Dragon Age RPG, Set 1 - Game Master's Guide.pdf - Dragon Age - famir112

Chapter One

If you are reading this book

that means you have chosen

to take on the role of Game

Master for your group. This is an important and chal-

lenging job, and also a rewarding one. The Game Master

or “GM” is equal parts storyteller, referee, social direc-

tor, and supporting actor. The Game Master’s Guide has

been designed to teach you how to run a game and sup-

port an ongoing series of adventures. In its pages you’ll

ind advice, additional rules, adversaries, rewards, and

an introductory adventure, The Dalish Curse , which you

can use to kick off your campaign. If you are not a GM,

you should stop reading now and pick up the Player’s

Guide instead; that’s the book for you.

The GM’s Job

Becoming the Game Master may look intimidating, and

it can be, but taking on the role is also a lot of fun. The

advice given in this irst chapter is general and meant to

prepare you to be a sucessful GM. For speciic advice on

the Dragon Age rules, see C h a p t e r 2: U s i n g t h e r U l e s .

While the players are responsible for keeping track of

their characters and deciding on their actions, the Game

Master is responsible for everything else in the game. A

good GM tries to make sure the game runs as smoothly

as possible and is enjoyable for all of the players. Many

The Art of Gamemastering

components go into creating a good Dragon Age game.

The following sections give you all the basics, but expe-

rience is the best tool to help you become a better Game

Master and get a feel for the job. The essential parts of

Game Mastering are:

Adjudicating the Rules

Like all games, Dragon Age has rules, and those rules

sometimes require some interpretation to determine an

exact outcome during play. It is the Game Master’s job

to decide rules questions and make decisions regarding

the implementation of the rules in the game. The rules

provide a framework for you, but they cannot cover ev-

ery contingency. You must be ready to make the call

when the players do the unexpected. And they will!

Preparing Adventures

Dragon Age focuses on the heroic adventures of the main

characters controlled by the players (the “Player Char-

acters” or PCs). It is the Game Master’s job to create the

opportunities for adventure and to “hook” the charac-

ters, giving them a chance to meet new challenges. You

can do this with pre-written adventures, adventures of

your own design, or a mix of both. Even when using

a pre-written adventure, a good GM often customizes it

to better suit the player characters.

group and is inhibiting everybody’s fun. While the

Player’s Guide contains the core of the game system,

there is more that the GM needs to know. C h a p t e r 2 of

this book, U s i n g t h e r U l e s , gives you those rules and

advice on how to use them.

Running the Game Session

The Game Master is much like the director of a play,

coordinating all the various elements of the game to

make it happen. So it is the GM’s job to set up the ad-

venture, introduce the events to the players, and nar-

rate the story according to their decisions about their

characters. It is also the GM’s job to take on the roles

of the various supporting and adversarial characters,

describing their actions and interactions with the play-

ers’ characters. All the while the GM must maintain the

pace of the game, trying to keep things going at a good

clip and moving the story forward.

S e c r e t t e S t S

Sometimes it’s a good idea to make certain tests se-

cretly, so the players don’t necessarily know the result.

This is usually the case for any sort of test where the

characters don’t immediately know whether they’ve

succeeded or failed. For example, you may want to

make Perception tests secretly. If the test succeeds, the

character notices something. If it fails, then the player

doesn’t know whether it’s because the character failed

to notice something or there just wasn’t anything there

to notice in the irst place.

One easy way of making secret tests is to make a list

of random rolls in advance. When there’s a need for a

secret test during the game, mark off one of the rolls

from your list and use that for the test result. This way,

the players don’t even know you are making a secret

test for them.

Planning the Campaign

The Game Master plans out the overall “arc” of a series

of adventures, creating what is known as a campaign

(named for military campaigns, since early roleplaying

games were derived from war games). Some GMs plan

out a whole campaign in advance, working out a series of

adventures taking the PCs from one place and challenge

to another, while other GMs have a more open-ended

approach, perhaps only planning one or two adventures

ahead and seeing how the story unfolds through the

players’ choices and the characters’ actions.

