Bragrmans Sidequests

7 Principles of Good GMing

This blog post began with a joke which, to understand, needs a bit of context.

When I’m not gaming I’m a teacher in Australia, and one of my regular gaming groups includes several other teachers.

In Australia we have a set of professional standards for teachers that inform accreditation, professional learning, evaluations and basically all aspects of a teachers practice.

The first of these is “Know your students and how they learn”. In a conversation about the our recent game, for which I am the GM, one of the players asked about my approach to running games and in response I rephrased the first teaching standard as “Know your players and how they play.”

Great joke, right? You had to be there.

While the comment was flippant, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me, and when I thought about the other professional standards, they also translated quite effectively into a gaming context. There seemed to be a lot of overlap between my perception of a good GM and those practices considered ‘best practice’ for teachers.

I wondered; could these inform a set of Principles of Good GM-ing?

While I’ve read many excellent books and blogs about GMing, and while some talk about the qualities or techniques of a good GM, they don’t always succeed in identifying the behaviours and practices that a person might engage in to be a good GM, or to become a better one.

So, with that thought bubble expanding inside my brain, I set about adapting the Australian Professional Teaching Standards into a gaming context to see if they all could be applied to the practice of being a good GM.

So here is my first attempt at coopting the Australian Professional Teaching Standards into the Principles of Good GM-ing

1. Know your players and how they play

A good GM understands the kinds of games, stories, and events that their players find interesting and engaging, and uses those elements to craft plots and narratives that till be fun to play. This does not mean a GM should capitulate to every whimsical desire of every player, but rather a good GM seeks to find an equilibrium in the game that offers something to everyone, rather than forcing a particular style of play on to their group without consideration of players’ preferences.

A common strategy toward this goal is to start the game with a ‘Session 0’ where players and GM can talk about their preferences and expectations and find common ground before commencing play. For the GM, however, it is an ongoing process of observation and adjustment as the game progresses.

2. Know the game and how to run it

The GM should be fairly familiar with the setting and rules of the game being played. While many GMs and gaming groups introduce homebrewed rules and settings, these should be discussed and agreed upon outside of play (when delivering the death blow to one of your players’ characters is never the time to introduce your new house rule that allows certain attacks to bypass or otherwise ignore armour).

The published rules of a game define people’s understanding and expectations of the gaming experience, and the shorter the distance between someone’s expectations and experience, the happier and more satisfied they will be with the experience.

Adhering to the rules faithfully – or flagging variations to the rules ahead of time – is an essential element of trust between GM and players, and that trust is essential to players feeling safe and free to take risks either mechanically, or with their roleplaying.

3. Plan for and implement appropriate gaming experiences

Every group has it’s own preferred playing style, from the rigidly mechanistic board-game-like dungeon-hack to nearly mechanics-free LARPs to the completely improvised collaborative story-telling.

Whatever your group’s approach, as a GM, you need to ensure you plan appropriately for each session, as even effective improvisation takes some planning and practice.

Your planning may involve a flexible plot outline which is altered by your players’ decisions in game, rehearsing the voice or mannerisms of a major NPCs, you may like to prepare pictures or maps, or maybe you prepare 3D printed dungeons with carefully painted miniatures.

In effect, this standard speaks to the implementation of the first principle, and says that whatever your group’s agreed style of play, make sure you are prepared to deliver on that style.

4. Create and maintain supportive and safe gaming environments

Like any collaborative activity, roleplaying depends on a certain amount of trust between players and GM. That trust depends on all participants feeling safe and supported within the gaming environment in order to take risks and engage in the game in new and interesting ways.

While roleplaying is usually a collaborative activity among friends or peers, and as such everyone has some responsibility towards a positive gaming environment, the GM holds at least symbolic significance within the group and has a larger-than-average role to play in establishing the tone and nature of gaming group interactions.

Consider particularly the way in which you handle queries or disagreements over rules, or the distinct separation of dialogue directed at characters compared to players, but also how effectively you implement the first 3 principles will contribute significantly to players’ feeling safe enough to take risks within the game.

5. Acknowledge and respond to player contributions to the game.

(This one is the most modified from the original language of the Teaching Standard)

Almost all games contain a mechanism for character advancement through the earning of Experience Points (XP), Karma, or other abstract representations of growth-through-experience that can be used to advance a character’s ability. In the first instance, this principle is about the appropriate use of such systems to acknowledge and reward desired behaviours within the game.

Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, this principle is about player agency. Agency – being the perception or belief that ones actions result in a meaningful effect – is a key part of enjoyment within a roleplaying game, as well as a significant contributor to a person’s overall sense of wellbeing. Few things are more demotivating than the belief that one’s own actions are pointless and this is as true in roleplaying games as it is in the workplace or more generally in life.

As such, the good GM considers the actions of players and their characters and allows them to have an effect on the game, to influence the setting, the outcome of a scene, or even the direction of future stories.

This is part of the collaborative storytelling process that exists to varying degrees within all roleplaying games.

6. Engage in ongoing learning

At its core, this principle is an acknowledgement of the fact that being a good GM is ultimately a process of ongoing effort, rather than a fixed state of being. A good GM is not something you are, but rather Good GMing is something you do.

As an extension of the second principle, to be a good GM, be prepared to continually revise aspects of your game, your story, the published rules, your session notes, etc. It is a rare human who could have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the rules within a single gaming system, or the nuances of the setting that might be relevant to an upcoming session. For the majority of us, it requires an ongoing process of revising rules, adjusting ideas, seeking inspiration form other sources, or even just reflecting on what went well or could have been improved from previous session.

7. Engage with other GMs, players, writers and the gaming community

Roleplaying is a collaborative, community-based activity. As such, your practices as a GM can only be improved or enriched by engaging with the game from a community perspective. Whether it comes in the form of ongoing discussion with your group, participating in online forums, contributing to Q&As about particular topics relevant to your game, any broader engagement will ultimately provide you with opportunities to test and expand your ideas and understanding of your game.

