I love a good front. Of all the tools to come out of Powered by the Apocalypse games, fronts are probably one of my favorites. (Second only to clocks, really.) Because fronts allow me to keep track of everything from the arrival of the catastrophic doomsday event to the minor rival NPC’s petty revenge plot, and they give me the tools I need to not only figure out what the bad guys are up to but also how they’re going about their nefarious deeds.

(Confession: Even though I’ve read a bunch of Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games, I’ve only ever run a single session of one (the original version of Dream Askew), and I’m pretty sure I ran it completely bass-ackwards. And yet my love of fronts endures.)

You know what else I love? Putting my PCs in positions of power. I love foisting eldritch artifacts or ancient magics onto their shoulders. I take glee in giving them influence within an important organization and seeing what they’ll do. It allows me to ask tough questions about how and when they use their great power responsibly (thanks, Uncle Ben). Plus, it gives my players the power to enact real change in the game – something all of us can sometimes feel powerless to do in our real lives. (My group’s go-to power fantasy is making the world a better place.)

These two loves, though – they are at odds with each other. At least, they are when it comes to my villains’ devious plotting because those fronts happen in the background. Yes, I can write down that Professor Bad Guy’s Ultimate Plan of Evil has six steps, and I can plant clues throughout the game’s narrative that could potentially lead my characters to put the pieces together and figure out his plan.

Still, I can be an anxious GM at times, worrying that my clues are too obtuse or that my players will reach the wrong conclusion. And if I fail to deliver, then they’ll fail to figure it out in time, and The Ultimate Plan will succeed without the players having had a chance to thwart it.

Now, I know some games have done a wonderful job of systematizing when fronts advance. Still, when you’re porting the concept into a game that doesn’t already have them baked into the mechanics, you’re basically running that background minigame on vibes. And on the one hand the GM can basically do whatever they want (as long as it serves the story and creates a good time for their players).

But on the other hand, the GM can basically do whatever they want, and oh gods, I was already working with themes of using power responsibly, so now I’m second-guessing my second guesses!

GIVE THEM A WAR ROOM

Fronts are meant to be a GM-facing tool — a little mini-game the GM plays with themself between sessions. When I run games, I like to flip it around and, instead, give the players a “war room.”

Maybe it’s an actual war room in the command center of their base. Maybe it’s an oracle-like NPC or familiar that keeps track of their enemies’ actions. Maybe it’s the murder board in their detectives’ office. Regardless, all of these war rooms have one thing in common – the threat map.

Just like fronts, the threat map is a big circle with all of the campaign’s (known) threats arranged around it like a clock. At the center of the circle are the PCs (or their town, their ship, their community, what-have-you). Each threat has it’s own number of steps, and as those steps are completed, they get filled in from the outer rim, moving towards the PCs in the center.

At the end of each session, I show my players the threat map, and together, we discuss what threats they addressed and those threats don’t advance (or get crossed off if they eliminated it).

The ones they didn’t deal with, though. Those tick down. Getting closer and closer to completion.

Of course, the threat map is fluid. As they discover more threats, they’re added to it. When they eliminate one of the threats, it’s removed.

A war room with a threat map gives your players several things – it gives the players a feeling of control (or at least the potential to feel in control), it gives them a way to prioritize the most immediate threats in the game world, and gives them a core list from which they can build out what they know about the villains’ schemes. It basically gives them a quest log.

Depending on the tone of the game and just how many enemies the players have made, I may also introduce a mitigation mechanic – some way for them to delay a threat without actually dealing with it in the session. Sometimes, it’s a die role at the end of the game. Other times, it’s a resource cost. (This is also a great place to use an NPC delegation system.)

Because while the threat map can keep your players focused on the main tasks at hand, it can sometimes make them too focused. Any mitigation mechanic you introduce will allow them to breathe and indulge in ancillary role-play that wanders a bit.   

IT’S NOT FOR EVERYONE

I don’t always use a player-facing threat map when I run games. It works best in games where your players have the means to not just react to dangers but also get out ahead of them. I wouldn’t use this tool in games like Shiver or Camp Murder Lake, for example, because those games are about not being in control.

That said, introducing the threat map at a point in the game where the characters have crossed a certain power threshold could be a great way of driving home the fact that they’ve got bigger responsibilities now.

THE LAST THING I LOVE

Besides my spouse, my dog, and my library of books and games, I love one other thing — a good template.

Here’s the threat map I used when I was running Starfinder. Feel free to download it and make it your own, and tell me how you think you might incorporate player-facing threat maps into your next campaign!

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?

As GMs, we walk a fine line between balancing a compelling narrative that incorporates our player characters’ backstories, making them feel centered in the campaign’s story while simultaneously making the world feel natural, as if it has a life outside the narrow view of the game sessions. If we go too far in either direction, the game will feel off balance. After all, if every single cabbage merchant they run across recognizes the long-lost father of the orphaned druid, or if every mention of a prophecy ties directly into the rogue’s shadowy backstory, our suspension of disbelief starts to get stretched. On the other hand, if nothing in the characters’ backstories impacts the world, we risk the PCs feeling like balloons without strings, drifting aimlessly in a world built for everyone.

