Hey /tg/. I'm a new player to tabletop RPGs in general, along with my friend group who I convinced to learn with me. We're all playing a game of Black Crusade right now, and I'm the GM. Since we're all new, we're all making an effort to identify our weaknesses as players and fix them, like if we realize that we roll initiative slowly or we're looking up the same few rules every time, etc.
Anyway, as a GM, I've noticed that I have difficulty improvising. If the players do something which I haven't anticipated and thus prepared for, I have a tough time adjusting my planned adventure to account for their choices. I have trouble thinking of ways to make it so that the logical consequences of their choices fit into the greater adventure I had planned for them, otherwise I'll be improvising a whole new adventure I hadn't even thought of. Thus, my instinct is to try to steer them back to the adventure I had planned out for them. I don't want my players to feel like I'm railroading them, though, I want to be able to craft the adventure to their preferences.
So what I'm asking is if you guys have any tips for a new GM playing Black Crusade about how to better improvise unanticipated player actions so I can create a better experience for them. Should I ask them what they think the logical consequences would be? Should I take a momentary break to consider what to do? Should I have some stock encounters or events on standby for just such events? Should I just explain to my players that I'm weak at improvising so them going off the rails won't be as satisfying for them since I'll struggle to keep up?
I think we should also consider the general question of whether I should try to get them back onto the adventure I had planned out somehow, or let them go off the rails and try to constantly make things up as I go so they can just do what they want.
Bump. So any tips, tricks, advice? Does anyone have any specific instances of where they or their GM managed to competently handle players going off the rails?
>>46546600
Biggest trick I learnt is the illusion of choice. Let the players make their decision, and if you can't deal with it well guide them back onto your original path.
Example:
Players pass by the tavern that the next big plot character was sitting in.
Ok, setting's changed a bit. As the players go into a general goods store to restock on supplies they bump into Plotcharacter on his way out.
That might be a shitty example but you get the picture. I should emphasise, DONT just force the players to go into the tavern to talk with Plotcharacter, but anything they've not seen in-game doesn't exist, so you can always just drop the interior of that tavern into the next pub they walk into.
>>46546600
always have an out and know what you want to accomplish with a particular story beat.
For example I've been running a whfrp game where the party had been asked to investigate a warehouse by their employer(who is secretly the bbeg). The warehouse was full of cultists and Daemons and I was expecting the players to go to the city guard. The plan was that they would be arrested then she would come and bail them out using her political influence which would be the player first clue that something was up with her.
The players instead went straight to their employer. So I ended up having her send them to the guard chief and having the guards gripe about how now she is interfering with their business which clued in the party that something was up.
>>46547160
Ok, that's an interesting strategy.
Tell me what you would have done differently in he following. Here's a scenario that I ran into in my last game: It was Binding Contracts, that BC pre-made adventure. The PCs found one of the mutant gangs they were supposed to try to recruit. They approached the leader. The leader literally just introduces himself and asks why the players are standing in front of him. The Psyker decides now is the perfect time to start attacking with Doombolt. It's not a completely retarded strategy since a coup d'etat in front of the entire gang would be an admittedly effective way to gang control of that faction. The problem is that the NPC is literally about to offer them terms to a deal the moment they say anything, but the PCs go hostile almost immediately, so if I let it play out, the PCs would not have even heard the terms of the deal. I wanted the PCs to recruit this guy because he's a reasonably strong NPC who would be vital to their fights later against a bunch of Tyranids. I handled the situation by OOC literally just telling the player that his character doesn't do that and he waits until he hears out the mutant leader before they can do anything else. I realize how clumsy that was, but I at least wanted the PCs to hear what the NPC had to say before the PCs went full murder-hobo. In your opinion, was there a more elegant way to have handled the Psyker's decision to immediately go hostile? It doesn't just have to be improv in my capacity as a GM, it could be something like telling the player himself that he should probably hear out what most NPCs have to say/do and/or consulting with the rest of the group before doing something like that.
>>46547160
i once believed this until a friend lets his bro who we will call tom play
this is all fucking true and stupid but made my day
day 1
>GM: ok so you wake up in the middle of the night in a inn
> Tom: pack your things and start a fire
>GM: wha- why
Tom: scream fire then start robbing and when done throw it into the fire
>GM: o...ok the people outside are made at you an--
>tom: it was cursed by the jew
>Toms brother: dwarf
>Tom: wow racist
>GM: and what you said wasn't
>tom: na.
day 2
>GM: ok last we left off we burned a inn down.
>tom: and stole cheeses
>GM: no you didn't
>me: your where absent for that part
>GM: ok moving on!
>tom: trade all items in for gold
>GM: ok first even weapons and--
> tom: dude only weapons
>GM: why would you even... you know what ok you get 400g
>Tom: lets go
>gm: without weapons.......
>tom: o i got a weapon
>Gm: no no you don''t
>me: can we plz just go
> GM ok you get ambushed
>Nick: how many?
>GM: 4
>me: ok all for the each of us
>all attack and only toms mob was left
>GM:(shit eating grin) well
>tom:attack with cheeses
>GM: how the fuck-no why the fuck would attack a man with cheese.
>tom: rolling for crit
Crit and killed mob
>GM: fuck this i quit
walks away
>tom: do you think the smith will makes this into a weapon.
>>46547483
>>46547160
How do you think these are related?
>>46547160
This entire line of discussion is really more related to planned gameplay then it is to improvising,
but to phrase it better:
If you're force an event on your players they will feel railroaded if you force their path towards the event,
but they will not if you play the event along their existing path.
Player Agency is the belief that your decisions as a player are meaningful.
