Tag Archives: the dark arts of GMing

Mad Libs

I just got back from CharCon, an excellent little pocket gaming convention in Charleston, WV. I’ll probably post a more thorough con review later, but the post that’s been stuck in my head for the last couple of days is a con GMing tactic that I encountered on Friday night.

Friday night’s Fallout session, like all good convention games, used pre-generated player characters. What made these different was the GM’s insertion of a Mad Libs-style fill-in-your-own-characterization block in the lower left corner of the sheet:

It’s ridiculously simple, but it made a noticeable difference around the table in terms of player investment in the PCs they’d just received.

Apocalypse World and its Powered by the Apocalypse derivatives all have something similar in their playbooks, of course, but it’s a pre-defined list of choices – and I’d never made the connection between that concept and the need to provide some sort of player input on con one-shot pre-gens. I’ll definitely be stealing this for future demo games I run.

“Stand by for PC knowledge.”

As I restart Kaserne on the Borderlands, one tweak I’ve made to my GMing style is in how I provide information to my players that their characters should reasonably have. There’s little fun for anyone to find in me saying, “your character knows __.” It’s narration without player agency.

When I had in-person gaming groups, my usual solution (when I remembered to do it) was passing a note or pulling the player out of the room for a moment. Discord enables me to do the latter with multiple channels, without anyone having to leave their chair, and I do still use it for things that require a conversation. In the last couple of sessions, though, I’ve begun using Discord direct messages for shorter infodumps. This gives the player a written reference (something I’ve found is helpful when I’m imparting domain knowledge that’s more in the PC’s lane than the player’s) and lets them rephrase (or elide…) it in a manner appropriate to their character’s persona.

The cautionary note here is that I need to say, “stand by for PM,” before I start typing. Otherwise, the sudden GM silence is a bit awkward and can leave people wondering if we’re having a(nother) comms failure.

Like the Back of Someone Else’s Hand

This morning (that being the morning I’m writing this, not the morning of its scheduled posting), I was scrolling through the Pathfinder 2e subreddit over breakfast and ran across a post asking why readers prefer PF2 over rules-light systems. Several someones made the point which I would have made if I were going to comment: that different game systems are different tools for achieving different storytelling experiences and outcomes.

The comment thread that prompted this post, however, was this one, in which the OP expressed surprise that someone could be capable of running more than one game system without getting rules crossed up.

I had a bit of an “oh, sweet summer child” reaction to that. It never had occurred to me that this might be a problem. I’ve been collecting accumulating TTRPGs since my childhood in the early ’80s and studying and running them semi-regularly since the early ’90s. Each one still occupies a measurable amount of my brain. While I can’t claim to be able to run anything 100% off-book, the RPGs for which I could play or run tomorrow without much fumbling, unfamiliarity, or pre-session review are, off the top of my head:

  • 7th Sea (original)
  • Dungeons & Dragons (5e, 3e as a stretch)
  • Feng Shui (either edition)
  • Legend of the Five Rings (original through 4th)
  • Shadowrun (2e and 3e)
  • Spycraft (original and 2.0, including Stargate SG-1 as an intermediate member of that line)
  • Trinity (original)
  • Twilight: 2000 (v2.2 and v4)
  • Vampire: The Masquerade (original through Revised and 20th Anniversary)

At one time or another, I’ve spent enough time at the table for each of these to develop a decent familiarity with the mechanics. I can make a spontaneous rules call at the table and be fairly confident that my off-the-cuff decision will be consistent with the game as written. Of equal importance, I also know each of the settings (or genre assumptions, in the case of setting-less games like Spycraft) well enough to improvise plot and the world’s responses to the PCs’ actions.

In a pinch, I also could do passably-good GM work with the rest of the original World of Darkness (strongest in Wraith: The Oblivion, weakest in Changeling: The Dreaming), D&D 3e, Dark Conspiracy, Earthdawn, Star Wars (WEG or FFG), and a good cross-section of the Powered by the Apocalypse family.

Hex Flowers

One of the many background elements I track on the logistics spreadsheet for my Kaserne on the Borderlands campaign is weather. The Twilight: 2000 4th Edition rules as written are pretty simple: it’s either fair, cloudy, or precipitation, with a 1d6 roll moving along that sliding scale. I wanted a bit more detail, as I do appreciate me some fine-grained worldbuilding. While looking around my bookmarks, I was reminded of hex flowers.

As that linked post says (you really should RTWT):

Basically you arrange your 19 possible outcomes into the 19 hexes of the Hex Flower i.e. you populate the Hex Flower. The (general) idea is to group the 19 outcomes in a way that makes sense. Often this means grouping similar things together. In play, you roll dice and the rules of the Hex Flower dictate which Hex you move to next. That is, you move from the current hex to one of the 6 adjacent hexes. In that way the last outcome limits the next outcome … a sort of ‘memory’ of a kind.