Do you want to center your player characters’ backstories without making it seem like the whole world revolves around them? Do you want to create emotional bonds as strong as adamantine between not just the PCs and the NPCs but the players, too? Do you want to pull off an enemies-to-allies (or lovers if that’s your story of the game) arc without ham-fisting the heel-face turn? Well then, my friend, allow me to introduce you to a little trick in my toolbox I like to call Parallel Backstory Mirroring.

What the heck is “Parallel Backstory Mirroring”?

I’m so glad you asked. In psychology, “mirroring“ is what we call it when at least two people unconsciously mimic each other’s mannerisms. This helps create rapport and a sense of understanding between the people involved in the conversation (and it’s a handy trick you can use in job interviews). TLDR: whether we know it or not, we like it when we see ourselves in others.

We can tweak this psychological phenomenon for our roleplaying games by creating backstories for our major NPCs that mirror the PCs’ stories, but they do so on a parallel course. When you do this, your players will see their characters’ stories reflected in the world via the NPCs, and they’ll start to create unconscious emotional bonds with your cast, be they allies, villains, or something in between.

The important thing here is to refrain from copying/pasting the backstory exactly. (If you remember how bad the “Martha” reveal was in Batman V. Superman, you know what I’m talking about here, and if you don’t, consider yourself lucky.) No, you want to pick apart your PCs’ backstories and pick out the major themes and plot points, then file off the serial numbers and build your NPC’s story using the same skeletal structure.

For example, in a one-shot I ran a few years ago, a warlock had made a fae pact bargain to protect her sister from a degenerative genetic disease. The crucial beats revolved around making morally grey choices to protect a sick family member.

In the course of the adventure, they had to confront the leader of a thieves’ guild to retrieve a magic MacGuffin. Now, I could have just had them fight the thieves and loot the MacGuffin, but I wanted more meat to the encounter. So I gave the leader of the guild a parallel mirrored backstory: the leader, you see, didn’t steal because they wanted money. They stole so they could finance a cure for their son’s wasting disease.

See what I did there? Sick family member. Morally grey actions.

Suddenly, the PC had reason to pause and consider not just the actions of the supposed baddie but also their own. It was a great character moment that led to an emotional scene filled with roleplay.

Notice the other important element of Parallel Backstory Mirroring: the events you’ve extracted for the NPCs – they haven’t happened in the past; they are happening right now. When they recognize the reflections of their histories playing out in the world you’re creating together, they’ll experience an innate connection to the events and the characters that will make them feel seen and encourage them to take action.

If you need some help getting your players to establish goals and motivations (or need help creating goals for your villains), check out J.T. Evan’s articles on character goals and antagonist goals.

Controlling the Reveal

To put all my cards on the table, I am a big fan of putting all of my cards on the table. I try not to hold back information from my players for a BIG DRAMATIC REVEAL™ because I think players create more interesting stories when they have all the information right in front of them. Plus, players have lives outside the game and aren’t obsessing over every detail the way I do. That means subtle foreshadowing almost always gets missed. However, when you’re integrating parallel backstories into your sessions, consider the order in which you give your players the information because you can use that order to create different kinds of emotional impact.

Consider showcasing your villain’s actions before the players learn of his motivations. If your PCs are investigating a series of brutal cult sacrifices, then they’re going to build up a very specific image in their heads of the kind of person they’re chasing down. Then, when they find out that the villain is performing these rituals to contact the soul of his dead father, the ranger trying to redeem her mother’s soul will have some pretty big feelings surrounding that encounter.

Now, imagine giving them the information in reverse order. What if they hear about a powerful spellcaster attempting to contact the soul of a deceased loved one? Their realization that the ritual requires human sacrifice is going to hit differently.

When figuring out how you will handle the reveal, think about its impact on your characters. Especially if you’re trying to pull off a turn in the players’ perceptions of the NPC, ask yourself if you want them on board with the character at the start or end.

Bond Established. Now What?

So, what do you do once you’ve established these solid emotional ties between characters? Well, use them to your narrative advantage. When a player realizes this NPC is “just like me/my character,” they’ll be more inclined to trust the opinions of that NPC. Do with that power as you will – either to help guide the characters on their journeys or, you know, not.

You can also use the bonds to hold up a dark mirror to the PC. Use it to make your players consider, “This is what I could become if I continue down this path.” Use the bond to establish a solid foil or set up a hated nemesis.

Strong emotional bonds like these also ramp up the tension during social scenes, primarily if you use the NPC they’re bonded with as an obstacle to their goals in the scene. When an NPC they identify with has differing opinions on handling the impending wood elf invasion of the Capitol, will the PCs side with their friend, or will they push for their own strategies? If they do, what’s the fallout going to be like later?

Once you’ve established these bonds, you can turn up the heat.

