As I’ve played my second session of Mouse Guard, I kept returning to that concept of players’ turn and GM’s turn. You get to do *one thing* on the player’s turn. Hopefully that is going to be something that will help you during the GM’s turn. Without importing the scene economy into traditional games, I think I see a way to apply this.
What I really hate is when players are somewhere, there are no plot hooks, and the gamemaster asks: “What do you want to do?” Anything is possible, but nothing is going to happen. Hours will be wasted by players saying: I’ll go to the library! I’ll pick up some chicas! Where’s the booze! Can we buy magic items here? :say: “Boooring!”
You’re setting yourself up to a lengthy back and forth as players are describing what they are doing, the gamemaster reacts, nobody knows what they’re getting at, some people just can’t be short and to the point... What to do about that?
Here’s something I want to try in tomorrow’s Middle Earth Rolemaster game: “You left the town of Pashtah in the early morning hours and took the Tiger Road to the east. As you’re about to cross over into Eshmir, your thoughts return to last night… Everybody, what was the most important thing you did yesterday?” Let’s see what they did! Depending on your play style, just get into character a bit, provide information regarding current events, roll some dice and do a skill check. Just remember: One thing. Each player: What was *the most important thing*?
Maybe this inverted approach will help us set the mood, gain information, do some roleplay, and *drive the story forward*.
#RPG #thoughts
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I have used the “You left the town of... your thoughts return to last night…Everybody, what was the most important thing you did yesterday?” approach before. It works well. You keep the Uber role players in check (avoiding endless and often tedious monologues) and it usually encourages the not so adept role players to say a paragraph or two. Because it is in essense a cut scene nobody wants it to be that long, because they usually want to just get to the game. Try it out, in my experience it works.
– Jack Crow 2009-09-13 17:50 UTC
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I tried it last Sunday and it worked! When we talked about it after the game, I got very positive feedback. In fact, players said I should have kept it up – later in the game I missed some opportunities. I guess I was tired and heading into improv. country as players got further than expected. And then my old habits kicked in. But I’ll keep using this technique!
– Alex Schroeder 2009-09-14 10:02 UTC