TT Goes Into Rerun Mode Tomorrow

From November 1st through December 9th, Treasure Tables will be in reruns. I’ve queued up 39 posts from the archives (some obvious choices, some less obvious ones), and they’ll be popping up one-a-day until early December.

Rerun mode also means:

• Comments are off, except on two posts: Taking November Off from Writing TT, and the one you’re reading right now (for feedback and ideas about sustaining TT). I wish I could leave comments open like normal — your comments are a huge part of what TT is all about — but I just won’t have time to read them, clear the mod queue, police spam and so forth. Every rerun post will have a link to the original’s comments section, so that you can follow those discussions if you’re interested.

• The Treasure Tables forums will remain open, thanks to our most excellent moderators. If you need a GMing discussion fix, I encourage you to sign up (it’s free!) and dive on in.

• I’ll probably be much slower than normal on answering email, and you won’t see much of me on the site. Hell, I don’t think my wife will see much of me around the house — this NaNo thing is going to be nuts (in a good way).

I’m doing this because I’m taking part in National Novel Writing Month, and because I need a break from running this site. There’s a chance that after such a long break, I won’t return to writing TT (or at least, not in quite the same form). That’s the short version; the long version is in Taking November Off from Writing TT.

That’s enough out of me, though — for the next 39 days, enjoy some blasts from the recent and not-so-recent past as we take a spin through the archives. See you in December!

Adventure Plots: Simplest Formula Ever

If you have 60 seconds, you can come up with the plot for your next adventure.

First, let’s define three terms:

• A is the party — your group’s PCs.

• Z is one of the party’s adversaries (new or old, it doesn’t matter).

• W is something either A or Z wants, and that is bad for the other group.

Here’s the formula — there are two ways you can express it:

(A + W) + Z = Plot

or…

(Z + W) + A = Plot

In other words, the party (A) wants something (W) that, if they were to get it (if it’s an object) or achieve it (if it’s a goal), would harm one of their enemies (Z). The steps they undertake to get what they want — which are opposed by the bad guys, creating conflict — become the plot for your adventure.

You can also start from the other end: One of the party’s foes wants something that would be detrimental to the PCs, and the party’s efforts to stop them become the plot of the adventure.

If you know the PCs desperately want something, use the first version. If you’re not sure what the PCs want at the moment (you just began a new campaign, you run a reactive game, etc.), use the second version; you’ll always be able to find something the bad guys want.

When it comes to driving action, want is one of the most powerful and dynamic engines out there. By the time your adventure is written up, you might not be able to tell that this formula was its starting point — but it’s in there somewhere. In fact, if you look closely enough, it’s everywhere. Like dust mites. (Okay, bad example…)

Three-Part Series on Writing RPG Session Notes

Over on Encoded Designs, Phil Vecchione (longtime GM and TT reader (DNAphil), GM-Fu panelist and author of the kickass guest post Great Campaigns: One Out of Three Ain’t Bad) recently wrapped up an epic three-part series detailing his method for writing session notes.

This is one of those areas where you can never hear too many different ideas and approaches. Even if you’re completely comfortable with your own method, there’s always more to learn — and if you don’t have a standard approach of your own, reading a veteran GM’s outline can be invaluable.

Phil dissected his session-writing needs and constraints as a GM, and built his system around these three principles:

• The system needs to as simple as possible.
• It needs to be flexible. (I need to be able to speed it up or slow it down, depending on what is going on in my life at the time.)
• It needs to have some slack. (That is, it needs to be able to be delayed and postponed for a day or two in the cycle without things falling apart.)

In Taking It One Step At A Time, Phil outlines what he does each week, covering the whole prep cycle from start to finish. Part two, Tools of the Trade, discusses Phil’s favorite tools, including Moleskine notebooks and TiddlyWiki.

With It’s All In The Notes, Phil brings the series home with a detailed breakdown of each element that he includes in his session notes, from giving each scene a short, explicit purpose to jotting down key dialogue and deciding which skill checks are important enough to merit rolls.

The bit about statements of purpose is a great illustration of what makes Phil’s approach accessible, adaptable and versatile:

When I looked over my old session notes, I noticed that there were scenes I had written that did not really seem like they needed to be part of the session, or worse, after reading the notes, I could not figure out why I ran that scene during the session. So now the first line I put on the top of a scene, is the purpose. It is only one sentence long. If I can’t explain why I am going to run this scene in one sentence, then either the scene is not appropriate, or it’s too sweeping and would be best broken in to parts.

Phil’s series is a must-read, and I encourage you to check it out (and let him know what you think about his approach in the comments over on Encoded Designs). Thanks for sharing these, Phil!

Hellsquid

Like horror? Try this little guy on for size:

It’s a real creature, the 25mm promachoteuthis sulcus, a squid found a mile below the surface of the Atlantic. (Here’s its Tree of Life entry.)

But in a different size, or sticking out of someone’s stomach, or in place of an otherwise normal human’s head, this thing would be great for a horror game.

It’s those damned teeth — they’re so human-like, and that kind of incongruous juxtaposition can be very creepy. (Via Boing Boing.)

