Create Adventures and NPCs Around a Focal Scene

Brian Engard, who writes Gamecrafter’s Guild, responded to Do You Prep NPC Dialogue? by writing a nifty post about playing out potential dialogue scenes as part of his game prep.

I asked Brian if he’d be willing to flesh that concept out a bit and turn it into a TT guest post, and he was kind enough to do just that.
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When I design an adventure, I usually start with a single scene that’s been stuck in my head for a while.

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What Does Your LGS Mean to You as a GM?

Over the weekend, TT reader tsuyoshikentsu emailed me about Pandemonium Books, a Massachusetts gaming store that’s close to going under. He asked me to mention their fund drive on TT — instead of just quietly fading away, they’re trying to sell 1,000 T-shirts to stay afloat (here’s the order page).

I’m sympathetic to their situation — from their website, it looks like a great store — but I needed to find a GMing angle before I felt comfortable posting about their fundraiser (I’m always wary of using TT as a soapbox). And having seen several gaming stores go out of business over the years, Pandemonium’s financial woes do raise a larger question for GMs.

Whether your LGS (local gaming store) is a great shop, a so-so one or even a bad one, what does your LGS mean to you as a GM? And what would you lose if it went out of business?

Keep a Backup RPG on Deck

Along the lines of Write a Backup Adventure, I’ve recently started keeping a fallback RPG ready to go for “gaming emergencies.”

Right now, I have the fabulous new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, along with an entire three-book published campaign, just sitting on the shelf waiting to be run for my group. I’m familiar with the rules, and I’ve skimmed the adventures — I could easily start GMing a WFRP campaign on short (or no) notice.

I also know that my group, while they’d prefer a more customized campaign (rather than the “slot in your characters” approach that goes along with published modules), likes WFRP: we’ve played it once before, and everyone had a good time.

Those are the main criteria I recommend when choosing a backup game: familiarity with the system, adventures ready to go, pre-approved (at least to some extent) by your group and easy to run without any notice. There’s one more optional criterion, too, which depends on your group’s tastes: it’s a change of pace, as WFRP isn’t one of the games we’re currently playing.

So if either of our current GMs burns out or needs a break, or if we need a change of pace, WFRP is ready and waiting. I haven’t needed to Break Glass in Case of Gaming Emergency yet, but if I ever do I know that WFRP will be there.

Do You Prep NPC Dialogue?

When you’re putting together an adventure or detailing your next session, do you prep specific NPC dialogue?

Personally, I never have. I prefer to adlib NPC dialogue, which (like all adlibbing) produces a mix of gems, good lines, forgettable lines and, unfortunately, crap. Keeping track of prepped lines would be tough, and I think I’d be likely to flub them or fumble for them during play.

One of my group’s current GMs preps NPC dialogue for specific situations and encounters (notably, in our Stargate game’s recent — and excellent — time-loop adventure), and this approach seems to work very well for him. As a player in his game, it certainly turns out well on my side of the screen.

As someone who doesn’t do this, I’m curious to hear from GMs who do prep dialogue. How do you make prepped lines work in play? How do you spot situations where having lines ready in advance will be useful?

And if you don’t prep NPC dialogue, why not? Do you have the same concerns as I do, or is there a different aspect of your GMing style that comes into play?

Robin Laws on Linear Adventures

Robin Laws’s latest See Page XX column, Fear of Structure: The Diagnosis, argues that:

…to emulate certain fictional genres in a satisfying way, the GM needs to be able to create a sense of structure, with an opening that leads to a series of interconnected scenes, and finally to a climax that wraps up the various plot threads dangled in the previous action.

And as Robin points out, that can sound like a bad thing, especially to players who’ve “been burned by dictatorial so-called storytelling GMs whose heavy-handed, anti-collaborative techniques discredit all narrative-based play.” (That’d be this guy.)

His focus is on mystery adventures, but his advice — to consider linear scenarios a viable (and fun) option — can be applied to many types of scenario, whether you’re writing them for WoAdWriMo or for your home game. He makes too many good points to summarize here, and the column is well worth a read.

GM and Player Engagement: Four Observations

I’m about to say “engaged” a lot, so it’s worth being clear exactly how I’m using the term. I’m pulling from several definitions of “engaged” here, but the resulting composite is the definition I think best applies to roleplaying: involved, drawn in, engrossed, held fast and interlocked.

Observation 1: As a GM, I’m 100% engaged by default. Even if I’m not doing a great job, all of my attention goes to my players and the game. That doesn’t mean I won’t make the occasional joke, or need a quick break from time to time, but I won’t be flipping through a book, glancing at the TV or otherwise getting distracted.

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Never Say No When You Could Say Yes

When a player wants their character to try something unusual, you should never say no — even if what they want to do is bizarre, impossible or potentially fatal.

Instead, say “Yes, but it’s going to be tough,” and share useful information about the action they want to take.

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Evil Overlords, Now with Attributes

With Faction Gaming in the Empire, the author of munkipox adds another layer to the evil overlord concept introduced here on TT: attributes for the various factions.

Here’s an excerpt: “Faction attributes are rated from 1-10, and represent the resources and skills that a faction has to bring to bear on a situation. Faction attributes may change by +/- 1 from turn to turn in response to in-game events.”

All factions are ranked in six areas, including Diplomacy and Covert Operations, which sounds specific enough to be useful while remaining general enough to be simple. And just as importantly, each faction’s relationships with the other listed factions are spelled out — that’s a great idea.

The Empire in question is the one in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay’s Old World (one of my favorite RPGs), but the system itself is definitely general enough to be applicable to plenty of other games (and if you play WFRP, now you have six statted-out factions for your campaign!).

Cool implementation, secretive, anonymous munkipox author! just as when Tom ran with the idea to come up with his priority system (as seen in the free evil overlords PDF), it’s really neat to see other GMs taking this concept and running with it.

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