Since the opening days of my RPG life, I’ve created backgrounds for my characters. It’s just how my brain works. I love creating characters and their backstories. Don’t worry, I don’t force my GM (or fellow players) to endure reading the pages and pages of hastily-written material I’ve made for my characters. You shouldn’t do that either. Any backstory of more than a single page will end up in the “TL;DR” pile and will never come into play.

However, I’m not here today to talk about extensive backstories for your characters. I’m here to give some advice to the GMs out there creating adventures for their group. At the start of the adventure, there is a thing called a “story hook” that I’ll be covering in more detail next month.

Two elements of an adventure (or any ongoing campaign) that can help generate quality story hooks are backgrounds and factions. By providing a short list of options that are closely tied to your adventure setting, you can sprinkle hooks throughout the adventure to keep the PCs on track toward the end goal of confronting the adventure’s Boss.

Most of this material may feel like Session Zero goods, but its really not. Yes, backgrounds and faction alliances (and oppositions) should be determined during Session Zero, but they must come into play throughout the adventure. Otherwise, there is no point in including them at all. The key here is to ensure everything drives the adventure forward, deepens the experience for the players, or gives them motivation to be included in the adventure’s premise.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds come in a wide variety of flavors and styles, depending on what game you’re playing. It might be a Fate aspect. It might be a D&D 5e background. It could be a series of die rolls on Cyberpunk 2020’s lifepath system. The list goes on and on and on. I can’t possibly cover all of the distinctions here. If I try, I’ll miss your favorite game’s background system, and then the hate mail will flow in. (Or maybe not; you’re a bunch of nice people.) Instead, I’m going to approach this from a higher-level and more generic angle.

Backgrounds should include hooks into one or more of the following aspects of the adventure. Don’t try to wrap all of these into a single background. Otherwise, it’ll just be too much and will overwhelm the player while they try to keep track of how their background impacts their character.

• Relationship with an NPC
• A different style of relationship with a different NPC
• Alliance with a faction
• Opposition to a faction
• Investment in the story hook
• Creation of a bond with a key location or object

Life is better and creation is easier with examples. Here are a few:

Mentorship – Your character is a mentor to Allela. She is interested in learning from you, is always attentive, and brings you a piece of candy during each of your teaching sessions. (Then, in the story hook, Allela goes missing while on a field trip in the nearby Duldin Forest.) (This creates a relationship with an NPC and the story hook.)

Business Venture – Your character is attempting to get a local merchant guild, The Red Consortium, to invest in an import/export idea that you have. Garlu, the headmaster of the consortium, is reluctant, but will agree to entertain the idea if you do him a favor. (In the hook, the favor requested will be to return a family heirloom that his son lost in the recently discovered ruins in the nearby Duldin Forest.) (This ties the character to a faction, an NPC, a location, and possibly an object.)

Forest Warden – Your character is a member of the Wardens of Duldin Forest. You tend to the forest for Duke Arglist, the local leader of the area, by reducing dangers within the forest and preventing poaching of the duke’s deer. Lately, however, the duke has become concerned with a recent discovery of ruins in the forest. He’s unsure how his royal records and maps never revealed the ruins until its discovery last month. (This ties the character to the duke, a faction, and a location within the forest.)

As you can tell, the ruins within the Duldin Forest are probably going to be key. There is some mystery to the ruins as they were recently discovered. There a few minor hooks here, but they have yet to be fully triggered until the opening few scenes of the adventure. If you can “aim” backgrounds toward the same or similar areas, then hooking the characters (and hopefully the players) into the story will be much easier.

As an addendum, these backgrounds are small elements of a character, not the complete story of the character. Don’t write up a character’s background for the player. Just provide some options for them to pick up and build around while they come up with their own stories about what their characters did before the adventure started.

Factions

As you can see from my examples above, the factions are woven into the backgrounds. In my three examples, I made use of two different factions. You can include all of the factions into the backgrounds if you choose, but keep in mind that some of the factions may be opposition, not allies. This is easy enough to incorporate into backgrounds by simply having a faction do some wrong or misdeed to a character within the background.

Not all factions require background hooks, though. It’s easy enough to keep some aside, or even secret from the PCs, until it’s the right moment to incorporate them. While I’m talking about secret factions, I’m going to advise you to use those sparingly. If every other faction is a “surprise reveal,” then the shock value will wear off very quickly and have the impact of yawns and boredom, not actual surprise.

Most factions should be known to the players, even if they are not attached to or opposed against one another. There are plenty of factions in the real world that have zero impact on my life, but I’m aware that they exist. (I’m mainly thinking of the artificial construct of home owner’s associations here.) I would recommend only creating the factions that will have a direct and tangible impact on the adventure’s story flow. Give each faction a brief description, and create a “faction handout” for the players to peruse and reference. Obviously, if you have a secret faction or two, you’ll want to avoid putting those on the handout.

Some details about factions that I like to come up with are the leaders, organizational structure, goals of the faction, why the faction wants to accomplish those goals, and identifying marks (if any) of the faction. I don’t detail the membership rank and file beyond noting how many members exist within each city, village, or key location. For the identifying marks, I break those into two categories. The first is to note how members are marked. This could be a uniform, badge, secret handshake, a tattoo, or something else to allow either the public or fellow members to know who is in the know. Secondly, how do the faction “mark their territory” to let opposing factions know to stay away or stay out?

Conclusion

I hope this article helps you come up with some quality adventure-related backgrounds and factions to put to use. I touched on story hooks a little in this article, but next month, I’ll be doing a deep dive into story hooks and how to lay them in front of the players with proper bait on the hook.

Let’s start from the beginning… what is the primary BBEG in all gaming tables? We all know that is scheduling. So the moment one of your players fails to come to one of the games, you know you will have to get the player up to date on what happened and give an explanation to why they weren’t present during the previous session with the players. What if I told you this could be easily solved?

A plethora of games already use it as the default way to handle sessions, but still, so many of us shy away from it for some reason. Several TV shows (especially cartoons, anime, and sitcoms) are episodic (with one or two chapters every once in a while having a “To be continued…”). Why is it that they did that and why might we want to apply it to our home games?

Episodic Narrative

Similar to a one-shot or a stand-alone movie, episodic chapters in some cartoons, TV series, animes, and more use a format of beginning, climax, and end. They are auto-conclusive, any episode can be seen without having seen the previous one and, in most cases, you should not have any problem understanding the narrative. In the mostly dead era of regular television, people would often just watch whatever was being aired on TV. If the chapter from the TV series being aired was too difficult to follow if you hadn’t seen the rest of it, most people would just change the channel and watch some other thing. In the streaming era we are in right now, that concept is pretty much dead by this point.

But why would we want to do this in our TTRPG sessions? It is a fact that if you end a session on a cliffhanger, not finishing the narrative, people will be excited to come back to the next session. I am not denying that. However, being the adults we are, it may often be difficult to find a good time for us to all be able to meet for one session. When you make your sessions episodic, you can allow for someone to miss a session and there is nothing wrong with it. You can even tie one person not being there into the narrative!

Episode Structure

Episodic structure refers to a narrative composed of loosely connected or self-contained incidents. Essentially, each scene stands alone as a distinct unit, while still contributing to the overall storyline of the work. Episodic structure is often utilized in television shows, where each episode tells a self-contained story while still advancing the larger series plot.
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Three Acts Narrative Structure

If we structure our sessions in three acts, it will look something like this: the first one is the exposition, where a villager or the mayor of the town gives us a mission to take. Then comes the rising action or climax, in which the characters are sent to investigate a farm that appears to be haunted, only to find out there is a secret lab filled with traps below it. Lastly, for act three we reach the falling action, or finale, when we find evidence that the lab belongs to the town’s police officer’s daughter, and you have to chase her down in an epic chase concluding the story with a final epic fight. Sounds rad, huh?

This format is studied to easily hook the viewer, gamer, or listener, and that’s why we find it across all media. You can use it in all your sessions to achieve great success. However, doing so can lead to railroading the players and needing to do much more preparation. The GM needs to have great management of the flow of pacing in the game to achieve these (see Jennifer’s great article on how to handle time for running games at cons or an old article of mine for guidance on these). Running multiple one-shots can also help you get the hang of it, as one-shots are made to work like a single episode. Lastly, several games facilitate the whole episodic format way better: the Kids on… series of games, Brindlewood Bay, Agon, and Cantrip, just to list a few, excel at this.

