Advice for new "story now" GMs

[Clint_L]

My first piece of advice for a new Story Now GM would be to trust that the rules mean what they say. Don't smuggle in assumed processes from other games - use the ones the designer has provided in the game you're playing.

I incorporate other game systems into D&D all the time - I think the key is to talk it out with the group first and make sure everyone is onboard with it. So, for example, when a recent storyline was headed in a heist direction, we decided to run it as a game of Fiasco, only adding a bit of D&D for some combat and a few skill checks. Which meant that for that session, there was no DM. Or everyone was the DM. I ran another session as a game of Dread, though with modified rules to prevent the entire party being wiped out. But, again, everyone knew what was happening going in.

Overall, I love the OP's suggestions. D&D sort of trained me to DM in very much the omniscient, omnipotent deity mode, and I have been working for a long time to make the storytelling more shared and cooperative. The trick can be to find that balance between player agency and maintaining enough mystery in the story so that the players feel ownership of the story but also like there is a world that they are discovering.

I feel like "story now" is essentially trying to incorporate "consent first" principles into TTRPGs, which means that the GM has to be a lot more sensitive to and caring about sometimes subtle clues from players during the game, and sometimes must make sure to ask questions up front. Those are good things for relationships in general, and TTRPGs are, at their core, about relationships between the players that can go on for years.

 

[Darth Solo]

A conversation with a couple of friends about "tips for new GMs" blogs/Q+As led to someone suggesting a thread along these lines. So here it is.

At the heart of "story now" RPGing is the players bring the protagonism. The players decide what it is that their PCs care about, what their motivations are, what their projects will be. I'll bundle all these up as the players' concerns for their PCs.

This gives the GM three important, and related, jobs during play: to facilitate; to respond; to oppose. A fourth job happens outside play: to prep.

Prep: there's a lot that can be said about the role of prep in "story now" play, but some simple ideas are enough to start. You need to learn what your players' concerns are for their PCs. The easiest way to learn this is to ask them. This can be part of PC gen. (Burning Wheel and Torchbearer are both good systems for this approach.) It can also be part of a first session where the players and GM bounce off one another to build up the initial situation for the game. (Apocalypse Word uses this approach.)

Once you've learned what your players' concerns are for their PCs, think up - and if it makes sense for your game system, stat out - a few situations and a few NPCs that speak to those concerns. Think up some links between them - use ideas the players have given you, and add your own. Soap operas and Marvel Comics can be your guide here - making everything interconnected (my family nemesis is also a cultist of the demon you're sworn to defeat) will make it easier to do your other jobs.

Facilitation: it's your job to "set the stage" so that the players can pursue their PCs' concerns. This means presenting situations that speak to those concerns, and thus prompt the players to declare actions for their PCs. This is where your prep can be helpful. But if you need to take a 5 minute break to think up something new and appropriate, don't be afraid to tell the players that. Let them talk among themselves for a little bit while you exercise your imagination!

It's helpful, here, to know how your game's action resolution system works, because if you prompt your players to declare actions that your system can't handle, that can be a problem. It pushes play away from the player protagonism you're aiming for, and into either rules debates, or rules-free storytime.

Also, different game systems express different attitudes towards "rigidity" of prep. As a general rule, though, I suggest it can be better to be flexible with your prep - adapt your situations and your NPCs that you've worked up, in order to do the job of facilitating - rather than sticking to it rigidly and risking things becoming boring or aimless. (There's a skill in sticking to your prep and keeping things interesting and focused on the players' concerns for their PCs. The Apocalypse World rulebook is excellent, maybe essential, reading for anyone who wants to develop this skill.)

Responding: when your players declare actions, you have to respond. Your game should (if it's got a good rulebook) tell you how to do this. Maybe your response is to call for some appropriate dice roll. Maybe it's to say something more that develops the situation. Maybe both: first dice are rolled, and then you say something that honours the outcome of the dice role and develops the situation appropriately.