Goblin’s Henchman blog

So far, my only implementation of this has been a direct port (theft) of the weather table, which is totally system-independent:

And there you go.

Fire Sprites

As promised in the last campaign post, here’s how I ran the fire sprite “combat.”

This whole scene was a result of rolling into the topmost hex of my weather hex flower table (to be detailed in another upcoming post). That result for weather indicates some sort of hazardous weather. Because the previous day had been extremely hot, I decided to throw in a day that would have been a red flag warning in modern National Weather Service terms: hot, low humidity, and high winds, perfect for starting and spreading wildfires. I struggled a little bit on how to make a wildfire interesting and “winnable” before settling on a field fire that would start small enough to be manageable… if not for some complicating factors.

The action sequencing for this “fight” ran according to my normal initiative house rules, with the farm NPCs assisting the PCs and the fire acting in the NPC phase. Attempting to extinguish an adjacent burning hex was a slow action requiring a successful Stamina roll. This received the usual +1 bonus for each helper, and an additional +1 if the PC was foolish enough to stand in a burning hex and try to extinguish it.

Good enough so far, but how about the fire “fighting back” and spreading? Well, I decided that while the initial UXO blast that sparked the fire was “natural,” the weather and – ahem – other conditions were right to attract entities that would drive its spread. What the PCs couldn’t see (until Minka and Pettimore uttered their respective prayers) were the two hexes that I had designated as holding the initial entities:

On each NPC/fire turn, I rolled 1d10 for each active entity. For each success (6+), the fire spread one hex. For each maxed die, a new entity would join the fight – which would drive faster spread on subsequent turns.

For each hex of spread, I chose a burning hex and rolled an appropriate die to randomly determine where the fire would go. For example, this would just be a d5 (or d10 / 2) roll:

After all spread had been resolved, each burning hex rolled a normal intensity C (2d8) fire attack against each character within its flames.

So far, this would work perfectly well for fighting a normal fire, perhaps with some mechanism for randomizing the spread rather than picking the source hex with deliberate ill intent (and for pushing the spread downwind).

As far as the entities went – Minka dubbed them “fire sprites” in the team’s after-action review and the name stuck – I decided that they’d be invisible to the PCs, but anyone who spent a turn studying the fire’s spread would get a Command or Survival check to realize the fire was acting unnaturally. With success, they’d be able to perceive the fire sprites. Minka was designated as getting automatic success because of all the PCs, she’s been leaning the hardest into the local folklore. If we’re putting it in D&D terms, she’s the party’s druid to Pettimore’s paladin – but as it turned out, both players independently did things that made me say, “screw it, you can see” without a roll – as did Arkadi’s player a couple of turns later.

Banishing a fire sprite required total melee damage (or Thoughts and Prayers damage) of 5 points. I also was open to creative solutions, but Minka, Pettimore, and Arkadi solved the problem rather efficiently once they could actually see it.

Behind the Screen

No one has actually asked how we run the Kaserne on the Borderlands campaign, but I figured I’d throw together a breakdown of the basic logistics.

(if you aren’t familiar with the concept of a West Marches campaign, go read Ben Robbins’ original series of posts on the subject. Seriously.)

Coordination

I’m currently running for eight players. We have a private Discord server which we use for all our scheduling, worldbuilding, and between-session communication. Its one limitation is long-term recordkeeping, so I’m considering shifting to a forum for some content, but Discord’s always-on nature makes it very convenient for actual conversations.

(Initial recruiting was easy because everyone is either an original member of, or immediately adjacent to, my college-era World of Darkness gaming group, most of which still maintains contact. So I didn’t have to go far to seek players.)

After some initial shuffling about, we seem to have locked onto a monthly scheduling cycle. At the beginning of the month, I look at my personal and work calendars and determine the nights on which I expect to be available to run. My players typically carve out one evening a week, though we do have some weeks with a weeknight slot and a Saturday slot.

I require them to commit to a date and give me their agenda at least 48 hours in advance so I’ll have enough time to put together a session. I’ll run with as few as three people signed up, though so far I’ve had between five and eight for any given session.

The biggest scheduling problem so far has been player reluctance to commit to a time slot that might exclude someone. I think traditional linear campaigns have given us an expectation of maximizing inclusion. I’ve tried to set different expectations here with the statement that this is more like a LARP (which all my players have experienced, most of them extensively), in which it’s not expected – and, indeed, is often physically impossible – to be involved in everything that happens over the course of a weekend.

I also write campaign posts here with my players in mind. Those who miss a session can get caught up (assuming that it’s pretty close to what the other PCs would have told their character).

Platforms

As previously mentioned, we’re using Discord for scheduling and between-session communication. We also use it for voice comms during play. I’ve set the server to require push-to-talk to reduce the amount of people talking over each other, and because I got tired of interruptions from people yelling at cats.

