So at some point you are going to have to create
something on the fly. A lot of amateur DMs get flustered when the players
suddenly turn left, leap off a cliff, murder the king, or do any one of a million
things that you weren’t expecting any sane person to do. Well let me tell you
about the GM’s Little Friend.
You see, every role playing game in existence
boils down to percentages. The chance of success, the chance of failure. If you
can determine the chance of success of failure, you don’t need any rules, or
stats, or anything. All you have to do is roll the dice, then determine the
outcome. When in doubt, go with the averages. Now there are three ways to roll
the dice, and I will explain them. There is the 1d20, the 1d100, and the
3d34-2. That last one is a little complicated.
A d20 is really a percentile dice in 5%
increments. It lends itself well to High fantasy games because anyone has a 5%
chance to hit. It’s quite possible to get very lucky with a d20, hence why it’s
a good choice for games like D&D.
The 1d100, or percentile, is a bit more
realistic. You only succeed automatically 1% of the time. That’s still rather
high in some situations, but it makes it much less likely that someone can stumble
through an encounter by sheer luck alone.
The 1d34 is a strange die that looks somewhat
like a top. You roll three of them, add them together, then subtract 2. You’re
better off programming an automatic roller on your computer. This produces a
number between 1 and 100, but it’s on a bell curve. The statistical averages
keep the numbers somewhere in the 30 to 70 range. The chance of getting a 100
is .0025%, or 1 out of 39304 rolls. This sort of random number generator is
great for people who want to simulate the real world. Life is usually on a bell
curve. Linear random number generation tends to lead to some strange outcomes,
but a bell curve is… normal.
With this in mind, you need to think about which
one is more like your play style. High fantasy, low fantasy, or realistic. Once
you pick, then you can easily learn to deal with strange situations on the fly.
If something would automatically fail, it fails.
If something would automatically succeed, it
succeeds
If there is a slight chance of failure, on a 1
it fails.
If there is a slight chance of success, only the
highest result on the die is success (20 or 100)
If it isn’t one of those four, you only have to
figure out what percentage chance of success is, then roll the dice. If you are
using a d20, pick a number between 2 and 19. Otherwise, 2 to 99. Once you pick
the number, WRITE IT DOWN. I cannot stress this enough. Write it down and what
it’s for. Reuse it if it comes up again.
For example, if you are creating a monster on
the fly and you are trying to figure out if he can hit the PCs, work out the
chance of success, write it down, then roll, and live with it. Only roll your
randomizer once. That’s the hard part. Living with the roll. All too often you
roll the die and wince a little and say, “Errg… it’s a 99, I know I said only a
100 succeeds, but…” If you find yourself on the fence, consider a degree of
failure, or an “almost” success. Or a victory with a price.
A DM has to create the illusion that he's
impartial and fair, that he's playing by the rules, but the thing is, the
players have no way to figure that out. We have hundreds of rulebooks, and we
look at them. We make faces and contemplative noises. Why wouldn’t you just
figure out the rules and use them? What does all this have to do with running?
Time Management
You need to know the nature of the game. It's
TRUE nature. You need to strip away everything that is holding you back. You
need to see past the rules to the intent, creating shifting conditions of
success, failure, and result. In the end, if the players believe in you, all
you need is one d20 and a whole lot a chutzpah. If you find yourself bogged
down in reading rulebooks and trying to determine every possible outcome, the
game lags, and player enjoyment drops. Sometimes you just need to do
calculations in your head, go with your gut, take a guess, and figure that the
player has a 15% chance of leaping off a roof onto a moving train.
After the game, go back and try and figure out
what really should have happened and plan to use it next time. Because
sometimes you just need to fake ‘til you make it.
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