The Black Campbell

“What’s past is prologue…” William Shakespeare, The Tempest.

The Bard, of course, meant this in relation to the events in the play, but it holds true for people’s lives, as well. You past never really leaves you. Inside every man or woman is the little boy or girl they were, the teenager, or the young adult… A person is the sum of their past experiences, and they inform our opinions on politics, religion, science, and even gaming.

In a recent discussion, it was pointed out that watching people playing games gives you an interesting insight into their own character, as much as that of who they are playing. It doesn’t take long for an experienced GM, or simply one familiar with the players, to get an idea of what they will do in the course of play, regardless of what their character might do.

One excellent example was a player who loved to be in charge…until he was. His personality was such that he liked the idea of authority, but not the weight of responsibility. No matter what the character was: the intrepid starship captain, the bad-ass cop, the hot-shit, no fear fighter pilot, he played them the same way: they were risk aversive and when saddled with a situation that wasn’t a simple shoot and scoot…he simply locked up and let the other players do for him. He wanted to be the big hero, but for the same reason his life choices led to stagnation and bitterness, his gaming suffered. Another consistently played the ingenue or “slut”, but preferably one with serious political clout. She had been raised as the black sheep of her family, had a hardscrabble life through her 20s, and after finally getting to be the big fish in her small pond, tended to be authoritarian in desire, if not ability. It showed in everything she played, no matter what she played.

Players tend to choose the role they wish they could have in a game: the tough fighter, the cunning wizard or thief, the charismatic bard. However, these choices are as indicative of the player’s personality, as their style of play. This insight into their personality can give you hooks that will allow you to wrap the player into the story lines. The obvious exception to this is the wannabe actor/tress that wants to play something different every time and loves to act! their part. (They’re fun to have in the game. They’re also often annoy to have in the game because when they center of attention isn’t on them, they get bored and either tune out or get disruptive.)

This personal prologue also informs the role of game master. My experience in the intelligence field has led me to a run modern and science fiction games with a highly jaded eye. Government types are usually venal and not especially competent. In the past, when I ran a superhero game, the “villain” of the piece turned out to be an “anti-hero” who cobbled together a new Roman empire to save Europe (and give herself massive power.) Today, after experiencing the ineptitude and corruption of big-government types and authoritarians wrapped in Progressive platitudes, the supers game feels much different, with these exceptional creatures bound by “necessary” licensure, insurance claims, legal actions, and their own, often mediocre personalities. Our “lead” hero is a corporate tool more interested in his Wheaties endorsement than saving people’s lives.

Our espionage game has the players as members of a special task force that is co-owned by the CIA and DHS. They operate in CONUS as DHS sworn agents, and abroad as part of a special action team. (The first games were set before the National Defense Authorization Act destroyed posse comitatus and due process for “terror” suspects; I have them as the “test case” to get the law enacted.) They are trying to protect the people from bad guys. tjhey also have been bending the laws to use asset forfeiture to roll around in expensive cars and clothes. They’ve engaged in actions that were a questionable legality both in and out of the US. Having the authority and ability to do things outside the spirit of the law means they haven’t broken the law…but they are not always the “good guys.” This is inspired by my libertarian politics, rather than the Progressivism that I hewed to in my teens and early adulthood.

Knowing your own biases and beliefs is essential to crafting your stories and not getting stuck in a rut. As with the players, you will aim for your comfort zone. I tend to run espionage or investigative adventures, no matter the setting. the trick is to use my background where it is constructive, and ignore it so as not to get in a rut where it is constrictive.

Blasting up bad guys is fun, and for espionage or military-based games, it’s bound to turn up, but here’s a good way to really challenge the players: make them avoid conflict.

The latest espionage campaign I’m running has the team as part of an experimental team that is shared by DHS and CIA — the goal being to allow them to operate anywhere in the world, including CONUS. (This was prior to the disastrous NDAA this year that allows military to operate in law enforcement actions on US soil — I’m going to make it a part of the campaign that their success helped “excuse” the NDAA.) Most of the team are an Army spec ops team, but they’re operating with Secret Service in a joint counterterrorism task force; while in the US, they’re on loan to the DHS to get around the legal blocks.

The down side: they have to act like cops in the US. The USSS characters have to run the ops domestically and have had to push the other characters to obey the laws governing evidence, searches, violent encounters (one character is in trouble because while searching a suspect’s trailer, he was aggressed and used the bad guy’s .44 magnum…then didn’t check it into evidence.)

Most of the time, their goal is not to waste the bad guys, but to capture and interrogate (and not in the “enhanced” way.) That means a lot less gunplay, a lot more planning, a lot more thinking things through, and more use of charisma and intimidation skills. They have to be carful in car chases not to get too crazy in urban settings (although we had a Bentley on Ferrari chase in South Beach that was pretty damned cool.)

The most recent involved stealing information from a mark’s laptop without him knowing. They couldn’t hurt the target, they were protected by diplomatic immunity. They didn’t want the information they were out to get be compromised, so they had to get to the machine while the man was away, either subvert the password, or find a way to image the drive without getting through the password. (There’s a couple of good exploits for the latter for the MacBook the bad guy was using that one of the players found online.)

Most of the characters were busy playing distraction for the French DCRI, which was providing security for the target and his cohort that were in Paris for a “cultural conference.” The goal was to keep the security types following them by being suspicious enough to warrant surveillance, while doing nothing illegal or detention-worthy, while a two man team slipped into the target’s hotel room while the bad guy was out partying.

The natural inclination from years of fantasy hack & slash, and other violence-tending adventures in RPGS, is to bust heads or open up with high order violence where possible. Pushing them to be subtle usually runs against the grain. It can be more challenging to do things quietly, and more fulfilling when they get away with a mission without the opposition even knowing they were there.

I was watching the last few episodes of Chuck and there’s a great moment where Sarah says, “So, it’s one last mission.” All the male characters at this point groan and shake their heads. “You never say that!” is the response. Because anyone who’s ever watched a heist-gone-wrong flick, or a spy film, or pretty much any movie or TV show know that when the phrase “one last job” comes up, you’re going to get butt-raped by a mastodon without the benefit of lube.

So to adequately reflect that, I suggest anytime the phrase “one last job…” or some variant such as “Just this last mission and we’re gone…” the GM automatically has, at some key moment, the player reroll a task and take the lesser test. Either that or give them a plot/style/whatever point in advance and them just simply screw them over as part of the narrative.

A variation on this is the “Goodbye, Mr. Bond” house rule I have. If the henchman or villain at some point uses that famed [phrase, you get an automatic style/plot/hero point to use for your cunning escape. The players will often try to get me to say it in a sticky situation, and from time to time I have. The point usually save their lives. You could also do this by GM fiat.

One of the more difficult things for the gamemaster is creating and fleshing out interesting characters for the players to interact with. There are a few ways to make your job easier. First, recognize that not everyone the player means needs to be heavily fleshed out. Think about an average day for you: chances are most of the people you meet don’t give you a whole CV and sense of their motivations in life. The guy waiting on you at the bar, or ringing you up at the store is polite or not, friendly or not…you’re interaction with them occurs in a matter of minutes and is done. Similarly, most of the interactions of your character with folks are going to be cursory.

Think of the NPCs in movie terms — there’s the extras that fill the scene, there’s the walk-on speaking role (“What can I get for you, stranger?”), there’s the bit player (the background character that pretty much does one thing for your characters), and the supporting. Your players are the main cast.

Extras — these guys are just set dressing. Describe in thumbnail terms these folks — “There’s a crowd of shoppers in the mall, mostly teens jabbering on their cell phones or to each other…” or “As you enter engineering, you have to dodge a bunch of red shirts carrying parts and tools…” or “The street’s full of tourists walking to the beach or sitting about the cafes that line the esplanade. A few police are directing traffic or loafing about flirting with the ladies..” Unless the players take notice of something and inquire, leave at that. If they inquire, you can expand a bit on the description but unless they engage directly with a character, they’re just extras.

If they do engage with an extra, they are a walk-on speaking role. This is the shopgirl, the barmaid that you flirt with but don’t really get to know, the guy that helps Scotty and McCoy stop Kirk from going into the radiation-filled chamber in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but usually its the guy that directs you to the bit player or supporting cast. they might have a name, if they turn up a few times, a basic description (red haired kid in Colonial deckhand coveralls…you think her name is Callie or something like that.) At most they have a hook — a name, a job, some vocal or visual cue that makes them more than an extra. (Bicycle girl in the first episode of The Walking Dead would even count for this.)

