Hi!  This is a spot especially for DM's.  I am going to take on the task of
being one and I was wonderin if anyone could give me pointers, hints, any 
kind of help?  

44 responses total.

be prepared to throw your entire adventure out the window at any time.
s**t happens

What is Forgotten Relms like (i think this is the world i am going to run)
What are it's advantages disadvantages?  What are some other cool worlds?

If your players like fighting dragons and the liking left and right, 
try Dragonlance.  Forgotten Realms takes a while to get used to
(I've tried), but it's worth it.  There's a lot of cool possibilities.

if you can get ahold of anything Spelljammer, the possibilities are 
endless! Council of Wyrms is also a good setting.
,

yes... if you want to play dragons... try dragonlane it's cool but if you want
ot be really elaborate try spelljammer or planescape, note not recomeded for
begining dms I also like Al-quadim.

I'd rather *be* a dragon than ride one   I've got dragon-characters from
long before Council/Wyrms came out :)

Are you using D&D, or some other system?

AD&D, 2nd. Ed. of course.

I us AD&D 2nd. Ed. too. 
;done
ooops 

I actually suggest freelancing...don't use any published system, and use 
a simplified system of dice rolls IF ANY...dice aren't necessary for a good
game, just good judgement

Rather than go straight from the hip, I'd recomend using one of the best simple
mechanic games (Over the Edge for modern games, and Everway for fantasy).  
Unlike many other games, where the systems get in the way of the roleplaying, 
these systems guilde the haracter creation process into intresting venues, 
while resolving disputes in elegant fashions once the game has begun.
        After all, why re-invent the wheel?

        Because you've got nothing better to do?

exaculty!

        <orinoco holds up his latest invention--a triangular wheel--for the
        world
to admire>

Hmmm, I know several parents who would invest in those to keep their teen
drivers from going too fast.....

 :-)

Hmmm....I don't happen to remember where I posted asking for help with my
rakshasa vs. the players who have read the books and aren't discreet about
it, but here seems like as good a place as any....Here's how I prevented my
rakshasa from biting the dust first turn:  the PCs, as part of the adventure,
were supposed to rescue a 0-level NPC half-elf girl who had been kidnapped
during a goblinoid raid on a town (one of the campaign plots is a group of
rakshasa who have united the goblinoid tribes into a horde and are attacking
a couple of good nations...)  So they enter the goblin-held prison, move
through in a nice, methodical fashion, and their method just happens to mean
that the rakshasa ruhk (who is in charge of the prison) is the first major
encounter that they face, so they aren't weakened by the idgit goblinoids
very much before meeting him.  That was a major flaw in my adventure...So
they went into a well-decorated, large bedroom, where they found the girl
sitting on the bed, petting a cat, which was sitting in her lap...she was
charmed by the rakshasa...The rakshasa let them talk to her, until they
decided that she was probably under the influence of magic, then presented
his true form....the PCs dove for their crossbow and Bless spell, but the
girl said "Don't you dare hurt my poor little cat!" and shielded him with her
body ("girl is misleading, she was about 19 years of age), preventing the
crossbowman from getting a clear shot....The rakshasa cast Dispel Magic on
the bolt, and the PCs realized that they had only had one Bless spell.  So
then battle broke out....The dwarven two-handed-battle-axe-master took about
six swipes at the rakshasa before deciding to listen to the people who said
"You're really not going to hit him."  (BTW, the Charm was dipelled and the
girl removed before the melee started)  The PCs were taking a pretty good
beating, before the high-level fighter/mage NPC (who is just along for the
hell of it, and the adventure) decided that an earth elemental might help,
and this allowed them to win....Of course, the NPC then layed claim to a
large share of the rakshasa's magical items, then said "So long, I'm off to
play with my new toys..."

Anyways, that was pretty long, but I just thought that you might care to know
how I saved my rakshasa from knowledgable PCs...

and save your dead pcs from yor rakshasa

Yeah, that too...I waited until their mage, one cleric, a pet monkey, and 
the dwarf were very close to dead (unconsious, using the "death's door"
rule) before he stepped in...He is rather chivalric, though, and he spent the f
first few rounds of combat making sure that the half-elf girl was safely
removed from the area of combat...

