Category / Uncategorized

by guyeatsfood

“I hit it with my axe” – fostering better player narration in TTRPGs

Player narration lies at the heart of top-class game sessions. As the Bakers say in Apocalypse World, roleplaying is a conversation, and when only one side (or neither side) are contributing much, it can feel flat. Even in the most trad game, when players describe their characters actions, it lands better if they add some flavour to it. Compare:

  • I pick the lock to the door with the demon face #rollsd20
  • We see Cherbol pressed against the door, his face to the carved demon, as he carefully rotates the picks in his hands, elf-ears pricked up to hear the click #rollsd20

Deeper player narration, or even action description, leads to a more engaging and exciting table. So what techniques can we use to foster it?

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

Start Simple

I’m going to try for some definitions here. I’ve written previously about giving players more narrative weight in games, and some of these techniques foster a different kind of player narration.

Action Narration is where a player describes what they’re doing – it can be as simple as the first example above, or developed further. 

  • I step towards the door and, mindful of the demon face, slip my greased lockpicks into the lock and begin to turn.

Scene Narration is where the player sets the scene as well. The second example above is a possibly over-flowery example of this.

Some players, tables, and GMs don’t like scene narration from players. That’s fine, to a point; although if you’re playing a game like Feng Shui or FATE some scene narration is embedded in the game mechanics so I’d strongly advise you to use it – but some people prefer a harder distinction between player and GM. Occasionally people talk about “Immersion” and say that scene narration is ruining gaming, and they take issue with other people using it – these people are idiots, so back away slowly and ignore them.

If your table doesn’t want to push towards scene narration, start them out with action narration – and use some of the techniques below to encourage it. If they’re brand new, and/or you’re happy with it, go straight for scene narration – even completely new players will often find it just as easy to work with

Techniques to Use

There’s no one fix for this, but there are a few you can try to encourage this. I’m not at all a fan of 

Ask For It – any time a player wants to half-ass some action description, you can always ask for a bit more from them. I use this particularly if they’ve given almost no description at all, or if they’ve stated a game action instead of fiction

  • Can I roll Acrobatics?
  • Of course you can! What are you doing when you roll it?

Ask for a Bit More – particularly in open-skill challenges or extended tasks, asking for more flavour is also allowed – particularly if there’s a stretch to it

  • I’ll try and find a cure for the virus
  • Great, it’s probaly Reason+Science – can you give me a bit of flavour about what we see your PC doing?

Describe Locations Loosely – make the setting of scenes you describe flexible and open to player input. This includes using theatre of the mind whenever you can – there are some GMs online who’ll put out gridded maps all the time, even for non-combat encounters, and it’s really hard to not take the details on those maps as immutable fact (hey, there’s three barrels to the north- what’s in them?)

  • You’re in the back of the warehouse. You can see the goons are about to unload. There’s teetering piles of boxes, shelves, an idle forklift truck, and a workbench with some tools on it. You look like you’ve got the drop on them – what do want to do?

Give Permissions Generously – if a players asks if they can do something, with any sort of narrative justification, default to YES unless you think it’ll grate with the rest of the table. Want to use Command to inspire the science team to help defeat the virus? Of course you can. Want to Force open the door instead of picking it? Yeah, that works – a skill roll’s a skill roll. 

If you’re worried this will lead to players using their best skills all the time, the fix for that is that unusual approaches usually only work once – and sometimes I’ll even (with players with particular penchants for stretching) say they can only do it once per session. I also have some hard limits on what can be done. When I’m running Star Trek Adventures, you can pretty much use whatever on an Extended Task if you can narrate it in – but when you fire a phaser in combat, it’ll always be Control+Security.

What To Avoid

There’s some other approaches I’ve found less successful, and in particular one very common one. Don’t give bonuses for extra description or exciting narration. Your mileage may vary, but my experience is that player rewards for “good roleplay/narration” just reinforce a GM-in-charge attitude that undermines the other approaches. It’s not a good-roleplaying doggy biscuit. Cool player narration should be the standard, not some unusual extra effort they’ve made so they get an extra dice.

An exception to the above is where games come with some sort of ‘fan mail’ mechanic where the whole table has a resource they can use to reward – this can really work, and gets everyone engaged in the process.

Similarly, where possible default to the same difficulty and approach as if they’d made the roll normally. If they want to get past the guards by causing a distraction by spooking the horses with Animal Friendship, cool – it’s the same difficulty as the Stealth check they’d make to sneak past, or the Deception check to lie to them. You’ve got to apply a reasonableness test at times, of course, but if you’re defaulting to yes and being generous, your players will realise this is only a one-off ruling and it won’t put them off being more inventive in future.

So, some ideas for encouraging player narration. What do you do at your table? Let me know any that I’ve missed.

by guyeatsfood

Bad Player Habits – And How To Avoid Them (Part Two)

A while back on twitter I posted about one of my gaming bugbears (not the furry kind) – players avoiding risk when the rest of the group is embracing it. This led to part one of this post, where I looked at Risk Avoidance, probably the biggest – and most frustrating – Bad Player Habit (BPH). Now it’s time to look at the other two big BPHs – Revisiting and Un-Roleplaying. 

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

Remember, this isn’t me dicking on noobs – in my experience these are always done by players who should know better – experienced roleplayers who probably do this every single game. And, again, whenever I’ve seen this it’s been one player not realising the effect they’re having on the rest of the group – maybe spotting these is something players should think about too.

Revisiting

GM: Right, so you’ve discovered the Ruby is in the Caves across the Desert of Ja’darr – and secured a guide who thinks he can trick a roc to get there. So as you creep across the mountain to the rocs nest….

Player: Wait, before we set off I want to talk to the merchant again. What does he know about rocs?

GM:….

Player: And does he have any more clues about the Caves?

GM:….

Player: Also, I want to buy a new sword.

This is the enemy of pace, and it can be frustrating for everyone at the table. It’s not hard to see how it develops – some types of games reward methodical analysis, and risk missing important pieces of information if every room is searched and every possible witness interrogated. These types of games are rubbish, by the way – avoid them.

How To Avoid It

One way you can mitigate this is by being clear when all the information is extracted – “so, the merchant has told you everything,” and even add in whatever in-game reason to prevent further investigation “well, the sun is nearly down, I’d better pack up for the day – I cannot talk any more!” Do this in-character first, and then move to direct, in-game if the hint isn’t taken. It’s also fine to say no if the player wants to go back in time – if everyone else at the table, including you, wants to move to the next scene, you can certainly go to the next scene. 

The passage of time also helps – I think having a pace in investigative games of each location, clue, or witness taking at least half a day is a good pace to start with. Prep your clues sufficiently far apart to support this, and any investigation game needs a looming countdown or other pace-setter to help investigation be done at speed.

Un-Roleplaying

GM: The merchant eyes you across the table… “Aye, I could tell you how to cross the desert, but I promised to never speak of it to outsiders again…”

Player: We knew he’d say this. Can we bribe him?

GM: …

Player: Why doesn’t he want to speak to us? I’ll Intimidate him (rolls dice)

GM: “Outsiders must never discover the secrets of Ja’darr…”

Player: Is 16 enough? Will he tell us now?

Look, I get it. There are some players who do not want to talk in character. I have a particular balance of tastes about the amount of in-character talk at a table, and I’m left cold by the lengthy in-character discussions that some streamed games have (it’s an audience/player distinction, though – I get why they do it). But you can get players who will actively resist any kind of character interaction, including just saying what their player 

But if you get just one player who actively resists talking in character, it can mean nobody at the table does. And while we all might have different tastes, I’d like more than zero of it in a session. If they really don’t want to, narrating what they say is fine (“I ask him what his problem with outsiders is” is a way round that doesn’t interrupt the rhythm of the game).

How To Avoid It

So how can we encourage a bit of in-character talk? Well the first thing is by baking in some character relations in our pregens or session zero process. If they’ve got some stuff to talk to each other about, they might actually do it. The other is by having some NPCs to start the conversations, who can ask in character for players to respond to. Having some sort of feckless ally travelling with them into the dungeon is a great way to make sure there’s some in-character chat even in the most barren of RP landscapes, and they can provide a helpful Greek chorus-echo of what’s going on.

The amount of in-character chat is a good thing to handle at the start of a one-shot or in a session zero, too – getting this element of play culture aligned is really crucial.

So, there’s the top three BPHs covered. Do you have others? Or are some of these acceptable at your table (let me know, I can pass some players your way at the next convention we’re both at!) Let me know in the comments below.

by guyeatsfood

Prep Techniques: Dilemmas

Credit for this technique goes to the game in which it is most explicitly modelled, John Harper and Sean Nittner’s Agon – a game of Greek heroes travelling home by way of a series of perilous islands – and each island begins something like this:

  • Will you command Meletia to use the island’s gold to restore the ruined temple of Hera and receive divine protections? Arts & Oration vs. Meletia.
  • Or will you command Ionestes to cease speaking false promises of divine aid and instead support the construction of practical defenses? Arts & Oration vs. Ionestes

(Agon, Isle of Kryos)

Each choice offers a chance at resolving the conflict introduced, and taking sides in an ongoing dispute – the following scenes will differ depending on which approach they take (and whether or not they are successful). These happen right at the start of the adventure, as the players arrive in the isle, and thrust them directly into the action. But there’s no reason we shouldn’t use these with other games, and they’re a really effective way of launching a session.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

Why They Work

They give players clear options and genuine choices and let them engage with the adventure immediately. Particularly for one-shots, it can be easy to start with a fight that is just thrust upon the players, and they can feel like they’re just setting off on a railroad – this gives them a choice right at the start. There’s also no need for them to be limited to the options you’ve suggested – they can come up with their own approach, but you’ve given examples to help them make that decision.

By choosing one option, they also cut off the other, and there will be NPCs on each side that will want to engage with them to resolve the choice. Ultimately, either choice might lead in similar directions, but how that direction appears will be coloured by their choice – and whether or not they are successful.

How To Prep Them

Begin with your initial scene and think of a couple of ways they can be resolved. This doesn’t have to be amazingly original – your players may come up with other choices, too, when you’ve shown them two, and that’s fine. Have an immediate call to action inherent – either a threat to something the PCs care about, an ongoing mission that will take them directly into this conflict, or a personal link to the issue.

Then, give some thought to how each option could be resolved. Try to make them equally exciting – you might balance a combat with a skill challenge of some sort, or a series of skill rolls with accompanying risk. They don’t have to be equally difficult, of course – but try to avoid offering an obvious answer to the dilemma.

