Running a Game

Once you understand the basics of keeping order and making sure that your players aren't going to try to pull a fast one on you with invincible or unbelievably powerful characters, you still need to know what to actually do when you start the game to make sure that it runs smoothly for everyone involved.
==Making the Dice Work for You==
There are ways to very quickly and easily make the game your own, even on the fly while running an adventure.
===Determining Base Check DCs===
In general, the check DCs for almost all skills are given in multiples of 5, if for no other reason that it's easier to remember "5, 10, 15, 20..." than it is to remember "6, 13, 18, 27". Your goal when setting a check DC is both to keep it consistent with the world which you are presenting your players (i.e., Fort Knox might have DC 40 locks, but an average suburban home likely won't) while also making it an appropriate challenge for your players.
One important guideline to keep in mind for setting skill DCs is that they're essentially a measure of how likely the characters are to succeed at the check. If a character needs to roll a 10 to succeed on the check, then the character will succeed on the check 50% of the time. If the character needs to roll more than a 10, then his chances of success drop below 50%. If the character needs only to roll below a 10, the character's chance of success increases above 50%. Further, each point you increase the check's DC by decreases the character's chances of success by 5%. If you know the character's bonus to a given check, you can very quickly estimate what the character's chance for success is.
===Modifiers to Checks===
Once you arrive at (or just look up) the base DC for a given check, you can further adjust this target DC by applying a simple modifier to the DC. The value of the modifier will depend on the circumstances surrounding the check. Modifiers can generally be thought of is "How is this situation different from every other one like it?" So opening a locked door might be made more difficult because it's being done on a dark, moonless night, while performing a hit song in a theater with excellent acoustics will make it easier than any other time you've performed the same song.
A simple way to handle modifiers is from the table in the Action Core, where you simply follow your Bonuses and Penalties on the chart (of -10, -5, -2, 0, +2, +5, +10). A modifier of 1 penalty (-2 to checks) might mean that the circumstances are slightly more challenging than usual (such as trying to climb a cliff slick with rainwater). 2 penalties represent a situation even more difficult (such as trying to translate an ancient parchment which is badly burned and damaged in places). 3 penalties represent making a check under almost impossible circumstances (like trying to hack a computer after the monitor has been destroyed and doing it entirely "by feel"). These modifiers can also be reversed to represent good, great, and terrific conditions respectively, though good, quiet conditions in which to work can also be represented by allowing a character to Take 10 or 20 (see below).
===Taking 10 and 20===
Another option you as the GM tend to have control over when it comes to many checks is when players are able to take 10 or take 20. To use a real-world example, anyone who has ever watched a trivia game show has seen the phenomenon where a seemingly bright person becomes overwhelmingly, mind-numbingly stupid enough to fail to answer a simple question, such as identifying the Moon as bigger than an elephant. When under stress, even a competent person can seriously botch things up, and in d20 Advanced, this is often represented as a critical failure on a die roll.
However, under calm, controlled circumstances, a character can avoid this chance for failure by taking 10 on any task in which he or she has skill ranks. It's important to remember that circumstances under which the characters are actually able to take 10 are going to be rare in many games, where action is the norm. You as the GM always have the final say over whether or not a situation is calm and controlled enough for a character to take 10.
Taking 20, on the other hand, generally requires at least 2 minutes uninterrupted for even the simplest tasks, relegating taking 20 to almost exclusively non-combat scenarios (except for characters with FX like Quickness). The character attempting to take 20 must have the required amount of time to try the check 20 times, and the check in question must not have penalties for failure (such as setting off an alarm or falling while attempting to scale a wall).
It's up to you as the GM to decide when it's appropriate or not for characters to use these options. They're meant to help you quickly resolve trivial or time-consuming tasks, and should be used as such.
===Fudging===
Sometimes, the dice are just uncooperative, and instead of producing an interesting and exciting story, they only result in an anticlimactic let-down. The NPCs keep rolling poorly on their attacks, and can't even hit the PCs, much less damage them (or alternatively, a mook threatening to completely wipe out your party with a lucky roll). While you need to be sparing in fudging results with GM Fiat, you shouldn't let the dice dictate to you a resolution which, quite simply, is no good for your game.