Adjudicating

the Rules

The Game Master serves as referee when it comes to

applying the rules of Dragon Age fairly and equally

to help ensure everyone has fun. Part of this job in-

volves knowing the rules: prospective Game Masters

should read through both the Player’s Guide and this

book carefully and have a good working knowledge

of the game. The rest of the job is applying the rules

to events that come up during the game. This may be

as simple as knowing which rule applies to a given

situation and following it, or as complex as coming

up with a new application of the rules on the spot or

modifying an existing rule that isn’t working for your

G a m e m a S t e r F i a t

On occasion a particular die roll may result in an anticli-

mactic or just plain dumb outcome. In such a case, feel

free to change things a little to make the outcome more

interesting or more in line with how the game should

go. This is called “Game Master Fiat,” since the judg-

ment of the GM overrides the strict letter of the rules.

Isn’t this cheating? Well, yes, in a manner of speaking it

is, but it’s “cheating” in order to make the game more

interesting and fun for everyone involved. So long

as you don’t alter the outcome of die rolls unfairly or

maliciously and you do it to help ensure the game is

fun, interesting, and challenging, you shouldn’t have

a problem. Besides, the players don’t have to know you

change the occasional die roll behind the scenes. That’s

one of the reasons it’s a good idea for Game Masters to

roll their dice out of sight of the players and then an-

nounce the results.

Dragon Age in a Nutshell

Although Dragon Age has a fair number of rules, particularly when it comes to the various class powers and tal-

ents, the core of the game is quite simple: most everything in Dragon Age can be handled with an ability test.

So, when all else fails, if you need to come up with an immediate way of handling a situation and the game

rules are not clear, choose the ability and focus that best apply, and call for a test using them. You can base the

outcome on the result of the test or compare it against a target number, using the Basic Test Dificulty table

(see page 18), to give you an idea. Then just continue on with the game.

So long as you remember this basic rule of thumb, you can handle almost any situation likely to come up dur-

ing play.

The Art of Gamemastering

Adventures

An adventure is a single story in an ongoing campaign.

Think of an adventure as a single chapter in a novel, or

even a single novel in a grand series (for particularly

long adventures). Sometimes adventures stand alone,

with a clear beginning, middle, and end all in the same

game session. Other times the adventure spans several

game sessions before the entire story is wrapped up.

Creating a Dragon Age adventure is a fairly simple pro-

cess. First, deine the threat or challenge around which

the adventure revolves. Then outline the overall plot,

and describe the encounters the heroes are likely to have

during the adventure. You’ll also want to make sure you

have game statistics and character sheets for important

supporting characters and foes in the adventure.

Now, that’s what would happen if the heroes weren’t

around. Odds are the players aren’t going to just allow

the bandits to get away with their crimes. They might

have a friend who was the victim of a raid, or a nearby

settlement could hire them to deal with the problem.

Their liege-lord might order them to investigate, per-

haps even all of the above! The heroes can begin inves-

tigating, trying to learn about the bandits, who they are,

and what they’ll do next. They might set a trap to lure

them out into the open, or try and follow them back to

their hideout, or capture one for interrogation. Exactly

how things go depends heavily on what the players

choose to do.

Try to focus your plot on the actions of the opponents,

letting the player characters react to things as they hap-

pen. It’s hard to base the plot on what the heroes will do

because you don’t always know what that is. By focus-

ing on the challenge, you give the heroes the freedom to

do whatever they want in response, and you can then

modify the villains’ plans accordingly.

D e F i n i n G

t h e c h a l l e n G e

Dragon Age adventures typically focus on a particu-

lar challenge. It might be anything from an incursion

of darkspawn into a border region, to a sensitive dip-

lomatic mission to a nearby kingdom, or a quest for a

mysterious artifact with the power to save (or destroy)

the world. When the challenge presents itself, the he-

roes must igure out how to overcome it.