So that’s it. A model of Good GMing derived from the Australian Professional teaching Standards. This is still very much in draft form, however I feel there’s enough here to be worthy of refining over time.

What do you think? Is there any aspect of being a Good Gm that you think isn’t covered in these 7 principles? Or is there something here that you don’t agree is necessary in order to be a Good GM? Let me know in the comments below.

The GM & the Tarot: 5 – long-term plots and event timelines

<<<Previously: Cytherea’s Civil War (Part 1)

Arising out of the request that led to Cytherea’s Civil War was the need to create a way to use the cards to create significant plot events that could define a campaign. In order to provide enough complexity and variety, and ensure it was a sustainable system that could be used repeatedly without too much chance of repetition if used repeatedly in the same game.

In devising this particular use of cards, I drew on a couple of assumptions:

These plot events were primarily to involve the Player Characters (PCs), rather than define a timeline of events that would occur no matter what.
That every plot event should have some point of conflict at the core. Conflict is what drives stories and either forces the PCs to react or is the result of the PCs actions.

I maintained the rules for interpreting cards that any Major Arcana meant there was some relation to one of the major NPCs (and if it was an actual NPCs card then it related to that characters) and that the court cards (Page, Knight, King, Queen) meant a significant NPC, even if only in the context of that story arc or event.

I also retained the idea of using inverted cards to indicated that something was hidden or secretive, though in this case I would not be drawing an additional card to ‘mask’ the hidden action or intent.

With those ideas in place, I settled on the following approach:

Draw 3 cards

First card – defines the main plot event
Second card – modifies the main event
Third card – identifies the point of conflict

It is up to you whether you interpret the cards in sequence or together, through my preference in this instance is to take them all together and consider the interactions between cards rather than adhere to any strict sequence of events.

As an example, here’s the first plot event from Cytherea’s Civil War:

First, draw 3 cards:

Princess of Pentacles (inverted); explore and seek new things, but in secret.
2 of Pentacles; balance, equilibrium
6 of Pentacles; generosity of spirit

An interesting twist of coincidence (or poor shuffling) that three Pentacles cards came out together. Pentacles, despite the often mystical associations of the 5 pointed star, is most commonly associated with the material world and physical aspects of life. Money, property, business, etc.

That the key event is to revolve around a significant individual provides a sound introduction to a new story, and given the plot ideas already set in play by the draw of NPCs and their relationships to the characters, the element of secrecy is also quite fitting.

As it’s the opening of a campaign involving characters in a foreign land, there are some elements that seem unavoidable. Arriving, establishment, meeting locals. However the nature and style of these events are shaped by the cards.

So here’s how I defined the opening event…

Plot event outline:

The Vermillion legion (PC faction) arrive in An-teng and are welcomed by the matriarch of a village (the Princess card) in the outer regions where they set up camp. The PCs faction have been sent in support of House Ledaal’s legion who are there to help quiet tensions in the area after a minor uprising in one of the outer provinces (restore balance/equilibrium). Their true mission, however, is to seek out the location of a rumoured first age weapon that would give house Tepet a significant advantage, but the leadership of the legion are under orders to keep the true nature of their quest strictly need-to-know (seek new things, but in secret). Therefore, only a few of the legion’s ranking officers know the true objective. A conflict arises early between the two generals when the Ledaal general takes a very forceful approach to engaging with the local populace and the Tepet general intervenes at the behest of the Matriarch (the general’s generosity of spirit provoking conflict).

This approach seemed to work fairly well for its intended purpose, so the next step in finalising the Civil War plotline is to generate a series of events to provide the opening structure of the campaign.

<<<Previously: Cytherea’s Civil War (Part 1)

Coming soon: Cytherea’s Civil War (part 2)

Cytherea’s Civil War (Part 1)

<<<Previously: 4 – A sample session outline

Next: 5 – Long term plots and event timelines>>>

NOTE: This post assumes some knowledge of the setting and characters of Exalted.

One of the main gaming forums I inhabit is Onyx Path Publishing’s Exalted forum, and after I published the first 4 GM & the Tarot articles, I posted links here for some feedback from forum users, and offered to apply the process on behalf of anyone else’s campaign starters to see what emerged.

Forum user Cytherea took up that offer, providing the following idea:

“If you’re still up for it, I’d love to hear what your system can come up with for the game I’m currently planning.

It’s going to be a campaign about the Realm civil war beginning in An-Teng with a conflict between Tepet Ejava’s Vermillion Legion (the PC faction), the satrap and their local Ragara interests, and General Shuri the Scarlet representing House Ledaal. Of course, other factions like the Tengese Princes, the Lintha, and the First and Forsaken Lion will be causing trouble as well. I’m in the middle of trying to come up with a rough timeline of events for this mini civil war, sort of like the guide in Return of the Scarlet Empress. Could this system handle something like that?”

Can it handle something like that? Well, I was certainly willing to find out.

This request has two distinct parts. The first, and the subject of this post, is developing a campaign landscape using the method of drawing and interpreting tarot cards described primarily in post two of this series.

The second part, to come in a future post, was to come up with a method of determining large-scale timeline events to drive a campaign.

Choosing the deck

I have a number of different decks that have different images and themes to depict the common characters, events and ideas of the tarot. For Exalted games, I usually use the Manga Tarot. I like this one for a couple of reasons; primarily it uses images of characters, creatures and objects inspired by Japanese history, culture and mythology that has a strong resonance with the setting and style of Exalted, but it also inverts the typical gender associations of the major arcana and other characters depicted in the deck.