In general, if you are using fiat to benefit the players' enemies, then you owe them Hero Dice for it. The social contract which Hero Dice embody say that the GM can fudge things, but then the players gain the right to fudge them right back later. You want to award the Hero Dice only to the players most affected by the fiat (such as the warrior whose might blow was just negated by a fiated Toughness resistance roll). But if you're fudging things to benefit the players, then you certainly don't owe them Hero Dice for that, and you don't want to force them to "pay" for it with their own Hero Dice either.
==Common Mistakes==
GMs can and will make mistakes. There's nothing mystic about your title which makes you immune to human nature and fallibility. However, a little preparation and forewarning can help you to avoid making some of the more common mistakes which GMs can make.
===The GM's Character (GMPC)===
Although the wise, powerful guide is a common trope in fiction, it's not often a fun one in practice. Players like being the heroes of the story, and it's not fun when they have someone there to show them up at every opportunity. Yes, the GM has the ability to always make characters more powerful and more capable than the players do. There's no challenge to it, and it threatens to steal the spotlight from the players, whose characters are supposed to be the protagonists anyway.
While it's certainly likely that the players won't be the most powerful people in their particular world, or even the most powerful people on their side, it's important to make sure that they're the ones who get the spotlight. Having a pet character of your own might sound like a fun idea, but it can all too easily become nothing but an annoyance for your players. You can still have powerful NPC allies for your players, but be sure to always reaffirm who gets the spotlight. Powerful NPCs might provide cover for the PCs to accomplish their mission, or might just be unsuited to a task (while the PCs are better suited for it). Or perhaps it's up to the PCs to rescue the more powerful NPC!
So long as you keep it clear that the players' characters are the focus of the game, then you won't have to worry about an NPC becoming a GMPC.
===Monty Haul Games===
Named for the host of the long-running gameshow Let's Make a Deal, a Monty Haul game is one of instant gratification, where the players can get whatever they want with little or no work. For example, every villain is an easy foe to triumph over, the heroes never suffer any risk at real injury or defeat, and all their rewards are far too big for the almost non-existent challenge.
The danger in this sort of game is that the players will quickly become bored with a game in which they have no challenge, or in which they get whatever they want without needing to work for it. Half of the fun of the game is being able to cheer when accomplishing something great for the first time, or overcoming a real challenge even after taking some hard licks.
While you don't want to make it impossible for your players to achieve anything, you also don't want to make it too easy either. You've got to find that special balance between too hard and too difficult which your group will keep coming back to the table for.
===The Price of Failure===
It's also important to have an understanding with your players as to what might befall their characters should they be defeated. In some genres of gameplay, such as Horror or Swords & Sorcery face the very real threat of dying in any given encounter. In others, such as a more light-hearted Comedy game or a Four-Color Comic Book game, the only consequence of defeat might be getting knocked out (or at worst, captured).
You need to be sure that you and your players know what's at stake when they go into battle. If you expect to be able to run a scenario where the characters are captured and the players think that every fight is a battle to the death, then you're very likely to be out of luck.
Similarly, you need to be certain that the player's actions have consequences. If they go around attacking the local authorities, they're going to face reprisals. If they blow up a building filled with innocent people, then they're likely to be outlaws (or even worse) very soon. Players should have the freedom to do what they want, but they also should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions and choices.
===Different Benchmarks===
One of the more easily-avoidable disruptions to your game is when the people at the table interpret the numbers on the character sheets to mean entirely different things. For example, does a 5 in Strength mean that a character is the strongest human in town? The strongest in the country? The world?
You need to establish benchmarks with your players, so they know what it means when someone has eight ranks in a skill or a five in an ability score. The rules provide a few benchmarks throughout to help you with this task, but if you need more, or if they don't fit your vision of what these benchmarks should be in your world, then you need to establish ones that work for you. Sharing them with your players will help them understand how to fit their ideas into the framework of the world they'll be a part of without jarring suspension of disbelief for anyone in the game.
===Fixing Mistakes===
One of the most important lessons to learn about avoiding mistakes is learning that no matter what, you will not be able to avoid all of them. Even the best GMs still do things which they'll regret, and would like to take back if they could.
