ROLLING THE DICE
Once you have queried the player, figured out what the player wants to do, how they want to do it, whether it is possible, what consequences are attendant upon it, how many steps are required to achieve it, how difficult it is to accomplish, and what skill should be used, it is now time to call for a dice roll.
The player will roll the dice. Add any modifiers supplied by their level of skill and subtract any modifiers that apply because of the degree of difficulty.
If the player rolls a twelve or higher (after all the modifiers have been added and subtracted) that means the action the player wanted to take has been successful.
If the player rolls an eleven or lower (after all the modifiers have been added and subtracted) the action has been unsuccessful.
We’ve already noted that rolling the dice determines a simple failure or success state (rolling a twelve is as good as rolling a twenty for the purpose of determining a success and rolling a one is as good as rolling an eleven for the purpose of determining a failure) and that you might want to call for a consequence roll to determine the extent of that failure or success.
In interpreting the outcome of a player’s action, the dice roll represents the sum of all factors influencing player success; skill, knowledge, dumb luck, the interference of active and passive elements of the environment (things and people), the strength of any obstacles, and the emotional state of the character. This allows a deal of room for GM creativity to be employed. It may be that the character simply failed because they weren’t good enough at performing the action… but it also might be that other significant factors intervened. You may decide that the failure of the dice roll means that the player simply wasn’t good enough at climbing to get up the rocks beside the waterfall, or you may decide that the rocks are too slick with moisture to provide effective purchase for climbing. In this way, the dice roll can rewrite the world to an extent.
At first blush, this has big implications for whether you will allow repeated attempts at actions. But remember, if you are rolling the dice at all, you should already have established consequences for failure such that repeated rolls are unnecessary. If the player could simply try again and again until successful, then the actions should have been declared an automatic success.
RESOLVING ACTIONS
Now that you have the result of the dice roll, it is time to return to narration. Here you communicate the result and the consequences to the players.
First, tell the player whether the action succeeded or failed and why. Add the consequence that follows from this. Provide any exposition the scene may require. Reset the scene. And lastly, query whether there are any other actions the players wish to undertake.
For players to effectively make actions within the world of the game, they need to be able to predict and understand the outcomes of their choices. For this reason, it is important that you tell players, not only that they succeeded or failed in an action they have attempted, but also why they failed or succeeded. This information assists players in making future decisions and is therefore essential.
You should always try to include the consequences (including long-term consequences) that follow from the players’ actions in your resolution description. It is the simplest and easiest means at your disposal for letting the players know how their decisions affect the world around them. Withholding this information short-changes players in terms of the immersion they can experience within the world and minimizes one of the key rewards of role-playing (to have a meaningful and significant impact on the game world through our choices).
As part of the resolution, you may need to provide the players with some exposition by which you explain what they have discovered or role-play the reveal of information to the players. Make sure that all relevant and important information is communicated.
Always reset the scene. This is accomplished by highlighting any changes that have occurred as a result of the action attempt, describing again where the players are and what they are doing. Be sure to state whether the dramatic question of the scene is still open or not. This is an invaluable prompt that helps players refocus their attention and determine whether the scene is over or not, prior to asking them what they wish to do next.
Once the scene is reset we return to querying what the players wish to do next. As before we are concerned with discovering the players’ goals and the methods they wish to employ in pursuing them. This process (querying the players, adjudicating their choices, communicating the result) is repeated until the scene is concluded and it is time to transition out of the scene.
Don’t try to pre-empt player choices. The players may choose to rest, or ask more questions, or attempt to placate the angry shop owner or make some purchases. Simply present the situation anew and let the players state their intentions once more.
