A game on the fly.

As it turns out, I ended up having little interest in my X-Wing league at Mercenary Market. Lack of available product was an issue and I may have chosen the wrong day.  Who knows?  I will kick it back up when Wave 3 launches and hopefully get more interest.

I still wanted to do some gaming on Sunday and thought I would just go ahead and run an RPG. I talked to a few of the regulars and got a few people interested. I decided to run the Iron Kingdoms Full Metal Fantasy game from Privateer Press. WarmaHordes is pretty popular at the shop, so I thought it would boost interest and give me a pool of people who had a decent understanding of the core mechanic. The new version of the game abandoned the d20 system and put out a new edition that in essence mimics the mechanic of the tabletop miniatures game.

Now that I have all that exposition out of the way I will get to the point of this post. I proposed the game a week before we played. I purchased the Urban Adventure book which details the Five Fingers area of the game, figuring it would be a great place to start. I had all kinds of good intentions about jotting down some notes for the game and creating some NPC’s and putting together a story arc and some NPC’s. Then, I got lazy.  Didn’t do a gosh darn thing other than read through the Urban Adventure book a little. The only thing I knew for sure is that I wanted to do a game where the players got caught in the middle of a shadow war between Cryx cultists and Thamarite cultists.  Sort of a rock and a hard place adventure with a lot of mystery and danger.

Sunday came along and I had nothing. To most people that would mean cancelling the game and rescheduling. Not for this guy, I needed my RPG fix. So what did I do? I decided to make a game on the fly.

What did I have? I had the mental notes that I took from talking to the players about what they wanted to play.  Since they already had some form of immersion into the setting (having played the minis game) they already threw out some ideas.  I even had a player who made a character a few months back for a game that never materialized. So I had a fairly good idea about what was being played and what I had to work with. I also had a fairly good idea about the setting and the atmosphere I had to build for my sandbox, having read the Urban Adventure book. I had a palate of colors to work with and my core idea for a story. I also had an idea about a fight in a graveyard. Necromancy is a big deal for both of my antagonist groups, so I already had a good idea about my first action scene and the back of the base book had some pre-generated undead thrall stats as well as some stats for basic thugs. Since I also play the miniatures game, I would have a pretty good idea of how to balance the combat once I could see the PC stats and abilities.

I arrived at the store a little early and started talking to people as they started coming in.  One of my players was riding with me and another was the store owner so I knew he would be there when I arrived. We started chatting about their characters and I started to ask questions about their backgrounds. Being the creative types they answered my questions fairly easily and I started to build. This is what I had.

Greg: He wanted to play a character who was a fanatical follower of Menoth, the Lawgiver. The concept was that he was orphaned by a magic user and fled to a monetary. He then began training as an assassin for the church that targeted “witches”, which by their faith was pretty much anyone who doesn't use divine magic. This could be a problem if someone else wanted to make a magic user so I started asking him about his primary motivation. He comes up with the story that once he left the monastery he was focused on avenging his parents. I took that as the hook for bringing him into the party. If I made it so the other players were after the same arcane assassin, he would push aside his religious fervor in order to reach his objective. I made a note of that.

I then had him describe the scene in which he lost his parents. Working together we came up with the idea that the characters father was a curator and archivist for the church of Menoth. A woman came from nowhere demanding something from the father. Once he refused, the woman slew the characters mother in front of both of them. The father still refused. The strange woman then branded the boy with her glowing sword which had some strange runes on it. Undaunted by the woman’s threats the character’s father just knelt and began to pray to Menoth.  Enraged, the woman slays the father but the young man who would become the PC manages to escape to the local church.

Now I had a mysterious woman, a branding with strange runes and a magic sword with glowing green runes. NICE.

Chris: Chris had already made a character a while back for a game that never ended up happening. His concept was a bastard son to a noble turned pirate. Apparently, his mother was a pirate captain who had a tryst with said noble. The noble not having a legitimate male heir decided to legitimize the PC’s claim to the title, but before he could officially do so, his father was killed.

I further elaborated that the PC had burst into the room right after the assassination killed his father. He opens the door to find his father dead and bleeding on the floor of his unlit study with a shadowy female figure at running towards the window of the fifth story room.  She leaps out the window with no regard to her own safety, but in her haste drops a short sword inscribed with some strange runes inscribed upon it.

Now I have strong ties between two diametrically opposed characters. The religious zealot and the pirate noble share not only these strange runes, sword and perhaps the woman assassin in common but they were both victims of having their parent(s) killed in front of them.

George: George was completely new to RPG’s but has played a Khador army for a while and expressed an interest. He flipped through the book and wanted to make an Alchemist/Explorer. Don’t know why, but that combo struck him and that was fine. He crunched the numbers, but I needed to know who the character was. He explained that he came from a poor family in Five Fingers and he had lost his father when he was very young and was raised by his mother who taught him the basics of alchemy. His mother died tragically and for some reason George's character felt guilty about it.