Examples

Let’s say you’re prepping the most vanilla D&D plot ever, of a village in danger because of raiding goblins in the forest. You’ve, correctly, thought to start with an encounter with bandits on the way to the village – who are desperate because of the goblin displacement and could even be useful to find the goblin camp later – and had originally planned for them to leap out and attack the caravan they are guarding.

Instead, let’s have the PCs come across a robbery in progress. Around the corner, they see a merchant being turned over, with crossbow-wielding bandits in the trees above trained on them as they try to bargain with them. The merchant in front is clearly having none of it, and it looks like it could turn nasty – he hasn’t seen the robbers in the trees.

Do you charge in and intercede on his behalf, and try to cow the bandits with your force of arms and courage?

Or do you sneak around and dispose of the bandits in the trees to even the odds?

Or perhaps try and tackle the leader by surprise before his archers have a chance to react?

We’ve got a trilemma there, and although most of them probably lead to combat, it’s a much more vibrant and interesting initial scene. We’re assuming that heading into the forest to avoid the bandits isn’t an option – if it is, there’s always goblins to tackle them.

In cases where the PCs have a clear mission, your dilemmas can be more like options for them to pursue. For instance, if your PCs have arrived at a party to steal a crown from the host, we should add a bit more action. So begin with them seeing a drunken guest causing trouble, about to challenge another noble to a duel.

Do you attempt to sneak behind the scenes straight away, looking for a route upstairs while the guards are distracted?

Or do you intercede on either nobleman’s behalf, trying to create more chaos and maybe win some allies here who might know about the crown?

It’s an interesting challenge to try and add this to a session you’ve already prepped – particularly in the initial scene, where it will have the most impact. As I said, for more examples, look at Agon or the Paragon family of games, who all model this excellently. Have you used dilemmas in your games during the starting situation? Let me know in the comments.

by guyeatsfood

Wyrm’s Teeth: 13th Age Glorantha – A Retrospective on a Short Campaign

I’ve just spent a sunny afternoon prepping the final session of a short 13th Age Glorantha campaign, and it’s been great to get through a short season entirely home-written. I’ll have run 6 sessions by the time the finale is over, and we’ve taken 3 PCs from 1st level to the cusp of 4th level – we might come back to them at 4th level for a sequel, when we can rotate it back into the schedule.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

And it’s been great. I thought I’d review and share some of the prep techniques that worked for me. In fact, I’m going to look at adapting it and getting it up on the Jonstown Compendium, Chaosium’s fan-made storefront. In advance of this, Patrons are going to get sent my unedited, raw prep notes – they can let me know if they think this is a good idea.

Run What You Know

I’ve never actually run an ongoing 13th Age game before, although I’m fairly sure I’ve run more 13th Age Glorantha at conventions than anyone else over the past few years. I’ve a real love for the crunchy narrative combat / freewheeling player agency interlude bit of 13th Age, and this was a great chance to see it fly with players that were involved with it. 

So, if it isn’t too obvious, pick a game you like and ideally one you know the rules to pretty well. This gave me a good feel for making combat balanced and exciting (pretty important in a game like this) and how to handle the narrative techniques like montages.

Have A Campaign Plan

By “Campaign Plan,” I literally mean just a bullet point for each session. I didn’t follow it exactly, but it helped make prep easier as I wasn’t starting from an empty page each time – I’ll be doing this again with every season going forwards.

In fact, this was what it looked like:

  • S1 – Defeat cattle raiders, learn of encroaching chaos L1
  • S2 – Investigate chaos, learn of lunar magics upsetting balance L1
  • S3 – Secrets in the Cackling Caves – dungeoning L2
  • S4 – Consult with corrupted Silver Wolf tribe
  • S5 – Travel to Jonstown to find who could have learned of this – citycrawl beset by lunar spies L2
  • S6 – Fight the lunar spies in the Compendium / somewhere else exciting L3

We ended up going to six sessions, partly because session 1 was a sort of combined session 1 / session zero with character generation folded into it – so the first session took a couple of sessions really. Jonstown, too, ended up a bit different, because I thought it’d be a good idea to have the city burned down and besieged by Lunars. Session 6 is also completely different – they’ve dealt with a Lunar ghost and now have to find how to finally lift the curse on the lands.

Starting the campaign with a cattle raid, classic Glorantha. The presence of two rhino riders is a result of Roll20 teething problems.

Then Prep A Session At A Time

After that sketch was done, I stuck to only going one session ahead at a time. Why? Well, this allowed me to reincorporate player ideas. 13th Age has montages, hazards, and other opportunities for players to add elements to the story, and this let me re-use them in following sessions. I’ve written before about how effective reincorporation is, and this let me respond to it without having to feel like I was improvising too much.

This led to an entire session changing – I’d thought of the Cackling Caves as being a Broo encampment, but this became a corrupted Brown Elf shrine when elves were introduced in a montage the session before. I did a fair bit of checking in with the players for what they wanted more of through Stars & Wishes, too – which meant I had plenty of material to work with each session. Adding parameters, like with anything creative, usually makes things easier rather than harder, and this is a campaign I’ve genuinely enjoyed prepping.

