Many GMs – possibly most of them – are bad at prepping.

This is true even of GMs who run good games. You’ll frequently hear the mantra that if everyone’s enjoying your game, then you’re doing it right! There are a number of problems with this belief (starting with the fact that enjoyment is not a binary property), but bad prep habits are a really important counterexample: If you’re spending fifteen hours prepping to get the same results that you could be getting with only an hour of prep, think about what you could be doing with those fourteen hours you’ve saved. (And not just in the rest of your life; think about the things you could be doing with that time that would make the experience of you and your players even better.)

LOW-VALUE PREP

Which brings us to probably the most common prep problem: GMs who burn themselves out with low-value (or no-value) prep. They either spend inordinate amounts of time prepping material which is never experienced at the table and/or they prep material which doesn’t actually enhance what’s experienced at the table.

One of the leading causes of low-value prep seems to be published scenarios. Most RPGs don’t include any meaningful advice on scenario prep, and the RPGs that do include such advice are generally inadequate or misguided (often being written by designers who are, themselves, engaged in bad prep; the problem is, after all, endemic to the hobby). It makes sense, therefore, that lots of GMs instead turn to published scenarios as an example of what they should be doing.

Unfortunately, published scenarios are a terrible example of what a GM should be prepping. And I’m including all of my professionally published scenarios in this condemnation.

First, even in an ideal case, what I need to write in order to clearly communicate the ideas in my head to someone I’ve never met is VERY different from the notes I need to run a scenario for myself. Here’s an actual quote from a homebrew scenario someone sent me for critique:

“There are eighteen goblins living in this rocky cavern, which is largely similar to the other caverns in this area. If it’s morning, the men will be asleep and the women will be cooking breakfast. If it’s afternoon, the men will have left, leaving only the women behind. In the evening, however, all of the goblins will be here. You should also carefully consider whether the PCs’ actions elsewhere in the dungeon have alerted the goblins to danger, in which case the men will either leave 1-2 of their number to protect the women during the day; or all may remain at home if the danger is seen as particularly acute.”

Leaving aside the profligate verbiage, who is the “you” in this text? If this is how you’re prepping your scenarios for your personal use, who are you talking to? You don’t need to explain your intentions to yourself.

Second, most published scenarios are bad. This isn’t really a surprising revelation (Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap), but they’re often systemically bad in a way which collectively lead GMs to believe that scenarios are “supposed” to be prepped in a way which will also result in their scenarios being systemically bad.

Railroading is perhaps the most common example of this. But in terms of bad prep, the even more damaging example is Choose Your Own Adventure design, encouraging GMs to waste their time prepping elaborate flow charts filled with an ever-increasing amount of material that they know will never be used because it’s literally designed to NOT be used in its entirety.

Third, these problems have become increasingly exacerbated by the fact that a sizable portion of the audience reads published scenarios as a form of storybook pulp fiction instead of surveying them as a tool for creating memorable experiences at the gaming table. More importantly, the RPG companies know this and are writing their scenarios to satisfy this audience.

Here’s James Jacobs, the Creative Director at Paizo responsible for their Adventure Paths, on the subject:

Paizo more or less exists as a game company today (and not merely as an online RPG store) because adventures sell. If they’re done right. And by “right,” I mean “fun to read.”

Because I suspect the majority of adventures published by game companies are never actually played by most of those who read the adventures. (…)

And adventures, which tell stories, ARE fun to read. (If they’re built to be read.)

To be clear, I understand the meta-fictional appeal of reading an RPG scenario. There is a creative act of closure that takes place when reading a scenario and imagining how the situations it describes might play out that’s a fairly unique (and enjoyable) experience. And I understand the commercial need to appeal to as broad an audience as possible in order to make your products profitable, particularly in an industry like RPGs where your sales will be anemic even at the best of times.

The problem is that there are a number of things you can do as a writer to enhance the enjoyment of the reader that are actually inimical to the runner. And I’m increasingly seeing these elements in published adventures: Bloated descriptions. Material sequenced so that the reader is given a Shocking Reveal!™ instead of being sequenced for easy reference by the GM at the table. Narrative discourses and background information for which there is no clear vector for the players to ever learn of them.

Some writers do this because they are intentionally aiming for the reader market. Some writers don’t actually run adventures themselves and are writing for their own preferences as people who only read adventures. (This is shockingly common, and often encouraged by publishers who respond to the word “playtest” as if you had grown a second head.) And some writers are just following the examples they see in print from others, and which they have come to think of as the “correct” way to write up a scenario.

A lot of GMs follow a similar impulse to this final category of writers: They’re looking for an example to learn from in prepping to run their games, and the examples they’re using aren’t even primarily designed to run a game from in the first place.

LOW PREP

There has, in fact, been a backlash against low-value prep.

One particularly common form of this backlash are “low prep” or “zero prep” philosophies. You’ll find these in games specifically designed for such play, like Technoir or Lady Blackbird (along with a metric shit ton of storytelling games like Ten Candles, Hillfolk, Fiasco, and so forth), but also presented as a more general philosophy about how traditional RPG scenarios can be prepared.

These low prep strategies can be very effective, and have a great deal of utility in specific circumstances. (I’ve talked often in the past about the usefulness of having RPG experiences that can be picked up and played as casually as many board games can be, for example. Low prep systems are one way of achieving that.) But what it reveals for many long-time GMs is that their prep is bloated and ineffective and wasted. For some, their low-value prep is so bad that it actually has a negative value. Literally doing nothing results in better sessions than what they were doing before.

This leads some to believe that all prep is a bad idea. But this is an overreaction, trapping some GMs in a stunted ideology that can be just as limiting as the low-value prep they were practicing before.

Even in less virulent extremism, low prep philosophies can seductively convince GMs that they’ve solved a problem when, in fact, they’re only masking it: They discover that the prep they’ve been doing doesn’t work, so they do less of it and their games improve! All better, right? Problem solved!

Except they haven’t actually stopped doing the sort of prep that doesn’t work… they’ve just dramatically reduced the amount of it they’re doing. Eating less cyanide is good, but what you should really be doing is not eating cyanide.

You can find an example of this in the first section of Michael E. Shea’s The Lazy Dungeon Master. The book preaches a good message about GMs wasting a lot of time on prep that doesn’t add value to their games, but the alternative structure it teaches is to prep four things, each on a 3×5 card:

1. A beginning scene.
2. Three paths your game might take.

These paths can either be a Choose Your Own Adventure (where, after the initial scene, the PCs can choose one of the other three paths or, alternatively, none of them), in which case you’ll prep four things of which at least half of them will never be used. Or it can revert to a linear, pre-plotted sequence. But because the GM didn’t spend as much time prepping this linear, pre-plotted sequence, Shea’s argument is that it will be more likely that the GM will be willing to just throw it all out as wasted prep.

Shea recognizes that plot-based prep doesn’t work, but in the absence of any other paradigm, the only advice he can offer is to just do less of it.

SMART PREP

Which, ultimately, leads us to smart prep – the way to focus your prep on stuff with a high utility value while avoiding prep which is either unnecessary or likely to be wasted during play.

Whereas the goal of a low prep philosophy is to reduce the amount of time you spend prepping, that’s not the primary goal of smart prep (although it might be a side effect). When you’re practicing smart prep, the goal is to make sure that every moment you’re spending prepping is maximizing the positive effect that prep has on your game sessions. You might even end up spending more time prepping. For example, I spent dozens of hours prepping the Eternal Lies campaign, but the result included hundreds of props and visual elements that created a unique and memorable experience for everyone involved.

Smart prep is all about thinking long and hard about your prep methods to see if there are ways in which you could be achieving the same results (or better results) with less prep. (Or using the same amount of prep to achieve more.)

So let’s talk about what that looks like.

Go to Part 2: The Principles of Smart Prep

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 11C: A WEARY TWILIGHT

November 11th, 2007
The 30th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

THE RAINBOW LAKE

In the sudden stillness which pervaded the cavern, things looked bleak. Without the stress of combat the torturous nausea diminished, but their wounds were grievous. Itarek had merely been knocked unconscious, but even after the soothing of Dominic’s divine ministrations he still oozed blood from countless wounds and moved with the stiff pain of torn muscles.

Itarek looked down at the body of his warrior which lay near by and with a weary voice asked, “Can you heal him?”

Dominic looked at the body — its skull caved in and its chest mangled — and shook his head. “No. There’s nothing we can do.”

Itarek nodded. “We must leave. Tend to our wounded.”

Tee, who had been prepared to argue for precisely that, quickly agreed. But Ranthir suggested that they should take a look — a cautious look! — further down this passage. They may be in poor condition, but knowing what lay ahead might better inform their decision.

Tee nodded and, while the rest of the group quickly stripped the duskblade’s body of anything that looked remotely interesting or valuable (taking particular note of a finely crafted sword, steel shield, and chain shirt), she slipped quietly through the shadows ahead of them. Read more »

(click here for PDF)

Robin D. Laws’ DramaSystem is tucked away inside the Hillfolk roleplaying game. Hillfolk is kind of an odd duck of a book: There’s about 50 pages of generic rules describing the DramaSystem engine. There’s 15-20 pages of setting material pertaining specifically to Hillfolk: A Game of Iron Age Drama. And then there’s another 150 pages providing everything you need to play in 30 other settings. In other words, there’s 200+ pages of material for the DramaSystem and only 15-20 pages of Hillfolk in there. The entire book is really designed as a generic resource for the DramaSystem, but it’s not branded, presented, or sold as such.

The raison d’être for the DramaSystem lies with Laws’ breakdown of fiction into procedural scenes and dramatic scenes: “In procedural scenes, characters confront and overcome obstacles — “they fight opponents, conduct chases, investigate mysteries, explore unfamiliar environments, and so on. (…) In a dramatic scene, the main characters confront internal obstacles, seeking emotional reward from people they care deeply about, for good or ill.” The majority of RPGs focus almost exclusively on procedural content. Laws wanted to design a storytelling game which specifically focused on creating and playing through dramatic scenes.

Laws believes that one of the primary obstacles to effective dramatic scenes in traditional roleplaying games lies in the fact that players tend to default to no, convinced that their characters are all possessed of a steely, unbreakable resolve that will never buckle, and thus creating flat, repetitious scenes that never build, centered around boring characters who never grow or change. (He says this in like the most insulting way possible, claiming that anyone who refuses to play games in an authorial stance is in denial about what roleplaying games are really all about, and that anyone who refuses to come to Jesus after experiencing the true glories of the DramaSystem is basically a petulant man-child who should be kicked out of your group. But except for the couple of pages where he goes on that Bizarro World rampage, he’s not fundamentally wrong.)

The DramaSystem structurally works to overcome these impulses by (a) specifically focusing gameplay on the dramatic content, (b) redefining “success” in dramatic instead of personal terms, and (c) mechanically encouraging (and, in some cases, forcing) characters to yield in dramatic scenes. The central mechanic around which these structures are built is simply framing scenes in terms of petitioners (and the emotional need they want fulfilled) vs. granters (and why they won’t give it).

One interesting feature in this is that Laws seems to identify these mechanics as modeling the storytelling techniques used by creators in other mediums. But that’s not really accurate. What the mechanics actually model is a process of literary criticism. (It is, in fact, the same lit-crit that Laws uses in Hamlet’s Hit Points.) Intriguingly, that’s also what the game’s mechanics feel like in play: A literary critique of the narrative you’re spontaneously generating.

The result feels very unique in play, and it definitely succeeds in forcing a group to aggressively focus on a type of character interaction which is, in fact, rather rare in most tabletop roleplaying. Having played it only a handful of times, I’m not 100% sure it actually succeeds as a game. But it definitely succeeds at being a very interesting creative exercise, and if nothing else I honestly think most groups would benefit from playing a half dozen sessions of it or so. The lessons you’ll learn (both individually and collectively) will likely have a very positive impact as they feed back into your other games.

SYSTEM CHEAT SHEETS

I’ve designed system cheat sheets for a number of RPGs and STGs now. This one is designed to be used with any DramaSystem setting (the 30 from the Hillfolk corebook, the 25 from the Blood on the Snow supplement, or any which you create yourself). For those unfamiliar with them: These cheat sheets summarize all the rules for the game — from basic action resolution to advanced options. It’s a great way to get a grip on a new system and, of course, it also provides a valuable resource at the table for both the GM and the players. (For more information on the procedure I follow when prepping these cheat sheets, click here.)

HOW I USE THEM

I generally keep a copy of the system cheat sheet behind the GM screen for quick reference and also provide copies for all of the players. I also keep at least one copy of the rulebook available, of course, and the cheat sheet probably won’t make much sense to you if you haven’t read it yourself. But the goal of the cheat sheet is to consolidate all of the mechanical content of the game, eliminating book look-ups: Finding something in a handful of pages is a much faster process than paging through hundreds of pages in a rulebook.

The organization of information onto each page of the cheat sheet should, hopefully, be fairly intuitive:

Page 1: This page contains the broad, general principles of the system.

Page 2: This page contains virtually everything you need in order to frame and play through scenes (which is the heart of the system).

Page 3: Something of a miscellanea. This includes general principles and rules for the GM, but the rules for player v. player conflict also got bumped onto this page due to lack of space.

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).

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 11B: Garden of the Sickstone Elementals

The arrow flew straight and true, striking one of the goblins in the back of the head. The pure force of Tee’s draw smashed the arrow through the creature’s skull, so that the tip of it emerged out of its eye.

If you’ve been reading these campaign journals for awhile, one of the things you might have noticed is that Tee frequently shoots enemies through the eye.

Is this some sort of special feat? Or does the player just like making called shots?

No. It’s nothing mechanical. It’s just how I ended up describing some of her kill shots. This started all the way back in the prelude sessions:

After defeating them (Tee skewering one through the eye and Agnarr cleaving them both in twain)…

But another of the reptilians walked in and started squawking: Tee drove an arrow through his eye, pinioning him to the rock, and Agnarr followed through with a devastating decapitation.

This wasn’t something that I had planned for. It’s one of a hundred different things I said in describing the early combat scenes of the campaign, but this is the one that resonated with us: Bam. Tee shoots something through the eye and it brings us joy and laughter.

It’s a running gag. They’re small things, but I think they really help to tie a campaign together. They’re a great example of the things which can help elevate a long-form campaign above episodic one-shot play.

Honestly, though, I don’t think you can plan for these. Or, if you can, they still won’t be nearly as effective or satisfying as those developed organically through play.

But you do have to be aware of them. You have to pay attention, spot the moments when these running gags have the opportunity to emerge, and then make the effort to cultivate and reinforce them over time.

You have to read the room.

These gags can be almost anything. The first time I ran Eternal Lies, for example, it was the character who managed – through pure luck and circumstance – to never be present when the supernatural elements manifested during the first half dozen or more sessions of the campaign. Once the player called this out, it became a consistent light-hearted moment whenever the rest of the group would begin rambling about what they had just experienced.

As these examples hopefully demonstrate, running gags don’t need to be huge, overblown, mood-killing things. Nor should they be overly frequent, as they will quickly kill the gag and sap the joy from it. But used with moderation and care, they become shared joy, a sense of community, and a lovely contrapuntal beat.

PLAYING WITH THE GAG

Here’s a couple of other things you can do with running gags, although they require great care and surety in their use.

Breaking the Gag. There may come a point when it’s most effective to end a running gag. In my Eternal Lies campaign, the character eventually did witness the supernatural firsthand. The player, rather cleverly I thought, chose to let the gag persist a little longer, but now the tone of the gag had changed: It was no longer a humorous Sculley-esque tolerance for the lovable crazy people she was associating with; it was a desperate and increasingly willful denial that she was using to cling to her sanity.

Eventually the time came for the gag to end completely. When the horrors which surrounded them had so completely and deniably impinged themselves upon the character that she had no choice but to break and accept what was happening to her.

And this really demonstrates the power of a good running gag: That final break – that final, mad acceptance of the supernatural – was made more powerful by the tradition which had proceeded it.

The trick with breaking a running gag, of course, is that you want to make sure that you’re not doing so cheaply or frivolously: The payoff you’re getting needs to more than outweigh all the future good that the gag could bring. (Or it needs to be so utterly necessary and demanded by circumstance as to be undeniable.)

Sharing the Gag. After they’ve been well established, some running gags that “belong” to a particular character can benefit from another character “guest-starring” in them. For example, once everyone firmly associates shooting people in the eye with Tee, it can reduce a table to tears of laughter when the normally bumbling Dominic suddenly does so almost by accident.

Here care must be used because you can end up watering the gag down. Tee shooting people in the eye has become a strong character trope in the campaign; if everybody starts shooting people in the eye, the gag loses its distinctive character (pun intended).

This is not, of course, to say that running gags can’t belong communally to the whole group. Some do. But others don’t. You need to make sure you understand what makes the gag work (and what makes it rewarding) so that you can cultivate it properly. Otherwise it’s like over-watering a cactus.