The Big Thread of Unsolicited Advice

[Reynard]

No one asked, but we are going to give you TTRPG gaming advice anyway.

This thread is for information and advice you think it is important people here. it can be directed at players, GMs, companies or anyone else. It should be legitimate advice, intended to help people get and/or do better, or have more fun, or otherwise benefit from in the context of TTRPGs.

I'll start with the single most obvious bit that I still see people fail at on a regular basis, both newbs and vets: TALK TO EACH OTHER. Talk about your preferences and expectations and hopes and concerns regarding the game. Talk to the GM when things aren't going great. Talk to the players just to check in. TALK.

What is your unsolicited TTRPG advice?

 

[Reynard]

More unsolicited advice, this time slightly less obvious:

If you have to look up a rule during play, measure the time it takes to get the rule right against a potential cost in fun and/or momentum in play. I won't say "just make something up and go" in every circumstance. Sometimes it is worth taking the time to find the rule. But many times it isn't, and the benefit of keeping the game moving outweighs the benefit of whatever the actual rule is. And don't forget you can abandon the search at any point. you might think it will only take a second to find the rule, but it ends up being conmvoluted or otherwise difficult. You can still decide to make a ruling and go.

But definitely look the rule up later, just so you know what it is. You might decide to keep your ruling as a new house rule, but you should at least know what you are replacing.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

1. No matter what your level of talent, in any field, nothing is more important than doing. If you are starting to GM, you will make mistakes. That's fine! It's part of the process- you will learn from it. Keep on doing it. Don't give up. Whether people talk about the "10,000 hours" or "number of reps" or "just keep swimming" it's always the same- the more you do something, the more you learn from your mistakes, the better you get. You will mess up. You will learn from it. Just stay in the saddle.

2. The only thing you can do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.

 

[not-so-newguy]

show up on time

 

[CleverNickName]

Set up and use an online gaming calendar for your group. Keep it updated with your availability, so that everyone can schedule the next gaming session. It's so much easier than dealing with tons of "are we gaming this weekend?" texts and emails every week.

 

[Kannik]

As a continuation of @Reynard's first post and @Snarf Zagyg's advice, rarely is there an adventure (or campaign!) that is totally dead/sunk/screwed up. There's often the chance to course correct, even mid way through, to get back to a place that's cool and exciting for the group. It's happened to me many a time, trying a style or focus of an adventure that goes either awry or, worse, has the players bored or frustrated, and by wrangling things I was able to have the adventure wrap up with interest, excitement, and (sometimes) cheers.

To which I'm now realizing that the key advice here really is this: be humble. I'd wager that the downfall of nearly every grand human endeavour is hubris. To adjust the adventures I noted above took awareness, inquiry, and listening, and took giving up what I felt ought to have worked and instead did the work to have it stick the landing.

Humility is powerful as a player too. It is more enjoyable to work with everyone to create a great experience. Even cooler can be to challenge what you think you like, or what you think is the 'right' (or only) way to do things, in order to discover what might well be/become your new favourite thing.

 

[Emberashh]

Let go of the obsession with narrative and story.

 

[LaTia J]

"Yes, and" and "No, but" are not the only options. "Yes, but" and "No, and" are just as valid, and sometimes more fun!

 

[payn]

Sometimes your best friends make for the worst gamers.

You can lead a gamer to Mt Dew but you can’t make them drink.

 

[Dustin Cooper]

1. Plans last until they come into contact with players. Even when you know your players and their characters well, they're sometimes going to just snap your plans in half. Let them. You can make new plans later, and players tend to love finding out that they did something they weren't supposed to do. Some of the best experiences I've had running games were when this has happened. Like one time, I made an adventure where some pirates kidnapped a mermaid, and the players were supposed to get up top of their ship and work their way down into the bottom like it was a dungeon. Instead, the monk made the longest series of successful stealth rolls I'd ever seen, got into the room with the mermaid, and announced to me that as a martial artist, she had plenty of experience breaking planks of wood, so she was going to just punch through the hull of the ship, grab a hold of the mermaid, and have her swim her safely back to shore. She made her rolls, I let it happen, figured out a way to still have a decent boss fight after that, and it was easily the most memorable session of that campaign for all involved. It's still the session I go to first if I ever start talking about D&D stories with people, and that never would have happened if I'd contrived something to make sure my dungeon worked like it was supposed to.

2. If an adventure ever has a section where the big villain fights the PCs for a little bit, then runs away, no they naughty word don't. I don't mean you should change the adventure as a GM, I mean the players are not going to let that happen. Letting an enemy get away, particularly one that an adventure like this tries to get the players to really hate, goes against every desire and instinct they have. They will pull out every stop, remember every power and item they kept forgetting in all previous sessions, and put themselves in incredible risks of a level they never have before to get that naughty word. If you run one of these adventures, keep in mind point 1 above, and make sure you have an idea what to do if (probably when) that escape attempt fails.

3. If you're a player in a D&D style game, and you're starting to wonder if you all should run away from something that seems to hard, just run. I've been in multiple situations where everyone was muttering about how a fight might cause a tpk, and maybe we should run, but no one wants to make the first move, so most of the party died. If you just run, the worst that's going to happen is everyone goes in the other room, says "we can totally take that guy, let's try again," and then you go back in the room and finish the fight.