ttrpg-fortunes/ttrpg

There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.
– Gary Gygax
%
Random chance plays a huge part in everybody’s life.
– Gary Gygax
%
The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don’t need any rules.
– Gary Gygax
%
The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience.
– Gary Gygax
%
Role-playing isn’t storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it’s not a game.
– Gary Gygax
%
Of course as children, we all, in all cultures and societies, learn behavior from observation, imitation, and encouragement of various kinds. So by the suggestion made, we all ‘pretend’ most of the time.
– Gary Gygax
%
I foresee online gaming changing when there are good audio-visual links connecting the participants, thus approximating play in a face-to-face group.
– Gary Gygax
%
“Games give you a chance to excel, and if you’re playing in good company you don’t even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game.”
– Gary Gygax
%
The worthy GM never purposely kills players’ PCs, He presents opportunities for the rash and unthinking players to do that all on their own.
– Gary Gygax
%
You are not entering this world in the usual manner, for you are setting forth to be a Dungeon Master. Certainly there are stout fighters, mighty magic-users, wily thieves, and courageous clerics who will make their mark in the magical lands of D&D adventure. You however, are above even the greatest of these, for as DM you are to become the Shaper of the Cosmos. It is you who will give form and content to the all the universe. You will breathe life into the stillness, giving meaning and purpose to all the actions which are to follow.
– Gary Gygax
%
Role-playing games are contests in which the players usually cooperate as a group to achieve a common goal rather than compete to eliminate one another from play…. Role games … bring players together in a mutual effort.
– Gary Gygax
%
One more thing: don’t spend too much time merely reading. The best part of this work is the play, so play and enjoy!
– Gary Gygax, Oriental Adventures
%
While it is possible to play a single game, unrelated to any other game events past or future, it is the campaign for which these rules are designed. It is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign, and better still, it will cost almost nothing. In fact you will not even need miniature figures, although their occasional employment is recommended for real spectacle when battles are fought. A quick glance at the Equipment section of this booklet will reveal just how little is required. The most extensive requirement is time. The campaign referee will have to have sufficient time to meet the demands of his players, he will have to devote a number of hours to laying out the maps of his “dungeons” and upper terrain before the affair begins.
– Gary Gygax, Preface of the Original Dungeons & Dragons, (1 November 1973)
%
One of the things stressed in the original game of D&D was the importance of recording game time with respect to each and every player character in a campaign. In AD&D it is emphasized even more: YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.
– Gary Gygax, “Time in the Campaign”, AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979), p. 38
%
One more thing: don’t spend too much time merely reading. The best part of this work is the play, so play and enjoy!
– Gary Gygax, Preface to the Oriental Adventures (1985)
%
Games give you a chance to excel, and if you’re playing in good company you don’t even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game.
– Gary Gygax, GameSpy interview by Allen Rausch, Pt. 1 (15 August 2004)
%
The game master is the creator, organizer, and arbiter of all. His most important functions during play, though, are more mundane. He is nature. He provides sensory data, and finally he fills the roles of the living things the PCs interact with during the course of the session.
– Gary Gygax, Role-Playing Mastery, page 48
%
Poor play does not merit special consideration. Players will not improve if the DM pampers rather than challenges them. If your players perform badly, do not allow their characters to increase in experience level. Be most judicious in how you handle awards to player characters. Allowing foolish and ignorant players to advance their characters to high levels reflects badly upon the game and even more so upon the Dungeon Master who allowed such a travesty to occur. In effect, it is the excellence of the DM which is judged when the caliber of play by any group is discussed. Keep yours high!
– Gary Gygax, The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (1982)
%
No, Eric, it’s a gazebo!
%
There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
%
It’s too late. You’ve awakened the gazebo. It catches you and eats you.
%
If there’s one thing players love more than shopping for gear, it’s complaining about not being able to get the gear they want.
– Darths & Droids, ep. 2
%
PCs always seem to be able to hold detailed discussions of their plans, despite being in situations where coherent speech, or speech of any sort, should be impossible. And all the NPCs can do is look on in bemusement.
– Darths & Droids, ep. 6
%
You should always be suspicious as a player when everything seems to be going perfectly.
– Darths & Droids, ep. 11
%
If there’s anything that can get players more paranoid than a GM making secret notes and cryptic comments to himself, it hasn’t been invented yet. If you’re a GM, try it. If you’re a player… Run away!
