Go to Part 1

If you’re a beginning GM, I encourage you to really practice framing and running roleplaying scenes using the introductory tips above. You can get a lot of mileage out of them, and you’ll honestly benefit a lot by running a dozen or more sessions like that while you get comfortable

When you’re ready to start spicing things up, though, here are a few intermediate tips you can use.

INTERMEDIATE TIP #1: ADDING CHARACTERS

First, as we’ve noted, it’s not at all unusual to have roleplaying scenes with multiple NPCs present. To get comfortable with this, I recommend starting out with no more than two major NPCs and then expanding from there. (It’s just like adding a second ball when you’re learning how to juggle.)

Being crystal clear in the NPCs’ touchstones and objectives will help a lot here.

For the touchstones, not only will their distinct mannerisms help you swap from one character to the other; it will really help the players keep track of who’s talking.

When it comes to objectives, I recommend starting out with scenes in which the two NPCs have goals which are in direct conflict with each other. This sharp distinction will not only, once again, make it easier for you to keep the two characters clear as you’re swapping between them, it will also inherently create an interesting dynamic in which the PCs will be “forced” to choose which NPC’s agenda they agree with.

Bonus Tip: It takes extra prep, but if you have a picture of each NPC, print them up as tent cards that you can display on the table in front of you or on top of your GM screen. It can really help the group keep track of all the NPCs in the scene, and you can also just reach out and lightly tap each NPC’s portrait as they speak.

INTERMEDIATE TIP #2: INCORPORATING SCENERY

When you’re just getting started, it’s okay to just stay focused on the dialogue — what your NPC is hearing and what they’re saying in response. There’s plenty of drama to be found in words.

But these conversations are not taking place in formless voids. The characters are physically present in the game world — a moldering dungeon, a sweltering swamp house, or chrome-plated neon nightclub. As the GM, it’s up to you to make sure that reality remains present in the minds of the players. It’s not enough to just talk in character; you need to periodically drop in descriptions of the environment.

It seems simple, but you may be surprised how much extra brain power it takes to make this happen. After all, your focus is going to be on the conversation; the back-and-forth of your witty repartee. It’ll be really easy to just let everything else drop away.

You’ll also find it difficult to motivate or justify these descriptive dollops: Why, exactly, are we mentioning the color of the linoleum floor again?

• Don’t just repeat what you’ve already said. Add new details and engage new senses. If you’ve described what the interrogation room looks like, now it’s time to talk about the sickly smell in the air. If you said that there was a table in the middle of the room, maybe now you can describe how the tabletop feels sticky to the touch.
• Let the scene evolve. In busy environments, describe what background characters are doing (e.g., a maid passes through the chamber dusting, loud cheers come from the roulette table, etc.). The smell of dinner cooking might drift in from the kitchen. The light outside the window might shift or a storm roll in.
• Describe the physical actions of the NPC and connect those actions to the environment. (You can combine this with miming the actions yourself if it feels appropriate.) They pace across the cream carpet; they rap their knuckles on the conference table; they glance nervously towards the double doors.
• When you’re not sure what an NPC should say next, take advantage of the moment to re-establish the scenery. (“Tom pauses, turning to gaze into the crackling fireplace.”) This pulls double duty, not only grounding the scene back into the game world, but also buying you a moment to figure out what Tom should say.

If you’re feeling really ambitious, go for the full-blown Sorkin walk-and-talk. Perhaps the conversation is happening while the characters are riding through town on horseback, and you can periodically describe the sights they see as they ride along. Or they arrive at a party and have a conversation with the host as he leads them deeper into his mansion.

INTERMEDIATE TIP #3: ROLEPLAYING ON THE INITIATIVE COUNT

In much the same way that being immersed in a roleplaying scene can make it easy to stop describing the rest of the game world, so, too, is it easy to forget to roleplay your NPCs during other scenes.

During combat, for example, you’re often juggling all kinds of stuff while simultaneously dealing with an ultra-slow pace and the artificially stilted action sequencing of the initiative order. Even though many of our favorite fight scenes from movies and comic books are filled to the brim with dialogue, it can be really easy for an RPG fight scene to play out like a silent film.