If your players make meaningful decisions and realize it, then that's player agency.
But if your players make meaningless decisions and think they're meaningful, it's still player agency.
Another thing to bear in mind is Schrödinger's Worldbuilding.
Essentially, details of your setting /only/ exist once you tell them to your players.
No matter what you've planned or decided, everything is completely fluid up until then.
The typical example of this is a room with two doors.
Beyond the first door opened is a room (A) and beyond the second door opened is another room (B).
The left or the right door can both lead to A, so long as they're opened first.
But this is completely non-magical and purely narrative, once the door to room pathing is established it has "always" been that way.
>so you can always just drop the interior of that tavern into the next pub they walk into.
This is a very great example of fluid details.
Anything you plan out that goes unused can /always/ be reused elsewhere.
Parts of dungeons not explored, treasures unfound, plots unfollowed, random encounters not rolled ... anything.
>>46548100
Thanks for the advice. My instinct as a GM has, so far, been very close to what you describe. I've been settling for trying to make the player choices somehow feed back into the same goal I had planned; multiple paths that all lead to the same destination.
As I ponder on this, I'm starting to realize that my players, being new themselves, have not entirely grasped that their characters are not destined to succeed; that their characters' actions have consequences; and that such consequences could very well be making completing the quest much more difficult, if not impossible. For example, the Psyker player I mentioned here >>46547408 later got one-shot killed by some Termagaunts and had to spend an Infamy point to keep from dying. He was very surprised and irritated that his character was so squishy.
I bring this up because I think part of the problem might be the expectations of my players themselves. The reason I'm so concerned with improvising is because my players don't seem to understand that their actions have potentially quest-failing consequences. I don't want them to crash their own quest out of the belief that things will just work out for them, when that's just not true.
I'm thinking of sitting down my players and explaining to them the consequential nature of the games I run, and that they could very well lose or die or fail a quest if they make careless decisions. I may even tell them that whenever they're thinking about doing something, they meta-talk to me, asking me what the likely outcomes of their planned decisions would be, and maybe even consult with the group. At the very least, this can give me some time to think up how such actions would play out.
>>46547408
Not the Anon you were asking this, but one way you can apply the concepts mentioned in this thread is to let the players kill said NPC then have another NPC, a lieutenant of the boss, step up and make a similar offer. Give the lieutenant similar stats and personality. Some things would change because of player actions but can still run in the direction you wanted with few wrinkles. Or more if you so chose.
Remember that everything that wasn't laid out on the table is still fluid. Making suggestions to the player isn't necessarily a bad thing, imho, but should probably not outright force a player/pc under most situations.
>>46548738
It's fine to give players some insight or suggestions once in a while. It helps give them a bigger understanding of a situation. You can also package some insight with the fairly common question to a players' potentially terrible choice: "Are you sure? Because.."
>>46549014
That's a good idea. I'll start making some more powerful versions of stock NPCs and enemies to act as lieutenants and substitutes for more essential NPCs should they die or become otherwise incapacitated.
>>46549145
I think I'll be giving more advice out in our early sessions since literally everyone is new and I'm probably the most knowledgeable of the rules and setting so far. Once my players have become familiar with the setting and how consequences work, I'll ease up on the advice. I can even do this in-game since I'm currently running a GMPC.
He's a Heretek mainly built to just be a support character (tech-use, medicae, Forbidden Lore, etc) and adviser to the players. I make it a point to NOT make my GMPC some kind of game-hijacking special snowflake. I've read enough horror stories here on /tg/ to see how that works out. The Heretek is mainly just an in-game tool for the players to learn information that they or their characters wouldn't otherwise be privvy to. Ex: if my players seem lost, the GMPC Heretek will make an educated guess as to what they should be doing, to give the players suggestions of what to do. He's certainly not giving orders, and he's in no way the PCs' leader. In combat, he just hangs out in the back with his servo-skull, taking pot-shots with his lasgun, laying down Suppressing Fire, healing teammates, etc.
>>46548738
>The reason I'm so concerned with improvising is because my players don't seem to understand that their actions have potentially quest-failing consequences.
Improving your improvisation well help you as a GM, but separate from that and more importantly you NEED to root out this mentality.
>I don't want them to crash their own quest out of the belief that things will just work out for them, when that's just not true.
Here's a thought. Take a good 10 minutes of so before the start of your net session to tell them that. Very clearly.
And if the message doesn't get across,wait 2 or 3 sessions and let them TPK.When they inevitably throw a hissy fit offer to roll back to the start of the session, but "just this once".
Something useful I've learned over the years is to never prepare more than the bare minimum of plot information, but to have tons of "floating" NPCs ready to pull out and interact with the players. Nine times out of ten if players encounter an NPC with a more complex name and backstory than "Bob the barkeep" they assume that they're still within the boundaries of what you expected them to explore, rather than feverishly laying down tracks just ahead of their train. Double points if they fuck off to somewhere completely random and there they meet Bartholomew the lovesick librarian who asks for their assistance in catching the eye of a beautiful woman who comes to check out new books every week, but never speaks etc etc etc.
>>46549549
If you are going to make a DMPC its best to make them a blunt instrument. Make them a support character and the players will feel that they are just being handed buffs and equipment. Instead have them just fight mooks while the players deal with the bigger threats.
That being said DMPCs work best when not directly involved in the adventure
I'd suggest to only write the initial encounter in a plot, relevant npc's, a few potential twists and then improv the rest.
Hell, my biggest advice to a new gm would be to "create an area were you think most of the adventure will take place, create a map of the area around that location and then write up 20 random encounters/plot hooks the players may encounter"
