How to find the "joy of prep" in PbtA games?

[hawkeyefan]

So my last session of Stonetop, we were getting ready for the Festival of the Dawn, which takes place on the Vernal Equinox and includes marriage celebrations and betrothals for the next year.

The PCs had just defeated a Swyn, a babboon-headed snake creature that has plagued the town since our very first session. It had mesmerized a young girl and used her to lure another child… the NPC nephew of the Ranger… into danger. The boy has the “forest eyes” that hint at fey-blood, and so he was a target of the swyn for some unknown reason. So they were all looking forward to a celebration.

One of the PCs… the Lightbearer, a priestess of the sun… betrothed herself to a rival of the town, the mercenary leader Brennan, who had effectively taken over the town of Marshedge to the south. Another PC (the Ranger) has a sister who is due to marry another NPC, the town’s Marshall.

There are some simmering social issues that have been bubbling up in town. So my prep for the last session just involved giving those situations some thought. The town’s midwife is the mother of the marshal and has been antagonistic toward the PCs. She’s on the verge of making a move to cause trouble for them. Also, a wandering priest of Tor has arrived in town and is kind of disrupting services involving other deities. This has the Blessed PC on guard. Finally, Brennan the Mercenary has some men, the Claws, and they’re a rowdy and dangerous bunch that doesn’t really mix well with the simple folk of Stonetop.

So the session begins and I have all of that on my mind… so what happens? The players decide to make sure the young girl was no longer under the influence of the Swyn. They bring her to the NPC Judge’s vault to make sure she was free of the creature’s influence. After confirming she was safe, one of the PCs decided to do the same for another. The Would Be Hero PC had in a previous session failed a Death’s Door roll. When that happens, the PC either dies or else makes some kind of pact with a dark power, gaining the Thrall insert.

So Would Be Hero had started behaving very strangely, and so the Blessed and the Ranger took this opportunity to try and see what was going on with him, too. The Judge was able to determine that he was being influenced by one of the Things Below. Hlal, the Eternal Maw.

So the session became about trying to exorcise Hlal from the Would Be Hero, while also jeeping everyone else safe. That all turned out to take up the entire session, so we never got to the Festival. That’s what I expect will happen next session now… but who knows?

Ultimately, you just keep track of situations. Use NPCs frequently… lots of NPCs and in a lot of ways. Tie the PCs to them. Make the world seem lived in. The PCs are connected to it and to its people. Then you just let the players kind of tell you what they want to do, and you respond in kind.

Take notes, track situations, have ideas about what NPCs want, and react to the players.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Thanks everyone for the advice and anecdotes! I'm more easily envisioning now how to do fun prep with a game like Ironsworn.

Next month I'm going to try to put together a group of folks who are new to TTRPGs to play Ironsworn. Before that I'm going to have some fun doing prep about the world, threats, etc.

 

[zakael19]

Thanks everyone for the advice and anecdotes! I'm more easily envisioning now how to do fun prep with a game like Ironsworn.

Next month I'm going to try to put together a group of folks who are new to TTRPGs to play Ironsworn. Before that I'm going to have some fun doing prep about the world, threats, etc.

I would encourage you to do most of that prep after the first session - beyond just having an idea of a starting condition/world state. That way you can encourage people to talk about what's interesting to them, define the world through their characters and initial choices, and then go prep stuff!

If anything, just have a scene ready for players to react too - and little more. This blog post on starting Dungeon World out might be of interest.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I just had a big realization that one of the reasons I may have been struggling with this in Ironsworn is that Ironsworn is both a rule set and a setting, so a lot of the prep work has been done. There are already interesting locations (Deep Wild, Hinterlands, etc) with adventure hooks, encounters, etc.

But I don't necessarily have to use them! I could use them as a template to create my own setting, with a whole bunch of encounter ideas, NPC ideas, and so on that could get folded into a game. I could even rewrite aspects to shift the genre of the game and make it more D&D Adjacent Fantasy, or pirate adventure, or whatever I want.

 

[innerdude]

The only difference from traditional games prep is that the elements you prepare should be more "floating in time and space", because ideally you introduce them to the game as a result of a player's roll from a move.

Thank you for this. You totally captured what I was trying to say in my response much more succinctly.

 

[Aldarc]

But I don't necessarily have to use them! I could use them as a template to create my own setting, with a whole bunch of encounter ideas, NPC ideas, and so on that could get folded into a game. I could even rewrite aspects to shift the genre of the game and make it more D&D Adjacent Fantasy, or pirate adventure, or whatever I want.

That's what Sundered Isles is for!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

@BookTenTiger

Hey, I just wanted to briefly come in because I saw this thread and found it helpful and illuminating. But I was hoping you could shed some light on an ancillary question I had for you-

I understand the "joy of prep" completely. I used to have that, some time ago. However ... now? Not so much.

For me, one of the things that caused me to use other styles and other games was precisely because I wanted to do less prep. Whether it's a PbTA or FiTD or FKR (or other rules-lite, indie game) or otherwise, to me the great advantage is that I don't have to worry about the prep.*

In fact, I take some of the techniques that I learn from other games back to running D&D for the usual groups to lighten my prep level- ideally, to point where the amount of prep is so small that I can drown it in a bathtub.

So I guess the question becomes, and maybe this will be more easy to answer after you've done it for a while ... what do you still find joyful about prep, and do you think that the type of prep you would do for these sorts of games fills that need? I think everyone has contributed amazing points and I don't disagree with any of them, but I've always viewed certain systems and ways of playing as a respite from prep, so I'm still wrapping my head around this, and looking for your experience.

Please note- I am NOT making an argument or taking a position; just trying to get a better understanding!


*I do still find some joy in creating bespoke games, but that's different.

 

[BookTenTiger]

@BookTenTiger

Hey, I just wanted to briefly come in because I saw this thread and found it helpful and illuminating. But I was hoping you could shed some light on an ancillary question I had for you-

I understand the "joy of prep" completely. I used to have that, some time ago. However ... now? Not so much.

For me, one of the things that caused me to use other styles and other games was precisely because I wanted to do less prep. Whether it's a PbTA or FiTD or FKR (or other rules-lite, indie game) or otherwise, to me the great advantage is that I don't have to worry about the prep.*

In fact, I take some of the techniques that I learn from other games back to running D&D for the usual groups to lighten my prep level- ideally, to point where the amount of prep is so small that I can drown it in a bathtub.

So I guess the question becomes, and maybe this will be more easy to answer after you've done it for a while ... what do you still find joyful about prep, and do you think that the type of prep you would do for these sorts of games fills that need? I think everyone has contributed amazing points and I don't disagree with any of them, but I've always viewed certain systems and ways of playing as a respite from prep, so I'm still wrapping my head around this, and looking for your experience.

Please note- I am NOT making an argument or taking a position; just trying to get a better understanding!


*I do still find some joy in creating bespoke games, but that's different.

So first of all, running Ironsworn has been a real relief from prep. I don't feel the need to prep every week, and I don't feel guilty if I haven't taken time out of my very busy life to prepare an adventure.

However, I have missed the option to prep, especially since my online Ironsworn group has really committed to doing all-improvised.

To me, doing prep is like designing a playground. It's really fun for me to think about what the characters might interact with, how the players will react to things, and the opportunity to make art or designs to add to the session. When I'm folding laundry, doing dishes, or sitting in a boring meeting, it's fun to turn my brain onto future sessions and go through possibilities.

It's also really fun to go through the thinking process of "if this is true, then what else is true?" I was just yesterday imagining an Ironsworn setting that starts on a peninsula surrounded by a Primordial, dino-filled forest. Well if that's true, what else is true? Are there still mammoths and wyverns, or would that change? What other rules or aspects of the game or assets would I want to change?

These kinds of thoughts can happen during the session, but I love having them on the back-burners of my brain while I'm going about the week, every once in a while a neat image or idea rising to my consciousness.

That, to me, is the joy of prep!

 

[thefutilist]

To echo what others are saying, you could always switch up systems and in fact still use PbtA style systems if you wanted.

So if you were doing it with Apocalypse World say. You'd still run the first session as is suggested in the book. Then afterwards you can go crazy with the world building. Then what you do, is just change the way you use the resolution system so that no new world facts are introduced or changed.

In effect you've created a little sand box and the plot is still free to go certain ways but the places, people and all that stuff are fixed.

For example:

You can create groups of people and then individual npc's and the stuff they have. So for example if you know the mutant raiders are to the north in the old power station. You can crate what that power station is like, it's history, who the mutant leader is, some his henchmen, what weapons they have, the relationships between them, what they want.

Then when people roll a miss, just narrate it more like you would with in a more sim rpg. You have them fail at what they were trying.

So for instance. If the mutant gang keeps the satellite uplink in the vault. Then just treat that as an established fact. If a player tries to open the vault and rolls a miss. Then they just fail to open it. Don't change where the satellite uplink is, or change what it is or any of that type of stuff.

I find this a really fun way to play because it's more like seeing how the interactions between people play out rather than plot being created if that distinction makes sense.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So first of all, running Ironsworn has been a real relief from prep. I don't feel the need to prep every week, and I don't feel guilty if I haven't taken time out of my very busy life to prepare an adventure.

However, I have missed the option to prep, especially since my online Ironsworn group has really committed to doing all-improvised.

To me, doing prep is like designing a playground. It's really fun for me to think about what the characters might interact with, how the players will react to things, and the opportunity to make art or designs to add to the session. When I'm folding laundry, doing dishes, or sitting in a boring meeting, it's fun to turn my brain onto future sessions and go through possibilities.

It's also really fun to go through the thinking process of "if this is true, then what else is true?" I was just yesterday imagining an Ironsworn setting that starts on a peninsula surrounded by a Primordial, dino-filled forest. Well if that's true, what else is true? Are there still mammoths and wyverns, or would that change? What other rules or aspects of the game or assets would I want to change?

These kinds of thoughts can happen during the session, but I love having them on the back-burners of my brain while I'm going about the week, every once in a while a neat image or idea rising to my consciousness.

That, to me, is the joy of prep!

Thank you for the excellent and thoughtful response.

I do have that recollection of enjoying the prep (despite my current disposition). That said, I was thinking more along the lines of ... how does this prep that you're doing interact with the systems you are running, and the desire to keep it more improv?

I was just thinking that a lot of the time, when I have something prepped, I will (consciously or unconsciously) put my finger on the scale so that the prep is used and not wasted; is this something you are concerned about, or am I overthinking this?

(And just to reiterate, I am ALL FOR incorporating your joy of prep into the systems you are enjoying running! I am just wrestling with some other thoughts, and looking for input ... not looking for an argument on this. I am genuinely curious about how this will work together. Because I have thoughts for my home games.)