GM Primer: Game Design

Primer 1: Game Design

• Outline your work
  • Determine run premise
  • Outline narrative beats
  • Add in mechanics
• Do the Work:
  • Outline, plan, prep
  • Run better games, not just more games
• Personalize your work
  • Run requests
    • Should obviously have key spotlight moments for the run requesters
    • Other runners should have less narratively impactful spotlight moments but should still get the spotlight
  • Open Call
    • You know the roles you need - place spotlight moments for those roles
    • Don’t take roles you don’t need. Sometimes that means lower runner numbers, which frankly makes encounter mechanics easier to manage, anyways.
• Key Narrative Points
  • Plan out, pre-write if you need to, key narration. What do the important moments of complication look and sound like? What does the key VIP look like? Borrow from DND Modules, etc.
  • What items can you pre-plan to make sure those spotlight moments happen?
  • Sometimes this can be narratively impactful moments of deep emotional roleplay and character developments
  • Sometimes it’s just big numbers and giving the soak tank some ridiculous thing to soak so they get to see their build do the thing they built it to do.
• Overall Narrative Process
  • Freytag's Pyramid
  • Agency and Character Driven Stories
    • Players are there to be the stars of the show, not passive observers of it.
    • Things occurring in a run should be anchored in character motivation, character driven, actions.
    • This means planning a “Most Likely” route for success, but pre-thinking alternatives and being open to player improvisation
    • Run complications should not occur, not as “Gotchas!” - we want characters to be surprised, not players
    • Signposting, or foreshadowing, is vital for this. Give them enough clues to put things together. If the complication happens because they’re not paying attention, that’s on them - and the complication will make more sense to them in context later.
  • Sometimes the run solution is literally “The Players will do something clever”
  • Look for reasons to say that yes, it works, as opposed to shooting down ideas until they magically read your mind
  • Look for places to reward character actions with plot points as opposed to holding the plot points until they do Just the Right Thing
    • This will avoid a lot of player frustration because they feel like they are always making progress.