There are a lot of GMing skills that transfer seamlessly between systems. But as you move out from whatever your first RPG was and begin exploring other games, it’s useful to remember that this is not universally true. Games are mechanically different from each other, and what works in one system — whether you’re talking about prepping scenarios or running at the table — can fail spectacularly in another. Perhaps even worse is when it doesn’t fail spectacularly, but just quietly degrades the experience. It can be surprisingly difficult to notice when a habit which is “obviously” the way something is done is actually wrecking your game.

A subtle example of this is how you call for a skill check.

Some RPGs, of course, don’t even have skill checks. If you’re used to running systems with skill checks, that’s a big ol’ tip-off that you’ll need to run skill checks differently in this game.

But RPGs that have skills can be broadly broken down into two categories: those with discrete skills and those with overlapping skills.

In a system with discrete skills, each task will clearly fall into the purview of a single skill. This means that the GM can call for a specific check: “Give me Knowledge: Science.”

In a system with overlapping skills, on the other hand, there might be multiple skills that could apply to the current task. For example, a PC might be able to use Knowledge: Science, but they might also be able to use Quantum Mechanics, Stellar Lore, or even Organic Chemistry (depending on exactly what strange phenomenon they’re attempting to analyze).

If a GM familiar with discrete skill systems calls for specific skill checks in a system with overlapping skills, it will either create a much muddier interaction or even end up needlessly neutering PC abilities (if, for example, no one realizes they should actually be making a Stellar Lore check because that’s the skill they actually have). In a system with overlapping skills, what the GM should generally be doing is describing what the skill check is for and then letting the players identify what skill they can use for it.

GM: I need a skill check to identify a weird space rock that’s glowing with some kind of bioluminescence.

Player 1: Can I use Stellar Lore?

GM: Sounds good.

Player 2: Bioluminescence? Could I use Organic Chemistry?

GM: That works.

I, personally, have a weak preference for systems with discrete skills. I like the clean clarity of “give me Skill X,” and it also makes it easier to call for skill checks without first telling the player exactly what the check is for.

But there are definitely advantages to overlapped skill systems. Such systems tend to be used in games with a lot more detail in their skill systems (e.g. GURPS, which has skills for Biology, Chemistry, Naturalist, Paleontology, and Physiology), allowing players a lot more control in describing and distinguishing their characters. Such systems also require players to think about HOW their character is going to approach a particular task or problem, and they can also encourage players to think fiction-first (and discourage GMs from preemptively describing a mechanical solution).

You can also, as seen in our example above, easily end up in situations with people rolling different skills for the same task: Five different people all making the same skill check just skews the probability of success. But successes with different skills can be used to provide different insights into the problem.

The drawback, of course, is that negotiating/identifying which skill(s) to use can be awkward of belabored. There’s not a One True Answer™ here, just different techniques that have different strengths and weaknesses. Understanding those strengths and weaknesses, however, will let you steer towards the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of whatever system you’re currently using.

THE SPECTRUM

Of course, in practice, many RPGs won’t fit perfectly into either the “discrete” or “overlapped” categories. Even systems with heavily discrete skills will likely still have some situations that fall into a gray area. Other systems may have mostly discrete skills, but then a few skill areas with a lot of overlap.

D&D 5^th Edition is an example of this: Most of the skills in the game are very discrete, with the exception of Athletics and Acrobatics, where the distinctions of which physical activities fall into which box can get really hazy. (This is particularly true if you use the, frankly superior in every way and it should be the standard rule, method of allowing skills to be used with multiple ability scores.) And D&D 5^th Edition also has tool proficiencies, which largely operate as a secondary skill system with a ton of vague overlap.

It can be useful to identify these specific features of a skill system and resolve skills appropriately: For example, I tend to call for specific skill checks when running D&D 5^th Edition, except when it comes to Athletics and Acrobatics where I’ll generally say something like, “Give me an Athletics or Acrobatics check,” acknowledging the huge overlap between those skills. And I’ll also say things like, “Give me any appropriate tool proficiency for trying to repair the broken device.”