One of the ideas I’ve always found attractive about the setting of Exalted is that because people of all genders exalt (awaken to/be granted demi-god like powers) in roughly equal numbers, there is not an underlying culture of sexism informing most of the societies in the setting. For this reason, I like the greater number of prominent female figures in the manga tarot deck, partly as a reminder to constantly question my own assumptions about issues of gender and identity when creating key NPCs and plot elements for the game.

The Campaign Landscape

The first series of card draws involves drawing only major arcana to inform a series of 8 NPCs, followed by a second draw, again of only major arcana, to inform NPC motivations. The second draw allows inverted cards as an indicator of hidden motives, and which usually prompt subsequent draws to identify the public face of the character’s intentions.

So for this campaign that intends to lead up to a civil war between major houses of the Empire, I drew the following:

NPC Card	Motivations
02 – The Priest	16 – The Tower (inverted) + The Hanged Woman (inverted)
08 – Justice	19 – The Sun
11 – Strength	13 – Death
12 – The Hanged Woman	14 – Temperance (inverted) + 20 – Judgement
16 – The Tower	8 – Justice
18 – The Moon	15 – The Devil
19 – The Sun	0 – The Fool (inverted) + 11 – Strength
21 – The World	21 – The World

Devising NPCs

Here’s how I interpreted the NPC cards in light of Cytherea’s overall campaign outline:

Card	Meaning/s	NPC
02 – The Priest	Spirituality. Advice, non-materialistic vision, teaching. “The spirit is a garden to be cultivated with love”.	Respected elder of An-Teng, mortal necromancer, ‘keeper of the pact’ who negotiates with the denizens of a local shadowland.
08 – Justice	Equity. Do right, objectivity, perspective. “Doing the right thing is the most difficult thing.”	Imperial general – Tepet, believes in service to the empire but values immaculate philosophy principles of caring for those beneath one’s station, and so questions orders that seem to serve personal, over broader, goals.
11 – Strength	Energy. Self-control, perseverance, resistance. “All know how to be weak, all know how to be strong.”	Imperial general – Ledaal, devotee of military strategy, master martial artist, values victory above all.
12 – The Hanged Woman	Equilibrium, sacrifice, training. “equilibrium comes from the inside”	An-teng political leader who serves as a local advisor to the satrap, is privy to various factional plots that seek the leader’s endorsement and resources.
16 – The Tower	Ashes. Ruin, destruction, things going up in smoke. “The storm breaks only what does not bend”.	Tengese prince who is the figurehead for an army preparing to reclaim an-teng from the empire.
18 – The Moon	Going beyond appearances, dreams, thoughts, ‘Harmony in giving and receiving’.	A sidereal of the Silver faction, believes a compromise is necessary between the ruling order of solars and lunars, due to the solars reduced numbers.
19 – The Sun	Truth, light, decision, ‘Live in the light’	A sidereal of the Gold faction, seeks to return creation ‘to the light’.
21 – The World	Soul, Completeness, understanding, perfection, achievement, ‘Everything in the right place’	Pirate captain, serves their demonic patron (soul) in their mission to return things to the right place. Believes they have established a life of balance and perfection walking between worlds (land and sea, creation and malfeas)

This collection of NPCs primarily served to represent the primary factions already identified as part of the campaign, with only the addition of two sidereal characters, manipulating matters from behind the scenes.

Determining Motivations

Next came their motivations, which offered the chance to develop these NPCs and open up the possibilities of their involvement in the story.

I interpreted the cards this way:

NPC	Motivation Cards	NPC motivation
The Necromancer	16 – The Tower (inverted) + The Hanged Woman (inverted)	The necromancer is secretly providing intelligence to ancestor spirits about the workings of politics and imperial happenings in An-teng. They believe the ghosts will help to free the region of Imperial forces, but are unaware that a Deathlord is direction the actions and inquiries of the ghostly forces who plan instead to wipe out all of creation. Many other factional leaders seeks wisdom form the dead via this NPC, but they are genuinely unsure of who, if any, deserves their help.
General of the Vermillion Legion (PC starting faction)	19 – The Sun	The Tepet leader of the Vermillion legion believes that something is amiss about the current state of their orders and, while fulfilling their duty, seeks the truth of their orders, and the actions of the other imperial legion in the area.
General of the Ledaal legion	13 – Death	The Ledaal general seeks glory through greater challenges, grows tired of suppressing rebellions and fighting off beastmen on the fringes of civilization and wants to test their mettle against legendary enemies of creation.
The Satrap’s Advisor	14 – Temperance (inverted) + 20 – Judgement	The Satrap’s advisor hides beneath a veneer of judicious leadership, balancing the various interests and factions that threaten to upset the peace of the region, however they secretly want to purify and heal their homeland.
Prince of An-Teng	8 – Justice	This Tengese prince is the local mirror of the Ledaal general. They believe they are fighting a righteous war and are dedicated to their cause.
Silver Faction Sidereal	15 – The Devil	This Sidereal, while pursuing a return to power of the celestial exalted in creation, also wishes to be celebrated for their achievements. They hunger for recognition and reward, and feel frustration at the effects of their arcane fate.
Gold Faction Sidereal	0 – The Fool (inverted) + 11 – Strength	This Sidereal presents an image of dedication to the protection of creation, claiming that the celestial exalted are the strongest defence against chaos, however they secretly get a thrill out of upsetting the status quo. After a life dedicated to order and fate, this individual has found perverse pleasure in impulsiveness and unpredictability, and part of their motivation is to cause chaos and see what emerges.
Lintha Pirate Captain	21 – The World	The Lintha pirate capatin is pure in their service to the malfean ideal. They want to help bring down the masters of creation so that their demonic parents can rise again. Everything they do has an angle connected to a plot to set people against each other, cause strife, and encourage others to further fray the fabric of creation. In time, this NPC may be a prime candidate for Infernal Exaltation as a reward for their service.

NPC-PC Relations

The final part of determining the overall landscape is randomly determining the overall relationship these major NPCs will have with the PCs. This determines who their allies, enemies, and associates will be over the course of the game.