Describing a PC’s Death?

Except under unusual circumstances, you won’t get time to prepare for character deaths — crappy rolls, bad luck and other spur-of-the-moment factors will make sure of that.

Personally, I haven’t had many PC deaths on my watch, but thinking back I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to handle each of them with a complete lack of skill and without any sense of drama — in other words, as gracelessly as possible. It’s not that I try to be a dick about it, it’s just that PC deaths tend to take me by surprise, and all of my GMing skills go out the window.

Assuming you’re running a serious campaign (not Paranoia, for example), and that PC death has meaningful consequences in your game (not just poof, you’re back), how do you go about describing a PC’s death to your group?

Do you focus on the PC’s player? Do you let that player describe her character’s demise? Do you try to move on as quickly as possible?

This will likely be the last question post before TT goes into reruns, and I’ll be shutting off the comments before November 1st. If you want to weigh in, don’t wait too long!

Snap Decisions and Retconning

As a GM, you’ll often be forced to make snap decisions about an element of the game that might turn out to have lasting consequences — and it’s inevitable that some of those calls will be inconvenient or just plain wrong.

Sometimes you make these decisions because your players surprise you, which is just the nature of the beast (and one of the best things about being a GM). Other times you’ll make a mistake that seems minor at the time, and not discover it until later on.

Depending on your temperament and how important the seemingly-unimportant decision (or mistake) turns out to be, it can be tempting to say “Shit. Now I’m stuck with that” or “Ehhh, I’ll just change it.” When it comes to retconning, though, it’s the specifics of the situation that matter.

For example:

In the first case, you can always retcon that decision after the fact. If you start prepping for an adventure involving that building and realize it needs to be much larger or smaller than you said it was originally, just change it — and explain the change to your players at the start of the adventure. No big deal.

In the second case, you’re better off working with the secret that you picked on the spot. There’s probably a way to change something about the NPC or about the story arc you had in mind to incorporate the new twist. I wouldn’t recommend retconning in this situation — chances are good that it will bug at least one of your players. If you absolutely can’t work with what you came up with, retcon it and apologize to your players.

In the third case, your snap decision has changed the course of the game substantially, and the scene itself was probably very satisfying for your players (who came up with a clever idea, executed it and got results). Retconning this one is a terrible idea, and should be avoided at all costs. Just make it work — you might be pleasantly surprised by what emerges from this curveball.

How do you handle situations like this?

Ultimate Spiral Notebook

I’ve always been a fan of spiral notebooks for GMing notes, particularly spiral notebooks with perforated pages and durable covers. But there’s always one problem with them: When you stick them in a bag of gaming books, the spines have a tendency to get smooshed.

Enter the Five Star Advanced spiral notebook. Not only does it have a pen loop (something every notebook should come with), it has a nylon sleeve sewn into its cover that protects the coil from getting crushed.

I bought one of the smaller ones (the 6″ x 9 1/2″ version) for work, and it travels like a champ. I couldn’t find one of the larger ones (linked above) when I needed a notebook for my current campaign, and I’m regretting that already.

Simply put, this is the best spiral notebook I’ve ever seen. If you like using notebooks for your old-school GMing note-taking needs, I highly recommend them.

Taking November Off from Writing TT

After careful consideration and several changes of heart, I’ve decided to take the entire month of November 2007 off from Treasure Tables, for two reasons.

The first is that I’m going to be participating in National Novel Writing Month. I’ve always wanted to write a novel, and I need a kick in the ass to get one written. NaNo is that kick. I’ll be writing 50,000 words in November, and there’s no way I can also write TT posts at the same time and retain my sanity.

The second is that I just plain need a break. I’ve been writing for TT daily since November 2005, and I’ve never missed a day. That’s a good thing, but it’s also burned me out a bit. Lately, running TT has been more work and less fun, which I’ve always found to be a pretty good signal that it’s time to take a break from a hobby.

Thanks to our forum moderators, Scott M, Rick_TWA and VV_GM, the TT forums will be staying open. Guys, you’re awesome — thank you! If you find yourself itching for GMing discussion in November, I hope you’ll consider taking advantage of our forums.

And thanks to an excellent idea of Rick’s, TT won’t be “going dark” during November — instead, it’ll be going into reruns. There are over 800 posts in the archives, and I’d wager that not too many TT readers have read all of them. I’m going to be choosing 30 39 posts — some well-known, some more obscure — and running a post a day for the whole month from November 1 through December 9 (the extra week is to recover from NaNo!).

I hope this crazy, novel-filled break cures my TT-writing burnout, but I’m enough of a realist to know that with any break this long, there’s a chance it’ll become permanent. I’ll make that decision by early December, and either way I won’t just fade out: if I’m going to stop, I’ll announce it here; if I get back in the saddle, I won’t be shy about it.

Whatever happens, I’ve had a blast running Treasure Tables — and that’s due in large part to you, the TT community. It sounds cheesy, and I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: You rock. This wouldn’t be TT without you, and thank you.

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