“You attempt to climb the moisture slicked rock-face but it is too slippery to find adequate purchase (attempt-result and reason). The sound of pursuit is drawing ever closer and it does not appear you can escape the canyon using your current method (consequence). You still stand at the base of a waterfall that blocks the end of the canyon you have been fleeing down. The hunters that have been pursuing you are now much closer to your position (reset of scene). What do you do now? (query)”
“You threaten the shopkeeper and, fearing for his safety, he quickly hands over his ledger, showing you what Mr. Smith bought in the shop (attempt-result and reason). The shopkeeper is a popular man in town and you can see from the bitter set of his mouth that he is likely to make trouble for you in the town from this point on (consequence). The shop has quickly emptied of patrons leaving you facing the shopkeeper alone. You have the ledger before you. It reveals that Mr. Smith has ordered (and paid cash up front for) a new piece of lab-equipment, specifically a centrifuge used to separate chemical components (exposition). Having obtained what you asked for, the door to the street stands open behind you and a rear exit can be seen behind the counter (reset of scene). What do you do next? (query)”
MANAGING TROPES
Adventure tropes are not generally lethal in nature. They are exciting, common, features of adventure tales, that, while potentially harming our heroes, rarely result in their deaths. Instead, they add flavor. They are great as the stuff of cliff-hangers so always be ready to end a play session at the point where the heroes crash their car in a chase, or land in the death trap or the bridge snaps beneath them. Such moments are great opportunities to create that Old-Time-Serial feel.
Now some readers may be thinking, “where’s the challenge in non-lethal tropes?”. It’s a fair question, and look, if you really feel it is important to make the tropes you employ in your game genuinely lethal, go ahead and do so. But making them non-lethal doesn’t mean they can’t be meaningful and involve real consequences for the players. Make sure there is always something at stake, some obstacle to overcome, and some consequence for success or failure. The consequence doesn’t have to be instant death in order to be serious and worth avoiding.
Death-traps
Here’s a little-known secret regarding death traps. Ready? You don’t have to design them with a way out. All you really need to know about death traps is (and don’t ever let your players know this) that death traps don’t work. Listen to any radio play, read any pulp novel, or watch any action/adventure movie and it will become quickly apparent to you that death traps don’t work.
Death traps serve a purpose in games but almost never as a means of killing off the players. They are a way of signaling that the story is moving into the third act. They serve as a means of allowing the villain to gloat over the players and give away his super-secret plan in a ridiculously short-sighted monologue. They serve as a way of upping the tension. But they DO NOT serve as an opportunity to kill the players.
Knowing this saves you from having to come up with a fatal flaw in your death trap that the players can exploit to escape.
Huh? How does not having a way out of the death trap make it easy for the players to escape?
Well, it doesn’t make it easy, but it does stop the death trap from being tied to the discovery of that one thing you planned that will make the death trap fail. Instead, almost anything the players come up with will work (so long as it is at least a little plausible). But how do you stop it becoming so easy that the death trap never seems like a threat?
Easy, you alternate between these two simple pieces of advice, using the first on one occasion and the second on the next, back and forth as often as is required.
Instance 1: The second useful idea the players come up with works and defeats the death trap.
Instance 2: The first thing they try works but they must add something to the action to complete it.
You can spring escapable death-traps on your players for years without them ever realizing that it isn’t their own cleverness that has been saving the day.
By the way, this doesn’t mean that death-traps can’t hurt you. They most certainly can. Characters are almost certainly going to be injured by the trap. It’s just that the trap won’t kill them so long as they make a reasonable effort to get out of it.
Be sure to make the event meaningful as well. Escaping the trap should have consequences and real jeopardy.
Remember a death trap is still a scene. What is the player goal (beyond mere survival)? What obstacles stand in the way? What happens if they succeed quickly/slowly/loudly/quietly/etc.? What is the resolution?
Environmental Hazards
Environmental hazards are another staple of radio adventure; boiling mud pools, rivers of lava, quicksand, sandstorms, rickety rope bridges over gaping chasms, landslides, earthquakes. Treat them in much the same way you would a death trap – as an obstacle to slow or hurt the players, but generally not to kill them.