The big pitfall here is prejudgement. If your responses impose your own prejudgement of how things "should" go, then you've lost that player protagonism you were aspiring to. It's fine to inject your own ideas - you're a creative individual, just like your players! - but your ideas should complement and build on what the players have contributed, in accordance with whatever the rules of your game say. They shouldn't contradict or override them.

A useful technique here is to follow the lead of your players' response to your responses. If the players pick up your responses and run with them, then great! Build on that positive feedback cycle. On the other hand, if the players push back on your response, don't ignore that. Sometimes it might make sense to overtly retcon in response to such pushback, but I think a better first step is to use your game's own rules and procedures to invite the players to reorient back to their concerns. Maybe you can ask them questions that invite them, as their characters, to think about how they want to respond to the situation that is dissatisfying to them as players: that might prompt some new action declarations which allow the players and you to steer things away from the dissatisfying towards the satisfying.

Opposition: protagonism needs antagonism. It's your job, as GM, to bring that. It's something to keep in mind both when you're facilitating, and when you're responding. Not every bit of facilitation needs to involve opposition - sometimes it's fun and interesting to offer a player (and their PC) an opportunity, rather than presenting them with a challenge or a conflict - but sometimes it needs to. By presenting situations that oppose the players' concerns for their PCs - whether that is NPCs acting against the PCs' interests, or impersonal obstacles - you not only prompt the players to declare actions, but you give the players a chance to really show that their PCs mean it! (Or, perhaps, that they don't. That's interesting too.)

Not every response needs to involve opposition or confrontation. Sometimes a success takes a PC to a nice place for a while. Sometimes a failure just brings pain. But opposition is a nice way of responding. And it can be both a reward for success - the PC gets to confront the antagonist, or the impersonal force, the player was hoping for - or a consequence for failure - the PC has to confront some new obstacle or antagonism that they weren't anticipating. But when using opposition as a consequence for failure, still keep in mind that the game is focused on the players' concerns for their PCs. You'll need to find your balance here - most players will probably accept that a failure entitles the GM to put their imprint on the situation, but don't use it as an excuse to reorient play towards something completely different. Good standbys are old enemies turning up again, or new opponents who really care (but in the wrong way) about a PC's ideology or beliefs, or a NPC or situation that will let a player deploy their PC's central skill or method or approach.

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I hope that it's clear that facilitation, response and opposition are not mutually exclusive. They're not steps in a cycle of play. (The rulebook for your game should tell you what the cycle of play is, and what its steps are.)

Rather, facilitation, response and opposition are interrelated jobs. Good responses facilitate. One way to facilitate is to oppose, and one sort of response is opposition. But some facilitation should provide the PCs (and thereby the players) with opportunities other than just confronting challenges. Getting the hang of this - how to pace things, how hard to push - is a skill that takes time. But if in doubt, follow the signs your players are sending, as described above under Responding.

And remember: the reason for presenting the jobs in this way is to orient your thinking, as a "story now" GM, towards the players' concerns for their PCs. Or in other words, to orient your GMing towards player protagonism. That's the heart of "story now" RPGing.

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Anyway, the above is a starting point. There's a lot more that could be said about "story now" GMing. One big topic is how setting factors into "story now" RPGing, and related ideas like "no myth"/"low myth" RPGing. And if you're already familiar with some other approaches to RPGing, there are also things to be said about how the "story now" approach is different. (Eg why is the idea of a "plot hook" unhelpful for "story now" GMs?)

But hopefully what I've written above is enough to get some discussion going!

A great post for novice Gamemasters. GMs have always prepped campaigns, facilitated the game, responded to players and presented opposition. One could argue these are the basics of Gamemastering and it is important that this kind of information is given to new GMs. I remember as part of my introduction to TTRPs, I was taught exactly what roleplaying games are and how to play them properly. With the huge numbers of people coming into the TTRPG community over the last few years, it's crucial that experienced GMs pass on the rich oral tradition of running campaigns to the new generation of GMs.

More of this, pemerton.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A bit more about the interplay of facilitation and response:

It's common for "story now" systems to require the GM to say new things about the shared fiction, where precisely what to say isn't dictated by the system, but the GM does not have carte blanche to say whatever they like. Your system's rulebook should give you advice or examples to help with this. There's also no substitute for practice. But you can also think of it through the lens of facilitation and response.

In particular, a "story now" GM should avoid "deprotagonising" responses - that is to say, responses that change the fiction in ways that don't reflect in some fashion the players' concern for their PC, and that don't provide avenues for the player to respond in terms of those concerns.

The boundaries for this are all about context: what does the player expect? what do they understand themself to have put at stake (like @AbdulAlhazred's example, just upthread, of the sword of power)? System is also important - to give an example, in the Marvel Heroic RPG the GM can "shut down" Captain America's shield whenever they want to (assuming the fiction permits it, and subject to the availability of an appropriate GM-side resources), but Cap's player can take a pretty straightforward action to get it back.

To go back to the sword of power: does the player regard it as one of their concerns for their PC? Or is it something they take for granted a part of their PC, that will help them deal with the things that are their concerns? If, as GM, you think it might be exciting to put something important to the PC (and thus the player) at stake, but you're not sure and you don't want to deprotagonise, then start with something "soft": the bugbear king challenges the PC to a duel for the sword; the PC hears a rumour that a suspicious stranger is offering bribes to the PC's retainers, or telling false stories about the PC, to try and undermine their loyalty; etc. If the player expresses outrage, that might be a sign to back off a bit or at least proceed with care! If the player engages, great - you've facilitated, and now you can respond as is appropriate for the situation, given the particular system you're playing.

Right, and lets imagine that the PC loses a duel with the Bugbear King. OK, clearly he was willing to stake his sword, maybe based on some sort of goal or belief he has related to defeating the BK. Obviously instead of perishing, he's now going to be, lets say, tossed in the slave pits. This is NOT deprotagonizing in that he's going to run into situations where he can 'do stuff' and try to sort out his situation, or maybe its a character altering experience! At some point he's pretty darn likely to have a chance to get that sword back! Of course, there CAN be capstone moments in these games where you find out "nope, you are not ultimately going to prevail."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I feel like "story now" is essentially trying to incorporate "consent first" principles into TTRPGs, which means that the GM has to be a lot more sensitive to and caring about sometimes subtle clues from players during the game, and sometimes must make sure to ask questions up front. Those are good things for relationships in general, and TTRPGs are, at their core, about relationships between the players that can go on for years.

I am not sure what context 'consent first principles' are being drawn from, but I agree that good TTRPG play is a relationship thing. It can be a pretty game-focused relationship, but certainly trust and communications are good for it. I think maybe once you get that going, in my case with some narrativist game play with a new group, then it may be easier to branch out into other styles and carry that along. Not that you wouldn't want to develop that in more trad play, and you certainly can, but it may not always start out front and center, or developing it is less integrated into the play loop? I don't want to be judgemental, the other way to look at it might be that trad play could generally work better in say LFR kind of play where you maybe don't really know who you're playing with each week.

 

[pemerton]

I feel like "story now" is essentially trying to incorporate "consent first" principles into TTRPGs, which means that the GM has to be a lot more sensitive to and caring about sometimes subtle clues from players during the game, and sometimes must make sure to ask questions up front.

To an extent, that might be right - though I think I see these features more as a by-product than as the goal. (And @AbdulAlhazred has suggested that these features can generalise.)

What I think is central to "story now" as a type of RPGing is player protagonism, which invites a GMing approach different from the "omnipotent, omniscient" mode that you describe in your post.

The trick can be to find that balance between player agency and maintaining enough mystery in the story so that the players feel ownership of the story but also like there is a world that they are discovering.

This is something I see from time to time, but in my personal experience is a non-issue, in the sense that there is no particular tension between "story now" RPGing and mysteries that the players (via their PCs) discover.

