I'm mostly with Gronan. You are not your players' servant. Run whatever you want. If they want to play something else, let one of them run it.

If you don't put your heart into it, the campaign's going to suck.

Amen.  If the game is a burden for the referee it will be awful.

Seriously, tell your players what and how you feel comfortable running. If they don't like it they have two choices, suck up and play anyway or find someone else to run something.

Stretching a bit outside your comfort zone is a good thing. It's how you grow. Subjecting yourself to abject misery in a quest to make others happy is quite a different thing.

Gaming is a hobby. Hobbies are for fun. If it's not fun, don't do it.

If you would LIKE to run the DCC RPG, but need a detailed setting. I highly suggest the Hubris setting for the DCC RPG.

Here's the author's blog.
https://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/category/role-playing/hubris-campaign-setting/

He kickstarted the setting and it was just delivered. So far, everything I've read has been deeply awesome. I assume its gonna hit DriveThruRPG any day now, but in the meantime, check out his blog and the KS for lots of info.

BTW, there is NO REASON you can't string various DCC modules together into a setting. Plenty of gamers did that back in AD&D 1e.

Here's my 2nd suggestion - The Islands of the Purple Haunted Putrescence by Venger Satanis. It is system neutral(ish) so you can easily drop in all the DCC stuff you want. It's a crazy gonzo sandbox and Venger's done the heavy lifting for you.

It's on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Islands-Purple-Haunted-Putrescence-Venger-Satanis/dp/1500121592

But most of all, please get new players and don't be their bitch.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;932153Can someone recommend a resource that tells you exactly what to do to run (procedurally) a Fantasy RPG campaign?

Gamemastering http://www.gamemastering.info/

Thanks for the advice!

I will look at hubris.

I actually suggested the Islands thing, but they said no to that.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;932262Thanks for the advice!

I will look at hubris.

I actually suggested the Islands thing, but they said no to that.

Very confused.  If the players have that strong an idea of what they want to play why dont they run it?

You seam to be operating under an explicit contract with your players which is odd to me.  What are the terms?  Obviously you are the DM and you want to run a game your players find fun.  So far i think we are all with you.  What else?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;932216Tell them you're going to run the new game Uncle Gronan wrote for White Wolf:

"Pee Hole: The Tonguing."

really, when is it being released?  do you need beta testers?  

you want a DCC gonzo campaign?  how about this one?

something happened many many years ago, and the moon was shattered, and is now a ring around the planet.  this caused the major land masses to shatter into a series of various sized islands, so now rather then nations there are independent city-states on various islands, and lots of pirate type raiding for various resources.  The PCs are hired by a crazy old wizard, who sends them out to collect magic items.  They aren't the only team of adventurers this guy has hired.  He is also hiring them to collect bricks. Very specific bricks, that have been scattered across the world.  Initially the PCs only get a small section of the over all world map, but as time passes, they get more and more of the map, and the can see that there is a central island to all of these islands.  That is where the crazy old wizard has his base, and is using the magic items and bricks to rebuild an ancient wizard's tower.

This is more then just a wizard's tower, the tower was, once upon a time, a massive magic wand that was used by a crazy wizard to smash the moon.  THIS crazy wizard is trying to reunite the moon, so that there will be no more raiding between the peoples of the world.

So, your players want DCC.  But they're also telling you exactly what you can or cannot run modulewise.

Is there some reason you're still playing with these idiots?

Quote from: CRKrueger;932305Is there some reason you're still playing with these idiots?

It's the Swedish Bikini Team. They are VERY picky about their RPGs.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;932153Can someone recommend a resource that tells you exactly what to do to run (procedurally) a Fantasy RPG campaign?

I should never have complained (only on the internet) about having to run Arcanis, since at least that has a super-detailed world and pre-made campaigns. It turns out my players have decided that (1) I'm running Dungeon Crawl Classics; (2) I can't convert an Adventure Path from Pathfinder (or something similar). If I had any say in what I was running I'd (1) only run things in the real world+ (or failing that a provided setting) and (2) use an adventure path / campaign / plot point adventure (or failing that something with a clearly defined core activity like Delta Green or Werewolf the Forsaken). Creating adventures, settings, and campaigns is agonizing and unpleasant for me.

