Or you can purchase both in a single file with all of their freebies for $10.

These prices and the bundle will only be available until January 2, 2013:

The GM Bundle of all rpgGM’s available books:

GMs–what’s the most important part of your game? It’s your players. Without your players, you don’t have a game. Yet, it’s your players that often cause you the most grief.

Have you ever had players who

• arrivs on time to every game, but spens the entire session reading a book?
• try to monopolize your attention?
• complain that other people aren’t playing their characters right?
• argue with every decision you make?

We all have. It’s hard to know how to deal with difficult players. But you don’t have to go it alone. The GM’s Field Guide to Players can help.

What’s Included

This 54-page PDF covers:

• How to identify players types and how to use them to make your game more enjoyable
• The five steps for dealing with all problem players
• Common types of problem players and how to deal with each one
• How to remove a player from your game and still look yourself in the mirror

Bonuses

In addition, when you purchase The GM’s Field Guide to Players, you get two bonuses:

• How to Deal With Cheating Players: Just what the title says, this booklet describes several ways players cheat and offers ideas on how to deal with them.
• Fitting Them In: Ideas on how to introduce new players to your game. It covers everything from introducing brand-new players to RPGs in general to bringing experienced players into your on-going campaign.

What’s it cost?

The regular price is $7, but from now until October 31, 2012, you can get it for $6.

• Dealing with Problem Players: The Munchkin
• Dealing with the Socialite: a Casual Player Type
• Play *My* Way–Dealing with Rules Lawyers
• Player Type: the Character Actor

Posts that were originally going to be part of the book, but were cut for space and will be used in my next project The Campaign Creation Handbook

• 13 Ways to Keep Good Players
• How to Find Your Perfect Player
• Some Tips for Introducing New Players to RPGs

The best news, though, is that I’ve found a great artist to do the cover art. His name is NJ Huff and his style is exactly what I wanted for the cover. You can check out his work at his website. I’ve seen the preliminary sketches and I can’t wait for the finished piece.

Keep looking back here as over the next couple of weeks I’ll be sharing some more excerpt from the book.

That said, I’m looking for an artist to do a cartoon line drawing for the book. It’ll be on the cover, but I just need the illustration itself, as I’ll do the cover design. So if you’re interested, or you know someone who might be, have them email me at jade [at] rpggm [dot] com.

The Rules Lawyer is probably the most reviled problem player after the Munchkin. He constantly questions the GM’s rulings. He complains loudly and constantly when the GM deviates from the printed rules, often causing the game to degenerate into lengthy and heated arguments over whose interpretation of the rules is right. These arguments eat up play time and cause bad feelings among the group.

Some Rules Lawyers simply love to argue. But for many, the driving force behind those arguments is fear. He simply doesn’t trust the GM to act fairly towards his character. After all, if the GM can change rules on a whim, what’s to stop her from suddenly deciding that the Rules Lawyer’s character can no longer use his abilities? If the rules change, how will he know what he can and can’t do in the context of the game?

Most Rules Layers that I’ve encountered have came from games where the players and the GM were at odds. Sticking to the absolute letter of the rules was the only way these players could succeed. Even so, many game sessions still devolved into slightly more sophisticated “Are not! Are too!” arguments.

Actually, the Rules Lawyer’s reactions are quite natural. After all, we spend a lot of time teaching our children to follow the written rules of a game. If they don’t, we tell them they’re cheating. And cheating is bad.

Then they take up roleplaying and suddenly they’re told that rules are just guidelines and can be changed. But only by one person: the GM. If all you’ve ever encountered are board and card games where every player is on a equal footing, having a player who doesn’t need to follow the rules is rather confusing.

Add to it that in the other games they play, they compete against the other players. It’s hard for a Rules Lawyer to lose that sense of competition. After all, every other game has competition. Other games have only a single winner. If the players are to act a single team, that leaves the GM as the only competition.

Rules Lawyers primarily cause problems in two ways:

1. Taking a literal interpretation of the rules, then challenging anyone else’s interpretation,
2. constantly interrupting the game to argue for their interpretation.

