Hello everyone

[vanvid]

Hi,

New to the forum, and for some reason just wanted to say hi. Been 'lurking' on this site for about a month now, listening to AP's and your... uhmm.. RPPR show, or whatever we call it.

I would like to say thank you for making this. I am a roleplayer in the land known as Denmark, I work every day and have a family to take care of. Being able to listen in on you guys discussing roleplaying, and of course also the actual plays, really helps in staying inspired when not being able to play more than at most once a month.

Last month, december, my 'regular' group decided that we would try and play some CoC. I had played that before, but never as a GM (keeper, whatever), so I searched the internet for resources. A friend adviced me to use one of the scenarios from the core book as intros, and I thought that was probably a good idea. Initially I chose The Haunting, and began to search the web for advice and stuff on this scenario. And I came across your AP of The Haunting. You know. The really horrible one. 'Great' I thought and begang listening. For a while I didn't understand what was going on, and that you were all being idiots on purpose. After half an hour or such I was so sick of hearing the players being such assholes (you reminded me of all the worst players I've ever played with - actually you were worse...) so I was almost about to forget all about the site. Then I read one of the comments being sarcastic saying 'much better than candle cove...'. Having read Candle Cove from Ichor Falls some time ago, I got intrigued and continued on to find your AP of Candle Cove. I really liked it, and continued on with other stuff. So there. That's how I got here in case you wanted to know.

I would like to have listened in on the Slender Man campaign. But there are only two episodes, and I hear from other sources that it's never completed. What a shame.

Finally. A request for advice. I've been listening to lots of your RPPR shows in search for good advice for GM's. Found some good stuff too. But one of my big problems is time. I don't have enough time for preparing my scenarios. I end up using something like 15-20 hours preparing for a 6 hour session. I don't know if you have any episodes on the 'GM preparation process', but in that case I haven't heard it yet. If not. Well, here's a suggestion for an episode you could make: How to plan the session (efficiently).

As for my CoC game. We played Edge of Darkness instead, and have now begun Masks of Nyarlathotep. I hear you have played this as well. Will there ever be an AP posting of it?

Anyway. Thanks again for your good work, goes for everyone who participates in RPPR.

-vanvid-

[Dom]

Hey vanvid, welcome to the RPPR forums!

I think you may have read my comment on the "The Haunting" actual play; sorry for that, as you can see it was completely sarcastic (much like the actual description to the Actual Play.) The game was the first time Aaron (one of the RPPR cast-members) GM'd a game of Call of Cthulhu. This was in preparation of running a game at Gencon 2010, so the other players wanted to act as 'bad players' in case any of the unknown players at the Con game were bad players as well. Unfortunately for Aaron, he was late for the game, which meant that he had no control over the character generation of the players so they went wild and created the most "asshole" PC's they could.

So yeah, it was a joke, (Posted on the site on April 1st, no less.) which toughened up Aaron enough for his Gencon game. It's not really a good session to listen to for the first time, since normally the sessions are better in every way, shape and form.

Regarding planning for games, it really depends on the type of GM you are. There are many who don't write ANYTHING for their scenarios, and sort of make it up on the fly. There are others who will pour out their hearts and souls on writing pages upon pages for the scenarios. It all really comes down to how comfortable it makes you to have those notes to fall back upon, and how much faith you have on your creativity when put under the spotlight.

I myself spend 2-4 hours working on my scenarios, though my game sessions normally last 3-4 hours. Although normally I spend a whole week just thinking of stuff and writing it down somewhere, then spending a few hours writing the scenario based on those ideas.

I think it mostly takes practice. Getting the grasp of writing scenarios helps a lot to cut down the work-load. Knowing your group, how fast they go through content, how likely it is they will talk to an NPC, what their likely actions will likely be, what they like to do, etc. will also help you narrow things down.

You don't need to stat out every single character or give them all a unique backstory. You also don't need to detail every single room, just write down basic thigns they might see, and jot down details that might be important. For Masks of Nyarlathotep you have the added benefit that someone has already done a lot of the work for you, use that!

Hope that helps. 

[clockworkjoe]

http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2011/09/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-63-stylish-substance/

http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2009/01/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-27-grand-theft-apparatus-of-kwalish/

http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2011/10/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-64-adventures-in-adventuring/

just off the top of my head

[Flawless P]

I know when I first started GMing I spent a good solid 4-6 hours planning for a 3-5 hour session.

As I got more comfortable with the role and the rules I started preparing like an hour before the session started.

Now I will just walk in blind and run something based off an abstract idea I had at work with 0-5 minutes of research to back it up.

My game quality has improved now that I am more experienced as well. Also, Ross' links should help plus I'd listen to the Episode about timing, it's more about keeping on task but iirc there is some discussion about preparation.

I hope I helped somehow...

[Setherick]

Unfortunately our Masks game was never recorded. It was so monumentally epic that it keeps coming back up in reference to other games.

[clockworkjoe]

Yeah I ran it before I had the zoom h2 recorder.

[vanvid]

As for the Masks campaign, I found another actual play recording of it on the community site. Bet there are others out there as well, but I'll go for this one :-)

http://community.roleplayingpublicradio.com/blog/tag/masks-of-nyarlathotep/

As for the preparation. I think I'm using a lot more time doing it now than I did when I started GM'ing. Somehow I don't feel I'm doing the game justice if I don't come very well prepared. This might have something to do with the fact that I don't play that often anymore, earlier I would play twice a week (5-6 hour sessions), so obviously couldn't take as long to prepare.

Now it's like when I'm writing my own scenarios (most of the time - actually this Masks CoC thing is the first premade adventure I've run since... dunno.. maybe some ol Temple of Elemental Evil thing back in the days), I almost try to write them detailed enough for publishing (not really, but I don't just do notes). In this way I can go back to them again years later, which you never know when might come in handy. As for this Masks campaign. Well, I felt like I needed to research to twenties, read the campaign, take notes to the various scenes, and come up with pictures of various 20'es stuff (cities, ships, cars, fashion). But hey, it's not like I don't like this preparation process. It just takes a lot of time, and I'm often wondering where I might be able to skip a bit lighter through it. Just thought, maybe a discussion on this could be interesting. But I'll check out the links joe posted, sooner or later I'll probably get through all the episodes anyway.

Thanks for your feedback everyone

-vanvid-