– Darths & Droids, ep. 12
%
One of the challenges of running or playing in a roleplaying game is making up character and place names that don’t sound stupid. Some people have a talent for it, while others… don’t. Most people fall into the latter category. If you’re consistently good at making up fantasy or science fiction names that don’t sound ridiculous, especially at short notice, then you could probably get a job doing so for all those roleplayers who can’t do it for themselves. Except for the fact that many gamers actually think that “Steve the Barbarian” or “Hoodoo-fugu the Alien Monk” are perfectly good names.
– Darths & Droids, ep. 18
%
A phenomenon which often occurs in games is that a player will start coming up with explanations or revelations about the plot that the GM had absolutely no hand in. At this stage, it’s fine, since that’s a simulation of the what the characters are doing - trying to understand what’s going on around them. Things get interesting when what one player says becomes so compelling that the other players start taking it as the truth, believing it in preference to what the GM actually has planned or says in contradiction.
– Darths & Droids, ep. 22
%
When a fellow player’s freeform improvisational style makes the GM squirm, that’s great. When things take a sudden turn and that player’s wild ravings start to work against the other players, you can almost hear the grin spreading across the GM’s face. On another note, “diplomacy” is one of the most versatile words in the player character arsenal. It covers pretty much any conceivable action in any imaginable scenario.
– Darths & Droids, ep. 25
%
Many roleplaying games abstract damage to people into more or less generic “damage points” of some sort. But when it comes to damaging vehicles, it somehow seems much more important to determine exactly what bit of the vehicle has been damaged and what the effect of loss of a specific component will be. This ends up meaning that the vehicle damage tables in a lot of games end up being an order of magnitude larger and more complicated than tables describing damage to living beings.
– Darths & Droids, ep. 32
%
Dice are of course used as randomisers in most roleplaying games. Rolling poorly is a bit disappointing, but it’s more than made up for by those times when you are (literally) on a roll and everything goes perfectly. Even though many gamers think their games would be perfect if they only ever rolled good dice rolls, the fact that you sometimes fail is what really adds the excitement and fun to proceedings. Success in the face of uncertainty is more satisfying than a forgone conclusion.
– Darths & Droids, ep. 38
%
When a new player joins the group, you sometimes have to explain things that you’ve done earlier in the game. It had all seemed perfectly sensible and logical at the time, but somehow when it comes to trying to justify it later, the carefully constructed chain of events suddenly seems not merely to contain a weak link, but to be constructed entirely out of stupefyingly enormous mistakes and errors of judgement. This is a perfectly natural consequence of typical player character actions.
– Darths & Droids, ep. 40
%
I have a simple rule of thumb: If you’re designing a mystery for your PCs to solve, you should include at least three clues for every conclusion you want them to reach. More often than not they’ll miss the first clue and misinterpret the second, but the third will do the trick. (And sometimes they’ll spontaneously jump to a conclusion without even being given a clue, which is always a pleasant surprise.)
– Justin Alexander, Tales From The Table: Bumbling In Freeport
%
If you’re GMing a roleplaying game, you should never prep a plot. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
If playing an RPG is a conversation between you and your friends, then the most basic element of that conversation is the ruling. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
Default to yes. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
You’ll almost certainly have no problems creating interesting and meaningful encounters and challenges in your games. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
Unless you have a specific reason for NOT saying yes, your ruling should always be, ‘Yes, you do that and this is what happens.’ 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
The trick with designing these combat encounters is that you want them to be difficult enough that the players feel a risk of failure, but not so difficult that the PCs can’t possibly win. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
You can create literally anything you can imagine. That’s the whole point! 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
We’re not trying to classify every ruling we make with scientific precision. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
One of the things that makes a dungeon easy to run is that, in the dungeon, every moment of the experience is usually relevant, interesting, and therefore part of the game. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
The choices that the PCs are making during empty time either won’t change the outcome, they’re not choices that we, as players, are interested in, or both. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
By creating the scene together and seeing what happens, you may discover that it’s actually about a completely different question than you thought. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
You may know where the scene begins, but you don’t know where it ends. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
Every raid needs an objective. This makes a raid a great scenario structure to pull out of your pocket when your players say they want something: Just put the thing they want inside a secure location and point them in the right direction. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
It can be fun to flip through the Monster Manual: Identifying and assassinating a doppelganger, rustling blink dogs, or rescuing an aboleth all pose unique challenges. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
The core experience of the raid scenario is making a tactical plan. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
A hidden entrance is one that may not be detected during the site survey…Finding a hidden entrance will usually be beneficial. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
The key to running the city during play is that virtually all actions in the city boil down to either finding information or going to a location. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
Ultimately, there’s no hard-and-fast rule: It’s what works for you. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
When designing and running an open table, you want to have a mix of new players with veterans. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
Travel is an opportunity to expand your game world and create novel experiences for your players. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
If no meaningful choices are being made, you should probably cut forward to the point where interesting choices will be made. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
