Conseils au DM

Par znog32 le 1/7/2002 à 1:43:51 (#1737197)

(repris du forum Bioware)

OK, here are a few tips, for having as smooth a DMing experience as possible based on about 40 hours of experience so far by me. Note that most of these tips are directed at public drop-in games that allow local vault and have ELC and Item Restrictions set to on. This is my current style of DMing although I'll be trying PW, extended server vault games, and other variations (except for SP modules) in the future.

It goes without saying that a DM should always respect the players and have giving them a fun experience always be top priority. I've DMed about 25 games now of 3-6 people and haven't booted a single person yet. I doubt I'll have to very often at all. Especially after they get the monster possession fixed so I can focus my attacks on unruly players to keep them too busy to cause problems. Enforce RPing if you want, but do state it clearly in the server description that can be seen from chat that it is an RP only game!

1) Have broadband.

2) While it is not confirmed, having 512 ram, a decent CPU, and a fast hard drive seem to all make a huge difference.

3) NEVER use the Goto function due to a current bug. NEVER EVER! Word is that it is particularly crashy from the Chooser.

4) Generally only possess creatures if you want to speak dialog through them in the case of 'friendly' NPCs. Possession has too much of a chance of mucking-up your hotkeys to be worth it since you can't reliably attack anyways.

5) For public games, keep PvP on NONE. Too many jerks will ruin your game if you don't. I keep the box checked for 'only one party' also since that auto groups people. I also limit my group size to 6 at this point to cut down on the chaos even though I'm sure my pipe could support more players.

6) Make a holding area with an NPC in it that explains the world in character then uses an OOC section that is clearly marked as such to explain house rules.

7) Enable the experience and gold penalty for respawn otherwise too many players won't give a hoot about dying and some will recklessly just run forward and die over and over (ask me if you can't figure out how to do this as it is very easy in the OnRespawn area of the Module Settings). I increased the penalty to 150 points per level and stated that in the house rules section of the first dialog guy.

Make sure to use the Invincibility fix (untested by me so far) since worrying about this is a royal pain.

9) USE ENCOUNTERS! Why? Because if you hand place monsters, then the game will be much less automated in terms of balancing itself to the power of the group attacking it. My most test module has been able to run fairly smoothly and balanced for from 1 5th level character to 5 about 8th level characters! Pretty impressive what Encounters can do.

10) In using encounters NEVER (unless it is a ghost or something) place spawn points where the PCs can see them when they trip the encounter off! Seeing things appear out of nowhere that don't have an ability to do this ruins the suspension of belief. If you are lazy, you can just put ALL of your encounter triggers for an area right in front of the area entry area transition.

11) Don't use gigantically long dialogue trees for public multiplayer games. Waiting around for 15 minutes as people read through your novel just isn't many people's idea of fun, and in public games you get people coming and going anyways.

12) Either keep players who enter the game in a holding area they can't get out of, or, in my case, let them shop in the city but not get out. Then, use the command that brings the entire party to you as soon as any current combat is resolved. Another nice trick is to update any new players journals with the quest or quests currently being performed by the party!

13) Apparently, if you set a server to a max of say, level 10, then even if a character gets enough exp to get to level 11 they can't level up! Therefore, if I make a server that is made for level 5-10, I set it up to accept from level 5-13 then put either a trigger or a check in OnCreatureEntering that boots players that try to start the game higher than level 10.

14) Speaking of level ranges, I don't use more than 5 levels of recommended range in my public games (for PWs or whatever many of these tips don't apply as I'm focusing on local vault public drop-in games at the moment). So 5-10, or 10-15 would be examples of recommended ranges and this should be clearly posted in the server description line that can be seen from the matching system's chat.

15) Since the difficulty slider doesn't work, the best way I've found of increasing the difficulty for players who are breezing through my game is to get a few areas ahead of them and spawn in some of the same sorts of monsters at the spawn points (you have to have a good memory to do this and know your maps well!). Generally, it is easier to RAISE the difficulty than to lower it (since you cannot delete encounters, AFAIK, easily during DMing but you CAN add monsters.

Monsters added this way will stand around like zombies instead of wandering around a bit like the one's that are spawned in with encounters so this, while not being ideal, seems to work OK for this current version. I personally mostly use 'normal' encounters so that if I get a bunch of lousy players with weak classes trying to play the game I do not have to run around killing off part of the spawn just in time for them to enter the area! Like I said, usually easier to make it harder than easier. The skill of the group will make a HUGE difference in what they can handle.

16) Use sounds to the fullest extent. It is SO easy to drop in sounds and setup a soundscape for a map! I can do the full soundscape for a large size map in about 10 minutes now and it adds a TON to the enjoyment of the game.

17) Try to have things make sense. Why would there be a trap in the middle of a road if no rogues were around? Why would there be giant spiders mixed in with a bunch of animals? Try to develop themes for areas and think about what sorts of creatures might get along and which would kill each other off. Also, if you choose more than one kind of creature for an encounter, make sure they would actually be fighting together.

1 Make a shopping area that is fairly compact so that players don't have to spend an hour just locating what they need as the other players stand around and twiddle their thumbs.

19) Grab and use the code for the "Magic Staff" that allows you to see the classes, levels, and items of players so you don't have to ask them this info.