I shuffled the cards and ended up with this result:

(strongest allies/supporters at the top, down to direct antagonists at the bottom)

The Moon – Silver Faction Sidereal
The Tower – Tengese Prince
Hanged Woman – Local Advisor to Satrap
The World – Lintha Pirate
The Priest – Mortal necromancer
The Sun – Gold faction Sidereal
Strength – Ledaal General
Justice – Tepet General

Now this was a fascinating outcome! The leader of the PC starting faction was to ultimately become their greatest adversary, with local political figures and revolutionaries as their closest allies.

That the gold faction sidereal was to be in a more antagonistic position made sense, seeing as the Terrestrial Exalts overthrew and murdered the solars all those centuries ago.

Ultimately, it seems the characters will start the game as members of an Imperial legion on a mission from powerful royal luminaries, and eventually find themselves in conflict with their initial allies and in stronger alignment with local interests, perhaps becoming sympathetic to their plight or even joining or helping lead their rebellion.

And that sounds like the beginning of an epic civil war story about loyalty, values and conflict!

Coming soon: Cytherea’s Civil War (part 2) – Countdown to war!

<<<Previously: 4 – A sample session outline

Next: 5 – Long term plots and event timelines>>>

Image title/artist unknown. Sourced here.

The GM & the Tarot: 4 – A sample session outline

<<<Previous: 3 – Devising a session

The purpose of this post is to provide a sample of a session outline developed using the processes outlined in Part 3 – Devising a session. This example will be for a Shadowrun game session and will build on the campaign frame and sample NPCs developed in Part 2 – framing a campaign. If you haven’t read the previous posts detailing the use of cards, this post may be a little hard to follow, though the scenario outline at the end should still be of use.

First, in order to kick off the story a begin building plots involving my major NPCs, I’ve opted to incorporate two of the Major Arcana/NPCs into my session draw. After a bit of shuffling, The Chariot was mixed into the 7 card draw, and The Hierophant is a secondary factor in the story.

Session outline draw

The initial 7 card draw comes out as follows:

Story Element	Card	Suggested meaning
Inciting Incident	9 of Swords	Failure, death, delay
Story Goal	The Chariot	(Major NPC – Smuggler)- also, war, triumph, providence
Primary Obstacle	10 of Cups	Contentment, perfection
Assistance	9 of Cups (inverted)	Concord, victory, success
Opposition	6 of Swords (inverted)	Journey, route, way
Consequences / Stakes	Judgement (inverted)	Accounting for past actions
Rewards	4 of Pentacles	Resisting change

Interpreting the cards

Because The Chariot emerged as the Story Goal, the objective of the story is for the characters to help the Major NPC of the Smuggler achieve a significant goal. As another Major Arcana emerged under Consequences / Stakes, that aspect of the story will be related to the second NPC in this story, the corporate military R&D agent (The Hierophant). Because the Judgement card is inverted, the Hierophant’s involvement in the story will be indirect and possibly not something the player characters are aware of.

Now onto the rest of the cards:

While the common conceit to start a story in Shadowrun games is that the PCs are hired to do a job or ‘run’, and not wanting to over complicate things for the first session in a new campaign I will stick with that arrangement. The reasons for the job, however, can be coloured by the card that is drawn and influence the circumstances of the rest of the session.

So this story begins when the characters are hired to replace another team who have failed to do a job (‘failure’ as represented by the 9 of Swords). This immediately suggests that the job is particularly difficult. The reasons for their failure will be determined after more of the session outline is completed.

The goal of this story is to help the Smuggler deliver a package – they PCs are to meet the Smuggler somewhere just inside the national border and take possession of a package and then get it to its intended destination.

The primary obstacle of this session is defined by ‘contentment, or perfection’ – following on from the influence of the 9 of Swords as the Inciting Element, this card could be interpreted as a further absence of contentment, or even the opportunity for contentment, meaning that the pressure is really on for this task. The job has just become incredibly time-sensitive and so the PCs have far less than their usual time for preparation – effectively none – and will have to improvise more than usual to complete the task in time. To further expand on the idea of an absence of contentment, the primary setting for the story will be on unfamiliar and hostile territory. In the default Shadowrun setting of the Seattle city-state, there are plenty of hostile urban sprawls and slums in which such events can take place. In this case, the PCs have to meet the Smuggler in one of the abandoned regions of the city rendered uninhabitable by an erupting volcano, occupied now by urban predators, gangs and magical nasties that dwell in the dark places of the Shadowrun universe.

Whatever assistance is available to the characters at short notice is not immediately evident and would therefore require some exploration or creative thinking on behalf of the PCs to uncover. In the context of the story so far, and given a primary meaning of the 9 of Cups is ‘concord’, or agreement between groups of people, there will be a small community of homeless people living around the area who can help the PCs navigate through unfamiliar terrain. This help will not be offered freely, nor will their presence be immediately evident.

Opposition, defined by an inverted 6 of Swords, has to do with the route or journey the characters or their goal will take. A clear use for this card is not immediately evident, so I’ll wait to apply the remaining cards before deciding in this one.

The inverted Judgement card relates to the NPC of the Hierophant, or the military R&D agent, who themselves have a hidden motive. This character is behind some aspect of the story but their involvement is indirect, so I interpret that as meaning that the character will be acting through third party agents as well as further ciphers to protect their identity, should the PCs go looking. I also have to remember that this character is meant to be the primary antagonist of the campaign and so it can’t hurt for their relationship to the characters to get off on a bad foot.

Therefore, I choose to interpret this card and it’s position on the draw as referring to the ‘consequences of success’ in the style of ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. If the characters succeed in their task they will incur, at least, some ongoing bad favour from their hidden adversary.This means that the hidden NPC doesn’t want the characters to succeed. But why? The NPC has an investment in the characters failing in their task. This NPC wants to claim the item that the characters are helping to smuggle, which, given the secret motivation of the NPC suggests that the smuggled items have some value to the NPCs secret pursuit to ‘transcend humanity’ through cyber-technology.