If this is true for you, too, then leverage the initiative system by giving Dialogue an initiative count separate from the NPCs: When you hit that initiative count, it’s a cue to have one or more of your NPCs say something.

For a more detailed breakdown of this technique, check out Random GM Tip: Roleplaying Initiative.

Bonus Tip: Once you get a conversation running in-tandem with your fight scenes, it’s an opportunity to give your character’s an objective other than “kill the other guy,” For example, maybe they want to get information from the PCs (how did they find us? or where is the Ruby Ark?). This adds a whole extra dimension of drama and interest to the scene.

INTERMEDIATE TIP #4: BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

Over the course of a campaign, you’re going to have a lot of roleplaying scenes, many of which will likely feature NPCs that the PCs have interacted with before. Ideally, the PCs (and their players) will begin developed relationships with NPCs over time.

To help foster and develop these relationships, it’s important that your NPCs also change and grow over time. If they’re the exact same cardboard cutout every time the PCs talk to them, they’ll never feel like “real” people and the players will never invest in them. Relationships, by their very nature, must build over time.

Obviously, every relationship is unique and how it develops over time will depend on what actually happens during play. But here are two rules of thumb that can help make sure they keep moving:

• Ask yourself: What is one thing this NPC has done since they last saw the PCs? This may or may not come up in conversation, but you should generally try to find an excuse to drop it in somewhere.
• Have the NPC ask the PCs what they’ve been up to since the last time they saw them.

You don’t need to shove these in immediately as soon as the scene begins. (Although they can be good icebreakers if you need one.) In fact, they’re generally more effective if you can work them organically into the flow of the conversation. (“Have I heard anything about Marc Redfern? You know, it’s funny you ask, but when I was in Berlin last week attending the peace conference…”) Note that you don’t need to preplan how you’ll incorporate them; just look for opportunities where the anecdote can usefully contextualize information or an argument or whatever the conversation happens to be about.

Bonus Tip: Also think about how the NPC’s attitude towards the PCs may have shifted since their last interaction, either due to their last interaction or because of offscreen events in the interim. (Does the NPC have different attitudes towards different PCs?)

CONCLUSION

Even with these intermediate tips, we’re still only scratching the surface of what’s possible in a great roleplaying scene: It turns out that people are complicated.

But hopefully by breaking some of that complexity down into simple, basic rules of thumb, you’ll be able to take your first steps with confidence.

When you’re ready to take things even further, check out the Universal NPC Roleplaying Template.

FURTHER READING
Prep Tips for the Beginning DM
Prep Tips for the Beginning GM: Cyberpunk
Failure for the Beginning GM
Pacing for the Beginning GM

Players have it easy.

They have exactly one character. They can focus all of their attention on portraying that character. And once they get into character, they can basically just stay in character for the entire session.

As a GM, on the other hand, you have to portray everyone else in the entire universe! Not only will you almost certainly need to swap between multiple roles during the session, you’ll simultaneously need to be handling your adventure notes, world description, and pacing, not to mention all of the rules! Plus, there can easily be scenes where you need to play multiple characters all at the same time!

That’s quite the juggling act.

So let’s see if we can simplify it down a bit and get things off on the right foot.

INTRO TIP #1: PICK YOUR ROLE

Simple interactions with a single NPC in a scene where the sole focus is the roleplaying are, obviously, a good place to start because they let you stay focused and (relatively) undistracted. So, whenever possible, try to frame up your roleplaying scenes like this.

If you have a situation where the PCs are talking to a group of NPCs, pick one of them to be the “spokesman” of the group and focus on them. You can often ignore the rest of the group entirely, but you may find it useful to think of them as scenery: Occasionally have them agree or disagree with what’s being said, just to remind everyone that they’re there.

INTRO TIP #2: TOUCHSTONE

Create a physical touchstone for the NPC you’re roleplaying. Everyone defaults to an accent (i.e., talking in a funny voice) here, but it’s easier to do stuff like:

• This guy rubs his neck a lot.
• She sniffs imperiously.
• They nervously flip a coin.
• They lean forward
• They cock their head to the left when listening.
• They talk with a smirk.

This touchstone does not need to be clever or unique. It might be something you just do once or twice during a conversation, or it might be a persistent mannerism that the NPC does throughout the entire scene.

The touchstone gives the conversation a memorable hook and identity at the table. It’ll help the players to say, “Oh, yeah! It’s this guy again!” Making each NPC distinct — even in the most minor of ways — will make them more vivid, which will also help to make them feel more “real” to you and the players.

INTRO TIP #3: OBJECTIVE

The NPC should have an objective. What does the NPC want from this conversation/situation?

This should not complicated. You should be able to state it in a single, simple sentence. You might also find it useful to state the objective in the first person:

• I want the PCs to rescue my daughter.
• I want to get out of here.
• I want them to believe my lie.
• I need them to understand how dangerous this is.
• I want them to give me an excuse to help them.

The objective may or may not be in conflict with the PCs’ goals, but when in doubt, setting an objective of “the opposite of what the PCs want” is almost always an effective default.

The objective gives you focus: Whenever you’re unsure of what the NPC should say or do next, just ask yourself, “How can I accomplish my objective?”

INTRO TIP #4: RESOLUTION POINT

When a roleplaying scene begins, the characters will talk to each other for a bit. You’ll establish what the PCs’ goal(s) and the NPC’s objective are. Everyone will be working towards their desired outcome, and this will generally lead you to one of three outcomes.

First, it will become clear that some or all of the characters’ goals in the scene have been accomplished. (For example, the NPC wanted to convince the PCs to save his daughter and the PCs have agreed to do that.) When this happens, you can just wrap the scene up. Good work!

Second, the scene will be interrupted or transform into a different scene. Maybe a PC becomes so frustrated that they throw punch — BAM! Now you’re in a combat scene. Or an NPC realizes that the PCs are onto him, so he bolts and makes a run for it — VOOM! You’re in chase scene. (These scenes might revert to roleplaying scenes later.)

Third, everyone in the scene has made their best effort to accomplish their goal, but it remains uncertain who will succeed (if anyone). This is the moment to call for a social skill check or similar mechanic. If the result is a success, great! Describe the success and move the scene to its conclusion.

If the check is a failure, on the other hand, use one of the techniques from Failure for the Beginning GM to figure out what happens next.

The real trick, when the PCs have failed (e.g., this guy isn’t going to talk), is wrapping things up: Given the chance, players will gladly just spin their wheels trying to achieve the thing they’ve already failed to accomplish. The skill check will help with this, giving a clear point of demarcation, after which you can shift to summary: “You keep at him for another hour, but it’s clear he’s not going to break and there’s no point in continuing the questioning. You send him back to his cell. What do you want to do now?”

(The better players will also figure this out, take their cue from the result of the skill check, and help you bring the scene to its conclusion: “I shove him back into the chair in disgust. ‘Get him out of here, Tommy. Maybe rotting in his cell overnight will loosen his tongue.’” But you can’t always count on this.)

Scenes can get a lot more complicated than this, of course. But for right now, just keep your eye out for these three possible outcomes and you’ll be in good shape. (When you’re ready to dive deeper here, check out The Art of Pacing.)

Bonus Tip – Key Info: Paradoxically, it’s not unusual for an adventure to include an NPC for a reason that’s antithetical to what the NPC wants. A very common example is an NPC who knows something (e.g., a clue) that the PCs are supposed to learn (e.g., by interrogating the NPC) but which the NPC doesn’t want to tell them.

The key thing here is to go all-out in roleplaying the NPC’s objective. But then, as the GM, remember that YOUR goal isn’t to stonewall the PCs. You may also find techniques like Default to Yes and Failing Forward useful when resolving the scene.

Go to Part 2: Intermediate Tips

Pacing is tricky.

No matter what medium you’re working in — whether film, theater, prose, or roleplaying games — pacing is ephemeral, subjective, and devilishly difficult to get a grip on. Even absolute masters of pacing will struggle to teach it, and the few rules they offer seem to be more honored in the breach than the observance. Entire books about pacing in film have been written where the practical advice more or less boils down to, “Make the cut at the moment that feels right to you,” and, “Watch movies with really great pacing until you get a feel for it.”

How much more difficult is it, therefore, to teach (and learn!) effective pacing in a roleplaying game? A medium in which, even with the advent of actual play broadcasts, most of the artform is experienced only by those immediately participating?

Nevertheless, pacing is incredibly important. Even pedestrian material can be made compelling with effective pacing, and otherwise brilliant material can elicit glazed eyes and bored players if the pacing is plodding or unfocused.

So I’m going to do my best to give you some concrete, actionable advice for pacing your sessions.

Here are some basics of scene structure in RPGs that we need to understand before diving into pacing:

First, RPG sessions are made up of scenes.

Each scene is framed, introducing the location where the scene is taking place and the characters who are participating in it. (Characters may, of course, come and go as the scene continues. Some scenes will even change location, although a change of location more often suggests that a new scene is beginning.)

Each scene has an agenda, which is the reason we’re playing the scene. This can often be thought of in the form of a question that the scene is answering:

• Can the princess be wooed?
• Will Hou defeat Chaohui?
• Can the goblins convince the PCs to help them fight the dragon?
• Will Jack Hammer find the murder weapon?

If you can’t figure out what the agenda of the scene is (or if the answer is trivial or obvious), then it’s probably not worth playing it out and you should move onto the next interesting question and frame that scene.

When a scene is finished, the GM will either cut or transition to a new scene.

Broadly speaking, pacing can be understood as (a) the choice of when to end a scene, (b) the choice of how to start a new scene, and (c) the speed at which the scene plays out. Collectively, this also encompasses the speed at which the entire scenario and/or session plays out. (You may notice the emphasis on “speed.” That’s why we call it pacing. It’s all about controlling the speed of the narrative.)

THREE TIPS FOR THE BEGINNER

As a beginning GM, you’ve got a lot of balls to keep in the air. Pacing is one more ball that you need to figure out how to juggle, so I’ll give you a bonus tip before we even get started: You might want to leave the Pacing ball in the cupboard for a few sessions while you get a grip on everything else. To at least some extent, pacing will take care of itself, particularly if you’re starting with location-crawls (as I recommend in Prep Tips for the Beginning DM) and it can make a lot of sense to focus on just the essential balls (like making rulings) rather than trying to master everything at once and dropping all the balls on the floor.

When you’re feeling confident, though, here are three practical pacing tips to get your started.

If the scene is about achieving a logistical goal (e.g., interrogate a prisoner until they give you the information), cut to the next scene within one minute of the logistical goal being achieved. (Often you can cut immediately on the goal being achieved, but a little denouement/cooldown is often a good idea.)

Advanced Tip: If the PCs have a logistical goal whose achievement may not be immediately obvious (e.g., searching for clues or an interrogation; have we gotten all the information? or could we learn more?) hold up a sign that says WRAP SCENE on it. (You’ll want to explain this to the players ahead of time.) This gives players “permission” to exit the scene, while also giving them the space to wrap up any loose roleplaying ends they’re interested in.

If it’s a roleplaying scene, cut on the second lull. The first lull in the scene — that moment when the players seem a little uncertain about what they should be doing or saying — is often a pivot: The players have learned what the scene is about and the “uncertainty” is actually them figuring out what they want to do about it. Once they find that new direction, the scene will start chugging again and will often drive forward to a clear and satisfying conclusion.

If you hit a second lull, however, that’s a good sign that the scene’s function is done. Or, at the very least, that the question asked by the agenda cannot be answered this time (e.g., the princess is neither wooed nor unwooed, but no further progress on the wooing will be happening at this time).

If it’s a combat scene, your overriding goal is to resolve the fight faster. No, faster than that. Even faster. Faster. Faster … Okay, that’s not bad.

A few core techniques you can use to achieve this:

• Write down initiative (or whatever other form of clear recordkeeping your initiative system requires, like using a shot counter in Feng Shui). “Anybody going on 17? 16? What about 15?” is absolute death for pacing in combat.
• Put the players on deck. “The goblins are going and then it’ll be your turn, Rob.” Giving players the heads up that their turn is next helps keep them focused and speeds up both perceived and actual waiting times in combat — the former because they’re getting reengaged before their turn; the latter because you actually will be cycling through the initiative order faster.
• Get ahead on resolution by multitasking. Are you waiting for the PC fighter to roll their attack roll and damage? Roll the goblins’ attack dice so that they’ll be waiting when the goblins go next.
• Roll fistfuls of dice. Roll all the goblins’ attacks at the same time and/or roll attack & damage at the same time. If you can get the players doing the same thing, even better! (Check out Random GM Tip: Fistfuls of Dice for more details on this technique.)

As I said, the most important thing here is to keep combat moving as fast as possible. The quicker you cycle through each round of combat, the less time each individual player will be waiting to take their next action. Get it fast enough and the benefits will compound (as the players remain more engaged and can, therefore, resolve their actions faster, resulting in combat going even faster). But the reverse is also true: If combat is too slow, players will disengage, take longer to resolve their actions, and combat will slow down even more.

Advanced Tip: Roll initiative last. Instead of rolling initiative at the beginning of combat, have everyone roll their initiative at the end of the fight and then use those initiative scores for the next combat. That way, when the new fight starts, you can launch directly into it at full speed, instead of pausing to generate, record, and then sort initiative values. (You will, of course, need to anticipate upcoming combats and get your NPCs’ initiative scores recorded while, for example, the PCs are still walking down the hallway towards them.)

FOR THE INTERMEDIATE GM

You’ll have noticed that all of these tips are strictly about speeding things up: Shorter scenes. Faster scene transitions. Quicker combat resolution.

Speed is not, of course, the be-all and end-all of pacing. Quite the opposite: Sometimes you want a slow scene. Sometimes you want to build tension (and release it!). Sometimes you need to find the quiet moments. Sometimes the players need a breather.

But, as a beginning GM, the biggest and most effective improvement you can make to your pacing is to just get all the drag and dead air out of your sessions. So just focus on that for right now!

Once you’ve got everything tightened up and your sessions are humming along like a well-oiled machine, you’ll also be in a much better position to start thinking about where letting things relax is the right choice (and why). To put it another way: A slow-paced scene is only meaningful if (a) it’s a deliberate choice and (b) it stands in contrast to the other scenes in your game.

When you’re ready to take that next step, check out The Art of Pacing.

FURTHER READING
Prep Tips for the Beginning DM
Prep Tips for the Beginning GM: Cyberpunk
Failure for the Beginning GM
Roleplaying for the Beginning GM

The awesome thing about failure in roleplaying games is that it provokes creativity, heightens the stakes, and drives the adventure in interesting directions.

I would even go so far as to say that an adventure without meaningful failure is, all other things being equal, inherently worse than one with it.

Unfortunately, this may not be immediately obvious if you’re used to scenarios prepped as plots (i.e., a predetermined sequence of events). In a scenario prepped as a plot – particularly if the GM is using railroading to enforce that plot – there is only one path. And if there is only one path, any failure must be interpreted as temporary and, therefore, meaningless.

Failure is meaningful (and interesting) when it creates an obstacle or consequences, and therefore requires the creation of a new path.

Once again, if you’re used to prepping and running plots, this can sound incredibly daunting: With a plot you have to figure out how to reliably route the PCs from Scene A to Scene B. That’s non-trivial and if the pre-planned routing fails, improvising an alternate route on-the-fly is tough.

But if you’re prepping situations instead of plots, then the pre-planned route doesn’t exist. And if the pre-planned route doesn’t exist (or isn’t important), then it’s not even your job as the GM to come up with the alternate route! It’s the players’ job.

Despite this, though, you may find that failure is still just causing the wheels of the game to spin. Why?

Well, another common way in which failure can become meaningless is when unnecessary action checks are being resolved. As described in The Art of Rulings, action checks should generally only be made when failure is either interesting, meaningful, or both.

If you’re a beginning GM trying to figure out how to make failure meaningful, here’s a couple of simple techniques that you should be able to rely on.

INTRO TECHNIQUE #1: NO RETRIES

The easiest way to implement meaningful failure is to simply not allow retries: If you failed to pick the lock on the door, that failed check tells us that you’ll never be able to pick that lock. You did your best; it didn’t work.

Now what?

Kick it in? Cast a spell? Look for a different entrance? Look for a key? Seduce the housekeeper? I dunno. You tell me.

But as you can see from these example alternatives, each of these new paths creates interest: The PCs are leaving evidence or engaging in further exploration or creating new relationships. Arguably all of these are, in fact, more interesting than if they had simply picked the lock and gone through the door.

Note: A trap that you can fall into here is thinking, “Well, if failure is better, then I should just force everything to be a failure!” There’s a longer discussion to be had on this point, but the short version is: Success is also important if, for no other reason, than that the players will become increasingly frustrated if they can never actually accomplish anything. So let the dice fall where they may.

To be clear, this technique is not the be-all or end-all of how to adjudicate failure. There are more advanced or gradated techniques that can be used to good effect with practice. But if you’re just getting started, you don’t have to make it complicated.

INTRO TECHNIQUE #2: QUICK-AND-DIRTY FAILING FORWARD

Okay, so you’ve done that for a few sessions and you’re starting to get a feel for what meaningful failure looks like in actual play, but you’re also starting to chafe a little bit under the straitjacket of never allowing retries.

You’re ready to make it a little complicated.

What we’re going to use here is a technique called failing forward: The mechanical result of failure (e.g., rolling below the target number) is described as being a success-with-complications in the game world.

A simple rule of thumb for when you should use failing forward is whenever disallowing a retry feels a little weird to you: Why can’t the PC just try to pick the lock again?

In our first technique, the intended path fails and the PCs need to find an alternative path. Failing forward is a different way of making failure meaningful because you don’t annihilate the intended route (whether you prepped it or the players chose it). You just complicate it.

Coming up with interesting complications on-the-fly, though, can feel intimidating. So, when in doubt, just impose a cost: You succeed, but…

• You have to pay extra.
• You took damage.
• Your equipment broke.
• It took extra time (if that’s relevant).
• Someone knows you did it who you didn’t want to know.

If you have a better idea, great. But if not, these five broad categories can cover like 90% of fail forward checks. In fact, you’ll usually have multiple options. When picking a lock, for example:

• You open the door, but trigger the security trap. (You take damage.)
• You open the door, but your lockpick snapped off in the lock. (Your equipment broke.)
• You open the door, but it took twenty minutes and now you only have ten minutes before the Count returns home. (It took extra time and it was relevant.)

If nothing works and you can’t think of something outside the box, that’s fine: Either don’t make the check in the first place (just let them automatically succeed) or default back to no-retries-allowed and move forward.

Advanced Tip: You can get a little fancy here with a fortune in the middle technique by offering the cost to the player. For example, “You’ve almost got the lock open, but the hacked security camera is going to come back online. Do you stay and open the door or GTFO before the camera spots you?”

INTRO TECHNIQUE #3: BASIC PROGRESS CLOCK

A progress clock is a simple, visual way of tracking how close a particular outcome is to happening. There are a lot of different ways that you can use a progress clock, but for today, when the PCs fail their first check during an endeavor (e.g., sneaking into mansion, tracking a band of orcs, investigating a cult’s activities in Dweredell):

1. Create a progress clock by drawing a circle and dividing it into four, six, or eight parts.
2. Set a significant consequence or overall fail condition. (For example, security at the mansion realizes there are intruders and the alarm is raised, the PCs lose the trail of the orcs and can no longer follow them, or the cultists succeed in summoning a demon who begins rampaging though the Great Market).)
3. Whenever the PCs fail a relevant check, fill in one part of the progress clock.
4. When the progress clock is filled, trigger the consequence or fail condition.

This technique can be used with any type of action check, but for our purposes primarily provides a default consequence for failing forward: If you can’t think of any other consequences, just fill in the next section of the progress clock and explain the connection.

Progress clocks can exist in one of three states at that table:

• Open Clock: When you create the clock or fill in a section, you show it to the players. This is often the easiest method, making it crystal clear what the consequences of a failed check are with no fuss.
• Hidden Progress: When you create a clock, you directly or indirectly tell the players that it exists. (For example, when they’re sneaking into a mansion you can clearly state that there’s a risk the security team will detect them.) But the clock itself remains hidden. The players don’t know how large the clock is or exactly what the progress on the clock is. However, because the clock’s progress is hidden from them, you will need to clearly communicate the consequences of failure to them. (For example, if they fail forward on a lockpicking check, you might describe how they managed to get the door open, but they’ve left clear signs of tampering that might be noticed. Such explanations, you’ll note, will also inform exactly how the failure condition plays out – in this case, it’s possible that the alarm is sounded because someone noticed the damaged lock.)
• Secret Clock: You create the clock without telling the players it exists; it serves strictly as a tool for you to keep track of things. As with a hidden progress clock, it’s your responsibility to continue clearly communicating the consequences of failure to the players in your description of the game world.

Advanced Tip #1: Other events or actions can fill in sections of the progress clock even if there isn’t a failed check. If something happens that logically moves events closer to the progress clock’s outcome, fill in a section. (Similarly, particularly terrible failures might fill in more than one section at a time.)

Advanced Tip #2: It’s also possible for progress clocks to “run backwards.” If the PCs do something that sets back the plans of the cult, for example, it may make sense to erase one of the filled sections of the progress clocks. (On a similar note, progress clocks are not inevitable: If the PCs break into the mansion and get out before filling the progress clock, the alarm doesn’t sound. If they wipe out the cult, the demon is never summoned. And so forth.)

FURTHER READING
Prep Tips for the Beginning DM
Prep Tips for the Beginning GM: Cyberpunk
Pacing for the Beginning GM
Roleplaying for the Beginning GM

Many moons ago, I wrote Prep Tips for the Beginning DM, a super-streamlined set of guideposts for a first-time DM to follow. The advice was aimed specifically at D&D/Pathfinder GMs, and over the years I’ve received a number of queries about how GMs can get started with other systems. The truth is that the advice is largely transferable. For example, here’s how you could get started running a fairly typical cyberpunk campaign where the PCs are a crew that runs heists and similar jobs in the style of William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

(You might be starting up a new Shadowrun campaign. Or maybe you’re hyped about the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 and want to run a game like that for your friends. Whatever works. This advice is widely applicable.)

(1) Start with a simple run featuring a location-based crawl. Keep it simple! Make it a single building with maybe a dozen rooms. Keep the challenges inside the building firewalled (i.e., the PCs can generally muck around in Room A without also bringing everything in Rooms B-Z down on their heads) with the possible exception of a roving security patrol that will also respond to triggered alarms. Keeping things compartmentalized will make it easier for you to run; it’ll also give your players a chance to figure out their characters and the system.

(2) Do a couple of those. You can slowly start building the complexity. Introduce adversary rosters so that the complexes become more dynamic and active. This will increase both the challenge for your players in planning out their runs and the complexity for you in actually GMing those runs.

(3) Take a look a the Three Clue Rule and use it to create a linear investigation scenario: Go to Location A, find clues that lead to Location B. At Location B, find clues that point to Location C. Repeat until you reach the conclusion.

LINK IT TOGETHER

It’s okay to just run a purely episodic campaign where each run is independent from the last. But here’s a simple example of how you can link all of these things together: The PCs are hired by somebody to do a couple of jobs. Then their patron calls them with another job, but when they show up for the briefing they find him dead. Now they need to figure out who did it.

Discovering who their patron was, what he really wanted, and why he was killed will either wrap up the mini-campaign or wrap up Act I of the ongoing campaign and give you a nice launchpad for the rest of the game.

Note: You don’t need to prep all this before you start play. In fact, you shouldn’t because you’ll be learning stuff in play that you’ll want to implement in the next scenario you design.

All you need to get started is #1: A simple run.

As you’re wrapping up Act I, take a look at Don’t Prep Plots and Node-Based Scenario Design. Use those to build an Act II.

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