Gamemastering

Gamemastering involves story-telling, writing, planning, acting, refereeing, arbitrating, and facilitating. Metaverses meta

Providing Adventures

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Teaching the Game

You will frequently be called upon to teach new players the rules and ideas of the game. This is a good time to remember that no matter how well you know the game now, you too were once a beginner with the same kinds of questions. Be patient with newcomers and take special care to ensure that their first Empowerment experience is a good one. Teaching players the art of Gamemastering is a valuable way of increasing the number of people who can run Empowerment RPG groups.

Providing the World

The GM has the challenge of developing the storyline like a writer without control over their lead characters. Determining the Style of Play …

Adjudicating

When everyone gathers around the table to play the game, the GM is in charge.

Propelling the Game Forward

GMs must keep the storyline going and always be prepared for what happens next with additional plot lines and scenarios.

Keeping the Game Balanced

Like the world, the game isn’t always fair but we like it to be.

Changing the House Rules

Beyond simply adjudicating, sometimes you are going to want to change things. That’s okay. However, it’s a challenge for a GM with only a little experience. If you don’t like particular rules, you can change them to better suit your play. It is important to inform your players of what kinds of optional rules you play with. The standard rules apply unless the GM says otherwise.

Making Mistakes

Gamemasters are supposed to be all-knowing but they too can make mistakes. Sometimes Gms will call a game ruling wrong to avoid slowing things down with research. Other times you’ll mix up your storyline with some kind of inconsistency. Despite their god-like level of responsibility for the game world, Gamemasters are only human and these accidents are not catastrophic

Running A Game Session

Food: It’s a good idea to plan how players are going to get fed during long game sessions. Music: This can really set the mood. Papers and Pencils: Computers: Visuals: Seating: Running the game…

Determining Outcomes

You’re the final arbiter of everything that happens in the game, period.

Rolling Dice Discretely

The GM should handle dice rolling in secret so that players don’t know anything they shouldn’t.

DCs, Defenses, and Saving Throws

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GM Cheating and Player Perceptions

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When Bad Things Happen to Good People

Ending Things

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Game Session Checklist

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Skills Require Training

Most people with advanced skills will cite variouis schools and teachers as stepping stones along their education.

The General Versus The Specific

Somtimes a player will say, “I look around the room. Do I see anything?” and sometimes she’ll say, “I look into the room, knowing that I just saw someone dart inside. I look behind the chair and the table, and in all the dark corners. Do I see them?” In both cases, the GM replies, “Make a Spot test.” However, in the second example, the character has specialized knowledge of the situation. She’s asking specific questions. In such cases, always award the character a +10% bonus for favorable conditions. It’s good to reward Someone who has knowledge that allows her to ask specific questions.

If the soldier’s actually not in the room, but a sniper awaits in ambush from above, the character has no special knowledge and gains no bonus. She doesn’t get a penalty either-don’t penalize specific questions. If both the soldier and the sniper are in the room, unless they’re working together as a group (see above-but it’s unlikely), two Spot tests are required. The character gets a +10% bonus to the roll to spot the soldier and no bonus to spot the sniper.

Degrees of Success

The GM may assign greater results to higher margins of success when players roll scores much higher than the difficulty number needed.

Taking 10

The GM may choose to take 10 at any time.

Ability Tests

When players attempt to do something not covered by a skill, the GM decides which ability is relevant and the player makes a test using only that ability modifier like an untrained skill test.

Option: Critical Success or Failure

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How to Build an Adventure

Encounters

What Makes an Adventure Exciting?

How to Build a World

The term “world” refers to the ongoing game created by the Gamemaster, a linked set of scenarios that follows a group of players. Running a world is a bigger task than running a single scenario. The world needs a sustaining thread to keep the player characters together in achieving long-term goals.

Prestige Professions

Prestige careers allow GMs to create specific, exclusive roles and positions as careers. These special roles offer abilities and powers otherwise inaccessible to characters, focusing them in specific directions. Someone with a prestige class will be more specialized, yet perhaps slightly better than Someone without one. …

Creating Prestige Roles

GMs may wish to describe special prestige roles for their players to attain.

Executive

At the top of every company are the executives,.