A Caveat for Failed Perception Checks

Suppose you find yourself with a player or two who aren’t as big on introspection or self-reflection via tabletop blorbos. In that case, I suggest using a different NPC as a mouthpiece to point out and drive home the similarities in the themes. (Shakespeare deployed this character often, and if it’s good enough for The Bard, it should be good enough to use on your bard.) Alternatively, just ignore the advice above about copying/pasting the backstories and turn the obviousness of the connections up to 11. Tell ’em Martha sent you.

Parallel Backstory Mirroring Checklist

• Collect PC backgrounds and goals
• Strip down their stories and pick out major themes and plot beats
• Write NPC backgrounds using the skeleton of your PCs’ stories
• Make sure the events of the NPC’s story are happening NOW
• Decide what sort of emotional impact you’re looking for and dole out the information accordingly
• Use those bonds to turn up the heat!

What about you? How do you handle tying your player characters’ backstories into the world of your campaign? Let us know in the comments.

Ahh, January, that time of year when we make resolutions we are definitely going to stick to. Maybe you’ve resolved to improve your GMing in the new year. Perhaps you decided this would be the year you finally take your turn in the hot seat. Maybe you stumbled onto this article in the middle of summer and are just looking for a couple of quick tips.

Regardless of the promises you made to yourself, today we’re going to take a journey that begins with identifying our problem areas and ends with a plan to min/max the heck out of our GM-fu.

Ready? Queue up “Eye of the Tiger” because it’s time to do this!

STEP ONE: Identifying Our Problem Areas

The first step in min/maxing our GM skills is knowing where to devote our effort, and in order to do that, we need to get specific.

A Caveat on Anxiety: There can be a fine line between wanting to improve ourselves because we love this hobby and wanting to improve because we’re insecure in our abilities. A lot of self-improvement blogs use that line to get clicks and engagement, especially at the start of the year. But this isn’t one of those blogs.

So before we go any further, let’s acknowledge that there is no such thing as a perfect game master. To some extent, we’re all improv GMing our way through life. No one really knows what they’re doing, but those of us who care enough are trying hard to do better, and that’s what matters.

Even if we yeet our anxiety out the window, insecurity tends to cling to the trellis. How do we know the difference between the skills we need to work on and those the mind weasels use to keep us up at night?

The answer is simple: specificity.

If you can point to a specific aspect of how you run games and say, “Yes, this is what I want to improve. This distinct thing right here.” Then, congratulations, you have identified an area that needs improvement.

On the other hand, if you have a general fear that everything is horrible and nothing is right, that’s anxiety trying to crawl back through the window.

Don’t be like Stoick the Vast and Hiccup.

If you still need help, source your table. Talk to your players and see if they have constructive criticism, or try implementing a formal system of gathering feedback like the Stars & Wishes method developed by Lu Quade over on The Gauntlet.

STEP TWO: Getting (More) Specific

So let’s say you’ve soul-searched, brainstormed, and sourced your table to come up with a list that looks like this:

• Rules Mastery
• Improv Skills
• Storytelling and Roleplaying

That’s a great start, but those topics are way too broad. Like, those are Texas-sized topics, and we’re looking for topics the size of Pittsburgh. Take one of your areas and drill down. Then, drill down again. And again. Go until you get to the smallest bite possible.

Take “Rules Mastery” for example. This is one of the areas I want to improve this year, but I’m mostly running Pathfinder 2E, so that’s hundreds of pages of potential room for improvement. Instead of trying to eat all of that at once, I’ll drill down into a specific area of the rules. Combat is an easy example.

“I want to get better at the way I run combat” is a good start, but we can get even more precise. I want to get better at running more dynamic combats, combats with environmental hazards, and something as seemingly simple but rather complicated as starting combat from stealth.

Now my list looks like this:

• Running dynamic combats
• Mastering hazard rules
• Deciphering stealth mechanics

That’s the level of specificity we’re looking for, and once we achieve that, we can begin the fun part: research!

STEP THREE: Seeking Knowledge

Research can come in two forms, the first makes us feel like wizards in our towers, gathering spells and lore, and the second puts us in the audience of an exceptional bard, getting advantage through inspiration.

RESEARCH

Once you know precisely what you want to improve, you can hit the books (and the podcasts, and YouTube videos, and advice blogs). Your very specific topic becomes the basis for the search terms you’ll use to not only hunt down the knowledge needed but also help you narrow down the prodigious amounts of TTRPG content out there.

Since I don’t know the specific areas you want to improve, I can’t make bespoke recommendations, but I can advise you to read (and watch/listen/consume) broadly. You’re just as likely to discover helpful information in a book on novel writing as you are in a YouTube video on improv or voice acting, and nothing makes a dry self-help book on productivity or team management more enjoyable than figuring out how you can apply the techniques to your table at game night.

If you’re in the market for some general resource recommendations, well, you’ve already found Gnome Stew, but have you tried podcasts like Panda’s Talking Games or The Misdirected Mark Podcast / MM Plays? These treasure troves of knowledge heavily influenced much of the advice in this article.

