GM Resources/Support Materials

[Wolfjack]

Hey all,

 

Even though I’ve been involved with RPG’s since 1981, I’m still a fairly inexperienced GM. I played mostly in the 80’s, with occasional GM’ed game of Justice Inc. (100% pure pulp!) and then just simply let it all slide with free time suddenly becoming a precious commodity. That, and my player group and I just went out separate ways. The 90’s were about buying the books and doodling characters for fun, but no real playing.

 

The millennium was about PBeMing and, while I won’t discuss the merits of them here, they did get me back into playing and GMing. Now, fortunately, I’m experiencing a true gaming renaissance! PBeMing introduced me to a great guy that lives in town and we share the same tastes in games and the balance of “real†life and family. We take turns GMing solo hero games. Mine takes place in Hudson City – a terrific city resource you should get if you don’t already have it – adapted to grand 4-color tastes.

 

Anyhoo, back to why I started this thread. I’m still a new GM, despite having been involved with gaming for over twenty years! As such, I’m wondering if anyone has any tools or techniques they use that help make the experience more enjoyable for players and GM’s alike. I’ve certainly come along from writing out characters with graph paper and a calculator thanks to Hero Designer. These boards, that I’m still new to, are another great resource. But what else is out there?

 

Here’s something I use to help develop sub-plots and get my player, and me, familiar with the city and what happens in it. I write what started out as the “News of the Week!â€, Word docs that provide a sense of what happens after the adventure. After the first one, I started to add-on cutscenes that would help the player see what’s going on behind the scenes, just like you would if you were reading a comic book. I’ve attached a couple so you can get a sense of what I mean. The quality of the writing is entirely subjective so draw your own conclusions. Depending on your familiarity with game resources out there, you’ll be able to pick up on my sources of inspiration.

 

There’s my contribution. What does anyone else use to enhance their games?

 

Best... Lee

[MitchellS]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

As far as game enhancements, we use session newsletters, color cardboard minis, the GM will do email "blue book" role-playing with each player to keep everyone's personal lives up to date [and it also keeps the secret stuff secret]. Our GM also does occasional small [1-2 paragraph] "Day in the life of..." stories about various villains and what they are doing/planning/scheming.

[Runehammer]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

My plot hook versions are pretty much the same as yours, I send emails to my rather scattered current group in the form of a newsletter. I take the odd news report about something and throw the Hero spin on it.

My last was on a tanker truck with a load of strychnine that overturned and dumped its load into the Great Barrier Reef in New Zealand (old news clipping in the Metro) Monster time!

The second was a man in Germany that was attacked in his apartment while sleeping next to his wife by a 'wild boar'. The animal jumped out a ground floor window and escaped, the wife was unharmed. (same old Metro clipping) What lycanthrope did he piss pff?

The third was a man in Georgia who was arrested for repeated counts of breaking into a church every two weeks to drink his fill of holy water from the fonts in the church (recent news) What is he trying to control I wonder?

[Wolfjack]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

As far as game enhancements' date=' we use session newsletters, color cardboard minis, the GM will do email "blue book" role-playing with each player to keep everyone's personal lives up to date [and it also keeps the secret stuff secret']. Our GM also does occasional small [1-2 paragraph] "Day in the life of..." stories about various villains and what they are doing/planning/scheming.

 

I've been making my own cardboard minis (fun to make on the huge color printer at work) and the day in the life stuff I've got. But bluebooking sounds interesting... what is that exactly? A way to enhance the backstory personal life of the PC would be fun.

 

And what are the session newsletters? What's their perspective/POV?

 

Best... Lee

[Wolfjack]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

My plot hook versions are pretty much the same as yours, I send emails to my rather scattered current group in the form of a newsletter. I take the odd news report about something and throw the Hero spin on it.

My last was on a tanker truck with a load of strychnine that overturned and dumped its load into the Great Barrier Reef in New Zealand (old news clipping in the Metro) Monster time!

The second was a man in Germany that was attacked in his apartment while sleeping next to his wife by a 'wild boar'. The animal jumped out a ground floor window and escaped, the wife was unharmed. (same old Metro clipping) What lycanthrope did he piss pff?

The third was a man in Georgia who was arrested for repeated counts of breaking into a church every two weeks to drink his fill of holy water from the fonts in the church (recent news) What is he trying to control I wonder?

 

Now the idea of using actual newspaper clippings is a good one! I may use that. Hmmm... this actually reminds me of Carl Kolchak from the Night Stalker tv show. What if there's actually some truth to those wacky tabloids only nobody will believe them because they're just so bizarre? But the reporter is forced to sell them to a rag no one takes seriously because no one will take him seriously?

 

Anyhoo... some plot ideas in there!

