Strife:Official New GM Guide

This section does not tell you HOW to play the game, it is more so advice and guidance to new Gamemasters.

Resources you need
As a GM, at minimum you must always have the Rules PDF, GM’s sheet and the UESP wiki all up so you can pull story, NPCs, and lines (if needing aid improvising) from the wiki. The GMs sheet is used then for utility, like keeping track of enemy stats, knowing the time and day, and keeping track of currently active quests. Finally, the rules PDF is used to check rules and mechanics you may have forgotten; there’s no shame in forgetting mechanics, I made this and still forget most of it!

Using homebrew
The homebrew races and items are made to be simple for beginners, except for races that are higher difficulty which may require some learning first. This is different to the homebrew questlines, which are made for more experienced improvisers.

Knowing mechanics...
A knowledge of mechanics is also essential, but if you do not it is easy enough to learn as you go, because of the rules PDF contents page hyperlinks. It may be slow to start off with if you are still learning, so you may want to alter encountered enemies to easier to deal with ones, such as creatures with set HP and damage.

What you want as a GM
If you’re looking for a more authentic game experience, feel free to cut content and mechanics in favour of base game ones. It may become complicated to keep track of, though. This is simplified for a TTRPG ‘on the fly’ setting after all.

Thinking about starting
While Strife can be played in person on a map board, it is designed to be played online. Here is a link to a discord server template to play Strife.

You do not have to give players every single quest they potentially could acquire, you’d become overloaded quickly if you did. Only give it when they search for quests or ask NPCs at the beginning, and then later you can give them quests whenever you want with random encounters and such.

Many questlines have been altered, with multiple cut quests, because they are non-interesting with generic rewards. If you want to use these you can, but as an Strife resource I’ve compiled reworked lists of questlines on the page “Changes to House and Faction Quests”.

Starting slow
As a Strife GM you are there to act as NPCs, control enemies, and give structure to the open world environment, giving players as much freedom to explore as possible whilst still being comfortable with it yourself. You may at times need to increase or decrease the number of enemies in a dungeon for difficulty balance.

The game’s progression is similar to the game, starting with waking up in the Seyda Neen docked imperial ship with Jiub, then progressing to the main quest start.

Having fun with it
As a GM your fun is as important as the players, have fun with changing quests about and experiment with encounters when you're comfortable. This requires improvisational skills, like homebrew quest content, but not as much and can be a good method to get used to it if later down the line you want to explore homebrew quest content.

Adding and changing quests about is fun, maybe you have to do it because someone in your party isn't comfortable with one of the themes explored in Morrowind, or you get some inspiration to do something in the shower one day. But most importantly, make it fun for you AND your players. GM-ing an un-fun situation for you sucks, but fighting an unfair fight or doing an impossible puzzle may be just as un-fun for players. Changing NPCs and fights is also fun, you can do this by:
 * Giving NPCs items
 * Giving NPCs racial powers, abilities, and spells from their races page, or even changing enemies races to incorporate some more obscure races that go unmentioned in the campaign
 * Modifying an enemies resistances and weaknesses
 * Changing the fights entirely with your own NPCs

A good change to make to areas if players are overleveled is making an area limited visibility, or dark (more explained in the rules PDF). You don't want to do this often, nor rely on it, but it is a humbling experience for players.

A fun and simple thing to do also is to not tell players the time when they're in a deep dungeon for realism. They either have to keep track themselves, be surprised when they come back out and ask an NPC the time, or in dire situations surprised when they come back out and its night when it should be day! This also gives you the control to skip time or rewind time for strange magical goings on...

Traps are a fantastic tool, but make sure to sprinkle in a physical set off trap or two, so players are weary of the risk. There is nothing more unfair than players not having reason to suspect a door is a trap, and then falling for said trap.

Long-term
In the long term, the levelling system is far from perfect; there is a lot of variation due to player's abilities levelling at different rates and some players will fall behind, though it is not their fault. Because of this once in a while it may become apparent some players do need a boost. My advice for this is to level behind players to 2 character levels lower than the highest character level party member, at 0 character level experience. You can do whatever you think is right though, including leaving the levelling alone. This isn't just "giving" players levels though, it's more about making everyone able to enjoy the game the way they want. You can do this naturally too, by sprinkling in level rewards that benefit lower players for quest rewards, or skill books in dungeons that achieve a similar goal.

For more seasoned GMs, I encourage making up your own mechanics and abilities (or modifying mine) that the players like and find interesting, and as long as you think it is fair and not too over-tuned. Creating your own stories, backstories, and encounters is a cool, creative, and fun concept to explore!

Useful links
As a final note, here are some useful UESP wiki links: Note that we are not affiliated with in any way or supported by the UESP wiki.
 * The items list, where you can find base and enchanted variations. This even has links at the top for Bloodmoon and Tribunal lists too. Note that on materials pages, like Daedric or Glass, you can also see their exact locations.
 * The settlements list, where you can find NPCs, maps, and quests of each settlement.
 * The merchants list, where you can find merchants an even sort by location.
 * The interactive map, which is like google maps for Vvardenfell and Solstheim (not allowed to players).
 * The base game spells list (with a link also for spell merchants at the top) and the base game spell effects list.
 * The generic creatures list, for Tribunal and Bloodmoon also (not allowed to players).