GM Training Thread

>>53373598
Evil (Not chaotic retarded) PC in a party of obviously good people
Eg ; Evil Wizard , Good Fighter , Good Wizard etc etc

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>>53373598
Interesting idea. I'll give it a shot.

You are GMing a campaign and one player seems to always have a trick up his sleeve to get out of the situation you have the players in without much trouble. You've double-checked the rules and determined that he isn't breaking any of them nor ignoring any restrictions. He just really knows the system, better than you do in fact. Most of the other players are content to let him play his min-maxed character and do what he does. However, a lot of his actions have thrown a wrench into your ideas about the general direction the campaign is going in. What do you do?

>>53373667
How is that a dilemma?

>>53373691
You adapt.

>>53373691
Git gud, spend time working on your system mastery. In this case though, I'd be worried about intraparty balance, which tends to be more of a problem with an advanced minmaxer than external difficulty.

>>53373598
Players constantly jump to baseless conclusions, and then get upset if the plans they form based on these erroneous conclusions don't work.

>>53373667
Possible solutions:
1. Tell him the party must stick together the whole game. You are not allowing evil characters in a good party because this would lead to a party split (or characters sticking together purely for OOC reasons)
2. Give guidelines on playing the evil character: For example, he must not interfere with the other PCs business, he must not act evil in public with them, he must listen to the party, etc. After all, evil does not mean psycho. You could play a "crooked cop" style Knight, for example.
3. Allow major conflict, party split-ups, and/or PvP.

>>53373691
Adaptive response, combined with learning about the system's finer points from him. Its not a matter of denying him his tricks, its making the use of them lead the party into interesting situations, like jail or a dead end room.
Make notes of every encounter he manages to bypass - if he did it deliberately, give the party XP for it, and bring those forces up in a later encounter, or even another adventure.
Learn the limits of the character, and create situations where the other players have to be just as clever.
As for the campaign... I stop writing a plotline and start writing the villains plots. Much easier to adapt to flying spanners.

A player always seems to know someone in town who can get his character into the exact building they need to get into, no problems or questions. How do you respond to this?

>>53373810
Wow, such an insightful and interesting post!
We can /thread now.

>>53373691
Several options:
1. Play a system without such blatant balance issues
2. Talk to your player and say that it isn't fun for you to try to challenge the party, since you have to work extra hard to challenge him without killing everybody else
3. Wait for the other players to get tired of being useless

I see that everyone is realizing that this thread would be great if 99.999% of dilemmas weren't solved by "talk to your players like an adult."

Here's an issue that I'm currently having that has not so far been solved by just sitting down and talking.

We're playing 3.5 (Yes, we've tried not playing D&D, but we're playing D&D right now so we get to deal with it), I'm DMing.
One player, call him Bob, knows the system inside out and has been helping make characters for everybody so they're distinct and effective. I am 100% onboard with this, and he's been helping me do encounters and monster stuff so it's been working wonderfully.
Another player, call him Jim, is the only one who hasn't taken Bob's help with chargen.

Jim has resolved himself to play a "Jack of All Trades". That's taken the form of a Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric. The party is at level 10 and he's functionally on par with a 6th level character in most aspects.
Jim is painfully aware that his character sucks hot shit, but refuses to change it or let me or Bob try to find a way to make it work. He's spent entire sessions pouting about his inability to do things and blaming me for "making everything unbalanced ivory tower bullshit while letting Bob take a piss on the narrative integrity".

I've told Jim that between me and Bob we'd be able to find a way to make his character concept work. I've told Jim that he's going about his idea all wrong in this system. Jim has dug in his feet and is refusing to help us help him, and I think it's because he things that you either rollplay or roleplay.
I really don't want to kick him from the group because he is a good roleplayer, but he's mechanically worthless right now and it's driving everybody crazy because he won't unfuck himself.