INSPIRATION

Speaking of inspiration, we can’t forget to consume media we want to emulate. We are what we eat, after all.

Your inspiration doesn’t have to only come from TTRPG-related materials either. Play video games. Read novels. Binge-watch a series or fifteen! Look at how other people tell their stories, pull them apart, and see how you can use the pieces to improve your storytelling.

Say what you want about the reality of professional actual plays, but there’s nothing wrong with being inspired by professional work. Pro athletes have been inspiring people to go out for school sportsball teams, community intramural clubs, minor leagues, and even major leagues for decades, and shows like Dimension 20 and Critical Role can do the same for us.

They say comparison is the thief of joy, but I think this only applies when anxiety clings to the window ledge. Yeet that bugger off a cliff this time and approach media not as something to judge yourself by, but rather something to aspire towards.

STEP FOUR: Project Managing The S#!% Out of It

We’ve found the specific areas we want to improve, and we’ve begun collecting research materials; what do we do next? Where’s our training montage?

If your day job, like mine, involves you being a Very Professional Business Person™, then you might be familiar with things like SMART Goals or Agile Development. Those are incredibly powerful project management techniques, and we could use them to plan our journeys, but if you’re unfamiliar and you don’t want to add more items to your research list, you can use this simplified method:

• Create a schedule to research your topic, take notes, and just learn. A little bit of time every day or a bigger chunk occasionally throughout the week. Whatever works. The important thing is to stay consistent.
• Then, give yourself time to process what you’ve learned. Your brain needs to sit with new information before synthesizing it from theoretical data into practical knowledge. Don’t overload yourself. Remember: one bite at a time.
• Once you’re comfortable with your new knowledge, implement it into your game! Test it out! And then, once you’ve tried your new skills…
• Iterate and reiterate! Adjust based on how you performed. Tweak what you need to learn and practice for next time.

A note on your schedule: at the beginning of the year, it’s very common for people to over-promise their commitment to routines and then abandon them when they can’t keep up. (Hello, unused gym memberships.)

The trick to dodging this pitfall is to reevaluate your new routine after a few weeks. Check in with yourself and see how it’s going. Forgive yourself if you haven’t been able to keep up. If you have, ask if your pace is sustainable (and answer truthfully; just because you CAN suffer through a grueling routine, it doesn’t mean you HAVE to do it). Then, revise and start again. Repeat this throughout the year, and you’ll not only be able to stay on top of your tasks but even take on more as your tolerance increases!

We Are Mighty

To paraphrase the popular home repair TikToker, Mercury Stardust, learning something new can be scary, but we devote a lot of time to this dice-chucking hobby of ours, and we’re worth the time it takes to level up.

What GM skills are you going to work on this year? Let us know in the comments, and let’s help each other reach our goals!

I like the lore, the gore, and the story of it. Iron shoes stomping lonely travelers and then, just to add insult to death, the Redcap dips their cap in their victims blood to keep themselves sated. Nice and gruesome. So I dropped one into my game, called it The Redcap, capital THE, as part of a dark fey thing going on in my campaign. Thing was I wanted to make the Red Cap part of the Redcap a little more special. So I came up with a mechanic to allow the players to rip the cap off its head. A Descending Difficult Check.

I’m going to give you the example first and then follow it up with the format so you can use this idea in a game where it would make sense.

The Redcap’s cap provides the creature with a bunch of buffs: extra defenses, damage reduction, stronger attacks. The Difficulty Check to pull the cap off the Redcap’s head started at 30. Just about impossible in the game we were playing. Every time someone managed to grab the Redcap’s hat and try to pull it off but failed, the DC was reduced by 2. This meant with effort, in the form of actions taken, the difficulty would eventually be lowered enough so the cap could be taken off the Redcap’s head. Once that was done those buffs disappeared and any damage done to the cap would deal double damage to the Redcap.

Outlining This Process

With the example set up let’s talk about outlining the process for building out a descending difficulty check.

1. Situation. You need a tense situation where effort over a short time would matter. Getting the cap off the Redcap’s head.
2. Stakes. Figure out what the stakes are for engaging with the task. Removing the cap from the Redcap greatly weakens it.
3. Difficulty. Decide the level of difficulty you want to set the task at but don’t tie it to a skill or ability. If someone comes up with an idea that makes sense in some way, utilize the mechanics of your game to give it a chance. DC 30 to remove the hat.
4. Actions. What taking action will do. Decide how much a check will lower that difficulty. You can put levels into this if you’d like. For instance, with the Redcap I could say only a check that was over 15 would reduce the difficulty by 2 and any check below 15 only reduced the difficulty by 1.

With those steps you have a descending difficulty check for your game.

A More Complex Example

Let’s come up with another more complex example with some different parameters. I think I’ll use that well known Dragons with Dungeons RPG.

Situation: There’s a magical ritual that is currently summoning something terrible into the world. Powering the ritual is a head cultist and their allies. 