I went on to say that he was always a bit of an explorer and found a strange box in the catacombs underneath the city. His mother inspected the what she found to be a puzzle box and found a poison barb trap. It lead to a long and lingering death where the PC tried to find a cure and became obsessed with poisons and antidotes. He also became known as someone who did extensive research on special arcane subjects.

More tie ins and story hooks. Part of the explorer class was to choose a patron that kicks the PC down 25 gc a month for.. well.. exploring. I then looked at Chris' sheet and saw that as a Noble he got a 50 gc stipend. I then asked them if it was cool to say that Chris's character was George's character patron. Chris would have to share his stipend with George but it also means that George gets to work full time on trying to decipher the sword runes.

This tied in nicely, but what George doesn't know is that the puzzle box he found as a child is also part of the plot.

Paul: Paul decided to play a Gun Mage/Warcaster. Which pretty much means he is a god. Not that he is a min/maxer, but he likes to make outsider characters that usually don't exactly fit into the party.  His character was straight up military, ex-Cygnar military to be exact. Ex-Cygnar as in deserter. This character was a little harder to fit in, but I had so much synergy with the other characters as far as the main arc, I decided to leave Paul's story as sort of a side plot that can fill in between portions of the main arc.

As a deserter, I decided that Paul's character came to Five Fingers to join up with a merc company that Chris' dad used to own. They had disbanded after Chris' characters father's death, which left Paul with few options. He then finds Chris' character through some trial and also came to be under his employ as a bodyguard. Paul decides to keep his magic use on the down low since he doesn't want to be discovered as a deserter. I decided that Cygnar is not likely to cotton well to a Warcaster deserting their ranks. Somebody will be coming to visit.

Paul provides me with a nice side story to throw in to keep the players from burning through the main arc to quickly and to distract them so I can make sure the antagonists have time to plot and maneuver. So I am pretty much set.

After character generation I had everything I needed to put together our first story.

George goes looking for the source of the swords runes and hears a rumor about this guy who seems to have brands with the same runes.

George starts asking around for this guy but flubs a roll.  I let Greg know that there seems to be some kind of shady character asking questions about him.  Greg decides that's not a good thing, tracks George down and confronts him at his alchemy shop.

This was dicey since the two PC's could easily come to blows. Greg ends up snatching the rubbing of the sword and leaving in a huff.  George seemed unimpressed and let him go, thinking that tracking him down later might lead to something. George tells Chris and Paul about what happened and they go looking for him.

Chris sees that he has underworld contacts, so I make up Smitty the Knife, a local fence and information broker. Chris decides to visit Smitty who leads him to some abandoned tenements by an old graveyard (see what I did there?).

The group decides to hunt down Greg and find out what he knows and after some kerfuffle manage to do so. They deicide they are all working towards the same goal. Greg gives them a detailed description of the woman who killed his parents.  Could it be the same woman that killed Chris' father? Who knows?

George decides to start trying to track down some info on this woman. He asks some questions and looks some stuff up in some books, yadda yadda. The fact that he is researching these runes and asking questions about a certain woman start making certain powers that be start to notice. He is met by a pleasant woman at a cafe, while he is pouring over books. Fails to resist a roll and ends up spilling the beans about his mission.  She of course is a trained spy and pretty much determines that he knows too much and has to be brought in.

The other characters decide to join Greg in staking out the graveyard since there have been rumors of grave robbery in the area. George decides to come along and join the others as night begins to fall.

Human thugs attack George as he enters the graveyard and the others rush to the rescue, but from behind come a group of undead Thralls lead by a man in heavy armor. Now the characters are surrounded. The thugs are soldiers from the Thamarite group and the Undead and the leader are from a cabal of Cryx worshippers who have been waiting for the right time to find and kill members of their Thamarite rivals.  The Thugs have orders to kill but preferably capture George. The melee ensues. George gets knocked out and almost dragged off.  If it weren't for Greg's quick thinking they would have gotten away with it, especially since Chris and Paul were knee deep in undead.  They lived to see another day, but were very confused and thirsty for answers.

Now I have a full on story from nothing. I just developed a story around the stories my players made. With a slight bit of manipulation at character creation I tied story hooks together and made an entire session on setting up the group and binding them through comradery, common tragedy and the fires of mortal conflict. I now have a basis for an entire campaign.

The whole point of this post is about how important players can be to the storytelling process. You can let them steer the whole thing up to a certain point. If you are a GM don't feel like you are the only creative force in the story.  As a player, don't be afraid to give the GM plenty to work with.  He/She will appreciate the story material and if they are worth their salt, they will make good use of it. Stories can come from anywhere.

So you want to be a GM? - Part 3 The breadcrumb method.

A “Breadcrumb” game is a game that involves a mystery. The breadcrumbs are the clues that lead the PC’s to its resolution. The main conflict of these games revolves around uncertainty and the drama is generated by overcoming this uncertainty through the course of investigation.

The main advantage of this format of storytelling over the Encounter based method is that this provides the GM and players with more freedom and choice.  This type of story is suited to a “sandbox” environment where the PC’s can explore and interact with a GM’s world more freely and openly, giving a greater level of immersion. Encounter based stories tend to be very linear while Breadcrumb stories have multiple locations that can be discovered in any order which provide players with different sets of information and conflicts which can lead to multiple other avenues of investigation. Like I said in our first installment, think in Parallel not in Series.

Before you start, ask yourself the basics:

Who is the evil mastermind?: Many of the same tools that you would use for an Encounter based game still apply to the Breadcrumb method.  Most importantly is establishing your Antagonist. Remember, your Antagonist is key to creating drama and all the same rules apply. Create a villain. Understand his/her motivations and goals. Understand the structure of his/her villainous empire. Create his/her named and faceless minions as well as any functionaries/cats paws.

The mystery aspect of the breadcrumb method will require you to put a little more depth into your Antagonist than in the Encounter method since he/she is hatching a secret and nefarious plot that has yet to be discovered. The difficulty is not so much in creating the plot, but in understanding how your players will either discover the plot before it is hatched or ultimately discover who is behind the crime after its been committed.

What is the crime?: What has your villain done or what is he/she planning on doing? Murder? Theft? Usurpation of Power? Sew chaos and destruction? Calling fourth or producing some form of power that will enable him to perform any or all of those? Any of these or combination thereof works well. These are but a few examples though. The most important part of creating the crime is giving the players a reason to have a vested interest in seeing the Antagonist caught or foiled in some way.

When does the crime take place?: Has the crime already been committed or is the plan yet to unfold? Do the characters have a finite time limit to uncover the plot before all is lost or the Antagonist gets away? Time limits are a great way of creating tension, but remember you don’t really have to tell the players exactly what the time limit is, just allude to the fact that there is one. This give you the opportunity to create the tension without having a built in self-destruct button for your story. Remember, it’s a bad idea to have an argument with something with a self-destruct button.

Where is the scene of the crime?: Usually there is a starting point where the characters either discover the “scene of the crime” or discover something suspicious that leads them to dig further. This is the springboard for your adventure and a place that will most likely be revisited several times in your story.

Breadcrumb games revolve around “plot nodes”. These are places that hold a connection to your main plot and provide the players with a piece of the puzzle. They are the containers of your breadcrumbs. This would be node one and the place where you set the mood of the game and start the heroes on their journey. Revealing just enough to entice but not so much that the players begin unravel the puzzle too quickly is the real challenge of this kind of storytelling. Remember, this is more Agatha Christie than Scooby Doo. Unless you like Scooby Doo and have a strangely powerful attraction to Velma, but I digress.

WHY?: This leads us back to the ever so important Who.  Not the Doctor but the Antagonist. Who could be a Doctor, but… once again, I digress. Why is your Villain on his/her path? The development of this motivation can really affect some of the things you may have to come up with on the fly. Greed, lust for power, kink for chaos, minion of evil, vengeance seeking, or seeking destruction are all great villain motivations. You can see more about these motivations here.

Once you have all of that figured out, you can start to deconstruct your plot. “Don’t you mean construct?” you might ask? Nope, I said what I meant and meant what I said.  The best way to create a convincing mystery adventure is to write it backwards. Assume that your Antagonists plans have gone to full effect. MUAHAHAHAHA! Now that you know the result you can start going full on Columbo and figuring out what the jerk did to make that happen.

Watch Columbo rip Torn a new one as he deconstructs the plot

By retracing the steps of your villainous alter ego you can look at those steps in detail and determine what kind of clues the Antagonist may have left at every step. Are there witnesses? Was something left behind? Was there some kind of trace left by someone who did not belong at a certain location? Was a figure seen speaking to someone in hushed tones? What resources did he/she have to collect? What allies or minions did he/she need to employ? What places did he/she visit? With who did he/she share his/her plans with or at least bits and pieces of it? Who would know that he/she has the most to gain from this crime? Is there some sort of link between the victims and your Antagonist? Was there a tool or method employed that was a unique calling card to the Antagonist because of affectation, access to resources or prior activity? Whatever the case may be, it’s up to you to make this puzzle solvable and convincing. By retracing the steps of the crime you can not only invent a convincing caper, but you can structure the means by which the heroes can solve the mystery.

Now you have a villain, a mystery, and the people and places that hold the clues to solve the mystery.  These people and places are now your plot nodes. Once you set off node one, you can react to what the players want to do. They will start asking questions, making perception or investigation rolls, etc. At this point, the PC's might jump straight to another node or might need some help. Clues don't need to lead players in a straight line. Anyone who has watched a good cop movie will know the basics, but if they don't remind them.

Motive: If they are solving a crime that has already been committed, the first place to start is Motive. Seek out the persons that would have the most to gain from that crime.

Opportunity: Find out who cannot account for themselves at the time of the crime, who had the available resources, knowledge, etc. to have committed the crime.

Discovering a Plot: If you are dealing with a plot, node one takes on special importance. It has to be something dramatic enough to entice the characters to go down the rabbit hole. I find what works best is to involve an NPC that already has a relationship with a PCs. Either that NPC is involved with the plot or falls victim to its machinations. Whatever device you use, the players will have to try to draw conclusions based on whatever clues you leave behind, question people that may be involved and otherwise break some doors down to find out what's going on. Don't feel like you have to lead the characters around. Give them some time to figure things out for themselves, let them stumble a bit. You will discover that the players are much more in the drivers seat of this plot than you are.

Here is a sample mystery from a write up for my old podcast.  It starts with all the events of the crime in reverse order and goes on in further detail on how the adventure plays out. If you are interested in hearing the podcast itself, I uploaded the MP3 on my Google Drive.

Once you have all these things in line the second challenge of this style of game is making a convincing sandbox for your characters to play in.  That will be the topic of part 4 of "So you want to be a GM?"

So you want to be a GM? - Part 2 Writing an Encounter based adventure.

When I first started playing RPG’s and wanted to become a Dungeon Master (since D&D was my gateway into the hobby) I was at a loss as to where to begin.  Sure I had some big ideas about a story arc and some notes on some NPC’s but when I sat down to write the adventure, I had no clue where I should begin.

I struggled with formatting my ideas and putting them in place.  How would I lead the characters from one place to the other? Where should I start the game and how do I introduce players to my plot?  I went as far as going out and borrowing a few pre-made adventures from my friend Chris, not to run, but to emulate the format in which they were written.

I was in the middle of Junior High School and didn't have the benefit of any advanced literature classes or any literary instruction at all. I did have a love for reading and had a basic understanding of story structure, but nothing formal.  It was more of a raw cunning for story than an intellectual understanding.

I ended up figuring it out and cobbling something together, but I was completely self-taught at that point and if I were lacking in commitment at all, I would have probably given up out of frustration and never ran my “Day of the White Raven” game for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

Although I didn't know it, the adventure structure I came up with is what I now call the Encounter based structure. How I define this structure is a story which:

a) has the central conflict and drama revolve around combat.
b) has a story framework that leads characters through a series of conflicts
c) has conflicts result in the characters being armed and ready for the next conflict in some way through the introduction of plot elements, equipment or lore.
d) resolve in a final confrontation with the principal element confronting the characters, in other words a boss fight.

Have you ever seen Bruce Lee’s Game of Death? If you haven’t, I highly suggest you do.  It’s the perfect example of this kind of storytelling. (Looking back at my blog apparently I am a huge Bruce Lee fan since this is the third time I cite him as a reference.)

What you need to put together an Encounter based adventure?

The very first thing you need to run a successful Encounter based adventure is a firm grip on the combat system you are using. Since the conflict and therefore the drama of your story revolves around combat, it is imperative that you be able to adjudicate combat fairly and accurately. More advanced GM’s might have a series of house rules, modifications or hacks and that is fine. But be sure to discuss these changes with your players beforehand to avoid any confusion.

I was told there would be no math.

Most importantly the GM has to have a good grasp on how to balance encounters. This is the crucial element in creating the drama for your game.  If the monsters are too easily defeated, they players will not get a sense of tension and lose interest. If the monsters are too difficult overcome and result in several character deaths, the players will lose hope and therefore interest.  The key is to create combat scenarios that are interesting, challenging and within the scope of the characters combat ability.  This can take some time to master since much of a player character’s effectiveness is based on player creativity and the correct player application of the characters abilities.

If you are stuck in a situation where you think things are not going the way you want them to, I have one piece of advice…cheat. Yep, straight up cheat.

If the combat is getting too hard and some people are down simply go, “That Bugbear is looking pretty beat up, looks like one more hit will take it down.” Doesn't matter if the Bugbear still has more than half his hit points, you are adjusting mid fight for balance. If all else fails, give the players an angle of retreat so they can escape the encounter, lick their wounds and find a better way to solve the puzzle. This can be a great way to build even more tension as the players realize that they "can't win ‘em all.”

If the fight is too easy, open up that bad guy spigot(tm) and bring in a few more monsters for the players to beat on. You can also tack on some other element like hidden archers or an unseen trap. Be like water and think on your feet, just because you wrote it down doesn't mean it’s set in stone.

Keith S. brought up an important point on G+ that I had skipped on my original post.  He said:

"Toughening up an encounter on the fly should be a carefully-considered option. Think about the context. Sometimes things will come easily for the PCs. How do the players react? Do they become reckless and overconfident?

That reaction may be an important factor in the next encounter. Some encounter variety will enhance the appreciation of the balanced and/or hard encounters.

Easy encounters are like minions in the broader context of the adventure, satisfying to crush, but how many resources get used in the victory? Resource depletion = story tension."

This lead me to think on the psychological part of the game as well. Using the difficulty of encounters not only to challenge, but to create situations where characters may become somewhat lax and then get a rude awakening. Or simply giving the PC's some much needed confidence building fights could keep them in the game rather than becoming demoralized.

We can take 'em boss! After all they are the equivalent of martial arts skittles. TASTE THE RAINBOW!