Bit players, like the walk-on, are pretty one-dimensional, but if they catch the players attention, they might get called on to aid in the mission more (rising to supporting cast.) These are guys like the coroner your detective has to interact with, but whom really don’t know that much about other than his/her name, a basic personality (moody, cheerful, stand-offish, etc.) to help the PCs interact with them, and maybe a basic set of stats that might come into play. They don’t know more than a few tidbits about them (single or married…maybe you know the spouses name at best; they’re into cats or dogs from a photo on the desk, or something like that.) Keep it simple, but these are the NPCs, I find, that people latch onto and start wanting more from…that’s when you need to start building more onto them on the fly. Take notes on what you did with the characters so you can start building them up to…

Supporting cast: these are the NPCs you need to put some work into and cover everything from recurring NPCs (say, that cop in the stationhouse that you always tell to get you the file on whatever) to major henchmen and villains. For the lower end, say your favored mook, you’ll want a real basic idea of what their physical and mental abilities are, their big skills. Some very basic background and character elements. (Singh is a Sikh that deserted from the British Army in India and came to Shanghai where he is now your favored bad ass. He wears the turban, bangle, and carries the knife of a Sikh, and has almost no sense of humor that can be detected. Women love him.) For the more important supporting cast, say the captain of your starship, you have the name and stats written up like a PC (build to the ideal of the character, don’t bother with creation points unless you like to build characters…like I do), basic background that people would know, and a more fleshed out personality.

Important to note is that your major villains don’t always need a big background — you might know that Hanoi shan was a native colonial administrator for the French in Indochina, and that he was suspected of collaborating with anti-colonial forces; that he likes to use poisons to kill his enemies and has female assassins; that he is super-intelligent and well-educated. With that you can already build a good picture of the character without having to know what his relationship with his mother was (unless that becomes an important aspect of the storyline.) However, you’ll want a full writeup of your major villains, and probably their top henchman, as well. (Think James Bond movies for this — the big baddie rarely gets into it directly with Bond, but his steel-toothed henchman, or femme fatale will…you should have an idea of what they can do in a fight or action sequence.

Only put the level of detail and work into the NPCs that you have to, but be prepared to add more on as you go; you never know when the character is going to decide that cabana girl is the one for him.

There are a few schools of thought for playing characters in the military in role playing games. The traditional one is you start out as lowly enlisted or junior officers — this gives you the chance to be on any missions that might involve direct action — and let’s face it, military-style campaigns are about direct action. This gives the characters the chance to rise through the ranks and gives a sense of advancement and maturation, but it does have the limitation of them having to follow the orders of their superiors.

For the gamemaster, this is a godsend: you can direct the characters as needed to follow the plot without being too obvious in your railroading. It provides the characters with a goal and a certain set of parameters to achieve said goal. It also gives them authority with some protection of responsibility for any failure…you might get busted in rank, but unless you do something egregiously illegal, the command staff will soak some of the consequence.

However, there are players who will want more control over their game universe, who will want to be in the “center seat” to use Star Trek vernacular. Having your players run command level characters can seem somewhat limiting — not every commander is going to strap on his sidearm and take a Raptor (or beam) down to the planet to take charge. Nor should they — they are the captain and, while not indispensable (who really is?) they are the prime authority on the vessel and are the brains and motivator of the outfit.

This post was generated in response to a question on another posting regarding what to have command level people do in a game. The CAG is not necessarily going to be on every mission, unless they are a control freak or action junkie, or gloryhound looking to pad their military jacket. And those folks do exist…if it fits the character, don’t question it. The CO is less likely to be running about playing hero, as well — they’re older men (at least in their 40s) who are more administrators and politicians than men of action.

And that’s the key to the challenges they should be presented with: pe-Cylon attack, the CO of a ship is going to be wrapped up in politics…not just between himself and the chain of command — jockeying to get prime assignments, getting his vessel on exercises to heighten his profile for promotion — but also in actual politics. He will be trying to get noticed for promotion, which means publishing in journals on military affairs — tactics, strategy, but also defense policy. (To that end I created a Fleet Times magazine for our campaign, but also a Journal of Military Affairs, and a Journal of Military Theory that officers are often trying to get published in.)

Day to day operations mean the commander is overseeing the ship or fleet he’s running — making sure they don’t run out of food, fuel, water, that there are enough personnel manning the various positions. It’s mostly paperwork and handling disciplinary issues…it’s drudge work, and you can use that to create a sense of realism and boredom between the action sequences. Senior enlisted would be engaged in this, as well, in addition to lending a hand in turning a wrench, etc.

