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General Tabletop Discussion
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What do you find hardest when running RPGs?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7469163" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Everything.</p><p></p><p>Running an RPG is far and away the most challenging mentally taxing thing I do. I never run a session but that I afterwards think of a dozen things that I could have done better.</p><p></p><p>Pacing. Keeping a game from stalling, but building up enough that winning feels meaningful. That's hard, and it requires incredibly imaginative ability.</p><p></p><p>Personifying NPCs. Making NPCs say meaningful interesting things that invests the players in them in some way and which moves the story along is just flat out tough. </p><p></p><p>Omniscience. You somehow have to know everything. This is easiest in a fantasy setting where you are the source of all truth in the setting, and even then it is hard. But when running a game in a modern setting or a historical setting or even a hard sci-fi setting, you literally have to know everything because you never know what detail the players are going to inquire about. And often you have players who are really smart people, so you have to get it at least pretty close to right. Plus at the same time, you also have to be a fountain of rules knowledge and capable of adjudicating whatever comes up, no matter how weird it is. </p><p></p><p>Preparation is the key. You have to train yourself to do this. You have to research. You have to spend time brainstorming. You have to rehearse. You have to take notes about all the things you thought up. Even if you have pre-written material, you often need notes that are longer than what you've been given to really run things smoothly - especially once you've learned the sort of things that inevitably come up in play like the name of every single NPC and what that NPC knows and thinks about other NPCs. </p><p></p><p>And the older I get, the less time I seem to have to do the preparation.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7469163, member: 4937"] Everything. Running an RPG is far and away the most challenging mentally taxing thing I do. I never run a session but that I afterwards think of a dozen things that I could have done better. Pacing. Keeping a game from stalling, but building up enough that winning feels meaningful. That's hard, and it requires incredibly imaginative ability. Personifying NPCs. Making NPCs say meaningful interesting things that invests the players in them in some way and which moves the story along is just flat out tough. Omniscience. You somehow have to know everything. This is easiest in a fantasy setting where you are the source of all truth in the setting, and even then it is hard. But when running a game in a modern setting or a historical setting or even a hard sci-fi setting, you literally have to know everything because you never know what detail the players are going to inquire about. And often you have players who are really smart people, so you have to get it at least pretty close to right. Plus at the same time, you also have to be a fountain of rules knowledge and capable of adjudicating whatever comes up, no matter how weird it is. Preparation is the key. You have to train yourself to do this. You have to research. You have to spend time brainstorming. You have to rehearse. You have to take notes about all the things you thought up. Even if you have pre-written material, you often need notes that are longer than what you've been given to really run things smoothly - especially once you've learned the sort of things that inevitably come up in play like the name of every single NPC and what that NPC knows and thinks about other NPCs. And the older I get, the less time I seem to have to do the preparation. [/QUOTE]
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