Tag: GM prep

How I Manage Events & Clocks in My Game

I’m an unashamed fan of the idea of clocks within RPGs, if you’re not familiar with this concept the clock (a concept I encountered first in Apocalypse World) is simply a method of tracking how many intervals of time have to pass before an event occurs. Clocks tend to be represented in Apocalypse World and other such games as a circle divided into segments.

In the clock to the left there are eight segments, each time certain criteria were met you–as the GM–would fill in one or more segments, when they are all filled in the event (whatever that might be) occurs in your games.

Continue reading “How I Manage Events & Clocks in My Game”

Wednesday Wisdom – Top 10 Tips for Running a Game When You’re Short of Inspiration

It’s been a long day here at Red Dice Diaries, so I thought that–whilst Hannah is running her Star Trek game on my desktop upstairs–I’d offer some advice on running a game when your well of creativity has run dry or you’re feeling low in energy.

Podcast Episode 46 – Old school prepping and bullet journals

In this episode I discuss some ideas for manual prep and note recording methods going forward for my games:

If you’re interested in the idea of Bullet Journalling you can find out more here:

Title Music

Shinigami by XTaKeRuX:
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/XTaKeRuX/Empty_Grave/Shinigami

Used under creative commons licence:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Wild West Wizardry Prep Notes

Last night I ran a game of Dresden Files Accelerated for five great players, it was a one-shot and–to put a bit of a twist on it–I’d decided to set the game in the wild west rather than the more traditional modern setting of the game. Looking for an iconic town I settled on Tombstone, during it’s waning years after the silver mines had dried up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone,_Arizona

Using the Wikipedia page I made the following notes:

POTTED TOMBSTONE HISTORY

  • Founded in 1979 by Prospector Ed Schiefflin in Arizona.
  • Grew in mid-1880s, last of the boom towns.
  • Local mines produced $40 to $85 million silver bullion.
  • Town established on mesa above the Goodenough Mine.

  • Had bowling alley, 4 churches, ice house, school, 2 banks,
    3 newspapers and an ice cream parlour.

  • 110 saloons.
  • 14 gambling halls, numerous dance halls and brothels.

  • All businesses situated amongst and around silver mines.

  • In mid-1880s the silver mines pentrated the water table.

  • Pumps were destroyed by a fire in 1886.
  • Unprofitable to re-build the costly pumps.
  • City nearby became something of a ghost town.

The players were told about the setting in advance and asked to create characters using the DFAE rules, shortly before the game I posted the following plot-clue to the Facebook event:

Created using an online tool: https://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

To give you an idea of my prep, below are some of the notes that I made for and during the game.

First of all I started with the main antagonists, a black court vampire by the name of Dillon and his thrall, a young girl with powers of necromancy.

Then I moved onto some of the goon-level flunkies who were going to be acting as muscle for our main villain:

I also made some brief notes of the powers and abilities that these villains had to save me having to look them up during the session:

During the session I also made some notes regarding PC names and incidental NPCs, I also used these index card to keep track of boosts, advantages, etc.

In addition to these note I had a text file with some rough plot ideas outlined, just before we started recording I asked the players for a bit of background and worked to incorporate it into the draft plot that I had written down already, changing it as necessary. The index card method is really useful during a game because it allows me to quickly reference the most needed stats and information without having to flip through the rulebook so much.

If you want to watch the actual play video of the session you can find it here:

 

What should you do when a session feels a bit flat?

We’ve all been in that position from time to time when you run a game session that you don’t feel is up to your best standards, this could be for any number of reasons, you might be tired or have other things going on that serve to distract you from running the game. Continue reading “What should you do when a session feels a bit flat?”

GM Tips: Prepping for a Campaign Part 5 – Post Game Prep

Okay so you’ve done your prep, got the campaign running and have run your first session, surely that’s it for prep until you start getting ready for the next session right?

Wrong. You certainly could run games like this, however, there’s a few little bits of prep you can do after your session has finished that will make your life easier and improve your campaign in the long run.

Continue reading “GM Tips: Prepping for a Campaign Part 5 – Post Game Prep”

GM Tips: Prepping for a Campaign Part 4 – Prep for the Start of a Session

The main focus of a lot of peoples prep occurs when getting ready for running an actual session, this post isn’t going to talk about the specifics of writing an adventure or creating a story for a session, but rather what sort of things you should get ready and have to hand when you run it to make your job easier.

Continue reading “GM Tips: Prepping for a Campaign Part 4 – Prep for the Start of a Session”

GM Tips: Preparing for a Campaign Part 3 – What sort of things should you prep at the start of a campaign?

We’ve talking about about pre-campaign prep and scheduling your game prep in previous instalments of this series, now it’s time to talk about the sort of things that you should be looking to have prepped for the start of your campaign. Continue reading “GM Tips: Preparing for a Campaign Part 3 – What sort of things should you prep at the start of a campaign?”