SO YOU WANT TO RUN A TABLETOP GAME

Or, How To Spend 90 Hours To Make Your Fursona Canon

Obligatory Greeting Slide

• Hello! My name is Rumel, I’m a mothbear
• (or a “Lepidursaran” if you’re feeling fancy)
• I’ve been GMing for around 10 years
• I’ve run games of a bunch of systems:
• D&D in various editions, Pathfinder 1e and 2e, Wanderhome, Monster of the Week, Urban Shadows, ALIEN, Starfinder, Zweihander, and a couple games I designed myself that are Not For Sale Yet, If Ever
• I am my group’s “Forever GM”
• (Ok, some of my friends GM too. But if I don’t do it then I will eventually get bored and start another game)

WHERE DO I START?

Things you need:

• An idea
• A game
• A group

Things you don’t need:

• $500 of books
• A GM screen
• Miniatures
• A good idea
• 5-7 professional voice actors
• Experience
• Writing or art skill (but it helps)
• Improv skill (but it helps)

An Idea

• It doesn’t need to be your original idea, you just need to like it.
• Writing Baldur’s Gate 3 fanfic is a perfectly legitimate campaign concept!
• Aim for under 10 pages.
• Keep things simple and expand as you go!

An Idea

“You have banded together in a town plagued by monster attacks. Fight them to gain wealth and power”

“You are the newest students of a magic college. Learn your craft and help your community”

“A local angel asked you to investigate wild parties that might be run by a demon lord. Go figure out what’s going on”

A Game

• I trust you to figure your game out, and there is no such thing as a game that’s too complex for beginners
• I am contractually bound not to offer hot takes during the panel
• If the game excites you, you can figure it out!
• Consider when choosing a game:
• How complex is it?
• Does it match your idea?
• Is your group familiar with it?
• Is it fun for you and your players?

A Group

• Your game typically defines your group (normally 3-6 players, sometimes less, rarely more)
• More than 6 is possible but usually difficult
• Start with people you know if you can.
• If you’re a player in a current game, try running a side story and being the GM for a week

Now that you have all of those, it’s time for the hard part:

SCHEDULING

The bane of all games: coordinating the schedules of multiple adults

• Aim for a consistent, specific time, ex. Biweekly on Saturdays at 7 PM CST
• Generally speaking I will run a game unless 2 or more people can’t make it
• Games often don’t make it past here. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out! That’s no big deal

The Setup

• Everything that gets done before Session Zero but after you know the game will actually happen
• If you don’t know how to play the game, this is a good time to figure it out
• If you’re running something prewritten, this is a good time to skim it
• (No need to read the whole thing cover to cover, but it helps to have a picture of the plot)
• If you’re writing from scratch, sketch out your plot
• Have a good idea of what session 1 might look like, and what session 2 might look like
• Be prepared to discard those notes about session 2
• …In fact, be prepared to discard all of these notes

The Setup 2: Virtual Edition

• If your game is fully online, TEST YOUR SYSTEMS before Session Zero
• Get an idea for how your system works–if you have one!
• You can run most games perfectly fine with nothing but a Discord server
• If you don’t like taking extra work to set up a VTT, then don’t!

Trust me, your online stuff doesn’t need to look fancy

SESSION ZERO

Pre-Game Discussion

• Introduce the Game
• Give the campaign premise
• Any needed context about the setting
• Anything else that players need to know
• Introduce the Players
• What are the players doing in this campaign?
• Who are they playing as?
• How do they know each other (if they do at all)?

Handouts

• Personally, the way I like to do this is with handouts.
• You can make a 1-2 page document (or shorter!) that offers some context on the world the party is getting into.
• Some prewritten adventures have these built in!

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(Don’t worry, if you are strapped for time or don’t feel like it, this is definitely an optional step)

Game Help

• Divide your work! This will help people stay engaged and reduce stress for you.
• Common stuff to divvy up:
• A note-taker to keep the party aware of the important characters and events.
• A “rules friend” who knows the rules well and can help others.
• For in person games, snacks and drinks if you want them
• After session 1, recaps on what happened last time

Safety Tools

• The other, more important part of Session Zero
• These are tools to manage consent and figure out what will or won’t be portrayed “on screen”
• Lines and Veils
• Lines: Things that cannot be portrayed. Torture, phobias of those at the table, and so on. For the purpose of the game, these things either do not exist or are never portrayed.
• Veils: Things that can be portrayed, but “off screen.” Sex is a common veil–the scene “cuts to black” and there is no focus on it, but it still exists in the game in some form.
• X-Card
• A card accessible to everyone at the table. Touching it means the scene stops: you are out of the game. You can move on or discuss how to proceed. Effectively a TTRPG safeword.

SESSION ONE

You made it!

