The Black Campbell

Over the decades, I’ve had a chance to play with a few gamemasters here and there, and to observe a few more. One thing I noticed was that very few GMs understand pacing — how to keep a game running smoothly and quickly. Their games bogged down in full, but unproductive side chatter, characters meandering into side plots that didn’t involve their other characters or had little to do with the main story, or simply lacked a certain energy.  There are a few reasons for this. I’ve broken these down in to three rough issues: preparation, engagement, and timing.

In this post, we’ll deal with the first — preparation.

First and foremost: have a working knowledge of the rules you are using, know where the tables and rules you will need are in the rulebook, and be ready to ignore the rules if you will slow play looking for how, say, that grenades damage fall over over what distance. Just make a ruling and go.

There’s been a host of gaming blogs that have been playing down the importance of preparation in favor of improvisation. I’m just going to get to the point: many of them are wrong. Preparation is essential to success in all thing, but the trick is the right amount of preparation. That doesn’t mean improvisation isn’t important or doesn’t have it’s place. As a military turism goes, “A plan never survives contact with the enemy…” and a game plot never survives (fully) the involvement of your players.

That’s kinda the point. You are all working together to tell a story, but as with a military unit, a software development team, or a bunch of guys working at a fast food restaurant, you need an objective and at least some kind of leadership — even a collaborative one.

A quick bit of history to place my comments properly: Most RPG systems have a game master and players. The GM prepares some kind of basic plot or objective which the players attempt to achieve. In early RPGs, the GM was an actively antagonistic force, working against the players. Later, this evolved into a more collaborative role, working with the players to run through a story as more of a facilitator or “storyteller”, to use the White Wolf term. Most recently, GM-less or collaborative storytelling games remove the hierarchical nature of GM/player and everyone gets to work together, perhaps with some sort of facilitator (or GM) to keep things moving. I’ve played in all and found that the best balance seems to fall in the middle — a GM with some level of fiat and control over the universe, but not an active antagonistic force. You may feel differently.

The trick is the right amont of preparation. Too little preparation — what I link to “sandboxing”, or letting the players wander about a gaming environment looking for something to do — has intrinsic problems of pacing. It is player controlled, and that means multiple people with differing points of interest. This leads to parties being split in ways that are not always conducive to achieving the supposed point of the mission. It also tends to favor the more powerful personalities in the party, as they can suck all the air out of the room and focus all the attention on their characters.

Too little preparation also means that when players do the unexpected (and they will), you have to improvise. If you’re good at this, no issues; if you are not, something as simple as “what’s the barkeep’s name” can create a blip in the flow of play. (One of my ways around this is to say something like “he’s credited as ‘barkeep’ in the credits.”) If you are involved in a combat sequence, you might want to have a good metal image of the field of play so you can map on the fly, if you don’t do it ahead of time. Nothing slows play like “I can’t visualize this — can you explain the situation again?” Or worse — you have no real plot, villain, or story and are just leaving it to the players to come up with something. There’s only so much manly carousing at a pub that players will want to do.

Another problem is too much preparation. The kitchen sink style of prep leads to GMs wanting to use every little bit of the campaign world they’ve created. It can mean asides and distractions from the action that are unnecessary to the plot line and bog down play.

Here’s a few examples: You join a D&D campaign that’s been in play for a few years, or which is just firing up but the GM has been crafting his world for the three years he had no players…it’s a beautifully realized world with an 80-page campaign bible you should read when you get a chance… 1) No one cares what happened 90 years ago in the Kingdom of Bratwurst unless it has direct import on the mission, so 2) if you don’t need it, don’t show it. An example: does it matter what King Louis XVI was doing before he got the chop when you are fighting Wellington at Waterloo? No — other than he and the royals are nasty sots and you hate ’em. Hell, how many people know what happened 10 years ago, much less 100…if you’re in a fantasy campaign, chances are your characters aren’t too well educated.

Worse, all that preparation — the big action scene in the abandoned iron works, the fight on the volcano planet, etc. — that all might be for naught if the heroes either ignore the plot entirely, or find a way to sort things before you get to your big denouement. Maybe they’ve found a way to get the bad guy on the way to his secret base in some Ronin-style hit on the city streets. Roll with it. Improvise the scene and let the players help.

One fo the best things about gaming is the collaborative process. You know, as GM, what has to happen for the game to play out. Say it’s the players need to get the McGuffin from the bad guys. You wanted to happen at point D, but the players have jumped the gun and with good planning and an annoying number of very good rolls are going to hit the villain an hour earlier in the night at point B. Let ’em do it, and let them tell you want they’re going to do. Now you know their plans. If they’re going to be too efficient, trip them up somehow. Maybe the car is armored. Maybe the guy isn’t there or offloaded the McGuffin. Maybe there’s a chase car with mooks.

Listen to their expectations of what should go down and give them just enough of what they want to make them entertained, but don’t make it so easy they don’t feel challenged.

You can sum it up this way: Keep it Simple Stupid.

Which I did not for this piece.

There are a few things I think are important to keep in mind for the new gamemaster running a game for the first time (or anyone, really…)

1) Preparation: I know a lot of GMs are down on preparation, but I think it’s important to have a decent working understanding of the rules, and to have an idea for a basic plot or adventure for the group.

Knowing the rules at least well enough to know the basic mechanics, say, attribute+skill+die roll vs. a target number is essential. Yu don’t have to know the specific modifications aiming, or called shots lend or take away. you can fudge those the first time if you can’t find the rule right away.

Having a basic plot for the initial story makes it more interesting to the players and is more likely to lead to enjoyment. Players like it when their characters achieve something. They might not follow your mental script, but have a few essential scenes — waypoints to the final event — will help push the plot without feeling like you are railroading them. (More on that in a moment.)

2) Confidence: Okay, you’re new to the rules yourself, the adventure feels a bit kludged, and you’ve got, essentially, stage fright. Don’t show it. Loosen up and enjoy yourself; this isn’t a job. As military officers are taught — look like you know what you are doing…especially when you don’t.

As long as things are happening or characters are interacting well, they’ll often miss glaring plot holes they might notice in a movie or book…because they are (kinda) living it.

3) Be flexible. The players aren’t always going to do what you want. If you need them to pick up on Clue A at a scene, but they don’t bite, roll with whatever they are doing and put the clue in the new location or scene. Maybe they kill the bad guy early or they go through your cool action scene with mooks (and this will happen with annoying frequency)…now they find out bad guy is actually the lead henchman for the new bad guy. Okay, they got through the action scene that was supposed to be tough like they were walking down the street to catch a bus; let them bask in their reward and at the next scene hit them harder, or perhaps make the reward less impressive. “We took on the entire gang of Shen Ho to find…a shipment of bananas? Where’s the [insert prize] that was supposed to be here?” Nearly dead mook, “Shen came and got it an hour ago…they’re loading it on a truck for…ack!”

4) Have fun. If you aren’t having fun GMing, hand off the responsibility to someone else (if someone else will do it.) It’s a game.

We’ve all had some version this guy/gal in our groups. They get their moment in the spotlight during the session and just don’t seem to be able to let it go. Maybe they’re someone that every day is a “me day.” Maybe they don’t get to play often and just get overly-enthusiastic. Maybe they GM much of the time and are used to being the center of the group. (cough me cough) Maybe they’re the wannabe actor/tress for whom attention is the thing, more than the play. Maybe they just talk…a lot. (You can tell what spurred this post, can’t you?)

So how do you shut down the spotlight hog without hurting their feelings, being to obvious about it, or being a jerk? If you tend to be a hands-off GM, it’s going to be harder to move the action along than if you are a bit more active. For me, as a narative-type who likes to be involved more with the play than a simple “What do you do?” sort of GM, it’s a matter of engaging the player first, then shifting the focus of of them in a way that feels natural.

Example: The GIQ is doing a bit of expounding on the legal complexities of the adventure or mission the characters are on. It should be a simple bit of exposition, but the player (as well as the character) is a lawyer. And a bit long winded. Okay, knock off the “a bit”. He’s been on a roll for about five minutes, already, and has missed the queues from one of the other players — the equivalent of “Read you. Press on.” In the interest of advancing the plot and letting other characters get a bit of “scene time”, it’s time to step in as a GM.

At this point, I engage the player sort of like a director talking to an actor. Get into his mind space, or his emotional state with a few pointed questions. I’ve got his attention now. I shift the attention to the character he was talking about — how do you feel about this? What’s your perception of the information? Now the attention is on the other player and I can get the other players back in.

Now, I’ve found that 9 times out of 10, you’ve just fixed the problem. But sometimes GIQ is not going to want to relinquish the spotlight so easily. If you have successfully moved the attention — even for a moment — a simple upraised finger  (a “wait” finger) should do to keep that player sidelined long enough for the other players to get their say in for the scene, then return the spotlight to the player, or move on.

This is the gentle way to use social judo to take control of your game when necessary without coming off as a jerk.

Any other techniques out there?