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Ahhh! So you were the only one willing to run the game, taking the responsibility of the “Game Master,” but you really wanted to play. Easy fix, make a character to play along with the rest of the players. NO! Don’t do it! It is too easy to fall into this trap. Sure, it sounds like fun, but soon you are taking over everything, having all the answers, and making the rest of your players feel like supporting characters in your story.
Think of it this way…you do not need to be a member of the party when you are going to play all of the other people the party runs into. There are times where an NPC is needed to help the party reach a location or gather knowledge, but these characters need to come and go. If you find the party is lacking in a particular area, and will need a way to pick up the slack, you can add an NPC for a brief time, however, a better way to handle this is to have the party find magic items or be gifted boons. Occasionally, the story you are creating may require your players to protect an NPC. If this is the case, the NPC should not be able to stand on their own, but actually need the party to keep them alive and out of trouble. If the party is escorting a merchant (you know, becoming the ever dreaded hired guards for a caravan), the merchant and their underlings should present in a way that shows the party they would indeed die if your group was not there. This gives the players a sense of purpose, and drives their egos. If the story calls for a character to travel with the party for an extended time, let them sit back. Don’t allow them to drive where the players go or let their story take over. It’s not about the NPC reaching their goal unless they can achieve it while the PCs are accomplishing their own agenda. If the players do seem to get caught up in asking the NPC a lot of questions, it is okay that they do not have any answers. In general, when I add an extended NPC with the party, I place them on the back burner. They do not speak unless spoken to, and they are not a fount of information. If they enter combat, I have them do pretty minimal actions and always lose ties to players and enemies. Any NPC that must travel with the party is typically a “One Trick Pony,” and are there for a very specific purpose.
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I was chatting with a friend of mine one evening and we started talking about a certain deck of cards that causes much chaos. The bane of both players and GMs alike (though I’m down with the chaos that will ensue). We laughed and joked about what could happen if certain cards were drawn for nearly an hour then moved on in our conversation.
It hit me shortly after we got off the phone. What would it be like to actually have quests associated with certain cards? Well, being that this particular magic item causes my brain to hurt as a GM, I altered it of course. Instead of being associated with this item, I had it associated with a deck of tarot cards instead. From there, I had to decide what kind of world I wanted to play in. Looking at my shelf, I saw “Arcana of the Ancients” (which I had dabbled in, but not completely embraced) and decided I wanted it to be a magic + science type of world. I then bought the campaign setting for 5e, “Beneath the Monolith” which is designed to work with the other book. That was it, the missing piece! Based on what I was reading, the people of the world relied more on their machines and one particular group of people as their religious leaders. I thought…no gods? The light bulb turned on. In all the campaigns I’ve run, I pictured gods receiving power based on their followers (more followers = more power). What if the gods had diminished enough that they decided to take action to return? What if they had had enough of barely surviving and are ready to thrive once more? What would they do? And I was off, researching gods and setting up how they interacted with one another. Creating challenges to go with the cards that the gods had provided. All this while also trying to keep the evil deities under some kind of control. Once the ideas were in place, I opened up the world and let the players jump right in. The rest is yet to come. Note: “Arcana of the Ancients” and “Beneath the Monolith” are published by Monte Cook Games. I suck at them! This is an area I need to improve upon. As a GM, I am asked to do one shots frequently, and to come off poorly reflects on my GM-ing as well as the game itself. I need to present a full beginning, middle, and end all while allowing the players to still experience the full range of role play (exploration, social encounters, and battle).
I’m a long term gamer. I like to open the world before my players and let them explore. I could easily go two or three sessions without any battles, and let the characters interact with other non-player characters to learn more about the people, places, and histories of the world. I develop my overall plot line while we play, and generally use player conversations to guide it. But, in a one-shot, it needs to already be laid out…at least to some degree. It really comes down to time management. I start by asking myself a few questions. Is the one-shot going to take place in 3 hours, or 6? Will there be an extended break in the middle? How many players are going to be involved? These questions should aid in guiding the creation of the one-shot, and some answers directly affect others. I try to limit the number of players for a one-shot. Too many will bog down play time and create decision paralysis, and they can easily become distracted as they wait for others. Too few can cause holes in skills and abilities, leaving a section of your planned one-shot as a dead end. One of the ways to fix this is to have pre-generated characters. Not only will it save time, it will also ensure you have the required skills scattered among the players that are needed to complete this quest. Getting the players hooked is easily done through reward of money, or they get to keep any other loot they find. If you want to have more story, give one of the pre-generated characters some background that involves them in the plot (a nemesis or love interest, or they may be bound by an oath). Be careful on adding this though, as a new player may not be comfortable with playing out a backstory. A huge helpful tip that I once received is to be generous with information. Don’t be afraid to give your players the names of places or NPCs that they need to interact with right away. If you need them to investigate for information, have the minimum roll still provide enough to complete the quest and allow for your high rollers to gather “flavor text.” This will allow the players to still reach the satisfaction of a job well done, and provide a little spice along the way. Final thought: don’t be afraid of tropes. Meet in the bar, rescue the damsel in distress, get back the stolen item for the noble, rid the town of annoying goblins. It’s a one-shot! Having an expected plot line aids the players in knowing where to go and what to do, especially if you have first time players. Secrets…so many secrets. It seems players want to keep their thoughts and goals to themselves. Most will share with the GM their ideas, but not with the other players. Yes, I said players. This sometimes goes as far as to keep the GM out of the loop as well (usually ending poorly). They fear the metagaming aspect of another player knowing the secret.
Let me make one thing very clear: metagaming is not always bad! If the other players know and understand what your goal is, and a general idea of how you may want your character to get there, they will have their characters interact in a way to help you do so. This is a collaborative game, the players, as well as their characters, should be working together. This will enable them to achieve the larger goal of defeating the bad guy, but it also helps to achieve the smaller, more personal goals. Metagaming aside, if the GM doesn’t know the secret, they cannot incorporate the reason for such a secret into the game. What is the reason for keeping a secret if there is no fear of it becoming known? I, personally, am okay with secrets among my players, but it does come with caution. The secrets kept cannot interfere with party cohesion. I do not like when one player goes out and does anything detrimental for the rest of the group, or intentionally causes some major setback on the main plot. I don’t like a “mole” within the adventuring party that is planning on betraying the group (some like this, but I do not). I also don’t like it when players keep their personal goals or expectations to themselves. This is why I like session 0. This is a good time to work out how the characters know each other and what they know about each other. Secrets could to be shared with at least one other player, and the GM to ensure their incorporation within the story. Talk with your GM, let them know your personal goals (it’s okay if this develops during the game, you do not need to know it all on day one. If it is a secret within your character’s backstory, let them know what it is and what your character believes would happen if it became known. And, if none of it matters, why keep it a secret to begin with? Part of homebrewing a campaign is customizability! If my players want to be able to do a certain thing, I can create a feat, item, talent, background, or even race that will enable them to do so (within reason of course). The hardest part is balance, I don’t want it to over power the rest of the group. So, I start with the end and work backwards.
The first thing I ask the player who wants it is: Why? Sometimes a player is really just looking for something flashy. A new look, an acrobatic attack, or an ability that would come out of their backstory…these are all good reasons to homebrew. In one campaign, a player wanted his character to be born of a union between a mermaid and a human, and was looking for something to show this heritage. Okay, sounds cool, so the next thing I asked was: What? This is when we spitball ideas until something makes sense. We thought about aspects of the merfolk that we could bring in such as swimming speeds, fins, water breathing, skin coloration, etc. We finally landed on being able to hold his breath for longer and making it easier to swim. He wanted the water to be comfortable for his character, but the land would be his home. Great! Now I ask: How? Here is where the balance needs to be taken into consideration. For this specific example, I wasn’t too worried about this. We decided that his character could hold his breath for twice the time a normal human could, and added a swim speed equal to his walking speed. Other times I’ve done this, I really had to think long and hard. I did not want to make something too powerful (dealing enough damage to one shot my monsters), nor add so much extra resources that would allow the character to take on a lot