Falling from a rope bridge into a chasm is generally going to kill a player. When the rope bridge snaps, make sure the player has the opportunity to grab onto something and swing into the wall. They’ll take damage but they won’t be killed. Likewise, getting thrown through the cockpit window of a plane. If a fall does happen then determine whether it is a lethal fall or not. A non-lethal fall (say from a second-floor window) is going to do damage but not kill. Treat non-lethal falling damage as the equivalent of club or rock damage (2 wounds). If a lethal fall occurs, then a player may need to cash in their opportunity to cheat the odds, landing in a fortunate haystack or a cushioning bog that leaves them injured (see above) but alive.
It is a good idea to have a few “safety nets” planned for such exigencies. Guide ropes hanging from the bottom of the balloon or Zeppelin may be a good way to save the life of an otherwise doomed character. Some passing driftwood, when dumped in the ocean, may likewise. If the lava is about to overwhelm the player standing on the rock, have the rock break loose and allow the player to surf it to safety (scorched and burned (4 wounds) by the experience.
Again treat the hazard as a scene and make it meaningful. Generally, hazards are obstacles. What do the players want that is driving them to cross the lake of lava? What obstacles lie in their way (the hull of their vessel is melting; geysers explode up around them showering them in boiling magma etc.)? What consequences are attendant on their success (they find fresh tracks and realize they are approaching the place of sacrifice)? What happens if they are forced to turn back (it will take two days to skirt the lake and their quarry may be lost)?
Capture and the villain monologue
“Argh! You shot me, right in the monologue.”
A near-universal feature of radio adventure is the villain monologue. It is a good idea, from the outset, to impress on players the fact that it is no bad thing to be captured and hear the villain out before escaping and spoiling his fun. It is often in the midst of capture that the heroes finally uncover the villain’s plan. At that moment when the villain feels he has triumphed and now has the characters at his mercy, our bad guy, stupidly overconfident, prepares to reveal all… and then one of the players shoots him.
Incredible as it may seem, one or more of your players are highly likely to value getting a clear shot at the bad guy over finding out all the important information you’ve buried in the monologue, especially if you decided the bad guys were too incompetent to search the characters and remove their weapons before the encounter. There are a few common ways around this (and you should try to plan things so the monologue can be delivered safely). You can always have the bad guy address the players through a loudspeaker from a control room behind bulletproof glass etc. But eventually, you will be caught out. The best thing to do is ensure there are other sources for the information you were hoping to share; the villain’s journal, an as yet unsent communique to the villain’s henchmen, and/or a fellow prisoner who can fill the heroes in.
The “villain monologue” is a form of scene resolution, but don’t be surprised if your players turn it into a scene and prove to be their own worst obstacles. The section on preparing mysteries below will give you more on the importance of redundant sources of information.
Puzzles
Puzzles are another common feature of radio serials. Resist the temptation to use the characters’ passive abilities to determine the answer to puzzles. Puzzles are part of the challenge of a roleplaying game. If the players can’t uncover the solution then let the consequences of failure follow. But don’t substitute a dice roll for player smarts. Yes, the player may be representing a character with a brain the size of a planet. And yes the character’s ability to decrypt alien languages may have revealed the puzzle. But the players should be the ones to solve it (or not as the case may be).
CONCLUDING SCENES
Remember we said earlier that when you set the scene you should identify the dramatic question that needs to be resolved? The dramatic question is your guide to when a scene has been concluded and it is time to move on. While the dramatic question remains unanswered the scene has tension and excitement. Once the question has been clearly answered the excitement of the scene disappears. It is the sign that the scene is complete and a new scene needs to begin. Never continue a scene after the dramatic question has been answered. This will only bore your players.
The final decision point in every scene is the moment you ask the players what they wish to do once they have decisively achieved, or failed to achieve, the objective within that scene. Be on the lookout for the markers that indicate the scene is over: the dramatic question has been answered, the available options have been reduced to zero, and/or the conflicts in the scene have all been decisively resolved.
