GM Primer: Table Management

Primer 2: Table Management

• This System Is Dense As Hell
  • It’s ok to not remember everything. Write shit down so you don’t have to
• Do the Planning work first
  • Sort out your dice pools for the opfor in advance
  • Rule of thumb:
    • About 10 Dice for Mediums and Lows
    • About 20 Dice for Highs and Deadlies
    • About 30 Dice for Extremes
    • About 30-40 Dice for Semi Primes
    • Anything over 40 Dice is Prime territory
      • It doesn’t actually matter the composition - you can plan it if you need to, but anything over extreme the requirement get wobbly
  • Record book and page number notes in your planning notes
    • This will let you Control-F look up things in legally acquired PDFs swiftly
    • When someone hits you with an unexpected power, take 30 seconds to ask them for a book and page and look it up. No one will mind. We all know how crunchy SR5 is.
  • What happens if someone throws you a curveball?
    • Depending on who it is, it is ok to trust them with their mechanics - get a book and page to confirm, and let it roll.
    • If it unbalances the encounter, LET IT.
    • This just became their spotlight and you’ve learned something
    • When in doubt, take a ten and check the rules or use the On Call GM tool.
• Set the Tone
  • Plan your intro and outro
  • Don’t just wrap at the end unless you’re crazy short on time
  • Music? Think like how audiobooks do the opening and closing 30 seconds
  • Landing Pages help set the overall run tone
• Setting Tone:
  • Word choice, overall tone of voice, and content all contribute to tone.
• How to Do Good Picks
  • Mechanically
    • Pick characters who will have a mechanical spotlight during the run
    • Pick characters who are “just right” - not overpowered, not underpowered
    • There are exceptions to this - narrative choice overrides it, sometimes characters are overpowered on a different aspect than the run focuses on, etc.
  • Narratively
    • Pick characters who will have a narrative spotlight
    • Faces should get more than just the Johnson negotiation
    • Street Sams should have chances to intimidate, to do Physical Things, not just attack
    • Mages should have something more than just “I zot the watcher spirit”
    • Deckers/Technos should have more than just host diving something once or doing a matrix search
    • Riggers should have a chance to use their drones or vehicles to some effect
  • Splitting the Party
    • Handling the “Van Sam” problem
      • Notably, consider narrative spotlights above
      • Pick characters with wider toolboxes
    • “Decker Time”
      • Communicate time expectations
      • Let people take breaks while handling magic time, decker time, solo infiltration time
    • During the course of the run, make sure, make sure each person gets a spotlight solo time - by removing the pressure of “making everyone wait for decker time”, you can communicate better - give players the agency to hang out and listen or take guilt free breaks without “missing anything” for their character
      • Social face negotiations, narrative decker fights, etc
  • COMMUNICATE
    • Let players know time expectations - how long will decker time take? Is it the end of a session break where they can sign off early?
• RYG and the IC / OC line
  • We know RYG / X Card for content on runs
  • Use RYG for player stress, frustration with things, etc
    • Failing sucks, sometimes the dice roll bad
    • Discord actually kind of sucks for this - people talk over each other because there are no visual cues that someone wants to talk
    • Actively communicate timing of breaks, of RP sections, of dice rolling sections, etc
    • Actively get the quiet ones involved - “what is XYZ doing while the decker does… etc.”
  • RYG is player safety - and that means both about questionable content as well as the modalities of gameplay
• Handling table management in a Play By Post
  • Consider the ideas of Chapters and the old Choose Your Own Adventure books.
    • What makes PBP difficult is that it is asynchronous - players are more likely to get lost
    • What makes PBP difficult is that it is 100% text based - reading comprehension is hard
  • So what to do?
    • Give clear updates at each “chapter”
    • Give potential follow up bullet points (Originally an Asmo idea) for the players to follow to reduce decision paralysis
    • Requires a LOT more forethought, pre writing, and clear “checkpoints”
• Let go
  • Shared Story
    • Remember the goal is to lose well - and so any plot point which can be edited on the fly to have come from character choices and consequences is better than whatever you might have already written
    • You are not a Game Master or a Storyteller, you’re a Guide - your goal is to guide these people through the story you’re created for them, but they are going to take their own route through it
    • GM determines WHAT plot points are present, players determine HOW they get there.
    • Be prepared and open for them to Go Left on something - when in doubt, call a ten minute break and plan.
  • Set the dice up to be against the players. Set the world up to be against the characters. And then be entirely on their side the whole way through.
    • Drak: “I’m going to make you bleed, but I have the bandages”
  • Sometimes they come up with Better Shit. Roll with it!