Haven and Hearth

Haven and Hearth is an multiplayer survival game with some basis in Slavic and Germanic folklore. The basic idea is that you start in the wilderness with a fire and some basic survival skills and as you gathering things and learn about the environment, you gain points which are used to increase your skills and learn new ones. There are a lot of skills and its takes a lot of effort to get all of them.

Along with learning new skills, there are some skills which can be improved by spending learning points. There are also base attributes which affect how the use of your various skills works. The world is huge, though sparsely populated. I live in a small hearthland with 4 other players, sharing the work of getting to the more advanced technology and skills. As you can probably guess from my character sheet and land, I’m the farmer. I also take care of some of the livestock.

There are some inherent problems with Haven & Hearth. Since every item is a node with a limited amount of an item, you might come across a really large mud flat with no clay or a tree with no branches. There is also a really serious lag problem stemming from their network setup.

Haven & Hearth has a lot going for it, with a wide variety of skills and ways to play the game. You can be a nomad, a thief, a farmer, a merchant, a village leader, pretty much anything you can imagine. There’s a lot to explore too. One of my favorite features is the Hearth Secret which allows people to come into the world in the same area as their friends instead of a random place in the world. Overall, it has a lot of potential and I can’t wait to see what it will be like when it finally come out of alpha. I award Haven & Hearth 4 out of 5 hearts. Handle that lag problem and you’ve got something awesome here.

 

If you’re interested in playing Haven & Hearth, you can find it here and its completely free.

 

 

How to Make a Character (that other people will want to quest with and you’ll have fun playing too)

Whether its your first roleplaying game or your millionth, you’re still going to need to come up with a character concept and sometimes that can be hard. Creating believable, interesting characters who can play nicely with the other party members is a challenge, but one that can be very rewarding if tackled. That’s where I come in, I’m going to break everything down into a nice, simple step by step process to creating your character. To demonstrate I’m going to follow along, making a new character.

1. Alignment

Alignment isn’t normally the first thing people think about when making a character, but in a lot of cases it should be. Alignment is basically the believe system of the character boiled down into a few words. Generally speaking, roleplaying games use the old 3×3 alignment grid from Dungeons and Dragons, sort of like pictured above. The reason that people should think about alignment earlier in the character creation process than they tend to is because it effects party dynamic. It also can matter if the GM has disallowed certain alignments. If you decide you’re going to create a chaotic evil character in the same party as a lawful good character, it may not end well. I’m not saying that all the characters should be the same exact alignment, but try to be nearby or at least capable of getting along. In a lot of systems, a lawful good character such as a paladin can’t knowingly be in the same party as an evil aligned character.

DEMO: Well, lets say that my hypothetical GM isn’t disallowing any alignments, but told me that one of the other players usually players paladins. I tend to like a bit of chaos in my actions so I’ll go with chaotic good.

2. Concept

Concept is basically what you want your character to be. This can include race and class, or could just be an archetypal idea. Archetypes are things like undead destroying paladin or snooty elven noble, or things like thief who grew up on the streets and just suddenly developed magic. Despite the fact that this is more or less a one-line description, this is the step you should spend the most time on. In most cases, the concept is the character and if it isn’t something you’ll enjoy then you should just keep trying this step until you make something you do like.

Now, look at your concept. Does it work well with a team? If it can be described like the picture below, the answer is probably no. Your character should be good at some things, bad at others and have character flaws. And most importantly, take a good long look at your character concept and make sure you actually want to play this. There are some character concepts that sound really great on paper but turn out to not be so awesome after all. As tempting as it can be, I highly suggest having freewill and all of your limbs.

DEMO: So, I’m chaotic good. I think a good concept would be a wood elf who has never met anyone but other wood elves before coming to this city where they meet the party. This leads for great roleplaying potential, and it also means that I can play them as curious and somewhat naive.

3. Motivation

Motivation is just as important as concept, but in a different way. Motivation is what your character does what they do. And here comes the thing I have watched singlehandedly destroy roleplaying games. Why does your character adventure? A lot of people don’t think about this little detail and it results in characters who seem to be dragged through adventures, really making no progress. If a character has no reason to be adventuring, or maybe wants to get home, when they get a chance to return to their normal life, it makes no sense not to take it. So make sure your character wants to be exploring the world or has some other goal that can’t be reached by sitting at home.

DEMO: A chaotic good wood elf who has never left the forest is what I’ve built so far. Lets add in some motivation. First I need to decide why they left the forest. The easiest motivation to go with is that the little elf was bored and curious and wants to see new things. To add to it, elves are a long lived race with very little adventure, so maybe this elf heard stories about human adventures and wanted to go have some of their own.

4. Flesh Out the Details

So now you have your base concept. the next step is to fill in anything you missed. Remember, this isn’t about creating a character sheet, that comes later and might involve numbers. This is just the matter of creating a character. Where were they born? Are they from this world? Who are their parents? Do they know their parents? Are you already friends with people in the party? This is also the part where you come up with their name, and maybe appearance if you want. This is the where all the fun fiddly bits come in where you really get to decide that maybe your character really likes cheese or doesn’t like spiders come in.

I hope this helped you in your efforts to create fun and interesting characters that your party (and you) will enjoy. Have any advice you’d like to share or stories you’d like to tell? Feel free to leave a comment!

Help! My Players Know the System Better than Me!

Table top roleplaying as we know it has existed since the early 70s. Naturally, this means that some people picked it up before others did (or before others were born). And while there have been a lot of changes over the years, this still means that there will come a time when, as a GM, you may encounter players who are more familiar with the system than you are. If you’ve already been in this situation, as I have, you know it can be hard. There are different ways that kind of game can go, and I will cover them to the best of my knowledge.

Players As Rules Helpers

The optimal case for you as a young GM is that your experienced players will support you and help out. If the players know the rules well and can tell you the rules that apply in a given situation, they can really streamline the time the game takes. After all, how many people know off the top of their head how to handle a player vaulting across a pool of lava, hitting a wall and falling 20 feet down into a pool of lava by the rules in 3.5 D&D? And how long would it take to look up all the pertinent rules to figure out how much damage the player should take, by the rules. The best rules helpers, however, will offer the knowledge of the rules and then roll with it if the GM decides that no, you fell in the lava, you’re just dead. Rules helpers are also nice for streamlining character creation if you have new players or players playing more complicated characters than usual. My favorite use for the rules helpers is to partner them with a new player to help them through their turns. That really really helps to make it so that the newer player can learn the rules without having to occupy the time and attention of the GM.

Players As Rules Lawyers

Rules lawyers are annoying. There, I said it. Imagine if you will that you’ve written custom rules for a scenario only to discover that there were already rules for that particular situation partway through the session when one of your players informs you about them in full detail. Rules lawyers can be useful if you want to run a game completely by the book, and again for teaching new players, but can be very irritating. If you encounter a rules lawyer, make sure they understand the level of rulesiness your game is going to have and how much lawyeriness you are willing to tolerate. While it isn’t always possible to lay down ground rules for your players in this fashion, it can be useful to at least warn them that you’re going to be running fast and loose with the rules at times. If they can’t deal with your way of handling the game such that the rules make sense for the game rather than the other way around, then you may want to encourage them to find a different GM.

One think that can really help with rules lawyers is that if you know ahead of time that you’re going to be using an alternative or homebrew rules, then tell them what those rules are. In a lot of cases, this will give them the same warm fuzzies of there being logical rules which can be followed that they expect in a tabletop. Just remember that in the end, you need to make sure that what you’re running is what you want to run and not what one or two players are pushing you into running.

Players As Rules Manipulators

Rules manipulators are the worst kind of more experienced player you could have. Everything they do will either be entirely within the rules, or appear to be so, but is something that a more experienced GM would recognize and disallow. For example, an undead with a ring that turns all damage he takes to bashing damage…which undead are immune to. If you suspect that something your player is doing is fishy, ask to see the books they’re getting it from. Do some research on your own, ask other people about it. They may have misinterpreted things or they may be purposefully taking advantage of your lack of experience and knowledge. If you think one of your players is purposefully doing things that are against the rules or going against the spirit of the rules, they are cheating and you should deal with them appropriately. I suggest talking to them one-on-one without any other players there and requesting that they change their behavior. If they are good, give them some kind of reward to let them use their powers legitimately awesomely.

 

Hopefully this will help you with your endeavors in the future. Remember that you are the narrator of their story and that ultimately the rules are what you make of them.

Custom Fudge dice!

Hey guys! So I found this Kickstarter project when I was looking around to see what kinds of neat things were available. I think you should all check it out.

Pulse Dice

Encounters that Have to Happen

There comes a time in every tabletop rpg where an encounter is at least partially scripted. It might be your opening quest hook, it might be a later encounter, or in the case of introducing a new player or a player’s new character, getting the party to play nicely with someone new. Depending on your game, this can be a challenge.

I’m going to have to lay out a bit of background to start with. I tend to think of people playing roleplaying games in two categories: Games and Roleplayers. Gamers think about stats, work on the META (out of game) level and expect story cliches to happen. Roleplayers think about character, ignore the META level and act in the moment, thinking about consequences only on the in-game level. They’re actually pretty familiar to the Stick Jock and Paste Eater of Live Action Roleplaying. I much prefer to run games for Roleplayers, particularly since my preferred system is diceless, but also because I am one myself. However, Roleplayers are problematic. For a Roleplayer, actions need to be justified with character.

So you’re probably wondering how this all connects. Think about it this way. You’re going along on a quest to stop an evil lich from taking over the kingdom and one of your friends gets killed. This new guy shows up the next time you go into town, or out there near the lich’s stronghold. Are you going to trust him and have him join your party? If you’re a Gamer, you know its your buddy at the table and welcome him in. If you’re a Roleplayer, you’re probably going to grill him about who he is before letting him join at best. We actually encountered this problem in my game just last night. The new character in the game is a shapechanger who was captured by a non-magical noble and was being kept in a cage in the form of a raccoon. In order for her to join the game, the other PCs had to go rescue her. The information I gave them involved a mysterious creature never before seen and the strong belief of the nobleman that it was a Faerie creature. The characters were like its an animal, why should we care? And I ended up having to flat out tell the players that they needed to care so I could get a new character in.

So here comes the real question: How do I solve this problem? The first step is to identify the problem. Its a matter of motivating your players properly. If your players are Gamers, they should be pretty easy to motivate. Generally speaking, get a little input about what kinds of powers they want to have and you should be able to provide either in-game monetary rewards or items as an inducement to go play your adventure. If your players are Roleplayers, it may take more effort. Figure out what kinds of characters they are playing. If you have a group of good characters pitting them against evil is generally speaking a good bet. Things tend to get more complicated. Figure out their personal motivations and you have the proverbial carrot to dangle to get their attention.

And all of this comes back to encounters you have to run. If you have to get the players somewhere for the next aspect of the plot, or to bring someone new into the game, you can figure out the proper inducements for your players to lure them there. Think about ways to run your encounter where the players already are or how to include hooks to new content in ways that will interest your players. And remember that sometimes, you have to pull back the curtain and tell your players to suck it up and do what you need them to.

Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom

I have just returned to my domain from the far off land of Florida and I come bearing new games. Today is devoted to an interesting new game experience available only in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom called Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom. In this game, you play the role of an apprentice sorcerer and defend the Magic Kingdom from Hades, Ursula, Governor Ratcliff, Maleficent and everyone else. To do this, you team up with the various good guys of Disney film history and use your spells to do battle.

Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom is a trading card based roleplaying game that is free to play for any guests in the Magic Kingdom. To join, you can go to one of two stations and present your ticket. The stations are in Mainstreet USA and Liberty Square. When you join, you get two things, a sorcerer’s key which allows you to activate the portals around the kingdom and a pack of 5 cards. The cards are your spells and on the back of each card is the sorcerer’s crest which allows you to channel power directly. Periodically a mission will require you to do this. Speaking of missions, the basic idea is that Merlin has a powerful crystal known as the Crystal of the Magic Kingdom and it has been broken. The villains all want it. It is up to the player to protect the crystal. They do this at various portals around the kingdom, which can be found by looking for the sorcerer’s crest symbol on the ground. Nearby those symbols is a lock which can be activated using a sorcerer’s key. The portals are in shop windows, hidden in wanted posters or other kinds of places out of the way where people won’t see them unless they’re activated.

The whole system is quite well done. You get the collectible trading cards, the fun of battling Disney villains and its all wrapped up in a trip to the Magic Kingdom. The best part, in my opinion, was the cards. I loved going around and battling Disney villains, don’t get me wrong. But the cards are absolutely awesome. There are 70 different cards right now and you can get 5 new ones each day you’re in the Magic Kingdom. The packs are randomized and I’m pretty sure the lower number cards are more common because I got a couple of Belle. My one complaint is that the cards have all kinds of information on them that never gets explained to the players. I was told during the tutorial that you could play up to 3 cards at a time, but it wasn’t until another person saw me and my brother playing that we learned that there were special combos of cards that worked better together.

The sorcerer’s key is probably the coolest part of the whole game. I’m not even sure how it works, though I suspect RFID. The sorcerer’s key is set up to a specific person and records who they have faced, how the combat went, where they are in a story line, where they need to go next and all of that. You can take it to any portal and find out where you need to be to continue playing. The key is a card, but it seems to contain all of your information as a player. I saw people who had been playing longer than me who had a sorcerer rank. I suspect that comes after you’ve finished more than 3 or 4 missions.

A Sorcerer’s Key

Overall, I love the game and the cards. I’m a little sad that I have to wait until we can go to Disney again to get more and to play again. But I suppose that’s the point. The great part is that it gets park guests to talk to each other about the game and the experiences they’ve had with it. And what could be better than that? I give Disney’s Sorcerer’s of the Magic Kingdom a 4.5 out of 5 hearts. I loved playing and wish I lived closer to play more.

To PVP or not to PVP, that is the question…

…whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of that obnoxious paladin and the churlish bard or to take arms and beat them soundly about the head with your cudgel and by opposing end them.

There are two major types of games in the world: PVE (player versus environment) and PVP (player versus player). In terms of the table top experience, PVE is the players coming together against the world as created by the GM and PVP is inter-player fighting. In most cases, PVP is the result of having two characters in a party that disagree on matters of alignment, such as a paladin finding out that one of his new companions was a lich. In some cases, however, it is more the situation that the characters just have temperaments that do not mesh well such as a ranger or druid being thrown in with a scientist who destroys nature in the name of his research. In the campaigns I’ve seen or played in, PVP has racked up more character death than PVE ever has. So that begs the question: is PVP worth it? That depends. There are ways to make PVP be disallowed in world instead of just telling the players they can’t. You also might end up with players who want PVP to be an option. You need to come to an accord between the GM and the players. If everyone supports PVP, then go for it. You want to make sure that you don’t alienate anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable with PVP interactions.

So lets say you have decided that PVP is allowed. Lets cover some ground rules. First and foremost is for the players: do not let in-game PVP become out-of-game animosity. If you ever feel like your characters not getting along is proving to be a problem to your friendship, then either one or both of the players in question need to drop from the game or the game needs to end. Remember that you’re playing to have fun. The next thing that everyone should remember is that PVP should not be allowed to get in the way of the story the GM has written for you. If you ever find yourself in a situation where PVP combat or animosity keeps the plot from moving forward or combat lasts for more than a session, then you should stop and seriously reconsider why you are playing.

Now here are some reasons to consider why you might want to engage in PVP combat or allow it in your world. For one thing, I’ve seen some really interesting games that were based entirely around the concept that the players were gladiators and almost all combat involved some PVP. These can be amazingly fun games and it can be on the whole a great experience.  Another reason to include PVP is to add a level of verisimilitude to your world. I run a magical school setting for my game, and PVP is allowed, though discouraged. But I discourage it on the in-character level of sure you can fight some, but the Professors aren’t going to take it kindly if you kill or maim another student. Take a look at the real world, PVP is allowed but discouraged by things we like to call laws and morals. If your character is lacking on morals and flexible about laws, then logically speaking you should be able to punch the person who makes you angry.

Ok, so lets allow PVP but find in-world ways to discourage it. The easiest way is by having laws or rules and enforcing them. Particularly if the NPCs enforcing the laws are more powerful than the PCs. This doesn’t work, however, if they choose to have their PVP away from anyone who might stop them. But on that hand, why not let them go at it as a reward for finding a way to get around the rules. Its all up to you, oh GM, but remember to let the PCs have fun.

Whatever you choose to do, the most important thing you can do is to remember that all of the players are in this to have fun (including the GM). No matter what kind of game you’re playing, people should come to the table as friends (or strangers…it happens) and leave as friends.

Sandbox Worlds : The Good, the Bad and the Perpetually Lost

Freeform worlds are a truly wonderful thing. They are extremely realistic and offer a lot for the players to explore. But they can also be a source of endless frustration and must be handled with care.

I both GM and play in sandbox world games. My world is a perpetual sandbox that is best described as simulationist. I know what the factions of the world are all up to and keep track of it and the players can do whatever they want. If they choose not to go play with the plot, then the world might be doomed. But since they can choose to do anything they want, frequently my players have stumbled upon unique solutions to problems. Today, I’m going to tackle the sandbox world from the view of a GM and a player.

The GM’s Perspective

So you want to run a sandbox. Here’s the first thing to realize. Your players are going to sit around lost for a while every so often. It happens. Give them tools for finding out where things they may be interested in may be happening. Make sure that when they first create their characters, that they know the world is a sandbox. Most importantly, be prepared for them to hare off in a random direction. Since you’re not railroading your players through a preset storyline, they can go anywhere. Sure, the plot may not be there, but they may really want to be. Lets take my world for an example. I run Nightshade Academy, a school for young magic users. Frequently, the characters run around doing normal student things, like getting in trouble. But sometimes, they end up saving the kingdom. Don’t expect your players to be able to find everything interesting in your world immediately, and don’t expect them to be drawn to your plot. Let them explore.

How do I tell my story if the players can go anywhere? Make them want to play it. My sandbox world started with an airship attacking the school, which was the precursor to a very large plot that the players are pretty much all involved in at this point. To go one step further, I made all the antagonists be adults and the people who needed saving be, for the most part, younger than the player characters. Give your players chances to be heroes and have the plot periodically come to them and they will want to play. Even if just one big event happens where they can’t avoid it, they may wonder why it happened and go looking for more.

They found the plot, and then they didn’t do anything with it! What do I do? Did they do nothing or are they confused? Its possible that your players are trying to figure out how to find more, but its also possible they just don’t care about your story. If they’re lost, give them a way to find more. An NPC to talk to or a way to do research works wonders. Either way, even if they don’t seem to care, then just keep track of how your plot is progressing and have it run its course, changing the world. Maybe they choose to get involved and maybe they will get involved later on or maybe they might get to spend the second half of the game fighting against what they allowed to happen.

The Player’s Perspective

So you’re playing in a sandbox world. One of the most important things you need to realize is that the GM is not going to spoonfeed you plot. You need to go out and look for interesting things to do. Your character has to have motivations and goals, they have to have a reason for doing things. Having a good backstory is even better, because it means that the GM can tie you into their stories, or write new ones about your character. You can also leave parts of your backstory open for the GM, just like in any other tabletop, but in a sandbox where everyone can be working on discovering or exploring whatever they want, it is more likely that your story will be heard.

I can’t find the plot! What do I do? Well, here are some things you can try. Is there any kind of divinatory or scrying magic in the world setting? You could do a general sweep for interesting things, the GM might just throw you something for trying. You can go explore, or try to achieve some of your character’s goals. You can see if any of the other characters have goals they are trying to achieve. Listen to rumors, if there are any. Go talk to interesting sounding NPCs, you never know who they might turn out to be. Whatever you do, don’t just stand around doing nothing. If you want to get the most out of a sandbox game, you need to get up and do things and meet people. Seize the day.

I have so many options! What should I do first? That depends almost entirely on your character, but it also depends on how you will have the most fun. Does something sound more interesting than something else? Then go try it. There are no boundaries to what you can do, so go do things that you will find fun.

Playing in a sandbox is like being in the woods when there are no trails. Its what you make of it.

Do you run sandboxes? Do you play in them? Do you have any thoughts on the matter? Leave a comment!

Teach Your Kids to Game Week

I know, I know, I’m posting on an off day…but I was super excited when this found its way into my inbox the other day, forwarded from one of my friends who follows the RPGNow Newsletter. This week is Teach Your Kids to Game Week. They’re not talking about teaching kids to play Halo or Modern Warfare, they’re talking good old fashioned table top. I know what you’re thinking, oh masses of parents who do not game, but all those horrible things I’ve heard about Dungeons and Dragons! Don’t you summon demons and worship satan and other terrible things? Don’t you play in steam tunnels? Let me just be one of many people who points you in the direction of a magnificent FAQ put together by The Escapist. I highly suggest that people who aren’t familiar with table top roleplaying give that a read through.

So, you’ve decided to go along with this and you’re going to run a table top game for a group of kids. The first thing you need to do is decide what you’re going to be running, as far as genre goes, and then find a system that you want to use. There are a lot of webpages (such as this one) devoted to talking about what sorts of table top systems and settings are good for use with kids, but in my experience as a camp counselor, you would be surprised. We had kids ranged from age eight to age seventeen all playing in the same D&D game together. The rules are complicated, yes, so you guide the kids through character creation and make sure that they understand the types of dice and rolls they need to be able to play their character. I’ve even seen suggestions that I rather like, involving making customized character sheets that only show the skills and such that their character has.

The next question is how do you tailor your game for children. You have to keep the themes of your story kid friendly, obviously. But you also have to keep the sessions short to tailor to their attention span. I’m not saying that kids have a short attention span, I’m saying that 2 hours is a long time to sit still doing one thing, let alone the 24 hour sessions I’ve seen some gaming groups do. You need to make the adventure exciting and compelling, but you also need to be prepared for them to go haring off in random directions because it sounds neat. Really, its like writing for any average gaming group other than that you need to remember that your players are children.

 

Image via Wikipedia

Here’s the thing that I’m surprised more of these guides and sites don’t mention. Under no circumstances should you underestimate your players. Sure, they might not have hit puberty yet, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t grasp the tactics of battle, or the inter-play of politics. Depending on the kid, you might be pleasantly surprised by their understanding. I’m not saying to show them the dark underbelly of the world, but you don’t necessarily have to dumb down your system or run something that involves happy stuffed animals making friends when you could be actually just playing Dungeons and Dragons or Fudge. Kids aren’t stupid, they’re just young.

Image by mshea via Flickr

I read a fascinating article the other day about how afraid people are that with geek culture being popular that the geeky tendencies to have trouble speaking to people might become the norm. What better way to nip that in the bud than through table top roleplaying from a young age. You’re probably thinking that that statement doesn’t make any sense, but if there’s one thing that I learned through my time as a table top player and a LARPer its that roleplaying games really help with the development of social skills. I’ve learned to see other sides to situations from playing that other type of person, I’ve learned to speak up more and how to lead people so that they’ll listen. Certainly, whether kids learn anything from gaming is dependent on the GM, but think about that while you’re writing the game and running the game.

So go forth! Find children, teach them. Pass on the hobby and the wonder. They are the future of table top.