The players understand the scene has concluded when they respond to the “what do you want to do next question” by choosing an exit out of the scene.
Don’t be afraid of your players coming up with a unique, fast, and unanticipated means of answering the scene’s dramatic question. If you are doing your job properly you present the players with a situation and leave it up to them to attempt to get through it using any actions that they choose. If you pre-judge that they need to get through a particular scene by engaging in a fight you are failing in your job. The players might decide to drug the wolves that are on their trail rather than fight them. If you don’t have any preconceived notions about how the players are supposed to achieve their objectives, you will manage the scene more effectively and respond more flexibly to your players’ actions.
As the players progress towards their objectives, the number of choices available to them diminish until either the objective is achieved or the opportunity to achieve the objective has been missed. Unfortunately, players (and GMs) sometimes fail to realize that the number of available answers to the question “what do you do next?” has been reduced to none.
This occurs most frequently in situations of social conflict. The players are trying to convince a shopkeeper to help them but have accidentally insulted her to the point that there is no way she will ever give them assistance. The scene is over, but the players fail to realize this and keep on trying to find ways to get the shopkeeper’s cooperation.
In such circumstances, it can be helpful to have an explicit scoreboard to refer to (see mini-games below). Combat, for example, uses wounds to keep score. When a participant has had enough wounds inflicted upon them, they lose the combat. The presence of a scoring mechanism is very useful as something to point to in order to make it clear that the dramatic question of the scene has been answered.
That said, there will be times when the fact that the scene’s question has been answered is lost on the players. Here you will need to be explicit and spell things out for them.
The following may prove to be a helpful model to follow when ending a scene. Once you realize that the action that ends the overall scene has been undertaken and resolved (with consequences), re-state the objective of the scene, recap the main action that has taken place, and explicitly state that the objective has been met or missed. You then highlight some of the exits out of the scene and ask the players what they intend to do now. Give the players a chance to rest, loot the bodies, do some minor book-keeping (give out experience if you think it is worthwhile), heal and dress wounds etc. , and then transition to the next scene.
“You set out to clear a path to the three doorways on the opposite side of the chamber. After a short but ferocious battle, the giant spiders which blocked your path now lie dead at your feet – what do you do now?”
“You came into the shop hoping to win the shopkeeper’s assistance. After an involved conversation, a number of unintended insults have led her to conclude she will NEVER cooperate with you. The exit to her shop beckons and it is clear she is only a moment or two away from calling for the assistance of the constabulary – what do you do now?”
Normally there are multiple exit points from a scene. But if all the decision points within a scene have been used up and only one option remains (namely, leave the scene through the only available exit), you should quickly narrate the exit. Don’t present players with artificial choices where the only choice is obvious.
“When you entered this room your intention was to clear a path to the lone doorway on the opposite side of the chamber and now the giant rats that blocked your path lie dead at your feet. A quick search of the room reveals nothing but a few gnawed bones (birds and bats most likely). You make your way through the exit”.
Once the exit from the scene has been communicated, be sure to take a moment or two to finalize things. Explicitly give the players a chance to dress any wounds, etc., and also seize the opportunity to award any experience points or loot etc.
Now it’s almost time to introduce the new scene and begin the process all over again. But before we do that we need to manage the transition between the current scene and what is coming up.
TRANSITIONING
A transition is just a phrase or couple of quick sentences that mark the movement from one scene to another. A transitional phrase can be as simple as “You walk into the next room”. It doesn’t have to involve a new location though. It could introduce some new action in the same location. “The door bursts open and six ninjas pour into the room”. It can also be used to pass over time. “Three days later you arrive in Paris.”
A good transition will acknowledge the end of the previous scene, the players’ choice of exit, and indicate the change from that scene to a new scene. “Having killed the spiders you choose the exit on the left and walk through”.
