I was wondering how I could do a chase scene in one of my campaigns.

My dilemma is that chase scenes are supposed to be fast and action packed, no dull parts or slow parts.

But with Pathfinder’s usual movement rules, it’s too boring and my players lose interest.

Thanks for the request, Devon.

Readers, we’ve had car chase tips in the newsletter, but not fantasy-based tips.

I’m especially interested in chase scenes involving villains on foot. Those seem to be rare and difficult to pull off.

I look forward to reading your tips below!

Image credit: Patrick Crusiau

A couple weeks ago I sent out a Reader Tip Request for the spouse of a GM in need. The game master was having problems reacting to in-game events. He needed to think faster – or different – on his feet so he could handle unexpected player decisions and actions better.

Here’s the request from RPT Reader F.:

Reader Tip Request: Thinking Fast on Your Feet

Hello! I’ve been subscribed to your tips for awhile now and I’ve enjoyed them and found them useful. I don’t have much experience GMing myself, but my husband has GMed for years. The only problem is, due to a brain tumor and other brain trauma, he doesn’t think as fast anymore.

He’s tried GMing again and he just can’t keep good control of the party. He says he has to plan out every possible avenue players may take in detail beforehand because he can’t think on his feet well enough (and that would take a long time).

It’s either that or he has to shoehorn the party and make the story too linear (which most parties won’t like and many will try to break it without even knowing what they’re doing).

He designs his own adventures. He has difficulty figuring out what happens after each encounter.

But the biggest problem is keeping players in line. Because it takes him a few extra moments to think about what happens next, the players tend to steamroll ahead before he’s ready (which causes him to have to rethink everything he has just come up with, which takes more time).

I play in his games and try to moderate when I can (I know what he looks like when he’s having a hard time) but it doesn’t always work out.

He’s just gotten so defeated that he feels like he can never GM again, and I want to show him that he can.

I was wondering if you or the community have any tips or tricks to try and help him? Thanks for your help.

- RPT Reader F.

Below are the responses I received by email. Lots of great advice in there! And feel free to add a tip of your own.

Flipping through my thrilling purchase, I had some questions about the mega adventure. So I reached out and asked Tsar author Greg A. Vaughan some questions. As a bonus, I rolled a 20 on my Diplomacy check and he’s shared some GMing tips with us!

The first thing I want to ask you, Greg, is how you stayed fresh during the writing of hundreds of encounters and almost 1000 pages. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Greg: Stayed fresh? What is that? This thing sucked the life of me like a good demon lord should.

The inspiration for the adventure came directly from Rappan Athuk, which I’ll get into more in a bit. As for the encounters, I kept a little notepad with me at all times, and every time I had a thought on a good encounter or NPC that would fit in with what I was wanting to do, I took notes.

I kept it by my bed and carried it with me. I ended up filling two steno pads with notes for encounter and design ideas.

I worked on it for a year and a half, which gave me lots of time to come up with stuff, and the result was that I horribly overwrote the thing. Bill wanted about 100,000 words, and I gave him 550,000. However, it also allowed me to use all of my ideas without abridging them, which was pretty awesome I have to admit.

I’m a backer for the Rappan Athuk Kickstarter, which gets funded July 2nd 1:59 PST [hint, hint readers]. Is there any way I can use that campaign with Tsar? And, does Tsar allow GMs to run side adventures throughout, or is it fairly linear in style?

Greg: You can absolutely use them together since they’re both big sandbox adventures. There is an overall plot to Tsar, but it’s not a railroad for the PCs to follow but rather a series of secrets that they can discover.

Likewise, Tsar’s development led to the creation of an overall plot for Rappan Athuk, since the two are intimately connected. However, other than the difficulty level of encounters, there is nothing to dictate what order things are done in.

So, a party with some teleport spells could absolutely bounce back and forth between the two. I think that would probably create an even richer gaming experience as the players could see how the relationship between the two unfolds.

In addition, there is at least one magical gate in the lower levels of Rappan Athuk that leads directly to the Hidden Citadel in Tsar. So, they are a natural fit together.

Tsar starts at PC level 7. And I’m salivating at the thought of running it. However, I like it best when PCs start out at first level. It gives campaigns nice continuity. Plus, when the group finishes Tsar, they can brag about how their characters were just wee pups when it all began.

What build-up adventures would you recommend I run to bring the PCs from level 1 to 7? Feel free to mention Frog God adventures, or any others. I’m just wondering if you have any recommendations that fit the theme and style for a smooth transition to Tsar.

Greg: I wrote Tsar with the Necromancer Games adventures The Wizard’s Amulet, The Crucible of Freya, and The Tomb of Abysthor in mind as the lead in. In fact, that’s how I ran it for my own group.

The Tomb of Abysthor will take PCs to above 7th level, so you’d have to have them head out early to get them into Tsar at the appropriate level.

For my own game, I had the churches of Thyr and Muir in Bard’s Gate contact the PCs with the mission to Tsar just after they had raided the Temple of Orcus on Level 4 of Abysthor. That not only fit in thematically (there is a temple in Tsar that emulates the temple in Abysthor), but it also allowed them to learn a bit about the Justicars of Muir and their tombs which ties directly into the first book of Tsar.

My idea was to tie a bunch of Necromancer Games products together when I first wrote Tsar, and that goal continued into its current incarnation with Frog God Games.

Alternately, now that Rappan Athuk is being expanded to include play for first-level PCs, you could also have a party cut its teeth for 7 levels on the upper portions of the Dungeon of Graves before heading over to Tsar since they both tie directly together.

Long-term campaigns have just come up as a topic in Roleplaying Tips. A game master was having problems making his campaigns last. What advice do you have for GMs thinking of running a long-term campaign like Slumbering Tsar?

Greg: Other than one-shots in convention play, long-term campaigns are just about all I play. I have always found that to keep it going long-term is to make it about the characters not the adventures (though you definitely need cool adventures, too).

I have my players roll up their first level characters and provide me a paragraph of backstory (more if they like) subject to my approval.

I then take those backstories and weave more into them, some of which they know and some of which they don’t and will have to find out over the course of the campaign. It creates a huge buy-in from the players as they not only get to contribute to the meta-story of the campaign with their backstories, but they also get to have the experience of learning the secrets about their characters’ own personal story as they progress.

I know campaign fatigue can be a problem – especially with a meatgrinder like Tsar – but my group spent seven years playing through it and stayed engaged throughout because it was always about the characters and their stories first and the adventure itself second (one PC actually murdered another one without the others knowing, and the victimized player took it in stride because it fit their characters so well).

It takes some creative thinking on the part of the GM to personalize an adventure or series of adventures, but that is something I think gamers typically have in spades and is not an insurmountable task.

When you wrote all the installments for Tsar, did you have the whole plot outlined in advance? Could you tell us a bit about how you went about planning a massive adventure?

Greg: I planned the overall plot for Tsar from the beginning when I made my initial pitch to Bill, and then spent a year and a half filling in the details.

Since it was originally a three-book series, that wasn’t as difficult as it sounds since I wasn’t juggling 14 separate components. Only later, when we decided to publish it as a serial, did it get divided into 14 parts along the most logical divisions.

As for the planning of the adventure, it all began with Rappan Athuk. There’s a little bit of flavor text history at the beginning of Rappan Athuk that talks about the battle of Tsar and how it resulted in the creation of Rappan Athuk.

I always felt that paragraph left a lot of unanswered questions and was just rife with potential. My whole thought process began with: Why, after the Army of Light was defeated at Rappan Athuk, did the city of Tsar remain abandoned if it had been such a stronghold for the victorious followers of Orcus?

That led me to believe it all must have been part of some greater master plan, and from there it was just writing the history of Rappan Athuk by exploring what happened at Tsar.

A lot of it practically wrote itself since there was such a wealth of undeveloped campaign detail in many of the products by Necromancer Games. I think the biggest compliment I ever received was when I was still working on the third book building off of material that Bill and Clark had created, and Bill sent me an e-mail saying, “Hurry up and finish. I want to see how this ends.” Highest praise, in my mind.

There’s an obituaries section at the end of the book for successful GMs poor characters that don’t survive. That’s awesome. Whose idea was that? Have any fans reported back on their kill counts?

Greg: That was created by Bill, if I recall correctly, and I think that just gives a little insight into the mind of the man who personifies Tsathogga. What can I say, he thinks adventurers are delicious.

I have seen messageboard threads here and there talking about PC kills, but nothing organized yet. However, the book was only recently released, so I’m expecting for something like that to pop up eventually.

[Update: Frog God just let me know there's a PC obituaries section up at their website now. ]

Encounters are the building blocks of great adventures. Could you give my readers two or three tips on how they can improve their encounters and make great ones?

Greg: Forget the math and trying to balance it. Come up with a cool encounter idea that is atmospheric, fun, challenging or all three. Then go back and make it fit the game balance you want.

The worst thing to do, in my opinion, is set out to make a bunch of perfectly balanced encounters with level-appropriate monsters and treasure. I think that just creates bland, predictable, homogenized encounters.

Make awesome encounters that are fun to play and run, and then tweak them so they fit the power level you want. The rules are there to help you, not hurt you.

What are you working on next? Will it be so heavy it collapses my mailbox too?

Greg: As revealed by the sneak peak at the end of Tsar, my next major project is The Sword of Air as a sequel of sorts to Tsar (though it will also start at first level).

It will be big and will be released in a serial format and will be big (did I mention that), but I expect it will not be as big as Tsar. I expect I’ll never write anything as big as Tsar again because, let’s be honest, writing Tsar that big was nuts.

It was the ultimate gamer dream of writing and publishing his campaign exactly how he wants it with basically no restrictions, but it’s not a very practical idea. I think Bill would not consider me to be a very much of a contributing part of Frog God Games if I only cranked out one adventure every 8 years.

But it’ll be big, and it’ll be fun. So your mailbox should be safe…unless it was perhaps structurally weakened by the delivery of Tsar, in which case all bets are off.

We’re also in development of a new series of adventures by Richard Pett revisiting his decadent and desolate home campaign world that has previously been represented by the Styes in Dungeon Magazine and Carrion Hill through Paizo. It’s going to be a lot of creepy fun.

That sounds awesome. Thanks for your time, Greg!

No, thank you. It’s been fun. I hope you and your players have a lot of fun with Tsar. And be sure and fill up those pages in the back!

How long have you been a GM?

6 years

What are your favourite game(s) to run?

Deadlands Classic, d20 Modern, Mutants & Masterminds, Pathfinder, A Song of Ice and Fire RPG.

How did you first get into GMing?

The first game I ran was a free D&D 3.5 adventure available on the WoTC website. My gaming friends and I had just started roleplaying a few months before. Me being the DM was a spur of the moment thing that was sort of pushed on me peer pressure style at about midnight on a Saturday.

I had a blast, and so did everyone else. We played until 9am Sunday and then went to breakfast at Denny’s. It was so much fun that we pretty much followed that routine every Saturday for the next two years.

How has GMing made a difference in your life?

Most importantly, being a GM has kept me busy writing all the time. I had always dreamed of being a writer but thought I would never have enough motivation to spend enough time writing to get good.

Fortunately, roleplaying kept me writing long enough after I had ‘given up’ on it for me to realize that I was writing all the time and had actually gotten decent.

What is your usual gaming schedule? (Session frequency, time and length.)

We play every Thursday from 7pm until Midnight. Me and two of my friends who also GM have a three game rotation, so I run my game every third week. This helps a lot with the burnout.

Where do you play?

We play in the dining room of my apartment. I move the normal table and chairs into a corner of the living room, and we pull out a few fold-out tables to play on.

I usually have the rulebook, a GM screen, a notebook, a pencil, my dice, a large easel pad printed with a 1 inch grid, sharpies of all different colors, gaming beads, and a tablet on standby if I need to google anything.

Do you use published material or create your own?

I create my own adventures, although I do pull a lot of tidbits from the creations of others. I find the game more successful if I am able to tailor an adventure to my group’s play style. Plus, I love to write.

What non-digital and electronic GM aides do you use?

The easel pad and gaming beads mentioned earlier. I also make simple props sometimes. The group is playing a team of special agents in my current game, so there are a lot of office memo’s, mission reports, archive files, and classified manila folders around the table.

Minis or no?

We mostly use gaming beads for minis. I also have about twenty wooden cylinders that are about .5” x 1” we use for the player characters.

For large scale battles that come up in some D&D games and just about every Song of Ice and Fire session, I have a bucket of small multi-color painted wooden rectangles, circles and triangles.

What is your biggest GMing stumbling block right now? What could you do to fix that?

Lately I have found myself skipping over details I had intended to cover in a session. Hints at the content of the next session, clues to help better solve a mystery, etc. I have been writing out a list of these things before each session and taping it to the inside of my screen. It helps some.

When was the last time you were a player? What insight about GMing did you pick up?

I play two out of every three weeks. Having the opportunity to play in game run by two out of the four people who play in my game is wonderful.

The three of us feed off of each other’s good qualities. Nothing is better than a friendly GM on the other side of the table as a player who is always able to see the structure of the game from a different perspective than a normal player, and who helps keep everything on track and running smoothly.

Describe your perfect gaming session with you as GM.

First, everyone has to be involved and having fun. After that, perfect for me is achieved if all the players have had a chance to showcase talents of their characters and their own, and I can say bye to everyone knowing that my session will be on their mind for the next three weeks.

What is the one thing you want to hear your players say after a session, other than “great session!”?

I like to know I have conveyed a mood well. So I always appreciate, “Wow, I really felt the tension there,” or the like.

Describe in a few words your GMing style.

I spend a lot of time prepping, especially enemy stat blocks, interesting locations, and NPC personalities.

I try to keep these three categories separate so I can assemble the right enemy with the right personality in the right place to fit the vibe of the game at that moment.

I let players motivate themselves and move the story along in a way they feel comfortable with.

Most of my sessions begin at the end, with me explaining where the PCs are at when it’s over, or perhaps by having a superior tell them what they need to get done. Then I let them figure out how to get there in the way that is the most fun for them.

What are the top qualities you look for or need in a player?

Punctuality, willingness to roll with the punches, personally motivated to participate, and willingness to roleplay or willingness to get drunk enough to roleplay.

Describe in a few words your group’s playing style.

Our best sessions are usually high on intrigue and adventure. Big personalities, big locales, and, if it comes down to is, big guns.

Describe in a few words each of your players and their playing style.

Fellow GM. Great grasp of the rules (useful player to have). Usually plays strong-willed moral characters with a flaw that keeps them grounded (drunkenness, overly agressive etc.)

Fellow GM. Always makes characters with well thought out personalities, usually plays someone attempting to rise above their bad lot in life.

Player Three. Plays wisecracking characters, usually an official with a dirty streak. (Whoring priest, gambling addicted mayor, etc.)

Player Four. Plays characters who begrudgingly serve their purpose in society. Usually have views opposed to the norm in radical ways. (Secular in an obviously god-filled world, fear of technology in future game etc.)

What is your best GMing skill or ability? What advice would you give to a GM wanting to improve in that area?

Preparedness. My advice would be to set aside multiple periods of time before the game (long enough to get something done but not too long to get sidetracked; 1-2 hours works best for me).

Set a small goal at the beginning of each prep period. It can be overwhelming to have to prepare an entire game in one sitting, and I find working through a series of smaller goals helps keep me motivated.

What is your typical session planning process?

I usually spend 4-8 hours in the weeks before a session preparing stat blocks, encounter locations and the like. I keep in contact with my players on Skype or in person, so I can pick their brains for where they want to take the game the next time we play, so I can better prepare a through line for the story.

What are your favourite online resources for GMing?

Although it might be cheesy to mention it in this setting, I have found a lot of useful information on roleplayingtips.com. It also is an understatement to say that the Pathfinder SRD is useful when running Pathfinder.

Google maps is great for place names and quick city maps. Need a name for the diner the player characters stop in on the highway while passing through Oklahoma? Just type in Diners near M Oklahoma and see what city names pop up as suggestions and pick one.

In my example, I went with Muskogee, OK and found the following diner names: Boom-A-Rang Eastside Diner, Paul’s Diner, Dust Bowl Diner and The Cattle Cove Cafe. I could go on forever (there are 581 results).

The point is not only does it help give you cool place names, but you can click the link and see pictures of the food, the logo and reviews to help clue you in to the atmosphere. Talk about immersion.

What pressures do you face as GM? (Do those pressures come from you or your players?)

I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform well while GMing and find myself questioning a lot of the decisions I made when I review a session in my brain afterwards.

What can Roleplaying Tips do to help alleviate those pressures?

Roleplaying Tips has hundreds of neat ideas to help me prepare better, and I usually find myself scanning through the archives after a game looking for advice on ways to perform better in certain aspects the next time I GM.

Darrin Drader

I emailed Darrin and asked him if I could pick his brain about how he creates his adventures, worlds and stories. Here’s what he had to say.

Johnn: You have some game settings under your belt. What’s your best tip for GMs creating their own settings? And, how do you go about making each setting different?

I think when it comes to gaming settings, sometimes the goal is not to make them different, but rather, make them not the same. Some people refer to this as filing the serial numbers off, in which case what you’re really trying to do is tell stories in an established implied setting without copying copyrighted material.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Take the conceits behind D&D: you have humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings as your core races. You also have a technology level around the medieval level, as well as magic, dragons, undead, orcs, goblins. For a lot of people, they need look no further.

Put that onto different geography with different names, and different people fighting over different things and you’re there.

Now, say you want to push things a little further, you need to customize it. D&D is good about including everything that can be considered fantasy and working it into the world in one way or another. It includes everything from Greek myth to H.P. Lovecraft, and takes from virtually every intellectual property and mythology along the way.

So the thing isn’t to figure out what to include, but what not to include. If you’re publishing the world, there are things you can’t include because they’re owned, but there are so many things pulled from myth that they’re totally fair game.

Also consider there are the works that inspired D&D so old now they’re public domain. So, you can have elder gods, orcs, goblins, trolls, and many other mythological elements.

So, I’m kind of answering your question with a building blocks approach. It’s been said there’s no such thing as an original idea, and I tend to agree with that, so creation is a matter of finding the ideas you want to play with and then finding a way of presenting them that seems new.

Keep in mind Shakespeare didn’t come up with any of his stories, but he’s been famous for hundreds of years because he was able to put his own spin on them. I think that’s what every author or world builder should realistically aspire to.

Once you’ve decided, in a broad sense, what’s in the world, then figure out if there are any major environmental differences. Maybe the world is mostly desert or glaciated.

Once you have that, you need to answer what are the major conflicts? This is one area where you can get creative. Is it humans vs. humans? Elves vs. dwarves? Humans vs. dragons? Gods vs. the elder gods? Cowboys vs. aliens?

More importantly, how do the characters take part in this conflict?

Once you’ve figured out the answers to those questions, you’re well on your way to creating a new and original fantasy world.

Johnn: Tell us about your new book.

Which one? *laughs* I have a novel coming out soon called Echoes of Olympus, and it’s being released by Dark Quest Books, but I suspect that this isn’t the one you’re curious about.

First, let me make this clear – what I just released isn’t a novel. The Vacant Forge can be considered either a long short story or a short novella.

It comes in at 33 novel-length pages. It’s a self-contained story, but it’s also the first of a new series of stories I’m writing and releasing at a pace of one per week, at least for the short term.

It’s also set in a shared world created by Scott Fitzgerald Gray, who has written a great deal of fiction in this world.

The story starts with a blacksmith’s apprentice, Antilos, awakening one night to find his master murdered under bizarre circumstances. Although he’s an apprentice, he also helped fight off a tribe of orcs when they invaded a couple seasons ago, so he knows his way around a blade.

He is joined by two of his friends, an animys caster (similar to a cleric in the Endlands setting), Tanryn, and another friend, a half-elf rogue who has just landed in a great deal of trouble during a bungled robbery, named Nalgaar. Through their investigation, they learn about a major threat to the city that could have much wider consequences.

As I said earlier, this is the first part of a series, so even though the story is a self-contained tale of adventure, it also poses questions that will be answered in later parts of the series. Like a television show, or the dime novels of old, the stories will be episodic. It will help if you read them all, but you can also get away with skipping one or two without missing so much you won’t be able to catch back up.

Johnn: The book uses the setting of The Endlands, created by Scott Fitzgerald Gray and shared by the Monumental Works Group. Can you explain what this is about?

The Endlands is a setting that was created by Scott Fitzgerald Gray, who is a screenwriter and occasional Dungeons and Dragons contributor.

The Endlands is a large and complex setting of his design he has graciously opened up to other authors he’d like to work with. He has several novels and stories set in this world available for sale at Amazon.com.

The Monumental Works Group is a group of up-and-coming fiction writers, of which I’m proud to be associated. Many of its members have profiles posted to the main site, though some are choosing to lay low, at least for the time being.

Many of us have ties to the gaming industry, though there are a few members, such as Daniel Rider and Cara Maddy, whose work has more of a literary bent.

Johnn: What’s your writing regimen like? Do you write a bit each day or in bursts or….?

I was on staff as a writer for 38 Studios for the past two years. Sadly, the company ran out of money and is now in bankruptcy, so I’m between jobs at the moment.

That said, I was in the habit of producing a decent amount of output every single day. That does conflict with the writing I did in my spare time, where I would mainly try to produce a lot of material during the weekends, or at night after the kids were in bed.

Right now, given the demands of doing a story a week, I’m forced to either be outlining, writing, editing or producing material every single day, except for the weekends. So long as I’m keeping to that schedule, it’s a regular thing.

Johnn: How do you go about your writing? Do you create outlines, draw maps, make things up as you go?

I outline as much as possible and I try to look for logical holes and bad characterization as I go.

Good storytelling doesn’t have characters doing strange things or acting against their own best interest for reasons that are never explained (LOST). A good story should have a pre-planned arc, where eventually, something of world shattering proportions will happen, even if you get there one episode at a time (Babylon 5). The series shouldn’t just reset after every episode, but you should be able to catch up.

I plan as far ahead as much as possible. I outline the major plot elements and scenes.

Occasionally an idea will hit while I’m writing. Maybe a character will want to do something I hadn’t planned for, or a scene goes off in a different direction than I had originally intended. It’s cool when that happens, and I like to follow what the character wants when they’re trying to suggest things to me.

But at the same time, I follow the rule that whatever happens has to make sense based on things we know now or will know in the future. I will also draw maps if I feel the area where a scene takes place is complex enough that it needs it.

Keep in mind that a story isn’t the same as an RPG dungeon. You don’t have to explain that a character takes a left, goes down a corridor, into a room, through a secret door, down another hallway, into another room, and finally meets up with the orc king that’s trying to kill him.

Instead, you can summarize a lot of that because the reader doesn’t care to mentally map the dungeon. The reader is in it for the scenes and for the stories. And no matter how convoluted it looks on paper, it’s always a straight line from one event to the next.

Johnn: What was it like working for Wizards of the Coast? And what was a typical day like?

When I worked at Wizards of the Coast, I was at the beginning of my professional writing career. I was doing customer service by day, and then by night I’d put on the Bat Suit and become an RPG freelancer. I doubt you’re all that interested in answering customer emails, particularly those where some player was trying to get us to help them overrule their DMs (happened all the time).

As a freelancer, the key is to write, hit deadlines, get things turned in on time, and not suck.

It turns out when writing is your day job you pretty much do the same thing, and the emphasis on not sucking grows immensely. When you work freelance for a company like Wizards, you try to polish up your stuff as much as possible, and then that gets handed off to editors, and they make take it and make you look like a rock star. When you’re on staff, sometimes you are the editor, so the polishing phase needs to lead to a much more professional and polished piece than it does when you aren’t.

Aside from interacting with the creative people who were on staff whenever I could get a minute of their time, I couldn’t really tell you what it was like to be there at that time.

I can tell you I’d be nowhere if it weren’t for Chris Perkins, who assigned several of the projects I worked on to me, and who took me under his wing and taught me a lot of the fundamentals I now know – things like avoiding the passive voice, avoiding the “to be” verb as much as possible (it’s not always possible), and various other tips that you don’t get outside of a classroom (and sometimes within).

Johnn: What advice do you have for GMs who want to tell awesome stories?

When it comes to roleplaying, a lot of the time awesome stories happen not because of what you’ve prepared, but because of how the players react to the scenarios you put in front of them.

The key to telling good stories through roleplaying is the same as telling good stories through fiction: learn how episodic storytelling is accomplished.

If you want the textbook model of how to tell a huge story in an episodic format, watch all of Babylon 5, from beginning to end. People sometimes ask me who my influences are, and Joe Michael Straczynski is probably my greatest one.

To do this well, you have to have some idea of how long your series is going to be, then you have to plant hooks. Sometimes you build an entire episode around a plot point, and it doesn’t seem that important right now, but later it comes back and turns out to be an essential piece to whatever is going on.

Thanks for the great advice, Darrin! Best of luck on your new series.

Roleplaying Tips readers, if you have any questions for Darrin, just ask in the comments below.

Written by Phil Vecchione, the 127 page book is carved into three main sections:

• Understanding Prep
• Prep Toolbox
• Evolving Your Style

There are also meta pages covering references, intro, conclusion, index and so on.

While reading the Understanding Prep section, I came across three pain points of typical game preparation in a section titled “You’re Doing It Wrong.”

A light bulb went off and I wanted to delve deeper into the biggest mistakes I (and maybe you) make when handling preparation for games.

This article, then, covers the three insightful GM prep pain points Phil identifies, plus a couple of personal ones from my own book of mistakes!

But before diving into today’s dish of prep faux pas, I wanted to call out a couple of quotes from Never Unprepared.

Prep = Confidence

The first quote tells us the key benefit of game prep is confidence:

“The goal of prep is to give the GM a level of comfort through the understanding that all the information they need to run the game as smoothly as possible is readily at hand.”

I agree very much with this, that good prep gives you a feeling of confidence. A sign you are preparing for game sessions well is you feel confident going into the game session.