Use Random Generators

Speaking of the Brown Elf Shrine, I actually used a random dungeon generator (well, sort of) for it – and similarly for the Silver Wolf tribe. In fact, I used the same generators each time – the tools in Kevin Crawford’s excellent Worlds Without Number. There are many more available, and although I’d recommend these, use whatever you want to spike inspiration within the parameters set.

Make Up Monsters

While 13th Age Glorantha has a great bestiary in the game, it’s also been fun to lean into 13th Age’s recommended way to freeform monsters. Most of the time I’ve either reskinned existing monsters, but I’ve also used the standard stats in 13th Age core – flavour counts for more than statistics in a game like 13th Age, and so picking up a few of these has been great.

So, a run down of how I’ve prepped a full campaign for a (relatively) trad game. I’ve learned a lot from these processes, and a lot of them I’ll use again. Are there any go-to prep techniques that you use for campaign planning? Let me know in the comments.

by guyeatsfood

Trindie Goes Mainstream – Review: Candela Obscura Quickstart

You’ve heard of Critical Role, right? In the wake of the OGL fiasco, they’ve started diversifying – leading to Darrington Press, their publishing arm, putting out Candela Obscura, an occulty trindie-ish narrative game with some interesting DNA. It’s got a fantasy steampunk setting, mechanics that are a drift from Forged in the Dark (FITD), an adventure structure that tips a hat to Vaesen, and a free, high-production value, quickstart you can get here.

There was a flurry of commentary about it on release, about how they’d failed to acknowledge their FITD base (now addressed in a later release), about how loose some of the rules were (I mean, it is a quickstart), and how this will either alienate CR fans or open up a great doorway to more narrative games for them. 

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

But to really judge a game, you’ve got to play it – so I did. And you can watch it soon, on Unconventional GMs – so keep an eye out for that. I ran the quickstart in just over 2 hours with 4 players, and it was – I think I’d speak for everyone – more fun than we expected. So here’s my play-informed review of the quickstart.

The Setting Is Great

Fantasy steampunk stuff, in the shadow of a recent war, gives plenty of scope for exciting occult stuff to investigate. The titular organisation you work for deals with occult threats, so you’ll be sent to resolve them, and there are a couple of rival/enemy organisations that fit together nicely. There’s a big city on top of the monster-infested ruins of the previous civilisation, some other locales to investigate with towns and villages and stuff, and a good mixture of detail and speculation.

There’s also an edge of oppression, with the church, the state, and in particular the police force – the Periphery – very much cast as enemies of the people. I like this, and to be honest even if all it does it put off the “keep politics out of games” mob, that’s a win for me. All in all, there’s loads going on in the setting, and it’s got loads of “PCs do this” ideas in it to make it easy to think up adventures for.

The System is Decent – and Feels Different to FITD

There’s quite a few tweaks and drifts from classic Blades to keep you on your toes – my concern running it was defaulting to rules from Blades (particularly as my group had all played and run a lot of Blades). You have Gilded Dice, Resistances, and Drives which can all be spent to boost – this felt like it might be one too many extra resources, but in play it worked fine. 

The damage system felt good – Marks accumulate in different areas and turn into Scars on the fourth Mark – although it didn’t give as much peril as I’d like – maybe I was a bit soft on them in not doing more than one Mark at a time. Maybe this’ll be revisited in the full rules.

All in all, it felt like it might be better for a short run or one-shot (it’s probably, whisper it, better than standard FITD for a one-shot) – although, again, we’re playing with the quickstart so there may be many more options in the full book.

The Adventure Presentation is Terrible

We played through Dressed to Kill, the quickstart adventure, and this was the strangest part of the game. Its presentation has a really strange approach that makes running it significantly harder than it needs to be. The adventure itself is great in terms of concept, plot and structure – and leads to a satisfying showdown, but it often came up short in terms of what it supplies to GM to help actually run it. 

The adventure is presented as a sequence of broad, open scenes, with a “Reveal” in each one they need to find to progress to the next one. While the overall sequence is linear, the scenes are open-ended and offer a lot of player choice as to how to pursue them – I’m all for this kind of structure in a one-shot, and each scene has a good combination of hook-riddled NPCs to get some juicy roleplay going.

However, in this flexible presentation, they don’t make it easy. When you arrive at the village of Mordant Springs, the investigation is very much like a Vaesen setting – there’s multiple places they can visit, and several clues they can find in multiple places. Because this is presented as paragraphs of text, though, it’s quite hard to parse what these options are without making your own notes, or where each one could lead. GM guidance is often quite passive, “use a clue below or make up your own…” or offering “opportunities” for them to meet NPCs without a clear idea of what those NPCs might do or offer. And don’t get me started on the NPC (one they’re likely to interact with) with no name. Telling the GM they say “you don’t need to know my name” is insufficient, adventure writers – what is their name? Why won’t they tell them? What’s their deal anyway?

It’s all workable, and I made a few notes (Patrons let me know if you want a copy and I’ll send it out to you) – but for a quickstart that presumably will have CR fans new to running more narrative games reading it, it’s not terribly helpful. A more structured approach would have been easier to grab I think, or alternatively a wholly looser kind of thing where the mystery is presented much more like it would be in a FITD game.

I think it stands up because the overall quality of the adventure shines through, but I do  worry this is how they plan to present all their adventures, and they’re designed to be read, not GMed. We’ll see, I guess – if Darrington Press are reading this, please reconsider!

