Posts Tagged by prep work
| March 19, 2013 | Posted by John Arcadian |
My room-mate and I often take a night or two a week to watch through episodes of some series together. This is the closest either of us get to watching “TV” in the traditional sense. Our latest effort, House Of Cards, is a series on Netflix that deals with Francis Underwood, the current Majority Whip getting passed up for Secretary of State and using his influence and power to destroy his Washington enemies with politics and backstabbing. It’s a great series and got us talking about how…
| March 14, 2013 | Posted by Don Mappin |
There will come a time, through no fault of your own, when you will be expected to run a game or exercise your GMing prowess and you will feel…lacking. We speak often of player and NPC motivation within the context of constructing a game or campaign, but very little about what keeps a GM motivated and returning to the table, week after week (hopefully). Some ideas to get through that darkness and into the light…. Fake It Until You Make It You’ve probably heard this…
| June 10, 2012 | Posted by Patrick Benson |
Details. I have such a love/hate relationship with details as a GM. Adding details to your game is like cooking with a powerful spice. If you add too little it is a waste, and if you add too much it overpowers the dish. You need to get the amount of the spice right for not just the dish as a whole, but for every single bite. It gets even worse though, because you have to get the amount of spice right for every single bite…
| January 31, 2012 | Posted by Don Mappin |
Having no intention of running a game in 2012, I did not craft an entry for our New Year, New Game event — hopefully you did! — so imagine my surprise walking out of last week’s game discussion with a new campaign to plan. Did I mention it’s based on a licensed property that I’m only passingly familiar with and two players who dwarf my knowledge? Oh, and we’re starting chargen this weekend. Just another day in the GM’s chair? Prep For Success Whether you’ve…
| January 16, 2012 | Posted by John Arcadian |
A while back I dropped an article talking about a prep method I used, called 3-3-3 Quick Prep. It’s a method composed mostly of bullet points to give some minimal structure to a game but allow for improvisation at the table. There were some requests in the comments to show some examples of it in play. Well, I am more than happy to oblige and dug up some old quick prep examples as well as making sure to detail some for the game I’m currently…
| December 13, 2011 | Posted by John Arcadian |
I was just reminded of an interesting concept the other day. My room-mate and I were hanging out in our shared office and talking about the game I am going to be starting up soon. He mentioned, offhandedly, that I’ve been doing a lot of prep for a game that hasn’t started yet. And then he said these bell-ringing words “Oh well, strike while the iron is hot, I guess.” Something made me grab that phrase and cogitate it around in my gnomish melon a…
| November 2, 2011 | Posted by John Arcadian |
Anymore, I’m pretty much an improv only Game Master. I like getting down and making an awesome, intricate, and detailed game, but so often those types of games just blow up when the players get into them. You either have to reign players in to preserve the spiderweb of the plot, or you have to help set it on fire and fiddle away. So I’ve taken to improvising as much as I can for most any game I run. It just works better and tends…
