T w e n t y S i d e d
At long last, my answers to some reader-submitted questions about GMing:
Jace911
1. Where do you tend to fall on a scale of simulationist vs narrativist games? I used to prefer the former in my early years for their structure, but as I get older I find myself drawn more and more to narrative-focused games. Is this your experience as well?
2. When you set out to create a one-shot, campaign, etc do you start with the themes and craft a game around it or do you start with an idea or image and build the themes around it?
I have no straightforward answer to your first question–it’s like asking if I prefer apples or onions. What I seek out and what I recommend depends entirely on the other ingredients.
If I’ve got my STEM group, six hours, a six-pack, and a thick monster manual, I might choose a system that offers a high level of fiddly strategic detail. If I’ve got my looser humanities group and two hours, I might pick a system that’s low-maintenance and primarily narrative. If I’ve got my serious game-design people over, we might whip out something experimental and obscure that uses dreamcatchers instead of dice or some other nonsense. In RPGs, as in other things, my tastes run pretty eclectic–it’s all about the group I’m experiencing it with and what system compliments their strengths best.
Anything shorter than a long-term campaign I tend to improvise rather than design. When I do design a campaign world, the watchword is always tone. I tend to settle on sense of stakes, attitude, and pacing and create central elements that evoke it. I also find it helpful to think in terms of genre and pastiche. An office comedy fantasy game. Southern Gothic that feels like a Spaghetti Western. A post-apocalyptic LA Dusk Til Dawn rock opera. These glib summaries are useful to have on hand for when you start explaining the game to players, who (all being well) would like to make their characters fit into whatever you’ve been working on.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Rutskarn’s GMinars: Finally Answers”