The first thing to do when you make a mistake is to own up to it. Tell your players that giving them the all-powerful soul-sucking sword of doom at PL 4 was a mistake, and that you want to correct is so that the game can be better for them. This is part of establishing trust with your players, getting them to understand that in the end, you're going to strive for fairness with them.
There are a few ways to go back and fix mistakes once they've been made:
* A Wizard Did It: A fancy way of saying "I'm changing it for no reason other than to keep the game moving" with a minimum of in-game justification. A magic reward the players had simply vanishes into thin air. An ally who they had been fighting alongside disappears in a puff of smoke. Rather than investigate these strange happenings, the characters shrug, write it off as "a wizard did it", and then continue on with the game as if nothing happened.
* My Home Planet Needs Me: A slightly less-shaky way to remove a disruptive element (usually a character or NPC) from the game. The character suddenly announces a henceforth unknown responsibility (such as rescuing his home planet, even if nobody ever knew before that he was an alien) and then runs off and vanishes, never to be seen again. For disruptive items, this could also be something like "my rightful owner needs me". This is slightly more in-character than simply vanishing because "a wizard did it", but also probably not the best way to go about doing it.
* The Retcon: Short for "retroactive continuity", a retcon refers to something which has been going on (presumably for some time) of which nobody had any knowledge, either in-character or out-of-character. A retcon is also sometimes known as "Wait, wait! I actually have an explanation this time!" In a way, "my home planet needs me" is a painfully simple retcon. Most other retcons go to greater lengths to make it seem as though the retcon had been planned that way from the beginning. An unbalanced magic sword is suddenly revealed to be the key ingredient for a ritual the characters must complete to save the day, and thus must be destroyed. A character who is too powerful discovers that one of his problematic abilities is starting to fade.
* Smash and Kill: Alternately, "Steal and Maim". A problematic piece of gear is destroyed in the normal course of battle, or an unbalanced character is slain, letting the dice fix the problem neatly. If it happens during the course of battle, and the dice designate it as the correct outcome, it seems less jarring to many players (even if they're quite familiar with this tactic for editing out mistakes themselves from other games). An alternative to this, especially for gear, is to have a thief make off with the troublesome item, which could even spark a whole new adventure by itself.
* You Must Right this Wrong: A more-robust retcon, the far-too-powerful item or character discovers that the source of that power is evil and dangerous, and it needs to be purged or destroyed for the good of all. This literally turns ridding the world of the unbalancing aspect into a success for the characters, and one they may even cheer when successful.
Being straight-forward with your players about your reasons for using any of these methods for retroactively fixing a mistake is still the key, since it is the best way to get cooperation from the players on fixing the mistake. And working together to make a game into a great adventure is exactly what roleplaying games are all about.
==Rewards==
So your players have been great, and their characters have some awesome accomplishments under their belts. They've saved the day, the world, the city, and just for good measure, the neighbor's cat too. Now they've really earned a reward or two.
The question is, when should you reward them? After every encounter? Every night? After the latest adventure has run its course?
There is no one right answer to this, just as there is no one type of reward. Each individual type of reward needs its own take, and its own approach. You need to find what works best.
===Hero Dice===
Probably the most common sort of reward, you can hand out hero dice quite often. This is an important area for you to control the flow of gameplay, by making the game easier or harder for the players to control. The more hero dice you hand out, the easier the game will be for the players, as their characters can use more stunts and recover more quickly (or just more easily avoid) injuries. In short, the more hero dice you award players, the more heroic and capable they'll be. If you hand out fewer hero dice (or simply excise them from your game altogether), then the game will be grittier, with the players having fewer options during gameplay, and fewer chances as well.
When it comes to hero dice, the players will provide you with ideas and hooks for when it's appropriate to award hero dice. They'll suggest complications for their characters, describe their natures, and their backgrounds in general. You'll never be in short supply for ideas, but it will still be up to you as to when you will bring those complications up in-game for the players to earn their awards. This is how you can control the number of hero dice which the players will have access to.
For most games, you want to provide enough opportunities throughout the game so that players are earning about one hero die for each encounter throughout the adventure, which will give them a healthy pool of hero points by the time the adventure's climax arrives. You also want to make sure that, just as every character should get roughly equal spotlight time, so too should their chances to earn hero dice (especially through complications).