Disciplinary actions are also a big part of life, from dressing down the guy that is perpetually late to muster, to addressing crimes aboard, and dispensing justice. For court martial, he would be the lead on the tribunal hearing the case (unless it’s pre-attack, in which case there’s a good chance they’d just ship their problem child off to the nearest JAG office for trial.)

In a fight, things change. The commander is overseeing the battlespace and the fight; the XO watches over ship combat operations — taking the commander’s “Bring us about” into actual orders to align the ship as wanted, giving the gunnery crews their targets from the commander’s battle plan. Senior enlisted man the guns, or handle damage control teams, but can find themselves fighting a fire or fixing things. The CAG is out with the pilots fighting. Marines would be guard posts, but they also throw in on rescue of injured crew, fire suppression, etc.

In a post-attack campaign, if there’s a fleet, the commander would be engaged in politics of a different nature: trying to work with whinging ship captains, making sure repairs, parts, food, etc. were dispensed through the fleet. He would most likely be making visits to ships to shore up wobbly captains and crews terrified by the robot apocalypse.

Junior officers post-attack could find themselves getting assigned to whatever mission needs doing simply because the crew might be short-handed, overworked, or otherwise strung out. Sensitive situations, like dealing with a mutinous civilian crew might require a senior officer to go across and try to talk some sense into the ringleaders (or bash heads.)

In the Star Trek universe, the senior staff lighting out to handle every situation is a bit less realistic. Starfleet is chock-a-block full of smart, talented subject matter experts…or so it seems on screen. They’ve got scores of scientists, doctors, and the like in the TNG and later period: the captain and first officer are paper-pushers until a fight breaks out, so would be senior staff. This is a setting more conducive to the lower-level officers. (Although the “new” universe seems to be much more dangerous, and attrition higher, suggesting that go-getters find themselves promoted damned fast.)

As always, these suggestions are my opinion and may not mesh well with your group.

A lot of novice game masters ask the same question: How do I plan a game or campaign?

One of the easiest ways is to start with a sample adventure or module. These were very common for Dungeons & Dragons back in the day, and most games come with some sort of introductory mission for the players. You might want to start with one or two of these to whet your appetite. Otherwise, here are a few suggestions.

First, decide what you and your group want to play. Usually, for beginning players, this is going to be Dungeons & Dragons or some fantasy variant. There are a lot of things to commend this choice — the various D&D and fantasy games have a pre-generated setting that you can drop your campaign into. For this reason license-based games like Star Trek or Supernatural are good choices, as well — there’s a well-established world to work with, you just have to carve out your own corner of it. When you have people wanting to play different things, it’s a bit more tricky — hopefully, you have a mature enough group you can do a vote. Most popular idea wins. I’d sugest if someone is truly opposed to a game or setting, take that one off the table. (I’d love to run Mouse Guard but I have one player pretty adamant about not wanting to…off the table for now.)

Second, now you know what you want to run, it’s time to decide what kind of campaign you want to run. If you’re a new GM or one with time constraints, here are a few tips that will make your efforts easier:

1) K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid): Don’t try to plan a major overarching story arc ala Babylon 5 right off the bat. Go with a serial mentality — each story is a discrete one, like a movie. You might have sequels, but each is a specific story. Craft a simple story for your first go — For example, in The Hobbit we have to walk from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain to kill Smaug and save the locals (and raid the place for treasure…) Similarly, you could go with something as simple: the characters are brought together to rescue someone/recover something/kill some bad critter for the locals.

2) How Do You Eat an Elephant? One bite at a time… Break it down into manageable parts, like a three act play or TV show:

The first act brings everyone together and they are presented with a mission — in this case, destroy a dragon that has moved into a mountain lair (or another type of lair) and is hurting people and trade around the local area. The towns have pitched in together to pay for a couple of folks to go out and snuff the reptile. (Think of it as The Seven Samurai, except you’re fighting a giant, fire-breathing monster.) You have to get the suspected location of the dragon and set out. The end of this act would be some sort of obstacle to overcome: bad intelligence, say; the dragon isn’t where they thought it was, and their expedition is exposed to discovery. Act 2 requires the party to find the real lair of the dragon by some means that is dangerous (maybe they have to lure it out so that they can follow it back to it’s home.) Up the stakes somewhat here. Eventually they find the lair. Act 3: Raiding the lair and fighting the dragon. Finally give a Coda in which they can get their pay and adulation. Alternately, you coud add another act where the townspeople try to renege on the deal.

