#gming advice

[avalynramsaygames]

Put an opera in your campaign!

Put an opera in your TTRPG and make a reason why the player characters MUST attend. There are many reasons to do this!

It's fancy so the PCs have to come up with formal wear that their characters would bring to the opera (this is one reason it should be an opera). Let them wear whatever weird shit they want so long as their character LEGITIMATELY believes the outfit is appropriate. Let them get Met Gala with it. Other guests may stare and make snide remarks, but the staff should only offer token resistance if the outfit interferes with the performance or audience, or is dangerous to the people around them.

It forces the PCs into a social situation they may not have the mechanical skills for. Fish out of water stories are lots of fun, especially during the intermission when they have a chance to mingle with the NPCs. Make part of their task at the opera to get to know the wealthy folks in the audience, either generally or specific ones. Even better if they have to get *something* from them (political support, a specific item, information, etc). If things seem to be stalling, here are two tricks to help keep things flowing: a) have someone powerful pointedly insult the most hot headed PC in a very upper class manner. Comments about their outfit and upbringing are classics. This heats things back up as the hot head tries to get violent while the other PCs try to keep the peace, and can lead to a duel the next morning when the dilettante turns out to be a renowned duelist. b) once things have completely stalled or if you need to cut things short (in or out of character), have the intermission end and the audience called back into the auditorium. This can be used as a cliffhanger for whatever was about to happen!

The opera house can be a very interesting location! There's the lobby, auditorium, and possibly concessions, but if the PCs start going where they shouldn't, there's a lot of behind (and under) the scenes spaces for them to explore. Do they go to the changing room and harass (or even replace!) the actors? Maybe they go to the props department and replace a stage knife with a real one! There could be a weirdo living in the basement who is obsessed with the lead actress and plans to kidnap (or rescue?) her. There are all kinds of interesting spaces for plots to happen!

The opera itself is an opportunity to tell the players about the past, present, or even future! What is the plot of the opera? This is key information! The opera will be telling a story that is important to the majority of the audience. It could be about the past of the nation (mythical or historical). Maybe it's about events the PCs witnessed themselves but told from a different point of view than theirs and this might be unflattering towards them or those they care about. You can even foreshadow future plot points by having the play be a fiction that thematically or narratively parallels later parts (or even the next) of the story arc. If there's a great evil that's going to return, you can combine the past AND the future by describing the terrors of the "defeated" evil, then later show those signs happening as hints that the evil returns!

There are some great examples of how an opera (or play if you must) can be inserted into a story to great effect. The Ember Island Players episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender recaps the entire show from the perspective of the antagonist Fire Nation.

Final Fantasy 6 has a famous opera scene where one of the heroes has to replace an actress who has been threatened with being kidnapped by the mysterious man whose help they need! The hero must then remember her lines while the rest of the party protects the show from getting derailed by monsters.

These are just a few ways that you can use an opera in your TTRPG campaign and I highly recommend giving it a whirl!

[avalynramsaygames]

Do you have any tips for gming for oneshots or more episodic style campaigns? I'm wanting to run a scum and villainy/galactic 2e game for my friends but with all our vastly different responsibilities and unreliable schedules we probably wont be able to play more than once a month at most, and likely not even with the same people every time. How do you prepare for that kind of episodic play that can be set up and reach a resolution within the same session?

The main thing with running one shots and single session adventures is organizing yourself around time. Many times I've seen people talk about how their one shot turned into a four shot, which is fine if everyone is up for that possibility, but it sounds like you're pretty restricted.

The first thing is that it helps if you run games that you are fairly familiar with. This isn't necessary but it does help with judging how long a group will take to work through the adventure. Not only will you have a better idea for how challenging an obstacle is but you'll also be able to answer any rules questions more quickly.

Planning for what the session IS, even before planning the adventure, goes a long way. What is your pitch of the adventure to your players? Is everyone doing character creation beforehand? What about reviewing safety tools like Lines & Veils? How familiar are the players with the system? How much time will you have for playing? These are all important questions to have answers to.

If the players are unfamiliar with the rules and you have the time, you may want to consider doing character creation step by step as a group. This way you can also steer players away from any skills or abilities that are completely irrelevant to what you have planned; if you're having a desert adventure, they probably don't need to take water walking/breathing spells, for example.

GMs have different valves for controlling the speed that the players move through an adventure. You make things harder than originally planned if they are flying through the adventure and easier if they are struggling. They won't notice because either the danger is ramping up or they are excited about their success.

You can adjust:

The obstacles' offense

The obstacles' defense

How aggressive obstacles are

The locations of objectives/clues

How helpful side characters are

How much control the players have over the narrative (aka just rolling with it)

All of the above will help keep your adventures to a single session.

When I run games at conventions, I follow the above advice and can run a full Beam Saber mission in 4 hours, including 1 hour for character creation.

As for doing an episodic campaign, the first step is to come up with a conceit that allows the mix of characters to change between sessions based on availability. You can hand wave absent characters more easily than you can present characters who are VERY quiet for a while. A good set up is having a central employer/fixer who hires each character on a contractual basis. Once the current job is done, they may or may not get hired again for the next one.

Next is tying the episodes together. There are two ways that I do this:

A string of pearls. Each episode is directly connected to the one before it by a thread. This may be something major like an ongoing antagonist, or small like a one off macguffin item. It doesn't have to be the same thread between every episode but having each connected to the one before gives a sense of continuity for any players who are there consistently.

A tree branch. Each episode is unconnected to the ones that come before and after, but ALL of them are connected to the same central plot. For example you may have several episodes that are all about how an organization harms people, but those people and the way they are harmed is unconnected. This creates a central theme for the episodic campaign to build itself around while allowing space for players that aren't familiar with The Lore to focus on the problem in front of them.

I hope these help you with your game! Good luck with the scheduling!

[open-hearth-rpg]

One of the good things about running the community feed is that I get to boost some of my own work.

Age of Ravens: Volume I: Running

I've now released the first two volumes collecting work from AoR from last 14 years. This first one brings together my general and specific advice for GMing and running ttrpgs. This clocks in at 196 pages with 27 pieces.

You can pick this up on itch or DrivethruRPG

So what do we have in this book? The first part "Strange Things Seen Close Up" covers game specifics:

1. Mook Methodologies: how rpgs handle troops, minions, and masses 2. Teamwork Tactics: how rpgs handle help, aid, and support 3. Considering Complexity: thinking about how we judge crunch in play 4. Building and Setting Settlements: How recent games handle community building 5. Running Mysteries: planning and executing mystery scenarios 6. Factions in Action: using factions as a campaign cornerstone 7. Conspiracies: using conspiracies in rpgs 8. Conspiracy Sandbox: building an rpg campaign around open world conspiracies 9. Newb's Guide to Imaginary Wrestling a non-wrestling fan learns stuff to play WWW 10. Suikoden, RPGs, and Imaginative Space: lessons we can take from this jrpg series

Section two is "Pulling Back the Lens"

11. Seven Starter Stories: go-to inciting incidents 12. Running One Shots: tips & tricks for running these at cons or beyond 13. Selling the Setting the challenge of deep rpg setting 14. Hack the Table: the joy of quick hacking games and getting them played 15. Open Table: What the What: challenges & rewards of open table play 16. Gaming the Online Medium: ideas for making use of what playing online can offer 17. Multiversal Campaigns 1: conceiving and planning these campaigns 18. Multiversal Campaigns 2: more lessons 19. The Quickening: best practices for publishers presenting product 20. What I Like in Games: Saying Please: a wishlist of stuff in rpg books 21. Online Con Management: lessons for running large online events

Section three is wide range stuff "The Eye in the Sky"

22. Five Faces of the GM: a quintet of game facilitator roles 23. Pandemic Brain: Breaking the TTRPG Reading Block : how I stopped worrying and learned to grok rpgs again 24. Community Lessons: key lessons learned from running for my online community 25. 23 Lessons from RPGs: what I learned from every rpg I ran in one year online 26. 33 Tips for Running Online: specific advice for running rpgs online 27. How To Run 200+ Sessions With 25+ Systems In One Year: a run-through of my process

If that sounds interesting to you, I hope you'll check it out.

[iamthedukeofurl]

Controversial Opinion

Watching and learning from Critical Role might make you a GOOD DM, but internalizing the lessons of TAZ Balance will make you a GREAT DM. 

This is not because Griffin Mcelroy is a more skilled DM than Matt Mercer, he’s not, not by a longshot. Matt’s technical skills (Voicework, roleplay) and rules knowledge are substantially better. While he lacks the poetry of some of Griffin’s narration, He’s far better at building a collaborative story around his players and their characters. Griffin, by contrast, is far more of a railroader, it works because he and his family are on such a similar wavelength, and his players are 100% game for just kind of cracking jokes and reacting as the plot happens to them. I’d much rather play in one of Matt’s games than Griffin’s. 

However, Matt Mercer is basically the WoTC “Model” DM, excellent technical DMing skills, running a “Traditional” D&D game with utmost skill, enthusiasm, and resources. 

As soon as the Moon shows up in Balance, Griffin is barely playing D&D Anymore, and that’s wonderful. One of the most important lessons any GM can learn is that so long as everybody has a good time, you can’t get a Bad Grade at DMing. The rules are tools for creating an experience, they have a lot of built-in baggage about the TYPE of experience they are supposed to create, but you can throw that out. Griffin decided that elevators were cool, that he wanted to build this arc around a halfbaked plot to win an illegal but fully supported and with elaborate infrastructure Mad Max style deathrace SO HARD that somebody would give up a magical artifact. 

Watching Critical Role, you’ll get a superb demonstration of technical skill, but very little in the way of usable lessons. You’re not going to become a professional voice actor no matter how many expertly acted NPCs you watch Matt perform. You’re not going to learn the intricacies of pacing a session out, or running a combat with lots of characters. Heck, you’re barely going to learn the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. If you look carefully you’ll pick up plenty of good lessons about picking up plot hooks the players provide you, and letting the PC’s actions drive the narrative forwards, but you’re not going to learn how to Run A Game Like Matt Mercer Does. 

Listening to TAZ, you’re going to learn how to Run A Game Like Griffin Does. More importantly, you’re going to learn that you CAN run a game like Griffin does, which is going to make your games so much better. Even if you adhere much closer to traditional D&D than TAZ did, with it’s secret moon bases and elevators, realizing that, as the DM, you are allowed to get as crazy as you want so long as your players are there along with you is going to do more for your table than a thousand hours practicing French accents until you no longer sound like Pepe LePew.  You are allowed to build a world that does not resemble the art in the sourcebooks at all. You’re allowed to make up whatever magic items you want, abandon the conventions of “adventurers go to a dangerous place and fight a dangerous thing”, introduce weird mechanics and, heck, even abandon the rules of D&D altogether if they don’t serve your purposes at the moment.

The limit of what you can do in tabletop games isn’t printed in the rulebooks, it’s “What sort of experience would my players enjoy”. If they sit down wanting to play D&D, you should probably give them D&D, but you shouldn’t let yourself be constrained by the conventions of the game. The rules are there as tools and guides, not as chains or walls.  

[skynyrdsinner]

We, as people playing story-games and RPGs, often assume that our fellow players are on the same page as us. We assume that other players want the same things, have the same tolerances, fears, and …

For later

[safestsephiroth]

something I hate in tabletop games: unnecessary dice rolls

I know that there’s this prevailing idea that everything should be random but I fucking hate it. You can open a door, you can climb on a barstool, you can speak a simple sentence without spurting out curses, you’re not functionally broken 1 out of 20 times. A natural 1 doesn’t inherently mean a catastrophic failure, especially not on a simple task. If you’re trying to walk down a paved street perfectly sober you’re not going to just klutz out and trip and snap your neck 5% of the time unless you’re specifically a huge klutz in-character. How many times have you walked in your life? When was the last time you were sober and awake and you tripped with solid footing for no reason at all?

Failures are for combat rolls. Failures are for contested rolls. Failures are for tense situations. Failures are for life and death. Failures are for challenging tasks. Failures aren’t for sticking your tongue out at someone and accidentally biting it off. Failures aren’t for turning the handle on a door and breaking your wrist because you rolled a 1. You shouldn’t even have to roll dice if the door isn’t trapped. (Unless you want people to wonder if the door’s trapped.)

If a five-year-old can do it, don’t roll for it. The hell with what the rulebook says, you’re the GM. You are the rules. Don’t make your players embarrass themselves 5% of the time without good reason. It sucks. It’s lazy GMing. It’s pointless. It’s not fun.

[just-tabletop-things]

When in doubt, have two men with guns burst in the door.

GM advice brought to you by Raymond Chandler

[just-tabletop-things]

What is a Roleplaying Game: the Roleplaying Game

This is a real game designed to introduce newbies to the concept of RPGs. The rules were written in an explain-as-you-play format and you can play a complete game with no prep in 15-20 minutes.

P.S. You play as bank robbing astronauts.