Tag / ugms

by guyeatsfood

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

Well, after blogging about my initial steps to learn a system in Part One, and fully prepping the session in Part Two, I’ve actually run the one-shot of Runehammer’s Index Card RPG (ICRPG) for the Unconventional GMs channel. As promised, I’d like to take a look at what worked well, and what I’m not so sure about, after the action. The session itself is scheduled to be released in March 2024 – so for now you’ll just have to subscribe to the channel if you want to follow along!

Reviewing and revisiting our sessions is something that I think we don’t do enough of in the hobby, whether it’s just self-reflection while writing up a session report, or doing something like Stars & Wishes at the table. It’s a fantastic tool to improve your play experiences in future, and great to get other perspectives on it from your players.

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

Keeping to Time – GMing to a Schedule

We’ve got nearly 25 episodes of Unconventional GMs recorded now, all Actual Plays of less than 2 hours – and a frequent question I’ve got is how to keep it below that. While we did it as a creative constraint and because we got frustrated with Actual Plays that took half an hour to get going, it’s an interesting one to consider, and I think both me and Gaz have run enough times to have some hints and tips to help this.

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!

Continue reading →
by guyeatsfood

Hit The YouTube!

Just a short update here, but I wanted to share some news that’s been teased for a while – Unconventional GMs has launched!

Unconventional GMs is a collaboration between me and Gaz from The Smart Party podcast, where we produce short, snappy one-shots showcasing some of the techniques we blog and/or talk about on our shows. Episodes are 2 hours long, with minimal editing, and have a rotating roster of players.

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!

So far we’ve released games of Ironsworn: Starforged and Candela Obscura (check out my blog post about the latter here), and the first part of a short campaign of Odyssey Aquatica, an Agon hack where you play oceanographic explorers. Sessions of Deathmatch Island, 13th Age Glorantha, Vaesen, and even D&D are scheduled for release – and if there’s anything you’d like to see us tackle, let us know in the comments or on twitter!

Release schedule is every two weeks, but we’ve put a few eps out first to give you all something to watch.

As well as this, both me and Gaz, and Ben (the other half of the smart party) led a seminar at The Kraken game convention in Germany last week, where we designed a scenario from audience prompts in an hour. Watch out for the actual scenario appearing on here soon!

Similarly, as a patron bonus, I’m going to start putting my convention notes for scenarios up on the Patreon – so if that’s something you’d like to see, be sure to join, as £2/$3 a month gets you access to not only these but access to blog posts 7 days early.