Overall I’m really excited to see Candela come out, and like I said, it played well. Merging some of the narrative / trad approaches is something I’m really into, and I’m excited to see more games embrace this. If you want to see it in action, there’ll be a link here when Unconventional GMs goes live with it. In the meantime, what do you make of it? And are there any other trindie classics you’d like to hear about here?

by guyeatsfood

Lonely Fun, Or What To Do When You’re Not At Expo

We’ve all been there – a convention you couldn’t make, or just didn’t fancy, and the FOMO that sometimes hits when you see the pictures of the happy gamers on your social media. Even worse, sometimes you see the swag they’ve bought! For a number of (happy) reasons, I wasn’t at UK Games Expo last weekend, and although it’s not a con I hold in much affection (it’s just too big – and it’s not really about the games), I did get a few wistful feelings about it.

So I did what every self-respecting gamer does – some game stuff, and then I felt better about it. Feel like you’re missing out on game stuff, either through cancelled sessions, a missed convention, or a spare evening you could have been gaming? This sort of stuff used to be called “lonely fun,” which I think sounds a bit too sexy, but here’s a few things to do to cope with not being at a convention.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

Get That Back Pocket Game Prepped

I’m a great exponent of everyone having a few back pocket games ready for when a game night gets cancelled, or when you’ve got to fill in a convention slot. For this you’ll need pregens, a few scenes, and a sketch of the start and end. If you’ve nothing but a game idea, start with pregens – if you can get a solid set made, you’ve already done the hardest part of prep. If you aren’t quite up to that, try an easier set-up – a DCC one-shot with the character generators at Purple Sorcerer, or read through a quickstart and make some notes. Myself, I was getting the new Candela Obscura prepped to run a YouTube game of it – watch out for it soon!

Do Some World Prep

If you’re not ready to prep a whole one-shot, why not get some prep done in a game setting. The original lonely fun (to a certain definition of fun) is, I guess, rolling up Traveller worlds, but there are so many random generators out there it’s a great opportunity to get a setting sketched out – and maybe then an adventure will come from that!

Notable resources that are well worth digging out to do this include Stars Without Number (or indeed any of Kevin Crawford / Sine Nomine’s stuff – most are available in free or deluxe versions), Tome of Adventure Design, or any number of old-school procedurally generated stuff (1e DMG, anyone).

Alternatively, why not dive into a rich, detailed setting? I often don’t have enough time for this, but Glorantha, the Forgotten Realms, or even Dune offer lots of options to dig into a setting. A proper setting sourcebook should spark a bunch of adventure ideas, which you might or might not come back to – who knows?

Play a Solo Game

I’ve got more detailed posts coming about solo gaming, but in case you’re curious, you could check out Ironswon or Starforged for a way to play solo that embeds the game into this approach. Alternatively, try the Mythic GM Emulator with your system of choice (you might still need pregens, mind). There’s been a real explosion of solo games recently – and some will give you a really close approximation of a traditional game. I found this interview from the Grognard Files with Jon Cohen, the host of Tale of the Manticore really useful to picture how a solo game of a more trad game might look.

Watch Some Actual Play

Okay, I’ve said what I’ve said about Actual Play, but there are some good ones. I’m planning to be contributing to the good ones soon with Unconventional GMs, but in the meantime try Jason Cordova’s youtube channel for some great demos of PBTA games, or the One Shot Podcast.

Or, as I did, you can spend yet more time trying to learn some basic photoshop and video editing to get yourself onto the AP scene. Still a way to go there.

So, four options for your lonely fun. What does your coping-with-con-absence prep look like? Comment below or catch me on other social media.

by guyeatsfood

Actual Play Is Rubbish

There, I’ve said it. Like many gamers of my generation, the fascination with, and success of, Critical Role leaves me cold. Or rather, if I’m honest – it leaves me disappointed, fruitlessly flailing at something that I should really enjoy, but don’t. If we’d had recordings of games available in the 1990s, I’m certain we’d have evolved roleplaying into a more interesting direction quicker than we did – and maybe we’re starting to see that evolution now – but often, streamed shows leave me wanting more.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

Don’t get me wrong, I think the streaming revolution is overall a massive positive for the hobby – we can watch games played easily now, and access different styles of play and learn and improve our own games. Or can we? I think there are three things that can spoil actual plays for me.

They’re Too Slow

I like a bit of pace as much as the next gamer, and while I can deal with some slow-burn investigating, a bunch of D&D PCs sitting around in a pub (which is what most of Critical Role seems to consist of) isn’t my kind of fun. I’d cut all those scenes in my game – or at least trim them down to some short interactions to add flavour and stakes to character interaction – so I’m going to tolerate them even less as a viewer.

There Aren’t Enough Rules

I like a decent bit of game in my RPGs – whether they’re narrative-driven or more traditionally minded. I want to roll dice within the first half hour of a game, or I’m wondering why I’m there, so if I’m a viewer I’m even less interested. Even worse, some APs fall into the worst kind of “rulings not rules” nonsense which actively irritates me – “just roll a 1d20 and get high” – which is just lazy GMing. If I’m watching a game played, I want the table to make a decent bash at playing the game, because I’m watching, in part, to get an idea of how to run the game myself.