If you want to stretch things out a bit, you can throw in a random encounter for each act. This combines the travel/exploration style game and the dungeon crawl. Often, a dungeon crawl is seen as a simple way to jump in — map out a dungeon or locale for a fight, populate it with nasties, and get on with it. I think of these as more time-consuming than complex adventures, as you have to send a fair time drawing out your maps. Alternately, you can go random and create the place on the fly.

Here are a few adventure seeds for various other genres:

Modern espionage/military: A RPV (Predator, etc.) has been recovered after it was used on the battlefield against your side. According to inventory, it was on route to a camp in Iraq, but has turned up here (wherever you choose here to be.) Act 1: You are to investigate the loss and find out who got the drone. Go to the unit that is supposed to have the craft and investigate. Here they could pick up on other missing gear and learn the inventory can be tweaked; the gear never arrived, so it was sold in the US (or wherever.) Act 2: Go to the next base (probably Creek or Nellis AFB) and investigate. This will rile the bad guys; set up an action sequence and give the opportunity to capture and question the traitors. Act 3: Set up a new buy through the traitor to sweep up the bad guys. Action sequence — firefight and/or chase. This could eventually lead to a new adventure tracking who used the craft, or you could tack on another Act to find the terrorists that used the Predator in the first place.

Horror: The characters are hired to investigate the disappearance of someone’s relative or friend in a small town in Maine or the Pacific Northwest (cold, wet, and foggy makes for good set dressing.) Act 1: Get hired and travel to the town. Weirdness and colorful characters that are a bit creepy. No one knows where the person is, but they find a clue (a notebook or something) that leads them to the classically creepy mansion on a cliffside. Act 2: Creep mansion is the home of a local powerbroker is trying to protect the town from an old reputation as a cult center. Research the cult. Their curiosity should be an attempt on their life under spooky circumstances. Act 3: Break into the house during a major ceremony to bring about something evil with their quarry either as the sacrifice or yet another cult member. Stop them and get out alive.

Western: Characters are hired to protect a thing or person from theft or release by bad guys. The goal is simple: get from Point A to B with the package intact in a certain length of time. Maybe you’re guarding the payroll for the railroad. Maybe you’re taking a prisoner, a famed bad guy, to trial. Act 1: Meet the package and learn of the opposition. First action sequence shows they’re going to have to fight to make this happen. Act 2: Chase sequence or hiding from the bad guys. Discovery will require a good hard ride to someplace close to Point B, but they will get boxed in somewhere. Act 3: Fight the bad guys in a spectacular shootout. Coda: Deliver the bad guy or thing.

It happens — one of your players who is integral to the plot that night doesn’t show up. Or you have a handful that are unreliable, or there’s a period of time that players get flaky on showing up (for us, it’s usually late summer when one that works in the movie industry is usually on set and another is doing the convention rounds; or it’s the holiday season.) So what do you do?

There’s the usual stuff — don’t play ’til you have the necessary folks for the adventure, have someone run/roll for the missing characters (this is my usual MO), play a board game or pick up game instead. One of the threads over at Gnome Stew had the idea of running a game or series of gmaes con-style — one shots that don’t require a lot of planning or character work.

Think of it as a sort of James Bond style game: You know the hero is going to be a certain way — we don’t have to delve into his weaknesses beyond the most basic — he’s a sucker for dames, his lovers don’t get past the end of the film, he’s relentless to bad guys. The Bond girls — there’s a femme fatale, one or two love interests that make themselves useful in some manner. There’s usually a local sidekick (Felix Leiter, Matthis, Tiger Tanaka, whoever…) The bad guys are fairy simple and have a nefarious plan. Come up with a few action sequences to string the exposition into. Go.

For the GM, think of it as writing a movie, rather than a series or series of books. There doesn’t have to be a lot of backstory, just enough to do the job. (Think Raiders of the Lost Ark — Indy’s really not a well-defined guy: he’s a cruise missile that goes after his prize without hesitation. He’s scared of snakes. He’s got a nemesis that usually bests him [Belloq]. He’s an eminent archeologist with friends all over the world to help him. He likes to use a whip and loves Marion. Done. Go.)

In this style, the GM writes up characters to fit the plot and has a basic notion of what’s going on. The James Bond system had a nice random mission generator in the For Your Eyes Only splatbook, and I’m sure other game genres have something similar. Keep it simple and keep it fast. One idea could be randomly giving characters to the players. I thought that using a system like Leverage or FATE where you could craft up archetypal characters for the genre and just let the players fill in the necessary bits of development on the fly might be conducive to this style of play.

Say, a fantasy game: You’ve got the main hero(ine) and their sidekick (a thief, usually, in the fantasy movies), and maybe the old wizard/sorceress to aid with esoteric knowledge exposition and handling magically stuff. Fill in the blanks — is the lead a bruiser like Red Sonja or Conan, a bit more trickster with animal friends like the Beastmaster, a wet-behind the ears but game for anything type like Perseus or Hercules? (Or Luke Skywalker, for that matter…)

Mix and match tropes, kill some stuff, a chase scene, big showdown with the bad guy that honked your team off for whatever reason…that’s a quick night or two’s play.

I’ve met a couple of gamers through my tenure in the hobby who avoid stepping behind the screen. For some, they just don’t have the time, and one admitted didn’t have the creativity, for the position. Others see running the game a daunting proposition: there’s a lot to remember, some aren’t as practiced as others with the improvisation that is key to good gamemastering, some don’t have the rules entirely mastered…

And none of that matters. If you’ve got a good story to tell — or just an entertaining one — it doesn’t matter if you’ve only got one in you, or it’s just the start fot eh storytelling dam breaking, if you have entertained the thought, give it a shot.

Here’s some idea for a new GM to maximize their effectiveness, and most importantly enjoyability — not just for the players, but for the GM as well. Because if you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.

1) KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid! Don’t craft some multitextured, year-long adventure with dozens of NPCs, loads of backstory, or worldbuilding. Do what you need to tell the story. We’ll use a movie example — Pitch Black.

The basic story: A bunch of characters crash land on a moon of a gas giant when the ship malfunctions. Something is lurking underground and get one of the characters, leading to the discovery of the light-sensitive creatures that are soon to make their lives more interesting than they’d like. The moon drifts into the shadow of it’s primary every decade or so and the place is immersed in darkness. Which is when the nasty critters come out. Your mission: get to an outpost nearby and get the shuttle up and running before the sun sets and the nasties come to get you. No slop, just a survive-or-die adventure.

What do we know about the universe? (Ignoring the craptastic Chronicles of Riddick) Not much. There are colonies and interstellar travel, nasty penal systems and bounty hunters, Muslims in space. That’s pretty much it. The setting, this moon, looks an awful lot like Western Australia.

What do we know about the characters other than a thumbnail? There’s the pilot, guilty about crashing. There’s the bounty hunter we barely know other than he’s a drug addict, and his quarry Riddick — an infamous killer with eyes that allow him to see in the dark…but who shows more compassion than we might expect. The bounty hunter doesn’t trust Riddick; it’s mutual. There’s a miner who gets killed early. The imam and his sons praising Allah and not much else. The merchant. A young boy 9actually a girl) that idolizes the killer. All very basic characters.

Simple.

2) Don’t Panic. You don’t even need a towel for this one. If you have trouble with the rules, have a player look up the specifics while you press on. Or better yet, simply adjudicate the issue with common sense and based on what you do know of the rule. (Crap! How do explosives work in this game? Whatever — they’re area effect and the damage listed is 6d6 with an area effect fo 5’…let’s assume it’s a die drop off/range. Roll 6d6, line ’em up, and knock of one per increment. What, there’s a wall between you and it? Let’s assume the wall soaks a die.)

If you start to feel in over your head, call a bathroom or drink break. Take a moment, regroup, figure out what to do next. What not to do — dig around the rule book for more than a minute or so. You might consider tabbing them with the colored doo-hickies students use in their textbooks, labeled with the appropriate rules you might need.

3) Don’t be afraid to let the characters wander off course a bit, so long as they are enjoying themselves. They might drift off of the story for a bit. Drop a new hint or clue to get them back on course.

4) HAVE FUN! If you’re not, you’re doing it wrong.

5) Afterward, when the session is done, get feedback from the players to see what you did right or wrong. If they don’t even mention your GM’ing but enthuse about what happened, who did what, the cool NPC, congratulations! You succeeded! And if you didn’t, don’t take it personally.