter how much experience you may have. If you're cool with that, let me know and dan and I will pick an appropriate time and group and adventure for you. We'll even teach you how to use whatever VTT is best for the adventure.

This won't be happening soon, as we first need to establish the game properly and run some kickass stuff to establish the project. But once it's established, in a few months, and once groups start getting wiped and starting from scratch, I'll be ready to open up the DM's role to more people than dan and me. Just post here so I know you're interested, and tell me your background if any, so I can begin planning. And if you're a beginner, make sure that in the next few months you learn the rules of whatever systems we play inside and out (though for a 0-1 level adventure you won't need to use half the rules, and combat is super-easy).
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Unread postby schadenfreude » 09 Dec 2020 09:20

I'm interested. I have little experience playing, let alone DMing. In high school I played through a 3rd edition beginner's adventure with friends and towards the end took over as DM once he lost interest, and after finishing it I tried to continue our adventure by making shit up, but we all gave up after a month or two.
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Unread postby icycalm » 09 Dec 2020 12:37

Sounds good, I'll keep you in mind for when the group wipes start. Apparently they are called TPK by the cool kids (total party kill). I only recently found out by browsing RPG forums.

In the meantime, try to read the rules books cover to cover to prepare. The problem is, you're playing PF1 now, but the adventure you'll be running will probably be D&D 1E or 2E because that's what the vast majority of the 0-1st-level STANDALONE adventures were written for. PF1 has tons of 1st-level adventures, but they aren't standalones, they are part of endgame campaigns. I guess you could run the first part of one of those, and then switch to me or dan as DM, but the books spoil a lot of what is to come, so this isn't ideal. The ideal would be you running a cool self-contained 0-1st-level adventure like Under Illefarn in the Forgotten Realms.

That said, PF1 does have a bunch of standalone adventures that dan and I haven't looked into yet because we haven't bothered since the campaigns are so much cooler. So now that I know someone is interested in DMing, I will look into them and report back. Problem is, if you run one of those, and your group ends it at 2nd or say 3rd level, they will then be too OP to start on a PF1 campaign, which all start at 1st level. But if the group has enough EP amassed, they could take the opportunity at that point to travel to another setting, and there are many adventures for such levels in many other settings, so we have options if they have the EP.

So I am laying out all the issues we'll be facing so you know them in advance. The point is, you can't be reading two rule books at the same time, you'll get them mixed in your head and it'll be pointless, so focus on your current one and learn it better than anyone else: that's your goal as DM. And when the time comes, if I can give you something to run in PF1, that'd be ideal, and if I can't, you'll have to decide if you want to make the effort to learn a second rule system. Ultimately, a Battlegrounds DM will have to learn ALL the systems, including of course UE, but I won't require this of beginners who just want to try out running a couple of low-level adventures to see if they like the job.
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Unread postby Saf » 09 Dec 2020 14:04

I would also like to put my name down. I've been DM and player on-and-off since about 2015, primarily with D&D 5E and its associated modules (especially in the last couple years). I've run other stuff before like Cthulhu and Savage Worlds, but it's mostly out of memory at this point—I can come up with an exhaustive list of modules if need be, with some digging.

Never played Pathfinder, but I'm in the process of reading the rules carefully for our upcoming game. I also read most of the 2E Player's Handbook in anticipation of Dark Sun, but I've never run or played a 1E or 2E adventure.
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Unread postby icycalm » 09 Dec 2020 14:59

Well, since you already know 5E, that gives us more options. 5E has a lot of stuff that starts at 1st level, however from what I've seen this stuff tends to be big stuff like Pathfinder's campaigns: mostly remakes of classics like Curse of Strahd or Tyranny of Dragons. But if we can find something for 1st level that's small and self-contained, that'd be perfect for you. Even more so since all the 5E stuff is on all the popular VTTs, not only Fantasy Grounds which is tough to learn, but Roll20 and others that are easier. So if we could find that small adventure for you, you'd be pretty much ready to start whenever, maybe even on the first party wipe. You could run an introductory adventure for a group, and once it was done hand off the campaign to me or dan to start them on something bigger, and then we'd look for another opportunity to use you as DM down the line until I felt you're ready for a full campaign, assuming you'd want to run one.

On the subject of your prior history, we already have an old thread here which we used for this purpose back in 2015 when we first tried to get this project off the ground: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=5188

I want everyone to eventually post their full D&D history there (including Pathfinder), including novels, videogames, etc. There's no rush to do this however since we've already launched on campaigns that should last months. Nevertheless, any of those campaigns could end any given weekend, at which point it would help if I knew in advance exactly what everyone's been exposed to, so the sooner people do this the better. And once you've posted your lists, you should keep them updated whenever you read or play or run anything, also bumping the thread whenever you make an update to your post to let me know.

Note that I would prefer if no one reads or plays anything that's not unlocked via Battlegrounds, however I understand that for some people that's too much to ask, especially for people who are DMing outside Battlegrounds. So everyone can do what they want, and I will figure out where in the Battlegrounds universe to place them so that they won't have to tackle material they're familiar with. This might involve vetoing adventures your group picked (as we just did by the way with group 1's initial pick of Rise of the Runelords, which dinopoke had played a bit, and which I therefore vetoed for that group, and it was ultimately picked by group 2, which fully solved the issue), or even moving you among groups as needed. So I can handle any amount of player foreknowledge as long as I am aware of it, so that's why I am asking everyone to TELL me what they're doing, and to keep your lists updated and the thread bumped.
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Unread postby Saf » 10 Dec 2020 00:07

Sounds good, I will put up my list soon.

If we are including 5E, the recent D&D Essentials Kit includes an introductory adventure that might be suitable for me (or other new DMs) to run. I've not run the kit, just read the summary.

https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tablet ... ntials-kit

The D&D Starter Set also has a decent introductory adventure, which I ran a few years back.

https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tablet ... starterset

Most of the other stuff Wizards puts out for 5E does tend to be big remake campaigns unfortunately, usually for levels 1-10 minimum.
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Unread postby shock therapy » 16 Dec 2020 23:58

I'll sign up. I have experience DMing the PF1 adventure path Skull & Shackles, but I'm also happy to try my hand at the other systems.
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Re: DM sign-ups

Unread postby ChevRage » 04 May 2022 20:59

It's been a few years and I'm suffering withdrawal, so I'm signing up for DMing. I've pretty much run things for only a couple of years and feel like a complete newb whenever I do, so please don't give me anything too heavy lol.

I'll probably play some of those one-on-one adventures icy linked on Discord with a friend in the meantime. That is unless by some chance they are going to be part of Battlegrounds.
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Re: DM sign-ups

Unread postby icycalm » 05 May 2022 10:31

If a new GM wanted to run something in Battlegrounds now, I wouldn't give them a full Adventure Path right away, as even dan didn't ultimately run it at a level I'd be happy with. He needed to do a lot more work, and he wasn't doing it, and that's why I picked up War for the Crown from him. So to a new GM I would give a standalone adventure, and even better a 1st-level Pathfinder Society one-shot, where nothing would be at stake, either for the GM or the players. If they failed it, so what, and if the GM bungled it, so what. We're talking of a 16-page adventure. You could master it in an afternoon as GM, and of course I'd be looking over your shoulder the whole way. We have so many of them that a party could go from level 1 to 20 just playing them, or they could transition to regular standalone adventures (32- or 64-page) anywhere along the way (APs for comparison are 600 pages, plus special rulebooks and sourcebooks specifically designed for the campaign, so closer to 1,000 pages, and I am running FOUR of them now :). And once they reached the level cap, or TPKed, then it'd be time to think about giving this GM and this team a full Adventure Path. Even better would be to start with the Pathfinder Beginner Box for First Edition, and transition to Society scenarios right after.

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Only problem is this box isn't on Fantasy Grounds yet. But it shouldn't be hard to convert ourselves, and indeed this box would be precisely the best way for me to learn how to do this, since I'll have to learn this ultimately anyway (since almost none of the PF1 Society scenarios have been converted, though many if not all of the PF2 have been).

The problem is that I have no GMing work to give you currently, as I run all our teams myself and don't want to part with any (and taking over mid-campaign is the absolute hardest thing a GM can try to do, which is why it took weeks for me to successfully take over War for the Crown from dan). We'd need to make a new party for me to give them to you, and the only "loose" player we have for a fifth party currently is leccosta, who'll be playing in West Marches. If he dies and feels like starting a conventional Fantasy Grounds campaign next, and your friend joins him, and we somehow get two more players, I'd be happy to let you run this group starting with the Beginner Box. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you manage to get four of your friends together and run them yourself, they'd only have to pay €100/month as a group (€20/person) if they wanted to join Battlegrounds, since I wouldn't be running them. Any single individual joining any of my other campaigns would have to pay €50.

As for one-on-one adventures with your friend, a suggestion I would give is Call of Cthulhu. According to James Jacobs, it's the best RPG ever, and just the other day I saw that Chaosium sells SOLO scenarios on their site, meaning without even any players, just the GM. So they probably also sell singleplayer ones. AND the rules are way simpler than Pathfinder, so perfect for a new GM. Check it out: https://www.chaosium.com/call-of-cthulhu-rpg

A bunch of CoC stuff is even on Fantasy Grounds, so you could begin learning that too.
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Re: DM sign-ups

Unread postby ChevRage » 05 May 2022 17:08

Don't worry about not having any GM work for me at the moment. I just figured I'd sign up with the others so you know how many potential GMs you have on hand for the future.

And thanks for the suggestion, I'll be sure to check it out.

Regarding the conversion of the smaller adventures, I don't like that the maps drawn for those tend to be in black and white. No doubt for cheaper printing costs, and yet the converted adventures for Fantasy Grounds still have black and white maps like in the original document (or at least the one-on-one converted adventure I looked at does). So I was thinking of using Foundry VTT or TaleSpire rather than Fantasy Grounds, and then attempt to recreate the map in colour with the tools they offer. I'm leaning towards Foundry though, apparently it has an easy mapmaking tool of sorts.
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Re: DM sign-ups

Unread postby icycalm » 05 May 2022 23:08

Foundry will definitely be easier to use, but keep in mind that as far as maps go you’re much better off going with a dedicated mapmaking tool like Dungeondraft. It’s not just for dungeons, it can do anything, and the assets are so beautiful and easy to use that you can’t make anything ugly even if you want to. Look it up, I am planning to learn it.

Another thought that occurred to me is that the West Marches will be the perfect campaign for people to experiment with GMing. For first of all, TaleSpire allows unlimited GMs, unlike Fantasy Grounds which allows only one. You can have five GMs running the same campaign simultaneously, all of them controlling NPCs, adjusting cinematic values, typing dialogues or whatever, even across multiple boards in the same campaign simultaneously! This opens up incredible possibilities for co-op and PVP. Imagine two teams attacking a town from two directions, many boards apart, with the GMs coordinating the timescale. Or PVP scenarios with each team getting its own GM. Moreover, because we are in control simultaneously, I can step in at any time to aid you as needed, and then step out again. It’s the ultimate GM learning tool. And finally, the West Marches themselves are ideal for new GMs because they are light on the roleplaying and the urban environments, which are the toughest to run.

So as soon as I’ve established the campaign well, and we’ve all figured out the basics of TaleSpire, I’ll start getting people in who want to try GMing and giving them small contained environments at first, like say something simple like an ambush or a spider/wolf/etc. lair, and then we build up from there. Everyone who plays a follower is an assistant GM anyway, so whoever would like more duties can just ask and they shall have them.

We have amazing days ahead. I want everyone’s wishes and ambitions to be realized as soon as it is possible. You’ve all waited long enough for it!
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