Remember, the reason for these combats is to create drama, not to defeat the player characters. You are not playing at or against your players but with them. There are ways to adjust things without being overt. If you are too obvious about it, you will break the immersion, you will lose tension and more importantly trust.

You will find this will get gradually easier once you start getting a firm grasp on what your players are capable of and begin to get a better idea of how they will react to certain situations. Know your peeps and you will get a better understanding on how to balance your game.

The second major factor to an Encounter based adventure is premise and motivation. Where do the characters get started and why do they want to brave all of these obstacles?

One of our +X2A members tells a great story about how his father joined in on one of his D&D games back when he was a kid.  Joel and his brothers were sitting at the kitchen table getting started on a new game and their father walks in and wants to join. They of course enthusiastically agreed and sat him down to make a character.  His father wanted to know who his character was and the boys all answered he is a first level fighter, but that’s not what Dad wanted to know. He demanded to know who the character was. What did he do? Where did he come from? The boys scratched their head and Joel explained that the character was a farmer and since all able bodied men of his village had to take up arms for defense he was also a fighter. His Dad grinned and said, “ok, sounds good to me!”

Dad listened intently as the Joel explained that there was a cave system nearby that was full of goblins that needed killing and that this crew was going to go in and take them out.  Dad would have nothing of it.  He said he was going to go back and start planting for the season and wished the rest of the party luck.

The kids were dumbfounded and asked if Dad was serious and if he actually wanted to play the game. Dad said, “Of course I want to play, but I have heard you guys playing before and therefore know all the bad things that live in those caves and my character doesn’t really have a reason to risk his life, potentially leave his kids fatherless and his poor pregnant wife with lumbago alone with the planting.” After explaining what lumbago was, he went on to explain that without a real cause, he can’t see why his character would risk his life to kill goblins.  It didn’t make sense.

So, they all put their heads together and came up with the storyline which had these goblins come in and murder the farmer's wife and children while he was off in town getting seed.  They burned down the old farmstead and stole his mule Stanislaus for whatever nefarious reason. Now, motivated by revenge and a desperate need to rescue old Stanislaus, Dad wholeheartedly agreed to dungeon delve with his boys.

Poor ol' Stanislaus

Dad was playing more than one game with the kids that day, but he brought up a good point.  Sure, the regular “Everybody meets at the inn and someone offers them a job” routine is tried, tested and true, but it’s not your only option.

I find that when I get a story in my head the best thing for me to do to flesh out the story is to sit down with my players and tell them the basics of my setting and have them make characters. Once the mechanics are in place (stats, class, etc.) I start a dialogue about where the character comes from, what he did before becoming an “adventurer”, how he got his training so on and so forth. When we start crafting these backstories I find that they are fertile ground for my plot to grow. I begin to develop an idea about how the party forms and why they have banded together towards a common goal.  I find that it really helps me put together the story elements that lead the characters from one encounter to the other and has the added benefit of making the characters more personally involved in the plot.

Let’s take my Game of Death example. Bruce plays Billy Lo, an up and coming martial arts and film star. Billy gets involved with a shadowy organization called “The Syndicate” which tries to intimidate Lo into joining their organization and extorting a cut of Lo’s earnings.  Of course good ‘ol Billy doesn’t cotton to that kind of thing and refuses. Long story short, Billy fakes his own death to escape the long arm of the Syndicate.  That’s the backstory.

When The Syndicate begins to muscle in on his ex-girlfriend (an up and coming singer) and begin to threaten her life, Billy gets drawn back in. This is where the adventure begins as Billy Lo, under the guise of his new identity takes on the leaders of The Syndicate one by one.  Every one of Billy’s assaults is an encounter (including Chuck Norris).  After several of these he enters the Red Pepper Restaurant for the final set of encounters and then the Boss Fight with Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Awesome! Billy’s mission leads him from one encounter to the other and drives the story to its climax.

Now that you have your protagonists set its time to set up the black pieces on the board. This should be easy at this point. All you need to come up with is antagonists, a sinister plot, generate encounters, string them all together and determine the likely resolution.

Coming up with an antagonist or villain is key to creating drama. Who is this dastardly being? Why is he/she bent on harming others? What kind of minions is this villain likely to have?

What you are actually doing is determining the final conflict of the game. Your villain needs to be an adequate foil for your group, but should be far too powerful for them to directly confront at the beginning of your adventure. Don’t risk a “scratch one prince of darkness” situation by making your villain too fragile or exposed from the get-go. At the beginning of your adventure he/she should be a shadowy figure that is pulling the strings from a distance. Part of the drama is finding out who the ultimate architect of the plot is and you must develop this reveal carefully in order to make the maximum impact at the end of the tale.

DAMN YOU! One more mule and I would have taken over the world!

Your villains plot can be as transparent as “I want to take over this Kingdom and enslave its people.” For the purposes of this kind of game, especially for the beginner GM, take it easy and go simple. Don’t worry too much about making a three dimensional villain, that’s best left for an intrigue game. For the purposes of this kind of story you are safe with the basic bad guy bent on domination. Just figure out what he wants and how he goes about getting it and how that opposes the PC’s and you are golden.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t go ahead and develop your villain if you want to. If you are comfortable with that, feel free.  What I am saying is that if you are new to the whole GM process this is one of the simplest types of stories you can tell and therefore a good way for you to get your feet wet without feeling overwhelmed. If you bite off too much it will sour the experience. Ease into it.