PLAYER-DEFINED SKILLS

Many RPGs, like Numenera or Dresden Files, have begun using player-defined skills: Rather than having a specific skill list that players choose from, players are free to make up any skill that feels appropriate to them. Such systems encourage fiction-first character creation, and can also create wonderfully evocative character sheets: Lore of the Northern Hills, Greatest Avadrakai Flyer in Parloun, Savage Brawler, etc.

Depending on your predilections, you may find it useful to compile a list of the skills your players have created for their PCs, which you can then often use as a discrete skill list.

On the other hand, I often find it convenient to just treat these systems as being massively overlapped, always calling for skill checks by describing the task and letting players propose which cool skill they’ve created could best apply.

SKILL TREE SYSTEMS

Some RPGs feature skill trees, allowing for characters to purchase both broad skills and then hyper-specialize. For example, a skill like Science might have sub-skills below it on the tree like:

• Physics
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Astronomy
• Quantum Mechanics

And so forth. It’s not unusual for a skill tree system to feature multiple levels, so Chemistry, on the list above, might have additional specialties like Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Geochemistry, etc.

Skill tree systems, by their very nature, are overlapped skill systems. (Physics, Biology, etc. all overlap with Science.) But when correctly designed and used they can offer a lot of the advantages of an overlapped skill system, while also smoothing some of the potential awkwardness of calling for skill checks.

For example, a GM can call for a top-level skill check — e.g., “Give me a Science check” — and players can then, with focus, ask if their specific specialty applies. (“Can I use Biology?” “Yes.”)

Alternatively, the GM can call for a more specific skill — e.g., “Give me a Quantum Mechanics check” — and the player can immediately know that they can default to their general Science skill.

What defaulting to a less specific skill means will often be defined by the mechanics of the system (e.g., it’s made at a penalty), but that also serves as a convenient transition to…

PENUMBRAL SKILLS

In addition to gray areas where a particular task could be covered equally well by two or more skills, and therefore you could make the check with either, you can also end up with a situation where a secondary skill could apply, but clearly not as well as whatever the primary skill(s) for the check would be.

In other words, a task that exists in the penumbra of a particular skill. For example:

Player 2: Bioluminescence? Could I use Organic Chemistry?

GM: It’s not exactly your area of expertise, but I’ll allow it.

You can, of course, rarely go wrong by defaulting to yes in these situations. But it may also be appropriate to allow the check, but only with:

• A penalty (“make your Organic Chemistry check at -25%”),
• Disadvantage (or similar mechanic if your system offers it), or
• Limited results (a success with Organic Chemistry just won’t reveal everything a Stellar Lore check can about this weird asteroid)

In the case of offering limited results, you don’t necessarily need to tell the player that this is the case. If your system offers something like a critical or exceptional success, it might also be appropriate to use those outcomes to boost the limited result back to a normal result for our hypothetical organic chemist.

We resolve actions in RPGs by making checks, right? I’m not actually a master swordsman, but I can use my attack bonus to slay dragons. And I’m not actually a master thief, but I can use my Pick Locks skill to open a door. So even though I’m not as smart as my wizard with Intelligence 20, I should be able to make an Intelligence check to solve a riddle, right?

But, if so, why does that feel so unsatisfying?

Broadly speaking, it’s for the same reason that we don’t “solve” crosswords where the answers have already been penciled in.

We can also think of this in terms of the Czege Principle:

When one person is the author of both the character’s adversity and its resolution, play isn’t fun.

In the case of a riddle or puzzle, the resolution is, of course, figuring out the answer. If the interaction at the table is:

GM: Like the sun in a snowstorm, I must be broken before I can be used. What am I? Give me an Intelligence check.

Player: 18.

GM: The answer is, “An egg.”

The player has been excluded from participating. (And this largely remains true even if we muddy up the middle step a bit by, for example, requiring the player to say, “I’ll make an Intelligence check.”)

In The Art of Rulings, I propose three thresholds for making a ruling:

1. Passive observation is automatically triggered.
2. Player expertise activates character expertise.
3. Player expertise can trump character expertise.

If you apply this metric to riddle-solving, you generally end up in a similar place: Player expertise activating character expertise means that “the characters don’t play themselves.” The players have to make some meaningful input in order to activate their character’s expertise (e.g. deciding to search a chest for traps in order to activate their character’s mechanical Search check), and in the case of a riddle or puzzle the only meaningful input is figuring out the solution. (Which, of course, obviates the need for the check.)

To put this a different way: The only meaningful part of solving a riddle is the LAST step. So if you reduce the solution to a mechanical check, you have taken all meaning away from the player.

Engage the players through their characters. If you’re ONLY engaging the characters, then the players are no longer playing the game.

BUT I WANT TO CHECK!

But let’s say that you (or your players) WANT to make the Intelligence check. This is generally due to one of two reasons:

First, the PCs are stuck and they need a solution to the riddle or puzzle in order to proceed.

Second, the players wants to play a character who is smarter than they are. Just like some players want to play a character who can win a heavyweight title bout (even though they absolutely cannot do that in real life), you’ll have players who want to solve riddles and puzzles that would be impossible for them in real life.

Fortunately, there are some techniques you can use without making riddles and puzzles meaningless.

NON-ESSENTIAL RIDDLES

The first thing you can do is make the riddle non-essential.

For example, consider the riddle of Moria’s door in The Fellowship of the Rings.

‘What does the writing say?’ asked Frodo, who was trying to decipher the inscription on the arch. ‘I thought I knew the elf-letters but I cannot read these.’

`The words are in the elven-tongue of the West of Middle-earth in the Elder Days,’ answered Gandalf. ‘But they do not say anything of importance to us. They say only: The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter. And underneath small and faint is written: I, Narvi, made them. Celebrimbor of Hollin drew these signs.’

`What does it mean by speak, friend, and enter?’ asked Merry.

‘That is plain enough,’ said Gimli. `If you are a friend, speak the password, and the doors will open, and you can enter.’

‘Yes,’ said Gandalf, ‘these doors are probably governed by words. Some dwarf-gates will open only at special times, or for particular persons; and some have locks and keys that are still needed when all necessary times and words are known. These doors have no key. In the days of Durin they were not secret. They usually stood open and doorwards sat here. But if they were shut, any who knew the opening word could speak it and pass in. At least so it is recorded, is it not, Gimli?’

‘It is,’ said the dwarf. `But what the word was is not remembered. Narvi and his craft and all his kindred have vanished from the earth.’

‘But do not you know the word, Gandalf?’ asked Boromir in surprise.

`No!’ said the wizard.

In order to open the door, they have to figure out the password! There’s only one solution!

… but that’s not the only way to open the door, is it? Particularly if it was a D&D group:

• They could break it down.
• They could trick the lake monster into breaking it for them.
• They could prepare and cast a knock spell.

It’s also not the only way into Moria. They could, for example, try to climb the mountain and enter through one of the windows or ventilation shafts.

Plus, they technically don’t need to get into Moria at all:

• They could go back and try to cross Caradhras again.
• They could go south through the Gap of Rohan.
• They could abandon their overland journey entirely, retreat to a western port, and sail to Gondor.

This is similar to the Three Clue Rule: If there are multiple paths to the goal, then a puzzle the players can’t figure out rendering one of them inaccessible is not a critical problem. So if the only reason you were making the check was because you felt compelled to force an answer on the players, making sure that the riddle or puzzle isn’t a single point of failure for the scenario (and being open to player suggestions for how they might route around it) sidesteps the problem.

ROLLING FOR CLUES

Speaking of the Three Clue Rule, let’s put a spin on our earlier example of unsatisfying play and consider a different type of puzzle:

GM: Lord Arthur D’armount has been murdered! Give me an Intelligence check.

Player: 18

GM: Bob did it.

That’s clearly absurd, right?

But nevertheless, a murder investigation scenario will almost always feature players using their character’s skills to search for clues and identify the ash as coming from a Trichinopoly cigar in a moment of Holmesian brilliance. Why does that work?

The difference is that these checks (or other mechanics) are delivering clues. It’s still the players who use those clues and take the rewarding final step of figuring out what they mean.

And when someone playing a super-genius character like Sherlock Holmes or Reed Richards or Wile E. Coyote wants to make an IQ check to solve a riddle, we can do the same thing: Instead of giving them the solution, we give them a clue.

When we’re talking about a murder mystery, this distinction between clue and conclusion can feel fairly obvious. If we’re talking about Myst-like puzzles or Gollum-style riddle battles, on the other hand, it can be a little harder to figure out clues that aren’t just the solution.

This is often more art than science and will be heavily dependent on the specific riddle or puzzle, but a trick I frequently find useful is to break the riddle or puzzle apart conceptually and then give clues that only make one part of the riddle or puzzle more explicit. For example, let’s look at the simple riddle we used at the beginning of this essay:

Like the sun in a snowstorm, I must be broken before I can be used.

We could look at the first part of the riddle (“like a sun in a snowstorm”) and say, “You’re pretty sure the ‘sun’ and ‘snowstorm’ are referring to colors.”

Something else we can learn from mysteries is that you can also deliver clues to riddles or puzzles diegetically. Like Henry Jones, Sr.’s journal in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the PCs can piece together lore and rumor, and perhaps investigate the area around the puzzle, for hints to the puzzle’s solution. If there are a bunch of large stone pillars, each etched with a strange rune, for example:

• Researching the runes in a library might be useful in identifying which runes are related to each other.
• Searching around the pillars might discover scrape marks on the floor, indicating that they’ve been moved around.
• A giant-slayer’s journal might describe the relevant rules of Brobdingnagian chess.

And some of these, of course, might also be things that a successful Arcana or Giant Lore check would recall.

Published scenarios often teach us that scenario hooks are a bang-bang interaction: The mysterious stranger in the corner of the tavern tells us about a mysterious artifact, hires us to go look for it, and we immediately head to the dungeon to retrieve it.

Or we’re traveling along an idyllic country road when we come across the smoking remnants of a merchant’s wagon that was attacked by goblins. The ranger finds their tracks and leads us back to their warren.

There’s nothing wrong with these bang-bang hooks. But they’re disproportionately represented in published adventures because the writers have no way of knowing what’s been happening in your campaign: Everything you need to run and play the adventure has to be self-contained in the adventure.

But as the GM, you do know what’s been going on in your campaign. In fact, you can control it. That gives you the power to easily do so much better than the author of that published scenario.

• What if, instead of a “mysterious stranger,” it’s a long-time ally or patron of the PCs? Someone they’ve built a relationship with.
• What if instead of fetching an artifact that an NPC wants, the McGuffin is something that the PCs need to accomplish their goals? Maybe the stranger isn’t buying their services, but selling them information.
• Instead of a random merchant, what if the goblins attacked someone the PCs know and care about?
• What if the goblins don’t just materialize out of thin air, but are a threat people in the local village have been talking about for weeks? Or are part of a goblin clan that the PCs have fought before?

These kinds of long-term threads will weave the adventure into your campaign. The stakes will be higher, and more meaningful to the players, because they aren’t just transitory concerns.

Long-term scenario hooks can be implemented in a variety of ways (and have a variety of effects) depending on the campaign structure you’re using, but for the sake of simplicity let’s focus on episodic campaigns for the moment — the players are presented with a single scenario; they complete the scenario; then they get presented with the next scenario.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to implement long-term scenario hooks. First, you can retrofit the hook. When you pick or design your next adventure, you simply look back at the campaign to date and figure out how to use the existing continuity to hook the new adventure. What are the PCs trying to accomplish? What do they want? Who do they care about? Who do they hate? What are your players talking about between sessions? Just dangle it on the hook.

The other option is to plan for the hook. Which is basically what it says on the tin: If you know what adventures you’re planning to run later in the campaign, take a peek at them and think about how you can incorporate and foreshadow those elements into the earlier adventures of the campaign.

EXAMPLE: JOURNEYS THROUGH THE RADIANT CITADEL

SPOILER WARNING

As an example of what this prep might look like, let’s take a peek at Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. This adventure anthology, shepherded into existence by project leads Ajit A. George and F. Wesley Schneider, is a collection of thirteen D&D 5^th Edition adventures designed for PCs from 1^st level through 14^th level. Although loosely bound by the conceit that the adventures are set in a location which can be reached via the transplanar nexus of the Radiant Citadel, each adventure is a completely standalone experience.

Nevertheless, it seems quite likely that many DMs will run Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel as an episodic campaign, running each adventure in sequence, one after the other.

So how could we prep long-term scenario hooks for these adventures?

To start with, the tiers of play in D&D 5^th Edition make for a handy rule of thumb here: To set yourself up for success, you should be dropping the groundwork for your Tier 2 and Tier 3 adventures in the Tier 1 adventures of your campaign.

The Tier 1 adventures in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel are:

• Salted Legacy, in which the PCs get caught up in family drama and business rivalry in the Dyn Singh Night Market.
• Written in Blood, in which the PCs journey to a farming commune to uncover the source of an undead curse.
• The Fiend of Hollow Mine, in which the PCs must hunt down a demon-spawn which has unleashed a plague in San Citlán.

Using these scenarios as the foundation for our campaign, let’s take a look a the scenario hooks for the next several adventures in the anthology. One of the great things about Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is that the designers have included multiple scenario hooks for each scenario, so we’ll have some nice flexibility in what we can work with.

Wages of Sin includes this scenario hook:

Zinda’s March of Vice is famous throughout the region. An influential ally of the characters requests that they attend and, while they’re there, purchase a bottle of jeli wine to be used as a gift in a diplomatic negotiation.

Let’s go back to “Salted Legacy.” The ally requesting the jeli wine purchase could actually be Lamai Tyenmo, the owner of Tyenmo Noodles who hired the PCs. But let’s also find ways of pointing forward: At the end of “Salted Legacy,” perhaps Tyenmo asks the PCs to keep their eyes open for interesting ingredients and drinks that she might use to create new noodle dishes and enhance her menu. (That’s a nice, open-ended link, because it’s quite likely the players will find ways to continue engaging with it in every adventure. “Hmm… I wonder aurumvorax steak noodles would taste like?”)

In “Wages of Sin,” the PCs get involved with Madame Samira Arah, a King of Coin (one of the rulers of Zinda), and her investigation into a series of attempted political assassinations. It might be nice to pre-establish her. If we reach back to “Written in Blood,” one of the hooks is:

A trader the characters have had past dealings with — perhaps from the Radiant Citadel or the Dyn Singh Market — invites the characters to Promise to participate in a business deal with Aunt Dellie.

We’ll have this merchant be Samira Arah. She’s been doing some economic outreach and the guards she had with her took ill after their visit to San Citlán. One of the merchants from “Salted Legacy” recommended the PCs to her, and she contacts them in the Radiant Citadel.

Sins of Our Elders takes place in Yeonido during the week-long Dan-Nal Festival. One of the hooks involves the PCs being invited to attend the festival by a family member or friend. You can look to the PCs’ backgrounds for the family member or friend (who might be native to Yeonido or might just want to visit), but we can add a little foreshadowing by having Samira Arah mention in “Written in Blood” that her next festival envoy will be to Yeonido.

Gold for Fools and Princes takes place in the Sensa Empire, where the empire’s rich gold mines are disrupted by an infestation of gold-eating aurumvoraxii. The big thing we’d really like to pre-establish here is the Empire’s reputation for goldsmithing and the powerful Aurum Guild. This should be fairly easy: Lady Drew, the trader from “Written in Blood,” can try to sell the PCs Sensan gold. In “The Fiend of Hollow Mine,” some of the miners who worked in the now-abandoned mine can talk about traveling to Sensa to see if they can find work with the Aurum Guild.

Trail of Destruction brings the PCs to Etizalan, where an increase in volcanic activity is threatening settlements across the region.

The Shieldbearers of the Radiant Citadel [think fantasy UN Peacekeepers] hire the characters to visit Tletepec to verify rumors that the region is becoming dangerous, so that they can prepare for an influx of refugees. They suggest the PCs start their investigations near Etizalan.

Here we want to pre-establish the Shieldbearers. We can do that by having them question the PCs after end the regional plague in “The Fiend of Hollow Mine.” We could also add a small squad of Shieldbearers active in the region — trying to bring aid to the plague victims — that the PCs could encounter earlier in the adventure.

And that’s more or less all there is to it. Obviously, you could also continue weaving these threads through the later adventures. For example, if the PCs are getting on well with Samira Arah, she might send them to the Goldwarrens on some errand as the primary scenario hook for “Gold for Fools and Princes.”

FOR THE DESIGNERS

Although I opened this discussion by saying that published adventures were predisposed to bang-bang hooks and that it’s impossible for adventure writers to know the continuity of the campaigns of the GMs who choose to run the adventure, it’s NOT true that you can’t design long-term scenario hooks for published adventures.

The trick is to simply prep tools and content that GMs can use before your adventure begins.

A tool I’ve developed in my work as a designer are groundwork sidebars. (These are one of several scenario tools you can used in published adventures.) Groundwork sidebars give the GM examples of how material can be incorporated into earlier adventures; it’s literally laying the groundwork for the adventure.

You can find numerous examples of this in the Welcome to the Island adventure anthology for Over the Edge, for example.

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Advanced Gamemastery: The Campaign Stitch

Techniques like the Three Clue Rule and node-based scenario design can make mystery and conspiracy scenarios a joy to run and play with confidence. These structures are designed to make sure that the players get the information they need to understand complicated enigmatic situations, while also being empowered to make meaningful choices about what they want to do.

But what happens if they forget they have the information?

This generally isn’t a problem in a short scenario or one-shot, but it can be easy to lose track of stuff between sessions. And if a campaign is focused on unraveling a massive conspiracy, the investigation might span months or even years of time in the real world.

Now the Grade-A solution for this is to have at least one player in your group who is engaged, enthused, and rigorously keeps detailed notes. They’ll backstop the rest of the group and make sure fine details don’t get missed.

But while there are things you can do to encourage or even create players like that, not all of us will be so blessed. And there are also a lot of reasons why it’s good to get as much of the group up to speed as possible.

I’ve previously talked about how one of the most potent tools in a GM’s arsenal is a simple question:

What are you planning to do next session?

Because it allows you to focus and target your prep with confidence.

But before asking that question at the end of a session, first ask the players to briefly summarize what they feel their current options are: What do they know? Where do they think they could take the investigation next?

THEN ask them what they want to do next time.

This is the best time to do this, obviously, because the game is still fresh in their minds and they’re engaged in the moment. Take notes on what they say. At the beginning of the next session, ask them to recap the previous session and use the notes of what they said to fill in the gaps.

The best way to do this is as a discussion: Prompt them to provide what they recall, then fill in the gaps as they come up with what their former selves said but they’ve forgotten.

There are a couple reasons for doing this. First, the act of summarizing what they know and what they plan to do at the end of the previous session will, all by itself, improve their recall in the next session. Second, it makes it less likely that you — biased by your own knowledge of what’s important and what the correct conclusions are — will unconsciously put your thumb on the scale when summarizing things for them.

If you make this procedure habitual, it also becomes increasingly likely that the players will start jotting down these notes themselves and possibly even reviewing them between sessions.

(You can prompt this a bit by initiating an e-mail discussion on this stuff a few days before the next session, although this does carry the risk that the players will change their minds about what they want to do next, possibly misfooting your prep.)

TAKING NOTES

Here’s something else to note. Take a look around the table: The players have pencils. They have characters sheets. You may be surprised by how often they don’t actually have any spare paper to actually take notes with!

Provide them with that material. Something I like to do is to buy the players some cheap (but ideally flavorful) pocket notebooks and hand them out in the first session. (For example, stamp TOP SECRET! on the cover for a spy game. Or print a map of the game world and paste it to the cover.) It’s a nice little campaign gift, and also sends a message that they’re going to want to take notes in this campaign!

Another technique you can use is to reward players who prepare campaign journals. (This both encourages note-taking and also creates a shared document that can be referenced.) With receptive players, you can lean into this and create rich bluebooking for the campaign. (I discuss bluebooking in more detail here.)

You can also bypass note-taking entirely by encoding essential clues into props: Letters, business cards, photographs, maps, lore books — whatever you’re comfortable executing. Putting the clue into a physical item that you hand to the players creates a permanent reference. They no longer need to remember the clue; they can pick it up and look at it again at any time.

When a PC dies, their player is left without an avatar to interact with the game world. This means that they can no longer play the game, and are forced to simply sit and wait while everyone else keeps playing.

This is not necessarily a terrible thing. There are many players who thoroughly enjoy the audience stance and can have a grand old time being entertained watching their fellow players trying to haul their corpse back to civilization for a raise dead spell (or seeking bloody vengeance for their death, whatever the case may be). But, generally speaking, you don’t want the players of a game to be in a position where they can’t play the game.

In Random GM Tips: Backup PCs we discussed a variety of techniques you can use to shorten the amount of time players are in this purgatory. But there will likely still be spans of time when they’re twiddling their thumbs.

So what can you do?

Have them assume the role of an NPC. This character might be an ally or companion of the PCs, in which case the role become sort of a temporary PC, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s quite possible for players to step into any supporting character or even assume the role of foes.

IN COMBAT

A fairly easy time to do this is during combat: A fight breaks out, you hand the idle player one of the monster’s stat blocks, and you ask them to roll for initiative.

It’s just that simple. They might be playing for the other “team,” but they’re actively playing the game. (And if the monster they’re controlling gets killed, you can always pass them the stat block of another.)

Combat can often be the most time-consuming — and also the least interesting if you’re not actively participating — part of play, so keeping a player engaged during these encounters can solve most of the problem all by itself.

There are a couple things to consider here. First, what if the player sandbags the encounter for the benefit of the other PCs? Ideally you have a player who can embrace the challenge, but if this is a concern simply give them an ancillary stat block instead of the central bad guy in the encounter.

Second, what if the player goes all-in and ruthlessly takes down the PCs? This becomes an issue if you’re designing encounters that are too difficult and then dumbing the NPCs down so that they don’t crush the PCs. The short version is that you should stop doing that. But if this is a concern, then you may want to rethink using this technique (or, once again, give the player a less power member of the encounter that’s less likely to go PC stomping).

These minor concerns aside, the reason this works so well is that:

• Monster stat blocks are designed to be picked up and played.
• The monster’s agenda in combat is so straightforward (defeat the PCs) that it probably doesn’t even have to be explained in words.

So it’s very easy for the player to grab the monster and jump straight into play.

IN ROLEPLAYING

We can learn from lessons from this as we consider how a dormant player can successfully step into an NPC’s role in other scenes.

The first thing we would need is a briefing sheet (similar to a monster’s stat block) that can be handed to the player and bring them up to speed on everything they need to know about the NPC. Fortunately, if you’re using the universal NPC roleplaying template, it basically solves this problem.

The second thing we need to do is clearly communicate to the player what the NPC’s agenda is. Outside of combat this can get quite complicated and/or nuanced, but you don’t want to spend a lot of time briefing the player in (which kind of defeats the purpose of keeping everyone involved, can wreck the pacing, and can easily overwhelm and stress out the player). Try to select roles with simple, straightforward agendas (like, “you need to make sure Old Bill tells the PCs that he saw Murray by the shed at 1 A.M. last night”). These might even be conveniently summarized in the Key Info section of the roleplaying templates (neatly killing two birds with one stone).

Take advantage of these moments, too. For example, it’s always challenging for the GM to stage a scene where multiple NPCs talk to each other. But if an NPC is being played by a player, suddenly the NPCs can have a true conversation at the table!

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL…

This technique also works even if the PC isn’t dead. Maybe they’re imprisoned, in a coma, in flagrante delicto, or simply across town staking out the warehouse belonging to the Quicksilver Corporation. Whatever reason the PC might have for not being in the current scene, you can bring the player into the scene through the supporting cast.

It can also be used for new players, who might assume a supporting role at the beginning of their first session until you can arrange for their character to join the group. An extreme example of this, for me, was a Trail of Cthulhu campaign in which the group was on an expedition in the middle of a trackless waste. The new player assumed the existing role of an NPC guide and, due to an unforeseen swerve in events, ended up playing this character for several sessions before their own character could be brought into the ongoing events.

In another case, during the first session of a campaign, the players had set things up so that their new characters would meet each other when a caravan arrived in a new town. (Some of the characters would logically be with the caravan, and others would be in town.) But, for various reasons, I wanted the caravan to be attacked on its way to town. Rather than leave half the group dormant, I immediately handed them the monster stat blocks and had them plan out the ambush on the caravan.

When using this technique, particularly with the not-so-deceased, you may want to keep one eye on spoilers. Make sure your NPC briefing sheets don’t contain sensitive information that the PCs/players shouldn’t have access to yet. You may also find that some players really WOULD prefer to remain in an audience stance rather than splitting their attention into a new role. Try to be aware of that and respect it.