First Time Narrating
One of my players and best friends has wanted to run a game of d20 Mafia for sometime. After I picked up a copy of it at PhilCon I provided my friend with access to it, so he could learn the system in preparation. This has inspired me to write an article with some advice for him and other first time Narrators.
Don’t Worry. We know it’s your first time, and we’re going to be patient. More over, we know about the game you’re running, and we’re already interested. You’ve already won us over.
Don’t Skip A Beat. When I studied musical instruments, my instructors always told me to continue playing without pausing, hesitating, or reversing if I made a mistake. It might be glaringly obvious to me, but most likely, no one else. And no matter who noticed it, more people will notice it if anything is done to draw attention to it.
Ask For Help. There’s a good likelihood that your players have learned the rules to at least some degree, either from playing previously or simply studying them prior to the game. This is an excellent resource for you to take advantage of: Not only can you use them as a direct resource, but you can use their knowledge of the reference materials to find information quickly.
Don’t Over Reach. It’s your first game, and it’s the first time anyone else is playing your game. Keep it simple - your main goal should be to introduce yourself to the game and to running it, and your players into playing your game.
Take Feedback. At the end of the session, or even during, ask for some feedback. If you ask for some during the game, try to keep it quick so as not to disrupt the flow too much, unless a break is already being taken.
Accept the Feedback. There can be a tendency to second guess the feedback of players, and think that they may be praising the game simply so you won’t feel bad. While certainly people will be more patient with you the first time, they know it is in their interest to be honest. Accept the feedback.
Pat Yourself on the Back. Narrating for the first time is not only difficult, it’s scary. Regardless of any other level of success, simply getting through it is an accomplishment.
Any advice you’d like to share with anyone who’s running a game for the first time?
Thursday Links
The link division on the sidebar has been altered and split into two categories, Gaming Blogs and Gaming Communities. In addition, here are some sites you might appreciate:
Roleplay Gateway provides a community forum environment for people to discuss and play RPGs. If Play-By-Post is your thing, make sure you check them out.
Robin D. Laws has been posting an interesting series of articles exploring the implications of wireless e-book readers. The series begins with this article, followed by a second and a third. All of these are very good and well written.
Yax has been discussing the Top Ten Reasons why 4e will be the Best and the Worst RPG Ever.
A Different Kind of Artifact
In traditional Dungeons and Dragons-esque games, Artifacts are items of immense magical power, usually with a terrible price attached to their use, such as a curse, or something else. In fact, the rules are written to encourage this type of item.
For some artifacts this proves a good model, especially if the item is already in the control of an enemy. But so artifacts to spawn creativity and story ideas, and to be able to be a continuing source of them, I think a different set of creation criteria is needed.
The best artifact I can remember encountering came from the third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie in the form of the scepter which allowed the turtles to travel through time. What are the elements that made this item so perfect?
Re-usability. The scepter has no reason to be destroyed, which means that it can easily be re-used at any point, whether because of a return to the past, or someone else stealing the item. There are many different stories to be told with this one item.
No Strings Attached. The scepter never forced anyone into a story line or line of action, in fact all it does is create opportunities for new and different things to happen.
Plot Driver. The scepter drives the plot in new directions naturally, just by having players explore the consequences of the items abilities.
Zero Repulsion. There are many artifacts which players and characters alike will do their best to distance themselves from. This item not being one of them means that it encourages players to embrace the story, instead of making the story about escaping the story itself.
Infinite Possibilities. Perhaps the best part of the scepter is that it can allow time travel between any points where the scepter exists, so long as equal mass is displaced. This means that in addition to returning to ancient Japan, travel is possible to other points in the past as well as the future.
How do you like to design artifacts in your game? What kind of artifacts would you like to see more of?
Flashbacks
One of the more difficult things to pull off when running a game is the flashback scene, especially if that scene proves vital to the story.
Why introduce a flashback into your game? They provide a great way to give players information when it is relevant - especially useful when establishing world and character backgrounds. More importantly, they allow players to get this information through self-discovery, making them more likely to be able to remember the vital details later.
Flash backs also allow for a consistent non-linear story-telling mode whereby you’re able to temporarily by-pass scenes which are boring and irrelevant initially, but might become very important hours or even sessions later. Applied in the short-term, this method can be used as a framework within sessions to preserve pacing, mood, and progress for the night.
A key thing to avoid in flashbacks is unnecessary tension. Building tension in a flashback scene is almost entirely impossible - the players most likely know what is going to happen ahead of time, who will be alive, and who won’t. Resolving tensions, or using pre-existing ones can work, so long as the tensions are not the primary focus. Tensions self-contained entirely within a flashback almost always fail.
The second key thing to avoid in flashbacks are burdens, things which are relegated to flashbacks and must be resolved, explained, and meet up with a pre-determined point in continuity. While some burdens are almost always required in flashbacks, it is important too many can stop the flashback from flowing properly.
Bad Example: A show once had an episode which was comprised primarily of flashbacks, going nearly a year back in the story. Two characters spent five minutes arguing over which one would die in a suicide mission; while normally this might be entertaining, the audience already knew for a certainty who lived and who died, by virtue of who was alive in later episodes. This is an example of failed tension in flashbacks.
Good Example: The Highlander TV series featured at least one new flashback in almost every episode, and they did a very good job of it. Each of these flashbacks added to the overall character development, provided background on new characters being introduced, and did not intrude on the story or feel burdened.
Honorable Mention: Arrested Development had an interesting and relatively unique method of handling flashbacks and similar events. The show’s narration makes this compatible with a visually oriented Narrator.
