Hiccups

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.”