<tee hee>

He also prevented the psychotic dwarf from beating up on helpless prisoners.
A group of kobolds and some bugbears that had surrendered, and some non-human
prisoners of the bugbears...No one else wanted him to beat them up, but they
didn't have the muscle to make him stop, so my elf resorted to a little bit
of tactful persuasion ("I said, don't touch them...I might accidentally call
back that earth elemental and lose control of him..."), which caused him to
stop...<g>

again tee hee

Hmm.  A bit too much of the "big hulking GM's character is more powerful than
any of the PC's chracters, so PCs aren't really important" for my taste in both
the combat (I would have made the game a contest of of wits, not solvable
through physica force) and the captured prisoners (I might have used one of a
myriad of tactics,  all along the theme of giving chracters/players enough rope
to hang themselves,  prehaps including making one of the prisoners a faery in
disguise , who could take the oprotunity to curse the offending character,
prehaps letting one of the victims get away, and come back as a rightous
avenger bent on wiping evil (read -- the dwarf) from the world, prehaps having
a society of assassins after the chraacter's hide, an prehaps letting the
chracter develop a bad rep that would precede him to towns, guilds, 
relatives...).
        I'mthe GM, so my PC is bigger than your PC doesn't cut it in my world.

<kain agrees, the dm's avenger thing is kinda lame>

I'll second that emotion

Unless the pc's are real dicks, or want power without restriction

even then there are ways of dealing with them

A particular individual whom I no longer game with was bad about wanting
power--his former DM asked no price for power...when he faced a GM who did,
he could'nt hack it...especially e when he faced an NPC who was much too big
forhim and he knew it...

yo, starwolf, read the fires of dis adventure!>

Well, the dwarf settled for just tying up about a dozen bugbears and ten
kobolds and leaving them there....The DM-character figured that they would
get loose eventually, so this was not cruel and unusual...When the group left
the dungeon, the dwarf said, "You do realize that that Inquisitor is still
loose in there, don't you?"  I had completely forgotten about the Inquisitor
(a rather nasty type of undead that tortures for pleasure and lives on the
pain inflicted by the torture).  I said, in effect, "D'oh," and the other PCs
found this whole thing rather amusing...The dwarf was rather happy that I had
neglected to take the Inquisitor into account when my character let him
tie up the critters...

I don't think I'll bring him back, except perhaps as a mentor...Anyways, the
dwarf has kind of mellowed out...We have a new player who plays a chaotic
neutral gnomish illusionist/thief, and the gnome makes the dwarf look
positively warm and fuzzy....So now the dwarf spends a lot of time kicking
the gnome into line when he endangers the party...

chaotic neutral, that's about the hardest alignment that there is to play
Does this guy play him well?

I have a 15th level Necromancer, a human woman by the name of Devon Alek,
she is Chaotic Neutral, and an albino with snow white skin and eyes of deep
scarlet (pupil included) - though it is difficult, I play her alignment with
obvious precision - throwing people off track by doing things in an organized
fashion, lapsing into acting like a toddler, and other pure Chaos - but she
is usually the MVC of any party she travels with.

He spends most of his time acting in strange and unusual ways, annoying each
and every party member, and endangering their lives just for the h*ll of it.

None of them really play their alignments very well....except for the lady
ranger...

who is of what alignment?
..

The Q is, are the characters themselves consistent?  Alignmentsa are a
crutch,and an uncomfortable one  at that.
        As far as powegaming PCs, the solution is to give them enough rope to
        hang themselves -- take
a look at the "How to screw your players/characters" in the OTE rulebook, even
if you never read anything else in that book.

Alignments are a tool - not a straight jacket.

but can be used as either depending on how good or bad the pcs are

And of course, the Players opinions about alignment - I've seen many who've
seen it as follow directly what the books say instead of having some fun and
being creative about staying in alignment.

Well, I've been long considering saying "screw the whole alignment thing, you
can all just play your characters however you wish"...

The lady ranger is of neutral good alignment...

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss