Refinement Prep

“Refinement prep” is the final stage of game prep for an RPG — the part where you:

One of the problems I have with prep is that I tend to either procrastinate, which means I don’t get time for this important (and easily overlooked) stage of the process, or that I drill down to this stage on a couple of prep elements (maps, for example) but skip the stuff I really shouldn’t skip for all the other elements.

Refinement prep always seems like a luxury to me, but it shouldn’t be — two of the other GMs in my group always include this step, and it shows in the quality of their games. How important is refinement prep to you? Do you have an overall prep strategy that ensures you have enough time for this stage?

(I’m at GenCon from Wednesday, August 15th through Sunday, August 19th — two trips in a row makes for a busy month! As before, there will be a new post every day, but I won’t be able to respond to comments or reply to emails. I’ll be back with a full report next week — have a good time without me! — Martin

Meet Bob’s Brother, Cob

Jolly Blackburn’s excellent “Knights of the Dinner Table” comic strip has tackled this topic, but it’s never come up on TT: What do you do when a player’s character dies and instead of creating a new PC, your player erases the “B” in Bob, fills in a “C” and reuses the exact same character?

I honestly don’t think this comes up too often these days, but I could easily be wrong. And if I am, I’d recommend handling it one of three ways:

1. If you’re running a beer and pretzels campaign where nothing is taken too seriously, let ‘er rip.

2. If Bob died before his player had a chance to enjoy Bob as a character, Cob should definitely be A-OK. You might encourage your player to put a bit more creativity into it, but it shouldn’t be a big issue.

3. If neither of those two cases fits your situation, disallow it — unless your player can provide a compelling reason why Cob makes the grade.

The longer I write TT, the less often I take that kind of adversarial stance on player-related issues — but this one is just so sloppy that I feel pretty strongly about it. What do you think about Cob, and does he have a place in your games?

(I’m heading to GenCon tomorrow, so between spending time with my wife and packing, I probably won’t be on much today. I’ve got posts cued up through Monday, and I’ll see you next week! — Martin)

PC Backgrounds: Opening and Closing Doors

If you imagine the hooks and plot elements in the PCs’ backgrounds as open doors, it’s a good idea to close those doors during play. Not all of them, of course, and not according to some secret formula — but closure is important, and if nothing in a character’s background ever gets resolved during the campaign, why was it there in the first place?

The problem with closing doors, though, is that if you close enough of them then your players will have fewer points of entry into adventures, and fewer obvious avenues for character development.

The trick is to open new doors as you close the old ones. This will happen organically just by playing the game (for example: you introduce a new nemesis for the party, who becomes a hook for several adventures), but it’s helpful to keep the creation of new doors in mind when you’re writing scenarios.

These new elements can be tied to closed doors (or grow out of them), or they can be completely new, with no connections to past background elements. The key is to keep providing fuel for your players to work with.

Share Target Numbers with Your Players

From what I’ve seen, there are two schools of thought when it comes to disclosing target numbers (called a variety of things in different systems):

  1. Don’t tell your players what they need to roll, just let them figure it out after a few attempts.
  2. Tell them what they need to roll.

I’ve been used to option one as the default approach for years, on both sides of the screen. Over the past few years, though, I’ve had a chance to see option two — full disclosure — in action as a player, and it rocks.

I’m now solidly in the second camp, and will be taking the full disclosure approach the next time I run a game. Telling your players what they need to roll has several benefits:

You don’t have to share every target number, either — just most of them. You can still make a few rolls in secret, or keep mum about what the party needs to roll when you think it’ll add drama to the situation.

If you’re used to not disclosing target numbers, this represents a major shift in play style — and one that might not be for you. The best way to find out if this play style works for you and your group is just to try it. At your next session, disclose all (or nearly all) target numbers in advance, and see what happens. Like me, you might discover that you love this approach.

Be the Phone Nazi

I’m not a fan of taking calls during gaming sessions, nor of other folks answering their phones. Call me old-fashioned, but unless the caller is on fire (or you think they might be on fire), let it go to voicemail and listen to the message at the next break — and ask your players to do the same.

I don’t expect everyone to leave their phones at home (mine’s usually on, and right next to my chair), but breaking for phone calls is just one more distraction — and if we only have four hours, I want as few distractions as possible.

Am I just being curmudgeonly, or do you feel the same way when you game?

Does Age Matter in Gaming?

Inspired by TT forum member Rophan’s thread that asks How old are you and your players?, three related questions:

And if the answer to any of those questions is “Yes,” does that answer change depending on the situation — a home game vs. a convention game, for example?

Personally, one of the things I’ve always loved about gaming as a hobby is that it’s so welcoming to players of different ages. I don’t worry about how old my players or the members of my group are — it’s not age that matters, it’s maturity: coming to the table to have fun, and help everyone else have fun, too.

In my regular groups, what matters most to me is that I’m playing with friends. That tends to mean most of the folks I game with are in the same age ballpark, but not always: up until recently, our D&D group’s age range was 22-36 (I’m 30).

At conventions, I’ve been irritated by immature older players just as often as by immature younger players, and neither situation has come up very often. I’ve never gamed with a GM who was much younger than me, but I suspect it wouldn’t change anything — at least up to a point (I think I’d feel odd playing a game run by a 10-year-old).

How about you?

(I’m out of town on business from Tuesday, August 7th through Friday, August 10th, and I most likely won’t be able to check in while I’m away. There’ll be a new post every day, as always, and I’ll catch up on comments and the forums when I get back. See you in a few days! — Martin)

GMing Tips from a Player’s POV, and Meta-Mapping

• Notes to the GM - What a Player Wants: This Roleplaying Tips article offers six player-oriented GMing tips, from “Get Started Quickly” (#1) to “I Can’t Handle Much Homework - Let’s Game It Instead” (#6). They probably won’t all be to your taste (personally, I disagree with #2, “Black Box What’s Outside My Character’s Perceptions,” which advocates not discussing rules elements during play — I generally find that approach to be a bit of a waste of time), but there’s plenty of excellent advice here.

• Tips for GMs, From a Player’s Perspective: Johnn Four, the editor of RPTips, also linked to The Arcadian Guild, a “basement gaming organization” that produces a print magazine called The Arcadian Guild Quarterly — and specifically to an article by Guild member Paul Robertson, which presents ten more tips for GMs. They’re written from a decidedly old-school perspective, but it’s hard to argue with pointers on taking cues from your players or offering them incentives to create additional background material. Interesting reading.

• A meta-map: Jeff Rients created this simple map for his Star Wars campaign, and I love the level of abstraction. Instead of trying to map out every square inch of the party’s ship, he just blocked out the major areas — which, in ship-to-ship combat that isn’t being resolved via a full-scale wargame, is probably all he’ll need. Quick, easy and effective.

(I’m out of town on business from Tuesday, August 7th through Friday, August 10th, and I most likely won’t be able to check in while I’m away. There’ll be a new post every day, as always, and I’ll catch up on comments and the forums when I get back. See you in a few days! — Martin)

Set a Time Limit for Prep Tasks

I’m not a big fan of game prep, and one of the reasons why is because I have trouble guessing how long it’s going to take me. My personal Achilles heel is maps: I enjoy making maps, so I tend to get carried away (this is true for tactical maps as well as regional maps).

After two or three hours of work, I find that I’ve created one pretty nifty map for one section of the adventure…and nothing else. The real kick in the teeth, of course, is when I also guess wrong about my players going to the site of that map, and we don’t wind up using my three hours of mapmaking at all.

The best solution I’ve been able to come up with is to set a time limit for map creation. This helps me out for two reasons: it ensures that after the time is up, I move on to something else; and because I don’t want to run out of time without having finished a map, it forces me to create maps differently — sketching everything in first, for instance, so that even if I do run out of time I’ll still have a usable map for the session.

Your prep time sink might not be mapping, of course, but the principle should apply fairly well to other game prep tasks.

(I’m out of town on business from Tuesday, August 7th through Friday, August 10th, and I most likely won’t be able to check in while I’m away. There’ll be a new post every day, as always, and I’ll catch up on comments and the forums when I get back. See you in a few days! — Martin)

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