The Mandalorian's Narrative Loop Works For Campaigns Too

 Over the weekend I saw some people on twitter talking about the Mandalorian's narrative loop. No one was saying they disliked the show, just that the story telling in it is not very complex. In a world full of serialized shows with serialized plots, the Mandalorian is a big old breath of nostalgia with the majority of episodes being standalone while the over-arcing plot moves slowly and ponderously in the background until it builds up to where it needs to do something towards mid-season or end of season.

Three Questions For An Adventure Plot Miniquest

Adventure stories are tried and true for videogames, cinema, books, comics, and - of course - RPGs. They're so tried and true, we frequently call our parceled stories for games 'adventures' and the characters - at least in fantasy games - are often considered to be 'adventurers'. So how do you catch that feel for an Adventure type scenario? You know what I'm talking about, the thing that happens in what would otherwise be the mushy middle of a story to help keep things going, and to keep people entertained with action and intrigue.

It seems to me, it boils down to answering three questions and in answering these questions you can setup your own scenarios:

Path of Least Resistance

As a GM I've found that looking for the path of least resistance is important. It's important in life too, and in the same ways, but when running a game it can be very important. Life and people are - in some ways - very simple things. Efficiency is in many ways a desired trait, and we are all fundamentally lazy on some level. Not as a negative character trait, but in the sense that we will take the easiest path towards a goal. In other words, we - like water - naturally gravitate towards the path of least resistance.

Running Multiple Games

Running one game is a lot of work. Running multiple games is even more work. It is also a situation I find myself in quite often, and quite often by choice. I'll admit to being a bit of an addict, but at the same time when there are things you want to see happen in games sometimes you have to run them yourself. Today though, I want to talk about a few things that helps when you find yourself GMing for more than one game.

Preparing For Session 1

A first session of a campaign can be a very interesting thing. Few sessions have me as anxious in a campaign than the first session, because a solid first session can set the tone and pace for a game that will carry for a good, long while if not the entirety of the campaign. My personal anxiety over session 1 is helped by how awful I am at beginnings. Still, it always helps to be prepared.

Themes and Goals

When preparing to run a campaign it can be a good idea to write down some themes and some goals. This should be somewhere easily found and prominent when doing prep. It gives an idea to return to when you're not sure what to do session to session, or otherwise hit a place where it isn't clear what direction things should go from. Themes and Goals are different though, and they serve different purposes.

What Is At Stake?

What are the stakes of your story? What are the stakes of any given encounter? Do your players know? Do their characters? Do you?

Having a clear eye on the stakes is important. To quote Mastiff Press and their new game Lancer:

It’s important to start a mission with both a goal and

some stakes established. Not only does this give the

characters clear motivations for why they’re

embarking on a mission, but it also sets up the

possible consequences of failure and allows the GM

to push harder if that should come to pass – after all,

you knew what the stakes were!

Three Types of Content

Talking to a friend, and watching some videos for GMs talking about running games, I've come to the conclusion that there are three types of content that people use when they're running games. These three types of content also more or less boil down to three general styles of running games. Now this style doesn't mean you know everything about how a GM runs their games. It will give you one facet of their game style though.

Games Should Happen In A Time Of Change

One of the things that happens a lot in games, but not always by plan on the GMs part, is a lot of things change in the world over the course of a game. This makes sense from an objective perspective. You are playing a game. That game involves PCs who go on adventures and - presumably - are going to get quite strong. The things that challenge those PCs are going to have to be present in the world, and as the PCs get stronger those things are going to get stronger as well to be a challenge. And all that is without going into the stakes that are put in place to make the PCs care.

The Politics of War

Matt Colville's 80th Running the Game video is on the politics of war. You can find the video embedded below. It's a good video. I highly recommend anyone looking to run a more political campaign to watch it, along with episodes 23 and 24 (central tension and politics of peace.)

Planning a Campaign

When it comes to planning a campaign it can be hard to find a balance between leaving yourself room to grow and have the game change as the players do things, and being prepared to run the game and actually deliver on what you are offering.

There are several ways to do this, but in general you want this to be short and sweet but still cover the things you need.

SEX! Now that I have your attention, let's talk about sex!

As a heads up, I'm not going to be going into any graphic depictions of sex in this blog post. I am, however, going to be talking about sex in your games and sexuality in characters. Also, nothing said here is meant to insult. If I make a mistake when discussing some aspect of sexuality, please let me know I am in error. 

That said, let's begin.

Sex has an interesting place at the gaming table. On the one hand, you can't go 5 steps into an internet community built around RPGs without getting some variation of "Bards seduce everything. EVERYTHING." On the other, a lot of people - with good reason - think that sex has no place at the game table or in gaming, that simply isn't the kind of content they're interested in. As always, the truth lies somewhere - generally towards the middle - in practice. Where exactly though is different from group to group. Still, done right - and maturely - sex and sexuality can add a lot to your game and your game world. So today I want to talk about it.

Six Truths

Recently I stumbled upon a retweet of Sly Flourish's proposal/outline for a Level 1-20 D&D 5e Gnoll Campaign. Considering Gnolls are one of my favorite creature types in the Monster Manual - no idea why,  just like them - and that not using Gnolls when the PCs in my first 5e game were low enough level for them to be a real threat is one of my big regrets of the game, I clicked the link. What I found was an absolutely amazing layout for an entire campaign going from level 1 to 20 for a game built around Gnolls. One I want to run. One I may run should I get the chance to.

Plotting an Epic

With the release of the new L5R game, I've thought it would be a neat idea to try and plot out a campaign that could truly be an epic story. By epic here I mean grandiose in scale, not necessarily "the best game ever" though obviously that would also be amazing. I've run long term L5R games before, but in smaller and more episodic chunks rather than something that really went from A-Z with a big plan for everything from the beginning. However, RPGs and the nature of how they work make some of this tricky. Today I want to talk about the biggest obstacles I see, and key design elements that could hopefully address them.

Campaign Binders

Over the course of a campaign, there can be a lot of information you need to keep track of. Any named NPC could come back at any time, from either the GM or the PCs. I can't tell you how many times I've had PCs randomly remember someone they helped, or that helped them, over a year ago in real life and want to go back and talk to them. The same can be true for locations, and many other things.

To prepare for this, many GMs use various means of organizing the information. Online works well, but even then I find I prefer a physical binder. It's easier to flip through a binder at the table than go searching through my G-Drive or some other online cloud service.

Lately I've been meaning to re-organize my binder. I am thinking of the following sections, and am posting it here because it might be of use to others. Also, maybe someone will have a crazy good idea that I need to hear and will share it in the comments.

PC Section
I like having a place, at the front of the binder, to keep the PC's character sheets. This keeps the sheets with the game and means that as long as I remember to bring the binders, everyone will have their character sheet. It also lets me review characters during preparation. It's no good making a situation hinge on a particular set of skills or spells if no one has them - even if I think they're obvious good choices. Finally, I can also use this section to keep cheat sheets for magic items and other custom stuff.

Locations
In my current binder this section is called 'Maps' but I want to change it. I want to change it because I often need more information than just a map. Maps are great, they give you a visual, but written information makes the map more. I can have a map of a city, or I can have a map and a write up for the city. This puts context to the picture and explains what I'm looking at.

A location section should also have sub-sections for any major locations. A grouping of maps and write ups for a big city, while another place may only have one map and a few scribbled notes on things.

The beauty of this is it can be as detailed or not as needed. If I have an area well planned out, I can have computer generated maps and typed up write ups. On the other hand, if the PCs end up in a village that I have to make up on the fly, and all I have is a quick hand sketch map for the general shape of the village and a couple hand written notes about what the PCs did there, that can be put into the section and developed later, or just kept as is in case the PCs need to go back.

Previous Sessions' Notes
A place for notes from the past several sessions is always useful. This lets you flip back if something needs to be referenced or if you just need a reminder for what is going on. I'd recommend keeping at least all the information for the current arc in this section, but the previous arc may also be good. Obviously, once older than that these notes can be kept elsewhere (or summarized and disposed of.) But it's always good to have a record of the last few sessions. Even if just to help prepare the next few.

