Let’s Make a Deal!
By Cape Rust
The last few articles have focused on planning the initial concept of the game and developing characters. A big part of this whole process is wheeling and dealing with the players to give them what they want and getting what you want as a GM. It is important to remember that every gift you give the players must come at a price, but that price should never come at the expense of fun. So let’s make a deal!
The first thing I do is look at the characters and the player goals. I have yet to run a game where there wasn’t something about the characters or the players that didn’t cause me to change something about the game. I keep repeating that players will always make some kind of choice that will throw you for a loop and this is is a time when you get to throw back. Let’s say you gave Brad a cool weapon in exchange for a disadvantage. Brad was feeling frisky and decided to make his character afraid of women. Now as a GM, you can’t take too much advantage of this but you should make it a little painful. Instead of making him afraid of women, why not make him a sucker for a pretty face or make it where he stutters every time he is around a female that has more than a certain number of dice towards appearance? This way everyone can have a bit of fun without derailing the game.
Warning, situations like this can get out of hand quickly so it is important to set ground rules with the player. One thing that has to be determined is if the other characters know about Brad’s character’s fear. This is a time when I like to hold back and not tell the other players. This gives Brad a great role-playing opportunity and it is always fun to see the other players’ reactions when they figure out the situation. Now, this situation will definitely cause you as the GM to make changes. You will have to create at least one to ten encounters that give Brad that role-playing opportunity and cause him some discomfort as well. Some folks would go for the usual female villain, but there are hundreds of ways this can play out. The biggest thing to remember is that this whole fear of women thing can be integrated into a game without overshadowing it.
As a GM, it is easy to over play situations like this. They are fun and can really add something to a game but can get old quickly if not handled correctly. If the whole “afraid of women” thing gets old, as a GM you can change the nature of the fear or completely flip it on its head. Here is how to do it: Say you are a few months into a game and things are going well. Brad’s character has had some great, less than successful interactions with the opposite sex but it is getting old. Pull Brad aside, and ask him how he feels about changing things up. Why not have his character hook up with a female NPC and change his fear into an obsession for that particular NPC? This keeps the disadvantage theme, but mixes things up a bit.
We have focused on this Brad disadvantage but during the character development, we learned about some of the player’s goals. Those goals can add some great story arcs and actually make the GMs job easier. We’ll look at those arcs next week. Remember, keep good lines of communication open with your players; and players, always do everything you can to let your GM know what you want to try to do. If you don’t ask, the answer is always NO!