The threat in a Dragon Age adventure is often a villain

with a scheme the heroes must thwart. It can also be

a non-player character with an agenda the characters

can aid, such as protecting a border region, clearing a

notorious group of bandits from the forest, or arrang-

ing an alliance through marriage. The land of Thedas

has plenty of inspiration for adventures, and you’ll ind

many suitable villains in C h a p t e r 3: a d v e r s a r i e s .

S u b P l O t S

As you gain experience as a GM, you may want to

weave in subplots to your campaign. They can be relat-

ed or unrelated to the adventure and they serve to mix

things up and keep the players guessing. Subplots are

also a great way to use the goals and ties of the PCs and

you should keep your eye out for opportunities to do

O u t l i n i n G t h e P l O t

Once you have an idea for a challenge in mind, give

some thought to how it manifests itself. Outline a series

of events surrounding that challenge. This gives you

the overall plot of your adventure, a sort of roadmap

you can follow while you’re running the game to know

what is likely to happen next.

For example, you decide the challenge in your adven-

ture focuses on a group of bandits attacking travelers

along a main road in one of the border regions. Not

only are they a threat to local commerce, but they have

also inlamed political tensions, as the neighboring no-

bility have accused each other of backing the bandits. If

left unchecked, their depredations will eventually lead

to a bloody skirmish, perhaps even a small war, in the

region, costing many lives.

The Art of Gamemastering

Creating

so. Let’s say a goal of one of the PCs is to ind his miss-

ing sister. When investigating the bandit menace, he

discovers that his sister is one of these outlaws. Worse

yet, she has embraced the bandit life and does not want

to give it up. Now the group as a whole must deal with

the bandits, but that player must try to igure out what

to do about his sister. This makes the story more com-

plicated and has the potential for great drama.

Then decide if the encounter is primarily about combat,

exploration, or roleplaying, and note this accordingly.

Try and set up a good mix of the three types of encoun-

ters, since they provide a variety of challenges and styles

of play to keep all of the players involved in the game.

t h e G r a n D F i n a l e

Then there’s the big inish to the adventure, the grand i-

nale. This is when the heroes inally confront the main

challenge of the adventure and have a real chance to deal

with it. It may be a inal showdown with the villain, avert-

ing disaster, accusing a murderer in the throne room, or

confronting an army in a climatic battle. Whatever the

case, this is when events in the adventure come to a head

and it’s time for the heroes to step up and save the day.

The inale is the big payoff, what the players have been

working towards, so you need to make it as exciting

and fun as possible. That means the inale should be

challenging. On the other hand, the inale shouldn’t be

so tough the heroes can’t possibly win, or the adven-

ture just ends in frustration. Give the characters a solid

challenge, but you can tip the odds slightly in their fa-

vor by setting them up with a special resource or “ace

in the hole” during an earlier encounter.

For example, perhaps the party is dealing with a dark-

spawn about to be unleashed from a nearby ruin. They

have dealt with most of the creature’s cult of minions and

are ready to inish off the evil wizard who is trying to

free the monster. Along the way, they have learned the

darkspawn has a weakness: a particular spot where its

e n c O u n t e r S

Your plot outline gives you a number of potential en-

counters the heroes may have during the adventure. An

encounter is a single challenge, interaction, or activ-

ity, such as a ight, the investigation of an area, a chase

through the city, and so forth. Using your outline, you

can get a good idea of the possible encounters during

your adventure. In the previous example, the heroes

may have encounters with the bandits on the road, at

a settlement, or at their hideout. They may investigate

the sites of previous bandit raids, or interact with survi-

vors who might have useful information.

Outline the possible encounters and take note of the

important details in each one. For example, when and

where will the bandits’ next raid take place, and can the

heroes igure it out in time to be there and stop it, or will

they only learn of it after the fact? Who is the target of

the raid and how do they react to the characters? Where

can the survivors be found and what do they think of

outsiders investigating? Might word of the heroes’ in-

vestigations ind its way back to the bandits somehow?

And so forth.

The Art of Gamemastering

Dragon Age RPG, Set 1 - Game Master's Guide.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: