Chapter 7. Getting Feedback

Ok, we all like to get feedback from time to time. We all like to know how we are doing. And the skills we employ as a GM, like all skills, must be learned and developed. As such we like to find out how we are progressing.

Anyone who has been running games for a while will tell you that feedback is essential to helping you grow as a GM. They will then tell you that feedback is impossible to get (it is actually quite hard to come by) and usually not all that helpful (unless you are looking for the right type of feedback). There are two questions that will help you get good feedback; what did you like most about the session?; and what did you like least?

These two questions, asked regularly, and in a positive way (by email is my preferred mode) will get you the best feedback you can find. Player’s want to have fun. The fun they are having is reflected in their answer to the “like most” question. Things that stop your players having fun are identified in the answer to the “like least” question.

Generally, avoid asking “why?” and “what can be done to improve/fix it?” The fact is most of us are actually quite lousy at analyzing why we are having fun and why we are not. It is much better to identify what was and wasn’t fun and then look for ways to maximize one and minimize the other. Collect suggestions, by all means. Just don’t solicit solutions.

And when you gather feedback, NEVER explain, defend, or rationalize your decisions to the feedback provider. Just thank them (ALWAYS thank them) and turn your attention to how to build on the things they like most while minimizing or trying to eliminate the things they like least.

Chapter 8. Conclusions

If you have been working through this book systematically then you will be aware that it has presented the skills of running games in an ordered manner.

It talked about what a GM is and does, what players look for in a game, how to start a game from scratch and how to run your very first session.

It introduced you to the basic interaction of the game (asking players what they want to do and explaining the results – sometimes with the assistance of dice).

Next, it identified, and discussed in general terms, the three major (and essential) skills that the GM employs (narration of the situation, querying the players, and adjudication of the results of player actions).

Finally, it talked in detail about the complex process of running a game; (opening a game, narrating situations, roleplaying the world, querying player actions, adjudicating the results, resolving actions and their consequences, concluding scenes, transitioning between scenes, concluding sessions, and concluding storylines. It also looked at the advanced skills of managing the mini-games, maintaining pace and tone, and improvising in response to unanticipated player actions.

These skills should equip you pretty well for the job of running your own games and providing your players with fun and memorable adventures.

In the next section of this volume, we will explore the design and construction of games, providing you with the tools and skills needed to build your own adventures – from scene to scenario, to sandbox, to campaign.

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

The post Getting Feedback and Conclusion to the GM’s Guide – Chapter 7 & 8 – HYOOTRD RPG Game Master’s Guide appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

IMPROVISING RULES

Two kinds of improvisation pop up within games, and always in response to player actions. The first is where a player asks a question about whether they can accomplish a particular task. “Can I use my fire magic to set the pond alight?”. “Can I throw my knife to smash the broach that we now know is being used to inflict mind-control on the countess?” In such cases, where there is no clear rule to apply, you need to improvise to arrive at a ruling. Remember, the rules are all optional. They are tools to help you run a good game. As such, you can make and add your own rules to supplement or even replace the existing rules as written. Just remember that once you decide that the situation should be handled a particular way, you should be bound to continue handling the situation that way until the situation is altered or a story-driven reason to do otherwise emerges.

When you create a new rule to govern your players’ actions you need to assess how often it is likely to be needed, how often the players will want to take advantage of it, and how NPCs and monsters might take advantage of it. You can create major problems for yourself if you introduce a rule that unbalances the game by giving the players (or their enemies) an unfair advantage. If the rule will only be called upon rarely, then it won’t necessarily be a problem.

Likewise, when creating a rule you need to consider how well the rule fits into the world you are playing in. Is the action believable/possible? Does it violate the laws of physics (and/or magic) that apply in this world? Is there a good reason to believe this action would be impossible? Is it prohibitively difficult to accomplish?

Lastly, consider how it feels. Sometimes the action the player wants to undertake is possible (within the framework provided by the world), and doesn’t create unfair outcomes (with regard to the balance of the rules), but is tonally wrong. A player in your realistic police procedural game may decide to attempt to play soccer with the head of an enemy. If that feels wrong to you, then you should probably trust your instincts and veto the action (or warn of some really significant negative consequences that will follow – perhaps being taken into custody for psychological evaluation, for example).

Sometimes these three things will all line up (tone, balance, realism) but sometimes they won’t. Where you encounter a conflict you will have to decide which is most important for yourself.

Tip: Always record your rulings. The ruling you improvise today creates a precedent for your rulings tomorrow. In order to maintain the consistency of your world you need to write down the rules you add to it and keep them for future reference.

IMPROVISING STORY

The second kind of improvisation occurs where the players want to interact with an element of the story that hasn’t been invented (an NPC for whom you don’t have notes, a location or scene that hasn’t yet been defined, an object or prop that was originally just ornamentation but a player suddenly wishes to use).

When you improvise these elements of a story, you are engaged in design. You need to prepare all of the things that the game designer would prepare as part of the design process, only at the table while under extreme time pressure. As such you need to identify the minimum key requirements of the design of each thing.

An NPC must have their own goals and reasons for cooperating/resisting cooperating with the player characters as well as an attitude, look, and any props. The NPC also has to have resources, information, and/or clues that may be useful to the players

A scene must either be a space to explore (with items of interest scattered about it), or it must have a clear goal with an obstacle or obstacles to overcome. All improvised scenes must have exits that lead back into the game. The scene must also contribute something valuable to the rhythm of the narrative (convey information, provide a moment of tension and excitement, or allow an emotional reaction).

A prop or object must have a use/purpose and a means of operation as well as a look/description.

When you improvise, you must make sure that the things you produce have a purpose and contribute something to the story. This means you MUST know your story, and your world, well enough to make a judgment about how to integrate your improvisation into it.

You must also beware of introducing anything to the game that will invalidate or mess with the planned elements of the story. Work to make sure your improvisation will serve the story rather than sabotage it.

Tip: Just as with rulings, record everything you improvise for the story. You never know when this location, character or object may come in handy further down the track. Once you have created a story element it becomes a persistent part of the world and, regardless of whether you would ever have reason to return to it, your players will remember it and will want to know it is still there should they decide they need to access it again.

Tip: Keep tools and aides on hand to help you with things you aren’t good at. If you struggle to come up with names, be sure to have a pre-generated name list on hand for those times when you create a new character for the players to interact with. If you don’t draw maps well on the fly, then have some pre-generated generic maps on hand Likewise, if you need some generic stat blocks and abilities to give some thugs you just created to kick down a door, keep some lists handy.

DONT WORRY ABOUT THE QUALITY OF YOUR IDEAS WHEN IMPROVISING

An improvised scene only becomes necessary where the players have wandered off the edges of the map prescribed by the planned adventure. As such it will rarely be the case that what you are generating on the fly will have more than a minor impact on the plot. As such, don’t obsess over the quality of the ideas you are coming up with. The fact is, when you are improvising, the okay idea you can make use of in-the-moment is more important (and more essential) than the great idea you might come up with next week.

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

The post Improvising – Chapter 6 – HYOOTRD RPG Game Master’s Guide appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

Unlike film, where the pace is controlled by cutting material together in a carefully chosen order, roleplaying takes place “live” at the table.

Scenes of high action and excitement, scenes with loads of tension and uncertainty, demand fast pace and fast resolution. Scenes that involve exposition, drama, emotion, and emphasis require a slowing of the pace. Unfortunately, the rules of roleplaying games (particularly the rules involved in the mini-games) tend to slam the brakes on right at the point that you, as the GM, want to ramp up the speed at which things are happening. It is actually far quicker to deliver an expositional scene than it is to resolve a combat scene.

The pace in a roleplaying game is controlled by the presentation of choices. Each time the narrative stops so you can ask “what do you do?”, the flow of the narrative is interrupted and the pace is brought to a halt. This is also true of each time a dice is rolled, each time the game is halted to consult a rule-book, each time the players or GM gets distracted, and each time you break into a mini-game within the larger narrative. To keep the illusion of pace going these “breaks” must be kept to a minimum and, ideally, need to occur only at meaningful points in the game where meaningful choices are being made.

The making of meaningful choices within a world while playing a character is the heart and soul of role-playing. As such, the players’ sense of pace is directly tied to how meaningfully they are presented with choices and to what extent meaningless choices are excluded from the game.

The most obvious and easy way to keep the flow of the game going is to skip empty time. Empty time should never be experienced by the players. Choices presented in empty time are not choices at all. They are the role-playing equivalent of “hit this button to continue”. If the players, while in their hotel room, indicate they want to visit the old house at the top of the hill, you want to avoid having an exchange like the following…

GM: You walk out of your hotel room. A corridor leads to other rooms on this floor and some stairs going down. What do you do now?

Player: We take the stairs.

GM: You enter the lobby, the front door leads outside, there are doors leading to the kitchen, and an administrative office, along with a set of stairs leading up to the guest rooms. What do you do now?

Player: We go outside.

GM: The street leads north up hill towards an old mansion. To the south it leads down into the centre of town. What do you do?

Player: We head north.

GM: You come to a crossroads. The East and West branches lead over some hills to neighbouring farms. What do you do?

Player: We continue north.

Etc.

As you can see this is boring. None of the decisions are meaningful. The time spent playing this out is “dead” time. The choice to continue in the direction the players have already stated they wish to go is a non-choice.

Far better to say “You walk out of the hotel and up the hill to the mansion. It is long abandoned and surrounded by weeds and tangled shrubbery. You stand on the somewhat rotted front porch. The door appears barred and planks have been nailed over most of the first-floor windows. What do you do?”

If you wish to present a decision before the players’ reach the destination made clear by their stated goal, only do so if they are encountering a meaningful obstacle or interruption.

You could have your players walk straight into Doc Halloway’s consulting rooms if that is where they wish to go, but if the Doctor is out on a house call you might have them stall at the door to the doctor’s office. This would be a (very minor) obstacle to their intention. The road leading to the offices being washed out might be another. Stopping to overcome an obstacle is a meaningful decision point in the narrative. Likewise having Jane West run-up to the characters and beg them to come and help her husband who just broke through and fell into an underground cavern while trying to dig a new well, constitutes a meaningful interruption of the players’ intent.

Unless and obstacle or interruption get’s in the way of the players’ intent, however, the empty time before the presentation of the next meaningful decision should always be skipped.

MANAGING EXITS

We noted that, from time to time, you will need to motivate your players to seek out an exit from the current scene. The most common reason will be to keep the pacing or flow of the story moving. It is far better to provide reasons to exit that pull the characters forward rather than try to push them. Characters who are pushed tend to resist. When chased by a monster, the characters tend to want to stop and fight it. When told that the Prince has a well-guarded secret library containing all the blackmail information he uses to maintain control of his Kingdom, the players tend to want to go and find it.

TIME

There are three kinds of time in a role-playing game; slow time, real-time, and elided time. The most obvious is real time, where decisions are being made and acted upon in the present. Slow time is the time taken to play through a mini-game; the few seconds of real-time that a combat would take broken down into multiple actions and dice rolls. Elided time is time skipped to avoid “dead” time. “Three days later you arrive at…” etc.

Slow time has a very obvious impact on the pace of the game (as the action heats up, the game slows down – a far from ideal situation and one that is unique to role-playing games), but so long as the choices players make are meaningful and interesting, the impact on the pace will not be negative. This is one of the key reasons that transitions between actions in a mini-game are important.

The combat mini-game, for example, is quite dull if it is not narrated.

GM:What do you do?

Player #1: I attack the wolf.

<<Dice are rolled>>

GM: You do 3 wounds of damage. Player 2, what do you do?

Player #2: I attack the wolf as well.

<<Dice are rolled>>

GM: You do 3 wounds of damage to the wolf as well. The wolf now attacks player #1.

<<Dice are rolled>>

GM: And you take 2 wounds of damage. What do you do?

Player #1: I attack the wolf.

<<Dice are rolled>>

GM: You kill the wolf.

Narration helps make the choices in the mini-game become meaningful and therefore gives the mini-game its sense of pace. When the outcome of a mini-game has been determined (it is no longer uncertain) then feel free to end the mini-game at that point. There is never a need to play it through to the end if the outcome is no longer in question.

Real-time is the most unpredictable time in the game. It is the time characters spend taking actions to achieve their goals. This time is highly variable. Again, the time should only be spent on achieving player goals. Once it is known whether or not the players can achieve their objectives, it is time to move on.

Elided time is the mechanism by which time, that would otherwise be spent without meaningful choices arising, is skipped. It is expressed through phrases such as “Two weeks later…”, “You walk into the next room…”, “After a short half hour’s rest…” etc.

When do you pick up the story again after eliding time? Usually, this is obvious. It is always at the next point that presents the players with a meaningful decision. This point is introduced by setting (or resetting) the scene (see Narrating Situations above) and querying the players regarding the actions they wish to take next.

VARYING THE PACE

Pacing is the speed at which things happen within a scene. The GM has a great deal of control over the pace of scenes via the narration, via an appropriate focus on the most urgent and attention-grabbing elements of the scene, via management of external interruptions to the game (dice rolls, distractions, consultation of the rules, etc.), and via the control of time. But the question remains; to what end should this control be exercised?

For a story to be satisfying you will want to vary the pace. Place your fast scenes between slow scenes. Provide relief from the tension created by exciting scenes by alternating them with scenes that focus on information and scenes that focus on emotion.

A useful pattern is to alternate scenes so that an informational scene leads to an action scene that leads to an emotional (reaction scene) that leads to another informational scene and so on.

The information discovered in the first scene should lead to the action in the second. The players then react and explore the emotional consequences of the action prior to going in search of further information. Information scenes, action scenes, and emotional (reaction) scenes tend to take up about one-third of the story each.

Players will become fatigued if all they encounter are action scenes. They need to rest and think and explore and react as well. Slow scenes give them this opportunity. Most players have an intuitive grasp of this. They will themselves stop, regroup, and discuss things if they feel the need for some respite from the action. A drawn-out transition is no substitute for this and you should not try to short-circuit this process if you notice it is happening.

Likewise, if all the scenes are contemplative exploration scenes that provide no sense of jeopardy, the players will become bored and start itching for a fight (even if it’s only with one another). If the players are bogged down in an endless spiral of naval gazing inactivity, feel free to have some ninjas kick down the door in order to get things moving again.

If you are using a pre-published module, it can be hard to vary scenes on the fly. The best solution is to improvise the scenes you need in order to keep the pace varied. The section below on improvising explains how you can do this (but be aware that this is an extremely advanced skill to master and will probably require a fair bit of practice before you have it perfected).

THE IMPACT OF PACE

Fast scenes tend to invite us to disengage our brains, engage our emotions (usually just one strong emotion at a time – fear, anger, joy, etc.), raise our anxiety, excite us, and make our hearts beat faster. Slow scenes, by contrast, engage our brains and invite us to pay attention to the details.

The main way we control the pacing of the scene is through the narration and its focus. If we slow down our exposition, start to get wordy and descriptive, focus on lots of details, and a leisurely sense of urgency (wherein the players feel they have time to explore and think without pressure) we are presenting a slow scene. If our sentences are short, concise, to the point, and care little for extraneous details, with a focus on things that demand the urgent attention of the players (and we impress on the players the time critical nature of their choices such that they realise opportunities to act are slipping through their fingers) we are presenting a fast scene.

By always skipping to interesting and meaningful decisions, recognizing the purpose of the scene (information, action, emotional reaction), adapting the narration to that purpose, and by varying the type of scene that the players encounter, you will maintain an effective pace.

TONE

A game’s tone is established in terms of what does and does not “feel” right within it. It is the emotional comfort the GM (and players) have with the activity taking place in the story. A hard science fiction world has a different tone to a world in which cartoonish physics is commonplace. If you violate the tone of your game it achieves two things. Firstly it breaks your players (and your own) willing suspension of disbelief – immersion is lessened – and it makes it harder for players to predict the consequences of the actions they take within the world. Since decision making is severely impacted by this and meaningful decisions cannot occur where players are unable to predict how their choices will be handled, the second impact is by far the more serious.

The tone of a game can shift to allow comic relief or to increase the drama, but it must do so within fairly narrow limits and in a way that is consistent with the basic rules of the world. Magic must behave the same way today, tomorrow, and forever, and should not vary wildly because you found a way to milk it for a joke in one situation only to treat it like a form of rules-bound trigonometry in another. Likewise, the physics of your world must be tonally consistent. The ability to leap fifty feet into the air and balance on a twig floating on a lake may be appropriate in a Wuxia style story, but it won’t work if suddenly introduced to a gritty hard-boiled detective story. It is important, for pacing reasons, that the tone of your game shift a little from scene to scene, but wild swings in tone are always a bad idea and should not be entertained without a strong story-based justification, one that introduces a consistent change to the way the world works.

It’s part of your job to police the tone of your game. Trust your gut at those times when a player in your gritty detective-noir world decides they want to be known as Jake Poo-Poo-Splat-Bing the Third. Veto those things which mess with the tone.

Improvisation is an advanced GMing skill that you have to learn and develop from the very beginning. This is horribly unfair, but also unavoidable. Regardless of how well constructed a pre-published module (or your own game preparation) might be, at some point in the game you are going to be called on to improvise because, at some point in the game, the players are going to do something you don’t expect. They will try to perform an action that you haven’t considered before and need to figure out if it is possible, or they will go somewhere and talk to someone that the module didn’t anticipate. Sometimes you will find that, for pacing and tonal purposes, you need to insert an action, information, or an emotional (reaction) scene. In any of these cases, you are being called upon to improvise.

Why is improvisation an advanced skill? After all, the GM is just roleplaying the world. In many ways, it differs little from what the players are doing constantly, except that it involves you responding to player choices on the basis of your knowledge of the entire world rather than (as is the case for players) your knowledge of a single character you are playing. Well, while this is true, the added complexity should be obvious and, where you are called upon to create new scenes, you face the pressure of becoming a game designer (with a super-tight deadline and extremely high, in-the-moment, pressure to perform.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking improvisation is simply making things up on the fly. This is a personal observation, but as I approach nearly 40 years of sitting at tables playing in RPGs I shudder to think of how many GMs I’ve known who have taken pride in coming to the table unprepared, and of how many hours of my time have been wasted playing games that were mediocre simply because preparation wasn’t taken seriously. As I get older, time becomes much more precious to me, and the waste of time involved in sitting at the table with a lazy GM who hasn’t prepared adequately and, worse still, takes pride in their lack of preparation (“oh, I never prepare – I just improvise great games”) results in a LOT of resentment on my part – and I’m not alone in feeling that way. Playing an RPG is a time-intensive pursuit. I don’t get to game as often as I once did, and arriving at the table to find the GM hasn’t prepared and that the party spends one third or more of game time wandering around without a goal or focus because the GM “just wants to go with the flow and see what happens” is an insulting waste of my time.

Improvisation (done properly and well) requires all the planning and effort that goes into good module design, only it has to happen in-the-moment, and under great time pressure. As a result, and before we get into how you go about it, we need to talk about when it should happen and the risks that it exposes your game to.

Never improvise when you don’t have to. Snap decisions have a tendency to result in unpredictable consequences. These consequences can break the predictability of your world by accidentally introducing anachronistic and inconsistent elements to your game. The world you plan is more likely to be consistent and predictable (and players require predictability/consistency in order to make meaningful choices) than the world you construct on the fly. Anachronism has a tendency to break the willing suspension of disbelief your players bring to the table and you really don’t want the players to start questioning how much the world makes sense. You can guarantee that if they are, they have pretty much stopped having fun.

Secondly, if you do have to improvise, do so as minimally as possible. That is, do the minimum of improvisation necessary to respond to the players’ actions while continuing with the game as planned.

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

The post Maintaining Pace and Tone – Chapter 5 – HYOOTRD RPG Game Master’s Guide appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

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

The post Advanced Play – Part 3 – Chapter 3 – HYOOTRD RPG GM’s GUIDE appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

QUERYING YOUR PLAYERS

When you have presented the scene to the players it is time to find out what they want to do next (query them). The easiest way is to simply ask. “What do you want to do?” is a perfectly satisfactory way to begin eliciting the actions your players want to carry out. You are interested in two things in particular and, until you have them, you may need to ask a few clarifying questions.

Firstly you are interested in what the player wants to achieve – “get over the fence” – “convince the mayor to release the prisoners” – “smash the mind control device”.

Secondly, you are interested in how the player aims to achieve this – “using a rope and grappling hook” – “using threats and intimidation” – “hitting it with a hammer”.

Without both of these bits of information, it is impossible to adjudicate the outcome. Without both pieces of information, you will not be able to determine how to adjudicate the outcome.

You have to know how the player is going to attempt to get over a fence before you can call for the appropriate dice roll (or even decide if a dice roll is necessary). You have to know what the player is going to use the hammer for before you can decide whether the action is successful or not.

If the player is being ambiguous, keep asking questions until you are confident you know what they want to do and how they are going to go about doing it.

Don’t allow players to simply call for a skill check (e.g. “I want to roll my psychology skill”). Always explore further and determine what they hope to achieve and how they hope to achieve (e.g. “I want to determine if the Mayor is lying by closely watching his body language”). The players tell you what it is they want to do and how, but it is up to you to determine what skill check(s) may be involved.

There’s no hard and fast rule about who gets to go first declaring their actions in a game. You can simply go round the circle asking players to state their actions one at a time, or you can ask them according to some kind of marching order. You can deal with one group of players first, and then another. You can let players volunteer their actions on a first come – first served basis. In combat, the order is determined on the basis of an initiative roll. So long as everyone gets their say, it really doesn’t matter.

Don’t worry if players start to modify their actions in light of what the other players are doing, even after they have told you what they wish to do. No action is ever really set in concrete until the dice are rolled or you declare a result. Just keep going until everyone is satisfied that what they wish to achieve and how they wish to achieve it has been communicated and understood.

Generally speaking, you will want to resolve actions as soon as they are clearly identified rather than waiting for everyone at the table to state their actions before beginning adjudication.

ADJUDICATING ACTIONS

IS IT POSSIBLE?

Is the outcome that the player is looking for possible? The first thing to work out is whether, given the result of your query, the constraints of the world you are playing in, the action the player wishes to undertake is even possible. A lot of things impact this. Generally, you will want to err on the side of treating most actions as possible. The world of radio drama is (and I am aware of the irony of using this term) cinematic. This means that the action is heightened for greater excitement. Players can crash through glass windows without being cut to ribbons. They can swing on chandeliers without the apparatus giving way under their weight. They can smash a chair or bottle over the head of an opponent. All these things are actually fairly implausible in the real world but are commonplace in cinema and radio drama. Be careful to be consistent in the way you bring your world to life. If you decide magical fire can be put out, be consistent and don’t arbitrarily decide on another occasion that magical fire is magical and therefore can’t be put out.

Next, determine whether the method the player wishes to use could actually work. It might be possible to get across the chasm, but it may not be possible to simply jump it (a rope, bridge or other means may be required). If it is clear that the action being attempted, or the method the player chooses to use to attempt it, can’t possibly succeed then the action fails.

When an action the player is attempting is impossible, there is good reason to believe that a misunderstanding has occurred.

“I want to leap over the edge and attack the spear throwers in the riverbed.”

“You leap over the edge and are killed by the fall”.

“Wait, what? How big a drop is it?”

“Two hundred feet”.

“But I thought it was just a low embankment”.

Don’t let situations like the above happen. If a player attempts an impossible action, probe a bit further to make sure they understand why the situation is impossible.

“I want to leap over the edge and attack the spear throwers in the riverbed.”

“The embankment you are standing on is nearly 200 feet above them. Are you sure that’s what you want to do?

“What, no. I thought it was just a low embankment. I get my rifle out and sight it at one of the spear throwers who looks in charge”.

Sometimes a simple clarification is enough.

“I try to jump the chasm.”

“You can see that the chasm is too wide for that to be possible. You’ll need to find another way over”.

Sometimes the player doesn’t know an action is impossible because they have encountered something new. In such cases it is fine to play out the consequences, just make sure you explain the reason to the player.

“I try to put out the magical fire by smothering it with a blanket”.

“You try to smother the fire, but, try as you might, it keeps burning. The magical nature of the fire makes it impossible to smother.”

Regardless, if the goal or the method used to achieve it are impossible then the action fails.

CAN IT FAIL WITH CONSEQUENCE?

If the action that the player wishes to undertake (the result of your query) is possible, then you need to decide if there is a chance it can fail or not. Actions that are possible without any chance of failure just happen.

Actions which can be repeated indefinitely until they succeed (even if there is a chance of failure in any given attempt) also just happen. The exception to this is where the action that is repeated is likely to draw attention that will interrupt further attempts or where there is a specific time limit (ticking clock) in place.

For example, there is no reason you should ask players to continually attempt to open a door if there is nothing to stop them from eventually succeeding in opening it after repeated tries. In such a case the attempt should simply succeed. If however, a regular guard patrol is likely to interrupt them if they don’t succeed quickly, or if their chosen method of opening the door (say, breaking it down with an axe) is likely to attract unwanted attention, then there is a good reason to treat the attempt at the action (opening the door) as uncertain.

Once you know whether the action is uncertain and failure could occur, you need to determine whether there are significant consequences that follow from the failure. For example, leaping a pit that opens onto a 30-foot drop onto razor-sharp spikes has a significant consequence if the player fails. A leap across a pit that is only two feet deep and can be simply climbed out of on the other side with ease, has no significant consequence attached to it, even if the leap itself might prove unsuccessful.

Don’t call for a dice roll where there is no chance of failure, where repeated attempts can be undertaken freely without interruption, or where the failure is inconsequential. In any of these cases, the action should automatically succeed.

CONSEQUENCES

It’s only worth calling for a dice roll when there are consequences, so it is essential you have a clear idea of what those consequences will be before you call for a roll.

Sometimes the consequences of success and failure are obvious. “You negotiate for a good price on the shotgun and manage to get it for way under cost.” “You fire your rifle at the villain and miss”.

At other times you will want to have consequences that are dependent on the extent of the success or failure. In this game, this is determined by the use of a consequence roll. The consequence roll for a success is the difference between uncovering all the information you were looking for and getting some nice hints. The consequence of a failure is the difference between simply being unable to open the door, and tripping the silent alarm, or bringing the automated countermeasures online. Beware, however, of ridiculous consequences. Remember that, in as much as the guideline is important for player actions and reactions, it is equally important when considering the behavior of a piece of the world (a non-player character, item, or element within your world) that you determine whether the action being taken is possible. You may be tempted to treat a catastrophic consequence roll in such a way that it results in a particularly humorous or ludicrous result, but, if the result you determine is impossible, it will break the verisimilitude of your world. Don’t do this.

The consequences of an action, whether successful or not, alter the world in some significant way. They can be immediate or long term with regard to how the players experience them.

Consequences are usually attendant on the method used by the players to achieve the goal. Smashing a door down, rather than picking the lock, is noisy and may alert guards or the inhabitants of the room being entered etc. (an immediate consequence). Threatening a well-liked shopkeeper to get information might result in the animosity of the town’s entire Chamber of Commerce, making future interactions very difficult (a longer term consequence).

Successful actions can have negative consequences and failures can be beneficial. Threatening the shopkeeper can gather the information being sought but makes it more difficult to gain cooperation elsewhere in town. Failing to pick the lock may mean the guards remain unaware of the players’ presence in the complex.

The important thing is that you have decided on the consequences and that they flow from the method used by the players to achieve their goals.

Tip: It can be useful to think of outcomes in terms of, what some people refer to as, a hierarchy of consequences;

• Yes, and: the action succeeds and a positive consequence applies.
• Yes, but: the action succeeds and a negative consequence applies.
• No, and : the action fails and a negative consequence applies.
• No, but : the action fails and a positive consequence applies.

DOES THE ACTION NEED TO BE BROKEN DOWN INTO SUB-ACTIONS?

Actions are generally simple – fire a gun, jump a crevice, climb a wall, throw a punch. As such they don’t take much time. In combat, this is built into the system. Sometimes, however, it is tempting to break the action down into a number of dice rolls. While this is perfectly allowable, I would recommend against it most of the time. If the player expresses what they want to achieve and how they want to achieve it, you should only need a single dice roll to resolve it. However, if you feel the action being attempted is complex you can break it down into multiple actions.

For example, the player might say they wish to fire on the enemy from the cover of a nearby cliff. It would be perfectly reasonable to ask how they wish to reach that cover (as an action) before resolving the shot (in the next round if reaching the cliff is successful).

When a declared action is more of a process made up of smaller actions, work backward from the goal to arrive at each of the steps;

Fire on the enemy <— Get behind cover <— Climb to the ledge <— Run to the cliff wall.

Clearly communicate the steps you believe must be completed to achieve the goal to the player. It is possible they expected the action to be much simpler and may wish to alter their declaration accordingly. That is fine and the player should be allowed to change their action. No action is set in stone until the dice are rolled. And no player should ever be forced to undertake an action that was not genuinely their intent.

Successes here count as progress towards the goal. Failures interrupt that progress and demand that the player adjust either the method they are using or the goal itself.

Remember there should be consequences attendant on success or failure, otherwise, the step should be treated as an automatic success (or possibly shouldn’t exist at all).

If the player who wishes to do fire from the cliff-face is setting up an ambush and there are no opponents or other reasons why they are likely to be interrupted, then the process of getting into position on the ledge should probably be treated as a simple action with an automatic success. If, however, there are obstacles in the way or the scene is dynamic and changing in such a way that new factors are constantly intruding upon the action (lava is flowing across the floor, or a pitched battle is occurring in the space the player must cross), or the enemy is approaching such that getting into position is a race against time, then treating the action as a process requiring multiple dice rolls with consequences attendant on each success or failure is totally appropriate.

HOW HARD IS THE ACTION?

Generally speaking, most attempted actions can be assumed to be easy. That is, while it is possible to fail at them, they can be attempted and completed by anyone.

Player characters within the world of radio are considered to be exceptional by default and so they attempt most actions with their action-bonuses unaffected.

Despite this, even actions deemed possible by the GM can vary in terms of their difficulty. Difficult actions are harder to complete and attract a penalty to dice rolls (applied after any other bonuses have been added).

There are a total of 11 grades of difficulty that can be applied to actions. Most of the time, actions are standard and require little effort to identify, but sometimes you may want to think a bit more deeply about the level of challenge that the action your players wish to undertake presents.

Below is a chart that can be used as a guide to the penalties to be applied for different levels of challenge.

The chart isn’t exhaustive, but merely a guide. You will have to estimate the amount of challenge that different activities present – BUT if you define the majority of challenges as easy, then you won’t go too far wrong.

Easy: This action can be completed by anyone (running, playing chess etc.): no penalty.

Standard: A typical physical or mental challenge (outrunning pursuit, solving a logic puzzle): – 1 to dice rolls.

Difficult: All difficult physical or mental challenges (winning a championship sprint, beating a chess champion): -2 to dice rolls.

Challenging: Some very difficult physical or mental challenges (placing in an Olympic sprint, achieving grandmaster rank in chess) : -3 to dice rolls.

Very Difficult (levels 1 to 3): All very difficult physical or mental challenges (winning an Olympic sprint, beating the world champion at chess): from -4 to -6 to dice rolls.

Extreme (levels 1 to 3): Some extreme physical or mental challenges (winning an Olympic sprint by half the length of the field, beating the world champion at chess in the minimum possible moves while blindfolded): from -7 to -9 to dice rolls.

Titanic: All extreme physical or mental challenges (outrunning, on foot, a car full of Tommy-gun wielding gangsters while snatching bullets out of the air with your bare hands, beating 5 grandmasters at chess while blindfolded and at the same time deciphering an alien language): -10 to dice rolls.

PASSIVE SKILLS

One class of skills requires some special explanation. These have come to be known as passive skills and relate to things the characters passively know already rather than actively learn. The characters that the players assume for the purposes of the game often know things the players themselves do not. A player might play a chemist with a grasp of six languages and the ability to differentiate seventeen different types of tobacco ash even though in the real world he or she never engages in science, can barely speak the mother tongue, and doesn’t smoke. When such a player encounters a letter written in French it is typical to ask for a skill roll to determine if it can be read. However, you might want to handle it quite differently. You wouldn’t ask players to roll the dice to determine if they can read their mother tongue (it is assumed they can), neither does it make sense to call for a roll of the dice to determine whether they know things they have already learned as part and parcel of gaining a particular skill – and a dice roll always impedes the flow of the story. Instead, you might rather assign the knowledge a specific difficulty (from 0 to 10 based on how common or archaic the dialect etc.). On the basis of the character’s skill in French, as represented by the number of dots they have put into the skill, you can determine whether they can read the letter simply be comparing their skill with that of the difficulty you have assigned to it. So long as you have the characters’ ability scores written down in front of you, there is no need to roll the dice.

Likewise, on entering a location, you could call for a perception roll to uncover anything the players notice that is out of the ordinary. Alternatively, you could simply compare the players’ perception skill to a predetermined difficulty score in order to determine what they see. What they see could then be incorporated into the scene setting exposition without the need for a dice roll.

WHAT SKILL WILL THE PLAYER NEED TO EMPLOY TO COMPLETE THE ACTION?

You should make sure you have a list of the players’ skills and abilities in front of you throughout the game. Because players invent their own skills (if you are not using pre-generated characters) it is essential you know what they are and how they work. It is also important that you have discussed them (and their limitations) with your players prior to play.

Most of the time, the skill needed to accomplish an action will be fairly obvious. In fact, characters in a game set in the world of radio drama are assumed to be able to do most things unless they require specialist training, even if they haven’t listed those things as specific skills. All characters can, for example, try to pick a lock, hot-wire a car, or improvise a bow and arrow. If they haven’t listed such a skill then simply assume they can attempt it as if they have a single dot in it.

Skills that require specific and lengthy training need to be listed specifically if they are to be attempted. While anyone can be expected to know how to maintain a car, and while heroes in the world of radio drama can be expected to be able to conduct basic repairs (at one dot), they probably can’t build a car from the ground up using parts found at the scrap yard without a suitable skill being explicitly listed on their character sheet.

Part of determining whether the action is possible is figuring out whether the character wanting to take the action actually has the skill to accomplish it. You should already know if the action is possible, if the skill is one the character can use, and, where the skill is not part of the character’s explicit skill list, how difficult it is.

But what if there is more than one relevant skill to choose from? In this case, choose the skill that will give the player the highest chance of success. In deciding to call for a dice roll you should always err in the character’s favor.

Sometimes a player will suggest a skill they wish to use. This is okay, in so far as it goes, but ultimately it is your role as the GM to decide which skill is the most appropriate to be used to achieve a specific goal via a specific method. If the player says “can I make a perception check to see if there are any hidden compartments in the cupboard?” they’ve indicated the goal (find hidden compartments) but not really a method of achieving the goal. By asking what method the player wants to use (“I smash it open with an ax”) you can assess whether the dice roll they wish to use is appropriate or not – “Okay, I don’t think perception is what you want here, roll the dice using your ax-manship skill”.

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

The post Advanced Play – Part 2 – Chapter 3 – HYOOTRD RPG GM’s GUIDE appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

Preparing for the Game

Being prepared (preparing) is the key to running a good game.

Select a game that is appropriate for your group. Is your group made up of seasoned adventurers who are committed to long-term gaming? You may want to open a campaign. Is your group made up of newcomers who are just learning how to play for the first time? You may want to select a “dungeon crawl” style of game to get things going. Are your gamers hard pressed to find time for gaming? You may want to choose one-shot episodic games that people can plug themselves into as their schedules allow. Remember, your job is to provide a fun experience for your players, so choose with them in mind.

Be sure you have carefully read over your game notes (even if it is the sample game that came with this book). You will certainly be forced to think on your feet at times during the game and knowing your notes well is what will get you through those moments. Ensure you have any maps, handouts, and reference sheets ready before your players arrive.

Make sure you have a space ready for the game; table, chairs to comfortably seat your players, paper and pencils, dice (if your players don’t have their own), and, if running a game for the first time, some pre-generated characters for them to choose from.

It’s also helpful to have some drinks and nibbles (chips, chocolates, what have you) on hand to help break the ice.

Don’t be too quick to start the game (especially if the group is new). Allow people a bit of time to get to know one another, catch up on news, and generally chat.  When your newest player is making jokes and looking relaxed, that’s when you are ready to start the game.

If it is your first game together, have everyone go around the table and introduce their characters. Start with the most experienced players and ask each to briefly introduce their character’s name and a little bit about themselves.

Eg. “I’m ‘Texas’ Tim Hampton, and I’m a two-fisted archaeology professor who likes to solve problems with his fists, whip, and six-shooter” or “I’m Professor Thadeus Observer, an elderly inventor who would prefer to spend all my time in my library if it weren’t for the fact that I am constantly being called on to participate in various adventures” etc.

Now it’s time to start. Set the scene and let the fun begin.

INTRODUCING THE GAME – THE OPENING SCENE

Let’s start by looking at the skill of introducing a game to your players. You’ve gathered a group of players at your table, given out or generated some characters, and made sure you know the scenario/module that you wish to run. What next?

Well, now you have to begin the story and that means you need to narrate the opening scene.

According to the very brilliant Scott Rehm (one of the go-to people in gaming for advice on running games), the opening scene has to accomplish four things.

1. It has to gather the adventurers together.
2. It has to provide the goal of the adventure.
3. It has to provide a reason for pursuing that goal.
4. And it has to provide the players with some clearly marked exits out of the scene and into whatever scenes come next.

Gathering the adventurers

This is only necessary the very first time a group of characters comes together. In future games, they will have a history, but in the first game, they need to be introduced to one another. If you have engaged in character generation via the rules in our Players’ Guide then the characters will already know each other and have an imagined history in the world. Let the players introduce themselves to each other (a sentence or two, that describes the character and their connection to the group will do). Now they must be provided with a reason to meet. That reason tends to be one of only a handful that is commonly presented.

The players are presented with the adventure at the request of a third party – they are hired to complete a mission, they are given a mission by an authority that they can’t or generally won’t refuse, a bystander requests that they complete the mission – or the mission is requested by a member of the group – a member of the group has asked everyone to gather to help accomplish a particular goal.

Regardless of the reason chosen for gathering the players, the scene begins with that gathering, and the reason for it needs to be communicated (quick and to the point is best). Once the characters know that they have been gathered by the League of Adventure Seekers in order to take on a special mission, or that the mayor has requested a meeting with them, or that Wild Bill Buckshot (a member of their team) needs some assistance, it’s time to tell them the goal.

It’s worth pointing out, here, that in the setting we have built for this game, we suggest that all player characters should be members of the League of Adventure Seekers.  The League is committed to saving the world from all manner of threats (mundane, supernatural, or even alien) and provides a great in-world means for assigning missions to your team.

The adventure’s goal

The goal of the adventure is the measurement that the players will use to know whether they have “won” or not. When the players can say “I know we’ll have succeeded when…” and can complete that sentence, then they know what the adventure’s goal is. If they have no clear idea of when the adventure will be over, then they don’t understand the adventure’s goal. Again, quick and to the point is best.

“The mayor informs you that his daughter has been kidnapped and asks that you rescue her.” “The League has received solid information that the Sky Pirates of Languedoc intend to reign fiery death upon the city of Paris and must be stopped.”

“Wild Bill Buckshot has come into possession of a treasure map and wants your help in recovering the valuables.”

“General Wexford offers you $5000.00 each if you will travel to an Amazonian plateau and return with a live Pterodactyl.” Etc.

In each of these cases, the goal identifies a victory and defeat condition for the game.

To win the mayor’s daughter must be returned safely, Paris must not be destroyed, the treasure must be recovered, or a Pterodactyl must be captured and returned to civilization. To lose the group must simply fail to rescue the mayor’s daughter, Paris must burn, the treasure must be lost, or the expedition must return empty-handed.

It’s okay for the initial goal of the adventure to change later on as the story develops. But for now, in order to get the game underway properly, a goal (even a temporary one) MUST be communicated.

Motivations

The opening scene needs to provide motivation for the characters. There are two sets of motivation that you need to be concerned with when beginning the adventure; the motivation of the characters, and the motivation of the players. Of the two, the players’ motivations are the more important. Players will always drag their characters along with an adventure if they find the adventure motivating regardless of how motivating (or otherwise) they feel the adventure is for their characters. As such the opening scene needs to present the players and their characters with both a reason why the characters would want to pursue the goal and why the players would want to play the pursuit of the goal. This reason is always the thing that is most cool about the adventure, the promise regarding what the adventure will give the players and their characters.

Characters are motivated by three things; external rewards, ideals, and internal rewards. External rewards are things like money, treasures, fame, artifacts, etc. Ideals are abstract notions such as justice, kindness, fair play, world peace, etc. Internal rewards are concerned with self-actualization – becoming the world’s greatest swordsman, or mastering a skill etc.

Generally speaking, it is better to observe what a player (and by extension the character being played) does during play than listen to what a player says about what motivates them.

Players tend to be motivated by challenge, discovery, immersion, story, and clear (achievable) objectives.

Challenge refers to difficulty. Some players are never so happy as when they are facing difficulties, solving problems, or defeating challenges.

Discovery is provided through a sense of mystery and the presentation of the unknown.

Immersion occurs when players can enter into the world of the game, in character, and make meaningful choices within it.

A story is motivating when it is well structured with a clear and satisfying beginning, middle, and end.

And of course, the presence of clear and achievable objectives also motivates the players.

The last three motivations (immersion, story, and clear and achievable objectives) are part of the natural promise of a role-playing game and don’t need to be labored particularly.

You also don’t need to present players and their characters with every type of motivation in the opening scene of your game, but you do need to present and emphasize the major motivating factors.

The Sky Pirates of Languedoc are a challenging foe (challenge) who threaten the peace and safety of the world (ideals).

The hunt for the Pterodactyl requires an expedition into the unknown (discovery) in order to bring back a prize (external reward).

The recovery of the mayor’s daughter will require the solving of the mystery of her disappearance (discovery) and the honing of the group’s investigative abilities (internal reward).

The treasure hunt promises riches (external reward) but another unscrupulous expedition has already set out to recover it (challenge).

Try to remember that your sales pitch for the game (and that is what the motivation is – a sales pitch) doesn’t have to be long. A sentence or two is fine.

Exits

Once the players know what they are trying to achieve and why they are trying to achieve it, you need to give them some clearly marked exits out of the scene and into the game proper. Essentially, when the scene is over the players should know what their options are regarding where to go next. These options will, by their nature, not be exhaustive, but they should, regardless, be obvious and clearly communicated.

“General Wexford has chartered a boat to take you up the Amazon, leaving early tomorrow morning. You now have eight hours to engage in any research you feel is necessary or gather any equipment you wish to take along before meeting at the docks at 7.00 am.”

“The mayor offers you direct access to the crime scene and explains that the files of the investigating police officers are at your disposal”

“The informant who contacted the League about the sky-pirates is a member of a black market smuggling ring with contacts in the underworld. In particular, she may be able to point you to anarchists and bomb makers who are supplying the pirates with their explosives.”

“The treasure map suggests there are clues to be found to the treasure’s exact location at the Castle of Greymalkin, and at a ring of standing stones located in Sherwood Forest.”

In conclusion…

The opening scene, as a scene, can also pull “double duty” allowing exploration, interaction, exposition etc. (see later). The scene can be framed as an action scene, or as a mission briefing, or as a mystery or as a dramatic scene containing character choices etc. The important thing, however, is that the scene explicitly and clearly accomplishes the four goals listed above and that it is short and to the point so that players can get on with the fun stuff of playing the game.

Tip: When you are preparing the opening of your game, jot down the reason for gathering, goal, motivation, and exits related to the first scene. If you are using a published module and it is missing any of these elements, invent and record them.

Eg.

Reason for gathering – General Wexford has invited you to his club in order to make a business proposal.

Goal – He is offering $5000.00 each as a reward for traveling to an Amazonian plateau and capturing a live Pterodactyl.

Motivation – If you go you will be the first to explore this mysterious region. Fame, fortune, and adventure will be yours. It is not without challenge, however, as a rival expedition has already set out.

Exits – Wexford is placing his personal library at your disposal for the undertaking of any research you might desire, but points out that he has chartered a boat to leave at 7.00 am tomorrow morning. You may now engage in research, gather equipment you wish to take on the journey, or simply get a good night’s sleep, so long as you are on the dock at 7.00 am sharp.

NARRATION

As noted earlier, narration (telling your players about stuff) is one of the essential skills of being a Game Master.  Essentially narration, while playing a role in setting the mood, tone, and pace of a scene, concerns itself with communicating important information to the players.

INFORMATION CATEGORIES

There are a number of different types of information that you will want to take note of in your preparation, broken into two categories.

Obvious information – by obvious information, we mean, things that players and their characters would notice as a matter of course; things which have not been deliberately hidden from view.

Hidden information – this is information that is either deliberately or incidentally hidden from view. Deliberately hidden information may be behind a secret door, under a floorboard, or within a secret compartment. Incidentally, hidden information may simply be inside a box or cupboard. Hidden information can be found when someone looks for or examines the items in which it is contained.

EXPOSITION

Exposition is the basic means used by the GM to tell players the information that is available to them in the scene.

This information could be essential for the completing the adventure, or details within the scene, or backstory, or perhaps even information that foreshadows later parts of the story. As noted above the information may be obvious or hidden.

There are generally two points at which you are engaged in exposition. When setting the scene, and when describing what the characters find in response to exploration, investigation, and examination.

Generally speaking, when you are engaged in exposition you want to communicate the information that the players cannot be allowed to miss. You must provide everything they need to know. To do this you have to understand the nature of the information in the scene. Some published materials break this down for you nicely, but many don’t.

SCENE SETTING

Scene setting is something that can cause even the most attentive of players to lose concentration and drift off. As such it must concern itself with concise, clear, and economical communication of information.

Aim to be brief, don’t use complex language and keep the details provided to no more than three or four.

The imagination of your players is your ally in this. You don’t have to provide a great amount of detail because your players cooperate with you in constructing the world. When the GM says that “upon a hill stood a tall fir tree” the players fill in all that is absent. They don’t merely imagine the tree and hill but the sky and the surrounding atmosphere, clouds, time of day, shadows, grass, dirt, etc.

Narration is used to set the scene, transition from one scene to another, and provide exposition.

When setting the scene you need to provide the players with the scene’s goal, the obstacle(s) in the scene, and information about any exits and objects within the scene to be investigated. Ideally, you should aim to accomplish this in just a handful of sentences.

Start with the general location. Be brief and leave plenty of room for the players’ imaginations. Add a detail or two that help establish the mood and then identify any exits/ways to leave, goals, and obstacles that are part of the scene. It is best to FINISH with the element of the scene that demands the most urgent attention. Players have a tendency to stop listening once presented with a serious challenge, so it is always best to finish with the most urgent matter (in order to make sure it isn’t lost on your group).

Every scene (even an exploratory one) should have a clearly identified dramatic question associated with it. This is a question that motivates the players’ interaction with the scene. In general terms, it is the question “can the players achieve their immediate objective?”

In each scene, this takes a different specific form.

“Can the players find any useful information in the ransacked room?”

“Can the players sneak past the guardian robots?”

“Can the players defeat the wolves that are attacking them?”

Sometimes there are further complicating factors as well.

“Can the players open the door before the room fills entirely with water?”

“Can the players expose the villain while keeping their own identities secret?”

Regardless, the dramatic question is always the players’ immediate objective rephrased as a yes/no question.

The dramatic question that drives the scene is important to know and to communicate to the players as it is your key benchmark for determining when a scene is over. Be aware also, that the dramatic question may not be immediately evident during the setting of the scene. Sometimes it won’t solidify until you have asked the players what it is they are attempting to do, why, and how.

Scene setting is a call to action so be sure the problem to be solved is clearly communicated.

Here’s a quick model.

1. General description (A twilit lounge room in an abandoned house)
2. Incidental details (Heavy dust, and faded and torn wallpaper,)
3. Exits (A door leading to a hallway)
4. Goal (A door leading to the stairs leading to the attic)
5. Items of interest (A locked desk, a lop-sided painting, a rug with a corner turned up, and a walk-in-cupboard – currently closed)
6. Closing emergency/obstacle/dramatic question (An angry specter materializes)

TIP: Use these headings to organize what you are going to say when you introduce a new scene.

TIP: Try to use words in your descriptions that activate at least three senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, even taste if appropriate). These can help your players become immersed in the setting.

E.g. You enter a twilit lounge room, the floor-boards creaking (sound) under your weight. It is covered in heavy dust and has the musty odor (smell) of a place long abandoned. The rough (touch) patterned wallpaper (once vibrant and full of color) has faded (sight) and is peeling away in jagged (touch) strips.

TIP: While it is generally important for a scene to contain an obstacle to be overcome, not every location in a game needs to be a scene in that sense. Locations can provide a point in which the players can rest and take a breath. Try to avoid providing too many general purpose locations, though.

EXPLORATION

Exploration reveals hidden information that can then be revealed to the players. The list of ingredients for a potion that is hidden within a cardboard box lying in the corner of the room can’t be revealed until a player deliberately chooses to examine the box. All information revealed through exploration is intrinsically missable.

If a module has not been designed well, it is occasionally the case that essential information has been hidden from the players. In such cases, you will need to identify that information and place it where it can be revealed as part of the exposition. For example, if the construction of the chemical compound is essential to the solution of the game, but the recipe has been hidden in a cupboard that could easily be missed by the players, you may want to include the list of ingredients as part of the scene’s exposition. Simply change its location so that when the players enter the room they are told they can see a list of chemical ingredients lying on the desk nearby.

INFORMATION TYPES

There are several types of information to be managed within the game

Mandatory information – this is the information that is essential to the running of the game; a clear picture of the goal of the game, the motivation the characters have for taking part, the obvious exits from any given scene, and any obvious information that helps explain the game or things within it. This information should never be hidden from players. Players must also learn the objectives they must meet along the way in order to achieve their goal and the means required to achieve them. Unlike initial scene setting information (that appears at the start of the game), this is information that is seeded throughout the game itself and should be communicated as each relevant scene is introduced.

Assistive information – this is (optional) information that aids in the completion of the game’s objectives. The information can be obvious or hidden but isn’t essential (at least not in any one place). This kind of information is usually seeded throughout the game in the form of clues. A good game will usually scatter (at a minimum) three clues for every conclusion the players are expected to reach. The players are usually called upon to assemble the clues in order to find the right answer. For example, a room might contain three doors above which may be affixed three plaques covered in writing in a strange language. All are locked, two lead to certain death, and one leads to safety. Elsewhere in the complex is an alphabet (the key to understanding the writing), a key to the door leading to safety, and a device that reveals danger. When the device is used the deadly doors glow a cold blue. The key only opens the safe door (and shocks the user if applied to the others). And the Alphabet deciphers the plaques to reveal which is the exit. It is not necessary to find any of these clued (since breaking down each of the doors will reveal the exit) but the clues will make finding the exit far easier.

Background information – this is information that reveals about the events, location, or characters involved in the story. They include things such as the police report on the victims of a crime, the Who’s Who extract concerning a particular politician, the engraving on the temple wall that explains how and why it was built, etc.

Foreshadowing information – information that hints at or tells of a future event that the characters may encounter. It may not be relevant to the game at hand, but it can help set up future scenes and games.

TIP: While you can write out the information in a scene under the headings above, it might be simpler to highlight or underline the information using different colored highlighters or pens to indicate the different information types.

ROLEPLAYING

Acting is not roleplaying. It’ can be an optional part of roleplaying. But it should never be mistaken for an essential part.

Roleplaying is putting yourself in the place of a character and trying to act and react as they would to the situations you are presented with. The GM has to be a role player because the GM stands in for every non-player character in the player’s world.

Acting is a unique talent involving a specific set of skills. Some GMs have them. Some don’t. If you don’t, that’s fine. You don’t have to act to role-play. It really doesn’t matter if you can speak for the characters you play in the first person or the third person. So long as you can imagine what a specific character would do in a specific situation and can communicate that to your players accurately, the lack of acting skill won’t matter.

Clarity is more important than acting.

That said, it is helpful to learn to speak in character and out of character. Some of your players will do this (eg. “I walk up to the bar. Can I have a pint of ale, bartender?”) and some will simply describe what they are doing (e.g.. “I walk up to the bar and ask for a pint of ale.”) and some will alternate between the two.

If you can master this particular ability you will be able to respond to your players in the same mode that they seek to interact with you.

Be natural, even when playing a role. Use the non-player characters that you are running to ask questions of the players when things seem unclear. Use your non-player characters to provide the players with information that can help them. Don’t be afraid to throw in a few leading questions that might lead the players to the next step in their quest etc. If your players throw a question or comment at you that leaves you uncertain how to respond, let your character react as you would. Take a moment to think, stroke your chin, scratch your head, say “hmmm” etc. Just do it in the way your character might.

Tip: To bring your characters to life it can be helpful to write short descriptions of your non-player characters to help guide your performance.

Make sure you know the non-player character’s goal in any scene they are a part of. That goal can be “to get home quickly after a grueling day in the market” or it can be “to kill as many people as possible”. But a goal is needed in order to guide your actions.

You should also give the character a disposition (a reason why the character would want to cooperate with the players and a reason that they would not want to cooperate). For example, the barfly might “want to see the murderer of Katie Blossom brought to justice” but might also “mistrust anyone who won’t have a drink with him”.

Identify a word or phrase that describes their personality (surly, obsequious, fawning, cheerful, brave, stupid, etc.)

Describe one or two distinctive features of their appearance (short, tall, thin, fat, a scar over one eye, a taste for the latest fashions, covered in ashes, etc.)

Give the character a posture or expression. Stooped, straight-backed, nose up, a squint, leering, frowning etc. When you adopt the posture it will help remind you to stay in character.

Give the character a quirk – some kind of habitual physical behavior or twitch. They might always lean in conspiratorially when talking with a player. Their eyes might dart around, constantly looking for danger. They might steeple their hands or fiddle nervously with their hair, etc.

Also give the character a good pause behaviour (to indicate they are in thought), like turning their head to gaze away, looking up and to the left while saying “indeed”, etc. (handy for dealing with those moments where the players ask a question and you need time to think before you respond).

Tip: You can fit all these details on an index card.

Eg.

Name: “Thieving” Nigel Skrat

Goal: To get home after a hard day of picking pockets.

Disposition: Willing to help when there is something in it for him. Generally doesn’t want to get involved in situations.

Personality: Snide, cowardly

Posture: Stooped, furtive, frowning

Quirk: Quick movements, darting eyes, says “yeah” before answering each question (even when the answer is “no”.

Appearance: Ratlike, tatty grey clothes, crumpled hat

Pause indicator: Clicks tongue and eyes dart to upper right.

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

The post Advanced Play – Part 1 – Chapter 3 – HYOOTRD RPG GM’s GUIDE appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.

Three Key Skills

There are three basic skills (fundamentals if you will) that every beginning GM must have…

1. Narration – the ability to set the scene, roleplay the world, report the results and consequences of actions, and transition to new scenes.

2. Querying – the ability to draw out of players their goals and the means by which they are attempting to achieve them when they set out to declare actions.

3. Adjudication – the ability to determine the difficulty, skill to be employed, and the result of an attempted action and the consequences that follow from success or failure.

These skills must be mastered to run a game and, thankfully, they are pretty easy to learn. They basically require you to explain the current situation to the players, ask the players for their actions (and roll dice if necessary), and explain the results of those actions to the players – that basic exchange again. Not hard at all (especially if you have a pre-published module with all this information readily at hand). The more you practice this basic exchange the better you will become at it. The remaining skills (discussed in the remainder of this section of the guide) explain and build on these foundational skills to help you become a better GM.

Game Fundamentals

The fundamentals of running a game are fairly straightforward. The key skills are narration (including roleplaying), adjudication, and pacing (and a bunch of special cases such as introducing scenes, transitioning scenes, concluding scenes, and communicating the results of actions). A further skill is that of improvisation – an essential though advanced skill for managing those moments where the players depart radically from the game you had planned. Each of these skills is considered in detail in future sections of this volume. For now, it is enough to master the basic game interaction…

Tell the players why and where they are. Start at the first scene of the game and describe what happens (Introduce, Narrate, and Role-play).

Ask the players what they wish to do (Query). Make sure you understand what they are intending to accomplish and how.

Figure out the results (Adjudicate) and communicate what happens to the players (Resolve).

Describe the new scene that results (Transition) and keep doing this over and over (Maintain the pace and tone).

When the game reaches its conclusion (the players have achieved what they set out to – or failed) sum up what has happened, thank everyone for coming, and bring the game to a close (Conclude).

Your very First Session

If you are a brand new GM, then this section is specifically for you.

Without meaning to discourage you inordinately, you need to understand from the outset that you will run a bad game to start with. This is perfectly normal and should take most of the pressure you are feeling off you. The first time you ride a bike it is wobbly and you have a high chance of crashing. The first time you run a roleplaying game, it is likely to be bad (at least by comparison to the games run by people with experience). The good news is that your players will probably have a good time anyway. Most players are highly forgiving of someone sitting down in the GM’s chair for the first time.

To make your first game manageable, give it a limited duration – a single session (of three to four hours) with an endpoint that you are not going to go beyond – and tell your players.

Provide the players with pre-generated characters. For your first game, you don’t want to be looking up rules relating to character abilities on the fly. By using pre-generated characters you avoid this frustration and can concentrate on running the game for characters whose abilities you understand and have had time to prepare. The process of creating a handful of characters can also be a good way to introduce yourself to the rules and how they work. It also helps the players keep from getting attached to the characters (making it easier to limit the game to a single session).

Lastly, use a pre-published module or scenario (like “The Temple of the Vetalla” included in this volume) for your first game. If you’re a new GM you want to make it easy to concentrate on learning the fundamentals of running a gaming session. The design of a game from the ground up is an advanced skill that you don’t want to be distracted with, the first time you sit down to run a game. And a pre-published module lets you do this. Players are also more likely to blame the module for the quality of the game than they are to hold you accountable. And it will be easier to say “no” when players deviate too far from what you can manage during the game.

Make sure you communicate all of this to your players (limited time, pre-generated characters, and pre-published module) so that they are committed to playing the same game you are going to run.

The next point is obvious. Get to know the rules of the game and get to know the module you are planning to run. Understand the rules in their basic form, but also revise a few areas in detail. Specifically, revise the section on getting things done, combat, and magic.

Be sure to read the module through in detail. Read it all the way through at least once and be sure to skim it as near to the game’s start as you can. You’ll know you’ve read it enough if you can explain to yourself, out loud, the basic run-down of what happens in the module during play.

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

The post FUNDAMENTALS – CHAPTER 2 – HYOOTRD RPG GMs GUIDE appeared first on Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama.