External Link: GM Tips Video Series With Matt Mercer

If you have not already seen them, I highly recommend these videos filled with advice for game masters from veteran dungeon master Matt Mercer. He has a wealth of experience and helpful techniques to share, and you can see him in action on Critical Role, posted to Geek and Sundry's youtube channel and broadcast live via Twitch stream every Thursday night!

Taking a Break

Every now and then your carefully laid game night plans might fall through due to cancellations or unexpected circumstances. But that's okay! Sometimes it's best to roll with the changes and take some time off from the game table. Just like taking short breaks during a game session, taking breaks from gaming for a while isn't so bad. There are a number of ways that taking such a break can benefit you as a game runner and make your campaigns more enjoyable for yourself and your players.

First, it's a good way to prevent yourself from burning out on game mastering. Running a game is a labor intensive endeavor, and it can easily cause fatigue that will gradually effect the quality of your adventures. Don't be afraid to take a week off to relax and unwind. Put away your notes for a bit and let your mind reset and meditate. Don't stay at home during this whole time either. A change of scenery and some physical activity will do wonders for you creatively as well as holistically.

It's also a good way to suss out some future concepts and ideas for your game without the impending time crunch. Giving yourself an extra few days to prep for a game can make the difference between a rushed, sloppy session and something truly enjoyable.

Finally, it helps you prioritize your activities outside of the hobby, and can lead to opportunities to socialize outside your gaming activities as well. It's best not to be fixated on any single hobby or interest, tabletop gaming included. So don't be afraid of the next delay between game sessions, embrace the opportunity for a hiatus and channel it into something excellent!

Happy ventures!

Faction Generator Table

For today's quick entry, allow me to share this faction generator that I initially created for a Mad Max styled apocalyptic setting. It could really be used for any number of settings to provide quick inspiration for a group or nationality to include in your campaign.

ROLL A D8 TO  DETERMINE FACTION TYPE

1-2 Civilized: A nation, a village, a citizen's group.
3-4 Barbaric: Savages, marauders, vandals. 
5 Religious: A church, cultists, theocracy.
6 Cultural: Based around a cultural tradition like a sport, an occupation, or a sacred animal.
7 Militaristic: Army, militia, peace corps.
8 Criminal: Pirates, gangsters, thieves guild.

ROLL A D6 TO DETERMINE FACTION'S DEGREE OF SETTLEMENT

1 Settled: Fixed to a specific point of origin, like a city or headquarters.
2 Nomadic: Travelling around the world, unbound to a single location.
3 Fringe: On the outskirts of society, or an underground organization. 
4 Unknown: A faction that is secretive and unknown to most of the world. 
5 Extinct: The remnants of a faction that has since fallen to destruction or the ravages of time.
6 Scattered: A group that is found in various areas, dispersed and disconnected.

Happy ventures!

Puzzles: Moral Quandary Test

Today I'd like to share a fun role playing activity that is really fun to work into a campaign after the players have had some time to get to know each others' characters. This is basically a team-building activity that challenges the their observational skills as how well they have established their PC's characterization. It's comprised of a series of ethical dilemmas in which the answers are not always so cut and dry.

I often frame this challenge in conjunction with a magical device or item that is attuned to the morality of the player characters. In a campaign I ran in the Planescape setting, this was used as a means to calibrate a planar transit device, allowing the players to navigate between the various heavens and hells of the netherworld based on their moral understanding of one another.

So here's how it works. Read the question for the group. Have each player record their character's answer to question. This is the important part. They should answer the question as their character would, not like they would answer it themselves.

After going through all the questions and letting the players secretly record their actions, read the first question again. Point out the first player character and ask all the other PCs to guess what their answer to the question was. Then let that player reveal their answer. If more than half of the group guess correctly, then count one success. If not, then it is a failure. Don't let the players feel too bad about a failure, because it just provides an opportunity for dramatic revelations. The party members might not know as much about each other as they thought!

Continue this process for the rest of the questions. Keep in mind that I have included more questions than are necessary for you to do this activity, so you don't have to use them all. It can take a real long time to get through even a couple of questions with a decent sized game group. If the players score more successes than failures overall, they have won the challenge! If they fail, then some interesting and dramatic complication should befall them.

You see a fight between a policeman and a bystander

DO NOTHING

TAKE UP FOR THE BYSTANDER

HELP OUT THE COP

THREATEN BOTH

Each of these people from your community are threatened. You can only save one, the rest will be lost. What do you do?

A GREAT LEADER

YOURSELF

A RANDOM CHILD

YOUR MOTHER

While looking through a scroll in the library, you find a hidden treasure map. What do you do?

TAKE THE TREASURE

TURN IT IN TO THE LIBRARY SO THEY CAN USE THE FUNDS FOR THE COMMUNITY

FIND THE LAST ONE TO READ THE SCROLL AND RETURN THEIR LOST MAP

KILL EVERYONE ELSE WHO COULD HAVE READ THE SCROLL

You are in deep cover and asked to kill a man. What do you do?

