Making your Star Wars RPG awesome
What goes into making a scene an scene? How can you drive the players in the direction you want them to? What do you do to spur the players into motion? We talk about this and more in todays episode. Continue reading “The Scene Building Tale”
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This week we dive into Duty and Obligation and how to make them feel like a part of the whole story instead of a switch track stealing your plot. From simple ideas on how to weave a subplot into narrative, to ideas on where to look for incremental methods we have it here for you. Continue reading “The Subplot Tale”
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Tess wanted to ask about making a published module your own. We talk about how to make the voice of the module yours and how it can make it even more awesome because it allows you to focus on the characters even more. Continue reading “The Module Tale”
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David and Ben were able to talk about motivating your players out of their bases of operations in ways that aren’t only a sledge of their obligations showing up on their door. This was asked by a Patreon supporter Andrew Fullard.
Continue reading “The Motivation Tale”
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David liked the idea of talking about espionage and then talked about Jack Bauer and Jason Borne. We talk about far ranging ideas from infiltration missions to your party and crew being infiltrated. Continue reading “The Espionage Tale”
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David had the idea of trying to escape for a bit, but then we got talking about escaping prisons and how it’s done. We go from the classics all the way through to more modern ideas of prison breaks and talk about a few things you need to think of to make it feel earned. Continue reading “The Escape Tale”
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We got thinking of the classic question, what do you do when you have a character that feels like a mismatch to your party? David and Ben talk about how to turn this seeming weakness into a vibrant strength. From snipers to faces and many places in between. Continue reading “The Rock Star Tale”
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A question arose about hinting to your players that it’s time for their characters to run away. This is our answer, and we give a few ideas on how to make baddies even more present in your adventure. Tess, David, and Ben all have some wicked ways to make your players realize their characters are about to die.
Continue reading “The Brave Sir Robin Tale”
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Every now and then we get asked by new GMs how to I get started, I love the universe but this RPG thing scares me. This is David and Ben giving a few pieces of advice and telling a few tales of how they learned to use the dice. Continue reading “The New GM Tale”
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This week we talk about the kinds of campaigns that a diplomat would excel in. From negotiating treaties all the way down to keeping two rebel groups working together. David and Ben give ideas for several campaigns and scenes for you to use and give a few spins on dealing with interpersonal relationships that a GM might not always think of.
Continue reading “The Diplomats Tale”
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We talk about where we get some ideas for campaigns and characters, giving special thought to how to turn movies into Age of Rebellion Campaigns. Continue reading “The Inspiration Tale”
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We talk about how your characters got their first experience and a give few ideas how they spend time between campaigns. From ways to give out experience to ideas for training montages we give you many ideas for passing the time between and before your main adventures. Continue reading “The Downtime Tale”
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This week we have Ross on to talk about conflict, how to get your players to engage with it, how to make it matter to your players, and how to finally drive them to the dark side. Continue reading “The Spoon Full of Conflict Tale”
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There is a concept that I’ve seen with GMs and systems that can lead to a muddied role playing experience. This is a gaping problem I’ve found with what’s become called on the podcast and elsewhere as Session Zero. Using these systems and methods we can create vibrant settings for our players to interact with and there can be a multitude of options for what story element gets spun into the narrative that moves the group forward. Continue reading “Eyes Up: The Story Thrust”
As a player I’ve seen many GMs get distracted by the seeming whims of a player. The plot wanders all over until the GM finally gets inspiration and starts asserting their creative direction on the narrative. It isn’t enough to come up with a setting and then thrust players together to get moving themselves, as a GM you’re at the table to provide guidance and narrative shove to the player characters. Continue reading “Eyes Up: GM Focus”
I’m an improvising GM. I know that this hurts my games in some ways, but I work to even these issues out. I’ll go through my preparation stages to give a few windows into how I work out what happens in a session as well as how some of my bad habits can be overcome by other methods of pre planning. Continue reading “Eyes Up: Preparation”
My name is Ben, and I’m a GM. There isn’t a way on this planet that you could get me to change this.
Continue reading “Eyes Up: Where the Heck are We Going?”
When we sit down at the table we tell tales of daring do larger than we think we could normally accomplish. I saw a tweet the other day that makes me wonder how we can encourage heroics at our tables. This brings me to musing about what makes a hero. Why are characters that would normally be the epitome of heroics be so hard to play in practice? Continue reading “Confession of a Newb GM: Heroism at the Table”
I came across an article about the Yucca Mountain waste facility and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) when the warning labels that they are trying to put in place for radioactive waste jumped out at me. This could be the label sitting over the enclosed domain of a lich or a warning for a great evil. It’s started to make me very interested in these ideas of how to best keep people out of an abandoned, and dangerous, facility. This is a very realistic but grim view of how people design these facilities.
Continue reading “Eyes Up – A Most Dangerous Dungeon”
Something weird happened with the last Eyes Up, people asked questions and commented. Here’s one that I knew would take me longer than a 5 minute response to have the answer be any sort of use.
Continue reading “Eyes Up – Starting to the Side of Things”
Few things leave me as bored as a GM or player than two sets of characters sitting at the opposite sides of a map running at each other. When several of these instances are chained together I start to wonder if I’m playing chess. I generally prefer chess in those situations. Those people can party like you’d never believe. Continue reading “Confessions of a Newb GM: Vary Your Encounters”
Here’s something I’ve been dealing with lately that keeps jumping to the front of my mind. How can I deal with a published adventure that has significant problems with it but has a single diamond in the rough that will drive some great sessions?
Continue reading “Eyes Up – Diamonds in the Rough”
In Dungeons and Dragons I was able to game my DM because we never went up against a group of NPCs that were smart enough to attack the real healer. Every single one of the NPC groups had an INT score high enough to go for the healer, I just made sure I wasn’t the first one to heal. They would never retarget after the other healer stopped and I started. This realization allowed me to win D&D. Winning any RPG is one of the most pyrrhic things I can think of doing. It’s boring and you should never let this happen to your group. Continue reading “Confessions of a Newb GM: How to Not Win an RPG”
GMs have to strike a weird balance in ongoing campaigns. Don’t do too much preparation; so that when players go off the blazed trail you aren’t starting the nights campfire with your notes. But, also have enough structure so they aren’t just spinning on the log flume again and again going nowhere. All while having a little bit of fun while doing it. Many people look to random tables to solve the preparation issue to avoid burning out from creative fatigue. The problem with that is many of the encounters I’ve seen using encounter tables have been horrible; worse than just throwing a dart at the index. There is little life to the encounter and the GM doesn’t understand how the monsters are to be utilized in the scene.
Continue reading “Eyes Up – Taking the Boring out of Randomness”
