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Welcome to the Game Master's Laboratory!
Welcome to the Game Master Laboratory! This is a place for people who are running (or planning) TTRPG games to brainstorm ideas with other GMs, share ideas and resources, and test their creations with each other. I recorded a short video to get you started, which you can view in this post. It's all about what we do here, but it's also about how to use Skool, so if you're new to Skool, make sure to check that out! If we haven't met you yet, we would like to. Please make a post in the "General Discussion" channel to introduce yourself and tell us... 1. Which systems you like to play/run 2. A bit about the games you're running right now Glad you're here. DM us if you have any questions.
Welcome to the Game Master's Laboratory!
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Community Guidelines
Please take a glance at these before posting anything---pretty straightforward stuff. Moderators are the final arbiters on how guidelines are applied. Be Respectful: Show due respect to other people. This covers anything from being overly rude to hate speech. Do Not Post Personal Info: Even if you’re comfortable with others knowing your email or other contact info, please don’t post anything of the sort in the discussion channels. Be Supportive: Constructive criticism is welcome. Insulting other people is not. Don’t Pick Fights: If there are issues, bring them to the moderators. Don’t try to battle and hash it out yourself. No Ads: No advertising, including self promotion. Feel free to discuss and talk about things you think are cool or interesting (discussing an upcoming TTRPG, for example, isn’t “advertising” it) but don’t attempt to sell things. Family Friendly: Try to limit foul language to a reasonable amount, and don’t post anything explicit. Legal: Don’t post or share pirated content. Credit Creators and Sources: When you post art, games, or other forms of content, give credit where it’s due.
NotebookLM
I know people vary in their acceptance of AI, and I have my own concerns, but I've been using NotebookLM lately and really enjoying it. You include sources into a notebook and it adds the content into a model. I add episode recordings into a notebook and it provides stunningly good summaries, and also answers questions about the content very well. It isn't perfect, and occasionally you have to correct it (especially names), but it has proven to be very useful for helping me to remember things that happened 100+ episodes ago.
How do you run interrogations?
Does anyone have a favorite approach to running interrogations? I don't think I have ever run one or played in one that felt like it went well. The players ask a bunch of vague questions expecting lore dumps from a minion. I need something less detailed than a long uncomfortable RP back and forth and more than "you interrogate him for 20 minutes and discover that he really dosn't know much."
Updating my post about looking for campaign advice
Feel free to read the background below, you'll see I took many of your suggestions (had to simplify some for my beginner level GM thought processes) but this is the current status: The adventuring group has gone ahead through a time portal about 100 years with the help of the time staff. The time period they are in is a grim setting, Moander has huge influence and power there although details are light on that right now. Once there they learned that the Paladin's grandfather has likely been kidnapped by the Revenant Occupation from the custody of the Temporal Authority (time cops). The Revenant Occupation (RO) is a group of dwarves & elves who want to purify their race, part of it is they put forth they want to eliminate time travel. The players don't know though that they actually just want time travel for themselves and that is why they kidnapped the grandfather, the idea being to sacrifice him to try to access this magic in a ritual. They believe they know where the grandfather is but have heard that he is safe temporarily. The group became extremely suspicious of the time cops (I wasn't expecting that), so they are working on infiltrating them by becoming recruits and getting more information. They've also realized they don't have much money so they took up an offer to battle in an arena against psychic, mutant, dinos. I'm planning to have them hopefully win some gold and a dino egg as a prize and see where they go with that. (I unconsciously realized I got this idea from dungeon crawler carl) My thought is that as they infiltrate the time cops they will find spies there from the RO and could get more info on the grandfather and time travel in general. They will also learn about how I'm framing time travel in this campaign, I might have gotten this idea here, more that time travel creates different universes so you can't go back in time and change things. I'm afraid of keeping track of things if stuff gets too bonkers with that. They'll learn this in the training process as recruits.
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Game Master's Laboratory
skool.com/game-masters-laboratory
For TTRPG GMs to learn & practice running excellent games with D&D, Pathfinder, and More! Hosted by the authors of the Game Master’s Handbook Series.
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