They’re Too Long

Most AP streams go on interminably long, and we’re often looking at 3-4 hour online sessions repeated up to 10-20 times for a campaign. As a player, 3 hours is an absolute maximum I can tolerate online – and I’m happier with 2 – 2.5 hours as a rule. Online play, in particular, should focus play so there’s less dead time, and so more stuff can be covered in it. So, I’d like some punchy 2 hour sessions – or even less, if they can be trimmed down and I’m looking to see how a game plays.

They Don’t Help Me Be A Better GM

In fact, there’s a fair bit of internet discourse that CR might be making DMs worse as they try and imitate Matt Mercer’s style – to be clear, I don’t think it’s fair to blame CR for this, but there’s an opportunity missed that we never get to see players review the sessions with stars and wishes, or the GMs discuss the decisions they made, prep they did, or what they thought went well or poorly. There’s a wasted opportunity here, and it’d be brilliant if when we read about, e.g. giving players narrative control, there were a set of videos of different GMs demonstrating this.

Is It All Rubbish Though?

Well, of course it isn’t. I’ve learned a lot about running Carved from Brindlewood games from Jason Cordova’s youtube channel, the One Shot podcast does a great job of showcasing games. I’ve been in a few APs too, so I’d hope they aren’t (check out me running 13th Age in Glorantha for some context around a lot of the content on here). But overwhelmingly, the most popular channels seem to exist as a parallel to what happens at my table.

So What To Do About It?

Well, this is what I’ve been leading up to (and, readers, part of the reason why it’s been a bit quiet here for a couple of weeks). In the next month or two, I’m launching a new project – Unconventional GMs – with Gaz from The Smart Party and a star-studded array of TTRPG talent. We’ll be looking at short-form campaigns, and one-shots, and trying to showcase punchy, rules-engaged play supported by blog posts (on here) and podcast discussions (over on The Smart Party) about what worked and what didn’t.

We’re currently at the stage of getting sorted with the tech required for this endeavour, and making sure we can get a quality product out – but the first session has been recorded and will be ready for release when we’ve got a few more in the bag and our OBS skills are sorted. Stay tuned and follow me (@milnermaths) and Gaz (@the_smart_party) on twitter for further announcements! And if there’s any requests or games you’d like to see, send them in.

by guyeatsfood

Unconventional Mysteries – One-Shot Carved From Brindlewood Games

I hope you’re all familiar with a new subset of PBTA games, the Carved From Brindlewood (CfB) stable. These, all from the Gauntlet, involve player-created clue interpretation and offer something genuinely different to investigative games. Through the game, you collect Clues (often open-ended and with multiple interpretations, like “a diary mentioning forbidden love,” or “a sequence of numbers in an unusual place.”) The players then try to interpret these to provide a previously-unknown solution to the Mystery. They’re fantastic games, if you enjoy that sort of premise, and offer a new perspective on the investigative genre. 

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

There’s Brindlewood Bay, where you play elderly mavens in the titular town, investigating murders and gradually revealing a sinister cult. I reviewed Brindlewood Bay here, if you want to hear what I thought of it when I player the pre-kickstarter version. Following that The Between is a bit more baroque – you’re monster hunters in Victorian London solving cases and pursuing a mastermind. And most recently, Public Access, where your young investigators explore creepypasta urban legends on the trail of a vanished cable TV station. All of them are excellent, and all are hard-wired for campaign play of 4-8 sessions. 

But, as regular readers will know, I’m firmly of the opinion that you can run anything as a one-shot – and I’ve brought these to several conventions and run in single-sessions slots. They do take a bit of tweaking to get right – so here are my thoughts on running these as one-shots.

Be Up-Front About The Game

Firstly, you need to advertise carefully. In these games the mystery solution comes from the players, so you need to advertise that so that there are no surprised players who are expecting a more traditional experience. Some players butt up hard against creating their own solution to the mystery, and you need to make sure in the con pitch you’ve been explicit.

I’d also share that it’s a specifically one-shot experience, and it’ll likely feel like the pilot episode of a show – they shouldn’t expect everything to be resolved necessarily. Manage expectations and be clear that as much narration is in the hands of the players as you – and you should be fine.

Do the Regular Chargen and Prep

Even in a 3-hour slot, I’d advise going through the inter-player bits of character generation at the table. I get players to pick Playbooks (The Between) or Special Moves (Public Access or Brindlewood Bay) ahead of time if I can, but do the bits where they describe one another’s cosy place / corner of the house at the table. It can feel like this is eating into playing time, but it’ll mean you can hit the ground running well when you start. Think of it as time invested, and it’ll give your players lots to do with each other once you begin play.

Adjust Complexity

A mystery or question with Complexity 4 or 5, with one clear question to answer,  is about right for a one-shot session. It gives them a good shot at resolution and means they can gather enough clues quickly. If the mystery you’re running has a higher Complexity, just change it – you’ll alter the focus of it a little, but nothing will break. 

Think About Structure

In Brindlewood Bay, you can just play through a mystery as normal. For Public Access / The Between, I’d suggest the following:

short Day phase / Night phase / Day Phase (start by answering the question)

Start the first Day Phase in late afternoon and give the players just enough time to pursue a few leads before it’s dusk and they have to plan their Night phase. Assuming they aren’t watching an Odyssey tape (in Public Access), the Night phase can be primarily investigative, and should give them enough clues to try and answer the question the following Day – they might or might not be able to resolve it – if needed just montage them taking the action needed. If you have time for another Night Phase, by all means do it – but don’t try and squeeze it into ten minutes if that’s all the time you have.