Here's an example provided in the Apocalyse World rulebook (p 121), which relates mysteries to "fronts", which is the particular sort of GM prep that AW uses:

Your fronts will tell you things to say, too. When a player’s character opens her brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, for
instance, the rules might tell you to reveal something interesting. Something interesting? Look to your fronts: Joe’s Girl has joined the water cult, I’ll bet they didn’t know that. So say that, and of course say it according to the principles. Maybe “deep under the brain-howling, you come to hear … is it chanting? A list of people’s names, chanted over and over by a hundred subliminal voices. ‘Tum Tum … Gnarly … Fleece … Lala … Forner … Joe’s Girl … Shan …’” (Player: “wait, Joe’s Girl? . . .”)​

Here's an actual play example from my own Classic Traveller campaign:

One of the distinctive things about Traveller is its use of random generation to deliver content and flavour. For PC generation, I had written up some tables that were pretty close to the original ones (from Book 1 and Citizens of the Imperium), but with a few of the newer skills overlaid.

<snip>

Given that all the players had submitted to the randomness that is Traveller - and had got a pretty interesting set of characters out of it - I had to put myself through the same rigour as GM. So I rolled up a random starting world:

<snip>

With the background in place, I then rolled for a patron on the random patron table, and got a "marine officer" result. Given the PC backgrounds, it made sense that Lieutenant Li - as I dubbed her - would be making contact with Roland. The first thing I told the players was that a Scout ship had landed at the starport, although there it has no Scout base and there is no apparent need to do any survey work in the system; and that the principal passenger seemed to be an officer of the Imperial Marines. I then explained that, while doing the rounds at the hospital, Roland received a message from his old comrade Li inviting him to meet her at the casino, and to feel free to bring along any friends he might have in the place.

In preparation for the session I had generated a few worlds

<snip>

Given that I had these worlds ready-to hand, and given that the players had a ship, I needed to come up with some situation from Lt Li that would put them into play: so when Roland and Vincenzo (just discharged from medical care) met up with her she told the following story - which Methwit couldn't help but overhear before joining them!

Lt Li wondered whether Vincenzo would be able to take 3 tons of cargo to Byron for her. (With his excellent education, Roland knew that Byron was a planet with a large (pop in the millions) city under a serious of domes, but without the technical capabilities to maintain the domes into the long term.) When the PCs arrived on Byron contact would be made by those expecting the goods. And payment would be 100,000 for the master of the ship, plus 10,000 for each other crew member.

Some quick maths confirmed that 100,000 would more than cover the fuel costs of the trip, and so Vincenzo (taking advice from Roland - he knows nothing about running a ship) agreed to the request.

Methwit thought all this sounded a bit odd - why would a high-class (Soc A) marine lieutenant be smuggling goods into a dead-end world like Byron - and so asked Li back to his hotel room to talk further. With his Liaison-1 and Carousing-1 and a good reaction roll she agreed, and with his Interrogation-1 he was able to obtain some additional information (although he did have to share some details about his own background to persuade her to share).

The real situation, she explained, was that Byron was itself just a stop-over point. The real action was on another world - Enlil - which is technologically backwards and has a disease-ridden atmosphere to which there is no resistance or immunity other than in Enlil's native population. So the goods to be shipped from Ardour-3 were high-tech medical gear for extracting and concentrating pathogens from the atmosphere on Enlil, to be shipped back to support a secret bio-weapons program. The reason a new team was needed for this mission was because Vincenzo had won the yacht from the original team - who were being dealt with "appropriately" for their incompetence in disrupting the operation.

(I had been planning to leave the real backstory to the mission pretty loose, to be fleshed out as needed - including the possibility that Li was actually going to betray the PCs in some fashion - but the move from Methwit's player forced my hand, and I had to come up with some more plausible backstory to explain the otherwise absurd situation I'd come up with. And it had to relate to the worlds I'd come up with in my prep.)

That mystery developed further over the next several sessions, and has still not been fully resolved: it has been established that the bioweapons program was an unauthorised conspiracy, but it remains uncertain who all the conspirators were, what their precise motivations were, etc.

An interesting aspect of mysteries in "story now" play is what sort of information is the result of a successful check - as in the AW example, and as in my Traveller example - and what sort of information is the result of a failed check - as in the example of the cursed angel feather that I posted upthread.

There's no a priori rule for this: once again, it's all about the interplay of facilitation, response and opposition, having regard to the players' concerns for their PCs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To an extent, that might be right - though I think I see these features more as a by-product than as the goal. (And @AbdulAlhazred has suggested that these features can generalise.)