The Larger Series Plot

Series that follow an episodic format still usually have an overarching plot going on in the background. Unless it’s something like The Simpsons, or South Park where a character’s death rarely means anything, there usually is a story going on in the background. Supernatural, or Gravity Falls, just to list two episodic series I am watching at the moment of writing this, follow that same format, with the overarching narrative having me come back again and again willing to know what is going on. However, at the same time, I know that if I pass 2 weeks without seeing a chapter I can easily jump back into the narrative without the need for a recap.

Brindlewood Bay has mechanics for the game work exactly like that, with the grandmas solving small cases, but encouraging the GM to have at least 2 details of the big plot happening involving Lovecraftian secrets or conspiracies to be thrown per episode. You can do this with any game if you plan ahead enough, and I can guarantee there is great fun to be had from it, coming from experience. It can also be a fun minigame having the players name the episode at the end of the session.

Conclusion

As stated, episodic narrative has a bunch of benefits, and can be a fun change from the usual style you are used to. Grab a one-shot adventure, tie it into the overall narrative, and get your players to play in a series of self-contained episodes leading to a bigger narrative. You can have a “To be continued…” thrown every once in a while, but as a personal challenge, why not try giving an episodic campaign a chance in your game of choice?

Have you ever run an episodic campaign in your home games? What are your thoughts on it? Do you have any additional pros or cons about them that I didn’t list here? Let me know in the comments below so we can keep the conversation going!

What is Nostalgia Gaming? 

Let me make up a definition for this. Nostalgia is defined as, “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past”. Nostalgia gaming is when you run a session to bring about that sentimental longing or wistful affection for a past game or game group. 

This was my goal. I wanted to play a game that would feel like when we played in our teens. I wanted us to forget about it being 36 years later, and transport us back to a time when we would get out of school on a Friday, run to the grocery store to stock up on drinks and chips, and then head to one of our houses to play games until it was way too late in the evening.

Because of this goal, I made some specific choices about what game we played, the adventure I wrote, and how I GMed it.

Picking The Game

For the group that I was going to visit and the years that I was the GM for them, the game that was iconic for our group was Palladium’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We played several campaigns of TMNT. One member of our group was an artist and drew character portraits for all the characters back when we were playing. While I could not remember too many specifics about the sessions of our campaigns, all of us could remember the characters. That was the kind of game I was looking for. One that everyone had fond memories of that could bring about that nostalgic feeling. 

There was just one thing. Over the years, I have lost my love for that system, but lucky for me Julian Kay created Mutants in the Now. Julian had the same feelings about the original system and the same love for the source material. I wanted a game that would bring about a nostalgic feeling and was happy to do it with a game with modern game design. 

Prepping The Game

The Adventure

I knew I would be writing the adventure. I wanted to go for something nostalgic, and it had to be a one-shot and playable in 1-2 sessions. I went with an assault on a big bad’s lair. It was an easy plot, with only one twist. I cut out the planning of the assault by making my Mad Lib plan. To make it nostalgic, I took the iconic villain from the TMNT RPG, Dr. Feral, and made him the center of the adventure. 

My goal was for the adventure to be high-action, with lots of minions to mow down, and an epic battle for the finale. I also wanted to make sure that there were scenes where everyone got a moment to shine and do something cool. All of that was worked into my prep. 

Pre-Gens

I did not want us to spend any time making up characters as time was precious. Mutants in the Now has a pretty extensive character generation system (though more streamlined than the source material). While that may have been fun if we had more time, I went with making all the characters beforehand. 

In doing so, I emphasized getting the memory of the character more correct than any of the mechanical specifics. I remembered all the archetypes for the characters and created the pre-gens around those themes. 

Abilities Sheet

Since none of the players were familiar with the system and none of them had any of the books, I made a Google Doc with the text of all of the character’s specific abilities so they could easily reference them during play. I wanted to avoid having to pass around the one table copy of the game during play.

Cheat Sheets

Mutants in the Now also has a helpful combat sheet, to aid during play. I made copies of that for the table as well, so that they could easily look up all the combat options. 

That was a lot of prep, but I wanted to be able to hit the table and start playing as fast as possible. For this kind of gaming, I was ok with putting the burden of the work on me, to make the play experience better for everyone. 

Running the Session

For the running of the session, I did just a few specific things to make the game go smoothly. 

No Planning

I wanted this game to be about action and not bogged down in planning. That is why I prepped the game with the Mad Libs plan, and because this was the type of mission where a lot of planning would have happened, I gave each of the players a token that they could use for one flashback, where they prepared something for a given moment in the game. This would remove the need for planning but also would emulate the competency of a team that had planned their assault well. 

The Spirt of the Rules…Not The Letter

During the session, I did not worry about if everyone exactly got the rules right, or if I was remembering each rule. The goal was to have fun, and so after a quick overview of how the rules worked we started playing, and when we hit any questions, I just made up answers and kept going, and did not check the rulebook. That is in contrast to how I run games at home or even at a convention, where I put more of an emphasis on getting the rules right or showcasing the rules.

I was also generous in making rulings in favor of the players, to make sure they all got to do some cool things. This game was not the place to worry about realism or how exact mechanics work. We played Theater of the Mind so that I could make the world fit what the players wanted to do. 

Everyone Got To Kick Ass

I made sure in my prep that there was the potential for each character to do something cool. During play, I also made sure that those opportunities came up or I capitalized on something cool the players came up with, and in most cases, both. The vast majority of the enemies they encountered before the climactic battle were minions and plenty of them. I let them mow them down unmercifully. This mixed with the advice above, allowed me to make sure each of them had some awesome moment where they got to shine in their archetype. 

For the climatic battle, I had a mix of combatants and non-combat objectives. The combat-focused characters could brawl while the non-combat characters could work on the other objectives all in the same dynamic scene.

They Were Going to Win

No matter what happened, we were here for a kick-ass time, and that meant that Dr. Feral was going to die, no matter what. I did not prep anything specific for this, but there are a number of GM tricks I could have used to ensure that he was taken down by the characters.

But in the playing of the game, I did not have to do any of that. In the climactic battle, one of the players scored a brutal Barrage maneuver, which took out Dr. Feral much to the joy of the table. 

How Did It Go?

It was awesome. The game lived up to what I was hoping it would be. First, the Mutants in the Now rules are excellent and they make for some very exciting combats. For all my intent of streamlining rules, I had to do it only a few times. Most of the time we played the game pretty much as written.

Second, all the prep paid off and I was able to get everyone into playing the game quickly and kept the focus on the action. Lastly, the way I ran it maximized the fun over the accuracy, and it was the right vibe for a nostalgia game.

This Kind of Sounds like Convention Gaming…

For sure, I drew inspiration from running numerous convention games, to design the game for everyone to have a good time. I think the biggest departure for me was that I relaxed on rules accuracy/mastery and emphasized having fun. Also, in convention games, I will let a party lose, but that was not going to happen in this game. 

Waxing Nostalgic

Thirty-six years is a long time to get that group back to the table. I wanted to make sure that our return would be an enjoyable time. It was. For that weekend, at that table, we were teenagers again, with our mutant animals saving the day. I was thrilled to be able to bring that experience to the group and to share the table with them once more.

The thing about nostalgic gaming is that feelings are more important than accuracy. Do what you need to do to make the game feel like it did back in the day. For me, it was to change systems and do a lot of upfront prep and just a minor change to my normal GMing style. 

If you ever get the chance to run a nostalgia game for people in your past, I hope you have as much fun as we did. Have you ever run a nostalgia game and for whom? How did it go?

I’ve been mulling over the follow-up to my article On Dragons, Dungeons, and Dinner Parties for [ checks notes ] officially too long, but just this last week, I remembered a saying we used to have when I worked in theater arts: “The audience isn’t just coming for the show; they’re also coming for the experience.”

These words guided every decision we made, from the ticketing process to the music that played in the lobby to the snacks we served at concessions. It was all part of the experience, which brought me back to the idea of how to successfully host an online game experience.