Most Rules Lawyers aren’t trying to ruin the game. In fact, they see themselves doing just the opposite. They genuinely believe they’re helping the GM run the game “right”.

How to deal with a Rules Lawyer

1. Listen to the Rules Lawyer—briefly. Let him briefly state his views and listen for anything in his arguments you can agree with. Then tell him you’ve heard what he said, that you agree with points A, B, and C, but in the interest of keeping the game running, you’re making this temporary decision which will last until the end of the current game session. Tell him you’ll consider what he said between game sessions and that you’ll make a final ruling by the beginning of the next session. Then make sure you do.

2. Put house rules in writing. Print them out and pass them out to the players, preferably during character creation or when they first join. If any player wants to argue these rules, consider that a red flag—she may not be a good match for your game.

3. Ask for help. Consulting the Rules Lawyer on mechanics you’re not sure of can help promote the feeling that the two of you are on the same side. You can add to this by asking him to help the other players learn the rules. The Rules Lawyer prides himself on his knowledge of the rules. Make him feel that he and his knowledge are assets to the game and you’ll have gained an ally rather than an opponent.

Basically, it comes down to a matter of trust: your players need to trust you. They need to understand that you all want the same thing–to make the best game possible.

[Photo courtesy of Hatchibombotar via Flickr Creative Commons]

This is an excerpt from The GM’s Field Guide to Players, the up-coming book from rpgGM.com, due to be released this Summer 2012.

Related articles

• my sword glows blue in the presence of rules lawyers (wilwheaton.typepad.com)
• The House Always Wins: Examining the Concept of House Rules (campaignmastery.com)
• Creighton’s Corner: House Rules (gameknightreviews.com)
• Rules lawyer (Wikipedia)
• Rules Lawyers (Shirtoid)
• How to handle a rule-lawyer player (Role-Playing Games forum)

I just got most of the manuscript back from my editor (she’s still working on the last few pages, but I expect to have those back in my hands in the next week or so). I’m now starting on the final rewrite before I throw it all into InDesign and make a final product out of it.

I’m going to be posting some more excerpts of the book here, so keep checking back.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s been a while since the last update, so I thought I’d let y’all know the progress of The GM’s Field Guide to Players.

I’ve finally finished the first round of my edits. That means the manuscript goes to my heart sister and editor for the next round. Hopefully, I get the manuscript into her hands later this week, as her editing will take a minimum of a couple of weeks.

At least I’ve gotten the contents settled on. The first part of the book covers player types in detail. I know I included a section of them in The Adventure Creation Handbook, but this book builds on those brief descriptions and provides detailed information about how to use that information in-game. The second part of the book covers how to deal with problem players in general and several common types of problem players specifically.

Why a large section on player types? Because most types of problem players are simply player types gone to an extreme. It helps to understand the functional version of a player type before dealing with the disfunctional version.

I’m also hoping to have a flowchart to help you diagnose what type of problem player you’re dealing with, though that’s currently giving me some trouble, so time will be the deciding factor with that. If the book is ready for layout before the flowchart is, the flowchart will have to wait for the second edition of the FGP.

The bonus freebies will be a booklet for dealing with cheating players and a second book of general GMing tips from my blog, Evil Machinations, and from this site, laid-out in book format to make them easier to read.

That’s it for now. As always, I’ll keep you up-to-date as progress on the FGP continues.

Articles Zemanta thinks are related

• Product Update: GM’s Field Guide to Players (rpggm.com)
• The Loner PC, the Problem Player, & My Mistake (gnomestew.com)
• For GM’s Day 2012, 18 of Our Favorite GMing Resources (gnomestew.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Just a quick note today letting everyone know that The Adventure Creation Handbook is now available for the Kindle.

Obviously, I wasn’t able to include the worksheets and the whole book is stripped down to the text information. I did list the worksheet and checklist questions at the end of the Kindle version and anyone who purchases a Kindle copy will be able to download a free PDF copy of the “Adventure Creation Worksheet” from the rpgGM.com website.