20) Since possession isn't working right yet, the best use of your time will probably be to adjust areas that the players are about to encounter so as to give them a balanced challenge. That is what I spend 90% of my time doing since the skill, classes, and teamwork of a group make this pretty much essential to provide an ideal experience of high excitement, and low frustration. The other 10% of the time I spend possessing NPCs to give additional info to the players not covered in the conversation file.

21) Use the new Bleeding capability recently perfected by the community. This adds a ton to the color and intensity of combat and adds strategy and tactics, “do I heal my downed comrade and risk taking a killing blow from my enemy or do I finish him off as my teammate groans in pain on the floor and bleeds to dead?” This adds a whole new dimension!

22) Some DMs are using binding stones to cause people to respawn far from the party as a penalty to encourage careful and skillful play but I find this to be disruptive to the game. It is neither fun to run back to the party nor to wait around for the fallen teammate. I’m now working on a ‘respawn sickness’ mod made ONLY for these sort of Local Vault drop-in games where there tends to be more careless play due to characters being brought in for which the players don’t care about XP or Gold loss. This would mean that players who respawn would be weakened for a few minutes and this, hopefully, would discourage careless play and encourage teamwork.

23) Recent testing has shown that creatures either rarely or never use their Special Abilities. The current work around that I’m using involves these steps: 1) Find spells that is as similar to the Special Abilities as possible, 2) Make a custom creature and assign them each of the Spells that simulate their normal Special Abilities, 3) Give the creature enough levels in whatever classes they’d need to be able to actually use these spells, 3) Adjust the CR DOWN since all of these caster levels usually add a lotto the CR and the creature doesn’t really have the full power of these caster levels, only a few spells.

The new creature will use its these spells a LOT, in fact, so much that you might want to make another version of the creature that doesn’t have all or any of these abilities if you want some of them to melee while the others cast then include both types in your Encounter Creature List.

24) Do note that you can see exactly where the characters are in an area by looking at your mini-map. If you hover over one of the dots representing a character it will display their name. You can also jump to any point on the mini-map by double-clicking on it and this seems to not cause the same crashes that Goto often does.

25) Keep in mind that in this Local Vault style of DMing you will face problems that are very different from Server Vault style. In Local Vault the main problem is that many of the players will just put together a throwaway character that they don’t care much about.

This is by no means true of every player and you’ll find that some of the best games will be when you get lucky and have 4 or 5 players come in who are skilled at play, interested in teamwork, aren’t reckless, and who care about the plot. Dealing with players who have the opposite traits, that is, who are unskilled, run off on their own, are reckless and don’t care about respawning, and don’t care a bit about your carefully crafted plot is, by far, the hardest part of being a good DM for this style of game.

So, I’ll take a minute to cover how I try and deal with each of these behaviors so as to help the game run as smoothly as possible for those players who have the positive traits:

Running off on his or her own: a player who isn’t interested in teamwork and is essentially the worst kind of player to have in your game usually does this. It is important to deal with this quickly or else the group will fall apart and the game will suck. I usually us the DM voice to say things like “Stick with the group!” “Team up!” etc. and pay careful attention to if they listen or not (yes, yes, breaks the suspension of belief to have to say such things, but you have to DEAL with disruptive players, not ignore them).

If they listen, then you are set. If not, what I’ve been doing lately is creating a strong or deadly trap right in front of them as they try and run off. Was it there or did you place it? No one will ever know for sure, but the player might start to understand that they can’t both run off and live at the same time.

Training the group: this problem comes from the unskilled player who is also reckless and therefore runs ahead, making the monsters mad then running back to the group before they are ready. I use the same method of saying: “Stick with the group!” etc. first.

If they listen, then you are set. If not, the best way to deal with them is to possess a monster using full DM powers and kill the character quickly with the monster before they get a chance to start the train. Then dispossess it after they are dead. This is tough due to the possession bug, but they say that is being worked on.

Recklessness: this is covered above, and while being a less serious issue than the first two behaviors, it can still take away from the game. As mentioned in other tips, the best methods to at least discourage this are 1) make sure you have fairly stiff XP and gold penalties so that very reckless player’s characters will be going exactly nowhere, 2) make sure you use the bleeding mods so that they get some ‘time outs’ from play for this behavior, 3) consider what I plan to do in having a ‘respawn sickness’ effect that will cost them in their own play experience while impacting the other players in the most minimum way possible.

Not caring about the plot: the best you can do about this one is to make the plot fairly simple for these sorts of games. Single player games, and scheduled or PW Server vault games can get into deeper stores because in those, the players are investing more time and energy into the play generally.

It is fair, like it or not, to compare the Local vault sort of game to Diablo II. NWN offers a LOT more variation and fun than Diablo and the DM mode offers even more so I’m not making a direct comparison here, but I’m saying that the way the quests worked in Diablo II, e.g. short, simple, and sweet, with a clear goal and simple journal entry is really the best way to go for this format. It works great for Diablo II multi-player, and works great here.

The other thing you can do about this, obviously, is to make the plot, while simple, as compelling and interesting as possible. Was BloodRaven cool? I think so, and I enjoyed killing her, even after doing it 20 times…

Finally, don’t take it too personally if some of the player’s don’t care about your plot. Don’t forget that you never know if the person is a snotty 6 year old or a Shakespearian scholar. Unless they are being directly disruptive by saying things like, “who cares about the dumb plot, let’s go kill stuff” to which you can respond, “this is a quest based server, if you want to just kill stuff, please log-out”, otherwise, if they don’t show interest in the plot and others do, it is no big deal.