| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm a semi-spontaneous GM. I have a few notes with encounters and treasure in them and the rest I just leave up to the players. I've learned long ago that you can have Options A,B, and C, but they will always choose Q.
I have been moving toward more and more spontaneity over the past few years. I really like the collaborative experience involved in both story-telling and world-building it provides. I have a few things I do to help move everything along but the biggest hurdle to overcome is giving yourself a solid kick-start. Essentially, the world MUST be in motion for this approach to work. So much of the campaign prep must be done in advance. You need to have strong ideas about what will be going on politically and/or what types of disasters may occur. You need to have a strong sense of what the world will continue to do if the PCs DON'T act. I feel like I should stress this again. In order to be really strong in determining the consequences of the PCs actions you MUST have a strong understanding of what will occur in the setting if the PCs remained idle.
The next biggest thing is getting PCs really tightly tied into the story. I do this via a series of questionnaires that are completed well in advance (a month or more) of the first session. Here is my most recent "1st" questionnaire.
Please don’t answer these questions relating to your mechanical concepts. The idea is that we will flavor some of the mechanics based on who your character is, and this is the base of that process. Also, this will give me some information to begin to weave your back-stories into the game world.If there are any NPC’s from your back story that you want to see in the game then give them a name in your questionnaires.
A few notes about question #1. The city you are in is called Deerquarry. It was recently occupied by a nation from the North but the locals were able to repel the occupiers after nearly 50 years of brutal conditions. The quarry is all but exhausted (which is the real reason the occupiers left) and a separate nation to the South has sent envoys with relief supplies and facilitators to help man the Great Water Locks (more on that later) and provide some help with keeping order in the city. This envoy reports to the city’s provisional government although it takes orders from its own chain of command (from the South) So choices for question #1 would be some Military or Expert from the South as part of the envoy, Pretty much anything you would like to be from the town itself (including a child from an illicit affair of the previous occupiers), a Pariah of the occupiers (someone who was left behind or deserted for some reason), A tradesman or merchant from somewhere else who made a living in the city under the occupation but decided to stay, and the last one of course is the one-off who doesn’t know anything about his/her history but was raised in the city under the occupation (more details on this for whoever opts into that role.)
After I get answers to those questions I can begin to stitch more information about the world together. I want to create this world with as much immersion as possible on the parts of your characters. I want the characters to have real in world motivations for doing what they are doing.
Thanks!
Name:
Race:
Physical Description:
1. Where are you from, and why are you in town now?
2. What is your family like? Are you close?
3. What is your social class?
4. What do you do for a living? Do you love or hate your job?
5. What goal, or goals, do you have?
6. What is one incident from your past which haunts you or you are particularly proud of?
7. Do you have a strong belief system? If so, what is it? If not, why?
8. What person or thing do you value most?
9. Do you have any unusual hobbies, skills or interests that are unrelated to your job?
10. Give me three adjectives that others would use to describe you.
This questionnaire was followed up with two rounds of targeted questions for the players. From that I was able to finish fleshing out the setting and really give the game a solid kick to set it in motion.
I'll post more about the follow up rounds and world building later.
Do you go so far as to invite players to create parts of the "off screen" world? (To larger or smaller degree?)
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I like running premade adventures and using those to riff off during the game. Kingmaker is a wonder for that. I find that if I try to run a purely spontaneous session, my brain grabs for the easiest tropes and answers to keep the game flowing.
Having resources, random tables, and a good bank of knowledge is essential to any kind of spontaneous game.
I look at it like playing jazz, you should still learn how try write and play traditional songs, and see how they work before you start pulling apart the pieces.
You don't need to use a non crunchy system for collaborative play. I was play testing Rolemaster Unified and I didn't have a game world or a reason a dwarf an elf and two humans would be together.
One player made a dwarven warrior monk, who specialised in the battle axe throwing axes manoeuvring medium armour and adrenal manoeuvres.
Asked the player the following questions.
Why a dwarven warrior monk?
He said Dwarf orphans are sent to a monastery to be cared for and they are trained to form the skirmish line of the dwarf kingdoms army.
What is the monasteries name?
The Iron Hall.
Why are you travelling with an Elf & two Humans?
There has been a thaw in relations between the 3 nations because they border on unclaimed wild lands and Orc raids have increased and the various factions within the 3 nations have been forming external alliances to further their interests and protect them from outside threats. The Iron Hall has allied with factions that the elf and humans represent. Maybe they supply various minerals and materials that the Iron Hall uses to forge its weapons, the factions may also be the most outward looking and aggressive of the various interests operating in the 3 kingdoms.
The discussions with the elf and human players filled out enemy factions, the rest of the world, individual goals and the group goal which was to strengthen a way post next to the border with the orcs.
I just noted it down offered suggestions and my players had total buy in and knowledge of their characters history and culture.
Job done minimal work on my part. They arrived in town were attacked by assassins and had to chase down a shipment stolen by bandits. Had lots of fun.
I plan everything out ahead of time, but always make adjustments on the fly. I try to get people to complete their character before the session so we don't waste game time finishing characters. Of course, no one every does this so we have to waste game time finishing character creation/leveling.
I always help the players develop their characters. I don't use a spread sheet or questionnaire, but looking at the one posted above comes across as a good idea. I just ask the players to come up with the most basic backstory that I can help them develop. Of course, they are allowed to develop something more byzantine if they prefer, but I find with most of them that coming up with a backstory is not their strongest trait.
In my tabletop campaign, I informed the players of the region and gave them some ideas on how their chosen player race and class would fit into that environment. Strangely enough, not a single one of my tabletop players has played in a Golarion setting before, so it has been a lot of fun helping them fit into the Inner Sea World and helping them create their long term goals and desires.
Some characters are searching for things while others are just mercs for hire, but we figure out how they got there and why they're doing what they do. It's a fun part of roleplaying and also an integral part of developing a character that feels three dimensional as opposed to being an one note murder hobo.
Do you go so far as to invite players to create parts of the "off screen" world? (To larger or smaller degree?)
No. I invite my players to create parts of the "on screen" world.
This partly just nitpicking on terminology. I love for my players to invent aspects to the world that seem fun or interesting to them. The thing is though, I want that stuff to be relevant to our actual game sessions.
In another campaign with one of my groups, we had a player who wrote some 20-30 pages of notes for the elven homeland. It never came up once. It's neat that he wrote it, but it didn't really do much for the game, other than to comment about how detailed it was and how he was clearly the expert on the subject... that never came up. (I was not the GM)
I don't discourage players from making stuff up about irrelevant topics, but that's something for their own time and gratification. It might be useful at some future date, but I try to keep the game more narrowly focused, so when I ask them to create something it's usually very relevant.
More recently, we had a player who wanted to have Fireball as a Cleric. So he had to take the archetype that makes you part of a secret order to be a devotee of the god he wanted AND to take Fireball. Essentially he created a secret cult within the wider cult, and this became the central plot point of the campaign so far. It's continued on, even though that character died long ago.