===Character Points===
How and when to award character points is another important question. How you do it will determine in what ways characters will grow. If you award a small number (one or two) at the end of each session, then players are more likely to invest in lower-priced abilities, such as feats or skill. If, on the other hand, you tend to award more points at the end of a longer adventure arc (over the course of multiple smaller adventures), then characters are more likely to spend that bulk of points on more slowly-growing but expensive abilities, like FX.
Players may choose to spend their character points as soon as they get them, or save them up to increase their abilities later on down the line. Both are absolutely fine. However, it's up to you as the GM to award the character points in the first place, and you should do so with the understanding that awarding more character points is going to increase the versatility of each character more and more. This isn't a bad thing, but it's something for which you must be prepared.
At your option, you may also choose not to award character points for a particular adventure. Maybe the characters failed at their mission, or they decided to do something which conflicted with the game's genre (such as superheroes acting more like supervillains). You may also decide that they did particularly well, and thus deserve a bigger character point award. If you decide to do this, it's up to you to make sure the players understand why they received a different award than normal. The better they understand how they'll be rewarded, the better the players will understand what you as the GM see as appropriate for the game as a whole.
====Increasing Power Level====
You also always have the option of increasing the game's power level. As Campaign Building explains in more detail, character points represent experience and versatility, while power level represents overall potency and capability.
By increasing power level, you're allowing players to approach new heights of potency and power. They'll be tougher, stronger, and their abilities will be more all-around amazing. They'll be further removed from threats and challenges which might be troublesome for lower power level characters. At lower level, a thug with a gun might be a serious threat to a character's very life. As a character rises in power level, that thug with a gun will be less and less of a threat, to the point where even the gun pointed right at a character will be rightly scoffed at.
These rules suggest that the difference between different power levels are about 15 character points. This is a fair guideline for most games, but you don't need to follow it. It's perfectly valid for your game to remain at the same power level all the way through, or to only grow by two or three levels over the course of two years and hundreds of character points worth of gameplay. You can keep the game in your comfort zone indefinitely if you like. That's the beauty of having two distinct type of character-building rewards: you can pick and choose how to reward characters based on your view of their growth, what they've earned, and what you're more comfortable with running.
===Other Rewards===
But beyond awards which your players can use directly to improve their characters, you're also able to reward them with benefits which they will able to enjoy purely in-game.
====Wealth====
A classic reason for characters to go adventuring is for fabulous riches. Treasure hunters of all sorts have long gone on great adventures in search of wealth, from sunken ships to ancient tombs. It's also still a huge motivation for characters in crime and heist stories. Even truly good heroes might adventure to gain wealth, if only so that they can use it for good or just donate it. And it's a very easy reward for almost all players around the table to understand. If you are using the optional Wealth rules, it's easy to throw in the promise of a few more wealth dice for the players at the end of an adventure if they manage to complete the job.
Especially after getting a wealth reward, it might be appropriate for players to invest some of their character point reward into the Benefit feat, to represent carefully investing their wealth, or just learning to be better with money so that it isn't so "easy come, easy go" and instead represents a more stable pool of capital which the player can draw on in later adventures.
====Gear====
In fantasy games especially, a common interest for players is to be constantly looking for the next powerful weapon or suit of magical armor. In these games, while you should still require the players to invest character points in these areas normally, the actual acquisition of the new gear primarily comes when you decide it does, and is often a reward for defeating a foe or reaching the treasure room in a great maze.
This is less true in modern or future games, where most gear is technological, and thus is harder to justify being in the middle of a maze or only available after killing a monster and taking it's stuff. Sure, you might be able to rationalize it as a one-of-a-kind super-science item, or a master-craft precision instrument, but it's much harder to do than it is in fantasy games.
====Fame and Honors====
For some character, renown and popularity are the biggest rewards. Indeed, in some genres of gameplay (especially games involving high school-aged characters or celebrities), it may be the most important reward. People will recognize the characters more on the street, and the public will really come to look up to them.
For games which use Reputation, fame and honors are easily tracked. Simply reward characters who grow in fame with additional reputation dice. This allows them to use their newfound fame to their advantage, and gives them the additional task of knowing when they need to call in favors or use their reputations to further their goals.
Category:Rulebook
Category:GMing