Just in case the above link doesn’t work, here’s the actual page address:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Adventure-Creation-Handbook-ebook/dp/B007898QYI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1329168270&sr=1-1

This post talks about Character Actor, the player who lives for being someone else.

Description

There are many types of Character Actors. Some like to play the same type of characters over and over (like the player who only plays elves). Some like to recreate their favorite heroes or cool protagonists from fiction and film. Others tend to create the most tortured existence possible for their characters, and still others just like to “crawl into the heads” of their characters and be someone else for a while.

Many Character Actors love research and will spend hours scouring the Internet and reading books to help them create a character that it “authentic” to the time and location of your game setting. He may even dress like his character would, as best he can. You’ll often find he speaks in his character’s “voice” by using his accent or word choices. He Character Actor I knew created an entire slang vocabulary for her character.

A Character Actor’s in-game actions will be what he believes his character would do, regardless how tactically sound they may (or may not) be. He may have difficulty compromising his character’s actions for the “sake of the game.” When creating characters, he will often pick unusual combinations of abilities or odd powers.

These choices will be based not on what would give his character the best combat or skill advantage, but on what he thinks his character would know and what fits the backstory he’s created for it. It’s not unheard of for a Character Actor to create a PC with high scores in “useless” skills, such as History, Art, or Academics, but without any combat ability . Character Actors often love to create oddball characters, then write a backstory that justifies or explains their choices. Police your Character Actor’s choices as carefully as you would your Power Gamer’s. Remind him that without some combat ability, his PC won’t survive long enough to find his lost brother, discover the history of his family’s cherished artifact or whatever the character’s super-objective¹ is.

A Character Actor is surprisingly easy to accommodate in-game: just give him a chance to be his character for at least a little while each game session. He will likely enjoy a games sessions where the dice don’t even come out of their bags, as long as there is plenty of character interaction, both with NPCs and other PCs. Have the local shopkeeper ask how his younger sister is doing or let some townswoman ask after the health of his pet or animal companion. You may not even need a whole lot of input from the NPC–most Character Actors love to have their PCs talk about themselves. If nothing else, you can always start a conversation with “What’s a nice girl (or boy) like you doing mixed up in a situation like this.” You’re likely to have more difficulty ending a conversation with a Character Actor than starting it.

Things to do and not do.

• Give him a chance to warm up to new players. Character Actors live to talk to people in the game, but many are quite shy in Real Life. It’s likely to take him a while to feel comfortable around new people. Let him interact with the other PCs first; once he’s comfortable with that, he’ll be more comfortable interacting with the other players.
• Use the people from his character background. This is a player who will be thrilled that his PC’s younger brother comes around asking for a loan, or his mother gets word that the PC was wounded in battle and arrives with chicken soup and information about a “nice girl” he can settle down with. Player may not sound thrilled, but usually that’s only because he’s speaking in character. Ask him about it afterwords, and he’ll probably tell you he absolutely loved it.
• Give him frequent chances to roleplay. Allow you Character Actor the chance to take center stage for a little while. Small but frequent “spotlight scenes” tend to work better than occasional longer ones.
• Give some control to the player. The next time he asks what a particular NPC looks like (particularly one that’s not important to the game), say: “You tell me.” Let him be a co-creator within the boundaries you set up and will probably find your minor NPCs become easier for the players to tell apart and remember.

¹Super-objective: The over-arching goal of a character that governs his actions and choices; the one goal that the character dedicates his life to completing

This is an excerpt from the GM’s Field Guide to Players, the up-coming book from rpgGM.com.

[Photo courtesy of pinguino via Flickr Creative Commons]

Related articles

• Dealing with the Socialite: a Casual Player Type (rpggm.com)
• Rules-Lawyers: Dealing with the guy who has all the answers (rpggm.com)
• Interpersonal Relationships In-Game (dicemonkey.net)
• 13 Ways to Keep Good Players (rpggm.com)
• Cheating Players: 8 Ways to Deal With Character Sheet Cheats (rpggm.com)