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Ugh. The world’s toughest question for a GM that doesn’t keep track of time! I just don’t like to do it. Too many notes as it is to keep track of other things, I don’t want to have to search my notes for time, day, season, etc. I barely even keep track of climate. I realize that my players were in a cold environment not terribly long ago, and I did not have them do multiple constitution checks to see if they were freezing to death. Though, I admit, this is fun for me as a player to go…”Uh, guys. I’m exhausted!”
Remembering to do these things is just hard. Perhaps if I had a real GM screen in front of me. I could leave notes on it saying “CON checks every morning” or converting distance from miles into days for the map (playing online does have its own issues). Hey, I never said I was an expert at this, I’m still learning. I am still trying to figure out how to describe stuff to my players to make it engaging. Role playing travel time does give the players a sense of time passing. I usually just hand wave it, just telling the players an approximate amount of time that had passed. It has recently come to my attention that if I don’t give that time, where is the sense of urgency regarding what needs to be done? Since I do not play out the travel time, the checks for freezing will not make much sense. I almost always just hand wave travel time with “It took two weeks to get there.” Often, my players do find other ways to travel more quickly, such as teleport. For a few of my players, this becomes aggravating, they like to role play the travel time and get excited about what they may encounter along the road. Others would rather get to the point, stick to the objective, “stay on target.” I am leaving myself with much to think about. Perhaps I should add more semblance of time passing in my games.
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So you think you have it all planned out. The maps, the monsters, the NPCs are all ready, and you’re excited to run the game tonight! Then the players take a “wrong turn in Albuquerque.” Suddenly you find yourself improvising much more than you ever thought possible. Quickly flipping through maps and monsters that you may have never planned to use. All of this while trying to find a way to get them back on track for the encounter you had actually planned.
Any of you who have run a game has experienced this, it is nearly unavoidable. Roadblocks for any direction you haven’t planned are often looked at as “railroading” and causes a negative tension to the group. So you run with where the players are taking you. Whether this is going to a new town, or simply looking the other way when they see that thief, it causes you to want to throw the notes you have out the window. This is okay though, let it happen. Hiccups, for the most part, are fun. Sure you stress out in the moment, but these are often the times that are most memorable…and you as a GM learn a lot. The times that your players go a different direction give you insight to the characters they play. You can draw on this to inform the story, bad guys, and future game night plans. You learn to have a quick reference for monsters and NPCs, and begin to keep a name generator at the ready (okay, maybe that one is just me, otherwise all my NPCs are going to be named George). You can also use these times to introduce new NPCs or drop additional adventure hooks that you had trouble weaving somewhere else in the story. Build the tension of expiring time as they goof off shopping by having the party hear about something bad happening elsewhere. There are a lot of ways to guide them back to the story like getting a letter from a family member in distress, or having a friendly NPC they’ve already met come to them with an urgent request. Most players will jump on a new story hook or follow the trail of breadcrumbs from NPC requests, but if they don’t, let them continue to explore in this wild environment. (Wild only because it is being thrown together in an instant.) Remember, you are now the spy gathering information about your player characters. As a GM though, keep the time they spent in mind when deciding what the world did while they were absent. I like to keep my plans pretty open. I have NPCs and monsters that I could drop into any city, wilderness, or street that are related to the story progression regardless of where it happens. If they chose town A then I make it happen in town A. If they let that thief go, maybe I have them run into a beggar instead. There are a number of ways I adjust my encounters so that the players do not get too far away from “Albuquerque.” When I am thinking about a new campaign, the first thing I think about is a theme. I’ve done one that was just an open world, high fantasy, rule breaking characters. I’ve built a whole campaign around the idea that the characters started in jail and they had to find out who had put bounties on their heads. I did a high seas adventure that ended up on land more often than not. Now…the driving question for the current one: How would gods come back from near extinction?
Let’s go back one though, to the high seas. I started that campaign after getting a book about nautical mechanics for d20. I found the book quite interesting and addressed some areas that I found lacking in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (D&D 5e). Then came the idea to be pirates…well, privateers anyway. I had no end goal when we started, just a few ideas from backstories given to me. It wasn’t until about half way through the campaign that I came up with the overall plot that was taking place in the background. For this current campaign, I had picked up the book Arcana of the Ancients (Monte Cook Games) and found the magic meets science idea fascinating. I put a couple of monsters from that book into the current campaign I was running and found them fun (since the players did not know these monsters). I then decided to pick up Beneath the Monolith (Monte Cook Games) and began reading. This book helped me to lay out the world that I would have my players run around in. I know I am not keeping to the full idea of the book as I am mixing it with the traditional fantasy mechanics of 5e. I have also altered some of the world as we have been exploring it. After getting a basic idea of what I may want to explore in the world, or at least what kind of world I’d like to explore, I let the players know. I give them some set up instructions (like rolling ability scores and any off-limit traits) and wait. Once they start sharing their character ideas and backstories, the rest of the story starts to piece itself together in my mind. Sometimes I find myself having conversations with nobody just to get an idea about a character for my players to encounter. From that point, it is simply a matter of flushing things out as the players begin to explore. Time goes by as I start weaving the overall theme/plot into the story. I drop information, hints, and directions throughout the experiences they have, to drive my plot, while the players feel more like they are world shakers. GM secret: We listen to the players and use that against them…often, but we also use the ideas they come up with and twist them into the story. (wink) The roughest part for me is ending the story. Like all good books, I just want it to keep going. Finding a suitable and satisfying place to jump off and let everything afterwards to just live in the imagination is needed to complete the whole adventure. Closing the book is necessary though, then we can start a new one. The first time I was asked to GM, we were using Pathfinder. A family member picked up a pre-written campaign that I looked over and I was immediately overwhelmed. I hesitated enough that they came back and said, “It’s just an idea, do whatever you want.” Well, I took that to heart. I decided to let the players build crazy characters, giving them free reign to do whatever they wanted. My only rule was that if I questioned something, they had to prove where the rule came from and be able to show me so that I could read it. It made for some epic adventures and battles (none of us forget defeating a dragon with a frying pan)!