As an aside, and even when you’re not running these as one-shots, I still like to pace the Day Phase pretty tightly. It’s up to the players to pursue leads and choose where they go, but that doesn’t mean they have unlimited time. About one short investigation / move for the morning and afternoon is about right, and as GM you can certainly cut to other scenes once a Clue is discovered. 

Use the Starter Mysteries – or Don’t

All the games come with a mystery that it’s recommended you start with. These provide a great intro into a short campaign and are nice and straightforward to run, but for a one-shot feel free to run different ones. You might need to think about how the players might split up or what approaches they might take to make it work, and some Mysteries have gated strings of Questions that won’t fit into a one-shot in a satisfactory way, but I’d be flexible with this after you’ve first run Dad Overboard / The House on Escondido Street / The St James’s Street Ghost. They’re all great ways to teach the game (and it’s very appreciated that the games offer these) but after you’ve tried them once you can always try something else.

Show Them All The Stuff – But Don’t Use All The Stuff

Mysteries have been designed to have plenty of NPCs to interact with. Try to bring these onto the stage fairly early on, but don’t worry if your players don’t end up interacting with them. The way the game works, they don’t need to talk to the nosy neighbour, or the families relative – all of them are just floating clue dispensers for the long list of options that you can dole out to solve the mystery. Aim instead to give a few exciting / obvious options for investigation, and make the players feel like whatever they pick they’ll find stuff out – which is, in fairness, exactly how the game works.

So, I’m still planning on bringing some more of these to conventions in the future – and there are more Carved From Brindlewood games in the works that look exciting. Have you tried running these games in a one-shot setting? What worked or didn’t work?

by guyeatsfood

Bad Player Habits – And How To Avoid Them (Part 1)

Recently on twitter I posted about one of my gaming bugbears (not the furry kind) – players avoiding risk when the rest of the group is embracing it. This generated a lot of responses about similar play that can come up in one-shots, and make it harder as a GM to produce an enjoyable session for everyone. So, looking at some of these behaviours, I decided to think about what we, as GMs and fellow players, can do to discourage – or avoid – them. I’m going to look at my top three Bad Player Habits (BPH) – Risk Avoidance, Revisiting, and Un-Roleplaying. In this post, we’ll look at Risk Avoidance – one of the most common, and most problematic – particularly in one-shots.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

First, though, so you know I’m not a monster:

But maybe the players don’t know any better!

This was a response I got from several commenters – that I was unfairly victimising poor players who just preferred to play in a different way to me. To this, I say two things – firstly, in one-shots you really need to be explicit about expectations, and in almost all of the games I play at conventions, people are. And in any case, “This game is deadly and survival is more important than pace. So play carefully and check every room for traps,” is weak-sauce GMing – don’t do that.. 

Every time I’ve played and these have come up, of the n players at the table, n – 1 of them have had a very clear understanding of the game premise and the kinds of behaviours encouraged – it’s been clearly explained and understood by everyone except the player performing these things.

But what about new players? – I can categorically say that these are not behaviours that I see in gamers who are new to the hobby, but exclusively by old hands who really should know better. In all cases they’ve been oblivious to the annoyance that this has caused to the rest of the table, even when other players have directly challenged them about it.

Risk Avoidance

This is my top BPH. To be fair, I can see how it develops, sort of, if you’re used to an adversarial GM style where you need to check every door for traps and search every room in case you miss something. Careful play is fine – in some one-shot games that I run, it’s encouraged to an extent – in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, you want the players to see combat as dangerous and to avoid, say, fights with the city watch. But it’s when one player is doing this and the rest of the group are playing normally that it’s irritating.

“I’ll stay in the van while you explore the warehouse”

“I’ll stay in the control room and monitor the cameras”

“I’m not very good at combat, so I run away when the monsters attack”

All of this is poor because you’re caught as a GM between including them in the game – when they’ve opted out of the action – and letting them have the satisfaction of avoiding the danger that they clearly crave. They’re also leaving the rest of the group at higher risk from any danger that emerges – which is the real problem with this. When that player runs away, they make it harder for the other players who now have to fight with one fewer combatant. Add to this that very often these same players will back-seat drive the play from their position of safety, despite very clearly not being there.

So how to avoid this?

Well, first of all – and this goes for all of these – be explicit. Both at the start of the game, and during, make the level of risk-taking clear. If you’re running Mork Borg, it might just be to say:

“Look, this is a deadly game and the dice are going to fall where they may – some PCs might die, and that’s just fine – I’ve got a bunch of extra pregens and we’ll bring them in immediately. It’ll be more fun if we all just embrace this, rather than avoiding doing anything.”

Sometimes, you’ll find the whole group gets distracted by a perceived danger – sometimes what they perceive is even actually dangerous, but they can’t get past it and wind up in circular discussions about it. Here, it helps to have a friendly NPC who can drop in some clues as to the most fruitful route – having a local guide to point out that, while the deserts of Ja’darr are very dangerous, he’s pretty sure that heroes of the PC’s stature will be able to cope with them.

The other way is to demonstrate competence early. Begin with an action scene (often, although not always, a fight) where the PCs can win. An easy early scene lets the players learn the rules if they need to without too much peril, and also demonstrates that they can triumph in similar scenes.