The last card in the ‘rewards’ position indicates that ‘resisting change’ will be a primary benefit of success in this story. Given the result of the card/story element above, this is going to mean that succeeding in this task will prevent something significantly worse from happening – it means a significant delay in the NPCs progress towards their goal, which, by extension, means that the NPCs goal is something worth stopping.

With these two final cards in place it helps to interpret the card in the ‘Opposition’ position. The characters will be opposed by others who want to get the smuggled package on a different route or journey than the direction the PCs will take it. The one element I will then add to the story that isn’t immediately suggested by the cards will be the agents that are trying to intercept the package and prevent the PCs from succeeding. Given that the major NPC has an allied NPC (or group) in the form of an elite squad of soldiers assisting in the research, some manifestation of that group will be the opposing agents in this session.

With all of those elements in place, it’s time to draft the final session outline…

Session outline

Backstory: The NPC R&D agent is involved in some less-than-ethical research into pushing the limits of cyberware and the human condition. While doing more mainstream research for their primary employer, a corp-run military outfit, they are also pushing their own agenda and subtly manipulating some experiments in order to test personal hypotheses alongside the corp-approved research goals.

One facility that operates in a location outside of the games setting was the subject of a successful run to capture a lot of research data, and then damage or destroy the facilities and any available data backups.

The perpetrators of this run did not know that the facility and research they were targeting were part of the NPC R&D agents personal agenda.

Upon learning of the heist, the NPC set a couple of members of their available allied soldiers to track down the perpetrators and reclaim the missing data. Because the true nature of the research was secretive and the NPC didn’t want to draw additional attention, they send only a small number of soldiers on this mission (perhaps the corporation that owned the facility considered it an acceptable loss, especially seeing as such espionage is a common part of doing business in the world of Shadowrun).

So the team of runners that were meant to receive the package were intercepted by the soldiers while the smuggler with the data was still in transit, leaving the person who initiated the job to arrange for a new crew to make the pickup with little preparation and deliver it to a third and final agent.

Gameplay outline: The PCs are hired by a generic agent to pick up a job after the previous team have dropped out of contact. They have to meet the smuggler in a remote and hostile part of town, collect a package, and get it to another destination back in the inhabited part of the city. They characters are offered an enticing bonus to their pay to make up for the lack of preparation time and the extra danger implied by the disappearance of the previous crew.

The location of the meeting is a particularly desolate and alien piece of terrain. Long-cold lava flows engulf the bottom stories of buildings, many of which are crumbling and unstable due to the damage to their lower floors – rubble and difficult terrain abounds. The Smuggler will be coming in an aerial vehicle to land on one of the few large, stable buildings in the area that has a still-serviceable landing pad on its roof, where the PCs will meet, collect the package and aim to get back out the way they came.

This will involve a bit of planning and improvising on the part of the GM to characterise the terrain and consider how it may present challenges to the characters. Being inaccessible to most conventional vehicles is a good starting point.

Once the PCs have the package, the soldiers tracking them will make their move and try to reclaim the data being smuggled. Because in the world of Shadowrun, data can be smuggled/transferred via the Matrix, this package will also include a physical element. A prototype device that is also being transported.

The major conflict of the session then will be the PCs trying to either fight or flee from a small group of elite soldiers who will be better equipped and trained to operate in this environment. If they succeed, they will be marked by the NPC as being part of an opposing conspiracy, and if they fail they will either be killed by the soldiers, or at least lose the package entrusted to them by the Smuggler.

This will be played out in roughly three main scenes,

One – the hire. The PCs meet with the hiring agent who will impress upon them the urgency and potential dangers of the job (set the stakes high!)

Two – the meeting. The PCs enter the area of the ground, where the GM develops the alien nature of the surroundings and the challenges it presents. The PCs may have a little bit of time to explore and in which to potentially uncover the possibility of assistance from the local community (which might come in the form of a secret passageway out or helping transport the package so the characters can lead the soldiers away – this would be high risk and possibly result in achieving the story goal while still suffering significant personal consequences or death).

Three – Ambush! The soldiers spring their trap which, depending on the PC’s actions, could results in a deadly stand-up fight or a pursuit through difficult territory to freedom.

And that’s it! There’s an example of using tarot cards to develop a session outline and related story elements.

If you have any questions or comments, please post them below.

The GM & the tarot: Part 3 – Devising a session

<<<Previously: 2 – Framing a campaign

Next: 4 – A sample session outline>>>

Having used the Major Arcana to develop the landscape of your campaign, it’s now time to bring the rest of the deck into play in order to devise an individual session.

While this post refers to generating a ‘session’, that is shorthand for ‘a single narrative arc of complication-action-resolution that might realistically be expected to be played in a single session’. This means a single complication that needs to be resolved through character action, with factors to add options, obstacles and assistances for the characters.

This use of cards can actually be a more complex process as it requires an even more abstract interpretation of the cards, and does not present quite as ‘neat’ a framework as just using the major arcana for the broad strokes of a campaign. As with all parts of this process, it is intended to prompt ideas that might be outside of your usual approach to generating story ideas, not to restrict or limit ideas. So go with interpretations of the cards that makes sense in the context of your game, rather than being concerned about finding the ‘right’ or ‘best’ use of a card in any given context.

Before beginning a draw of cards to outline a session, you have to decide what to do with the Major Arcana cards relating to your primary NPCs

How to use the Major Arcana

The way you incorporate the Major Arcana into a session outline card draw depends on whether you want your overarching campaign narrative to develop quickly, or to be a background part of a more open-world campaign with lots of subplots.