For further reading, feel free to hit up these blogs:

Related articles

• It’s “Teach Your Kids to Game” Week at Drive-Thru RPG (wired.com)
• It’s Never Too Early to Roleplay [Dungeons & Dragons] (kotaku.com)
• Kickstart Your Kid into Roleplaying (wired.com)

Storytelling: The Pleasures and Pitfalls

So you’ve found yourself with a World of Darkness book or perhaps the much talked about Fudge system or maybe the Dresden Files book and its Fate system, maybe even the Marvel diceless system is in your hands. And you’ve decided that you want to tell a story, to be the master of a game world and lead players through it. Well, it turns out that there are a lot of dangers and pitfalls for the novice storyteller, especially those who come from a strong Dungeon Mastering background. While very similar, Dungeon Mastering and Storytelling actually have a significant number of differences from the standpoint of a beginner. I feel I should take this moment to just add in a sort of disclaimer here. There are DMs who run things like the STs I intend to talk about. They are by and large considered to be some of the best DMs out there and are fairly rare. So remember, that everything that is talked about in here about the Storytelling systems, can also be applied to the more traditional D&D style table top with little effort. The thing that makes being a Storyteller so much different from being a Dungeon Master can be found in the theory of the 3 different game types. These are gamist, simulationist and narrative.

Narrative: A narrative based game is big on story, possibly to the point of decisions by the ST being made on what will make the story the best or the most like what they have envisioned.

Simulationist: A simulationist based game is based on realism. In this type of game, it would be perfectly normal for the bad guy to have resources and be just as able to use their resources as the good guys.

Gamist: The gamist based game is the closest to the traditional views of table top games. Its based on what the dice and the rules say and nothing else matter. Gamist games are the place where you are most likely to hear “I want to talk to that guy.” “Okay, make a diplomacy check.”

What I’m talking about today is the Narrative style of storytelling, the style that I personally find works best with the Fudge system and other storytelling based systems. To run a good Narrative style game, there are a few lessons you need to learn. They aren’t just lessons on how to do things, but also things you should brace yourself for.

So you’ve mapped out an adventure and you want the players to go left when they hit this intersection over here…but you know they could go right, so things are planned over there too. Sounds like you’re bases are covered, right? Nope. The players are going to try up, down, backwards and every other direction they can think of that isn’t left or right. Lesson 1 of the Storyteller is don’t sweat it, and just roll with it. Keep some paper near by to jot down notes and just freeform the parts of the world that they are now encountering because they went in an unplanned direction. This doesn’t just apply to going in directions you weren’t expecting. They might decide that a random unimportant NPC is actually the key to everything and suddenly this person who had just been scenery now needs a personality and a name and possibly a full character sheet. That happened to me once, I had a character who was supposed to just be a slightly helpful NPC who gave them specific information and some healing spells. Instead she became the worshiped deity of one of the characters and instrumental to the rest of the plotline.

Lesson 2 is don’t rely too heavily on the rules. If you look at Dungeons and Dragons, the rules will tell you that will enough work, a player can balance on clouds. Sure, it takes a balance DC of 120 and the odds of a player getting there before hitting epic level is almost impossible, but with sufficient effort they might just make it. Does it make sense for your player to be able to do it? Then let them, otherwise the answer needs to be no. On the other hand, if your player wants to do something and there are no rules for it, make something up. No one ever said there have to be dice rolls for everything. Remember that, that part is important.

Lesson 3 is an interesting one for a lot of beginning storytellers. You can write a beautiful, glorious story that does everything you want, but the second the players touch it, everything will change. Players change everything they touch, even just by interpreting it. Don’t hinge everything on your players making the choices you want them to, or even of interpreting the story the same way you are. Brace yourself for your masterpiece to go in directions you never saw coming. You wrote a beautiful story about a rebellion? The players might decide that their characters would support the rightful king. Just prepare yourself for whatever may happen.

Don’t be afraid to go about and run a storytelling game. They’re fun to run and I find them to be much more satisfying that your normal tabletop. Be brave and give your players a story to remember.