The transition is preceded by the conclusion of the previous scene and the players’ choice of an exit to take and is followed immediately by the narration required by setting the next scene.
The intention behind a transition is to move the players to the next meaningful scene. A meaningful scene is one which presents the players with choices that matter. “Do you keep traveling?” is not a meaningful choice. Always transition to the next point of meaningful decision (locations or events that present players’ with decisions that have consequences for their story). When the next scene has been set, the question “what do you do now?” needs to have an interesting answer.
CONCLUDING THE SESSION
More often than not, your adventure will take more than one session to complete. This means you will want to manage the ending of the session carefully. You could just finish when your time runs out, but that is, frankly, one of the least satisfying ways to end your gaming session. Where possible you want to end on a major story beat – that is, a significant story moment that has some significance for the plot.
Make sure you can see the time during your session. Have a clock handy, or a watch, or another timepiece so that you can see when the end of your session is approaching.
Never run over time. In fact, aim to always finish early. It is always better to leave players wanting more than it is to leave them tired and wondering when the game is ever going to end.
When you see the end of the session approaching, you will want to start looking for an appropriate place to end. As stated above, some places in the story make better endpoints than others.
Good story-beats to end on include after a major success (where a significant goal has been accomplished), after a major reversal (where a significant disaster has struck – often presented as a cliff-hanger), and just after a new goal has been introduced (another form of cliff-hanger).
If the adventure itself ends, that is a special case, discussed below. But if the session ends with the adventure unfinished, look for one of these moments to end on, provide a quick summary of what has been achieved and learned during the session and bring the game to a halt. “And that’s the end of our session” is all the transition out of the game that you need. Pack up, thank your guests for coming and show them out.
Your work doesn’t end there, though. You need to make a record of the events of the session while they are fresh in your mind. You also need to make a record of any experience points earned during play (again while the events of the game are fresh in your mind.
Experience points should be awarded for the achievement of objectives, moments of heroism, and the solving of puzzles. Generally, you do not want to award more than 10 points per player in any given adventure (10 points being sufficient to earn a journal cover representing the publication of the adventure in the Journal of the League of Adventure Seekers).
CONCLUDING THE GAME
When a game comes to an end (that is when the objective of the game has been achieved or missed), a final bit of narration is required.
If the game ends in a victory for the characters, those who survive need to be given the aftermath of the story. As usual, you don’t want this to be long (just a few sentences) but the story has to have a resolution in which all the loose ends are tied up.
The players must return to the place where the call to action (where the goal of the game) was communicated to them. They must receive, or be reminded of the rewards they have won. And they must learn about the consequences that flow from the conclusion of the adventure.
If the game ends in defeat, the content of the final narration is a little different but the broad pattern is the same. The surviving players must return to their starting point. They receive any rewards they have earned and must be reminded of the rewards they failed to get. And they must learn of the consequences that flow from their failure.
Lastly, if the game ends in the players’ total destruction (as can happen from time to time), the final narration should simply inform them of the consequences that result from their failure.
Eg. If the kidnappers are defeated: “You return safely to the township of Harper’s end (return). The town fete’s you for several days and your fame is spread far and wide (rewards). The kidnapped children, a little thin, but otherwise unharmed, are returned to their relieved parents). The kidnapping ring is destroyed, and while it will take some time for the children’s nightmares to end, the townsfolk can sleep secure in the knowledge that this threat has been permanently removed (consequences).”
Eg. If the kidnappers escape: “You return safely to the township of Harper’s end. There are no parades in your honor resulting from this adventure. The townsfolk stare at you with grief-stricken and disappointed eyes. The kidnapped children are never seen again and few will ever sleep easily in their beds here ever again.”
Eg. If the players are destroyed: “You die, lost in the secret lair of the kidnappers. The kidnapped children are never seen again and the evil kidnapping ring continues its reign of terror, preying upon the innocent, enriching itself on the misery and grief of simple farming folk. Your own disappearances are left unremarked – strangers lost to strange happenings in a time of great sorrow.”