Stakes: In order to shut down the ritual you need to understand how it works. Once you understand how it works you need to shut it down. The longer this goes on the longer you have to deal with the empowered cult. To make things worse, if four rounds pass a very powerful demonic entity is summoned and then you’ll have to deal with the entity. This creates a two step process with the stakes being an empowered group of cultists and the potential summoning of a powerful demonic entity. Let’s flesh out the first step.

Step 1

Setting the Difficulty

Understanding the Ritual. DC 40 This game has an action economy so I’m going to want to take into account how that affects understanding the ritual. We’re only letting someone try understanding the ritual once per round. They can either use a free action or a bonus action 

What acting will do

• If you try for free. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 2. A roll above 10 reduces the DC by 1. A roll below 10 increases the DC by 2 as poor information has been given, confusing the situation.
• If you use a bonus action. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 5. A roll above 10 reduces the DC by 3. A roll below 10 increases the DC by 2 as poor information has been given, confusing the situation.

I chose this design because it allows for players to take a regular action to do things while trying to figure out what’s up with the ritual. It also has a risk element so that if a character who isn’t competent at figuring out magical rituals tries to help, they could end up interfering with the operation by increasing the difficulty. 

Now that we’ve done it once, let’s do it again.

Step 2

Setting the Difficulty

Shutting down the ritual. DC 30. Let’s up the stakes a little here since we’re acting and not just trying to study and understand something. It’s either use a bonus action or a regular action and we’ll put the rider on here that the PC’s action needs to be something that can interact with the ritual, so magic or some kind of action that messes with the ritual. 

What acting will do

• If you use a bonus action. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 2. A roll above 15 reduces the DC by 1. A roll below 15 causes magical backlash dealing 4d6 damage to the character but still decreases the DC by 1.
• If you use a regular action. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 4. A roll above 15 reduces the DC by 2. A roll below 15 causes magical backlash dealing 4d6 damage to the character but still decreases the DC by 1.

I chose this design because it ups the stakes by making the players need to use their actions to accomplish the task, which creates choices. Plus, a failure doesn’t strengthen the ritual but causes the magic from the ritual to lash out and harm the character. This feels more appropriate for the situation.

The other thing that can happen here is the Head Cultist can try and put their will against the ritual to try and strengthen it to keep it going. The Head Cultist, instead of casting spells or fighting with the player characters, can take their action to make a spellcasting check to reinforce the ritual. Just use the same what acting will do section but instead of decreasing the DC their actions increase the DC. It’ll put another choice on the board for what the players should do. Interact with the ritual, deal with the Head Cultist, keep the Head Cultist from strengthening the ritual, or deal with the other cultists. Not only that, but handle the ritual in 4 rounds or deal with something worse.

So that’s a more complicated example just to show off some different ideas surrounding the concept of a descending difficulty check. I’m curious to hear if others have tried things like this in their games and how they’ve made it work. I’m always looking to expand my choice of tools to provide the best experience I can for my players. Also, if you have any thoughts or examples of situations this would work in I’d love to see them in the comments.

Today this isn’t really a surprise. The Between and Public Access have different phases of play which allow for different kinds of actions to be taken. The Forged in the Dark games have their versions of downtime activities. Even D&D has their downtime mechanics where you spend days of time to do things when you’re not adventuring.

This last one, the D&D one, is what I want to talk about because it’s a bit lacking in both presentation and implementation. So here’s a version of downtime rules I cooked up for my D&D game, but realized I could use them in other RPGs. 

Downtime activities

• Most downtime activities have two resources associated with them. Resources and Energy. 
  • Energy is the amount of time and effort you can put towards a task.
  • Resources are the people, money, raw materials, and other such items an activity may need to be completed. Most of this can be abstracted as money, but special activities may need other more specific requirements. For example, if you want to learn an ancient language the GM may decide that you’ll have to gain the services of one of the three people in the world who can teach the language. That means you’ll have to go to one of these people and negotiate with them for their services as a special requirement.
• A character gains downtime energy each week equal to 25 + their character level.
  • A character can only spend a maximum of 50 energy in any one week.
• As soon as the GM declares it’s time for downtime, the PCs can work on downtime activities as long as they have the energy to spend on those activities.

So we have resources and energy. These mechanics are just cribbed from any of those mobile games where you wait to get energy and then spend that energy along with other resources to get things done. Strangely enough, when you just add a little narrative to what you want to get done it becomes a nice little flexible system to show how you can get things done over time inside of a fantasy RPG.

What Are Downtime Activities?

They’re pretty much anything that you can think of that would take time and potentially resources. But this makes the system flexible enough to fit pretty much any situation. Here’s three examples.

Example 1

You want to be proficient with a longsword, but you’re a human wizard and the only bladed weapon you’re proficient with is a dagger? Ok, We’ll say it costs you 200 energy and you need an instructor. The instructor will cost 40 gp. 

Example 2

You want to learn how to speak elvish and another PC in the party is willing to teach you? It’ll cost you 400 energy to have a basic understanding of the language along with 200 energy from your party member to take the time to teach you. 

