Why do I use the GM Decision Maker?
 To help
you, as a GM, make decisions about your game, when you know the available options and about how likely each option
is compared to the others. You don't have to come up with percentage chances; you come up with relative weights,
and let the program determine the probabilities.
For example, say that Vladimir Nazghirr, one of your NPC villains, knows that Herschel the Red, one of the PCs
in your game, has the Crystal of Alnar Krinz, and is trying to decide how to acquire it. Will he hire a thief,
hire a group of low-level thugs, send some of his own henchmen, or confront Herschel in person? There are four
possibilities here, so you need to decide on one of them. Which course of action will Vladimir pursue?
At this point, you can fill in four of the Description fields of the GM Decision Maker form. In the
first Description field, you would type something as simple as Hire Thief. In the second Description
field, you would type something like Hire Thugs. In the third Description field, you would type
something like Send Henchmen, and in the fourth Description field, you would type something like
Confront. I suggest you fill in the Description fields before the Weight fields, so as to
help you organize your thoughts. (If you don't need such help, remember that you don't have to fill in the Description
fields at all.)
After you have typed in all the descriptions for all the actions you deem possible, then it's time to fill in the
weights. There is no absolutely correct way to do this, but let's see how it might work for the above example.
Let's say that the least likely of the four options mentioned above is Confront. Pick some arbitrary but
fairly small number and enter it in the Weight field corresponding to Confront. In this example,
let's pick 6. Now, determine which other action is next least likely; let's say it's Hire Thugs in this
example. Compared to the confrontation in person, how likely is Vladimir to hire thugs? Let's say he's one-and-a-half
times as likely to hire thugs as he is to go in person. One-and-a-half times 6 is 9. So we enter 9 as the weight
for Hire Thugs. If Vladimir is twice as likely to hire an individual thief (one he hopes can pick Herschel's
pocket without being noticed) as he is to hire the thugs, the weight to enter for Hire Thief is 18 (twice
9). Let's say that the likelihood for sending his henchmen is only slightly higher than that of hiring the individual
thief, so we could enter a weight of, say, 20, for Send Henchmen.
Click on the Make Decision button, and the program will chose one of the four possibilities, and display its Action
# and Description at the bottom of the form. It's that simple.
Let's say that it decided on Hire Thief. Now you've got to decide which thief he'll hire from those available.
First, clear the form by clicking on Clear Form. You pull out your list of NPC thieves in the area; there's
Rastan Redeye, Ulluf Catseye, and Alynda Dreamstalker. You enter their names in the Description
fields, one thief's name per field. Maybe there are other possibilities, but they're all fairly remote. You can
cover yourself by typing Other in a fourth Description field. Now figure the relative weights for
each thief; let's say we entered a 3 for Rastan Redeye, a 5 for Ulluf Catseye, and a 4 for Alynda
Dreamstalker, since they're all pretty close to the same likelihood, with Ulluf slightly more likely to get
the job than Alynda, whose slightly more likely to get the job than Rastan. We enter a 1 for Other, since
it is least likely. (This gives a 1 in 13 chance of Other being selected. If this is too large a chance,
increase the weights for Rastan, Ulluf, and Alynda.)
Click the Make Decision button, and the program will choose a thief. If it chooses Other, then you've
got more work to do. In this example, let's say it chooses Rastan Redeye. Let's say that Rastan never works
alone; he always hires two youngsters to help him out. There's five possibilities in the current situation: Thaed,
Reever, Gorran, Justin, and Jasmine. Let's see which two he hires. Click on Clear
Form to clear the form. Enter the names of the youngsters in five of the Description fields. Let's say
that Rastan likes to hire Justin, but otherwise the chances are all about the same, with Reever being slightly
less favored than the others. The weights we might enter in this case are: Thaed 4, Reever 3, Gorran
4, Justin 10, and Jasmine 4. Click on the Make Decision button, and the first of the two youngsters
to hire will appear at the bottom of the form; we'll say in this example that Justin is chosen. To chose
the other youngster, you don't have to clear the form. If you click on the Clear Decision, then the last
decision made by the program will be cleared from the bottom of the form. Since you don't want to choose Justin
again, clear the weight that corresponds to Justin. It doesn't matter if you clear the corresponding Description
field, since the program will ignore any line that doesn't have a valid weight entered. The weights for the other
four are already entered, so now you need only click on the Make Decision button again. The program chooses
the second youngster for you, say Thaed in this example.
So now, with a little bit of work, you've decided that Herschel will soon encounter Rastan Redeye and two youngsters,
Justin and Thaed. Perhaps Justin will, apparently at play, chase Thaed past Herschel, 'accidentally' bumping into
Herschel, at which moment Rastan will make his move for the Crystal of Alnar Krinz. Or maybe Thaed will lay down
in a side alley, moaning, pretending to be hurt, and Justin will come running to Herschel for help; when Herschel
follows Justin into the alley, Rastan shoots him in the back with a dart coated with a mild poison that knocks
Herschel out long enough for Rastan to acquire the Ring (and maybe a few other goodies). Or maybe... You get the
picture.
Of course, you don't have to accept any decision made by the GM Decision Maker. The program is an aid, to be used
as you see fit. By all means, don't blame it or me for any bad decisions you make because you went with a choice
it made for you. After all, YOU are the ultimate authority in YOUR world.
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