FUTURE SESSIONS – PREGAME
Pregame there are a number of things you want to make room for. You need to provide room for people to have a bit of a catchup – this is a social experience after all, and friends want to have time for a quick chat and catch up on the week’s news. When the preliminary schmoozing is done you want to take care of any book-keeping that is required. Hand out any experience points from the previous session and healing etc. earned by the players. Give them a chance to advance their characters if they wish. You want to do all this at the start of the current session (not at the end of the previous session) if at all possible. Then it is time to transition into the game itself with a recap.
RECAPS
In an ongoing game, the recap at the beginning is an important element that you need to get right. It is also rather dull (being exposition). That said, there are ways to make this chore easier.
The reason recaps are important is two-fold. Firstly the recap is a chance for you (given your knowledge of where the game is going) to emphasize the important information from previous sessions that will be relevant in the current session. Player memories are notoriously poor (even about the sessions you have felt were astonishingly gripping and memorable). They also, perhaps even often, latch on to elements that are less than essential to the plot. The recap is your chance to emphasize what is important.
Secondly, the recap helps players transition into the game. It signals that the game is beginning and helps players move out of the “Hi everyone, let’s catch up” mode they are in when they arrive and enter the “hi everyone, “I’m in character and ready to participate” mode of the game itself.
Don’t skip over that unstructured social time at the beginning of the game. We all participate to be social and catch up with friends. That time is necessary. But when it’s time to start playing, the recap helps us make the transition.
Good recaps take preparation. Preparation for your recap begins at the end of the previous session (or as close to it as possible). You MUST make a habit of jotting down notes regarding what took place in each session of your game as soon as possible. You simply can’t rely on your memory for this. Write down a list (dot points are fine) of the things that happened during the game and keep that list on file for future reference. Your recaps will require you to be in command, not just of what happened during the last session, but also all the sessions that came before it. As such, that reference material will be invaluable.
Be sure you don’t just record the game events from your sessions. Also, include any big reveals (especially as they pertain to the characters). The spontaneous events and revelations concerning the player-characters in the game are just as important as the plotted events and revelations of the game, so make sure you record them too.
In a long-running series of sessions, it is not uncommon for seemingly unimportant elements of the early sessions to take on a larger significance later. This is why recaps don’t necessarily just relate to the last session you ran but relate to the entire history of your game.
Your recap, like the introduction to your opening scene, must begin with the current goal and motivation for the current game. Are the players trying to determine who murdered the head of the Corleone crime family because they want to prevent a full-scale mob war from breaking out? Then remind them of this straight away.
Now remind your players of the important information from previous sessions. The important clues that have brought them this far, the clues they haven’t followed up yet, the major obstacles that are standing in their way, the resources and allies available to them, the progress they have made towards their goal, and any important environmental conditions affecting their situation. Note, this is not about giving the players a comprehensive history of their game. You want to keep the recap short (because, as stated earlier, recaps are important but boring). Leave out EVERYTHING that is not important. Just emphasize those things that are important for the current session.
It’s also important, having communicated the important features of past sessions, that you provide a quick summary of what took place in the immediately previous session. Here you include the big victories, defeats, story beats, and character revelations that happened last time.
Finally, conclude your recap by informing the players of their current location and what options lie in front of them.
Tip: Part of your job is to make sure the players have the relevant information necessary to properly participate in the current session of play. The poor memories of your players are your friend here. If, during actual play (back in a previous session), they found but ignored the important clue that will become important in today’s session, simply pretend they didn’t and include it in the recap. Is this bending things a little? Yes, but if TV shows can do this (and they do) in order to keep the story moving forward, so can you. Remember, it’s your game. Try not to mess with your own continuity too much, but don’t be afraid to place a metaphorical thumb on the scales of your backstory from time to time if you feel that is what is needed.