What I think is central to "story now" as a type of RPGing is player protagonism, which invites a GMing approach different from the "omnipotent, omniscient" mode that you describe in your post.

This is something I see from time to time, but in my personal experience is a non-issue, in the sense that there is no particular tension between "story now" RPGing and mysteries that the players (via their PCs) discover.

Here's an example provided in the Apocalyse World rulebook (p 121), which relates mysteries to "fronts", which is the particular sort of GM prep that AW uses:

Your fronts will tell you things to say, too. When a player’s character opens her brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, for​

instance, the rules might tell you to reveal something interesting. Something interesting? Look to your fronts: Joe’s Girl has joined the water cult, I’ll bet they didn’t know that. So say that, and of course say it according to the principles. Maybe “deep under the brain-howling, you come to hear … is it chanting? A list of people’s names, chanted over and over by a hundred subliminal voices. ‘Tum Tum … Gnarly … Fleece … Lala … Forner … Joe’s Girl … Shan …’” (Player: “wait, Joe’s Girl? . . .”)​

Here's an actual play example from my own Classic Traveller campaign:

That mystery developed further over the next several sessions, and has still not been fully resolved: it has been established that the bioweapons program was an unauthorised conspiracy, but it remains uncertain who all the conspirators were, what their precise motivations were, etc.

An interesting aspect of mysteries in "story now" play is what sort of information is the result of a successful check - as in the AW example, and as in my Traveller example - and what sort of information is the result of a failed check - as in the example of the cursed angel feather that I posted upthread.

There's no a priori rule for this: once again, it's all about the interplay of facilitation, response and opposition, having regard to the players' concerns for their PCs.

Yeah, I think the surprise is going to be "what answer do we come up with" though from the character perspective there's revelation of the externally defined mystery. This means we must consider the purpose of said mystery from the player's perspective. The point is challenging some aspect of the characters etc.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, I think the surprise is going to be "what answer do we come up with" though from the character perspective there's revelation of the externally defined mystery. This means we must consider the purpose of said mystery from the player's perspective. The point is challenging some aspect of the characters etc.

Depending on how the game system works, the "we" who come up with the answer may still be the GM rather than the players.

I think there's an important difference between the players authoring a thing and the GM authoring a thing having regard to the players' concerns for their PCs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Depending on how the game system works, the "we" who come up with the answer may still be the GM rather than the players.

I think there's an important difference between the players authoring a thing and the GM authoring a thing having regard to the players' concerns for their PCs.

Yeah, and both are possibilities in narrativist games, for sure. Honestly, most of these games still focus on using the GM as the 'lead author'.

 

[loverdrive]

I incorporate other game systems into D&D all the time - I think the key is to talk it out with the group first and make sure everyone is onboard with it.

Regardless of whether other people are onboard with it, it requires an understanding of the game. You can't make a good DooM mod, unless you know what makes DooM tick, and if you start smuggling stuff like regenerating health, ADS, cover peeking and all that into it, you'll end up with a way worse game than if you just booted up vanilla: it will do Call of Duty worse than Call of Duty already does, and it will lose everything that makes DooM great.

I feel like "story now" is essentially trying to incorporate "consent first" principles into TTRPGs, which means that the GM has to be a lot more sensitive to and caring about sometimes subtle clues from players during the game, and sometimes must make sure to ask questions up front. Those are good things for relationships in general, and TTRPGs are, at their core, about relationships between the players that can go on for years.

I feel the exact opposite way: Story Now removes, or, at least, greatly lessens the need to be on alert for subtle clues. Players can just, like, do stuff. I don't need to worry or care about what's going on inside their heads because they have tools to just steer the game in the direction they want to.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I feel the exact opposite way: Story Now removes, or, at least, greatly lessens the need to be on alert for subtle clues. Players can just, like, do stuff. I don't need to worry or care about what's going on inside their heads because they have tools to just steer the game in the direction they want to.

Yeah I think this is pretty much true, maybe modulus some consideration for variations in players.