Gamemaster Characters

Chapter: Classes extensively describes player characters, but what about the rest of the world? Surely not everyone’s a soldier, a hacker or a suit. Characters who aren’t heroes fall into two basic categories. Commoners, who don’t have any levels and use the basic statistics for humans. Professionals, who have one or more levels in the Professional Classes listed below

Poison

When a hero is exposed to a poison,…

Poisons Saves are often relative to your body size (Con) versus dosage (DC). Thus poisons which could kill a child (6 Con) might only harm an adult (10 Con) Eg. 40% Con damage? … … …

Suffocation Someone who has no air to breathe can hold her breath for 12 seconds per point of Constitution. After this period of time, the character must make a Con test (DC 10) in order to continue holding her breath. The save must be repeated each round, with the DC increasing by +1 for each previous success. When the character fails one of these Constitution tests, she begins to suffocate. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hp). In the following round, she drops to –1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she suffocates. Slow Suffocation: A Medium-size character can breathe easily for 6 hours in a sealed chamber measuring 10 feet on a side. After that time, the character takes 1d6 points of stun damage every 15 minutes. Each additional Medium-size character or significant fire source (a torch, for example) proportionally reduces the time the air will last. Thus, two people can last for 3 hours, after which they each take 1d6 points per 15 minutes. If they have a torch (equivalent to another Medium-size character in terms of the air it uses), the air runs out in only 2 hours. Small characters consume half as much air as Medium-size characters. A larger volume of air, of course, lasts for a longer time. So, for instance, if two humans and a gnome are in a sealed chamber measuring 20 feet by 20 feet by 10 feet, and they have a torch, the air will last almost 7 hours (6 hours/3.5 people and torches x 4 10-ft. cubes = 6.86 hours).

Lava Lava or magma deals 2d6 points of damage per round of exposure, except in the case of total immersion (such as when Someone falls into the crater of an active volcano), which deals 20d6 points of damage per round. Damage from magma continues for 1d3 rounds after exposure ceases, but this additional damage is only half of that dealt during actual contact (that is, 1d6 or 10d6 points per round). An immunity or resistance to heat or fire serves as an immunity to lava or magma. However, a creature immune to heat might still drown if completely immersed in lava.

Smoke Someone who breathes heavy smoke must make a Fortitude saving throw each round (DC 15, +1 per previous test) or spend that round choking and coughing. Someone who chokes for two consecutive rounds takes 1d6 points of stun damage. Smoke obscures vision, giving one-half concealment (20% miss chance) to characters within it.

Falling Objects Just as characters take damage when they fall more than 10 feet, so too do they take damage when they are hit by falling objects. Objects that fall upon characters deal damage based on their weight and the distance they have fallen. For each 100 kilograms of an object’s weight, the object deals 1d6 points of damage, provided it falls at least 4 meters. Distance also comes into play, adding an additional 1d6 points of damage for every 4-meter increment it falls beyond the first (to a maximum of 20d6 points of damage). Objects smaller than 100 kilograms also deal damage when dropped, but they must fall farther to deal the same damage. Use Table: Damage from Falling Objects to see how far an object of a given weight must drop to deal 1d6 points of damage.

Table: Damage from Falling Objects Object Weight Falling Distance Object Weight Falling Distance 100 kg+ 4 m 99 kg – 45 kg 7 m 45 kg–23 kg 10 m 23 kg–14 kg 15 m 14 kg–5 kg 17 m 5 kg–2.5 kg 20 m 2.5 kg-1kg 23 m

For each additional increment an object falls, it deals an additional 1d6 points of damage. For example, since a 15kg metal sphere must fall 15 m to deal damage (1d6 points of damage), such a sphere that fell 150 feet would deal 3d6 points of damage. Objects weighing less than 1 kilogram do not deal damage to those they land upon, no matter how far they have fallen.

The Environment Characters crossing the burning desert face heatstroke and dehydration. Plunging into the murky depths raises the risk of drowning and even compression. This section details the hazards characters face from the physical world around them.

Darkness and Light Table:

Light Sources Light Duration

Candle ? Torch Flashlight Floodlight

Adapting to darkness: While adapting to or from extremes of light, you suffer –4 penalty on vision targeted tests for 2 seconds. Cyberoptics can compensate instantly for such changes.

Glare and Blinding: Bright lights may blind Your vision. Glare may temporarily Darkness: Without a light source, characters are effectively sightless (see “Blind” under the Character Conditions in this chapter).

Gravity

Different gravity effects movement as well as falling. Moon gravity changes the rate at which you fall and reduces the apparent mass of objects. Long term effects of altered gravity: Loss of bone strength? Acclimatization to different movements?

Radiation

Compounds like uranium, cobalt, cesium 137 Irradiation effects and Radiation Sickness: breathlessness, rashes, nosebleeds, and vomiting, blindness.