Mastering the Moment

Happy New Year!

I hope you enjoyed a wonderful New Year’s Eve. Mine was excellent — I had a great sleep. Getting old, lol.

Got something a bit personal for you today about my GMing credo.

I have, at the top of my Roleplaying Tips writing file, this line of text:

I play the Infinite Game and Master the Moment to make the best Move every time.

Let’s break this down, as there might be an idea or two here I’m hoping you can scoop for your GMing philosophy.

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The Infinite Game

I explain what this is in this article here.

In short, rather than playing to win by making other players lose thus ending the game, we instead play to open up more hooks, seeds, and choices to keep our campaigns going.

This is like the uber equivalent of Yes, and….

What this means in practice for me is:

  • Designing game pieces (NPCs, monsters, traps, etc.) so they brim with hooks, seeds, and choices.
  • Making GM Moves that avoid Logic Bombs, don’t paint myself into corners, or end gameplay.
  • Responding to Moves that are Finite Play so the session pivots to Infinite Play.

Master the Moment

We cannot prepare for every contingency before each session because our players are creative people. Anticipating and planning for anything and everything burdens us a lot.

My solution to this is to Prepare to Improvise. That’s my methodology for using prep time to create details, frameworks, and tools that reduce my cognitive load while GMing.

This means I have more mental bandwidth to a) enjoy the game instead of being stressed, b) respond to whatever crazy actions the group decides to take.

Master the Moment means in practice for me:

  • Being present, thinking about what’s going on right now in the game, and striving to make masterful Moves and Rulings instead of always thinking 3 steps ahead in distracted fashion.
  • Using the OODA Loop to help make those masterful rulings and guide the session towards the Infinite Game.
  • Squeezing every ounce of gameplay juice from my game pieces.

Moves

This is something I doubled down on in 2024. I borrowed this term from the Dungeon World RPG where a “Move” is a mechanical representation of a specific action or situation that triggers when certain conditions are met in the fiction.

Moves in DW are essentially the game’s way of translating actions into mechanical outcomes.

This year I realized that there are three major categories of Moves:

  • GM Moves
  • Player Moves
  • Character Moves

A GM Move might be to reveal some Lore. A Player Move might be to call for the group to make a plan of attack before leaping in. And a Character Move might be to cast a spell.

Breaking Moves up like this helps clarify who does what.

For example, this past year in the newsletter we talked a lot about player agency. In your campaign, can players create NPCs, locations, treasure, or plots? If so, you’d put those Moves into both GM and Player buckets, and then decide how you’ll handle the Infinite Game for them.

With my GMing style, I prefer to make the game pieces myself (except for the characters) but players can invent such game pieces by naming them and maybe providing a detail. Then I plot and build the rest of that game piece.

Summing Up

I play the Infinite Game and Master the Moment to make the best Move every time.

This goal sentence helps me focus on the areas of the game I can work on most to get the best results at the table. It’s a short-form code or reminder.

There’s a lot more we could unpack here, but that’s the gist.

I hope you found this interesting.

Do you have any GM mantras? Hit reply and let me know, or share on Discord.

Meantime, I hope your had an excellent holiday season. And here’s to a 2025 full of awesome gaming!

Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
Have more fun at every game!

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