Released by Chaosium in 2021 as part of the 40^th Anniversary celebrations for Call of Cthulhu, Keeper Tips: Collected Wisdom on Running Games is a pocket-sized hardcover filled with exactly what the title promises — a motley collection of small tips and random thoughts, each generally no longer than a paragraph, about running Call of Cthulhu games and RPGs in general.

(A “Keeper,” for those out of the loop, is what a game master is referred to as in Call of Cthulhu.)

It’s a handsome volume, with a faux-leather cover and gilt print accompanied by a burgundy bookmark ribbon. Very much the sort of thing you can drop into a pocket and draw out from time to ruminate upon its contents, which are roughly divided into a number of categories:

• Ground Rules
• Inclusivity
• Preparation
• Players
• Sensitivity
• Designing Scenarios
• Gameplay
• Keepering
• Horror
• Sanity
• The Cthulhu Mythos
• Non-Player Characters
• Monsters
• Online Play
• Props & Handouts
• Miscellaneous

The tips themselves are drawn from almost two dozen Keepers associated with Call of Cthulhu from its very beginning to its most recent days. As editor Mike Mason writes, “Some of the tips are contradictory. Some repeat or reinforce advice. Imagine, if you will, that you are sat with a group of experienced Keepers, each sharing and building upon the ideas of the others. Take from this what you will.”

As you read through Keeper Tips, you will undoubtedly encounter much that is familiar, much that you agree with, and also much that you will disagree with. You may even read certain passages that will raise your hackles. But as I’ve slowly worked my way through the book, it has never failed to provoke a thoughtful insight.

I say “slowly,” and indeed this is how I would recommend one experience Keeper Tips. It’s a collection that invites you to read perhaps one or two pages at a time and then set it aside while you think about what you’ve read. Was there some new insight? How will you use it? Was there a unique twist or perspective on something you’ve done yourself? Is there something you vehemently disagree with? Why do you think it wrong and what would you do differently? Is this tip useful for tables with new players, experienced players, or both? And why?

Then, perhaps later in the day or the next day or a week later, you’ll pick the book up again and choose another page to meditate upon. Perhaps the next page. Or perhaps one that you flip to randomly.

To gives you a sampling of what you can expect to find inside, consider these tips:

Counsel your players to create characters that are involved in the story, rather than be passive observers. Example: an expedition to the Antarctic will be an active game for scientists and explorers, not so much for the pilot and radio operator.

Undermine the pillars of the PCs’ confidence. Are they members of an anti-Mythos organization? Drop hints that it has been infiltrated. Do they have academic allies? Strike those mentors with public disgrace. Do they have family? Keep the PCs afraid for them — or of them. Do they have high social statue or loads of income? Chip away at that through media gossip, the Company Board turning on them, threats of unemployment, a hostile company takeover, or a stock market slide.

When making NPCs, assign each of them an adjective (greedy, suspicious, trusting, etc.). This makes them easier to portray in a memorable and fun way for the players.

Pre-made NPCs can be useful as instant replacement investigators.

For an extended game, ask about an investigator’s history, and then say, “What was your first experience with the Mythos?” and let them make it up. The reason is to get past the boring, “No, no, this isn’t real,” part of the scenario. They ‘know’ it’s real.

Never be afraid to rewrite a scenario’s plot hook to better fit your party’s occupations or backstories. All the details in published adventures should be considered more as suggestions rather than as strict guidelines.

If you’d like to see more of the book “in action,” so to speak, I’ve actually featured it a few times on my Twitch streams, using it very much as I describe above as a spur for commentary and deeper thought. (You can see one of these streams here.)

Along similar lines, I think it could be quite rewarding to organize a GM’s book club, gathering fellow masters of the game and using Keeper Tips as a prompt text for any number of wide-ranging discussions.

Ultimately, whether for your own private circumspection or as the nucleus for shared discussion, I can strongly recommend slipping a copy of Keeper Tips into your own pocket.

Grade: B+

Editor: Mike Mason
Contributors: Daniel Aniolowski, Sean Branney, Allan Carey, Keris McDonald, Jason Durall, Paul Fricker, Bob Geis, Lynne Hardy, Bridgett Jeffries, Jo Kreil, David Larkins, Mike Mason, Mark Morrison, Thom Raley, Matthew Sanderson, Becca Scott, Seth Skorkowsky

Publisher: Chaosium
Price: $17.95
Page Count: 128

The first sanity mechanics appear in Call of Cthulhu in 1981 and, in many ways, it remains the definitive mechanical model: The character is confronted by something unnatural, stressful, or terrifying. They make a check using their Sanity attribute. If the check succeeds, everything is fine. If the check fails, they take damage to their Sanity attribute based on the severity of the event that triggered the check. If the damage is sufficiently large (either immediately or in aggregate), they suffer some form of temporary or indefinite insanity. These insanities often force a particular action on the character (fainting, fleeing in panic, physical hysterics, etc.).

We can identify three distinct elements in these mechanics:

• The trigger which requires a sanity check.
• The check to see if the trigger causes harm to the character’s sanity.
• The reaction of the character to the trigger (usually due to a failed check).

This is a fortune at the beginning mechanic: You make the sanity check and THEN determine what your character does based on the outcome of the check. It is also a reactive mechanic, by which we mean that it is used in response to a triggering circumstance rather than resolving a statement of intention.

(Thought experiment: What would a non-reactive sanity check look like? It would probably be part of a wider array of personality mechanics which the player could use to interrogate their character’s state of a mind; a very non-traditional form of player expertise activating character expertise, with the player essentially “asking” their character whether they’re scared or aroused by Lady Chatworth or tempted by the devil’s offer. But I digress.)

RESOLUTION SEQUENCE

In my experience, most GMs resolve sanity checks in the same sequence listed above: they describe the trigger, make the check, and then determine the reaction.

GM: A tentacular thing comes slithering out of the closet! Make a sanity check!

Player: (rolls dice) I failed!

GM: You take (rolls dice) 3 points of Sanity loss! What do you do?

Player: Bertram screams and runs out of the room!

In this, they are usually mirroring how the mechanic is described in the rulebook: this is what this rule is for (the trigger), here is how the mechanic works (the check), and here is the outcome of the mechanic (the reaction).

This all makes sense.

But in my experience, it’s not the most effective way to run sanity checks. Instead, you usually want to invert the check and trigger, like so:

Player: Bertram very carefully turns the handle and eases open the closet door.

GM: Peering into he closet… There’s… Yes! There’s something moving in there! Give me a sanity check!

Player: (rolls dice) I fail!

GM: A tentacular thing comes slithering out of the closet! You take 3 points of Sanity loss! What do you do?

Player: Bertram screams and runs out of the room!

It’s a subtle distinction. What difference does it make?

First, the mechanical resolution now functions as foreshadowing: While the check is being made, tension builds at the table as the players anticipate whatever horrific thing might be triggering the check. (What’s in the closet?!)

Second, by resolving the check before describing the trigger, you allow the players to have an immediate, immersive response to your description of the trigger.

Which makes sense, right? When Bertram sees the tentacular thing he immediately wants to scream and run in terror. He doesn’t want to wait a minute while dice are being rolled.

So, in short, you heighten the emotional engagement of the moment both coming and going.

In my experience, the exception to this is when the trigger for the sanity check is generated by a different mechanical interaction. (For example, watching your friend’s brains get sprayed across the wall by a sniper’s bullet.) This is more a matter of practicality than effectiveness (unlike the tentacular horror slithering out of the closet, the GM doesn’t know whether or not the bullet will hit their friend until it does, and the whole table often learns that simultaneously), but does serve as a reminder that the “proper” ruling in an RPG is rarely a simple black-and-white affair.

TRAIL OF CTHULHU – LIMITS OF SANITY

In Call of Cthulhu, PCs start with a fairly large amount of Sanity and usually lose fairly small quantities in each session of play. There’s generally no way to recover lost Sanity, so over the course of a campaign, their Sanity is slowly eroded away by the horrors which they’ve seen, until final the last few points are taken away and they are left permanently mad and broken by their experiences.

This is very effective at evoking the slow, inexorable destruction of Lovecraftian fiction. But, like hit points in D&D, you generally don’t feel actual risk until near the end of the process. There are some mitigating factors, but this can easily have the effect of reducing the impact of Sanity losses.

In Trail of Cthulhu, Kenneth Hite does a very clever tweak on this system by splitting it into two separate tracks: Sanity and Stability.

As in Call of Cthulhu, Sanity generally can’t be restored once lost. However, you also don’t lose it directly. Instead, you usually only lose Sanity as a result of your Stability meter hitting 0.

The Stability meter CAN be restored when depleted, but it’s limited enough that it can easily be wiped out in a single session (which would result in Sanity getting hit).

This allows the system to create a mechanical sense of risk that builds over the course of each session (as Stability is depleted), while ALSO capturing the long, slow, inexorable, and irreversible destruction of a character’s psyche (as Sanity is depleted). It allows characters to brush up against madness without being permanently broken.

If you’re a Call of Cthulhu GM coming to Trail of Cthulhu to the first time, you’ll want consider how the hard limits in each system are different. This will affect both scenario design and the pacing of individual sessions. In some ways Trail of Cthulhu is more forgiving (because Sanity is “shielded” behind Stability), but in other ways it is considerably less forgiving (because it’s relatively easy to completely blast through Stability in a single session).

The game is fairly well-tuned so that in a typical scenario some or all of the PCs are likely to feel the risk of running out of Stability, but it won’t actually happen in every single session. (Which is also good, because if it’s getting hammered so hard that it IS happening like clockwork every single session, that also deflates tension.) But this is something you’ll want to monitor and adjust in your scenario design and rulings: If their Stability is rarely or never at risk of running out, check to see if you’re not calling for Stability tests as often as you should. If their Stability is being sand-blasted away, see what you can tweak to get a more balanced result.

UNKNOWN ARMIES – A MULTITUDE OF MADNESS

Unknown Armies by John Tynes and Greg Stolze has several more features in its sanity system (which, in the first edition, was called the madness meter and was resolved using stress checks).

First, instead of having a single track, the system has five separate meters, one for each type of psychological stress the character might experience:

• Helplessness (unable to take action you feel is necessary)
• Isolation (when you’re cut off from society or loved ones)
• Violence (pain, injury, death)
• Unnatural (challenges to your perception of reality)
• Self (violations of your deepest beliefs)

This paints a more evocative picture of a character’s psychological state. It also allows the game to track separate effects for each type of trauma, while still measuring overall psychological stability across all the meters.

Having these separate meters also allows Unknown Armies characters to become hardened: Each stress check adds a hardened notch to the associated meter. Each trigger is rated by its severity, and if character has a number of hardened notches in a meter equal to or higher than the rating of the trigger, then they don’t need to make the stress check. (They’ve seen so much Violence, for example, that someone being punched in the face no longer has a psychological impact on them.)

Systems that harden you against tests can suffer from a “plateau effect” where you reach a certain level equivalent to whatever style of play you prefer and then stop rolling checks (see Katanas & Trenchcoats). This also happens in Unknown Armies, but it sidesteps the problem by having the five different meters: You can plateau in one, but the character will remain vulnerable in the other meters (and realistically can’t plateau in all of them because there are cumulative psychological consequences based on the total number of hardened notches the character has).

Unknown Armies also does something interesting with the reaction phase of the resolution: If the PC fails a stress check, they have to choose fight, flight, or freeze – in other words, is the character’s reaction to furiously attack the source of psychological stress, flee from it in a panic, or simply lock-up in indecision, terror, or a “deer-in-headlights” effect.

The cool thing about this mechanic is that, although the failed check constrains the available options, the player still remains in control of their character. Conversely, even succeeding on the check gives a roleplaying cue (because becoming psychologically hardened is meaningful) that the player can pick up and run with.

SANITY CHECKS FOR NPCs

Something which many games with sanity mechanics miss (and which, in my experience, many GMs ignore even in the games which do include support for it) is to also make sanity checks for the NPCs.

If you aren’t already doing this, it’s well worth exploring. It can really push the narrative in cool and unexpected directions.

It can also emphasize how dangerous and unusual the PCs’ lives are (and, therefore, how extraordinary and meaningful their actions are). It can also remind them why they need to be the ones to solve the problem and that it may be a very, very bad idea to call in people who aren’t prepared to deal with it.

On that note, remember that NPCs will generally only have a fraction of the screen time that the PCs do, and, therefore, will only have a fraction of the opportunities to make sanity checks. Don’t load ‘em all up with the default maximum Sanity ratings for starting PCs. Seed in a broad range of Sanity ratings, from those who are fairly robust (at least to begin with) to those who are already psychologically unsound.

A DIGRESSION ON MYTHOS MADNESS

So it turns out that there are aliens. And some of them have visited Earth. Maybe they’ve even been involved in genetically engineering human beings.

… why is this driving me insane again?

As Unknown Armies demonstrates, sanity mechanics are not ineluctably linked to the Mythos. But they did originate there, and so pervasive is the influence of Call of Cthulhu that any Mythos-based game seems almost incomplete without them. So this feels like an appropriate time for a brief digression on why Mythos-inspired madness exists.

Partly this is just cultural dissonance: At the time Lovecraft was writing, these things were not part of pop culture, so it was possible to believe that people would find their existence unsettling to their settled views of the way the world worked. The understanding of how insanity worked was also different in some key ways. And, of course, Lovecraft was a huge racist and had a plethora of mental issues himself, so there is some projection of his own preexisting mental infirmities into the mental state of his characters.

So, to a certain extent, it’s like wondering why women faint all the time in Victorian literature.

On the other hand, there’s a bit more to it in terms of the time when the “Stars Are Right,” which suggests a fundamental reordering of the laws of the physical universe. The creatures of the Mythos literally belong to a universe incompatible with the universe we think we live in. To put it another way: We live in a little tiny pocket of abnormality which uniquely makes it possible for human life and consciousness to exist and/or prosper. The idea that at some point the Earth will leave our zone of grace, the stars will right themselves, and our little epoch of abnormality will come to an end can be rather unsettling in a way that “there are aliens” isn’t.

But more than that: The creatures of the Mythos are a living connection to the way the universe is supposed to work… and the way the universe is supposed to work is inimical to humanity. At extreme levels it can be like trying to run COBOL programming through a C++ compiler. At lower levels it’s more like trying to run a program through a buggy emulator. It’s not just “that monster is kind of creepy,” it’s “that monster has connected my brain to a place where my brain doesn’t work right.” (This idea also works in reverse: Mythos creatures are operating in a semi-insane state within this period of abnormality. That’s why Cthulhu is lying in an induced coma below R’lyeh… he’s trying to minimize the damage.)

But even more than that: The damage being done to your mind is actually a direct result of the mind desperately trying to rewrite itself to cope with the true nature of reality. Mythos-induced insanity? That’s not the mind breaking. That’s the mind trying to fix itself. It just looks like insanity to us because we’re all broken.

Back to the Art of Rulings – NEXT: Traps

Go to Part 1

Here’s my random tip for using Idea rolls as a GM:

Don’t.

Let me start by explaining what I’m talking about: In Call of Cthulhu, an Idea roll “represents hunches and the ability to interpret the obvious.” In some of the older scenarios published for the game, this roll would actually be used to prevent players from having their characters take certain courses of action because the character wouldn’t know to do them — sort of aggressively preventing player expertise form trumping character expertise.

There are some obvious problems with that, too, but what I’m interested in right now is the far more common technique of using the Idea roll to tell players what they “should” be doing. For example, if the players are talking about how they can get an audience with a casino owner, the GM might call for an Idea roll and say, “You could disguise yourselves as high rollers.” Or when the PCs stumble onto a bloodstained altar in the center of a stone circle, the GM might call for an Idea roll and then say, “You could try putting that idol you found earlier on the altar!”

Even in games that lack a specific mechanic like this, you may see similar techniques improvised (usually with some form of Intelligence check).

GM-INITIATED IDEA ROLLS

The basic function of the Idea roll is essentially like using a walkthrough in a video game: You don’t know what to do, so you have to consult a guide that can get you past the point where you’re stuck. A GM-initiated Idea roll, though, is often more like having an obnoxious friend sitting with you who’s played the game before and simply WILL NOT shut up and let you play the game for yourself.

If you’re a GM prepping a scenario and you come to a place where you think an Idea roll will be necessary, that’s a really clear sign that you need to DO BETTER. Saying, “I need an Idea roll here,” is basically saying, “I have designed a scenario where the players are going to get stuck here.” Instead of prepping an Idea roll, figure out some way to redesign the scenario so that the players won’t get stuck there. (The Three Clue Rule will often help.)

What about run-time Idea rolls? In other words, you’re currently running the session, you can see that the players are irreparably stuck, and you need to fix the problem. Well, there are two possibilities:

First, they’re not actually stuck, in which case you don’t need to use an Idea roll.

Second, they ARE stuck and definitely need help to get unstuck. In which case, you shouldn’t be rolling the dice because failure is not actually an option: You need to give them information. Therefore you should not be rolling to see whether or not they get it.

PLAYER-INITIATED IDEA ROLLS

On the other side of the screen, a player-initiated Idea roll is generally more viable: This is basically the players sending up an emergency flare and saying, “We’re lost! Please send help!” To return to our analogy of the video game walkthrough, this is the player who has been stymied to the point where they’re no longer having fun and just want to be able to move on in the game.

In my experience, it should be noted, what such players are looking for is often not the solution; what they are looking for is an action. They feel stuck because they don’t know what they should be doing. A Matryoshka search technique, therefore, is often a great way to respond to this.

Something else to look for is the clue that they’ve overlooked. Not necessarily a clue they haven’t found, but one which they don’t realize is actually a clue, which they’ve radically misinterpreted, or which they’ve completely forgotten they have. For example:

• “You realize that patent leather can also be used for furniture, not just shoes.”
• “While S.O.S. could be a cry for help, couldn’t it also be someone’s initials?”
• “You suddenly remember that you still have Suzy’s diary in the pocket of your trench coat. Didn’t she mention something about the color purple, too?”

Trail of Cthulhu innovated a cool mechanic along these lines for its Cthulhu Mythos skill: You can use this skill to “put together the pieces and draw upon the terrible knowledge that you have been subconsciously suppressing, achieving a horrific epiphany. The Keeper provides you with the result of your intuition, sketching out the Mythos implications of the events you have uncovered.”

There are two important features to this mechanic: First, it doesn’t require a roll. (Again, if the players need help, then denying it to them on the basis of a dice roll doesn’t make sense.)

Second, it has a cost: The sudden insight into the terrible realities of the universe will cost you Stability and, quite possibly, Sanity. Importantly, this cost is NOT exacted “if the player deduces the horrible truth without actually using [the] Cthulhu Mythos ability.” The cost, in my experience, not only dissuades players from relying on the mechanic instead of their own ingenuity, it also enhances the sense of accomplishment they feel when they solve the mystery or gain the insight without using the mechanic.

The 7^th Edition of Call of Cthulhu has similarly modernized the Idea roll, using a fail forward technique where a failure still gets the PCs the necessary clue/course of action, but also results in some sort of negative consequence: Getting the clue might bring you to the attention of the bad guys; or you might waste weeks of time digging through a library before finally stumbling across the right reference; or, like Trail of Cthulhu, the insight might force a Sanity check.

Another cool technique it suggests, particularly in the case of failing forward, is to aggressively reframe the scene: Jump directly to the point where the PCs have followed the lead and gotten themselves into trouble as a result.

A final interesting variant here is to make the Idea roll concept diegetic instead of non-diegetic; i.e., to make it a decision the character makes instead of the player. In a fantasy setting, for example, the character might literally make a sacrifice to the Goddess of Knowledge in order to receive a divine vision.

GM DON’T LIST #10.1: TELLING PLAYERS THE PLAN

Like an aggressive Idea roll on steroids, some GMs will go so far as to just literally tell the players what their characters will be doing for the entire scenario.

For example, I was playing in a convention one-shot where we were street samurai who got hired to be ringers on a Blood Bowl team in order to rig a high-stakes game. This was a really cool premise, turning the usual expectations of the game on its head and giving us an opportunity to explore how the PCs’ heist-oriented abilities could be used in a completely novel environment.

Unfortunately, the session quickly went completely off the rails. Rather than letting the players make any meaningful decisions, the GM had pre-scripted every play of the game: We were reduced to simply rolling whatever skill had been scripted for us. (It didn’t help that the rolls themselves were essentially pointless since the outcome of every drive and most of the plays had ALSO been planned ahead of time.)

This was an extreme example of something closely related to GM Don’t List #7: Preempting Investigation, but I bring it up here mostly because I’ve seen several GMs who use Idea rolls to similar (albeit usually less absurd) ends. These game are characterized by the players making an endless stream of Idea rolls, with the GM constantly saying things like, “Pierre [your character] thinks he should come back and check out the Le Petit Pont after dark.” Or, “You could probably get a pretty good view from the top of Notre Dame. You’ll need to figure out some way to get up to the top of the towers.” Or even, as literally happened in one game, “Rebecca thinks she should stab the Archbishop in the chest.” (“No, really, she thinks this is really important.”)

Basically: Don’t do this. Present your players with problems, not solutions. Give them the space to mull over a situation and figure out what they want to do (or what they think they need to do) in response to that situation.

Go to Part 11: Description-on-Demand

(click here for PDF)

Although this cheat sheet has been specifically designed for the Revised 5th Edition of Call of Cthulhu (because that is the version which I use), it should serve just as well with the original 5th Edition and 6th Edition because the changes between those editions are essentially inconsequential. (The only reason I don’t use 6th Edition is because (a) I already own 5th Edition, (b) I like the cover painting for the revised 5th Edition better, and (c) I find the 6th Edition rulebook virtually illegible because of the fonts used.) It can also probably be used nigh-seamlessly with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Editions, as the mechanical changes from those editions to 5th Edition are limited, if I recall correctly, to a very minor revision of the skill list and some changes to character creation mechanics (which don’t affect these cheat sheets). The change from 1st Edition (which I do not own) to 2nd Edition reputedly includes a rather major change to the magic system, so this cheat sheet will probably be of less worth to anyone still running a 1st Edition campaign.

It is quite likely that I will end up producing a version of this cheat sheet for 7th Edition (which contains a greater number of mechanical changes), especially as I have recently won a complete set of the 7th Edition rulebooks as a prize for a Novus Ordo Seclorum advancement event at Gen Con this year. However, I believe that this cheat sheet will nevertheless have an enduring value because I know that here are a great number of Keepers who are continuing their pre-7th Edition campaigns with no intention of shifting to the new edition.

If you’re not familiar with these system cheat sheets, you should know that the goal is to summarize all the rules of the game – from basic resolution to the spot rules for actions, combat, firearms, injury, and the like. It’s a great way to get a grip on a new system, introducing new players to the game, and providing a long-term resource for both GM and players. (For more information on the methods I use for prepping these sheets, click here.)

WHAT’S NOT INCLUDED

These cheat sheets are not designed to be a quick start packet: They’re designed to be a comprehensive reference for someone who has read the rulebook and will probably prove woefully inadequate if you try to learn the game from them. (On the other hand, they can definitely assist experienced players who are teaching the game to new players.)

The cheat sheets also don’t include what I refer to as “character option chunks” (for reasons discussed here). In other words, you won’t find the rules for character creation here.

HOW I USE THEM

I generally keep a copy of my system cheat sheets behind my GM screen for quick reference and I also place a half dozen copies in the center of the table for the players to grab as needed. The information included is meant to be as comprehensive as possible; although rulebooks are also available, my goal is to minimize the amount of time people spend referencing the rulebook: Finding something in 6 pages of cheat sheet is a much faster process than paging through a 400 page rulebook. And, once you’ve found it, processing the streamlined information on the cheat sheet will (hopefully) also be quicker.

The organization of information onto each page of the cheat sheet should, hopefully, be fairly intuitive. The actual sequencing of pages is mostly arbitrary.

Page 1 – Basic Mechanics: Because Call of Cthulhu is, at its heart, a pretty simplistic game (roll percentile dice and compare to a skill), this core reference sheet also includes the basic mechanics for Combat (including Injury).

Page 2 – Spot Rules for Combat: I find that a lot of Call of Cthulhu Keepers and players tend to forget that the system actually does have quite a few advanced options (which it refers to as spot rules, such as Spot Rules for Firearms). There’s a lot more gritty mechanical options that can be leveraged than you might realize if you’ve primarily experienced the game at the fairly ubiquitous tables which use a more casual approach to things.

Page 3 – Spot Rules for Skills: All the niggling little guidelines hidden away in the skill chapter are pulled out here for quick reference.

Page 4 – Sanity Rules: I find it interesting that these are always referred to as Sanity mechanics when it would seem more appropriate to refer to them as the Insanity mechanics.

Page 5 – Mythos Tomes and Magic: Pretty much what it says on the tin.

MAKING A GM SCREEN

These cheat sheets can also be used in conjunction with a modular, landscape-oriented GM screen (like the ones you can buy here or here).

I usually use a four-panel screen and use reverse-duplex printing in order to create sheets that I can tape together and “flip up” to reveal additional information behind them. In this case, however, I have not actually used these cheat sheets in conjunction with a GM screen (as the sessions I’ve been running have been conducive to a more intimate space), so I’ve only used the stapled packets. However, I’d recommend placing the Spot Rules for Skills behind the Spot Rules for Combat, as I feel they’re the rules least likely to be used frequently and also least likely to benefit from being taken in at a glance.