REFUSE TO KILL, SACRIFICE YOURSELF TO HELP THE MAN ESCAPE

KILL THE MAN AND CONTINUE THE MISSION

TRY YOUR BEST TO RUN AWAY

The Barony has found some illegal contraband belonging to your son. Your spouse steps forward to take the fall and serve time for it. What do you do?
CLAIM IT IS YOURS

ADMIT IT IS YOUR SON’S

LET `YOUR SPOUSE MAKE THE CHOICE

RUN AWAY FROM THE LAW AND ATTEMPT TO START A NEW LIFE

There is a storm coming. What do you do?

LEAVE WITH YOUR FAMILY

SEND FAMILY AWAY, HELP THE COMMUNITY PREPARE
TRY TO CONVINCE YOUR FAMILY TO STAY AND HELP

You are in a ticking time bomb scenario. The bomber is a fanatic and would only confess if you resort to tortuous methods. What do you do?

DO IT

KEEP GRASPING FOR OTHER OPTIONS
KILL THEM IF THE BOMB GOES OFF

Campaign Lethality

When it comes to determining how to handle player character deaths in your campaign, there are a few factors to consider. First and foremost you will want to implement a level of lethality that your players can all agree that they are comfortable with. Some groups may like a very challenging game in which they are often at risk of losing a character. Others would prefer alternatives to permanent loss of their in-game avatar.

But another consideration to make is based on the genre and setting of your campaign. What kind of tone and atmosphere is it, and would it lend itself to that kind of high risk gameplay or not? This is also an important factor to consider when choosing an RPG game system and implementing your own custom rules. For instance, when I run the Song of Ice and Fire RPG for my game group, I tend to add minor house rules to make it slightly easier for player characters to fall in battle. My reason for this is that those familiar with the books and the Game of Thrones television series that the game is based on will also be familiar with their infamously fatalistic "anyone can die" mentality. In order to make the experience authentic, I allow for a greater likelihood of PC mortality than I would for other games that I run.

Conversely, I find player death to be seriously out of place in a classic superhero campaign. Comic book supers are notorious for never staying gone for long, and even getting to the point of death is extremely rare. So I would run these games in systems that allow for many other alternative results of the players' defeat.

When you sort these games by theme and genre, it becomes easier to see when you should imperil the lives of the player characters. Horror games are an example of a genre that is typically very lethal, whereas comedy games rarely have such stakes. Narrative-heavy games often place the choice in the hands of the player, allowing them to choose when their character dramatically falls or survives to face some other consequence. Killing or sparing a player character in the wrong circumstances can really undermine the tone of your campaign, so be very sure you know what your players are expecting from the game, and that you have already decided how perilous things will get.

Happy ventures!

Opening and Closing Themes

I've talked before about the kind of music I collect for my game sessions, from action themes to somber dirges. But a couple kinds of music that I haven't discussed as much are the songs I use to open and close sessions. These are songs that I choose more carefully to fit the themes of the campaign and put people in the proper mood for the game. So what better time to explore these tunes than the present?

The Opening Theme

The opening theme song is the one I usually like to keep the same. If it is iconic and recognizable, it is ideal for returning players to the world of the ongoing campaign merely by the association of its melody. I will carefully pick out a theme song that fits the tone I am hoping to create in the game world, and start it up before or during the recap of the previous session. It's like the opening crawl of Star Wars, or the opening theme song of a TV show. It gets the group's attention and hypes the impending adventure.

Sometimes I might change things up and start with a different opening theme. This is a good way to really grab the players' attention and indicate a change in direction for your campaign.

The Closing Theme 

The closing theme could also be the same every time, but I prefer to choose a different song each time to wrap up the session. I think of the ending song like the song that plays during the credits of movie, something that lets the players reflect on the events that just transpired. To this end, I keep a playlist of various lyrical songs to choose from that might make good closing tunes. A good song can have a strong effect on the group as they wind down from an adventure, so I always like to end with a very striking melody.

I strongly encourage you to think about what kind of music would best fit with your own tabletop endeavors. Strike up the proper tune and it will bring your players deeper into the worlds you create in your pen and paper exploits.

Happy ventures!

Now Playing: Mythic GM Emulator

For those game sessions where you don't have anything prepared, or don't have any volunteers for running the game, you might find need of something like the Mythic GM Emulator.

I've tried it out a couple of times, and it is included in my binder full of random tables for improvisational game mastery. At its core, Mythic is a decision-making system that takes over the job of adjudicating your tabletop game. Think of it like a more advanced version of the old magic eight ball toy, answering any yes or no question you might pose. It also provides ways to generate keywords that can inspire an infinite number of random encounters. 

Finally, it structures the game in a way that makes the master-less adventure flow smoothly. By breaking your game into a scene to scene structure and assigning each scene a "Chaos Level," the system allows you to play out a series of engagements that tend to escalate in difficulty. Chaos levels increase the likelihood that your questions will be met with answers of 'yes.' Since those are typically questions like "Is there a booby trap in this room?" or "Is the duke angry with us?" you can see how things can get very interesting very quickly.

Overall, it is a fun and unique tool that I would recommend to any game master for their own toolbox. It can be used in conjunction with any system (Though it works best with simple systems that are less combat-oriented), and could also be used as a tool to help aid a game master with decision-making and inspiration in general. Check it out now on DrivethruRPG.

Happy ventures!