How do we craft a good experience for our players when they’re just voices in our ears and videos on our screens?

There are plenty of articles and how-to videos out there about the technical skills you need to run a game online, but for this article, I want to talk about the charisma-based skill challenges we face when our campaigns are digital—the soft skills, the social stuff.

THE FIRST THREE THINGS YOU NEED

Whether you’re using Discord, Slack, or (gods forbid) Microsoft Teams, you will need some way to communicate with the people you’re playing with. That part’s obvious.

What isn’t so obvious is how you organize the chats. Plural.

I suggest a minimum of three different chat channels:

• An out of character channel where you can schedule sessions, socialize, and generally just, you know, chat.
• An in-character channel where players can send each other messages from their characters through sending spells, text messages if it’s a modern or future setting, or letters and missives if it’s a more fantasy-based setting.
• A rules-only channel where you can discuss the fiddly bits of the system and keep track of house rules.

Your Out of Character channel will likely see the most use, and I encourage you to keep that channel active between sessions. Share fun links or funny memes. Post gifs that remind you of what the characters did (the “Adam West Batman with a Bomb” gif gets a lot of use in our channels, as does the “Concern compilation” gif). Talk about your day. Use it like you’d use any social group chat.

TTRPGs are about having fun with your friends, so use the out-of-character channel to have fun with them.

Keeping the channel active between sessions means your players will get in the habit of checking it. This makes them more likely to see your game-relevant posts and keeps the game top-of-mind. It’s a great way to foster a healthy table and a flourishing campaign.

TABLE CHATTER

Healthy table chatter during a session is part of the game. When you’re sitting at an actual table, it’s easy enough for folks to talk through their moves during someone else’s turn, discuss the plot during someone else’s scene, or maybe even complain about their boss or something else non-game related if they need to vent.

The problem with table chatter in an online game is that, usually, everyone’s in the same voice channel at roughly the same volume, so it’s much easier to interrupt the session. Try relegating the cross-talk to the text channel.

My groups have taken to trading relevant GIFs back and forth as a kind of running peanut gallery when we don’t have the spotlight. It adds humor and levity to serious or tense scenes and keeps people engaged and – in a way – participating in what’s going on, even if their characters aren’t there.

THE RULES CHANNEL

When looking up a rule will take longer than the scene can sustain, good GM’s break out the tried and true “We’ll do it this way for now and clarify it for the future later.”

The rules channel? It’s the perfect place to do that “later” work. Not only will it give the more rules-minded people a place to discuss their interpretations, but it also acts as a running repository for the eventual rulings and a great place to drop house rules.

OPENING AND CLOSING RITUALS

An online chat space can seem…amorphous. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of notifications from other apps, pets begging for attention, or kids who don’t understand that Mommy needs her shiny math rock time right now. Rituals are one way we can help turn that amorphous, unformed space into a realm of wonder and imagination.

Whenever my players log into our Virtual Table Top, they see the same image: a kind of title screen with the name of the campaign and pictures of their characters. In technical terms, it’s just a gridless map in the VTT, but psychologically it has the same effect as a video game loading screen.

Likewise, I always open my games with the same phrase (borrowed from something Taliesin Jaffe once said on a podcast): “Grab a seat and a snack and attend carefully as we begin.”

Having a small ritual like this grounds players in the fictional reality we’re about to weave together.

I also end every session with Stars and Wishes. Not only is this a great way to get a glimpse into what your players want to see in future sessions, but it also gives them a chance to reminisce over the most recent session, and it’s a great way to signal that we’re done now.

(Rituals like this work great for in-person games, too, by the way.)

FREQUENT CHECK-INS

It goes without saying, but it’s kinda hard to read body language on a voice call. Even if your group uses video, it’s not easy to get a read on people if they’re not in the same room as you are. It’s not impossible, though. We all get used to the cadence and flow of conversations with our friends, and human brains are great at spotting both patterns and anomalies in those patterns.

You’ll notice changes in your friends’ usual tones, when the talkative one goes quiet, and when the amiable one gets curt. However, it’s almost impossible to know why precisely the vibe has changed. Maybe your talkative friend has gone quiet because she doesn’t like the way the scene is going, or maybe her cat pulled her mic cable out of her computer.

For this reason, it’s vitally important to check in with your players frequently, even if you think everything’s going great. Make a habit of checking in after breaks and at the end of sessions.

Your VTT should have plugins for other safety mechanics like the X card, and Demiplane has even created a new app that folks can use to anonymously alert their GM to aspects of the scenes that are making them uncomfortable.

Hell, I’ve even started doing what I like to call “Re-Session Zeros” after big milestone moments in the campaign. These out-of-character-only sessions give me a chance to make sure everyone’s still on board with the way the story’s been developing and give us all a chance to course-correct if we need to.

RAISE YOUR HAND

Speaking of making sure voices are heard: If you’ve got quiet players or players that don’t like to interrupt, creating a way for them to “raise their hand” when they want to interject is important. Personally, I keep a list of the PCs and put tick marks near their names as they take the spotlight. This helps me, as the GM, make sure everyone gets scenes and attention, but you could also institute a player-side mechanic depending on the chat program/VTT you’re using.

Roll20, for example, changes your character portrait based with a drop down menu. You could color code the portraits for folks who want to interject or take the spotlight. Zoom literally has a “raise hand” option.

TIME AND SPACE

Lastly, depending on your group, you’ll need patience in terms of timing and fictional spatial awareness. Just like during in-person games, one player may want a minute-by-minute accounting of their character’s actions while another might take a more, let’s say, narrative view on time, rushing through hours or maybe even days worth of tasks in a few descriptive sentences.

When you’re all together at a table, it’s easier to juggle the time stream, but even more, when you’re playing online, you need to make sure everyone else is aware of where and when their characters are. Consider taking a queue from video games and creating “overworld” maps to show characters’ general locations during downtime.

THE JOURNEY

This list isn’t exhaustive, obviously, and not every group will need every bit of advice given above, but even if you throw out all of the above, remember this one rule of thumb, and you won’t go wrong:

If you put as much care into all of the things surrounding your game as you do into preparing the actual game itself, then you’ll craft a wonderful experience.

After all, experience is more than the points that get handed out at the of the session. Experience is literally the friendships we make along the way.

This time around, I’m going to talk about the order in which you design your adventures. There are many takes on this, and loads of approaches to use. However, I’m going to focus in on what works for me. If it works for you, great! If you give it a try, and it doesn’t quite jive with how your creative processes work, that’s fine too.

As you can tell from the title of the article, I’m going to be talking about adventure design in the order of do the back of the book first, then work toward the front of the book, with one exception. I encourage to know where the story starts at a high level. Determine your location, setting, situation, and any NPCs needed for that opening scene. Don’t setup the story hook just yet. That’ll come later because the hook will point the PCs toward the Boss fight and the final scene.

Opening Scene

Figure out where in the world you want the PCs to start. This can be a village, a city, an outpost, a set of ruins, or some place that has a named marker on your overland map. Then, determine the specifics of where in that location you want the PCs to be when they get the hook. This could be a tavern, a temple, the village square, a row of merchants’ tents, or something similar.

Don’t determine your hook yet. The hook is a pointer to the first stop across many navigation points. You’ll need to determine where the PCs are going to go and what they’re going to face prior to pointing them in a direction. Not having your final location and scene determined is like shouting “ROAD TRIP!” and diving into the car without having a map or a plan. Sure, you might have some fun and adventures, but without that map, you’ll soon wonder where you’re going to end up. That’s not the best plan of action when it comes to planning out an adventure for your players.

The Boss

Figure out who the Big Bad Boss of your adventure is going to be. The world is your oyster, but make sure the Boss reflects that mood, tone, and theme of your adventure. If you’re going for a whimsical, humorous story about unrequited love, the Boss should probably not be an eldritch horror from the depths of the ocean. I mean, that could work, but the bar for success will be set very high.