Tip: Some dot points under the headings “Goals and motivation”, “previously”, “last session”, and “current location and options” can be helpful to have on hand to guide your recap as you begin your session of play.
E.g.
Goal and Motivation: You are investigating the murder of Don Corleone, head of the Corleone crime family, murdered in his central city penthouse three nights ago, and you are trying to uncover who’s actually behind the attack before an all-out mob war starts in reprisal.
Previously: Your investigation of the scene indicates he was killed with a high powered rifle fired from the rooftop of a neighboring building. The rounds are of a kind not seen in the city before, suggesting the shooter may be an outsider (perhaps a contract killer from out of town). The current theory (held by the police and by the Corleone’s themselves) is that this is an attempt by one of the established crime families to muscle in on Corleone turf. The main suspects are the Cordova and the Ingliss families (who stand to gain most by the break-up and absorption of the Corleone territories). However, some cryptic references in Corleone’s private journal suggest there may actually be a new criminal organization maneuvering things in the background.
Last Session: Last session you were warned off the case by some thugs claiming to be members of the Cordova family and had an uncomfortable interview with the mayor (who seems to be trying to micro-manage your investigation) that suggests she is in the pocket of at least one crime family, maybe more. Following up some leads of your own, you were shot at while interviewing a contact in the black market about how and where unique guns and ammunition might be smuggled into the city. Your contact was killed, but not before identifying Pier four at the city docks, controlled by the Cordova clan, as the main place that weapons enter the city. After a short chase, the shooter escapes into the city’s sewer system.
Current Location and options: You’ve decided to visit pier four and now stand at the gate. It is only an hour until the curfew that local police are enforcing as they prepare for the expected mob war.
There are numerous armed guards patrolling the dock and two large, surly, armed, and somewhat twitchy thugs who are manning the gate have just finished asking you what business you have on pier four. You need to give them an answer…
This volume relies heavily on the work of Scott Rehm, Justin Alexander, Brian Christopher Misiaszek, Mike Bourke, Blair Ramage, Saxon Brenton, Robin Laws, John Wick, Wolfgang Baur, Ken Hite, Monte Cooke, Kevin Crawford, Phil Vecchione, and Walt Ciechanowski.
This chapter of the Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama RPG and all associated content (except where noted above) is © copyright weirdworldstudios.com and Philip Craig Robotham 2016 and may not be reproduced or distributed without the written permission of the author.
HYOOTRD Roleplaying Game – Game Master’s Guide – Part 1 – Running a Game
- Chapter 1: The Job of the GM (gathering a table, player types, and ensuring fun)
- Chapter 2: Preliminaries (the three fundamental skills, and your first session)
- Chapter 3: Advanced skills – Part 1 (the opening scene and narration)
- Chapter 3: Advanced skills – Part 2 (querying and adjudication)
- Chapter 3: Advanced skills – Part 3 (resolving actions, managing tropes, transitioning, concluding, and preparing future sessions)
- Chapter 4: Managing the Mini-Games (combat, chases, and social actions)
- Chapter 5: Maintaining Pace and Tone (managing time and policing the tone)
- Chapter 6: Improvising (improvising the story and the rules – for all the times the players do something unexpected)
- Chapter 7 & 8: Getting Feedback and Conclusion (improving your game)
HYOOTRD Roleplaying Game – Game Master’s Guide – Part 2 – Designing Games
- Chapter 9: Scene Design
- Chapter 10: NPC, Monster, Faction, and Villain Design
- Chapter 11: Dilemmas, Obstacles, Exits, and Clues
- Chapter 12: Plot (scenario, sandbox, critical path, and the interaction between story and choice)
- Chapter 13: Structures: The five-room dungeon (and variations)
- Chapter 14: Structures: The sandbox (the town or city)
- Chapter 15: Structures: The sandbox (the wilderness)
- Chapter 16: Structures: The Scenario
- Chapter 17: Structures: The Campaign