of major enemies without consequence. After getting some ideas, I start looking for something that is similar that might already exist. If I find one that works, I may just give it to the character (not make them find it or buy it). However, this is not always the case, sometimes I just cannot find anything that is close enough. Such was the case of the spell transference feat I created. Some have told me this feat is too powerful, but I disagree. I had created a scenario where some spell casters were being held ransom by a warrior tribe. Within the tribe were shamans who would shield the encampment if an enemy came too close. A problem arose when giants were attacking the camp, they needed more shields for camp. I decided that the shamans were going to be able to transfer the concentration of the spell to another spell caster, nearly doubling the size of the area if they passed the spell to the captives. I realized quickly that this could be misused (making it the powerful feat that some have claimed it to be). All I had to do was add in some restrictions. First, it had to be transferred to another spell caster, who had to succeed on a check to take it over. Second, the one that it was transferred to had to maintain the concentration on that spell to keep it effective (meaning they would not be able to cast a concentration spell themselves). And third, it could only be used once each day. Keeping in mind what a homebrewed creation can do at its maximum, you can write the mechanics and description to fill in the loop holes and give it some restriction. Too much restriction, it will make the creation nearly useless. Not enough restriction will make the creation control the situation (instead of the GM). You just have to find the happy median that will make your player happy while still maintaining control of the game. My first, completed, prewritten campaign is over! It was definitely rough. Though I believe the players had fun, I found myself stuck on the tracks. Talk about railroading! When the GM feels like they can only go one way, I know the players felt that too. There is so much more offered in the book that I was running that was missed, glossed over, ignored, etc. that I know the players would have enjoyed. However, because we had this major goal, they felt it necessary to accomplish that.
In this particular campaign, there are a few things I will do differently next time. Probably the biggest issue was it gave out way too much information right after the first real encounter. The players knew immediately what needed to be done, and even a bit of how to do it. At the end of that scenario, they were given a direction to find another NPC with even more information. So, how would I change this? Well, cut the information in half, if not more. Let the players explore the first city more before driving them onward. The next issue I would address was the magic items. Many points within the campaign just gave quite powerful items to the players from NPCs. A couple they found on bad guys they had defeated, but that was only a few. A couple of the players ended up having so many items that they began to look for ways to sell them. Well, it didn’t make a lot of sense for them to sell these particular items as they were religious relics in a low magic world. Besides that, they didn’t have a whole lot they needed to buy. So, that being said, I ran this in my usual style without caring about what they were carrying or how much was needed to pay for room and board. I just don’t like the nuances that come with keeping an inventory and, quite frankly, I forget about what the players actually have in their hands when encountering a guard or city official. However, I still felt as though that would not have mattered much in this campaign. I want to run this again. Next time, I will treat it more like a campaign setting and less like a prewritten campaign. I want to allow my players to explore the world more, and interact with more of the NPCs. Instead of knowing ahead of time about the bad guys, they will “stumble” upon them, and not receive so much information until they are half way through, or maybe even later. Gotta keep ‘em guessing, right? The number one discussion I have with other GMs is balancing encounters. Several systems try to do this by using some sort of mathematical equation that involves player levels versus monster levels. Often these equations just don’t work…well, not the way most GMs try to use them anyway.
I have discovered that if I use these equations and actually give several combats to the players before they can recover, then it works. However, I generally only have my players do one combat. When following the guidelines, these combats are super easy for my players. They lose interest quickly when fights are simple, and quick. They are not using their resources to any great degree, so how do I fix this? When I am planning an encounter, I find a monster (or bad guy) that makes sense to be in the area, and triple its given hit points. Then I check its attacks. If it has minimal attacks, or only one type of attack, I like to add other enemies to fill out the attacks, making sure I have some melee and some ranged attacks. If this is supposed to be a major bad guy, I might give them legendary actions to impress the imminent danger. My general rule of thumb is to try to make the encounter last at least three rounds, but not more than ten if possible. I want it to be challenging without becoming a “slugfest.” If it lasts too long, the players will fall into taking the same action on every turn. When that happens, they will check out and just roll the dice, the battle becomes monotonous. Full disclosure: I will fudge my roles, I will alter the enemy’s stats…and I will even do this mid-battle. I do these things for my players’ enjoyment. It is never a “me vs. them” mentality, I actually want my players to win (otherwise the story ends). I just want them to feel challenged and am trying to learn where the line is for making an encounter feel deadly without actually killing the characters. 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. 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. |
AuthorJodie 
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March 2026
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