I’d like to kick off the Bulk Up the GMing Wiki Project in 2007 (or earlier, if there’s enough interest) — here’s how it works.
The Treasure Tables GMing Wiki is a neat resource, but it’s pretty sparsely populated at the moment. We’ve got some nicely fleshed-out sections, but not much depth.
The Bulk Up the GMing Wiki Project is aimed at changing that, and there are two ways you can help.
1. Suggest a wiki topic in the comments, below. We’re looking for 52 projects — one for each week of the new year. (More than 52 suggestions is fine, too!) If you prefer the forums to the comments, there’s also a forum thread for suggestions.
2. When a topic’s week comes up, help create the new wiki page. The collaborative nature of wikis is what makes them so useful, and helping out is surprisingly simple.
That’s it! Once we have enough suggestions, I’ll compile them into some sort of project coordination page, and figure out a way to advertise each week’s project. I’m not sure how that’ll work yet — suggestions are welcome in this forum thread.
I can’t wait to see your suggestions — and to start working on adding them to the wiki!
The Suggestions So Far…
As suggestions are made in the comments here, and on the forum thread, I’ll add them to this list.
- Music, broken down by genre and occasion
- NPCs — system-neutral, with character traits (perhaps broken into groups: 10 fantasy citizens, etc.)
- NPC creation, geared towards realistic, interesting characters
- Winging it as a GM
- Tips on roleplaying NPCs
- Finding (or forming) a group
- Snacks and drink ideas
- Worst. Session. Evar. (with lessons learned)
- Reviews
- Tips for writing dialogue
- Running campaigns of different lengths (one-shots, short, long, etc.)
- Recruiting new players
- Gaming with players who are new to gaming
- Encouraging player interaction
- Dealing with troublemaking players
- Player rewards (not just bonus XP)
- Pictures
- Props
- Setting up your gaming area
- Running an online game
- Complete adventures (system-neutral?)
- Worldbuilding (including published vs. homebrewed, hooks, themes, levels of detail)
- Introducing a new RPG to your group
These are excellent suggestions, and I’m already seeing some good structural underpinnings emerging (particularly around NPCs).
Thank you to everyone who has made suggestions so far — keep ’em coming!
How system specific can a topic be? For example, I think a great topic to put on the GM Wiki would be common house rules. Things that a system doesn’t do quite right, and a lot of people like to change a little bit. However, that’s very system specific. You would either have to have a House Rules page, with seperate sections for each system, or a seperate page for each system, and House Rules as a subsection of that page.
Pythor – Personally I would rather see the wiki topics be system generic whenever possible, but that is just my preference. I think TT’s best material and forum topics are the ones that aren’t tied to a system. Just my two bits.
I’m not opposed to having system-specific material on the wiki, and there’s certainly no barrier to adding it. I keep the blog as system-neutral as possible, but at the moment the wiki is still very open as to its goals, format, etc.
I still support information being system neutral. It is the thing that draws me here as opposed to other blogs or forums. Running in the muck with numbers and what class does better than this doesn’t really interest me overmuch. Determining how to give a better experience to the players does. There are so many other sites out there that do house rule this, or system specific add on that.
The biggest problem I find with Wikis is that when someone creates a page, others are afraid to touch it; it becomes that person’s page and nobody feels right about adding to it or changing it. This is only true of the User page (there is a UserTalk page for posting comments to someone else). It’s hard to get people to overcome this reluctance.
1) In re: system-specific or system-agnostic, with the ease of creating wiki pages I don’t think there’s any barrier to doing pages on system-specific house rules should a contributor so desire. Every GM has expertise in different games and styles, and maybe they’ve found ways to shore up shortfalls that the rest of us have not. I’m not sure if you’d rather have this sort of project kept to general topics, though.
2) My suggestion for a page: Music. It’s a useful atmospheric tool, but with all of the different styles of music and game out there, any one GM has heard only a fraction of it…and he might be missing out on something absolutely perfect for his game. Start a page for song suggestions, by genre (fantasy, scifi, cyberpunk, etc.) and by occasion (town, conflict, travel, etc.). These are purposefully broad types. Conflict could be straight-up fighting, decking through ICE, spaceship combat, or tense diplomatic negotiations. Travel could be anything from slow and easy walking or horseback riding, to the chase scene, to that little ditty you play to signify the engaging of the Faster-Than-Light drive. Suggested format: Table for each Genre/Occasion combination, listing Track Name, Artist, Album, and Comments/Description (i.e. “it sounds like ___” and “I use this when ___”). This will give an interested GM enough information to track down the album in his local record store.
As to system specific vs. generic – as long as it’s easy to navigate, I think it’s important to realize that many GMing questions are most easily addressed by system specific stuff. Sometimes it’s actual rules. Other times, it may be higher level stuff, but still is system specific.
And sometimes a question is most easily answered by framing it for a particular system. For example, look at the contentions “bigger guns” discussion. People are tossing around examples of situations, but without particulars of system they are meaningless.
Frank
NPC’s. Not full blown stats or anything, but maybe something like:
Niles – human male blacksmith (apprentice).
Ferga – gnome female baker.
Mross Ironhand – dwarven innkeeper/brewer.
Things like that. Things that some peopel have problems creating, others don’t….
To add onto Jason’s (#8), maybe include a couple character traits and a goal for each of the NPCs.
A few more topic ideas (sorry if these already exist on the wiki; I’m being lazy and not checking first…)
– Tips on how to GM on-the-fly / by the seat of your pants
– Role-play / acting tips (to bring NPCs to life)
– How to find / form a new group
– Snacks / drinks ideas
– Worst. Session. Evar. (humor with lessons learned?)
– Electronic tools reviews (e.g., eTools)
– Non-electronic tools reviews (e.g., map tiles)
– Book reviews / suggestions
– Writing tips (e.g., BBG monologues)
I think what would be good would be a set of pages on running for different lengths of campaigns. Perhaps one page on running one-shots, one on running short campaigns, and one on running long campaigns. Perhaps links to a page for the stuff common to all lengths. Perhaps the recent topic on running for conventions could tie into that.
I like the unstatted NPCs idea. Break it up a bit into some more discrete chunks:
10 Urban Fantasy Citizens
10 Rural Modern Citizens
10 Dragons
10 Modern Mercenaries
…
Each NPC could have a name, a very brief physical description, a few descriptive words for their personality, a few things they are good and bad at, and a small plot hook.
I would like to suggestion some topics on dealing with players:
– Recruiting new players (both new to your group and new to gaming in general)
– Encouraging interaction amongst players
– Dealing with trouble-makers
– Alternative rewards (besides system-specific experience)
Along the same lines as the music topic, sections for pictures and props would be good.
I’ve updated the Suggestions So Far… section through Amathar’s comment, #15, and added the suggestions from the forum thread. We’re up to 21, some of which could easily be broken down into substantial sub-topics.
This is going to be sweet. 🙂
Here’s one that could probably be broken down into a couple weeks — at least.
World-building.
– Pros and cons of using a pre-built campaign setting vs. building your own world
– World & regional themes and unique hooks (what makes your world special?)
– Appropriate levels of planning detail
There’s a lot more that can go into this, obviously, but that’s quick off the top of my head…
Added! Thanks, Zephyros.