The first step to writing your first encounter is to determine your villains MINIONS! These minor antagonists are the ones who will dog your players throughout their ordeal. Here is where you bust out your Monster Manual or head to the back of your book for the Antagonists section or simply make characters of the same power level as your group.

I like to separate minions into two categories, Named and Unnamed. Named minions are the villain’s lieutenants and trusted shock troopers. They should be a little more powerful than your basic minion and have critical information or equipment characters need to advance in the plot. Taking down a named minion should be a feat to be celebrated and the rewards should be not only generous, but should be tied into the overall plot.

I'm out for BLOOOD!

Unnamed minions are basic foot soldiers. These monsters should be relatively weak but still strong enough to challenge the group in numbers. Street toughs, minor monsters or basic soldiers do the trick. Just balance the fight with unnamed minions to give the players a sense of epic struggle against mundane opponents that use numbers and surprise to their advantage. These fights can lend a feel of heroism to the game.

I don't think we're using these things right.  Like yeah, I can't hit the broadside of a Hiss.

Now that we have all our major players we can start on writing down some story. Here is a basic list of the things you need to think about for a story.

1) Figure out where the characters meet and how they reach the conclusion that they need to band together to oppose the antagonist. Most of your footwork should be done when you generate characters or you can simply develop an NPC that hires or somehow convinces the group to go on “the mission”. A group of impoverished villagers plead with the adventurers for help. The Lord of this area requires mercenaries to take on a secretive task. Attacked for no reason a group of travelers seek to understand who attacked them and reap vengeance. Whatever ploy you can think of, but this will set the scene for the upcoming adventure.

2) Develop links that lead the group from one encounter to the other. Encounter based games work similarly to the old serial films that preceded movies back in the 1930’s and 40’s. They usually ended with a cliffhanger or unresolved ending that makes people eager to see a resolution.

The end of a session has to have an element that will easily lead them to the next encounter. A dead monster can have a stolen item from a loved one that has disappeared. After a group of enemies are defeated, the players find a trail leading to a hidden path leading deep into the woods. With his last breath a dying enemy can say, “You may have defeated me, but Guttripper will end you all!” Thus, giving the group a clue as to who is behind these dang blasted murders and mule-nappings!

Often, I won’t even develop the next encounter until the previous encounter is complete. I can take the events of the previous session and take some time to draw upon the characters actions to make a more intriguing follow up.

3) Create elements that tie the encounters to the overlying plot. You have to keep in mind that at least a majority of your encounters should be involved with the larger plot and villain.  It’s great to put in some random encounters to fill in time or add some tension, but keep your eye on the prize or your players will lose sight of it as well. Players notice that there are a lot more goblins in the forest than usual. They also begin to notice that they all carry red fletched arrows. They further notice that there are crude red arrow symbols painted on trees and rocks. Players notice small dark cloaked humanoids seemingly giving orders to goblin chieftains, giving them trinkets or weapons. Use the time between encounters for exposition and give the players further motivation to seek out the greater mystery surrounding the violence.

4) Use dramatic elements to make the final conflict epic! The final fight should be more than a basic combat. Coming up to the final villain as he is about to pull off his final coupe at the height of his power should be the stuff of legend. The villain should be prepared to take out these pesky interlopers and handle himself what his minions have failed to do. Make the final battle an elaborate puzzle where they have to figure out the source of the villain’s power and take that out before they take him/her down. Give the villain a special power or ability that makes him/her unique and difficult to overcome. The players should have to use their wits along with their characters abilities to overcome this final conflict. Disrupt power crystals, remove the crown from their heads, kill or free the beast that the villain is drawing its power from, uncover the secret location of the actual villain while fighting its demonic avatar. All of these are classic elements that can make the final conflict something special and noteworthy.  Think of boss fights from video games and MMO’s.  They are perfect examples of this. Heck have them fight Kareem, he is a badass!

Now it’s time to try this out and see how you do. Grab a piece of paper and your favorite hand held portable communications inscriber (pencil) and jot down some notes. Read up on your player’s and GM’s guides and have at. You can do it!

If you liked this article check out the archive of the podcast in my Google Docs folder where we discussed this very topic.  Hear the mule story from Joel himself.

So you wanna be a GM eh?

I am a rare duck. The same day I played my first game of Dungeons and Dragons 1st ed. I wanted to run a game of Dungeons and Dragons.  I am the kind of person that just has a bunch of stories inside me I guess.  On top of that I love to collaborate with my friends and sharing ideas.  NERD.

Most other people that I know were somewhat intimidated by the idea of running a game.  You may have a story idea or a new game you really want to run but you are intimidated by the task of managing a game, writing a fun adventure or simply being judged by your peers. Well, let me tell you what... STOP IT.  It's going to be ok. Jacques Cousteau said, "When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself." It may not be sea exploration, but making something from basically nothing but your neurons and a piece of paper is truly extraordinary and if you want to do it, try it.  How do you get started?  You've come to the right place.