You can either keep the set of Major Arcana representing your primary NPCs separate from the deck, or you can mix them in with the other cards to see if and when they emerge. Whichever you choose, mix the remainder of the Major Arcana into the deck (including the ones used to identify NPC motivations).

If you expect to be playing for an extended time and want any developing meta-narrative to emerge slowly, with NPC plots developing along in the background, then mix them into the deck. Should they turn up in a draw, then you interpret them in a way that directly relates to that NPC (which is an interesting way to have subplots and unexpected twists turn up in your game)
If you want your game to quickly develop an overarching narrative that focuses on the machinations and conflicts of your major NPCs, leave them out of the deck. Before completing the draw below, draw two of the Major Arcana. Mix one of those 2 into the cards you’ll draw for the session outline (below) and place the other one to the side. The card mixed into the session outline draw will be the NPC who is primarily involved in the session / story, while the second card will be the one whose interests are invoked in the story, though maybe not by the NPC themselves being directly involved.

The session outline draw

After deciding what you want to do with the Major Arcana, shuffle the deck and draw 7 cards and lay them out in a row (or 6 + one Major Arcana as detailed above) . The cards inform the following elements of the story:

1 – Inciting Element

2 – Story Goal

3 – Primary Obstacle

4 – Assistance

5 – Opposition

6 – Consequences / Stakes

7 – Rewards

When shuffling the deck, you can introduce a swirl or reversal of some cards so that the orientation of the cards is also mixed up, as with the drawing of motivations in Part 2. Those cards that appear inverted indicate something hidden or secretive about the result, while those that are drawn upright indicate elements of the story that are available.

Interpreting the cards

When interpreting the cards, the abstract (vague?) meanings and imagery of many of the minor arcana can be interpreted to represent physical or abstract ideas within your story. If, for example, you drew the Four of Swords to represent the major obstacle in your session, you might interpret it as an actual person who is vigilant and ever watchful, or it might be that the scenario calls for the characters to be vigilant, and therefore you’ll throw lots of distractions and red-herrings at them. You have a lot of flexibility to shape the cards to suit the style and tone to the kinds of stories you like to tell.

However, the following guidelines can also help to make the abstract meanings and imagery of most tarot decks more relevant to a role-playing game:

If any of the royal cards are drawn (page, knight, king, queen) then use those to represent a new NPC who is of significance to that particular session – and who may become a recurring secondary character in your game. Whether or not that secondary NPC has any direct relationship to your primary NPCs is up to you based on how you interpret the remainder of the cards.
If an Ace is drawn at any point, then make that story element something of ‘greater-than-usual-significance’ to the setting of your game. This way, you occasionally introduce heightened stakes, or elements of drama in your stories.
If any Major Arcana are drawn, then that element of the story/session must directly relate to the business of one of the primary NPCs defined earlier in the process.

a. If you chose the option to mix the Major Arcana relating to your major NPCs back into the deck, then you choose which NPC a card relates to.

b. If more than one Major Arcana appear, then connect each card to a different primary NPC – this is how new conflicts and subplots can develop within your game. If you have chosen to draw 2 Major Arcana as part of your session outline draw, the relate any further Major Arcana to those 2 first before reaching further into your NPC deck.

c. If you actually draw one of the Major Arcana that is the card used to define a major NPC then that element of the story directly relates, if not personally involves, that character (this will definitely happen if you chose to mix one of the Major Arcana cards into your session outline draw).

From there it is up to your interpretation of the cards to create story elements for your characters to engage in. Be flexible in your interpretation of the cards, and if something comes up that you just cannot make work in a story framework you’re otherwise happy with, then ignore it, replace it with another story element that makes sense to the rest of your story, or even consider drawing another card to replace it.

<<<Previously: 2 – Framing a campaign

Next: 4 – A sample session outline>>>

Exalted 3 Combat Cheat Sheet – First Draft

After playing a couple of session of Exalted 3rd edition, I’ve started work on a quick combat rules summary that (hopefully) covers the most commonly needed rules for combat situations.

This is a first draft, which will probably end up being 2 pages, or one double sided page, once I add rules for movement, ranged attacks, cover and a couple of other combat situations.

I welcome any feedback or suggestions in the comments below.

Exalted 3e combat cheat-sheet

The GM & the tarot: 2 – Framing a campaign

<<<Previous: 1 – Why tarot?

Next: 3 – Devising a session>>>

“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random” – Ken Robinson.

As stated in part 1, the primary reasons to use a tarot deck to devise RPG stories is because of the elements of randomness and variety it brings, and the creative challenge that comes from trying to fit random elements into a story. As per the quote at the top of this post, the random draw of the cards provides a new idea, and then you give that idea value in the context of a story.

When starting a new campaign, a random draw of tarot cards can be used to quickly create a landscape of NPCs whose conflicts, goals and motivations will be played out over the course of your campaign.

The steps of this process are detailed below, along with an example from a Shadowrun game devised using this method.

Note: This approach is based on a couple of assumptions about the way people run and play RPGs; primarily, that people engage in ongoing ‘campaign’ style play with a continuous set of player characters, and that campaigns are made up of a series of sub-plots and stories (each usually representing 1-2 sessions of play) that fit within a larger, overarching narrative that develops throughout the course of many sessions. Later posts will detail a variation of this process for devising stand-alone or one-shot story ideas.

Game Concept

First, come up with an overall concept for the game/story you wish to run. This provides some indication of the kinds of characters and scenarios you’ll create and a lens through which to interpret cards drawn as part of the process.

Example: After a few years of running ‘specialised’ games in the Shadowrun universe (all PCs are gang members, elite military, a magical circle, etc), I decided to run a game that went back to the original setting of the game. The characters were to be runners navigating between the big players at the top, and the gangs and hard life of the streets.

For the sake of something different, instead of using one of the mega-corps to be the immediate representation of the ‘big players’, I wanted to focus on the corp-run security and military services of the 6th world.