This made me question the prewritten campaigns. I have tried to run that same one again, and after reading through a couple chapters I see potential, however, it still feels overwhelming to me. I have watched many videos and read articles about new GMs. Most suggest starting with a pre-written campaign (or whatever adventure may come in a starter pack). I guess this would be excellent advice for the novice player turned GM, or one that starts as a GM and was never a player. I think if one has played a system long enough, they will begin to create their own ideas. “I would have done…” or “It would have been cool if…” These ideas are the beginning to a homebrew adventure. Where I struggle in homebrewing an adventure is the setting. I don’t draw world maps, create exciting histories, or even layout cities well. I find campaign settings and other resources that will work for my story idea and incorporate them within the game. Some setting books include mini adventures, or quirks about certain cities that peak my interest, and may find themselves within the game. The fun thing is that they don’t have to! It’s my story! Okay, reality check: it’s not MY story, it’s OUR story. I lay out the world before my players, set up a few hooks and things to peak their interest, then let them explore. I do not always have an end to the story in mind when we start, I let that develop more organically. Remember, I like the long haul! My campaigns have run, on average, 20 months (80 sessions). Of course I need to make sure my players are moving forward, so I do have bad guys making things happen in the world, but it is up to them to engage...and they will (after all, they signed up for an adventure, not the simple life). How they engage though is completely up to them, I adjust accordingly. And that is why I homebrew. A prewritten campaign is more linear. Many try to offer alternative routes to get from point A to point B, but ultimately, they must reach point B. Some players are good sports and will follow the path laid before them, while others will scream about railroading. Every player is different, and comes to the table for different reasons. I, myself, prefer the social interactions where I can build my character’s personality and develop their goals. I don’t mind battle, but that is simply a means to achieve a goal. Other players thrive for battle, to take down an enemy through martial prowess and conquer the field IS their goal. These two players approach a prewritten campaign differently. That’s where I jump off. Prewritten campaigns are not bad, most of the time they have really cool ideas and content (that I take inspiration from often). I just struggle to actually run one. I feel railroaded as a GM when I’m going through a book that tells me when, where, what, why, and how. Adding my own creativity into a story already laid out for me is rough, I can’t do it and keep to the story. Besides, it’s not just about my players having fun, I want to have fun too! When I tell others that I run a regular game on Tuesday nights, the first question I get is, “What are you running?” I do not always want to answer that question. A part of me is afraid to get the ‘look.’ You know the one. The one that says two things at the same time: You must want to be another (insert name of a famous GM here), and you must have a lot of time on your hands. Neither of these make me want to continue any conversation, but I don’t like to lie so I confess that I homebrew. Then the ‘look’ ensues.
Unfortunately, this also ends the conversation rather rapidly. I cannot blame them, what do they have to ask after that. There is no common ground to talk about what happens in a particular campaign, or how I handled a poorly written encounter. The only question I will get, when it comes, is “How’s that going?” I simply answer “Fine” mostly because it is true, but also I don’t really know how to answer that. I do not wish to bore them with the details of how I plan out a story or put together maps. I have been fortunate enough to have done this for some time now, so the time I put into it is minimal at this point. I’ve built a little tool box of encounters and characters to draw from (though name creation is a last minute thought). The biggest struggle I have in being a GM is the rules! Guilty! I do not know the rules better than my players, occasionally my players correct me. Sometimes I just like to have a ‘rule of cool’ over actual mechanics, but sometimes players struggle with that. Balancing this can cause one player to feel left out or another to have an extended time in the spotlight. Human nature says, “What about me?” It can be hard to sit back and just let others have most of the attention, especially when looking at their own character and getting excited to explore their background. I always attempt to weave (not always successfully) all player character backgrounds within the story, interlocking the people they know with the places they go. Over time, as trust among the players and GM grows, it will balance out, usually. This is why I prefer long campaigns. |
AuthorJodie 
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April 2025
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