How to be an effective Zeus

[ajsarge 10]

Ladies and Gents,

After a few days of playing on Zeus games I've run into plenty of game masters who were both good, and absolutely terrible. I really hope I fall into the former when I'm GM'ing, but can't blame you if you hated the few mission I ran. If you have any tips, tricks, complaints, or discussion to add for aspiring Zeuses, please add to my meager offering.

- Everything in Moderation

Don't overwhelm a group of 5 players with 10 squads and two armor platoons. At the same time, don't just make them kill sentry groups and lone, unarmed, Ifrits. Give your minionsplayers the tools to do the job, and cater to modest requests, but don't listen to every specific request for an attack helicopter, tanks, or a .50 sniper.

- Guide Your Players

Everything in moderation. Again. Don't let your players just wander off, don't let them sit and plink at helpless AI, and reward cooperative gameplay. Alternatively, punish stupidity. That lone wolf charging ahead, alone, in a hunter? Drop an AT team and ambush him. But you have someone take a quad to an undefended side with a silenced rifle and friend? Allow them to call in mortar support and be sneaky. Did you spawn a CSAT recon team to sneak up on players re-arming? Spawn a helicopter and make it take off so that the players know the enemy is coming.

- Let the Players Play

Your #1 priority as Zeus is the entertainment of others. The worst things that will make players leave are boredom, impossible objectives, and being forced to play a certain way with no choice. Let them decide how to approach an objective and give them an epic mission in return. You're not there to kill every enemy you placed with artillery and lightning.

- Think Quickly, Work Quickly, Details Later

Decide in 30 seconds where you want your players to start at, where they're going to attack first, what kind of enemies they'll face off against, and which direction they attack next. Spend 30 seconds building the initial respawn point, spend 2 minutes placing the initial opposition, and plop an objective on top of it. Best case scenario? Your players are moving towards an enemy within 5 minutes of mission start after figuring out who's driving or playing squad leader.

- Pacing

Let's circle back to moderation again. It's overkill to throw 15 squads at your players at the word go, even if they're expecting it. Work them up to a full assault, let the tide thin, and move the action forward as your players push out and eliminate the enemy. Having 15 squads thrown in at once is just as bad as having a full blown assault in one wave. Your players are expecting more, or to kill stragglers, or something. Build up and taper off the action. "War is short moments of sheer terror interspersed within long periods of boredom." Don't go 100% all the time, don't go 10% all the time. If you can, find articles on Valve's method of pacing and level progression within Half Life 2. They're excellent theories that apply to Arma as well.

- Have a Plan

- Be Flexible

"The most well laid plan disintegrates at first contact with the enemy." And that includes YOUR plans. But if you don't have a plan of what's what you'll start to fumble, your players will get bored, and that epic experience will escape. This circles back to letting the players play. You don't have to be a mute Zeus. Talk to them, figure out what they want to do, and go hog wild while making them have fun. If your plans change mid-assault, let them and improvise.

My example:

I took over for the last zeus after the server crashed and they didn't return. I started the players in the same town they were fighting before the crash. I gave them a minute to think before sending in a sentry to put them in combat mode. With them on edge now, I could throw a sentry from a separate side to rattle them a bit more, and send a fire team with Ifrit HMG support as a main course. Before they could finish those forces, I already had a squad and two fire teams on the way to be last hammer. I moved in the direction of the attack and placed enemies the next town over. I added vehicles and mortars, plus a sniper team to act as spotters. Transport vehicles and an objective followed quickly after. One lone player grabbed his own hunter and sped off into the distance towards the town. It's easier to work with a single group than 15 individuals, so he quickly ran into an AT team with mortar support, got obliterated, and quickly fell in line. The drive over was uneventful, so I dropped a pair of mortars on the players to get them back up to speed. Instead of dropping fifteen on their heads, I kept it to batches of two (I had placed two mortars) and aimed at open areas that weren't likely to kill players. Since accurate mortar fire is something the players can't do anything about, I gave them an optional to kill the spotters and stop the mortars. Bam. I instantly see the group split between a main assault and the side objective. It's not long before they mow through the two squads guarding the front entrance, so I quickly plop more enemies to slow the progress and make them work for that victory. The server crashed shortly after.

[dale0404 5]

Common sense.

[zio sam 77]

Nice post AJsarge.A wanna be Zeus tutorial is something that could turn very helpfull for newcomers of this gamemode

[Psilocybe 3]

Common sense.

And as history shows, common sense is not common.

[Gutsnav 13]

And as history shows, common sense is not common.

Best thing I've heard in months.

[tier1commandos 10]

Love it!

[Guest]

The moral is: no matter what you do, server will crash.

[Ronnie P 10]

Last night I ran a server for a friend of mine. He is the typical lone wolf, big sniper-rifle kind of player.

So we spawned, I gave him the NATO special weapons box, and I flew him into a drop-zone, from there he infiltrated enemy territory. I used artillery strikes on the hillsides opposite as interdiction fire. Close enough to look good and scary, far away not to kill enemy patrols and him.

I dropped a ton of civillians into the town, and two sentry squads. I hoped that made him think twice before shooting guys in pink shorts. An Orca flew over the town. In the meantime, I let the weather deteriorate, rain came and then the occasional thunderstrike.

Really awesome for me as Zeus: I heard him mutter through his microphone: "Bloody weather, and now even thunder! Damn!'

How bloody awesome! I love Zeus!

[novemberist 2]

One of my biggest problems with the concept of Zeus right now is the players speaking to Zeus and making wishes etc. and Zeus talking directly to players, always stressing that there is a Gamemaster behind all of this. For the sake of immersion I'd really like to forget about Zeus' presence now and then and not talk about it in-game. Zeus should not be part of my game experience directly and ever break the fourth wall by saying "what units do you need" or "i spawned some enemies for you" or obviously spawing stuff out of nowhere. In a good Zeus game, there should be some roleplaying rules and all communication should be done either via objectives or via NPCs. I really hope they add more possibilites to communicate to players as other entities and not as Zeus talking in global channel. Pinging Zeus is acceptable for me, though.

Edited February 25, 2014 by novemberist

[I-like-m110s 10]

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[NeMeSiS 11]

i know this really doesnt belong here, but i just made a bistudio account and dont know where to ask this, how do i post

Congratulations, you succeeded. ;)