Friday, July 22, 2011

My Styles of GMing

My GMing style is casual, rules loose and usually I go for extremes in campaign theme.  First off the casual and rules loose.  I don't fret over the rules all that much, besides with the guys I play with they have them memorized or the book opened to to the right page.  I am one that just says 'Roll, let's see what happens'.  Now I admit that my rules loose approach can create some inconsistent rulings, but if the players remind me of what I did before I correct it.  Since we are playing GURPS sometimes the rules can get persnickety and I just want to keep the action going.

Second my extreme campaign themes.  I like either to have an epic/heroic story going for the players or a down a dirty, gritty scraping for every farthing campaign.  The one I am currently running is epic.  Already they have fought a medusa vampire and mana titan in only four sessions.  One player was promoted to master in the guild and another has witnessed a god battle.  This campaign I don't see being all that long, but I want to keep it intense and fasted pace.  So am I going to worry about money for trinkets?  Nope.  Pretty much these guys have the means and connections to get pretty much what they want.  Only something out of the ordinary would cause me to have them check the contents of their wallets. 

I am a wing it GM.  I find my stories are much more interesting when I use a loose structure.  The last adventure when they encountered the mana titan I did not sit down and stat it out.  Really there was no way to and plus when I do that I find the encounter restrained and not as cool as I wanted it to be.  I wanted these guys to know they were battling something very powerful, very potent and world altering.  And the battle was all that and two bags of chips.  Even though they won the battle the players could easily see how this creature could wipe out and army with very little effort.

I'm not sure exactly where this campaign will go or how long it will last, but I plan to just make up stuff that I find a lot of fun, keep a continuing storyline weaved through it and roll a ton of dice.  I want to roll until my Game Science dice go round. 

6 comments:

  1. Dice going round, nice, you allow the players to direct the story by questioning and asking for things that may not be included?

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  2. Sounds like you are totally on my wavelength as a GURPS GM. :)

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  3. GURPS is one of the best systems ever for 'winging it,' since you can make up creatures and NPCs in mere seconds and at the heart the game's mechanics are dead simple, with lots of optional crunch that you can ignore at your pleasure.

    In my GURPS days I would usually sit down at the table with absolutely no plan whatsoever, and the action and story would unfold according to whatever the players were doing. Probably the best campaign I ever ran.

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  4. Sounds a lot like how I GM. Except it's fun to have the players "scrape for every farthing".

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  5. I love running a sandbox by allowing the characters to build an adventure based on what they want to got do...

    I could count on one hand the times I have run a module, or followed a campaign setting by all its canon.

    Eric

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  6. yup, you got my vote! keep it fast and loose, makes it more fun!

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