Initial draw – creating primary NPCs

The first use of the tarot cards is to define the landscape of the campaign, the pattern of key NPCs who will feature in your stories and who will return as primary allies and antagonists for your player’s characters.

Extract the 22 major arcana, shuffle them and randomly draw around 8 cards (more or less depending on the scale and scope of the story you wish to tell). Keep in mind that you can always add to this at a later date if you wish to expand your story.

Each of these cards is used to inform the creation of a major NPC who will feature in the game/campaign. Take time to devise a concept for an NPC based on each of these cards, as appropriate to the overall game concept you’ve chosen.

Example: As I was only expecting to run this game for a handful of sessions, I limited myself to 6 cards.

The cards I drew to start the game were The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Chariot, The Hanged Man, Death, and The Devil (presented here in their numbered order within the deck).

As NPCs, I interpreted these cards as follows:

Card	Suggested Meaning	NPC
The Emperor	Wisdom and power, top of the hierarchy, male ego	A community leader/organiser with significant influence in one of the slums of Seattle.
The Hierophant	Knowledge & education, studying higher values, accepting discipline	A senior researcher in a corp-military R&D division.
The Chariot	Adventure and risk, mental and physical journeys, desire for victory	A smuggler who brings things into and out of Seattle.
The Hanged Man	Transition, limbo, taking a step backwards in order to move forwards	A crime boss whose efforts to grow influence have been stalled.
Death	Change, beginnings and endings, getting to the gritty details	The ‘agents of change’ – an elite squad within the corp-military that works alongside The Hierophant.
The Devil	Thirst for money or power, obsession, addictive patterns of behaviour, manipulation by others	The crime-boss’ second-in-command, a heavily cybered warrior.

Determining NPC motivations

The next step of the defining the landscape is to determine the prime motivations of each NPC in the context of the story. To do this, once again take the 22 major arcana, including the ones you’ve already drawn. One card will be drawn per NPC, which will inform their objectives and/or motivations.

This time, when shuffling the cards, lay them face down on a table and swirl them around so that the direction of each card is randomised as well as its order. When a card is drawn upright, that indicates that the character’s goals are a part of their public persona, while if it is inverted (upside down) that means the characters goals are hidden or secretive.

For each inverted card, you may also choose to draw another card to identify what kind of public face the character puts forward to mask their hidden intentions.

Example: For the NPCs identified above, I drew the following cards to define their motivations:

Character	Card/Motivation
Smuggler	The High Priestess
Community Organiser	The Hierophant
Crime Boss	Temperance
Crime Boss’ Lieutenant	The Fool
Elite Soldiers	The Magician
R&D Agent	The Tower (inverted) + The World

I interpreted this card draw as follows:

Character	Motivation
Smuggler	Seeks to uncover secrets – believes there is a secret plot connected to some of the jobs they carry out.
Community Organiser	Seeks to build a traditional, somewhat nostalgic, community to support people in the slums.
Crime Boss	Is seeking to achieve a sense of harmony, and heal themselves. At this point, the interaction between The Hanged Man and Temperance provided the idea of a Crime Boss inflicted with a mental illness. This is what was responsible for their stalled empire, and their current motivation was to overcome those problems in order to get business running again.
Crime Boss’ Lieutenant	Seeks experience – is a hedonist. Seeks new challenges and to overcome them. In this case the combination of The Devil and The Fool provided the idea of a figure who revelled in confrontational approaches to building power, yet was unaware of the implications of their boss’ health issues. In the context of Shadowrun, I translated this idea into a fledgling AI that controlled various drones and humanoid forms in the physical world.
Elite Soldiers	This unit seeks to elevate their skills and unit tactics. For reasons connected with their past experiences, they volunteered to work with R&D so they could test better equipment & tactics.
R&D Agent	This character’s hidden motivation is to transcend humanity. Having worked on cybernetic development for his career, this character wants to move beyond cybernetic enhancement of individuals and create a genuine hybrid entity. The character’s public motivation is to improve military cybernetics in accordance with company policy.

Determining relationship to PCs

Once you have you list of NPCs, take the cards that represent them, shuffle, and lay them out in a row from left to right, which represents the relationship to the PCs that these characters will have in the game.

Those towards the left are the ones with whom the PCs will be most closely aligned, and those on the right are the antagonists whose machinations will be driving many of the plots and forcing the characters to react.

Example: In this instance the cards came out in the order of: The Chariot, The Emperor, The Hanged Man, The Devil, Death, The Hierophant.

So the primary antagonist of this game will be the military R&D agent, followed closely by the soldiers working with them. The crime boss and their 2IC are more neutral, though the lieutenant is slightly more antagonistic. Finally, the Smuggler will be their greatest ally, and the community organiser will be generally, though not universally, supportive of the characters.

With that process, the social landscape of the campaign is defined and some tensions between characters as well as potential story lines start to emerge. As you progress to develop individual plots and session outlines, these NPCs and their motivations will play a role in interpreting additional cards drawn as part of your story.

Note: As stated in the introduction to this blog, one of the primary elements of my approach to creating RPG scenarios is to create conflicts of values and motivations that the players need to navigate. For this reason, I leave it to last to determine the NPC’s relationship to the players, letting conflict arise out conflicting an overlapping motivations rather than any predetermined concept of being heroes, allies or villains. This way the interpretation of cards to define NPCs and their motivations are free from expectations base don the characters role in the story.

If you wish to run a game that is more closely defined by the genre conventions of the game’s setting, or in a style that requires a more definite sense of heroes and villains, you can complete this step as part of the initial draw to identify NPCs. That way you are interpreting cards knowing what role each characters will play in your story.

<<<Previous: 1 – Why tarot?

Next: 3 – Devising a session>>>

The GM & the tarot: 1 – Why tarot?