 

Lee

[MitchellS]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

I've been making my own cardboard minis (fun to make on the huge color printer at work) and the day in the life stuff I've got. But bluebooking sounds interesting... what is that exactly? A way to enhance the backstory personal life of the PC would be fun.

 

And what are the session newsletters? What's their perspective/POV?

 

Best... Lee

Blue booking is just role-playing between two individuals. I believe Aaron Allston coined the phrase when discussing his Champions games in Strike Force. The email messages sent generally involve NPCs and personal life things that there might not be time to deal with at the gaming table due to group activity. It's also a good way for a detective PC to get information prior to the next game session. So you get that Batman effect where the PC gets to say something he learned off panel rather then the GM telling him [and everyone else at the table]. That way a PC can share however much he wants to share.

 

Blue booking is also a good way for PCs to deal with relationships between themselves. Two male players [one playing a female character] might not want to role-play an intimate encounter at the table but they are more than willing to do it in a non-face-to-face email situation.

 

Blue booking is also a good way to set up plot elements for future adventures. The little stories between the PC and GM can go in unexpected directions and lead to all types of fascinating things.

 

A session newsletter is where each player [and the GM] writes about the last session from their character's perspective. We email these to the GM and he compiles them and sends them to everyone in a pdf booklet. That way each person gets to understand what occured and how each person viewed the encounter. It helps players who overlooked clues and helps the GM expand poorly-iniated plot elements.

[MitchellS]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

Here's an older example of email blue booking:

 

The hospital corridor seemed crowded for so late a Sunday evening; as if everyone was making one last dash to see their beloved family members before the inevitable happened. Of course this wasn't that uncommon at Mount Sinai Hospital, which always seemed to be full of some of the South-side's most critical cases. Many patients have a tendency to "hold on" for one last visit from loved ones before they go to meet their makers. It was one of the strange quirks of human nature.

 

Doctor Jeffrey Cauldwell walked up to the nurse's station in the isolation ward with all the confidence and arrogance that a man in his position could muster; which was all bravado. If anyone had noticed Jeffrey grab the chart for Ms Ruth-Ann Walker and quickly thumb through it, they never would have given it a second thought. Jeffrey looked like he belonged there, in his dark-green medical gown and respiratory mask. Jeffrey looked the part of a disease specialist, and no one gave him a second glance.

 

Of course that's what Jeffrey wanted. Jeff had taken great care to darken his facial complexion, change the angle of his nose and grease up his hair so that he wouldn't be recognized. After many years of sneaking in and out of hospitals, Jeff had learned to use his powers to blend in. On more than one occasion some of his colleges had walked right past talking about Jeff and did not recognized him. But even after that, Jeff never grew careless or unmindful of his situation. A researcher of his stature in a hospital was one thing, but a mutant doing what Jeff was doing was something else.

 

Jeffrey turned from the nurse's station and began walking down the lime-green corridor toward room 611. Ms. Walker was dying from a rare form of centangenal leprosy; a disease that had been virtually eliminated throughout the world. The fact that a case had turned up in Chicago was significant enough that a medical report had reached Doctor Cauldwell's office through a contact at the CDC. Having this disease turn up in Zimbabwe was one thing, but in Chicago, it would be a virtual impossibility.

 

As Jeff reached the room, he paused outside the door to give the file one last scan. Ruth-Ann Walker was a 47 year old black woman. Five foot two, one hundred and eighty pounds. It was believed that Ms Walker came down with the illness three days earlier when a chronic cough began. Ms. Walker believed this to be nothing more than allergies and continued working around her Condo on 35th Street. She was found face down Saturday morning in her rose garden by her daughter Colleen. At that time Ms Walker already showed signs of lesions and tissue damage. The leprosy had already entered the internal organs and spread throughout Ms. Walker's system. Prognosis was organ failure leading to death within 72 hours.

 

When Jeffrey opened the door, the first thing that hit him was the smell of rot. The smell was overpowering and seemed to penetrate right through Jeffrey's gown and mask, imbedding itself into his pores. The small, single-bed room had only the bathroom light on, casting it into a shrouded darkness befitting the dead. A beige curtain was half drawn, allowing Jeffrey to only see from the torso down. The figure in the bed laid perfectly still and was covered with a pale-white sheet that was spotted in numerous places by bodily fluid that had seeped from the patient's skin.

 

As Jeff stepped closer and around the curtain, he quickly came to a stop. The woman's face was a mass of puss and open sores. There was very little that was recognizable as human. The lips were gone and the nose laid flat against her face, as if the cartilage could no longer support the weight of the skin of the nose. The lips were laid bare and even the teeth and gums seemed to ooze a light yellow liquid. Only the woman's eyes seemed normal as they focused on Jeffrey. In those large brown eyes was a pleading; not to be saved, but to be put out of misery. Ms. Walker's eyes begged Jeffrey to end her suffering.