Once you know who the Boss is, determine what they are trying to accomplish. Does the Boss want to perform a ritual to douse the sun for a full month? Does the Boss just want to open a portal to escape to another realm? Does the Boss want to open a gateway to summon horrific creatures from a far realm into the local area? Does the Boss want to take over a local trade route to make some coin? Perhaps the Boss is a spurned lover of a local NPC, and the Boss just wants to make that NPCs life as miserable as possible.

Whatever they are trying to do, it is paramount to also document why the Boss is trying to accomplish their goals. This motivation will allow you to adjust the Boss’s goals and approaches when the party gets in the way of the goals. A good Boss has a backup plan.

The Lieutenants

Once you know your Boss, go out and create or find appropriate Lieutenants for the adventure. It’s pretty rare that the party will beeline from the opening scene to the final location to confront the Boss. There are going to be obstacles, side treks, mini-quests, and other things to pull the party aside from going straight to the Boss’s lair and putting a good whippin’ on them. This is where the Lieutenants come into play. Depending on the length of your adventure, find some varied Lieutenants for the party to work their way through. A good range of headcount here is 1-3 Lieutenants. You can do more if the adventure is longer of if the party is going to encounter more than one Lieutenant in a single location.

The Underlings

All Bosses and Lieutenants need people to give orders to. Otherwise, they’re not very good at their jobs. This is where Underlings come into play. These people and creatures are generally more numerous and weaker in power than the Boss and Lieutenants that you’ve come up with.

Underlings can be absolutely loyal, completely fanatical, swords for hire, or thoroughly unreliable. They can also be a mix of those attributions, so there might be a chance for the PCs to undermine the Boss’s power structure by hiring away, cajoling into cooperation, or dominating into fleeing some groups of Underlings. Straight combat and slaughter of the Underlings will most likely happen in some encounters, but that gets boring if the Underlings’ sole purpose is to sap the PCs’ resources and hit points.

Final Location and Scene

Once you have your power structure of Boss, Lieutenants, and Underlings in place, you’ll need to figure out where the Boss is going to be encountered and who will be with them when the PCs finally arrive on the scene. This location needs to be discoverable by following a trail of clues, information, and signposts (not literally) that the PCs come across throughout the adventure. They need to be able to clearly traverse from the opening scene to the final location.

Document what the final scene will look like. Where is it? What does the room, set of rooms, complex, or arrangement of buildings look like? What’s the exterior and interior made of? Give some good, potent descriptions here of the setting that support your mood, tone, and theme.

Also figure out what else is going on here beyond “The Boss is waiting for the PCs to show up.” Areas always have activities going on, even when the PCs aren’t present. Figure out what those activities are to make your setting pop and come alive.

Work Back to Front

Have you ever cheated at solving a maze? Yeah. You. I’m looking at you. It seems to me that mazes are more difficult to solve if you start at the entrance and work your way to the exit. However, it just seems to be easier to go from the exit toward the entrance. Maybe it’s just me.

Once you have your final location, setting, and scene established, you can work your “adventure maze” backward toward the opening scene. You know where you are at the end. You should have an idea of what information the PCs need to get to that location. Where can they find that information? Build out that new location with proper setting, Lieutenants, Underlings, mood, tone, and theme.

Now you have a new location that the PCs will need information to get to. Where can they find that information? Hey! Now you have yet another location to detail.

Repeat the above process until you’ve followed the trail from back to front to get to the opening scene.

Set the Hook

The location of interest nearest the opening scene in the order of the story arc needs to be pointed to via information. This is your story hook. This is the first piece of pertinent information the party is going to receive. This is probably the most important piece of information the party is going to receive. If they ignore it, dismiss it, don’t latch onto it, or just plain miss it, then the adventure is dead in the water. You don’t want this to happen.

This means your opening salvo of information needs to be timely, pertinent to the PCs, actionable, achievable, and not too horribly risky at first glance. Once you have momentum in the story, your future bits of information can be helpful in nature, but if you can make each piece of information along the way as vital to the PCs as the opening story hook, all the better.

Up Next!

Next month, I’ll be talking more about backgrounds and factions. These will help you out in creating and setting that initial hook. If you have proper backgrounds and factions in place for the players to incorporate into their characters, then you can even develop multiple hooks for the various backgrounds and factions that all point in the same direction. This will make the start of your game even more potent! More on that next month, though.

One of my gaming groups plays a mashed up game with three genres: Highschool, Swashbuckling, and Urban Fantasy. We call it Children of the Shroud. In the game we play high school kids in a hidden magic world. As part of our magical learning we are part of the Junior Guardians club. It’s a club for magical students at our high school in Buffalo NY. Due to reasons, we got ourselves involved in trying to stop a magic prosperity cult who are using the in-game currency of a video game called Call of Violence to try and manifest a new primal elemental of prosperity. This in-game currency can be bought with real world money. Prosperity magic is outlawed by the magic cops because it can destroy the magical veil which helps hide the magical world from the normals out there. If those normals found out about the magical world they’d get really torch and pitchforky on the magic folks. 

Our characters are…interesting. My character, Silas, had his girlfriend’s essence bound to his soul when the campaign started and has been trying to make her whole again. Ti is a medusa in a really nice middle class family of medusas. Gunny just figured out he was a wind elemental and his dad isn’t dead, but some big bad criminal, or spy, or both. On top of that we can all manifest magical weapons that let us cast stronger and stronger spells the longer we fight, and two of us are also on the academic decathlon team at school, or the Knowledge Bowl team, as our friend Ti likes to say.

It’s a mashup. So let’s talk about how you can do something similar.

Pick Genres

First, pick three genres. Need a list? You can try TV tropes or here’s a bunch of genre’s to pick from: 

Action, Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Espionage, Fairy Tale, Hard SciFi, High Fantasy, High School, Historical, Horror, Low Fantasy, Martial Arts or Wuxia (It’s Woo-Shhaaa, say it with me, Woo. Shhaaa.) Mecha, Medical, Medieval, Modern, Mystery, Politics, Post-Apocalypse, Prehistoric (who doesn’t love a big old dinosaur), Psionics, your favorite version of the punk genre, Pulp, Science Fantasy, Soft SciFi, Space Opera, Sports (we need more sports RPGs), Suburbia, Super Heroes, Sword & Sorcery, Urban Fantasy, Western, Zombies AKA Hordes of shambling dead people where the shambling dead are the least dangerous thing.

Understand Your Genres

Second, understand what your genres are about. Let’s look at the Children of the Shroud game I mentioned. I’ll be quoting the Cortex Prime rule book for their take on the first two genres:

High School: Teenagers are complicated, and so are the adults that share their worlds, especially when the drama is dialed all the way up because of exams, proms, drugs, and bullies.

Swashbuckler: Icons of this genre are pirates, musketeers, and scoundrels, but it really extends to anything where the characters engage in flashy exploits, daring escapes, over the top swordfights, and perilous relationships.

There isn’t an Urban Fantasy genre in the Cortex book but here’s my best take on it.

Urban Fantasy: often deals with a world of magic in a modern setting. Most Urban Fantasy has a mystery at the center of these stories, leaning on its roots in noir fiction, but the genre is primarily about mixing the magical with a mundane world and seeing how they interact. The PCs should also have one foot in both the magical and mundane worlds.

Fit Those Genres Together – Largest Step

Third, try and look at how the genres can fit together. This examination also lets you take a genre to a different sub genre or lets you add a sub genre. Once again, here’s how we did it with Children of the Shroud.

In our Children of the Shroud game we decided everyone would have a magical weapon of some sort that they manifested, and the weapon would generate mana as it was wielded through different forms for combat magic. That was the intersection of Swashbuckling and Urban Fantasy. It also let me push a bit of the high school magic animes I enjoy into the game.

We decided we wanted ritual magic that took longer to use but was more flexible than combat magic and could produce a variety of effects. This strictly fits the Urban Fantasy genre.

Our GM, and fellow Gnome, Phil, created something called the Shroud, which hid the magical world from the mundane world but it could be strained if magic was used too blatantly. This also meant there was a governing body over magic in the world (the Veil), who helped maintain the Shroud and investigated and prosecuted those who sought to expose the Shroud or use magic in a way that would harm it. This pushed us to a hidden magical world as part of our urban fantasy genre. 

To help make this hidden world, urban fantasy, and high school genre even more poignant and overlapped, we placed the parents of our characters as part of this magical society in some way. On top of that, Gunny’s player decided his mother doesn’t know anything about the magical world, creating some hidden world genre tension.

Next we crafted mechanics that pulled in school cliques to highlight the high school school side of play. We called them Roles. This is a feature of Cortex Prime. Our Roles trait set includes Emo, Geek, Jock, Popular, and Performer. They provided attributes, but also our social standing in different school cliques. This is predominantly a highschool thing, but the mechanics also played into the action parts of our swashbuckling since Jock and Geek were used in our dueling rules.

We also decided our high school would be mostly mundane, but there would be a special club called the Junior Guardians that was a cover for the magical teens attending the school. This club would be where they got their magical education. This hits the high school and urban fantasy genres along with that hidden world sub genre.

Lastly, we have our important relationships. We started with two in the magical world and two in the mundane world to keep up the idea of being in both worlds from Urban Fantasy. Also, because one of the genres is Swashbuckling our GM decided to also do their best to make some of those relationships dangerous in a variety of ways.

There’s actually more to it than that, I just threw a bunch of examples of what we did at you. If you break it down there’s really just three things the group needs to consider and one extra the GM should keep in mind. Time for a sub list.

Setting

Your setting should do its best to find these overlaps. As human beings we’re pretty good at finding the patterns and intersections where these different genres and their setting elements can intersect. Just ask yourself a few questions such as:

• Where are the predominant locations the game will take place?
• Who are the important NPCs and how do they fit into the setting?
• Why are people or organizations doing what they’re doing? What’s their motivation?
• Where is the tension and conflict in the setting and how can it be related to the genres being used?

That’s just off the top of my head. Add questions that work best for your group and creative style.

Situation

An addendum to the setting would be situation. What is the initial situation the characters find themselves in or what is the overall situation the game assumes the characters will be involved in? Some folks think of this as a scenario or plot but it’s a little higher level than that. It’s more of a guideline for the players so they more easily craft characters inside the campaign. It also gives starting tensions, problems, and ways for the GM to provide meaningful hooks for the PCs.

In our Children of the Shroud game we were all a part of the Junior Guardians, which meant we had Junior Guardian missions we had to take part in. On top of that we had personal goals the GM ok’ed as part of the initial situation. Silas had his girlfriend Meseme’s essence bound to his soul and was dealing with the fallout from that. Gunny had just discovered he was magical, and that his dead father wasn’t dead and was also magical.

Mechanics

Your mechanics need to find ways to fit the overlaps. Cortex Prime made this easier because we built a game using the Cortex Legos. It was a little more upfront work but made for a very fun experience.The relationships, the roles, our dueling rules, how magic affected the Shroud, and our magic ritual rules all touched on the genres we chose in some way.

You can look around for a game that just does what you’re looking for. If you want a pulpy weird west with a dash of horror game, you can play Deadlands. But if you’re trying something where it’s not quite as obvious, or there’s not a game that fits what you’re looking for, it’s time to break out some house rules, hacks, and drifts. It’s a whole discussion on it’s own, but here’s a couple ideas for how to go about it:

• Utilize the core mechanisms of the game to build the things you believe you need to make the game fit the genre.
• Adapt mechanics and ideas from other games to the game you prefer.
• Combine the above two ideas.

What I would advise against is excluding rules for things that would be important to the genre and just leaving it up to interactions at the table. Of course, if your table is ok with GM fiat as a final arbiter for important decisions and moments in the game, then you should do that. Every table is different in what they enjoy.

Characters

Your characters should be crafted with the genres in mind, along with the above mentioned situation. Genres have character tropes that fit inside of them and story tropes which help drive character action. Here’s a solid way to come up with an interesting character for a genre mash game. Let’s do an original from Children of the Shroud:

• Start with a character archetype from one of the genres or pick two and mash them together
  • Manic Pixie Girl with sleep magic (High School / Urban Fantasy) She’s very pro Veil (Hidden World)
• Put a spin on it
  • She’s really pretty anxious about talking to people about things that matter unless it’s in her dream space. (High School / Urban Fantasy)
• Pick some kind of story arc you’d like your character to go on
  • Will she still see the Veil as the bastion of order, law, and good she believes it to be after working inside of it? (Swashbuckling / Urban Fantasy)
• Then play to the motivations of the character, the ideas of the trope, the idea of the story arc, and the spin.

The above example isn’t really an original, it’s a character named Bo who’s a much more prominent NPC in our game these days. She’s part of the Junior Guardians which is how our PCs know her, and she went to the Prom with Ti. This is just the story I would envision for her if I was playing her.

Together these steps will give a way to make a character that fits into the game you’ve mashed together.

Scenarios

Lastly, let’s talk about Scenarios. It’s actually the easiest part because you just look at the plots and tropes those kinds of genre stories have and build scenarios utilizing them as foundations. Then you can add some interesting bits from your characters, setting, and situation, utilizing your genre tropes where appropriate, and you have yourself a genre mashed scenario.

Phil did this quite expertly in our 3rd Children of the Shroud story, Smarty Pants. We started with an academic decathlon against a rival school (High School). Silas spied a student on the opposing team, Lowell Thornton, using a magical Altoid to give himself a temporary intellect boost during their one-on-one trivia battle. Thing is, Lowell isn’t magical (Urban Fantasy). On top of that, before we started the story Phil asked us about how we knew our friend Morris who died at a party at Lowell’s house this past summer, drowning in Lowell’s pool (Swashbuckling – Perilous Relationship). I told Phil my character was really tight with Morris, who was the one who introduced Silas to Meseme, my girlfriend whose soul is cohabiting my body (Highschool / Urban Fantasy). We come to find out that the Altoids were imbued with the essence of Morris, who had his soul sucked out of him in a magical ritual (Urban Fantasy). So now our characters are running down who sold the Altoids to Lowell which leads to who tried to kill Meseme in the same way (Swashbuckling / Urban Fantasy). During the entire story Silas is having emotional anger issues. His friends are doing what they can to deal with it, but tensions are high (High School). There’s a running battle in the park with one of the essence dealers, but she gets away (Swashbuckling). Hard conversations are had but eventually Silas’s friends, Ti and Gunny, help Silas commune with Meseme within his soul, which helps calm him down, and three are able to track down and bring some of the people involved with taking people’s essence to justice(High School / Urban Fantasy). This was, of course, in a huge sword fight in an abandoned asylum for the mentally ill in the city of Buffalo, NY (Swashbuckling). Yes, we have one of those here. It’s real.

Now that you have the list, here’s the most important thing to keep in mind. These items aren’t necessarily done in order. You’ll most likely need to bounce around to each of them, getting little bits of information, making choices, asking questions, and filling things out until you have a clear enough picture to proceed with whatever might be the next logical step in your genre mashup.

Session 0 or Session -1

To help this process you might want to gather your game group for this genre mash. Session 0’s are great for this, or even session -1 where you’re just hashing out the above items. There’s a lot to talk about, but here’s a starting list of things to think about when having this discussion.

Genre

• Which genres are we going to use?
• What do the genres mean to each person? 
• Where do the genres overlap?

Setting

• What do the genre overlaps mean for the setting? 
• Is the setting original or something created whole cloth? 
• Who’s building or deciding on the setting? Is it a group effort? Is the GM going to take point and get input from the rest of the group, or will you use some other methodology? 
• What’s the initial situation for the characters going to look like?

Mechanics

• What mechanics are you going to use? 
• How do they fit your genre mashup? 
• How don’t they fit your genre mashup? 
• Are you planning on hacking them to make them fit better? 

It can feel like a lot, but I find this kind of effort to be a fun creative exercise, regardless of whether you’re doing most of it alone or with your group. In my experience, if you just follow the flow of answers and questions as they come up, and refer to the above questions as you find yourself getting stuck, you’ll have a pretty easy time with this.

I will provide one more bit of advice. If you’re the GM and are doing this exercise with your group, I would suggest facilitating this part just like you run the game. Ask a question, get some answers, take some notes. Always do your best to provide and get clarifications on things that are said. Also, don’t be afraid to say no to things that don’t fit together, or ask the group how those pieces that don’t look like they fit together actually do fit together. You should do your best to control the pace and when things bog down, utilize the people in your group to get unstuck.

I just want to say thanks if you’ve read this far. Let me recap the steps I think about when putting together a genre mash game.

Recap

First, pick three genres.

Second, understand what your genres are about.

Third, try and look at how the genre’s can fit together and if you need to take a genre to a slightly different sub genre. When doing this you should think about these things:

• Setting. The people, places, important history, and current events of the game. These should all reinforce one or more of the genres.
• Situation. This is the initial set of circumstances the characters will find themselves in.
• Characters. Player characters that fit inside the genre and can be protagonists in the game.
• Mechanics. Mechanisms and procedures that make sense with and enhance the genres of the game you’re playing.
• Scenario. Build scenarios using the aforementioned elements along with the plots and story beats used in the genres you’re mashing up.

Once you’ve done that you have yourself a genre mashed game.

Now let me ask you. What kind of Genre Mashups have you put together? How did you do it? How would you enhance what I’ve presented?

When starting to design an adventure for your home group, the first things I always consider are the mood, tone, and theme of the adventure. This will dictate all design decisions, descriptions, monsters included, sometimes the treasure gained, and the general aesthetics of everything I create for the adventure.

Before I jump in, you’ll note that I’m leaving genre out of this list because I’m assuming you already have an established genre for the game you’re running for your group. If you’re working with a “clean slate” (meaning no campaign in flight for this adventure), then you really should determine the genre(s) you’re going to take into account for this adventure. Picking the genre first will drive many of the tropes, assumptions, styles, and approaches for storytelling within the adventure.

Having said all of that, I’m going to delve into mood, tone, and theme, in that order. I truly feel that one leads to the next that leads to the next. I always do them in this order.

Mood

This is the emotional resonance of the adventure. This encompasses the presentation of the material and the feels you want to evoke in your players by way of their characters’ experiences. I highly encourage you to head over to David Hodder’s web site and look at the top “emotion wheel” he has posted there. You’ll start with the innermost level of the wheel and pick an emotion. Then drill toward the outer edges to find more precise emotions.

I recommend having several moods/emotions chosen for your adventure, but make sure they’ll mesh together or have one lead to another. Sometimes, an adventure can present different moods at different stages of the adventure. Perhaps the adventure starts with a village celebration (jubilation) that gets invaded by nearby ravagers (panic) until the party of adventurers restores calm (content). However, during the invasion, the beloved mayor of the village is slain (rage/hate), so the adventurers take it upon themselves to venture into the nearby wilderness to put an end to the ravagers once and for all (stimulated). When they successfully return from their mission (satisfied), the villagers heap glory and accolades upon them (relieved/passion).

Tone

The tone of the adventure is how things are presented to the GM and the players. I’m assuming the GM is you, so you’ll want to make sure your notes, ideas, writings, and concepts reflect the tone you want to present to the players. By approaching your writing of notes with a specific tone in mind, you’ll be more consistent in your presentation of that tone to the players.

Some examples of tones for adventures are:

• Optimistic
• Pessimistic
• Joyful
• Sadness
• Fearful
• Hopeful
• Humorous
• Serious
• Horrific
• Mundane
• Warmongering
• Peaceful
• Weird
• Normal

Theme

The theme of your adventure can, I would argue should, borrow from literary themes. They are well-established, well-researched, and in many places are thoughtfully presented for your education. There are numerous lists of themes on the Internet. A quick search for “story themes” will produce gobs of results. Set a timer for 20-30 minutes before doing any research like this to avoid wasting hours down “the Internet rabbit hole.”

The lists of literary themes are so numerous and lengthy, I’m not going to try and reproduce them here. Instead, I’m giving you the above homework of doing your own research. I just don’t have the space or word count here to even sum up themes that can be applied to adventure creation.

Most of the themes are going to reflect how your PCs interact with the events and situations in your adventure. If you come up with your theme and then design an encounter that doesn’t support or mirror that theme, then the encounter might feel like a waste of time to the PCs. If you can tie every setting, every encounter, most NPCs, and the story arcs to your theme, the adventure will feel more like a cohesive whole rather than random bits tied together with string.

Taking my above example of the ravagers attacking the village during a celebration followed by the PCs tracking down the ravagers in the wilderness and putting an end to them, I would propose that my theme should be something along the lines of “righteous justice.” However, if I shift things around a bit and have the ravagers motivated by their leader’s love for the mayor’s daughter, the theme can change to “unrequited love.” If the daughter loves the leader back, it changes again to “fated love.” If there is no love element in the story arc, but the ravagers are going through a famine and just needed some food the villagers wouldn’t (or couldn’t) sell to the men and women in the wilderness, then you have a “survival” theme. This can be especially true if the famine of the wilderness is creeping toward the village and its farmlands.

The key is to pick a theme to run with, so that it can properly inform and color your story as you put the pieces together.

Changes Over Arcs

I’m also going to add on here that if you have multiple “acts” or “story arcs” within your adventure, you can have a different theme (or mood or tone) for each act of the adventure. I’m mainly working off the assumption that your adventure is a single act, but if it’s longer, then you can definitely have multiple choices going on here. The longer your adventure, the more opportunity you have to explore different aspects of storytelling within your plans.

Stay Tuned!

Next month, I’m going to tackle a concept that I came up with (though it’s probably not unique) called “designing back to front.” I hope you liked this article and stick with me for the next one.

Pass it along…

Face to face, out in the heat, hanging tough, staying hungry…

                                                                                                                                             — Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”

In a proud GM Dad moment, my eldest daughter just ran her first RPG session as a Game Master! I let her be, but stayed close enough to answer the occasional question, and by all accounts and an enthusiastic reception from her players she did a great job!

While preparing for her first session, she asked me a lot of questions. I answered them as best I could and thought that incorporating that advice into a single primer might help. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to finish this before she started running, but I thought I’d finish it anyway and put it here in the hopes that someone reading this might find it useful.

In terms of background, I’m coming at this from the POV of a Call of Cthulhu Keeper (GM), as that is what my daughter was running. Thus, my headspace was focused on investigative adventures, but I’ve tried to make the advice universally applicable.

So, without further ado…

Trust your group.

This is a big one and I think should be stated first. Unless you are running a convention game, you are probably playing with your friends, friends who understand that this is your first time taking the chair. They know that it’s a big responsibility and they’ll be willing to cut you a lot of slack. They’re happy that you’re willing to run a game for them. So, relax and don’t worry about being judged!

Note that this holds true for convention games, too. Believe it or not, many attendees who join convention games are home GMs who are happy to be players for a while. In any event, most of your players are getting used to playing with each other as much as you, so don’t think that a quiet table is an unhappy table. Everyone needs a little time to feel things out.

Expect to make mistakes.

You’re going to make mistakes, probably lots of them. But that’s okay. As a new GM, you’ve got a lot to keep track of and a responsibility to guide the session. You’re going to get tripped up here and there. Your players know that, and they’ll be fine with it. Again, they’re happy that you’re trying your hand at running!

And here’s a dirty little secret (or not so secret): we veteran GMs make mistakes too! The best advice I can give is not to hide it when you mess up. Nothing eases the stress on you like admitting that you made a mistake. If it’s something that didn’t derail the adventure, then just note the mistake and keep going. If it adversely affected the players, then compensate them and move on.

Be fair in your rulings.

While your players are going to give you their trust, it is up to you to keep it. A good way to do that is to be fair in your rulings. Note that “rulings” aren’t “rules,” they are how you run the game and apply the rules. As long as your decisions feel rational and you apply your rulings fairly, you should maintain the trust of your group.

It’s okay to take advice from your players regarding rules or rulings, but don’t let things get bogged down if a quick ruling keeps things moving. Ultimately, the rules are simply there to help you make decisions. Just make a decision for now and look up the rule after the session. You can apply the rule in the future.

Only appeal to chance when it matters.

Players generally want their characters to be competent. They don’t want to create a martial arts expert that gets easily clubbed unconscious by a purse-wielding senior or a scientist that doesn’t know basic chemistry. An easy way to do this is to simply assume competence when the act ultimately doesn’t matter or when the task seems too easy to fail. On the flip side, you can also say “no” when a character tries to do something that is obviously beyond their capabilities.

This is especially important if you’re running an investigative adventure. If your characters are investigating a crime scene, then they should be able to find any obvious clues as well as clues that they would know to look for. Nothing kills an adventure dead like the players not being able to follow leads because their character missed a skill roll to find a necessary piece of evidence!

There may be times when you’ll want the players to roll but you also need them to succeed. Keep in mind that you don’t have to make the roll a pass-fail test. It may be that if they fail, then they still succeed but draw some sort of complication. For example, if a character fails a roll on an internet search, then you may rule that they found the information only after wasting all night surfing and now they’re exhausted the next day.

Roll in the open.

This one isn’t truly necessary, as there is a long tradition of GMs rolling dice behind screens, but rolling in the open does two things. First, it fosters trust between you and your players that you are keeping things fair. Second, if you know that you’ll be rolling in the open, then you’ll also make sure that you’re only calling for rolls when you can accept the result. If you can’t, then why are you leaving it to chance?

Know the basic beats of your adventure.

Hopefully, you’ve done your prep work on your adventure. If you designed it yourself, then you’ve already internalized it. If you are using an adventure that you didn’t create, then you’ll want to read it at least twice (three is better!).

After reading the adventure, make a quick flowchart that follows the basic beats of the adventure and note where player choice matters. This flowchart doesn’t have to be very detailed, just enough to remind you of where the adventure is heading and how to guide the players back if they take their characters too far afield.

If the players need to meet a key NPC, find a crucial clue, or otherwise need a McGuffin to get to the next part of the adventure, then you’ll want to note that on the flowchart as well. That way, the flowchart will remind you of the important things you need to introduce along the way.

Keep things moving…

One of the worst things that you can do as a GM, new or veteran, is to allow the players to be stumped for too long. Sometimes what is obvious to you isn’t obvious to them, or they’ve simply discarded a clue that’s important because it doesn’t fit their theories. This can lead to unnecessary frustration.

Don’t be afraid to offer guidance. Sometimes, you can simply remind them of what they’ve found or offer suggestions to follow leads. A gentle reminder that they never visited the business on the matchbook they found, or they never thought to check the hills for the goblin encampment may be enough to get them moving without feeling like you handed it to them.

Also, don’t be afraid to end an encounter early if the conclusion is obvious. If the player characters are wiping the floor with kobolds, then you can simply say that they’ve finished them off without having to waste another 15 minutes. If an NPC isn’t going to give the players the information they want, then you don’t need to wait 10 minutes while the players keep asking questions.

…But don’t railroad.

If you’ve played RPGs for any length of time, then you’ve probably heard about the dreaded “railroad.” Simply put, railroading is whenever you take agency away from the players in situations where they believe that they should have agency. If the players are going to follow the adventure, it should be because it feels logical, or at least rational, for them to do so.

A good way to counter this is to always offer an open-ended option whenever you offer suggestions. “So, do you want to go to the business on the matchbook, follow up on Mr. Tanner’s interrogation, or do something else?” reminds the players of leads they haven’t followed but also tells them that you’re willing to go with whatever they decide.

Simplify the rules and internalize them.

Note that while I think most GMs get intimidated by the rules, I’ve made rules the lowest on the list of priorities. That’s because rules are the responsibility of everyone around the table, especially given that most out-of-game arguments during play tend to be about rules.

You don’t need to commit an entire rulebook to memory, but you should internalize the basic mechanic. Don’t worry about side cases. You can always make rulings until you’re more familiar with those rules. Just remember that point above about being fair!

In Dungeons & Dragons, for example, most tests involve rolling a d20 and adding modifiers to meet or exceed a target number. That, along with granting advantage or disadvantage, is enough for you to run a session with little trouble.

You’re supposed to be having fun, too!

This is not so much a guideline but a reminder. As a GM, you aren’t supposed to sacrifice fun; you are simply trading one type of fun for another. You get to see all the behind-the-scenes plotting, enjoy having the players interact with your adventure and make creative (and sometimes bone-headed!) decisions, play a bunch of NPCs, and overall control the flow of the adventure. It can be a blast!

Your players have a responsibility to ensure that you’re having fun, too. While there will certainly be times that a player doesn’t agree with you, they should respect your ultimate decisions. If things become too aggravating or frustrating, then it’s better to take a break or even shut down a campaign until those issues are resolved.

Wrapping Up

While taking the GM Chair can seem intimidating and even overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. Hopefully, the advice above is helpful in showing you that it’s possible to ease into GMing and, hopefully, lead to your guiding friends through many new adventures!

And as a final (and most important) reminder, GMing is not something to be tolerated, it is meant to be enjoyed!

That is the problem I was having. In a few weeks, my high school gaming group is having a reunion, and we wanted to play some games. One of our group’s main games was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Rather than run TMNT, I offered Mutants in the Now, which I think is a better overall game. It will be a one-shot, and likely time bound to 4-6 hours. The scenario I wanted was a raid on an island of the evil genius Dr. Feral. But planning…

Other games have done a good job of designing around planning, but Mutants in the Now does not have any direct planning rules. So I started to think, what if we didn’t plan everything but the group just made some choices? That is when I got the idea for Plan by Mad Libs. So let’s talk about it. 

What are Mad Libs?

A Mad Lib is a word game where one player asks for certain words – a noun, a verb, etc – with little or no context. The words are plugged into pre-written text. After all the words have been collected, the person reads the text, which often results in a silly, but entertaining narrative. For more info see:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Libs
• https://www.madlibs.com/

What is a Plan?

A plan is defined as a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something. There is an objective, and there are the steps to achieve that objective. Typically when this is done in RPGs the group knows or decides the objective, and then works to figure out the steps. This often results in iterative discussions as details that are discussed prompt a new discussion about older details. It can be time-consuming, frustrating, and boring. 

Plan By Mad Libs

The idea is to use the Mad Lib format to streamline planning so that we can quickly define the plan and move on to its execution, where the characters are taking action. 

To do this, I needed to take some of the agency from the players, for the sake of time. That is, I needed to come up with the pre-written text – the plan for how the characters would raid the island. I did this using a simple story framework for a typical raid kind of story. The plan would need info on infiltration, a diversion, achieving the objective, and exfiltration from the island. 

The blanks could then be the WHO and in some cases the HOW. Those choices could be left to the players so that they could customize the framework and make the plan theirs. 

Here is an example of how I used the WHO to define the infiltration to the island:

We first have to get onto Dr. Feral’s island. NAME will smuggle themselves aboard Kris Pierce’s yacht in Miami, and arrive on the island at the docks. At the same time, NAME and NAME will take a private flight out of Ft. Lauderdale and will parachute onto the southeast grasslands with our backup gear. NAME got a job as a bodyguard for Linda Davenport and will arrive on the island as part of her entourage, and will be at the arena. 

Here is an example of how I used the HOW for the diversion:

While that is going on, WHO will go to the CHOOSE (DOCKS, AIRSTRIP, POWER STATION) to cause a diversion by BLANK (ACTION or METHOD). 

Implementing the Plan By Mad Libs

The full plan is written as if one of the characters is going over the plan with the rest of the group (this was highly inspired by a scene from the A-Team movie). The players will fill out the Mad Lib plan and then one of them will read it back to the group. As soon as it’s read, we can jump right into playing.

Advantages of Planning by Mad Libs

There are a few advantages to this. The first is that it should be quick. Filling in the blanks won’t take long and we should be up and running quickly. Second, the plan is written out and on the table while we play. There is little chance people will forget the plan with it there on the table. Third, I can prep for the plan, which means that I can add some nice mechanical details that I might miss if I was ad-libbing based on a plan made at the table. Fourth, I can roughly manage the duration of the game based on the size of the plan I write.

Kind of Sounds Like A Railroad

Not really. Of course, there will be twists in the plan – some from me and others through the actions of the characters – and that I will manage while we play. The players can abandon the plan as soon as we start, or they can follow it all the way through. Both work.

The goal of the Mad Lib plan wasn’t to control the whole adventure, it was to minimize planning and get into the execution of the plan. The Mad Lib plan accomplishes that goal. 

One-Shots vs. Campaigns

For sure, this idea works great for one-shots, but could it work for a campaign? I think so, if the players were to buy into the concept. Hijacking a bit of agency in a one-shot is not that big of a deal, but in a campaign it could be more of a complex topic. 

I think it would work in a campaign where planning was not the norm, where the core loop of the game is something other than planning and for a specific story there needs to be a plan, and you use the Mad Libs format to streamline things so that the story goes smoothly. For instance, I would not use this for a Night’s Black Agents op, but I might use it for a one-off supers heist in the Marvel Multiverse game. 

Anything But Planning

Planning is not a fun activity in most RPGs. There are a lot of ways modern designers are trying to reduce or remove planning from games, all for the better. That said, there are plenty of games out there that need a design for minimizing planning. For those games, something like a Mad Lib plan can help.

I hope that this Mad Lib plan will help my table come up with an interesting and entertaining plan that unfolds into an exciting session. 

How do you manage planning at your table? Would you try a Mad Lib plan?

We know the meme: players latch onto the most insignificant goblin of a side character and ignore the walking plot hook in the fancy cloak. They’ll obsess over the most minor, minute details of a crime scene while completely missing the big obvious clue tacked to the board on the wall. They’ll squander all their time in the big city shopping and negotiating the price of a room instead of following the leads to the cultist sewer hideout you ever so painstakingly laid out for them.

The meme is funny because it’s true, but it can also be exhausting, especially if you’re not running a sandbox campaign and must steer your party back toward the plot. (And double-especially if you’re a newer GM or the type of GM that doesn’t handle curve balls well.)

Thankfully, there are techniques we can use to mitigate the “side character cinnamon bun effect,” as I like to call it. And if your players are stubborn, and you can’t seem to redirect their energy, there are ways to harness their attention for the benefit of your campaign.

It all boils down to how you describe things.

EYES AND EARS

As the GM, you are your players’ eyes, ears, and other senses. The choices you make when describing your game literally build the way they perceive their characters’ world, and their perceptions of the world will determine their actions. When they latch onto the wrong thing, be it the goblin barkeep instead of the mysterious figure in the corner, or the stale corner of bread instead of the bloody murder weapon, nine times out of 10, it’s a failure of description. Either you’ve got too much, too little, or the wrong kind altogether.

Let’s break ’em down, look at where things go wrong, and talk about how we can course-correct when they do.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION

Imagine this: your characters arrive in a big city. A central trading hub on the coast, bustling with merchants and guilds and religious orders, tourists, and travelers of all sorts. It’s a big change from their time blazing trails in the wilderness. It makes sense you’d want to describe everything from the ramparts to the docks to the magical castle in the center of town. But what happens after you spend five minutes recounting all the wonders the city has to offer?

Instead of dashing off like kids at Disney World, taking in all the wonderful and dangerous streets and districts you’ve prepared, your players immediately ask for the nearest inn and haggle over the cost of a night’s stay.

They could be playing in the moment and just want to establish a home base for their time in town. Or, it could be, in your attempt to impress upon them the grandeur of the location, you’ve overloaded them with information, and they don’t see the forest for the trees (so to speak).

If you find yourself constantly relaying a ton of descriptive information to your players only to be met with blank stares and “ummmms” when asked what they want to do next, you likely need to pare back what you’re relaying.

HOW TO FIX IT

Fixing too much information is kinda simple and really fun, and it’s all thanks to two little psychological tricks known as the primacy and immediacy effects. Basically, when we’re presented with a list of information, we’re going to remember the first thing we heard and the last thing we heard. The stuff in the middle? Might as well toss it into the sea. There are exceptions to this, obviously, but in general – first thing, last thing. Those are what’ll stick.

So let’s use these psychological effects to our advantage when we’re describing the city (or any other important aspect of the game world) by first making sure the two most essential elements we want to relay – in our example, the size and the sewers – come first and last. Then, we can devote extra time to describing those particular aspects while glossing over the stuff in the middle.

For example: “The port city sprawls out from the ocean like a giant squid that’s beached itself on the shore. The buildings fill your field of view, stretching from nearly one end of the horizon to the other.” (We’ve started by emphasizing the size.) “As sailors, merchants, and other citizens go about their busy days…” (And glossed over the unimportant details.)” You notice something odd – one of the metal grates covering the entrance to the sewer system has been pried open, and a trail of muddy footprints lead inside.” (And dropped the details about the sewer cult.)

TOO LITTLE INFORMATION

When your players seem to be latching onto random NPCs and making their own trouble when you want them to follow up the plot threads you think you’ve been subtly laying down for them, they’re likely suffering from a lack of information.

If I’ve learned one thing in over twenty years of running games, it’s this: when it comes to laying hints and clues for my PCs to follow, however subtle I think I’m being, I’m actually being 100x more obscure. Subtlety is an excellent technique for many, many forms of entertainment – a good mystery novel, a tense costume drama, a black-box stage play – but TTRPGs are not enhanced by subtlety.

HOW TO FIX IT

There’s an old marketing adage that says a customer must encounter information about your product 7 times before deciding to purchase it. It’s an old adage because the number of times has increased dramatically in the 21st century, but specifics aside, it’s still a good rule of thumb for how often you need to drop hints and describe clues before your players will start picking up what you’re putting down.

If you’re nudging your characters in the direction of a plot, repeat the hooks often throughout a single session. If you want them to realize the conspiracy to overthrow the king signals their allegiance by wearing the colors green and gold, then do not mention the green and gold robes of a single NPC once and then, four sessions later, note the streaks of green and gold dyed hair of the assassin NPC. That’s not enough repetition of information.

Instead, talk about a whole gaggle of green and gold-clothed individuals taking up a corner of the local cafe. Mention the proliferation of green and gold decorations in windows. The banners hanging from horses and wagons. The scarfs and hats worn by a large number of people in the city.

Don’t be subtle. Hit them over the head with the descriptions and then reiterate. Reiterate. Reiterate.

THE WRONG KIND COMPLETELY

This description faux pas is often some combination of the first two, and one I’ve personally fallen into numerous times throughout my tenure as a GM. What usually happens is you get so wrapped up in the description of a scene, focusing in loving detail on the fauna of the forest or the tapestries in the library or whatever your current personal fixation happens to be, that you completely forget to describe the important elements needed for your players to grok what’s going on in the scene.

I can’t tell you how often I’ve forgotten to describe a book, lever, or some other essential item while I was caught up describing the intricately designed marble fountain. And so, of course, my players focus on the fountain. I spent so much time describing it, it has to be important right?

Oops.

HOW TO FIX IT

Course correcting this error is easy-ish, depending on what you’ve prepped. Of course, the best option is to avoid mistakes altogether by keeping notes on important details so you don’t get away from yourself.

If you’re the type of GM who likes to prepare their descriptions beforehand, read them back a few times with a critical eye and make sure you’re hitting the important bits. If you’re like me and prefer to come up with most of your descriptions on the fly, give yourself some bullet points so you don’t get too carried away.

If, however, you find yourself far afield from where you intended, all is not lost. The easiest in-the-moment way to fix the wrong kind of description is to alter your plans and make that fountain the scene’s focus.

Sometimes, a little ripple like that can throw off your entire prep work, though, so in those instances, call for a perception check (and maybe fudge the results if you need to), and voila! The clever PCs have seen through your red herring and found the real clue that was totally there the whole time…

YOUR PLAYERS’ GIFT TO YOU: When Things Go Wrong

No one is going to nail their descriptions perfectly every time. And no group of players will stay on task 100% of the time, either. But when your players do decide to focus on the side character or the detail of minor importance, take it as the gift that it is: this is them telling you what they find exciting and compelling.

That’s not a failure; it’s valuable information that you can take back to your prep and use to your advantage the next time you run a game.

PRACTICING WHAT WAS PREACHED

Since there was a lot of information in this article, I thought taking some of the key points and repeating them would be helpful. Remember, when it comes to description, you should:

• Keep it short and direct
• Reiterate
• Reiterate
• Reiterate
• Ensure you focus on the important bits

What about you? When was the last time your players latched onto a completely unexpected minor detail and derailed your entire prep? Let us know in the comments section below!