A basic understanding means you can understand what someone says to you in elvish, convey an intended idea in elvish, or get the gist of reading elvish with an intelligence check. 

To become proficient in the language will then cost another 400 energy plus spending a month living among elves to get a functional understanding of the language. This means you’re now proficient in elvish so you can speak, understand, read, and write the language.

Example 3

You’re the prince of a foreign kingdom of fire elementally infused humanoids that don’t have the greatest reputation. You’d like to have an embassy for your people within the kingdom. First, be a hero with an impeccable reputation. Second, it’ll cost 400 energy. This is to get meetings with the right people, make the proper connections, and go through the process of diplomacy. For every 1000 gold you spend to help smooth the way 25 energy is removed from the total, up to a maximum of 6000 gold spent to decrease the energy spent by 150. 

A Bit of Commentary

The first example is pretty straightforward. It’s energy plus a resource, hire an instructor and pay them. This might change based on circumstance. If you’re in the middle of nowhere, an instructor might cost more. If you’re not a wizard but a rogue who’s trained in the short sword, then the GM might rule that it’ll only take 150 energy instead of 200.

The second example has one PC teaching another PC a language. This has a few different things. The first is the idea of a basic understanding of the language. It’s just something that made sense to me as a GM for those things that would take time and have steps and different levels of competency to learn. So once a character has a basic understanding of a language they have the ability and option to make an intelligence check to understand the language. It felt right as I was coming up with the downtime activity.  

Second, I decided to say if one of the characters wants to help them learn the language then they won’t have to pay for a teacher. The cost is the teaching character has to spend half the downtime the learning character is teaching them.

Last, I decided that to become proficient in elvish would require the character immersing themselves in the language for at least a month. That felt like a fun requirement to put on as it could create an interesting story.

The third example is slightly altered from one of my D&D games. We actually had this activity going on in the background for a while during the game until it was done and an embassy was established. Now, the players sometimes go there and speak with the NPCs that were created inside of the embassy, including a restaurant that features food from the character’s homeland. In breaking it down, this version of a downtime activity allows for the player to throw more resources at a task to get it done quicker.

So now that we’ve seen some examples, let’s put together a pick list structure for you GMs out there to craft your own downtime activities:

• A player says they want their character to do, make, create, or learn something.
• How much energy is the activity going to take? It’s not unfair to keep in mind that between 25 – 30 energy is usually a work week’s worth of effort.
• How much in resources are required, if any?
• Are there any special requirements or resources needed to accomplish the downtime activity that cash can’t handle?
• Decide if this project is one downtime activity or more than one. If it’s more than one, decide what it means when each step is completed.
• Explain the requirements to the player so they can get started on it.

So while I gave three downtime activities as examples, here’s some of the ones I’ve had in my games for your reference, along with the chart I use with the players to track this stuff. I’ll often highlight and move things around to denote that things are done.

This chart can read as a bit of gibberish to those who aren’t playing in the game, but it’s mostly just to show some of the different ways I’ve used the resources and mechanics of my very homebrewed D&D game to let these downtime rules function in a variety of different ways.

A worry that’s been brought up when I’ve talked to other people about this is, “Is this game breaking?” and no, the game has not broken. In fact I’m using this system in two separate campaigns that have lasted over twenty sessions each. The groups have been playing every other week for over a year. Both groups are level 8 and the game system has allowed them to expand their characters and engage with the world in a way that’s a little less hand-wavish and the downtime makes them feel like their actions can and are affecting the setting in meaningful ways.

One last bit of advice for those who try this system out. When a PC accomplishes a downtime activity, take some time to allow for whatever the downtime activity has accomplished in the game. For instance, the grapple gun that’s on that list has been used quite effectively, and the embassy has been a location that’s come up in play repeatedly. Also, allow the players to have input into those parts of the setting when they create things like the Embassy. Do it together at the table. It’s fun, takes some of the work off you, allows them to feel like they’re getting the thing they wanted, and creates investment in the game setting.

I know this is a lot. If you read this and find it interesting, but have questions, please feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to answer them. 

Session 0. We’re doing it again. Why? Because it’s important. Why is it important? Because it helps groups understand who the characters they’re playing are, why the characters are doing what they’re doing, places them firmly into the campaign and setting of the game, and give all the players at the table a bunch of information so they can have a easier time creating that shared vision of play at the table. For expanded upon information like this check out the actual podcast.

For instance, there are these intelligent Kobolds I use in my games sometimes. The Seven Talons of the Raging Inferno. They trained together for years and are field agents for a dragon who sends them on missions. Thing is, in their years training together they’ve come to care about each other. That means when they’re in a battle they get angry, sad, scared, and talk to each other as things happen. And if one of them falls the rest move to cover them. When they retreat they don’t leave anyone behind. They’re a family to each other which means they’re not just monsters to kill. When they’re in an encounter I’ve put together, it really puts a unique tone to how things play out.