I know you'll recommend Apocalypse World, but, for whatever reason, it doesn't really make any sense to me. I just don't get how it really applies to anything, other than providing a few super vague outputs. I'm glad you like it but I don't get it.

I have resources that provide a bunch of tables, but it's unclear to me what I actually do with them. I've got GM advice (like the Lazy GM Book), but it's just a bunch of advice, nothing procedural that tells someone that's horrible at this kind of GMing.

Is there something that explicitly tells you what to do to prepare the campaign, then prepare for each session, that's more useful than what seems to be the vague outputs of Dungeon World?

No, I don't need to railroad my players. I'm happy to provide a situation where they get to do whatever they want to solve it. However, I need a lot more prep than "just a situation" otherwise my sessions are pretty empty (I need NPC's, locations, timelines, challenges prepared).

This paragraph sound like your fave GMing style is more on the linear/scripted adventures side but your players want an open-ended/player-driven/sandbox game at the moment. If that's the case you have two choices: 1. Decline and pass the GM post to other guy if this style dont pleases you (which is a totally valid position) or 2. research about player-driven methods and techniques and adapt.

For number 2., there's a ton of online tips and techniques for running this kind of game. I'm at work now so I don't have the time for it, but if you google up "sandbox player-driven tips rpg" or something like that I bet you will have a ton of material to help you.

Btw, the Apocalypse/Dungeon world citation makes sense, as those games have great advice on how to run open-ended / player-driven games, in a way that's easily portable to other titles. But if you don't grok it, don't sweat. There are tons of good sources out there. I remember The Alexandrian and Estar' blogs having some great advice on the matter. I'll take a look when I get home.

Well, It's just my limitations as a GM, which I'm fine with at my age. No one is great at everything. I don't need scripted adventures in the sense of "here's exactly what's going to happen regardless of what the player's do," but when I run games where I haven't prepped a bunch of material, even stuff that never gets used, my sessions are universally flaccid, slow, and sort of incoherent. For whatever reason I don't do well improving w/out a bunch of prep. If I have a bunch of prep I can improv fine.

But what's weird is they DON'T want a sandbox. If I don't give them anything to do they don't do anything - they're not the 'lets come up with our own goals' types. It's a challenging situation. I put up with them because one of them is a friend and one of them is my kid. He's gets excited about stuff, which is why I'm willing to run it, and the other guy just has very strong opinions on what he wants to play, regardless of my ability to GM them. He's a much better GM than I am so probably doesn't understand that other people aren't as good as him. What's weird is HE doesn't run games that way. He just decides what he wants to run, runs it, then stops when he wants. So, in order to keep my kiddo happy (which I'm happy to do) I'm stuck in this bizzare situation. Kiddo would have been fine with a converted Pathfinder adventure path (which I could have hacked), but friend didn't want that.

Friend's suggestion was using Red and Pleasant Land, but that doesn't help me. I look at that thing and think "oh, that's creative," but I literally have no idea what to do with it. I get how to run/customize a plot point campaign, but no idea how to turn that into anything. It's so weird I have trouble imagining how to even improv characters and locations. So they meet a human there in Red and Pleasant Land. What the hell is he like? The setting is so bizzare I can't even imagine how to play him.

Ignore the friend and run a game for your kid. Your friend (who i presume is an adult) should be more flexible if there is a child playing. If he doesn't like it, he should eff off.

Quote from: One Horse Town;932326Ignore the friend and run a game for your kid. Your friend (who i presume is an adult) should be more flexible if there is a child playing. If he doesn't like it, he should eff off.

Plus one.

First, please tell me this is a joke!

Second, unless you tell me that, I have only one GMing advice.
Stop working to the players' specifications, unless they start paying you!

(Doesn't seem bloody likely;)).

After you do that, run the campaign you want to run! They can join, if they want to, or run a game for you.

And I've found that if they don't want to formulate goals, making goals part of the mechanics works wonders. You can just tie the XP to actions aimed at following their goals, and extra XP to succeeding or approaching said goals.

If they can't come up with goals? Assign them. No, I'm not joking.
Make it clear that if they want to change them afterwards, they can do so at no XP cost between sessions, or by playing it out during the session. As a bonus, this makes it more likely they'd swear to do dramatic stuff:p!
But if they can't come up with goals, assign them "starting" goals like "marry the Emperor's daughter", "destroy the (leading cult in the land)", "Rob the Imperial Palace" and the like:D!