Blank Lined/Graphing paper
You have to take notes on something, and graphing paper can double for quick maps in a pinch. Enough said?

Used Monsters
In D&D the Monster Manual can be a royal PITA to juggle when you have an encounter with several monster types. Even worse if one monster is in the default Monster Manual, one is in Volo's Guide, and the others are in Mordekainen's. I do have the Deck of Many Monsters box sets from Deck of Many, but they don't have everything covered. So often I'll end up with print outs of sheets from the book, or of Copy and Pastes of the stat blocks. These are handy to keep track of because monsters can be reused - sometimes reskinned but same stats - and why print it out again and again?

NPC List
I like to keep master lists of NPCs. I normally do these in Google Sheets because it lets me have a master list, a list for each PC, and a list for other big items in the game all derived from that master list (spreadsheets are magic, you can't convince me otherwise.) At the very least I like to track

• Name
• Race
• Sex
• Job
• Location
• Affiliation
• Friendly/Hostile
• Notes

Notes gives me a place to write any quirks or other specific things (i.e. if a PC owes them money or something). Having this information easily at hand can be a life saver for finding who that NPC was that time in that place. At present I have near 100 tracked named NPCs for one of my D&D games. The other has a lot less but it's been running for a lot less time, and well, I've killed a lot of NPCs in that game.

Having some variant of this - or at least notes for major/plot worthy NPCs in the binder is also good. For the Queen of a close country I have a whole page write up on her and her personality. I reference it often, and she has come up a lot in the last few arcs, so it's been good to have it in hand.

What Else?

Starting A New Game - Making A World Map

World maps aren't necessary for all games, and you should never feel bad for not having a map. However, I made the decision I wanted to at least learn how to make maps a few years ago and have taken some steps to learn. I also find for some games - particularly campaign style RPGs in fantasy universes - that it can be a lot of fun. Today I want to talk about building a world map, share some advice, and, well, we have pictures so why not.

Running a Supers Game

From Mutants and Masterminds to Icons and even some of the Fate Worlds, there are a lot of options out there for running a super powered RPG. Most of these games say they're for running Super Heroes, but I prefer called it a Super Powered game because depending on your players and what they want you might not be running a Super Hero game - no matter what you thought going in. Today I want to talk about this, and some questions you should be asking when setting up to run a supers game.

After The Game

You've gone and done it. You ran your campaign to completion. Your PCs either stood victorious over the campaign's end boss, or found that they weren't quite a match on that particular day and things went poorly. What do you do now though? You don't have a next session to plan for, and odds are your brain is still in GM mode for that game. Just starting a new campaign may prove to be rough. Today, let's talk about that.

Who Is Responsible For PC Involvement?

I was lucky enough to be invited into a friend's online D&D game about a year or so back. The game is run by a friend of a friend, and said DM is new to being behind the screen so is focusing on running pre-made adventures and campaigns. Currently we're doing Tyranny of the Dragon Queen, but as we're more than halfway through we've begun some light discussion of Out of the Abyss. The fun thing is, Out of the Abyss apparently has an interesting hitch in it: for the game to work, the PCs have to be interested in returning to save the Underdark, after a particularly nasty time down there. Today I want to talk about that, and what that conversation means for all games, not just people looking to run Out of the Abyss.

Plotting 101: Why You Want Individual Character Stories, And How To Use Them

A couple of months back one of the groups I'm in was preparing to start a new game. As people made characters I got really excited about the huge potential everyone was bringing for personal stories. The GM, at the time, said that he liked that but the game was going to be a more event based story so he didn't know how much room there'd be for individual stories. I didn't say anything at the time because this person is a great GM and their stories are wonderful.

However, last night we were discussing various games and plotting and I brought the point back up. In my opinion you are better served as a GM by incorporating individual character stories into your game, and wrapping those narratives around the central thread of your metaplot. Today, I want to talk about that.