>>53377639
In complete honesty the only solution there is here where nobody gets kicked out or driven insane is playing a different system. I get where Jim is coming from, and it's not a wrong position to be. It sounds like he doesn't want to have another player decide his character for him, and would like to build a character that fits his tastes both mechanically and flavorwise. With the sheer amount of Timmy options in 3.5, he just will not be happy with his character outside of certain builds.
So realistically your options are
1. Kill Jim's character and have him roll up a concept that can be made in 3.5 without min-maxxing and still be viable.
2. Let Jim bitch until he drives someone up the wall.
3. Play a system where Jim doesn't have to have someone build his character for him in order to participate.
4. Just give Jim some bullshit pity magic item that fixes his problems.
5. Tell Jim that it's been fun and you'll call him when you aren't playing 3.5.

>>53373691
1.throw a monster or other problem at him that attacks the weakpoints of his min-maxed build (for example: Zombies/ Skeletons against super-archers) and general variety
2.try to work out a temporary level-freeze. he wont level up until the rest of the party matches him somewhat in power

>>53373667
re-define all alignments so that they are able to work properly together in a party

>>53373959
Think of a way for them to be told their plan is a shit one before they execute it. For instance, if your party is trying to hire a beastmaster to extract hydra venom to kill a regenerating bad guy because they're convinced it will kill him even though it won't, have the beastmaster tell them that venom, no matter how strong, isn't enough to kill creatures with powerful regeneration.

>>53376088
How does that happen? He made his backstory like that? Roleplays well? His character has any stats that grant him those benefits?

>>53378500
Should I get them read again all my subtle cosmology hints so they figure out how to kill him?

>>53373667
Simply tell the players (all the players, don't single him out, it applies to them just as much) that their characters must be able to work together.
The characters don't need to have to agree on everything, but they should be able to function as a group AND stick together for reasons other than 'they're the PCs, of course they're together'

>>53378644
I think it might have worked if at the start of the campaign he printed out charts of lunar and constellation cycles and told them they might come in handy

>>53373667
So, your character is an asshole. Now tell me why does he genuinely like these two guys?
Evil ones still can have friends whom they like unconditionally.

>>53376088
Well, he paid his points for it and I didn't ban this advantage.
But of course this doesn't allow him to walk in bank vaults and/or secret bases

>>53378523
Back story. I actually came up with this one in sort of response to people going "reeeeeee! Character details bypass my precious plotline! Must stop! Reeeeeeeeeeee!"
>>53380540
Ah, but player abuse of the advantage is the issue here. So not only just limiting the locations he can get into, would one consider putting a side-quest requirement on its use, I.e. do your cousin a fucking favor for once?

>>53373598
When the party wants to split but you're real tired and don't want to run this text based rpttg switching back and fourth between rooms 1 and 2

>>53382060
Well, I'm not sure what the setting is or other details, but if he is in a situation where his character can get pretty much anywhere, he either wrote a novel which you approved or is going through loopholes.
Rich people have contacts but not to any place they want, so do members of certain groups or with influential friends, but never to everywhere, what's his deal?

>>53378500
if they're really not picking up on your lunar hint or whatever, like, if they're nowhere close you could always

make hydra venom work

if it's too easy perhaps a terrible thing happens and they end up needing to get the venom themselves with higher stakes?

>>53382060
>is a player using their background as an exploit a problem
yes. allow it, but gear them towards use where there's some challenge. your connections can't get you, for instance, a meeting with a war general who's in the battlefield right now, the players would end up doing a quest to find them. the connections can't get you into ancient ruins, or books respectable people wouldn't possibly have, and they're useless among those away from the civilization the character has background in. etc.

>is a player using connections they bought in chargen an issue
no. it's what you want. don't steer the game totally away from times this would come in handy, but find a way to make the game interesting anyway. maybe connections can get you into a bank but not into the safe, which needs to be broken into after you incapacitate your helpful connection and their guards. maybe you got a connection into the royal palace but they don't know who's killing people either and can easily become a target if the killer finds out you're on their tail and your contact is your key into the palace. etc. though, again, don't make anything they bought in char-gen worse that the book says it should be! don't!

>>53382294
Its based on 7th Sea, where the not!Spain has an advantage that allows you to roll to see if you have a relative in the area that can help you.