How do you handle flashbacks in your game?
I Think, Therefore I Game
Thanuir recently started a blog called Cogito, ergo ludo. While the blog is currently a little less than a week old, I’m familiar with some of Thanuir’s thoughts and respect them, and expect to see a lot of good content coming out of that blog.
Plot Opportunities
Last night, I had the opportunity to watch the movie Battlestar Galactica: Razor*. As a fan of both the re-imagining and the original series, I went in with high expectations that were fueled by the slew of previews shown during Flash Gordon. And indeed, the movie did have an excellent concept and over-all plot, but it ran into serious problems due to some tricky aspects of story-telling.
*Note: This is not a review. This does not contain spoilers. You may read-on without without fear of either, and need no familiarity with the show.
The way I look at plot development, there are two ways to lay it out: Plot Devices, and Plot Opportunity.
Plot devices are characters, objects, or events which are introduced into a story to send the plot in a particular direction. Most often, plot devices are encountered at the beginning a story in order to “get the ball rolling.”
Plot opportunities are characters, objects, or events which are introduced into a story to provide potential directions for the story to expand in.
I universally prefer plot opportunities to plot devices, which are overly linear and I am convinced must run on railroad tracks. The worst example of a plot device is a MacGuffin, a plot device which is completely irrelevant to the story - these feel particularly linear and contrived.
How do you create plot opportunities? By placing the characters near a lot of action, however that is defined in the story. By placing them close enough to the action to interact with it, there is a great deal of potential for the characters to explore, and like ripples in a bond, whatever direction the characters proceed in, they will encounter more action.
Placing plot opportunities in a story is a good way to let it grow organically, by creating potential and letting it develop in a process that is more natural and less contrived than one directed and processed by plot devices.
Alive and Eating
Last week after returning from PhilCon, I stopped posting for a few days, except to say that I had not eaten in several days and my headache medication had stopped working.
First off, I’d like to thank everyone who sent me kind thoughts, either through comments or e-mail. They were very much appreciated.
Second, I have a condition known as Ulcerative Pancolitis. In layman’s terms, it means that the length of my colon is covered in a series of ulcers. When I have flair-ups, eating anything becomes absolutely impossible, which often causes my stomach to shut down entirely and stop processing anything, liquid, food, or medicine. This is what happened to me last week, and I hope you can understand why it prevented me from posting.
Though I am still weak, and find my appetite severely limited due to my stomach shrinking after nearly six days of not eating, I am recovering and feel well enough to resume. So now I’m back to work, with 150+ RSS entries to catch up on in Google Reader, pages to update on the site, and entries to write up for everyone here on gaming goodness.
Posting Interruption
You may have noticed that yesterday, though I had returned from PhilCon, I had not posted.
In the last four days, I have managed to eat one meal, and my status migraine/tension headache medicine has at least temporarily stopped working. To say the least, while this is the case, getting anything done is impossible.
I have high hopes that I will either have new medications by the weeks end, or whatever bug I picked up at the convention will have taken its course in the next day or two, and my posting should resume its normal schedule shortly.
Thank you for your patience.
Friday Links
As I’m about to head off to PhilCon, I wanted to leave you with a few links for the weekend.
TheRPGSite is a great news site with forums and a good collection of user blogs, are focusing around gaming. I highly recommend this site, and encourage everyone to head over there and start posting on the forums.
The RPG Consortium is a great role-playing community, with a large number of great articles and active forums that are worth checking out.
Socratic Design is a design blog for RPGs. While unfortunately it appears to be discontinued, or at least on extended haitus, the archives are certainly worth taking a peek at.
Splitting Up The Party
Eventually, it happens in almost every game: the party is forced to split up for one reason or another. Here are some tips to keep in mind when splitting up the party:
Keep the scenes short. When the party is split up, it’s ideal to keep the scenes as short as possible, and switch back and forth between the sub-groups as often as possible. The longer people are waiting the play, the more bored they will become, and the more likely fatigue is to set in. As a rule, I try not to keep anyone waiting more than fifteen or twenty minutes to play again.
Next Session Finish. If the group is being split into two, and the session is either nearing its close or the party will be split up for some time, it may be a good idea to send half the group home for the night, and intend to do their scenes at the start of the next session, perhaps before the others arrive.
Party Division Means Talent Division. When splitting up the party, keep in mind that you are also splitting up the party’s talents and abilities - meaning that they should be able to accomplish their respective goals even without the other party members.
Fill Out The Groups With NPCs. This can be especially useful is the party splitting up was not by choice, i.e. if several PCs were captured and must now be rescued. By adding in NPCs, you provide players with the talents that they might be missing due to the party being split up, and you also create an opportunity for the players of the missing PCs to still participate in the game by temporarily assuming control of the NPCs.
Beware Telepathy and Teleports. If the party split up voluntarily, there is a high likelihood that they will be able to communicate, especially if they have access to magic, psionics, or advanced technology. It is also quite possible that they will have access to instant, near-instant, or extremely fast transportation, which can allow the party to reunite quickly. If you have proceeded further with one sub-group than another, it is possible that one will call in the other for reinforcements - this can negate actions which the group has previously role-played out and completed.
Division of Rewards. Be sure that the rewards are divided evenly among the group, if one set gains a lot more experience than the other, this can create an unbalance in the party. Additionally, there can be problems if equipment is not divided evenly or fairly among the group.
Make Sure It Fits. Splitting up the party should ideally be somewhat rare, and something that only happens when it fits the story, simply because it can cause a large number of potential problems which likely would never come up if the party did not split up.
How do you handle splitting up the party?