I’m not going to pretend that this is easy. It’s a challenge just roleplaying one character, let alone a legion of them. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
Don’t pitch a long-term commitment. Just ask people to hang out for one afternoon. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
Remember that not every challenge needs to be of epic proportions: Sometimes you run into some goblins in the woods and you kill them and you move on. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
A roleplaying game is a conversation. You’ll describe what the PCs see, the players will respond by telling you what their characters do in response or by asking questions to clarify their understanding of the situation, and then you’ll respond to them. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
The secret to being a great dungeon master ultimately boils down to (a) prepping cool toys for you and your players and then (b) playing with them freely and creatively together. 
– Justin Alexander, So You Want to Be a Game Master
%
Rule books are not roleplaying games, any more than a screenplay is a movie. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
What really makes a difference in the success or failure of a roleplaying session is you. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
If roleplaying is to grow creatively, game designers will have to continue to experiment and push the limits. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Don’t ever feel like a bad or inadequate GM because you don’t follow the advice given in this, or any other, book. If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
The most important, yet most often forgotten, rule of good GMing is this: Roleplaying games are entertainment; your goal as GM is to make your games as entertaining as possible for all participants. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
The key to great GMing is to figure out what each of your players wants, and then to find a gaming style that contains a little something for everybody, including yourself. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
The first step, then, in becoming a better Game Master, is to look at the things you do unconsciously, as part of your talent for GMing, analyze them, and start to do them more purposefully and systematically. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
There is no one best game system, but there is probably a game system that works best for your group. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Your choice of game system must be a compromise between your needs as GM and the preferences of the players. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
If you can attract and maintain a player group with the system of your choice, you’re in an ideal situation. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
A campaign created on the fly starts with an adventure, generally in the default style and setting of the rules set you’ve chosen. From one adventure to the next, you slowly add elements to it. Gradually it takes on a life of its own. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
The more the players know and feel about their imaginary world, the better. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
If you’re using an established setting, I strongly recommend that you allow your players to read any available supplements for it. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
The act of creation is fun and rewarding in and of itself. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
When in doubt, blindfold yourself, take any two GURPS sourcebooks off the shelf at random, and combine the results. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
A plot hook lays out a goal for the PCs, and establishes the biggest obstacle that prevents them from easily accomplishing it. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
You don’t need to make an adventure complicated. The players will do that for you. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Like so many other things, structure is a matter of taste. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
If you and your players like the dungeon-crawling style of play, let no one convince you that there’s anything wrong with it. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
The ease of the dungeon style turns out to be a mixed blessing, too; many come to find it insufficiently challenging.
– Robin D. Laws
%
Don’t fret; improvisation is easier than it looks. It is also, surprisingly enough, something you can prepare for. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
By making a few notes, you can give yourself a foundation to fall back on when the time comes to make stuff up. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
A name is not the only thing you need to invent on the spot when creating new NPCs. They need personalities, too. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Whether you’re using dialogue to portray a particular character, or to create the illusion of time and place, you can help yourself by writing out a line or two of likely dialogue for the major NPCs in your storyline. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Off-the-cuff creation of interesting characters is tough for everyone. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
The number one rule of running the game is: You’re doing a better job than you think. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Gamers can be a fairly low-key lot. Your group may be having the time of its collective life without giving any outward sign of enjoyment. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Sometimes it’s better to quit early than to let bad feelings attach themselves to your game. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Never get so caught up in the details of your creative effort that you fail to achieve the fundamental goal of providing fun for everyone. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Most players respond with even more excitement when you balance world description and die rolling. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Improvisation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. An improvisation is simply a choice you make in response to a situation in the game. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Relax. Any halfway sensible decision you make will be fine, so don’t worry about being perfect. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
The worst thing that can happen in the midst of a game session is nothing. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
The really serious problems that gamers run into have nothing to do with rules, GMing tricks, preferred settings, or anything else that my advice can do a darn thing to solve. These are the seemingly irreconcilable gaps in taste between group participants. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Failure is usually boring. It is the credible but unrealized threat of failure that is interesting. 
