Two to Tango: GMing a Solo Campaign

Running a solo campaign — one GM, one player — is a different experience from running a traditional multi-player RPG. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and it might not always be your first choice, but it can be a lot of fun.

For one thing, solo campaigns are intimate and collaborative in ways that traditional games are not.

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GMing: Art, Craft or Science?

I’ve most often seen GMing described as an art or a craft (and I tend to use craft myself). Arguably, it could also be described as a science.

This might sound like navel-gazing for the semantics-minded, but I see value in understanding what each term means when applied to GMing. And really, GMing is all three of these things.

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Interview with Mike Mearls

Mike Mearls has written nearly every d20 System book you’ve heard of (or at least it seems that way). Before going full time with Malhavoc Press, and more recently with Wizards of the Coast, he was one of the most prolific freelancers in the RPG industry.

Despite the name, he wrote Monte Cook’s Iron Heroes, one of the most popular implementations of the d20 System to date. And with a zillion game design credits to his name, the most impressive thing is this: It’s all good.

So he can write like the dickens and he’s got a unique, unpretentious and usually spot-on take on the industry (often showcased in his LiveJournal) — but what’s he like as a GM? How did he get started as a freelancer? And what are his lunchtime games like? The answer to these questions (and many others) are in this email interview.

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The Two Laws of Laughter and RPGs

Based on my experiences on both sides of the screen:

1. 99.9% of games benefit from at least the occasional humorous moment, even the ones where you cry and dress in black. (I can conceive of the 0.01%, but I’ve never played them.)

2. When any group of gamers gets together for a session, laughter is inevitable.

Have you also found both of these laws to be true? Is there a third law (or a fourth, etc.)? Does the first one take place naturally when you GM, or do you need to plan for it?

Unexpected Depth

Alysia (my fiancee) and I went to see The Descent last night, and one aspect of the movie really surprised me.

It translated well to GMing, too: Focus on something unexpected, and enrich the game in the process.

I figured The Descent would be about things in the cave system eating the spelunkers — a monster movie, pretty much like The Cave — which it was. But they played up the claustrophobia brilliantly, which I wasn’t expecting at all. (The Cave didn’t do this, and it should have.)

I don’t get claustrophobic easily, and there were scenes in the movie that made me cringe. The caving was shot quite well, and it really ramped up the tension. The movie would have met my expectations without doing this at all — and by focusing on this element, it exceeded my expectations.

When you GM, look for these opportunities — chances to add more depth than your players might expect, or to focus on a secondary element of the adventure.

This can be unplanned, too, as long as you’re paying attention to what your players are interested in. If they like something more than you thought they would, run with it and see where it goes.

Post-it Sortable Cards for GMs

While I was picking up supplies for work today, I ran across an organizational tool I hadn’t seen before: Post-it Sortable Cards.

They’re 3×5 index cards with a tacky Post-it strip across the top, lined on both sides and with header boxes on the front. The hook is that they’ll stick to most surfaces (like Post-its), but they won’t stick to each other.

Right out of the sample pack, this wasn’t quite true — they stuck too each other a little bit. But after a couple of shuffles, that changed and they shuffled freely. The only exception is when they’re back-to-back: The sticky bits stick to other sticky bits just fine.

The first thing that jumped to mind was using index cards and a cork board for prep. No cork board? No problem. They could also fill any of the many roles index cards already fill for GMs, with an extra fringe benefit. (See Tools of the Trade: Index Cards and Homemade Initiative Index Cards for some suggestions.)

I don’t know if I’m completely sold on them, but they are a very nifty idea. I’m a big fan of Post-its for GMing, so combining them with one of my favorite GMing tools — the humble index card — is a pretty good match.

My local Office Depot was giving out free samples, so you might be able to snag some testers in your neighborhood, too.

Smell-O-Gaming

Smell is the sense most strongly associated with memory — and the least-used sense at the average gaming session.

Has anyone ever tried to use scent in their games? (You in the back, keep the jokes to a minimum…) Lighting a scented candle every time the party is in a particular city, striking a match, lighting a cigar — anything like that?

As corny as it sounds, it strikes me that this could be a pretty powerful technique for forming mnemonic associations at the gaming table. The major limitation seems like it would be the limited range of ways you can generate different smells.

Someone needs to invent a smell-o-gaming machine.

GenCon 2006 and GMing

I got back from GenCon Indy 2006 on Sunday, and as always it was an absolute blast. This year, two GMing-related things really jumped out at me, although I wasn’t really looking for them.

The first was some truly appalling GMing, and the second was lots of cool products for GMs. I’d also like to touch briefly on Mastering Your GM-Fu, the GMing seminar I took part in.

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