Tag / prep

by guyeatsfood

Step-by-Step Prep: Ghost Mountain (Index Card RPG), Part Two

Just like in Part One, I’m continuing to share my prep for an upcoming one-shot for a system I’ve not run before – the Weird West setting Ghost Mountain, for Index Card RPG. In part one, I did my pregens and randomly generated a plot that I modified and started to flesh out. The next step is to write it up – a full write up is below.

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!

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by guyeatsfood

Step-By-Step Prep: Ghost Mountain (Index Card RPG), Part One

I thought I’d try something new for this week’s post – a worked example of how my prep looks for a one-shot, from conception to delivery. After Deadlands and Weird Frontiers on the Unconventional GMs Channel, we talked (me, Gaz, and the players for those games) about doing some more wild/weird west games. It seemed as good an idea as any – and of course what could be more authentic than a bunch of British people playing at America’s great mythic tradition – and so I started looking at other RPGs.

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!

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by guyeatsfood

Drifting Systems – Not Quite A Hack

I’m thinking about some game ideas for next year, and here are a few I’m pondering. I don’t really get the urge to properly hack games, as there are just too many games still to play, but I do like the idea of a quick shift in emphasis to give a game a different feel. Here are three that I’m pondering where I think a slight tweak in emphasis would change the game in a positive – or at least interesting – way. 

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!

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by guyeatsfood

2023 – Year In Review

With a blink, 2023 is behind us – or almost behind us if you’ve the good taste to be a Patreon supporter of mine – and we can look ahead to more gaming goodness in 2024. Before we do that, I thought I’d take a look back at personal highlights from this year, and look forward to 2024.

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!

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by guyeatsfood

Starting From Scratch – Prepping a New System

Over the past couple of months, I’ve run a few games on the Unconventional GMs channel that I’ve not GMed – or played – before. I’m normally a bit cagy about doing this, as I like to get to know a game before putting my GMing out publicly, but building up content for the channel has meant reaching further quicker than I’d normally. 

But games of Candela Obscura and Cortex Prime seem to meet our intent of bringing examples of one-shot play that people want, so I’m in the middle of prepping Weird Frontiers, a spooky weird west DCC game. Come to think of it, the first time I ran Vaesen it was recorded, too. So I thought I’d share my process of prep for a game where the system is new to me.

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!

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by guyeatsfood

The “How To” book the Hobby’s Been Waiting For – Review: So You Want to be a Game Master?

For a hobby with a lot of techniques and ideas to master, we’re terribly short of advice books. Aside from a wealth of excellent blogs, there’s really only the occasional book that looks at how to start GMing. The chapters in RPG books can be variable at best, and there’s a lot to the craft of GMing.

One of the best blogs out there for GM advice is The Alexandrian, and Justin Alexander has focussed a lot of his thoughts from there, and expanded on them, to release “So You Want to be a Game Master?” – a book focused on taking you right from the beginning of prep to running successful games.

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by guyeatsfood

Guiding the Ironlands – how to run Ironsworn as a One-Shot

Ironsworn, Shawn Tomkin’s RPG of dark fantasy with solo, guided, and GMless modes, is one of the most exciting releases to the hobby in recent years. With its sci fi sequel, Starforged, now established it’s beginning to get some decent play on the convention circuit – and it plays really well with a GM (in ‘guided’ mode) as well. So here are some tips if you want to get it to the table.

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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

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.