This is the first article in a series.  Here I will give some very basic tips to get you going on the right kind of thinking. Following up will be a series of articles that will talk about different styles of games, the kinds of stories that go well with them and how to get started writing that kind of story.

The best advice I can give to anyone considering running a RPG session is this. Be like water. Know your people. Never leave a good idea behind and run games with people not AT people. What do all those things mean? Well let me elucidate.

Be Like Water

"Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

-Bruce Lee

What I mean by this is that if you are too rigid you will fail. If you are too rigid with the rules, you may deny you and your players the chance to craft an interesting scene or simply weigh things down with minutia. Do you really want to make your players count down to the ounce the amount of equipment they carry?  If it's not salient to the plot it doesn't matter.  If you want to run a zombie horror game where every bullet counts then yeah, they have to keep a tally because it important to the tension of the game. If your characters are travelling from New York to Montreal by bus its really not important to note how much they spent on chips and hot dogs on the way.  Just get them to Montreal! Sweat the big stuff, not the small stuff.  This way you clear up time, energy and focus for what is truly important. Being able to tell what is important and what isn't is the bedrock of good decision making.

If your story is too rigid, your players will derail it.  Write your plots loosely. Never be too rigid in your storytelling it keeps you from being able to adapt to player driven situations. This is a bit of a hard concept to wrap your brain around, so let me put it like this.  When you write a story, you don't want to wire in series, you want to wire in parallel.

For those of you who do not speak electronics there are two basic kinds of circuits, series and parallel. As an example, consider a very simple circuit consisting of four light bulbs and one battery. If a wire joins the battery to one bulb, to the next bulb, to the next bulb, to the next bulb, then back to the battery, in one continuous loop, the bulbs are said to be in series. If each bulb is wired to the battery in a separate loop, the bulbs are said to be in parallel. In a series circuit, every device must function for the circuit to be complete. One bulb burning out in a series circuit breaks the circuit. In parallel circuits, each light has its own circuit, so all but one light could be burned out, and the last one will still function.

This means that your plot elements are all built independent of each other, so if one fails the rest can continue to function. When you make linear plot points its difficult to react when the players decided not to take the plot points in order or dismiss a plot point all together.  It's hard at first, but it gets easier as you go.  I will have much more advice on this as we go along.

You are not a slave to rules or plot points. Use them like tools, but never let them hamper your ability to tell your story. Most of the creativity in being a GM is reacting to the random shit your players will do to your story.

Know Your Peeps

Get to know your players. Find out what they like to do or better yet what their characters like to do. Know their loves, pet peeves, good and bad habits.  Try to tailor at least some part of your story to each player.  Don't be afraid to talk to your players, ask questions and answer theirs. They can make it easier for you by giving you backstory for plot hooks and can collaborate with you to create new story elements in general.  Remember that they are your partners in this endeavor so make sure you keep the lines of communication open and easy.

Never Leave a Good Idea Behind

Sometimes I'm sitting on the can and come up with some of the best story ideas.  Sadly, I am getting old and these ideas speed out of my mind like a spooked bat from a belfry. Story ideas are like gold, don't waste them. Jack Kirby, one of the most prolific Comic Book writers ever had a habit of keeping a box of index cards with simple plot ideas on them.  He would come up with a random idea like, "Machine gun wielding dinosaurs from Venus" write it down on an index card and stuff it in the box. When given a project, he would sometimes pull 3-5 cards out of the box and then write ways to connect the disparate story elements together and BOOM THERE GOES THE DYNAMITE! Use your daydreaming to your advantage. I sometimes will send myself a voicemail with an idea just so I won't forget it. Even when it seems like something crazy out there, you never know.

Run Games With People NOT At People

Don't run your game like a puzzle. Don't create situations where there is only one way out or hinge on a single skill, dice roll, save or RP resolution. When you make games like this you are not playing along with the players you are playing at or against them.  Your players are NEVER the enemy. That goes against the very concept of cooperative storytelling.  There are plenty of you versus them games out there and I can list quite a few by genre, difficulty and quality, but none of them are RPGs. The goal here is for everyone to have fun.  If you create scenarios where people are frustrated, confused or angry you have failed at your job.  For many, playing RPGs is about hero worship and people want to see their persona's be outstanding at least at some point. I'm not saying that the players should always win and there should not be any risk for gain.  What I am saying is provide players with options, that way you never deny their contribution.

Next episode: The Encounter Driven Plot and YOU!

How to deal with the unexpected

Every once in awhile as a role player I have come across some situations where the GM paints him/herself in a corner by incorrectly predicting how a character will act.  This is not uncommon and has a tendency to derail a campaign. This is especially the case when the player is not simply being obstinate  but has come to the conclusion that his characters motivations would lead him in a direction that the GM has not predicted.

