Comments on: The DM Should Utilize Help From Peasants

By: TheWhite

TheWhite — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:14:57 +0000

I love it when players make their own map as they adventure. Hell, I’ll give em grid paper and the scale that I’m using so they can do it more easily. The amount of times that I’ve got to the start of the session after we left a dungeon crawl mid way and thought “DAMN, I have no idea where the PC’s are!” and proceeded to just look at the map they have been making, found where they ended it and thus found exactly where to start :D very nice.

Also, I’m currently playing in Pathfinder Society (organized play where characters have specific faction missions in each adventure that the other players don’t know about), the DM never has to worry about remembering when each faction mission is coming up or in process because we get little slips of paper with the details. In each two-hour session there is about half an hour of gameplay that the DM doesn’t need to know anything about, that’s a good quarter of the game that the players take care of for the DM.

As for players taking note of when the DM is getting stressed, we had one DM in Society play who started taking out his own issues on characters. First sign of a stressed DM, using Coup De Grace rules on PC’s just because the DM doesn’t like their tactics

By: Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Sunday Seven: 2010-06-13

Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Sunday Seven: 2010-06-13 — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:22:22 +0000

[...] The DM Should Utilize Help From Peasants This article from Krystal says up front that the GM should recruit the other players to help the game run more smoothly. I’m 100% in favor of this and already leverage this to its greatest when I can. The GM already has so much to do, that any little bit that can be farmed out to the players is beneficial. [...]

By: Noob

Noob — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:15:05 +0000

A lot of this is really helpful, especially the section on note taking. I have one player who from day one has taken notes on everything, having a player who does this can be very helpful if you don’t mind occasionally being corrected by the player because you forgot some minor NPC’s name that they met ten sessions ago.

I would also add that sometimes all you really need from your players is a quick diversion. If my players notice their DM searching through his notes having misplaced a page that might take a while to find, they turn up the role-playing a bit and have in-character gambling, or arguing, or whatever the situation warrants. This gives time for the DM to get organized and keeps everyone in game.

By: david

david — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:30:25 +0000

I completely agree! In fact I take it one step further and sometimes when the characters get separated or if a new player is waiting to be included in the campaign, I allow them to play monsters and npc’s for me. I tell them that there main character will get xp based on how well they play their “role” as a npc or how much ass kicking they do as a monster. I had one of the players even after a lengthy period playing monsters over numerous sessions say “I kind of miss kicking all your asses” to the rest of the group, and the other players say “well we’re glad to have you on our side now as you were brutal when you were a monster!”

Its pretty fun to see them battle each other, and they all enjoy the challenge, and it allows me to better play more monsters and do better “monologue’n” ;)

-david
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