You feel like you can handle whatever the players throw at you. You feel you’ll weave great tales of adventure with your players based on your ideas and designs. And you feel great about the materials you’ll need to play the game well.

Herein lies a gem from Phil’s advice.

If your goal of prep is confidence, then you just need to figure out what makes you confident going into each session. Once you know that, you know exactly what to prep!

For example, maybe you run a game with a good amount of crunch in it, like Pathfinder or D&D. Confidence for you might mean rules mastery and a pool of pre-designed game elements, such as NPC stat blocks.

Or perhaps confidence for you means having a published adventure primed to run – studied, tweaked and ready to serve up like a hot dish of roasted PCs (with a touch of pepper).

Alternatively, confidence might mean having a bullet list of ideas and a map in your back pocket.

The lesson here is to figure out what makes you confident, for once we delve into our own recipes of confidence I bet we’re each different. So no one can tell you exactly what you need to prepare for you to feel confident.

If you are unsure, you can check out books like Never Unprepared or the Adventure Creation Handbook to give you ideas.

When running games, be sure to note the parts where you stumbled and a bit more prep could’ve helped. Track these moments and make a pre-session prep checklist for yourself. Improve your checklist over time until it becomes the perfect prep recipe for you.

Silence Is Death

“GMing is in many ways like radio, where silence is death.When [silence] happens, immersion is broken and the gaming table slowly devolves into building dice towers, book flipping, and sidebar conversations.Prep is what prevents those moments of silence.”

I thought this was great advice from the book. Great job, Phil.

When I read this I put my iPad down and thought about it. Is silence really a bad thing?

My conclusion: if not used for dramatic effect or as a short bit of player recovery after something intense, then yes, silence is death.

Silence caused by GM hesitation kills table energy. Hesitation can happen for a variety of reasons:

• If you get stuck and can’t think of what happens next, the ensuing awkward silence is hard to bear.
• If you get stumped on a rule, the silence caused from all the research deflates the game.
• If you can’t find what you’re looking for in your notes or book or adventure, the pause diffuses attention and excitement.

The first bullet is perhaps your worst GMing nightmare. Mental writer’s block. A creative stumper.

One solution to all those potential silent killers is good game prep.

And that falls back to who you are as a game master and what you need to feel confident, because confidence puts you in a frame of mind where you never get stumped. You are in the zone and have super recall. You handle tricky situations like rules issues with ease.

“Bob, would you mind double-checking that rule while I do a quick aside with Frank as he checks the locked box for traps?”

The Four Key Qualities Of Prep

Finally, I want to pull a model out of the book for you, as I think it’s a great way to think about the carrier waves of game prep.

I was going to call these four things goals. But we already have a goal for prep: confidence.

Therefore, these four things are the paths to confidence, sort of like carrier waves. Do these, and you’ll feel confident.

So, the four qualities of great game prep are:

• Accessible – What you’ve prepared must be available during games when needed.
• Organized – Find stuff fast.
• Effective – What you’ve prepared must actually be useful to you during games.
• Reliable – Your stuff is safe and secure (back your computer up now!)

Nail these, and you will be a confident GM.

Now, onto the big mistakes of game prep.

Mistake #1: Writing Too Much

“This is the most common reason that GMs dislike prep: They are simply writing too many notes.”

Good call.

Have you ever written a huge background for an NPC, place or item, then realized how little time is left before game day, so you start scrambling?

I recall writing session logs that took a whole week, which left me no time to get ready for next session.

I also remember writing vast histories for a homebrew game world called Seven Cities. All that writing left me exhausted and not interested in doing anything else to prep for a while. The irony?

I wrote about the creation of the universe and the formation of the gods. That’s it. I was exhausted and I had not even started writing about the lands of the Seven Cities and the kind of games and adventures that might take place there. I got stalled in meta land.

So, if you feel pressure to write a lot to be prepared, and this makes you procrastinate, then stop writing. It’s not necessary.

However, if you love creative writing like I do, then writing a lot about your campaign is great as long as you manage your time and energy well.

I find writing helps me explore the setting and its peoples better than any other activity. It’s better than just reading a whole bunch and trying to absorb all the details.

When I write and create my own stuff, I have better, longer recall of it. It becomes part of me – I just “know it” when the time comes to use it for prep or during games.

But each to his own.

The Solution

• Find your sweet spot between creating enough details to feel confident and not writing so many details that you run out of time or energy to be fully ready for next session.
• If you like to write, create a To Do list of what you need to do to be ready for next session. Then put time limits on your creative writing sessions so you leave enough time for the other stuff.
• Try to do a lot of creative writing before you start campaigns. Use this activity to set a strong foundation of knowledge and readiness, so prep you need to do during the campaign is diminished and easier.
• Through experimentation, learn what notes style helps you GM best. For example, I’ve found bullets work better for read aloud text than full paragraphs.
• Consider using stat blocks more often for various game elements. I’ve published a few stat blocks for different types of game elements in past emails. Stat blocks create consistent information entries, such as for NPCs and items, and can forestall the need to do a lot of writing because of the efficient format.

Mistake #2: Poor Tools, or Tools You Are Not Excited About

Try sawing a board with a hammer. You need the right tool for the job. The wrong tool will leave you frustrated, ineffective as GM and stressed out when you prep.

You should not only consider the physical properties of a tool, but choose a tool and preparation system you enjoy using. A tool you hate lies unused.

For example, you might use your computer for preparation, but not have it available at the game table, so you need to print everything out, which is always a last-minute mess.

Or, you might have five different pieces of software for notes and idea capture, making consolidation a nightmare.

I use MyInfo software for prep (plus some helper software and websites). But I’m always tempted to use a GM binder. And I also love the idea of going back to index cards.

Reverting to a binder or card boxes would be a mistake though, because then I’d have information sprawl – some information on a computer and some on paper or cards.

Plus, I love the search, tag and customization features of MyInfo, so it’s a tool I’m always excited about.

The Solution

• Experiment with different methods of preparation and organization for a while. Then pick what you like best.
• Stick with your decision! No system is perfect. Do not think the grass is greener on the other side. That will always be true. Stick with your chosen system and make it work for you, or risk getting bit by Mistake #2.
• Understand what you need from your prep tools:
  • Inspiration (i.e., generators, news sites)
  • Idea capture
  • Reference (i.e., gazetteer, cast of NPCs, plotline)
  • In-game note taking
  • Crunch (i.e., bestiary, NPC stat blocks)
    Then pick your tool(s) of choice.
• Avoid flip-flopping between tools (see bullet #2 above). For example, quit downloading notes apps and just pick one and stick with it. The more you use a tool, the more you will master it and learn how to make it work best for you.

Mistake #3: Not Understanding Your Creative Cycle and Schedule

Prepping while tired makes you dislike prep and it generates poorer results.

Some people are better in the morning, some in the evening. You might work better on weekends, or perhaps a half hour a day right after work or school helps you unwind *and* get prep done.

Never Unprepared goes into detail about your creative cycles and taking best advantage of them, which is great.

The book also guides you through schedule creation. Author Phil has a project management background, and he brings that to bear in his top-down approach to figuring out a schedule that helps you take best advantage of your peak creativity times.

I think just calling out that you have periods of higher creativity is brilliant. Once you realize, “Yeah, I am more creative when hooked up to my coffee intravenous each morning” you gain a key personal insight you can take advantage of for better game prep.

For me, I’ve tried the top-down approach of figuring out a weekly schedule and I have a slightly different angle.

Instead of making a calendar and filling in all the time boxes, I decide when I’ll do game prep each week and book an appointment with myself. I carve out this time and have everything else work around it, letting it all sort itself out.

I used to spend time each morning before work doing prep. But recently I’ve switched to after work. I get home from work, do a half hour of prep, then a half hour of exercise, and then I’m ready for whatever the evening has in store for me.

The end result is the same. Whether you fill in a whole calendar or just carve out protected time, you set yourself up for success.

The Solution

• Determine when you are most creative, inspired and interested in doing game prep. If unknown, experiment. Know thyself!
• You might have different strengths and preferences at different times. For example, mornings are my idea times, and afternoon breaks are great for organizing and research. Evenings are good for crunch. That’s me. How about you?
• Make a schedule or book an appointment with yourself. Either way, protect your prep time and keep appointments with yourself – don’t be a no-show.
• Always be thinking. I do a lot of prep just by thinking and imagining when my hands are busy but my brain is idle, such as while mowing the lawn. When it comes time to put fingers to keyboard, I already have a lot figured out.

* * *

Thanks again to Martin for the review copy of Never Unprepared: The Complete
Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep. The book is available now for preorder.

I promised you five GM prep mistakes. I’ve covered the three mentioned in Never Unprepared today.

In another post, I’m going to talk about two others I’ve learned the hard way over the years.

The first is called Not Rewarding Yourself.

Many GMs don’t like preparation. I was not a fan of it myself for awhile. And my games suffered because of it.

You might be great at ad libbing and running from just a few ideas written on a napkin.

But I feel a little preparation helps even those GMs who can wing everything.

• Adding a bit of polish to your ideas will make them gleam even brighter.
• Connecting more dots between sessions will turn you into a storytelling genius.
• And showing up to a session organized, prepared and confident will help you have even more fun every game.

Once I clued into the proper mindset for preparation, my whole game changed. Yours will too.

Stay tuned!

Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing sent me an advanced copy of his new manifesto, Naked Marketing, which is a smart take on getting new customers. A major premise of his naked marketing model is your business must attract like-minded customers.

Make a perfect match between you and your ideal customers so your business relationships are healthy, fulfilling and profitable.

Attract Like-Minded Players for Great Gaming

So too it is with game mastering and forming a group. Roleplaying games at their core are social activities. And they are prone to the same relationship problems that businesses face when working with the wrong types of customers.

For example, if the game master is at odds with a player, that conflict will come out during gameplay. And everyone’s game experience will suffer for it. Likewise, conflict between two players will ruin everyone’s fun from all the negative emotions of the table.

The secret is to attract people who believe what you believe makes for great gaming.

I once had a GM who was very controlling and who made his homebrew game world the star of the show. He would manipulate gameplay to protect his game world and ideas from us meddling players.

At first I thought this was just a temporary phase while everyone in the new group got to know each other.

However, third game in and it was getting even worse. And regrettably, my behavior worsened, which everyone picked up on. At the halfway point of the third session I realized I could not continue on like this. I was being disrespectful to the game master, my fellow players and myself.

After the game, I mentioned to the game master that could not continue to play due to a difference in styles. We had a bit of a conversation but there was animosity. I always remember how uncomfortable I felt during these games. And I’m not proud at how things ended, with me reaching a frustration point so high I had to quit.

Danny’s advice in Naked Marketing last week created an Aha! moment for me.

You need to gather like-minded gamers around your table for the best gaming.

How do you do this? Danny has the solution. Read on.

Who Would You Game Naked With?

In Naked Marketing, Danny asks “Who do you want to see naked?” The clever metaphor makes sense when you think about it. Who wants ugly customers, where ‘ugly’ means the wrong type or people who do not want what you’re offering?

“Everyone has a ‘type’ they find attractive – a combination of hundreds of different traits and features,” Danny says. “Just as we each have our unique personal tastes in romantic partners, we also each have a specific type of customer that is an especially good fit for our business.”

I believe we also have personal tastes in the kind of people we enjoy gaming most with. When everybody is having fun because they are kindred gaming spirits, conflict and “problem player” issues fly 300 feet per round out the window.

Who is your perfect kind of player? Who is their perfect kind of game master?

Become an Attraction Magnet

The solution for all GMs who have trouble with their gaming groups:

Become an attraction magnet for your perfect player.

If you attract the kind of players who thrive under your GMing style, and if you attract the kind of players that you enjoy GMing for, you have a recipe for a tight knit group of friends who game exceptionally well together and create memorable game sessions.

Think about it for a moment. If you are doing things to attract the wrong kind of player to your group, then you are sabotaging your efforts before you even get a chance to GM!

Likewise, if you just settle for the first d6 players who show up to game, you are taking a big chance there will be no clash in gaming preferences, which is not likely.

Instead, if you take care to present yourself and your gaming tastes honestly and openly, then you’re going to increase your chances of attracting the type of player who will become best friends and best gaming buddies.

This goes beyond game system and genre preference. Conflict bubbles up from issues deeper than that, such as why you game.

For example, if you GM to showcase your cool homebrew game world, I guarantee there are people out there who have love to explore and roleplay and interact with such creations. They love the mystery of the unknown and the thrill of discovery. They love to be surprised and entertained by filling in the next hex on the map. Imagine if these people got together to game. Oh the great games that would emerge!

Know Thyself

In Naked Marketing, Danny advises you first get to know yourself. By knowing who you are and what you want, you have a better chance of figuring out who your ideal customer is.

As the game master, you need to do this for yourself. You need to figure out what your GMing strengths are, what your weaknesses are. You need to understand in full your GM traits, tastes and style.

Know thyself is ancient wisdom.

And it’s the first step in the recipe to awesome gaming.

Once you are clear and comfortable about who you are as a game master – naked to yourself with no secrets — you can use this information to figure out what your best player type this.

The key here is authenticity. If you represent your true GMing self to others, then you will attract like-minded individuals for great gaming. It’s that simple.

If you put out false signals, then you will attract the wrong type of people.

For example, you have a player vacancy and let’s say you are the type who likes to be in control.

Coincidentally, this is who I am. I love to design and to construct fun situations on-the-fly based on character actions. Though contradictory, I make these two styles work together well most game nights. But it means I like to have control of various things to blender stuff together successfully according to my design visions.

Back to our example. You like control, so you want to attract the kind of players who are okay with an authoritative GM. But if you tell others you are a relaxed and laid-back sandbox game master who gives control to his players, do you see how that will attract a certain type of player who will ultimately conflict with your needs?

And if a player who learns his potential GM likes to be more of a Hollywood director, whereas his gaming ideals are freedom, randomness and choice…well, you can see where this is headed, right?

You need to be clear on who you are so you can broadcast that and attract players who thrive under your GMing style.

Get naked. Get out your Gem of Seeing. Look at your GMing self.

Differences Create Rich Gaming

Finding your perfect match does not mean all your players must have the same personality type or playing style. The cliché that opposites attract really is true in gaming, and any GM can work with players who present a variety of playing styles and personal traits.

So please do not mistake this as a recipe for tracking down just a limited range of players who have exact specifications.

For example, on the surface you might think you never want a rules lawyer in your group. You worry about rules conflicts, being contradicted in your rulings, and perhaps a bit of munchkin gameplay where they over-optimize their characters.

However, a rules lawyer is a valuable addition to your group. Their expertise makes play so much smoother because you can reach out to them and ask for fast help with rules adjudication.

Forget the term rules lawyer for a second. How do you prefer to play with players who have excellent knowledge of the game rules?

You would likely want to tap into that knowledge. And you have preferences for how that would be done during play. (My preference is to be interrupted and corrected on the spot to help me learn the rules better. Your preference might be for the player to take notes and brief you after each session.)

In this example, what you’re really after is a rules expert who’s willing to work with you and your preferences for handling rules during games. How great would that be? They can rules lawyer their faces off for all you care as long as they stick to the agreement you have about how this happens during games.

Be Transparent

Get clear on who you are as a game master and be transparent about that in your quest for new players. This helps others self select as potential candidates for your group. This not only increases your chances of attracting the perfect type of player for you, but it can save a whole lot of uncomfortable gaming before the typical problem player situation arises.

For example, if I put a classified ad in one of the many player finder sites out there, I want to be clear and honest on the kind of games I run so that players can decide if they’re the right GM for them.

I might say I prefer linear style adventures because it makes preparation and planning faster for me so I can put more time into fleshing out cool game elements because of the certainty this type of GMing provides.

This declaration will weed out players who prefer sandbox type of campaigns, where characters can do anything in the game world you present and which often results in PCs doing the exact opposite of what you have planned for.

Again, this does not mean you only have a narrow range of player types you can work with. It just means you attract players who align with the spirit of the type of games you prefer to run.

So when you talk about your game, you would not say, “Rules lawyers need not apply.” That’s not the case at all.

You might say something like, “I work well with players who have mastered the game rules and who would enjoy helping me run a smooth game session.” Such a player and I would work out how to handle rulings before the campaign so we could team up to make sure our game is a well oiled machine.

If you went around and told everyone you hate players who contradict your rulings during games, you risk attracting players who don’t know the rules. Or you risk attracting players who lack the confidence to speak up about rulings during the games.

In this way, your naked marketing of yourself and your player opportunity will be sabotaged. And then you repeat the cycle of attracting a player who conflicts with you and your group. And before long, you are looking for to fill an empty chair again.

Be honest about your game mastering and put that out there. It will save you a lot of work and bad gaming.

Just be yourself (and be honest with yourself) when questing for new players or groups to join. This will help you attract – and be attracted to – gamers with similar styles and preferences. This will save you from many false starts and problem player experiences.

I wish you great gaming, my friend. It’s such a wonderful hobby rich with great people, imagination and fun times.

by The Roleplaying Tips Community

Lots of great tips from subscribers in this Flash Back Friday submission,covering everything from being sick of gaming to having writer’s block. I hope the cure for you lies herein!

Note on Navigation: To quickly move between readers’ emails, use your application’s Find or Search feature and look for @@@@@@. I have purposely used six ‘at signs’ because they do not appear in anyone’s post and will not confuse searching.