Another prep technique is to have multiple options at each stage – if they are really hung up over the Deserts of Ja’darr, maybe there’s another way to cross them to the temple – they could try and hitch a ride on a passing roc to get them there. These alternative options are still dangerous, of course, but letting the players choose the one with less perceived risk satisfies some of the careful players’ needs.

So, there’s some techniques to counter risk avoidance and encourage all players to be on the same page about their approach to play – next time we’ll look at the other two.

by guyeatsfood

A Change Is As Good As A Rest – Reflections on 7 Hills 2023

Last weekend I was at 7 Hills, the TTRPG convention I co-run. It was, from my point of view anyway, excellent. Before the event both myself and Jag (my fellow organiser) had I think been musing over whether it was worthwhile continuing, and separately had decided that unless it was a “Hell, Yeah” we might need to lay the con down. It was emphatically a Hell Yeah from both of us, and we’ll be returning in 2024. In fact, we’re even looking at a Virtual Seven Hills in 2023 – all details on the website above.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

7 Hills is themed, with all games loosely (sometimes very loosely) linked to the theme, and this year’s was Change – which seemed to be suitably flexible to provide an inspiration push without holding GMs back. It’s also, like all conventions based in the Garrison Hotel, all about games – there isn’t anything to do apart from play games, and that’s by design. Each slot, everyone is playing – we have the odd trader (All Rolled Up were there this year, and we’re looking at some longer-term links with them too) but the main focus is, as it should be, play.

The first thing to reflect on is that running 2 games as well as organising the con is probably one too many. Or at least, I could have run 2 games using the same system – that would have made it more manageable. I went into the con with the least prep for my two games I’ve done for a while – and although they went well (more on that later) it wasn’t my best work. I’ll try to run both of them again, and post them on here, but they definitely need some fleshing out. So, here’s some things I learned from games run and played – a mixture of reflections and reviews

Urban Jungle is a Solid System

It’s an unusual setting, to be sure – anthropomorphic noir, where animals run around doing gangster stuff in a range of easily-recognisable American city parallels (I went for New Orleans-inspired Bellegarde for my game).The system does a clever trick of making non-combat characters effective, and the whole thing felt suitably dark and moody. As with everything, putting animals in makes it accessible – nobody worried about how to engage with noir or if their characters were doing the right thing in genre – hat tip to my player with the moody lion accountant!

I’ll be running this out at conventions in the future too, and if you want to see more of the system in action, check out Round About Midnight, a ready-made adventure for it from when I ran it before.

Soulbound is a Really Solid System

I’ve blogged before about Age of Sigmar: Soulbound, the high fantasy superhero opposite to WFRP, and I ran it again at Seven Hills with a self-penned adventure – and it really pops. A simple 3 fight structure, an investigation montage borrowed from 13th Age, and a straightforward plot made this a fun one-shot, and it’s certainly a game I’ll come back to again and again.

Ironsworn: Starforged Has More Potential Than I Thought

I’m a big fan of Shawn Tompkin’s Ironsworn, and although I backed Starforged, there seemed to be too much of it going on for me to wrap my head properly around it. It’s a solo-ish system that also allows for group collaborative or guided (with a GM) play, and its sandbox oracle creation stuff really sang in the game that we played. I need to get back to both Ironsworn and this game and give it a proper run out – there’s some balancing I need to get my head around about progress tracks, but I think I need to just suck it and see what happens. Either way, a nice game that fits into the “narratively crunchy” end just where I like it.

PBTA Games Need Tighter Sandboxing

I played Root (really excellent system, and, yes, more animals) – I really liked the gameplay, but some of the structure of the one-shot left me puzzled. In Root the default structure is that you come to a Clearing (the woodland settlements of the game) and encounter a number of multi-layered conflicts, which you can then interact with in a few different ways to resolve. Each Clearing has 3 or more conflicts, and multiple ways to interact with them. While this made for open, free-styling play, I’d have preferred a tighter sandbox for the one-shot. In our game, we went off in about three different directions, and met (or heard about) a wide array of NPCs that led to a bit of analysis paralysis from us. 

This wasn’t a fault of the GM, who was great at bringing action and building to a climax (and when we forced it to kick off a bit, ran with the punches well) – but a tweak to the structure would have helped, maybe by reducing the number of NPCs or the complexities of the Clearing’s conflicts, or starting with more of an implied focus on one of the conflicts. 

Ways to do this? Well, I’m a fan of Agon’s islands approach of “Do you do this, or this, or something else?” – and also the Apocalypse World one-shot starter of “You’re tied to a chair – who did this to you?”. Either way, starting with a bit more direct peril would have helped to get us on the same page from the start.

Pendragon Remains A Classic

I’ve yet to run Pendragon, somehow, at conventions, but have played more and more of it recently. It’s just a very easy game to get solid one-shot play out of – all the PCs have a means to adventure together and a clear mission, there’s lots of roleplaying juices to flow with your squires and the various other knights you find, and combat is brutal and swingy enough to have genuine peril in it. Our game ended in a near-TPK (with the survivors joining the evil fae spirits) and it was all genuine great fun. I need to get this to the table soon.

So, a successful convention – and if you’re up for Seven Hills 2024, or even Virtual Seven Hills, let me know and check out the website.