#gm asks

Thank you so much for your question @dungeonmama ! This one is actually the easiest!

So our Ranger (Tenjõ), in his backstory, comes from an island and has lived a very isolated life, so he’s a social misfit anywhere he goes and knows nothing of city etiquette. He came to the main city where the campaign takes place to find a relic he accidently sent away on a trading shipment. This was his first encounter with alcohol.

The players had found themselves in a shady bar, thinking they could dismantle a trafficking scheme. On the first floor was a huge bar fight, in which the boss was the bartender. Our Ranger, seeing how the boss is more powerful than the others, becomes convinced that the bottles of alcohol at his bar are actually strength potions. On his turn, he decides on chugging down an entire bottle. I ask him to roll a constitution saving throw.

Nat 1.

Laughter erupts at the table. I’m trying to be fair, but still end up giving major disadvantages to poor Tenjõ during the fight. He’s all dizzy and can’t shoot right. Once the adrenaline goes down, I have Tenjõ empty the contents of his stomach on the spot. The player is laughing so hard as well, telling me how it fits her character a lot.

Hello Friend!

I answered Arcana (Most bizarre things to have happened in a game) a good long while ago here. Since then we’ve also had:

Tricking a 2 headed Golden Dragon into debating classism and unionisation with itself so that they could sneak by.

Bard wearing boots that allow him to see ghosts is haunted by the soul of his lost bagpipes.

Gladiator tried to save a teddy bear, temporarily forgetting that it wasn’t alive at all in any way (just a regular teddy bear), and proceeded to merely throw it over a waterfall whilst shouting ‘Grab the Rope, Teddy!’ 

(That was my husband actually in real life not realising that an inanimate teddy wouldn’t be able to grab a rope. I have no words.)

For Bluff (Most unlikely success my players had):

Aside from the Ghost Kraken....

In one of our Newbie games, we have been running the Lost Mines of Phandelver and our Rogue got bored of being stealthy so pushed the Cleric into Klarg’s chamber from the hidden crevice.

The not-at-all-charismatic Cleric then proceeded to Crit on his Deception roll to convince Klarg that he was a Poop Demon from the toilet pipe, frightening the Bugbear so much that he let him escape back down the pipe.

As I mentioned sometime after the stream, I’ve been considering some additional interactive events for Dangan Live to help you all get more involve, especially during the break between updates. Before I start planning these things out in more detail, though, I’d like to hear a bit from you guys in terms of what times/days work best for you. It’d be rather pointless to host and event and then have only a few people show up, after all.

To send in your preferred times, please visit this google form. The information I gather will be used for later streams and whatever other ideas come to mind, so if you’re interested in these things, please be sure to respond.

Endurance - What’s your worst tabletop experience?

Hm, well I’ve been very lucky in that the vast majority of my games have been with good friends and things have gone pretty smoothly. I’ve already answered a similar question about my worst experience as a player but, since this is for the GM asks, I’ll talk about the worst GM experience I’ve had.

We were playing a standalone game with the usual roster of players but I knew something was going to happen as soon as we started. A married couple were playing (Let’s call them Tom & Laura) and, strangely, they didn’t arrive together. When Laura came in, she looked exhausted and Tom’s normally cheerful face was drawn.

The trouble truly started when we began rolling characters. Nothing Laura came up with was good enough for Tom. Her choices were cliche, her character was boring, even her character’s name was ridiculous to him. He started picking away at her and she began reacting in increasingly angrily snipes.

You could feel the storm brewing.

Other players sensed it and there were some attempts to diffuse everything, players making a joke out of being the most cliche, the silliest. I tried to hurry everything along, reasoning that the sooner we started playing, the sooner everyone could lose themselves in the fiction.

I was wrong.

Long story short, the game just made everything worse. Tom & Laura co-opted the whole story to play out their argument. I honestly believe they didn’t mean to but suddenly a story about epic adventure turned into a constant stream of party bickering.

It ended up with Laura crying on my shoulder in the garden while Tom paced up and down in a frustrated mess. Needless to say, not much fun roleplaying was done that night.

The group was so collectively upset by the whole experience that we didn’t meet to play for a long time afterwards and, when we did, a list of house-rules for behavior had been drawn up.

I’m happy to say that we’ve never had this problem again. Tom & Laura are both valued and brilliant players in the group and some of my best friends. I think if we all had been just a little more experienced with the emotional hazards of role-playing when stressed, we could have avoided the whole thing.

TLDR: Player conflict never helps a game when it’s brought to the table. House rules for behavior are a must-have!

“Game Master Ask Prompt.”  

Athletics - Do you have any tips for running combat?

Never, ever, ever reroll initiative for every round.  I don’t care what the rules say. just don’t.  It makes everything last longer.  Also, when fibbing rolls: only lie in the players’ favor, never lie to make your NPCs or villains look more badass than the die dictate.  Let the players feel awesome.

Diplomacy - What player style do you have most trouble GMing for?

I’m sure nobody will be surprised to learn that I suck at combat strategy, so those players that spend their off-weekends playing Axis & Allies or Risk can usually take me on no problem unless I’ve got a handful of mooks to charge in if combat gets too easy.

Endurance - What’s your worst tabletop experience?

So I’ve got 2 stories that really stand out.  One of them I already mentioned  as one of my craziest most bizarre experiences.  The other one occurred at my very first tabletop session.  I had been invited by some friends to observe their game to help convince me that roleplaying wasn’t actually the spawn of Satan (I grew up around the moral panic of d&d, so that was my initial baggage).  At the game, they mention the fact that one of the players is rather... intense... and they’re looking to split off the game into a different group.  When the session started, this guy had captured a storm trooper (it was a Star Wars game), and proceeds to torture him for information.

From the “Game Master Ask Prompt”    

Nature - Do you like using props/minis or do you prefer using a bare table?

I’m not sure if it’s just because it’s how I initially played, or if it’s a result of my dislike of strategy-focused combat simulation, but I generally like to get by without minis.  I’m not a great strategy player and really dislike games such as Risk or Axis & Allies, although I enjoy non-combat strategy games such as Othello and Khet.  I often feel like using minis is less immersive than just a bare table, because you focus on the distance, layout, and positions, rather than the story or the aesthetic of the game.

Stealth - Have you ever completely surprised your players?

I like to think so.  In one campaign my players spent a good deal of time trying to identify who was the traitor in an organization.  I don’t know that they were really surprised so much as disappointed when they found out it an NPC they really liked.  The spent the next several months tracking him down and shot his ship out of the sky.  Unfortunately, they didn’t find the remains (players groan), meaning he could return later to cause them more problems.

History - When did you first start tabletop gaming?

I only started playing D&D in my mid-twenties (about 5 years ago now). I’d heard of role-playing tabletop games and I’d always been a gaming nerd, both boardgames and computer, but I’d just never had a group or a chance to play.

Then, after moving out of London, giving up a very non-lucrative and unsuccessful acting career and finishing my writing MA, I finally got the chance when an author friend of mine suggested we give 4E a go.

Straight off, I knew that this was going to be a big deal for me. Tabletop Role Playing really combines everything I love in one big package: Narrative, acting, writing, gaming and interactivity, friends goofing off…

 I do wish that I’d found it earlier but I’m so glad that I finally did!