@@@@@@

From: Craig P.

As a player in a long running campaign (20+ years) may I
make some suggestions to avoid burn-out based on our GM?

1. Be open to new players. The GM and I are the only
original members of the campaign. New players bring in a
different style and feeling with their characters, adding
new interests for both GM and the other players.

2. Nurture new characters. As you can imagine, after 20
years there has been what seems like hundreds of player
characters. It is easy for both players and GMs to get
bored with a character after months or years of playing.
(This is much easier with a skill-based system than a level
based one. A well rounded 100pt GURPS character can
contribute almost as much as a 300pt one.)
3. Encourage players to help build the world. It is
impossible to work out every detail of your world. Allowing
the players to participate in the creation gives them an
investment in the world. One of my characters became the
leader of one of the main cities in the campaign, giving me
the opportunity to flesh out the entire governing system.

4. “Play” NPCs. There is usually little objection to the GM
running a well thought out NPC, especially if it fills a
hole in the party composition. Just make sure he doesn’t try
to solve all the party problems. Player characters can also
change to NPCs when the player leaves the group. The GM has
a ready-made NPC complete with background, personality and a
connection to the party. Retired characters can also turn
into Semi-NPCs, being still run by the player but showing up
just occasionally.

5. Ask the players. When a dry spell hits, ask the players
what direction they would like the campaign to go. Their
ideas may jump-start a whole new chapter.

6. Take a break. There is nothing wrong with taking a hiatus
in playing. Our longest break was nearly a year as various
personal things got in the way. If you keep in touch with
the players, you can pick up again as soon as things
improve.

@@@@@@

From: Cameron Goble

Hey Johnn,

Our group’s GM has been a real trooper. Week after week he’s
had good story and development, he’s plotted out at least
three ways for our party to go, and he’s always up on the
rules he’ll need to bring into play. But in the face of a
40+ hour per week day job, a fiancée, and other things out
there in the real world, the prospect of keeping up with
everything was getting to be tough on him.

Our solution was to have two games with separate GMs going
within the same group. When one game reached a narrative
appropriate point to stop for a while (generally after three
or four sessions), the GM would step down and become a
player in the other game, while one of the players would
turn into the GM of his own game for a while. Two separate
story lines, two GMs doing their own thing, two totally
different parties.

It’s been working great. Each GM gets to play on the other
side of the screen for a while – our “first” one hasn’t been
a player for years, and I think it’s really reinvigorated
him. Also, he gets a couple of weeks to cool down, go over
his story line, and spend time cooking up our next adventure
without having to worry about time constraints. When his
game starts up again; he always presents a polished, well-
constructed scenario for us. Perhaps one of the contributing
factors to GM Burnout is the constant sense of flying by the
seat of one’s pants – having a couple weeks break seems to
get around this problem.

It works well preventing player burnout too: everyone gets
to shift party roles every few weeks, as nobody plays the
same type of character in both games. We’re an experimental
bunch of players, so we get to explore lots of different
ways to play characters.

The reason we started doing this, by the way, was to work
our way into using the 3rd edition D20 rules. Our game had
been 2nd Edition AD&D, and when D20 came out, we didn’t want
to have to switch our beloved characters out without knowing
exactly what we were doing, so a separate D20 game was
started. Now both games are D20, and the benefit is that if
the actual GM doesn’t know a particular rule off-hand,
chances are the playing GM will. Our games have therefore
been very balanced, and we haven’t had a confrontation over
rules interpretation yet.

Thanks for the great work you’re doing!

@@@@@@

From: Tom Z.

If you’re burned out on the original theme then start again,
but within the same setting and campaign. If you used the
Vikings example then rather than trying to emulate Nordic
sagas, switch themes totally. Invade the homelands with
pseudo-Normans and switch to a Robin Hood outlaw game. Turn
on the Cthulhu and start to reveal conspiracies between
sorcerers, priests and unholy sacrifices to unknowable gods,
or even suggest that Odin himself is an avatar of something
more unknowable. Basically re-invent the campaign as another
game but layered upon the previous one. This actually
creates a deeper and multi-layered game.

1. Research. Watch new films, read new books. Maybe reading
noir detective books can be layered into the game as a
series of dark ages murder investigations. Maybe your dark
vampire game could cope with a touch of super hero inspired
heroism? Keep feeding new and wildly divergent ideas into
your existing maps and cities. SF games can absorb space
dwelling dragons, fantasy can cope with swashbucklers or
espionage.

2. War-game, board game. Buy Hordes of the Things or Chain mail
and run some large battles, tied into the campaign but maybe
without the PCs as heroes. Letting your hair down with what
is a rest from roleplaying but which still builds the
richness of the world. If you play the games straight, with
no PC heroes, the outcomes can be used to spark off new
campaign thrusts.

For example, a set battle between the Necromancer Slarge and
his host of skeletons against the Dwarfs of the Bumpy
Mountains. Play it, have fun, see who wins or loses. But if
the skeletons win, then the campaign will be full of
dispossessed dwarfs looking for work, trouble, help,
finance, revenge. The Bumpy Mountains will be full of
undead, the balance of power will shift, the lands may be
threatened. And the defeat of the Necromancer may reveal a
deadlier threat, the nomadic hordes that his undead zone
held back, or the dwarfs may prove to be not so friendly
with their key enemy gone, and the victorious dwarf forces
may march on the PCs’ homelands. The idea is to relax, let
the PCs play the game, moderate and share the fun, receive
creative input that you can’t wholly predict.

@@@@@@

From: Andy T.

Johnn,

The one thing that I have found to be a sure fire remedy to
lack of inspiration is just to sit back and let somebody
else take the reins for a while. Watch some movies, be a
player, forget the hassles, and relax. Essentially, recharge
your batteries and play the game, have fun and enjoy. If you
don’t enjoy the game you won’t run an enjoyable game. It’s
as simple as that. If you are running a sci-fi stealth game
(i.e. Shadowrun), try some fantasy for a while. If you have
been playing fantasy try some Sci-fi, change tack.

My best, basic tip is to turn the game on its head. Have a
breather, like your favorite TV show for example.
Occasionally they have a weird episode (musical Buffy for
example) and it’s a change of pace, something new and when
you go back to what you are used to, it seems fresh again.
Give it a whirl, have a time out, play a board game. Remember
that too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

@@@@@@

From: Dave W.

Hello there,

Yes indeed I did suffer from burn-out with my games. I had
been playing pretty constantly, 1/week, with 4 friends. I
GMed and I was having a good time for most of those 13-14
years. I had played in a few games but mostly I GMed. Well
we had started a new game, sorta a traditional game meets
Arab/desert world idea. People made characters and we were
playing but things just didn’t fit, didn’t work. I was just
not happy with the game.

So I left fantasy. I played some dark games, Vampire, and
Werewolf, and though they were fun, it just wasn’t the same
grand types of games I had run before. I tried Trinity/Aeon
this was a romp but really nothing great for me. I kept
feeling I lacked or rather my games lacked a certain oomph.

Now, I guess to my credit, players continued wanting to run
games with me as GM. Which I did, but my heart and soul
really weren’t always in it and I could see it even if they
didn’t.

What changed for me was coming up with a new idea, something
I had hashed out in bits with friends over the years. Well
about two years later I had worked on it and I really liked
it! It had a great long term goal, mysteries, and secrets
the party would have to discover, potential for a lot of
growth and interesting (to me) villains and heroes.

D&D 3E was just coming out and I felt this was a great way
to try out an old favorite whom I hadn’t played in nearly 10
years. It has turned out to be great. For me I needed the
background story. Sure there may be parts the players never
learn about, but they don’t need to. I do. It helps me make
my decisions, and where villains do what they do and what
countries are at conflict and why.

Well it has been fun so far and we’re still going.

Thanks for the great info you provide weekly.

@@@@@@

From: Dwayne T.

Hi Johnn,

I just got the new Roleplaying Tips Weekly and it was like
Andrew was an alien who kidnapped me to brain tape my mind
and then give me amnesia so I didn’t know, and then used the
biggest problem that exists in the gaming partition of my
noodle to write about…or maybe it would just be easier to
say he read my mind?

GM burn-out is THE NUMBER 1 BANE OF EVERY CAMPAIGN THAT OUR
GROUP HAS EVER PUT OUT. It has been appearing before we even
begin in my campaigns, but the prologue session of this
radically different post-modern campaign has changed that a
lot.

Last Saturday, we were going to go to a party but it
seems that the hostess did not show up, so it was
unanimously decided (by all but me) that I GM a meeting
between the present players’ (which are all but one)
characters. Despite my total lack of preparation (and my
neurotic fear of trying to get the players to interact
without a plan in my head) the session was a TOTAL success!

I had to introduce a plot thread a little early, but it got
everyone introduced, and most of the characters on one side.
It rocked! And I think that the new genre (as well as some
blunt analysis on my techniques, a reestablishment of
techniques that got players excited and some great advice by
both Robin’s Laws Of Good GMing and…of course…RPTips).

We have one other real GM who always seems too burnout at
the apex of the gaming excitement. It really sucks too,
because he is a spectacular GM who makes every player’s
character who tries to be a good addition to the game feel
like he’s in the limelight. It’s a lot like going on the
roller coaster that you just absolutely know is going to be
the best ever and then stopping just before the big scream.
Not just stopping, but falling out of the carts to fall all
the way to the cement. I have said many times that I will
not play in another of his campaigns because of his
constantly giving up. Isn’t that crazy?

@@@@@@

From: BillyBeanbag

One of the greatest lessons I learned about GM burn-out came
at a time when I was playing instead of running the game.
When I got started in the hobby, I was the first one to own
the books, and for most of my early gaming career, I was
always the one running the games. The few exceptions didn’t
really give me a chance for character development or
progression. So I groomed a replacement and switched sides
of the screen for a while.

What I learned is that at first it’s kind of like a parent
riding beside a young driver who’s learning the skills
needed to make it without you. It can be frustrating and
fun, but eventually you get past that and can relax. In
gaming, the feeling of ‘having to be the GM’ can overshadow
your whole experience. Once I got to play I started
thinking about what it was that I wanted from the game as a
player.

This was a fundamental shift in my thinking that changed the
way I run games as a GM. By listening to the things I
responded most to, and those things that really excited
other players, I got a much better sense of how to put
adventures and campaigns together that will suffer less
burn-out and create memories that people will talk about
years hence.

Just my two coppers’ worth

@@@@@@

From: Simon M.

My History Lesson. It’s happened to me about 3 times. The
first time was when I started college, I got a real social
life and was working in a part time job. Most of my friends
were starting to date girls and there seemed more important
things to do than game.

I return to gaming some 5 years (I was in my mid 20′s) later
when an old friend was cleaning out some junk at his parents’
house in order to move into a small unit. He discovered a
box of gaming stuff. Three weeks later we had a few games &
it set the course for 3 strong years of gaming. AD&D 2nd
Edition had just come out and we were really hooked on
Planescape. Computer games and getting married put an end
to our weekend sessions and it wasn’t until I heard about
D&D 3rd edition in 1999 I came back to gaming.

1. Starting Points & Ideas Fade. This can be stopped &
solved by having well fleshed characters with plenty of
personality traits, backgrounds, convictions, contacts &
family links. Throw stacks of NPCs at your characters & let
“THEM” do the work. Your idea should be brief and simple to
attach them to a part of the story line.

Players are the lifeblood and we all know that factory of
adventure ideas takes a dive at some time. The best thing to
do is to find out what you players are hungry for, then
“FEED” them. Bill likes a dungeon crawl, Jenny likes a
murder mystery, Bob likes long ships & keeps, and lastly
Anna likes dragons & romance. So work with that. Keeping a
campaign fun is hard work and takes a good deal of work &
time. Make sure you know that before starting. If your
personal life is really full with work, studies, children,
and hobbies then it might not be a good for you to run a big
campaign. Stick to small short Quests. Don’t start something
you can’t finish.

2. Villains, Creatures & NPC Villains. Treat them like a
proper character, with their own history, backgrounds,
flaws, perks, convictions and all the rest. They must have
goals and reasons for doing what they are doing, while
keeping it simple.

Joan is working on a Villain. She is using a Viking campaign
setting template and so selects a Frost Giant Chief as one
of her three bad guys. She then lists things about him.
Strong, Bossy, Mean, Tough, Fit, Swordsman. Killed many, bad
childhood, no family, no partner, trusts nobody.

Visualize to heighten areas (Caverns & Dungeons). Room
descriptions can be a really big problem. It’s a lot of work
to write up a 30 room level and by the 10th room it’s
downright painful. Change the way you do it. Imagine your
self as a hero walking into this room, look around, what do
you see… Creatures? Conditions? Color & Components?

3. Quest Preparation Feels Like Work. Putting together a
campaign is a lot of work. The idea is to cut the work down
into manageable chunks or blocks. Work out the nuts and
bolts for the first quest, make some brief notes for ideas
for any connectors along with possible creatures and setting
briefs and leave it alone till you get up to that stage.
Things change over the course of one or two games and you
might have to change things.

Never work on your quests for more the 2 hours at a time,
keep it fresh by doing it in small, punchy, half hour bites.

Work with lists, small paragraphs and flow charts rather
then huge masses of hand written or typed material. Keep
areas like caverns & dungeons to a room limit of say 15
rooms and only 2 levels. Try and invent at least 3 creatures
per quest. And never be afraid to scrap possible ideas for
some thing new that may prove better…

For example:

Joan is now running her first quest, “The Dogs of Death”.
The story hook is very simple, The players must solve the
murders in the city area in order to claim the 140gp reward.
A rival party is also attempting to solve this mystery and
claim the prize. The party needs this 140gp in order to
repay a loan from a Loan Shark.

The party soon collects enough facts & clues discovering a
secret gang of mercenaries working in the bell tower who are
using trained hunting dogs to attack unsuspecting victims
and rob them. Rather then infiltrating their lair in the
bell tower, the party in a complete turn-around instead
informs the Home Guard and sneaks into the Loan Shark’s
hide-out.

Joan, now in a complete panic, decides to cut for a break
while she works out a new tack. Working on the fly, 10
minutes of think-tanking comes up with the following
connectors. The Home Guards are corrupt and work for a rival
thieves’ guild, the Bloody Cutlass. The Loan Shark works for
the thieves’ guild, Blue Griffins. The third party here is
a band of goblin night assassins. This quest & campaign
turned out to be one of Joan’s best.

4. Player Expectations. Make sure players start off with the
character profession they want. Make sure their characters
are fully fleshed out giving you lots to work with. Make
sure you know what they want in the game, Action, Mystery,
Romance, etc.

Even if the party is all fighters and thieves, work with
that. Never have a player use another player’s character,
that always leads to tears and infighting. Don’t try and
save them from themselves, if they do some thing stupid let
them wear it, you don’t however have to kill them–just
punish them. Yes we should be aware that players are
expecting us to keep delivering… But as the
Narrator/Storyteller/DM you should know this and revel in it
by setting up you players with story baits and hooks, the
ones they in turn asked for at the start of the quest.

5. Player Envy. Avoid player envy (i.e. wishing you were the
one playing) by playing in a completely separate game group.
It’s good advice to never just constantly run games. Even
playing a computer game can do the trick.

6. Frustration & Restless Bored Players. GMs have told me
countless horror stories where players almost drove them
insane with constant nagging about their character, nagging
about the lack of magic items and how such-and-such new RPG
is loads better.

Stick to a generic campaign setting (boringly plain) then
select areas to enhance, with simple themes & ideas, to
flesh out later. For the Northern Hinterlands have a Viking
theme, while the Midlands have a Forgotten Realms theme.
Players can move to and from areas as they please. Always
keep things local and work outwards as the players work
outwards. Keep mostly to ideas with stuff inside the
players’ main circle of interest.

Make sure players are aware that they are in fact in control
of their characters’ lives. They can multi-class their
profession, they can go and choose their own skills and
talents, and they can go and train in whatever they want.
Put the ball back into your players’ hands, let “THEM” do all
the work. This also stops them from getting fed-up.

Always KEEP PLAYERS BUSY with stuff. Looking for clues in
a long lost journal (a hand-out you gave). Putting together
bits of a torn map (a torn hand-out you gave them), a
newspaper you email them monthly, looking for a lost family
relic in between normal adventuring.

In one of the campaigns I was running I had a player who was
starting to show loss of interest with her character, a 6th
level female half-elf Magic User. Always go straight to the
player & identify the problem with them. She was feeling
left out when the others in the party got stuck into combat.
Work with the player for a solution….I found the player to
be a closet Kung-fu nut. I gave the party a side mission
that led her character to multi-class into a Magic
User/Monk-Twin Dragon.

@@@@@@

From: Scott Fitz
MoonHunter

1. GM’s block is a serious problem in the roleplaying world.

Nothing stops a campaign faster than a burned out GM, except
maybe unhappy players. Signs of burn-out are a) lack of
enthusiasm for your own play, b) throwing the same old plots
at your players time and time again, c) seeing your
scenarios fall flat on a regular basis, d) not finding a new
hook or things to do in your campaign, e) players expressing
dissatisfaction about the game which they never have before.

2. Most people have a time of day when they’re the most
creative. Do your brainstorming then. Try going without
sleep for a while. Two o’clock in the morning is usually the
time when the brain is least reasonable. You can come up
with great ideas (or simply crazy ones) that can be added
together with other random thoughts. Always leave a notebook
and pencil by your bedside. You might wake up with a new
approach that can get you started again.

3. Read! I’ve been burned out before, and reading new things
always reawakens my imagination. I read fantasy books to
stimulate my creativity, but any genre will work. They do
not have to game related fiction. In fact, books of a type
you never normally read are best for inspiring you.

4. You can get ideas from movies. Watch movies with
different themes. A western can give you ideas completely
different from ideas inspired by a martial arts movie. Get
ideas from dramas, mysteries, suspense, horror, whatever.
Reading and watching movies may have some feature that might
provide the spark of inspiration from which a campaign might
be born.

5. Use your eyes. Artwork, both fine and graphic, are great
sources of inspiration. You can get ideas from a painting of
the countryside, a castle, or maybe just a portrait. Flip
through your books and see what kind of artwork is in them.
I recommend the annual Spectrum book series as the best
inspiration art book of all time.

6. If it does not work one way, try another. Consider
switching to another campaign setting or system. A new
setting may be a refreshing break from the standard things
your players are used to. If you play Fantasy all the time,
use a different section of your brain and try a science
fiction game. Sometimes you really need a break from the
usual. A change is definitely required if you’re out of
ideas on a topic.

7. Sometimes you need some help to get over the rough spots
in your creative drought. Don’t be afraid to read and borrow
stuff from others. Take ideas and add them together.
Roleplaying magazines always have little things that help a
GM, and they can be scoured for ideas you could use.

8. Review your previous work. It might help to go looking
through some of your old material. Look back at other things
you have written, and try revising them to fit your current
campaign. Update and modify it to fit your current tastes.
Also, the players may react differently to a situation than
another group of players. If they do, this will get you
thinking on a different line.

9. Try developing different parts of a campaign that you
haven’t already. See what the players could explore, be it
physical, emotional or spiritual. Try a moral dilemma
instead of your normal court intrigue or combat. Take the
group to a new part of your world as yet unexplored. An
invasion from space will always take a game in new
directions.

10. Ask a friend who is not involved in your current
campaign read over your work. Talk about it and see what
ideas he or she has that can be integrated. There is no such
thing as bad constructive criticism. If the friend doesn’t
like something about it, change it or make it better. Listen
to their comments and suggestions no matter how negative
they are regarding your work. After all, you don’t have a
better idea at this time.

11. If you can, try writing a little short story or stories.
Make your brain work in a different way. Put something down,
anything. Make it small. Start in the middle or write just a
piece of it. Make an outline. Think creatively about
something unrelated. Spend time just sitting quietly day
dreaming. Take a break. Give up for awhile and do something
different. Most likely you are burned out because you are
overworked. Enjoy some down time to rest your brain. Curl up
with a good book and let yourself drift to a different
place.

12. Try writing small pieces of information or creative
thought. These could be one line of scene description,
three sentences describing the organization of a religion,
the fast write up for an NPC, some game mechanics that when
a piece of description added could be a new monster, or even
a game tip. Once you can begin to write things down, they
can inspire you to move on to other things.

13. Sometimes there are physical reasons for why you are not
feeling creative. Try to make sure you are getting enough
quality sleep, taking in a little exercise, and limiting the
amount of chemical modifiers you are taking (caffeine and
nicotine being the biggest contributors). If you have any
physical ailments, try to get them resolved. You can’t do
your best when you don’t feel your best.

14. The hardest part of being creative is “the starting”.
Try taking pieces of the middle of what you want to do, then
go back and work on the beginning.

15. Sometimes you just need a change of pace. Trying going
someplace new, or just different, from where you normally
go. The change of location may help you to dislodge the GM’s
block.

@@@@@@

From: Jerry M.

Hello Johnn,

I’ve been running a home-brewed game for the past 6 years
with another friend, and GM burn-out creeps up on me very
often (usually once or twice a month). I have a suggestion
for other GM/DM’s to help overcome burn-out and make their
game and/or game world seem “better”.

I find that relaxing while listening to music and letting my
mind wander in my game world helps. While relaxing, try to
picture yourself walking around in your game world and paying
attention to what people do, their surroundings, and just
generally what goes on. Once you’re walking around in your
game world, close your eyes and let your mind wander
(preferably in your game world)… Do this for a couple
hours a week (sometimes 30 min a day for a week really gets
me wanting to GM).

You can take this to the next step further by making stuff
happen. Example. While walking to the store, you see someone
hit by a car. What do you do? What if that person is your
enemy, friend, spouse, noble/high class, commoner, etc.?
Sometimes seeing the day to day life of your game world
through the eyes of a commoner, or just some traveler, you
will begin to know more about your game world that usually
isn’t in any books. Your game world has a life, why not look
at how it is for a couple hours a week. Plus, don’t think of
plot hooks, let them come to you. The more you “see” your
world, the more you can probably figure out how to make a
campaign unlike any you had before…

This may be difficult if you do not have a fully developed
game world, or have little knowledge about the system. This
has been very effective for me because I built my whole game
world, system, and NPCs from scratch, so I know of many
aspects of day to day life in my world from planet to
planet, realm to realm.

These tips have helped me, and maybe they can help someone
else.

@@@@@@

From: Mitch Michaelson

Hi Johnn,

Your recent issue struck very close to home: I suffered GM
burn-out and I had to have a character leave the game.

First, because we play online, that means we don’t know each
other as people very well. And no matter how many smiley-
faces you use, it’s very easy to offend someone in a chat
room. The group lacked cohesiveness. I lost interest in
holding it all together. So I asked that we skip a week,
then come back and discuss the problems.

The remaining players and I talked our issues out. In some
cases, I was at fault as much as anyone. In other cases, I
had to play the “it’s my game” card while demonstrating
concern for their feelings.

One of the players pointed out a flaw in the way I set up
the game. As mid-level characters (ancillae), I wanted them
developing their own schemes and domains… but because
there were few low-level characters (neonates) in the city,
the player characters were effectively just powerful
neonates.

I didn’t think bringing in dozens of neonates would make
things better so the players suggested they take control of
my non-player characters! They each chose an existing NPC
neonate and will play them from now on, in addition to their
normal ancillae. This troupe-style play expanded the ranks
of player characters and since the two groups know each
other, the ancillae can send the neonates off on dirty
missions they devise. This completely dispelled my lack of
interest and my burn-out was gone!

Second, at the same time as all of this I had to expel a
character from the game because he simply didn’t fit in. The
player was also rarely present, so that contributed. One of
the players contacted the expelled player and asked if he
still wanted to play, which he did. The player brokered a
discussion between the ex-player and I, and now the ex-
player is creating a new character that fits the game and he
will show up more often.

The game is back on. The lost player is coming back into the
game. The moral to the story is, involve your players when
you suffer burnout. They will probably surprise you with
something out of the blue.

[Update April 14: Thanks very much to the great editors who helped out! The files have all been taken care of now. Stay tuned for more news about the Combat Swipes.]

Howdy Roleplaying Tips fan!

I’ve just compiled all the raw entries from the Combat Swipe File contest.

They have been broken up into short sections and I could use your help editing them.

If you like editing and have a few minutes to spare, please visit the shared Google Documents below and get your red pen out.

Thanks so much for your help!

Once the editing is done, I’ll start publishing the entries in the GM tips newsletter, and I’ll also be compiling them into a free PDF for Roleplaying Tips readers.

“The other issue is coming up with descriptions that aren’t repetitive after the 3rd combat.”

I have the same problem. And it’s time to fix it for everybody.

Let’s do a new contest.

The prizes will be MyInfo software and some PDF GM books.

You can enter multiple times for a chance to win more than once!

Here’s how to enter

Fill out a short combat description for each item in this block:

• Melee attack success:
• Ranged attack success:
• Spell attack success:
• Defense / miss:
• Insult / challenge:

One or two lines for each is perfect.

For example:

• Melee attack success: “Your weapon whistles through the air and opens an angry wound in your foe’s brow.”
• Ranged attack success: “With a loud THOINK! your missile penetrates your foe’s armour and he screams in pain and rage.”
• Spell attack success: “As the dying words of your incantation float into the air, there’s a sudden sizzling sound followed by a brilliant flash. Your foe staggers and grunts in pain.”
• Defense / miss: “Your foe’s foul breath almost overwhelms you as he laughs heartily at your feeble swing.”
• Insult / challenge: “You think that’s tough? I’ll show you tough! Watch out puny bug, I’m about to step on you.”

I’d like your entries to contain one description for each item in the block so I get a good balance of answers. I’ll edit the entries and repost them for us all to build our swipe files with.

Entry deadline is Feb 27, 2012.

I can tell this is going to be a fun contest. Bring on your combat prose, gory descriptions and best trash talk!