This can be very tricky to deal with for anyone trying to run a game. The GM must be careful to not override the player’s creativity or stand the chance of alienating that person. What if this completely changes the course of the story? What if the GM is not prepared for that eventuality and it ends up stopping the game? What if you end up having to deal with conflicts between your players and ultimately yourself because of this choice?  This is probably one of the greatest challenges any GM will face, but just like most challenges, if handled with a little courage and wisdom everyone can come out the better for it.

There are a few things that a GM can do in prep to avoid these problems.  First of all, try to keep your plot points from becoming too linear. Try not to think in terms of “dominoes” try to think more in terms of “pitch and draw.” What I mean by this is to write your plot points in such a fashion that there are multiple ways of achieving a goal so if you are thrown a card you don’t want, you can pitch it back and draw another.

This can be achieved simply by not over planning. Instead of designing specific instances that will drive the plot, come up with NPC’s and clues in the environment that the players can discover and interact with.  This gives you several options which the characters can discover organically. When you have a starting point and a goal, it’s far easier to come up with ways for the characters to reach that goal on the fly instead of having a meticulously designed scene that the characters can avoid or disrupt too easily.

“That boy is our last hope.”

“No, there is another.”

-Obi Wan and Yoda. Empire Strikes Back

Sometimes you will need to plan for the unexpected.  The best way to do this with plot points is to design a way for each character to discover information or interact with an NPC that will get you to your goal.  If one character fails to do so, you can move on to the next until you get the desired result. This will take some thought since character motivations are sometimes at odds.

“Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.” 

-Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

The best thing to do to keep things floating right is to communicate. Having a quick chat with a player whose character has an important role in the plot can save a lot of heartache in the long run. Do not feel like you cannot be in collusion with your players.  This is a cooperative exercise and you will be surprised at how accommodating your players will be if you simply ask them to play along with something. Some might think that is cheating. Just keep in mind that the point here is to tell an interesting story and having the players help you along is never a bad idea.

Here is a good example from a Legend of the Five Rings game I was in a few years back.

The situation:

A samurai is being manipulated by his sensei who just happens to be a member of a secret society bent on destroying the “celestial order.” The GM has basically put this player in a situation where he can

A) Go along with the nefarious plot and loose personal honor but uphold the “face” of his family and clan by keeping some blackmail secret or

B) Stand against his sensei and uphold his personal honor and let the chips fall where they may vis-a-vis the blackmail.

The Conflict:

The player decides that his characters priorities are to his family and clan and cannot force himself to cause any loss in honor to either even at the expense of his own personal honor. This is of course at odds with what the GM believed to be the “Heroic” thing to do, but has to accept that the player has a right to interpret his characters motivations. The GM now has to figure out how to stop the corrupted sensei’s plot and allow his player to retain his characters motivational integrity.

The Resolution:

Amongst the other players are a magistrate (basically a samurai cop) and his personal bodyguard.  They are from another clan. Since one of them is a magistrate and he has some authority, the GM decides to have them find something incriminating act upon it.  So the GM decides to lead them towards the plot and see if they take action.

The other players find things out after a while, but the GM runs into another problem. Since the magistrate is from another clan, this situation is outside his jurisdiction and he could start an all-out war between the two clans if he gets too deeply involved! The magistrate player explains that although concerned about the situation, he cannot see the character risking a war because of it.

The GM then pulls the bodyguard aside and basically deconstructs the situation and asks if there is anything he can think of to fix the situation.  The bodyguard player then confers with the magistrate and after a few minutes come up with the following plan.

Knowing that the blackmailed samurai was being groomed for a very high position within the imperial court, the magistrate had to do something about the situation without causing a war.  The bodyguard also decides that this situation is far more important than their personal honor (a conclusion that the GM originally assumed that the first player would make.)  So the magistrate and bodyguard leave without a trace. They travel to their daimyo’s castle and explain that they must leave their clan and family, renouncing their vows and everything that is held sacred in their culture and religion to become Ronin.  They further explain that they are doing this in order to take actions that are in the best interest of the empire, but cannot be connected to their clan in fear of the repercussions. The GM/diamyo grants them this and excommunicates them from the clan.

The two samurai return with no ties to their former clan, ambush and assassinate the corrupt sensei and promptly commit seppuku.  Case closed.

In this situation we ended up having a fantastic “samurai” ending to the story.  The plot was resolved and everyone ended up in the clear since dying an honorable death is the best thing a samurai can ever achieve.

The GM had to pull out all the stops.  He had to pull characters into a subplot that was malfunctioning and had to basically conspire with characters to get the plot back on track. The conclusion to the story ended up being more spectacular than what the GM had originally anticipated and everyone ended up loving the story overall.

“The price of a Lion Bushi’s honor?

One dark secret.

Ending a Kolat plot in a whirlwind of murder and seppuku?

Priceless.”

-Eli “Yojimbo” Basquez

Our GM never panicked and never gave up on his story.  Sure, things got horribly derailed and there were some arguments in between, but in the end it all working out. Sometimes the GM is the one who has to solve the plot puzzles while the players get to watch.