Monday, August 22, 2011

Badges!


Stuart over at Strange Magic had a pretty cool idea regarding game master styles - having a set of easy to reference badges that lets you know, at a glance, some notes about someone's game mastering style.  Do you make up rulings on the fly and improvise most of your encounters, or run scripted adventures?  Do you fudge dice when the whole party is going to die, or let the chips fall, even if it derails the adventure and wrecks your campaign?  Interesting stuff.  Quick caveat though - let's hold off on the value judgments - there are many ways to run a game, they're just not all the right styles for me.



Beedo's Badges
I picked Scary Stories, Death Happens, Don't Fudge Dice, By the Book, Exploration, Pre-made Content

I don't believe in fudging dice to guide the story, and death happens; for instance, we lost three player characters last night because they failed their saving throws against a banshee scream.

I don't believe in making up madcap rules on the fly, and try to be By The Book - I require resource management, encumbrance, light, all that stuff; however, we do have a set of pre-agreed House Rules that are considered part of The Book.

I try to give all of the adventures I run a horror twist, and heavily favor exploration themes.  I prefer to run pre-made content and use a small amount of improvisation to enhance it.

2 comments:

  1. Now I know I'd enjoy being a player in one of your games. :)

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  2. I... honestly don't think I can actually use these in any sort of helpful way. The trouble is that half of them do or don't apply depending on which system I'm running for which combination of players and how I'm feeling on a given day.

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