– Robin D. Laws
%
Roll for initiative!
– Referees all-around the globe, always
%
Prepare To Die. Embrace your PC’s death when it happens and roll up a new character to to take their place. Losing a PC can be painful, but it also makes for great stories, lets you try out new character concepts, and can thrust the party into unexpected situations. Remember that ultimately an RPG campaign tells the story of a whole world, not a single character or even a single party. As the campaign continues, it’s enriched by the stories of the characters that came before.
– Ben Milton, Knave 2E
%
Apply Tactical Infinity. Treat the gameworld as if it was real and work to turn every aspect of it to your advantage. When simulating a living world, no detail is simply “flavor”.
– Ben Milton, Knave 2E
%
I have a simple rule of thumb: If you’re designing a mystery for your PCs to solve, you should include at least three clues for every conclusion you want them to reach. More often than not they’ll miss the first clue and misinterpret the second, but the third will do the trick. (And sometimes they’ll spontaneously jump to a conclusion without even being given a clue, which is always a pleasant surprise.)
– Justin Alexander, Tales From The Table: Bumbling In Freeport
%
Weirdly, D&D didn’t encourage my leanings towards trying magic of my own at all. In fact, it frustrated them. Even the most pompous and ambitious historical magicians, from the Zaroastrian Magi through John Dee, Francis Barrett and Aleister Crowley, never claimed to be able to throw fireballs or lightning bolts like D&D wizards can. So D&D was never going to feed the fantasies of practising magic in the real world. That is all about gaining secret knowledge, a higher level of perception or inflicting misfortune or a boon on someone rather than causing a poisonous cloud of vapor to pour from your fingers (Cloudkill, deadly to creatures with less than 5 hit dice, for those who are interested). 
The game, as we played it, just doesn’t support the occult idea of magic. In fact, it might even be argued that, by giving such a powerful prop to my imagination, D&D stopped me from going deeper into the occult in real life. 
I certainly had all the qualifications—bullied power-hungry twerp with no discernable skill in conventional fields and no immediate hope of a girlfriend who wasn’t mentally ill. It’s amazing I’m not out sacrificing goats to this day. 
— Mark Barrowcliffe, The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange
%
That reminds me why I gave up Dungeons and Dragons. There were too many monsters. Back in the old days you could go around a dungeon without meeting much more than a few orcs and lizard men, but then everyone started inventing monsters and pretty soon it was a case of bugger the magic sword, what you really need to be the complete adventurer was the Marcus L. Rowland fifteen-volume guide to Monsters and the ability to read very, very fast, because if you couldn’t recognize them from the outside you pretty soon got the chance to try looking at them from the wrong side of their tonsils. 
— Terry Pratchett, Alien Christmas
%
So imagine: Dungeons and Dragons [is] a table filled with artists, whether they’re painters, whether they’re actors, whether they’re poets … - whatever they are, they are able to live in this world of imagination. 
— Vin Diesel
%
If Clue was played like D&D, you could grab the lead pipe, beat a confession out of Colonel Mustard, and have sex with Miss scarlet on the desk in the conservatory. 
— David Ewalt, Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It
%
Dungeons & Dragons was like that. Forget that half the kids in school probably went around slaying dragons and stashing loot on their PlayStations or iPads. It’s different when you actually have to roll the dice. 
— John David Anderson
%
D&D is, after all, a truly unique invention, probably as remarkable as the die, or the deck of cards, or the chessboard. 
— J. Eric Holmes, Dragon Magazine Issue 52
%
You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realize just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but-the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realization conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do. 
– H. G. Wells
%
When Indiana Jones shoots the huge sword fighter in Raiders of the Lost Ark, it became one of the most iconic duels ever primarily because the outcome was totally unexpected. It broke the rules. It wasn’t fair. And we loved it because of that. 
― Michael Shea, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
%
I didn’t spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage. 
– Blaine Faulkner, The X-Files