Roleplaying Tips Weekly E-Zine Issue #352
Know Your Players - Building Your Session Checklist
Contents:
This Week's Tips Summarized
Know Your Players - Building Your Session Checklist
- Learn Player Time Habits
- Learn Player Organization
- Learn Player Preferences
Readers' Tips Summarized
- Superstitions For Use In Your Games
- Scenario Writing Tips
- Mickey Spillane, Game Master
- Rackham Tiles
- Character Generation Idea
Shop for Electronic Products and Win Physical Books
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Return to Contents
A Brief Word From Johnn
Superstitions Contest - Two Weeks Left
The quest for superstition ideas continues. A few entries
have been sent in, and it would be great to see a few more.
Up for grabs is five copies of Superstitions by Creative
Mountain Games. I'll add in three Roleplaying Tips GM
Encyclopedias as well, for a total of eight prizes!
Check out the Readers Tips section for some example
superstition ideas and entries.
One superstition idea = one entry into the prize draw.
E-mail your entries to johnn@roleplayingtips.com and
good luck!
No Issue Next Week - Easter Break
Next issue will be April 15 as the e-zine takes a rest over
the Easter break.
Great New Article Posted
Attention educators and RPG club enthusiasts, check out this
great new article posted at the site:
"Starting and Running a Role-Playing Games Club"
by Katrina Middelburg-Creswell
It's a case study of a teacher who started up a thriving RPG
club at her school. Katrina also shares tips, advice, and
sample forms & documents to help you start your own club.
Thanks Katrina!
Cheers,
Johnn Four,
johnn@roleplayingtips.com
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Sword & Sorcery / Necromancer Games Overstock Sale
50% off the following D&D adventures while quantities last:
Return to Contents
Know Your Players - Building Your Session Checklist
Part One
By Johnn Four
Checklists are valuable game master tools. They are easy to
craft - just brainstorm a list of items, and put them in
order, if desired. With each use, you can change and update
it until the checklist is complete and perfect.
They are portable - put them in your GM binder, on your
screen, in your books, in your notes, on your computer.
They are also reproducible. Each time you need to perform a
checklist-oriented task, make a copy of the list, perhaps on
a Post-It, in Excel, or on a scrap piece of paper.
Checklists are like recipes for GMs. They give you a list of
ingredients, what to do with them, the order in which to do
them, and any related deadlines. I urge you to make
checklists for any series of planning, designing, or GMing
tasks, items, or processes.
One such recipe you might find valuable is the player
session checklist. A key part to your games is providing the
framework for players to show up and get what they want from
each session. Each player has different likes, dislikes, and
personal habits.
A player session checklist aids planning, design, and
session preparation to help ensure encounters and gameplay
has something for everyone each session.
There are many possible GMing checklists. The following tips
are to help you serve your players as best you can through a
player checklist.
Some of the items are organizational in nature. As GM, you
have experience and desire, and by default, the
responsibility to be organized and efficient where game
sessions are concerned. Organizing players might feel like
herding cats, but not everyone is gifted with being
organized, so I figure if you can help your players in this
department with little to no added effort, it benefits the
game and group.
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1. Learn Player Time Habits
Pay attention to the time trends of your players. Noticing
consistent aberrations will help you develop a handling
strategy and session preparation To Do items, which you can
then add to your player checklist.
- Are they often late or too early?
Late players are disruptive or might delay game starts,
depending on how you run things. Determine who is often late
and why - perhaps you can help the player be on time.
For example:
- Forgetful players might benefit from a reminder. Checklist
item: send player e-mail reminder the night before the game.
- Traffic is bad. Perhaps you can change the game location,
use Google maps to pick a better route, or tweak the game
start time.
If there's nothing more you can do to help players arrive on
time, and one or more players are still often late, add a
checklist item: account for player XYZ being late. This
little reminder will help you plan session starts that
aren't dependent on the late player or their character.
Early players can be just as disruptive by interrupting your
last-minute prep, or by adding to the pre-game chaos. Add a
checklist item for early players about ways they can help,
or to remind you to anticipate the early knock on the door.
- Are they slow in-game?
Observe player response time and note where slow-downs
occur. Again, you do this with an eye toward helping
players. Perhaps you can craft a short player's reference
for the fighter who stumbles over combat rules, or build a
spreadsheet tool to auto-calculate some things.
Maybe decision-making is tricky for them. If so, perhaps you
can improve your descriptions, or design with certain
decisions in mind to make choices clearer or easier to make
with a particular character.
If you spot opportunities to help slow players, add any
applicable, regular To Do items to your checklist.
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2. Learn Player Organization
This is a simple tip: what do players forget?
Checklist item: send the player(s) a reminder to bring their
dice, books, character sheet, and anything else they tend to
forget.
In-game organization is important too. Are players
struggling amongst empty candy wrappers, chip bags, and
dirty dishes? Put a garbage can nearby and ask an idle
player to remove some garbage off the table, or to take some
dishes to the kitchen.
Are books, notepaper, minis, and other game stuff at hand
and accessible to players? Help players stay organized by
keeping game reference and materials close, and also by
providing space to store books and things away from the game
table to give players more space.
Checklist item: clean-up and organize the game area.
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3. Learn Player Preferences
This is the meat of your checklist. To deliver the best
sessions, ensure each player gets what they're looking for
from the game.
Common sense prevails here. I'm sure every player would be
delighted with endless heaps of treasure and experience
points, however we all know that fun also includes
challenge, drama, and sometimes loss or setbacks.
With that in mind, write each player's name on a sheet of
paper and brainstorm what you think they want from your game
sessions, and what you think makes them enjoy playing RPGs.
Keep these notes handy, and add to them whenever you get new
ideas or observe new motivations.
Next, write each player's name on your session checklist.
With your player preferences notes in hand, for each
session, note how the game will appeal to one or more
preferences of each player.
There's no guarantee these preferences will be met next
session, but your checklist helps you consider each player
as an individual, and helps you figure out how you can tweak
your game to be entertaining for all.
You might go through your player preferences checklist
first, before you start designing and planning, so you have
player needs in mind. It's often possible to tweak a game
element, such as an encounter, challenge, reward, or NPC, to
better suit one or more players.
This is not new advice, but it is good advice that's easy to
do. In Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering (great book, by
the way), Robin categorizes players by type and emotional
kick. In Rolemaster's Gamemaster Law, players are
categorized by personality. Other gaming products have
classified player types and preferences over the years as
well.
- Document Player Preferences
You can use a grid, like Robin Laws, with player names down
the side and blank columns for Type and Emotional Kick along
the top. Beside each name, you write out what type you think
the player is and what game emotion you think they thrive on
(such as power gaming, method acting, or kicking butt).
I prefer making a free-form list of player preferences and
tendencies, and keeping each players' list in a separate
file or in a running text document. Some players have more
than one preference.
In addition, I find it limiting to assign an archetype, or
some kind of type, classification, or label to a player. For
example, power gamer, rules lawyer, fox, bull, and casual
gamer are interesting terms, but they don't exactly apply to
any of my players.
I'd rather get specific for my checklist: likes, dislikes,
preferences. However, types and labels are great starting
points for getting a rough idea of the mix of preferences
each player has, and then getting specific from there.
- Observe Player Preferences
As you make your lists, you might realize you know the
preferences of some players better than others. You are
welcome to make guesses, but you should immediately start
paying attention during sessions to get the facts on what
they enjoy and what makes them bored, frustrated, or
disengaged.
Conversations between sessions are also helpful in backing
up your lists with data. Feel free to be direct and ask:
"What do you like about gaming? Why do you game? What have
been your favourite parts of recent game sessions?"
Observation also helps you double-check your lists. Did you
figure each player's preferences correctly?
- Revise Player Preferences
During each session, or after, review your preferences lists
and make updates and changes. Hopefully, you are refining
things and getting to know your players very well.
- Checklist Item: Design With Each Player In Mind
Before game sessions, write out each player's name on your
checklist and note what parts of the session you anticipate
will appeal to them.
If a player's section is empty, best fix that right away. If
one player has a much larger list than others, that's great,
but it could be a sign of a poorly weighted session with too
much focus or spotlight time. Just go over session plans
quickly in your mind to ensure the session is balanced.
As you plan and prepare for next session, create or tweak
game elements to appeal to as many players as possible. Each
time you make a change so a player is being served well,
note that on your checklist.
For example, one player might enjoy combat a lot while
another likes roleplaying much better. You plan an encounter
where the PCs must confront the owner of a printing press to
learn who is crafting some hateful posters that are popping
up all over town. It will require good roleplaying, because
the owner doesn't want to lose his well-paying customer;
plus, the owner is a secret sympathizer to the hateful
cause.
Player B: roleplaying = check
Player A: combat = no check
You have some options at this point. You can add in a combat
encounter (short or long as per your game pacing needs) to
hit Player A's preferences next. You can add some thugs to
the print shop so that Player A can fight while Player B
interrogates, bribes, or tricks the owner to reveal his
customer. You can make the print shop encounter short, to
keep pacing fast so that Player A doesn't get restless.
Next planned encounter is with the customer. That's expected
to be a roleplaying encounter as well, because he's just an
employee of a powerful politician who has been ordered to
craft and distribute the posters.
You scratch your chin and consider the consequences of
having two roleplaying encounters in a row and how that will
sit with Player A and Player B.
The point of this example is the player preferences
checklist helps you analyze and tweak session plans to try
to make your games as enjoyable as possible. It's a great
tool.
- GM With The Checklist In Hand
While you GM a session, keep your checklist nearby. As the
game session hits points of player preferences, check off
that item on each player's list, or add the item if it was
unplanned.
Halfway through the session, look at the number of
check marks each player has. Players with no marks need some
attention.
As you GM, make new preferences entries as you observe, to
build up your master preferences list between sessions.
* * *
Stay tuned for next issue, Part 2: Know Your Players, where
I provide examples of player preferences to add to your
checklists, and ideas for serving them in your games.
By the way, a player's checklist is just one of three
stakeholder checklists you should craft for your games, with
the other two being Know Thyself (GM preferences checklist)
and Know The Characters (catering to characters checklist).
Would you be interested in reading about these, or does the
idea of more checklists leave you cold and dead inside,
screaming for mercy?
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Readers' Tips Of The Week:
1. Superstitions For Use In Your Games
From: Jody McAdoo
- Saying a greater being's (god/whatever) name gives it the
ability to hear and act upon events within 100 ft. of the
speaker. Careful who you call upon and what you say about
them.
- Inflicting harm to priests on holy ground is asking for
their god's wrath.
- Being hit by bird droppings is lucky.
- Wearing red hats on Tuesday is good luck.
- The blood of a vampire will slow the aging process.
- Werewolf teeth are good luck.
- If you leave your tooth under your pillow, the tooth troll
will leave you coppers.
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2. Scenario Writing Tips
From: Kit Reshawn
Writing good adventures is difficult. On the one hand, you
need to have strict control, otherwise things fall apart as
your players do whatever they want and you have trouble
coming up with things that are interesting. On the other
hand, you need to have loose control, otherwise your players
feel things are too boring or predictable and end up being
pulled by the nose everywhere.
Here is the way I write things to avoid these problems.
First off, having descriptions already written up is a good
thing, as making descriptions on the fly is difficult. It is
ok to write descriptions from a single perspective, because
you can always alter it on the fly to match whatever
perspective your players happen to be at when they see the
description.
Descriptions should be about a paragraph long, and you
should add in details that are unimportant (otherwise
players only listen when you start giving details). Details
are more important than most people think, because they make
characters (and places) quickly identifiable to the players,
and sometimes your players will find ways to make previously
unimportant things become important.
Next, come up with a general plot idea, and then write up a
plausible chain of events. What would happen if things went
exactly the way you planned? Include how different
characters will answer likely questions (Who are you? What
is going on? What do you want? etc.) plus motivations for
all of the major NPCs involved.
Don't think for a second things will go exactly the way you
plan, or that all the questions you think are obvious will
be asked by the players. Rather, all this preparation acts
as a framework. You can get an idea of what an NPC will do
in an unplanned situation by taking note of his motivations,
and your plausible chain of events can act as a guide when
changing how things are going to happen.
Have things ready to run a particular quest, but don't be
afraid to deviate. Let's say your players want to get into a
castle, so you thought they would go look for a person to
smuggle them in with forged passes. Although that is a good
way of running such an adventure, do not be afraid to let
your players do something different, such as sneaking in by
themselves under cover of darkness.
Most importantly, do not be afraid to make things you
believe are unlikely or difficult more difficult for your
players to accomplish. This does not mean it should be
impossible (impossible things should be rare). Rather, you
make whatever difficulty rolls they must pass closer to the
maximum they can achieve. If they fail, so be it. They
picked a difficult course of action and should have to take
the setback. Failure is as much a part of the story as
success, and if you never let your players fail then they
will stop feeling tension.
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3. Mickey Spillane, Game Master
From: Jay ~Meow!~
Mickey Spillane said, "I outline my story, decide who is
who, what's happening - and then I throw the first half of
the outline away and start in the middle of the story. If
there's any information I need to add, I can do that in
flashbacks."
I find this is a good technique for story writing and GMing.
One thing I like to do is get a good framing mechanism - a
good reason for the PCs to be adventuring. Among my
favorites are the Private Detective Agency, the Police
Force, and the Military. I have also tried a freelance
salvage/security company.
This lets players know what the goals are. For police - they
are informed of a crime scene or a dead body and sent to
work. For them the story is already in action. Someone has
been killed, something has been stolen or destroyed. Their
job - find out who dunnit. Where are they now?
With the military, it's "Report to the conference room for a
mission briefing."
With Green Jack's Salvage - Green Jack, the owner, acquired
jobs and told the PCs what he needed done. This had
successes and failures - a job too vaguely stated leaves
players wondering how to proceed and what's expected of
them.
In terms of a classic group of D&D adventurers - they need
group identity and a standing group mission.
"The Order of The Stick" is a mercenary company hired on to
follow Roy on his quest to defeat the Lich Xyklon. The group
structure is mercenary, the mission is a long term quest
against Xyklon.
My best friend tried to run a fantasy game where characters
pulled out of different times and spaces were drawn into an
FRPG world and given a quest to combat slavery by a demi-
goddess.
However, once out of the demi-goddess's temple, the mission
was forgotten, the goal fell to the wayside, and the PCs
scattered. This made Dennis cry, softly.
In another FRPG game, I basically recycled the "police
force" idea and made the beginning PCs members of a city
guard (I stole this idea from a guy named Lee who GMed a
rocking game back in the 1990s).
However, the players reacted with ambivalence to this - it
didn't exactly fit their expectations.
Another GM of my acquaintance took a random group of
adventurers and had the hoary old man at the bar describe an
ancient temple of amazing wealth.
Although the PCs joined this party for various reasons (my
character joined to get cover for escaping the police, for
instance) this set them up to all be standing in the ancient
temple when the Ancient God appeared and geased them all to
perform the quest the GM had in mind to begin with. That one
was cool, actually.
As for Mickey Spillane, I discovered, with Green Jack's
Salvage, that Star Wars works well when you cut to a point
where the story is already in motion: "You come out of
hyperspace near the Planet Rodom - the reason for the loss
of contact with the colony there becomes apparent as alien
fighters vector in to intercept you. Welcome to tonight's
session."
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4. Rackham Tiles
From: Barry Strain
I was catching up on my newsletters and noticed your Brief
Word about D&D tiles. Rackham is starting a new game called
Cadwallon. Cadwallon is a city in the land Aarklash (world
based on Rackham's minis game). Rackham has produced tiles
for the system, but I thought they might be useful for other
games.
Here is a link to Rackham's Cadwallon page.
The tiles are on the bottom of the page.
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5. Character Generation Idea
From: Telas
There are some excellent character generation ideas to be
mined in the indie game, "Spirit of the Century". Basically,
the players each write a brief description of an adventure
their character has been involved in on an index card. The
cards are shuffled and passed back out randomly, and the new
person becomes a "guest star" in the adventure, adding a
line or two. Repeat one more time, and it creates a cohesive
group with a number of common background themes. There's a
bit more to it, but that's it.
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