But the real question is, Why does this matter? 

Because it gives me something to play off of beyond the standard, “They’re monsters for the players to kill.” I could have the kobolds snarl, or bark if you prefer the dog versions, but it’s not what I’m looking to get out of my game. If you’re also looking for something a little more from the characters you’re portraying, I hope the following will help.

My NPC Creator Checklist

This is my short list I think about when building out NPCs

• I start with a name and a short descriptor that tells what function this character has in the setting.
  • Harper Coin, an arms dealer

It’s simple and tells me a little about the character at a glance

• I like to know what they want
• • To make money

This is an easy to understand motivation which I can play towards.

• I then desire to know what they need
• • To have a happy family life

What a NPC needs is a little bit more about the character’s subtext. It gives me something to think about when portraying an NPC. This could be insight to what’s actually important to them, a thought about what they’re missing out on in their life, or something else I’ll think of as the conversation is happening with the PCs. In the end it gives me options for how I might want to portray the NPC when they’re in an encounter.

• Give them three descriptors. 
  • Rotund, charming smile, missing part of their right ear

The first two I tend to make more common, while the third descriptor I look for something a little more quirky or memorable. It just helps create a quick picture of the character while leaving a lot of space for the PCs to fill in the blanks. 

• If you have time, give them a quote.
  • “ You won’t find fairer prices anywhere else. Plus you can feel better about putting your enemies into the ground since your purchase will be helping me put my Darcy into a good school. And next time you come back I’ll give ya the house discount. I’ll even throw in this explosive.”

I try to keep the quotes to two or three sentences. I find they help tie together the stuff I’ve already written down, add a little more depth to the NPC, and help remind me of their voice when I start portraying them.

Together, these pieces give you something a little deeper to play with at the table than just a name with a weird quirk. Don’t get me wrong. I love the utility of the quirk and a name to make a quick NPC, but even when I’m improvising at the table I will often work through this checklist, jotting down notes, as I’m interacting with the PCs.

I also find that for NPCs that persist in games for longer than a scene, just having these few ideas helps me play them with a sense of agency. They have wants and needs. Most of us have wants and needs. It’s easy for us to relate to. It also was one of the ways I realized I could get players to stop treating NPCs like props to be used to further their adventures. Helped make the setting feel a little more like a living breathing place and not just a location for the PCs adventures to take place in.

I do have to say I hope you noticed I never mentioned doing a voice or wearing a prop or anything like you might have seen on Critical Role or Dimension 20. I enjoy those shows and the entertainment they provide, but to portray NPCs that have a place in the world, feel unique, and are easy to remember, I find this checklist works for me.

Last thing. The ideas here are developed from the idea of Want vs Need in a variety of storytelling instructional ideology, and Jason Cordova’s Carved from Brindlewood games and 7-3-1 technique. Here’s a pretty good summary of the Want vs Need for a character.

• Want: something your character desires, because they believe it’ll improve their happiness.
• Need: the lesson they need to learn to overcome their inner struggle and achieve true happiness.

Read the blog it’s from here.

I hope you’ll give this a try, and if you have any thoughts or tips for how you make NPCs that you find easy and fun to play at your tables you’ll share them with us. Also, here’s the checklist one more time:

• A name with a short descriptor about their function in the setting
• A want
• A need
• Three physical descriptors
• A quote

Not every seed that’s planted in the ground grows, which is why you need to get some fertile soil, space your seeds in the soil properly, water them as needed, and monitor those seeds as they begin to sprout and grow.

Same thing applies to Plot Seeds but instead of trowels, watering cans, and enriched soil we bring a different set of tools and ideas to the game table. Characters, places, items, and events. So take a journey through Ang, Chris, and Jared’s metaphorical garden and get into how they use plot seeds in games.

By sharing the creation of your world with your players it can give you ideas you’d never have thought of, twist your game world in utterly unexpected ways, and leave you scratching your head trying to tie it all together! I’ve had it go well, go badly, and (more often than not) go outright bizarrely.

That’s all well and good, but how do I go about doing it?

The easiest way is gather a few rough ideas for your oneshot. I’d suggest sitting down with your players as part of a session zero, explain the concept and see what interests them. Next, set the oneshot an unspecified time before your main game. (Remember this – it’s handy later!) Pick the system you want to use for the oneshot and run it!

After you’ve played the game, the story you told becomes the inspiration and basis for the world your campaign is set in. Plan your campaign as you normally would, but use the oneshot as the source material.

Ok, so why might you want to start a campaign like this?

Oh my gosh! Where do I start! Well for starters it’s an easy way to introduce players to the game world. Instead of having reams of exposition (which may or may not ever come up) they get to play out the important historical events! You’re far more likely to remember the cause of the civil war if you played the character who assassinated the king! Even before you’ve started the main game it gives players a reason to be invested in the lore. Also it adds some fun context – saying its illegal to go within two meters of the queen is easily forgotten. Saying its illegal “Because of your previous character’s actions” adds some interest and you’re guaranteed a smug smile from your players!