Next: 2 – Framing your campaign >>>

I find tarot cards to be an invaluable tool for generating interesting RPG stories, or even individual session plots. The idea of using tarot cards as a way to generate story ideas or as a mechanism in RPGs is hardly new, however the purpose of this series of posts is to detail some of the ways I use tarot cards as a GM, particularly to help quickly generate new and interesting story ideas for characters, campaigns, stories, individual sessions and even single scenes.

‘The GM & the tarot’ series

Why TAROT?

The primary reason I use a tarot deck is for randomness and variety.

When writing stories for a game session you can create interesting and unexpected subplots and scenes by allowing an element of randomness to determine key story elements. Responding to that randomness by incorporating a new ideas into your game’s story can also be a fun creative challenge and break you out of those personal patterns of style or story structure that you may not even be conscious of.

Then there’s the variety of ideas represented by the number of cards and their various interpretations. Once you move past any ideas of mysticism, most tarot decks-which originated as playing cards before being co-opted by fortune tellers-are built around representations of human experiences and struggles, with cards and images imbued with symbolism to depict many aspects of those struggles. With 78 cards (usually) made up of 22 trump cards plus 56 cards divided into 4 suits, there are more possible card combinations to generate ideas than you’ll ever be able to incorporate into a lifetime of games.

This makes them a handy way to quickly devise interesting and original characters, motives and plot hooks for role playing games, or to add additional depth and nuance to an existing story line.

For those unfamiliar with tarot cards, here’s a quick summary of the way most decks are structured:

Major Arcana: 22 cards (also known as Trump cards) – each card depicts an archetype or ideal, and when taken in sequence the cards tell a story of the journey from innocence to worldly experience. Even if you do nothing else, these cards provide a structure for milestones of an extended campaign.

Minor Arcana: 56 cards divided into 4 suits-common suits are Pentacles, Cups, Swords, Rods/Staves-and each suit has 10 cards plus 4 court cards-Page, Knight, Queen, King.

Each of the suits has its ‘traditional’ meaning and associations, but if those don’t work for you, you can give them whatever meaning is appropriate to your game in order to make individual cards more relevant to the stories you wish to tell. For example, in games with a more Eurocentric mythology, you may wish to associate each suit with it’s primary elemental association, or associate suits with significant factions, houses or families within your game.

Finally, while purchasing tarot decks can be a costly exercise, there are plenty of free online resources including random card selectors, or sites with full decks and card meanings. You can even buy tarot deck apps for phones and tablets at a fraction of the price of a physical deck. I won’t link to any directly as many of them are associated with attempts to sell online tarot readings, so if you find such a site, I would encourage you to use of what free resources they have and view with extreme scepticism any other offers or promises they may make.

Next: 2 – Framing your campaign >>>

“I thought WE were the good guys?” – a story framework

This is the outline of the story that turned the encounter Little Demons on the Prarie into a 2 session event.

Presented here is the overarching story framework and the elements that define the core ethical dilemma of the piece – the running of this scenario involved additional encounters along the way, which will be presented in separate posts at a later date.

Themes and Objectives:

This story engages an old device that pits the characters’ morals against their integrity and reputation. A powerful being engages the characters to complete a task that seems entirely reasonable, but as they discover more about the task they realise they are potentially acting on behalf on the bad guy of the story.

In this scenario I’ve combined that plot twist with two other story telling devices (because who doesn’t love an over complicated story?) the device of the characters having to travel a distance to meet a deadline and facing delays along the way, and the device of the identity of the true antagonist being hidden. Continue reading ““I thought WE were the good guys?” – a story framework”

Little Demons on the Prairie – an encounter

This encounter was devised for Exalted, 2nd edition and was originally posted here. Presented here is the outline of a single encounter, which can be inserted into a game by itself as just an odd moment that raises the question of the nature of good and evil, but in my game this encounter formed the basis of a longer story which ran for two sessions. I will post that longer story outline in a future post.

Main themes and scenario objectives:

This encounter ultimately revolves around questioning the nature of purity and corruption on a micro level, and forces the characters to consider where their thresholds are on the scale between the two. The characters ultimately have to decide, on behalf of others, just how much ‘corruption’ is acceptable, and at which point suffering or death are preferable options.

The elements of this encounter might seem a little specific to the setting of Exalted, so I have included some suggestions to help swap out exalted specific elements for things suitable to other game settings. Continue reading “Little Demons on the Prairie – an encounter”

“…but at least he’s MY demon” – an encounter

This scenario was originally written for an Exalted, 2nd Edition campaign (if you’re not familiar with Exalted, read more here and here), and has been previously posted on the Onyx Path Exalted forums, here.

Main themes and scenario objectives:

The point of this encounter was to prompt the characters to explore the boundaries of their sense of right and wrong, all in the context of ‘how far would you go to survive’. There is no right or wrong way for this scenario to play out, as it ultimately forces the characters to make decisions about who they are and to express those qualities through their actions. Continue reading ““…but at least he’s MY demon” – an encounter”

Tales of Grey-introduction

I’ve been playing table-top role-playing games (or pen-and-paper, if you prefer) for a little over 20 years, and for most of that time I’ve been in the role of Game Master, creating stories, settings and conflicts for my friends to navigate with their characters.

The storytelling aspect of RPGs has always been my favourite part of the hobby, and as a GM I most enjoy devising stories and scenes that (hopefully!) engage players and make the game a more story-driven experience.

The title of this blog is in reference to my preferred approach to devising games, which is to create morally ambiguous situations in which the focus is more about the choices the characters make and the consequences of those choices than just on the results of dice rolls. This can work in different ways depending on the genre constraints of each specific game, but in general I find it an effective way to approach each game session that can result in extended engagement by the players.

This site is a combination of a blog about Roleplaying games and related resources, and a place to collect and publish some of the scenarios, characters and gaming resources I develop along the way on the off chance that anyone else finds them useful.