T w e n t y S i d e d

I know I said no posts from me this week, but I stole some time to write this. Regular posts still resuming Sunday.

EDIT: Sorry to drop a bunch of replies then bounce, but I’ll be out again until Sunday. I’ll read everyone else then.

There’s no greater moment in a roleplaying game than when players are surprised by something that makes complete sense–especially if the surprising part is that it makes complete sense. Players who aren’t totally bloody-minded are normally willing to politely ignore monsters with asinine ecologies, cities with no obvious food source, or magic items tailor-made for adventures, so when you reveal that the ecology does make sense, that the city’s food source is weird and unexpected but totally logical, or reveal the magic item’s quaint intended usage, the result is something between respect and relief and amusement that things were thought through after all. Every time players discover that some part of their fantastical world is more logical and organized than they’d given it credit for, their faith in the quality of the GMing, strength of the worldbuilding, and reach of the GM’s imagination surge forward. They’re more inclined to think themselves about how the game fits together–they’re more inclined to think about what NPCs would do, about how the gameworld will react, than plan in mechanical and metagame terms. It’s an all-around Martha Stewart Good Thing.

This companion series to my GMinars is all about those moments. I’ll take features of a standard fantasy roleplaying setting that players expect, and don’t expect a lot of logic out of, and I’ll examine interesting or uncommon logical reinterpretations.

This week we’re going to talk about one of my favorite antagonists–the Lich.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Rutskarn’s GMinations: The Lich”

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.

I’ll be at a family reunion this week, sans computer, and chances are excellent I’ll have no opportunity to post anything till next Sunday. Here’s a spoiler for Battlespire to tide you over: The game gets weirder. This is very probably the strangest videogame I’ve ever played; the fact that its spider-lech comes from the nominal creators of Preston Garvey, an NPC who could be mistaken for a grudgingly-inserted Kickstarter backer, is more tickling than it really should be.

Now–as far as the GMinar series goes, I’m opening the floor for some reader participation.

First, I’m looking for your questions. If anything about these posts has been unclear or insufficient, if you’re looking for advice on a specific topic, or if you just want to know my position on some aspect of tabletop gaming or GMing, please post your questions below.

For the GMs in the audience, I’ve got some questions of my own:

1. When did your players, in completely breaking your world or storyline, make it a hundred times better?
2. What’s the worst GMing judgment call you ever made? What made it suck?
3. What’s your proudest moment of GMing?
4. How has GMing affected how you approach the game as a player?
5. What do you wish more GMs would do and why?

I’ll cover all of your questions, plus my own, once I get back. I mean, after I load up Battlespire and indulge my passion for taking bags full of bags out of other bags. I’m only human.

See you next week!

-Ruts

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.