The other major boon is sharing the work of worldbuilding – especially if you use a GM-less system. Instead of the world being your sole creation, your whole game group is putting their heads together to create it. It adds a lot of variety and the GM can be just as surprised by the outcome as any other player! Once that’s done you cherry pick the interesting details and turn it into a campaign. Another advantage here is you can see what sparks the players’ interest. Perhaps a player gets fascinated by the heraldry or is increasingly intrigued by the flora and fauna.

Can you do this after you’ve started the campaign?

Of course! You can pop a oneshot session in at any point during your campaign. I often use it as a way of introducing a new location at the beginning of an arc.

It can also be useful as a tool to show what is happening while the main player characters are elsewhere – for example, setting your oneshot in the PCs home base, or taking on the roles of the evil overlord’s underlings. Plus it’s a good way to introduce new plots, show a different perspective on the world, and even foreshadow events that the player characters aren’t yet aware of.

However, my favourite use is as a way of visiting the past. If the player characters are researching something that happened a hundred years ago, why not switch to a oneshot and play to find out what really happened!

You seem to be pretty keen on shoving oneshots into your game, are there any downsides?

Much as I love using this technique, there are definitely some drawbacks. For starters it takes time. You’ve got to weigh up the worth of sacrificing a whole session to devote to the oneshot. It can also mean more prep time for the GM out of game.

Hang on, I thought you said it made it less work

…I did, didn’t I. OK, so there is less work upfront, however this technique does require some work in order to transform the oneshot into a broader setting. You have to gather all the details together and try to work out how they can mesh together to make a compelling narrative. Plus setting up the oneshot requires some prep in itself! (Even a zero-prep game requires learning and organising.)

On top of that, sometimes the material you end up with really doesn’t fit the game you want to run. For example sometimes what sparks your players’ imagination is ‘flatulent bunnies’ and spirals from there… leaving little source material beyond pungent rabbit puns… (If you haven’t already guessed, this happened to me.) Trying to turn that source material into a coherent world can take some effort!

….Wait what happened with the Flatulent rabbits!?

When the people demand bunnies and fart jokes, sometimes you have to give in and go with it.

However, remember I said your oneshot should be set an unspecified time before your main game? That’s where it becomes handy. The details that carry over are different if the oneshot happened six months before the main campaign vs. sixty or even six hundred year before.

You can use the time difference to control how similar the campaign is to the world of the oneshot. However it is still important to acknowledge your players’ ideas – their investment in the world comes from including what they have created.

The rabbit example can be used in a variety of ways without derailing the game. You could make the evil villain responsible for the near extinction of the rabbit population (Their favourite pastime is bunny hunting!) This becomes a sneaky way to focus the players’ ire – the players in-joke is under threat! A milder use is to illustrate how times have changed – what were once green fields are now sprawling slums that don’t smell much better than the previous wildlife! Or you can simply keep it as a joke in the background. Sometimes things can just be part of the scenery.

That sounds like you’re just ignoring the worldbuilding game and writing your own world

Maybe a little, but the key elements were all drawn from the oneshot – although the oneshot focused on something absurd, locations & ideas can still be drawn from it. It still draws on the players’ investment & gives you an idea of what they will enjoy!

I’m not convinced.

Thats fair. You have good and bad days, sometimes things don’t work as well as you hoped. The rabbit example wasn’t my most successful worldbuilding game, but we still had fun & I managed to pull some decent source material from it.

On that note are there any times you’d suggest avoiding this?

No. It’s an amazing technique and should be used at every available opportunity.

I think you may be biased.

Perhaps.

Seriously though…

Ok. There are a few occasions where I would advise against worldbuilding through oneshots. The most important consideration is, are your players interested? You can you can try to sell it to them, but if the idea doesn’t appeal, it won’t work.

I’d also advise against using this technique towards the end of a campaign, too. At the end of a campaign you are working on resolutions and tying up loose threads, not looking to add new hooks and ideas!

Lastly, use caution when approaching key parts of your story. Suppose your plot is centred around a civil war sparked by the assassination of a monarch. If you do a oneshot covering the assassination, there is a chance the players may decide to save the monarch! Generally you’ll find a way around it – the king could be in hiding and everyone thinks he’s dead etc – It could be a fun twist in the story. However if there are too many implications to explain away (prophecies, magic etc. etc.) it can put you in an awkward position. Unless you’re happy for a detail to be changed, its easier not to tempt the fates.

That’s fair… Any other tips?

Everything will work much better if you are upfront with your players– be clear it’s a oneshot, be clear that it will become the background to your campaign.

If you want to focus on worldbuilding, it usually works better if the characters in the oneshot are different to those in the main game – it leaves your players open to make more interesting choices without having to worry about the personal consequences. On the other hand it can also be a fun tool for exploring characters’ backstories too.

I may try it out…

You totally should! It’s a fun technique that can exercise your GMing ability and make your campaign as surprising for you as it is for your players!