• Most games don’t get to session 1–scheduling doesn’t work out, people lose interest, and so on
• Before we go into specifics, some general tips:

During the Game

• Listen first
• Don’t assume you know what the group wants. Get their plan, then react
• Your players aren’t characters in a book–they have their own ideas!
• Lead last
• If the group is stumped, though, feel free to cut in a bit
• Don’t gate hints behind dice rolls if you can help it, because those can fail
• Pass the spotlight around
• Make sure everyone’s opinion is counted!
• Get Ready to Make Stuff Up
• Don’t worry about getting it wrong
• You will miss stuff, especially rules! Don’t stress

Pacing Session One

• I tend to frame Session One in a specific way, but it’s less of a rule and more of a guideline:
• Part One: Open Time
• Part Two: The Hook
• Part Three: The Pull

Open Time

• “You Start In a Tavern”
• Basically, free time that the group can use to cohere
• We might see their first meeting and introduction to each other, or perhaps a regular meeting if they’re old friends
• A good time to introduce basic game mechanics in a situation with low or no stakes
• Eventually, this pivots over to…

The Hook

• The actual start of the plot
• If the group isn’t familiar with each other, this is what drags them together
• Also a good time to introduce things like combat basics or conflict resolution, but with higher stakes than in Open Time
• Combat is a classic hook (“Monsters attack!”) but social encounters, natural disasters, fires breaking out, and so on are all great hooks
• Once they’re hooked, it’s time for…

The Pull

• Now that the group is involved, what’s next?
• Try to end on a decision: “Next time, we’re going to…”
• If you end in the middle of something rules-heavy like a combat, try to find a convenient pause, like the start of a round
• This gives you what you need to set up your next session

THE MEME EXAMPLE

Open Time

The Hook

The Pull

AN ACTUAL EXAMPLE

Open Time

The Hook

The Pull

The players are prisoners on a ship bound for a prison island. They’re stuck in the cell, but can get some information and perhaps try to escape.

A crash of water! A kraken arrives to smash the ship. The guards escape via Teleport or dive overboard as the heroes scramble for an escape.

Now shipwrecked on an unfamiliar shore, the party must figure out how to survive in this hostile island–and perhaps find an escape…

What’s Next?

• Ideally, you know what the group wants to do next time and can plan around that.
• If not, keep your options open! You might even want to poll your players between games to see how they want to proceed.
• Between-game time is also a great time for maintenance: leveling up, buying stuff, and other stuff that isn’t important for the plot but is part of the system

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Stuff Is Going To Happen

• Arguments about rules
• Off-topic conversations
• Distracted players
• “Main Characters”
• Lone Wolves
• “My Guy”
• A bevy of other weird specific stuff

The Game Is Not A Barrier To Fun

• If the game is getting in the way:
• Alter the Game
• Or, Change the Game
• Or, Dispose of the Game Entirely
• Whatever you do, be consistent–or be explicit about exceptions to rules
• “That sounds cool, you can do it now, but you can’t repeat it over and over again”
• “There’s a special ability for that which you don’t have, but you can still try”
• That being said, you can still say no
• “You cannot summon a meteor with your Prestidigitation cantrip”
• “There is no conceivable way your character would know about that”
• “You can't phase through stone by rubbing your face against it”

The Game Is Not A Punishment Tool

• If something is bugging you or others in your group, the game is NOT where it gets dealt with.
• Do not be afraid to “break character” and be explicit.
• “I appreciate that you want to go south but I have nothing prepared there and I will not be able to make something up in 15 minutes”
• Talk about what’s going on outside the game
• Handle conflict person-to-person. If it’s a game issue, retconning or handwaving is often cleaner than alternative options
• If it’s something that needs to be handled right away, consider taking a quick 10 minute break to handle it
• Otherwise, it can usually wait until after the game

No Game Is Better Than A Bad Game

• Sometimes it doesn’t work out. You may need to ask a player to leave, or worse, the group will fracture.
• Don’t worry! This happens a lot, especially to first games
• If the game is no longer fun for you or for your group, it’s time to move on
• Forcing games to keep going will inevitably lead to conflict outside of the game.
• Learn what you can and try again!

Resources

• Virtual Tabletops I’ve used
• Roll20: Free, simple, very easy to pick up–but it has a subscription fee for its fancier features
• FoundryVTT: Incredibly powerful and only costs a one-time fee, but difficult to learn
• Useful Tools
• CampaignWiki’s grid map maker (free!)
• Dungeondraft (not free, available on the Humble Game Store)
• Token Stamp 2 (free!)
• Inkarnate for world maps (has a free version!)
• Your Favorite Software For Drawing Stuff (MS Paint is fine)
• Reference Material
• TheAlexandrian.net , a blog about running TTPRGs
• MCDM’s “Running the Game” series (mostly about D&D-like games)
• Dimension20’s Adventuring Academy series

Resources

You can find a view-only copy of this slideshow at my very basic neocities page,

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mothbear.neocities.org

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THE KOBOLDS ARE HERE TO TELL YOU THAT I AM OUT OF SLIDES

Does anybody have questions?