Our virtual tabletop for this campaign is Forge. This is the first time I’ve used it, but I wanted to give it a shot because of the available official rules pack. One of my players was an early adopter and was able to give me a solid tutorial in its use. The official material isn’t perfect, but it’s a 95% solution for me, which is far better than I could have gotten out of Roll20’s current offerings. I’ll go into a bit more detail on how I handle character management, inventories, journals, and battlemaps in a future post.

The World and the World Map

Previous blog posts have shown the gradual reveal of the world map:

You’ll see this material again

It should be unsurprising that I’m using the Poland map included in the T2k 4e boxed set and the Forge system pack. The players’ home hex, for those following along with the full map, is Af25, the approximate location of the real-world Ponikla.

For reasons which will eventually be revealed in play, I’m running their world map with heavy fog of war. They have to explore a hex to open it up on the world map. However, as the GM, I can see the whole thing. Thanks to Forge’s ability to link journal entries to map icons, I have GM notes on encounters, locations, and factions scattered across the world map. This includes canon locations of major military units (I’m using the 1e continuity) as well as a large amount of material inspired by Jed McClure’s Old School Polish Sandbox hexmap and key.

Places to go, plot to uncover.

This framework enables me to improvise encounters and locations that are somewhat internally-consistent.

Session Prep

When my players decide where they’re going and what they’re doing, I check my GM notes to see if I have anything already there. If not, I’ll come up with something based on nearby items of interest, my random encounter generator, and my overall intentions for the campaign.

For exploring a new hex, I try to seed at least three distinct items. These can be combat encounters, noncombat encounters, interesting problems to solve, recoverable potential resources, or things that tie into the campaign’s overall evolving plot. I also establish what the hex’s terrain is like (starting with the base terrain type[s] shown on the world map) and what was there before the war.

We don’t always get to all of the prepped elements in a single session. Depending on what I had prepped, I’ll either retain it in my GM notes for a later encounter in the same hex, or I’ll recycle it for future use in an appropriate place.

As my PCs start getting out of their home hex region, they’ll start rubbing up against some of the local factions I’ve established. For each of these, I have a home base, an area of influence, resource surpluses and needs, general military strength, and overall agendas. These should enable me to determine how members or leaders of the faction will react to PC actions. Factions will also change over time, either in response to PC actions or as a result of the established trends in the 1e setting and continuity.

Overall, my sessions so far have been about 10% random tables, 40% preparation, and 50% improvisation off the first two elements.

Building a Slightly-Damaged World

Because Twilight: 2000 is set in our alternate history, I decided to use Free League’s travel map of central Poland for this campaign’s world map. Obviously, this dictates geography, but the framework from the setting’s history also strongly implies some of the major factions out there, their rough areas of control/influence, and what they’ll be doing over the coming in-game months.

Because my players may read this blog, I will not be discussing those in detail… until they encounter them.

I decided to start my PCs in a small farming community near the south bank of the Pilica River (which, in-setting, is larger than it is in real life, and is navigable as far upriver as Tomaszow Mazowiecki). It’s near the center of the map, giving them ample room to explore in any direction. It’s June 20, 2000 – the summer solstice. They’ve been in the village about a month, having arrived here after evading pursuit by a large number of Soviet troops. Since then, they’ve been laying low and healing up, but as the village is becoming their semi-permanent home, it’s time to start seeing what threats and opportunities are out there. Thus, in West Marches style, they start off with visibility only in their home hex, and they’ve gotta go hexbash to clear out that fog of war.

(While I haven’t been specific about character histories and none of my players are Twilight: 2000 canon purists, I’m assuming that the 2000 NATO offensive occurred a few months earlier than in canon. Thus, PCs for whom it’s appropriate may have been involved in the Kalisz encirclement.)

After some collaborative world-building, we’ve decided that the village currently has 52 residents, not including the PCs. Its population was dwindling even before the war due to urbanization. Wealthier Poles from nearby cities were buying up vacant farms and converting them to hobby farms or vacation homes, so by the early ’90s, about half of the village’s remaining residents were involved in providing various services for these absentee landlords. Nowadays, the population is split evenly between prewar residents and refugees from the cities, which means there’s a shortage of the skilled farmers necessary for salvage-economy subsistence agriculture. There’s also a general lack of skilled trades, so finding and recruiting people with those skill sets will be an ongoing objective for the PCs.

One of the world-building assignments I handed out was “tell me three problems the village has.” The skilled trades issue was one. A second was a lack of potable water – water from the Pilica can cause illness and hallucinations. An additional catch here is that some hallucinations accurately predict future events, but those are accompanied by more incapacitating illness.

Did I mention that my players are mostly from my college-era World of Darkness group and they near-unanimously asked for supernatural elements in their post-nuclear apocalypse?

This ties into the village’s third initial problem, which is that something is taking the children. So far, it’s also returning them, but they have no memory of what happened to them while they were gone…