 

It was with a great measure of relief that Jeff switched to his scanning vision, allowing him to ignore the physical reality of the disease and focus on the virus itself. His mutant vision allowed him to see into Ms. Walker's body, into her bloodstream and organs to analyze the virus killing her. While unfamiliar with this strain Jeff did recognize the basic leprosy makeup of the virus. 'Yes,' Jeff thought, 'under normal circumstances she would perish within the next three days for there was no known medicinal cure for this disease.'

 

Jeff walked back to the door and checked the nurses notes on the chart. As he expected, they had just applied pain killing medication ten minutes ago and would not do another check on Ms. Walker for twenty more. Jeff removed a small strip of metal from his coat pocket and held it to the door and frame for a few seconds. When he let go the metal was somehow bonded in place securely holding the door closed. As Jeff turned back to the bed he slipped on a pair of sunglasses to help cover his face as his disguise melted away. There shouldn't be any cameras here, but Jeff did not like taking unnecessary risks.

 

Ruth-Ann was too groggy from the medication to see any change in his appearance. That suited Jeff just fine. Jeff held one hand over her head and the other over her chest. Taking a deep breath Jeff released his mutant gift into her ravaged body. Jeff's power was able to cleanse her system of the virus, changing it into healthy cells to replace what it had destroyed. It took only a few moments to repair what the disease had damaged.

 

With a deep sigh Ruth-Ann relaxed into a restful sleep, free of the pain for the first time in the last 36 hours. Jeff smiled down at her, happy that he had been able to help. Jeff walked back to the door and removed his door stop, then arranged his disguise again. Purposely opening the door he walked back to the nurses station and returned the chart. Ignoring the nurses Jeff strolled down the hallway and around the corner and slipped into the empty elevator just as it was closing. Smiling, Jeff changed his clothes to a Chicago Cubs shirt and blue jeans and his features to a blond teenage boy. He then walked right out of the hospital looking like a visitor leaving a loved one.

 

Although Ms. Walker was cured Jeff was confused. That form of leprosy was impossible to catch in the United States. Even if she had traveled to Africa in the last week the odds of her catching it were astronomical. But that was the most likely explanation. But Jeff had no way to find out if she was the traveling type.

 

One hour later Transition was flying through the sky on a transparent platform. He had made a phone call to Lt. Sean Cauldwell and was flying to meet him. Jeff still thought it very strange to have his own father as a contact in his alter ego, but he believed it best that his Dad didn't know his secret yet. As a cop, Sean was willing to use Transition's help on some of the stranger cases, but as a father, would likely want to keep his son away from the "crazies". In any case he should have a report on the activities of the last two weeks for Ruth-Ann Walker.

 

Back in the Mount Sinai hospital room of Ms. Ruth-Ann Walker, an ominous shape began to take form; seeming to grow from nothing out of the wastebasket next to her bed. What in one instant appeared to be nothing more than a swirling mass of tissue, quickly reshaped into the form of a man with large open sores, seeming to leak puss and other fluids with each bodily movement. The man glanced down at the restfully sleeping form of Ruth-Ann and an evil smile sprang to his lips.

 

The man slowly stretched out his left hand toward Ruth-Ann's face. When his hand hovered over Ruth-Ann's mouth, the attacker quickly clamped down on it, startling her awake. The look on Ruth-Ann's face was pure terror as she struggled to grab her attacker's arm. When Ruth-Ann's hands made contact with the attacker's flesh, they began to burn and immediately swell. A muffled cry of "no!" seemed to force its way past Ruth-Ann's attacker's hand, but it was not loud enough to travel more than a few feet past the bed.

 

The attacker bent closer to Ruth-Ann's face so that she could clearly see his expression; his desire to cause her pain. "You betrayed me Ruthie," the attacker whispered into her face. "I let no one that betrays me live. But you did me a favor tonight too, and because of that I'm going to give you a merciful death."

 

The attacker eyes seemed to glimmer from only a few inches away from Ruth-Ann's. Before the attacker continued speaking, a blackened tongue seeped from his mouth, licking his lips in an image of hunger. "I would have much rather have sat here and watched you rot for a few more days Ruthie," the attacker began again, "but you led me to him, as I knew you would. Payback's a bitch Ruthie. First I pay you back for your disloyalty, and then I finish him."

 

A sated purr seemed to escape the attacker's mouth as he continued. "I've tagged him now Ruthie. He's mine. No matter where he goes now I'll be able to find him. He will pay Ruthie, just as you are paying." The attacker looked down at Ruth-Ann and was upset to see that she was dead. The leprosy had once again claimed her, only with greater ferocity. There was nothing left of Ruth-Ann's face to show that she was ever human, let alone fully recovered just a few moments earlier.

 

"Goodbye my friend," the attacker whispered to the corpse of Ruth-Ann Walker. The figure then slowly turned and walked into the bathroom. The bathroom light was still on, and the figure caught a glimpse of its diseased face before it could turn away. The look in his eyes only seemed to harden. The figure casually stepped into the toilet and flipped the flush valve. In a matter of seconds the figure dissolved and disappeared down the toilet drain.

[Barton]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

Steve Jackson Games Modern Cardboard Characters and the plastic stands they sell. GREAT, includes police, firemen, and civilians for the by-standards you might need.

BattleMat by Chessex.

Dungeon Stamps by Green Dragon Studio (http://www.greendragonstudio.com) stamps for the battlemats. They allow you to make a map quickly that looks nice. Use unsented babywipes to clean the map.

HeroClix. Cheap ones, you can find them in huge buckets at some game stores. At 20 cents to one dollar a piece they are cheap.

[Agent 13]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

Now the idea of using actual newspaper clippings is a good one! I may use that. Hmmm... this actually reminds me of Carl Kolchak from the Night Stalker tv show. What if there's actually some truth to those wacky tabloids only nobody will believe them because they're just so bizarre? But the reporter is forced to sell them to a rag no one takes seriously because no one will take him seriously?

That was the concept behind GDW's Dark Conspiracy game way back when.

 

And the reason I got a subscription to the Weekly World News for Christmas one year.

[zornwil]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

There's a few things in the Software and Resources forum.

 

Pictures, however you get them, are great.

 

One of the GMs in our group uses a whiteboard to put up salient info and such, that's very effective.

 

Music is often good, another GM in our group normally mood-sets with music.

[Rapier]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

Any skills/habits/patterns to help GM? That's like asking if a fish has ways to drink water!

 

First and foremost know you scenario. The best scenario doesn't exist just in the scenario...it exists beyond the scenario. If the scenario is to save a senator from assassination, the best scenario determines if he become president before or after the attempt etc. Its all about the World!

 

Only tackle what you can absorb. If you are new, use as few of the "optional" rules as possible. Simplify as much as possible and add more as you get more comfortable.

 

Design opponents as equals to the characters (to begin with and then slightly better as time goes on).

 

Make opponents (villains) smart. Only an idiot villain blasts a fire hero with a flamethrower...an intelligent villain will blast the fire-hero with a freeze ray.

 

Start slow. Hero can get very Numbers-Centric which may frighten people off. Its better to start numbers-slow and work your way up keeping the players than lose them early on because its just too har.d

[MCMaenza]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

I used to do newspaper clippings for one of my campaigns back in the 90's. The players liked that because then they could a) keep a scrapbook of the adventures and find out what the media thought of their antics. Served some good purpose.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: GM Resources/Support Materials

 

Hey all,

 

Even though I’ve been involved with RPG’s since 1981, I’m still a fairly inexperienced GM. I played mostly in the 80’s, with occasional GM’ed game of Justice Inc. (100% pure pulp!) and then just simply let it all slide with free time suddenly becoming a precious commodity. That, and my player group and I just went out separate ways. The 90’s were about buying the books and doodling characters for fun, but no real playing.

 

The millennium was about PBeMing and, while I won’t discuss the merits of them here, they did get me back into playing and GMing. Now, fortunately, I’m experiencing a true gaming renaissance! PBeMing introduced me to a great guy that lives in town and we share the same tastes in games and the balance of “real†life and family. We take turns GMing solo hero games. Mine takes place in Hudson City – a terrific city resource you should get if you don’t already have it – adapted to grand 4-color tastes.

 

Anyhoo, back to why I started this thread. I’m still a new GM, despite having been involved with gaming for over twenty years! As such, I’m wondering if anyone has any tools or techniques they use that help make the experience more enjoyable for players and GM’s alike. I’ve certainly come along from writing out characters with graph paper and a calculator thanks to Hero Designer. These boards, that I’m still new to, are another great resource. But what else is out there?

 

Here’s something I use to help develop sub-plots and get my player, and me, familiar with the city and what happens in it. I write what started out as the “News of the Week!â€, Word docs that provide a sense of what happens after the adventure. After the first one, I started to add-on cutscenes that would help the player see what’s going on behind the scenes, just like you would if you were reading a comic book. I’ve attached a couple so you can get a sense of what I mean. The quality of the writing is entirely subjective so draw your own conclusions. Depending on your familiarity with game resources out there, you’ll be able to pick up on my sources of inspiration.

 

There’s my contribution. What does anyone else use to enhance their games?

 

Best... Lee

Awesome

 

 

Thanks

 

 

QM