09. Gamemastering

9. Gamemastering

As the gamemaster, you have the most difficult role of anyone in the group, helping the players create their characters and creating (or adapting) the setting. You must create and roleplay the nonplayer characters encountered, describe the world as it is explored, and be a fair and ultimate referee, especially during conflicts. While players can take turns and entertain one another, the gamemaster is always on. You must respond to the players’ actions and engage them all equally, ideally keeping them engrossed and sharing the spotlight.

It can be difficult to balance narration, roleplaying, bookkeeping, and rules refereeing. Many players never try to gamemaster, while others do it exclusively. It can be an immensely rewarding experience, which is usually why roleplaying gamers do it. Following is an overview of the gamemaster’s potential duties. Not all are necessary: you get to determine what’s best for you and your players.

Who Are You?

In this chapter, ‘you’ refers to the gamemaster. There’s nothing here that will spoil a player’s enjoyment, but the material in this chapter is primarily useful only to the gamemaster.

Your Players

If you are just getting started as a gamemaster, you may need to recruit some players. There are many ways to go about this, whether game nights at local stores and game clubs, or posting notices on social media or online tabletop gaming sites. Game conventions are also a great way to meet local gamers. Additionally, you can create new gamers by recruiting people who have never gamed before (but are curious). These can be friends, family, coworkers, etc. if they are willing. Basic Roleplaying is an excellent beginner’s game, with the easy-to-understand percentile system. You may be surprised at how many people were exposed to role-playing games at an earlier age but have never played themselves. Hopefully, they’ll come back for more!

Group Size

A roleplaying group can be anywhere from a single player and a gamemaster to many more. Each group has its own dynamics and is unique—some have someone who always runs the game, and others change gamemasters, giving everyone a chance to play. The dynamics of group size differs, and following are guidelines for groups of different sizes:

• Average Groups: This is usually three to seven players plus a gamemaster. Smaller groups tend to be more closely knit and are often easier to organize and maintain. Generally, the larger the group, the more difficult it is to get everyone in one place at one time. Make allowances for an occasionally shifting group of players: someone might miss one session or bring a friend the next. Games set in densely populated environments are often best for this, as missing characters can simply do something else while the other player characters play. Games where the group is isolated or tightly knit means that missing players need to have their characters either explained away, run by other players, or handled as nonplayer characters.
• One-on-one Groups: Games with one player and gamemaster are often very character focused and sessions can be intense, with a lot accomplished. Planning is easier and often combat plays a lesser, easier-to-resolve role. Virtually any setting works for one-on-one gaming, though superhero, horror, or sword & sorcery settings are ideal. You should have enemies avoid killing the character, instead taking them prisoner, or leaving them to their fate once defeated. The player may participate in describing the environment, and may have hirelings, sidekicks, etc. to make things less lonely.
• Large Groups: If your group is larger than eight players, you may need an assistant gamemaster. To handle such a group size, ask one or more players to help with dice rolling and recordkeeping during combats, perhaps even letting an uninvolved player run some opposing nonplayer characters. It’s also a good idea to keep some sort of system for checking in with everyone and keeping them engaged: keep characters grouped with characters they work well with and go around the table (or screen) periodically to make sure everyone is included.

The Game

The biggest decision is whether the game is a one-shot (a single adventure, either one session or more) or a campaign (a series of adventures with characters who continue throughout). Each has benefits and weaknesses.

One-shots are fun and focused. Characters are created for the one-shot, generally not used again, so there is little need to worry about experience or a longer-term goal. Characters for a one-shot can be extremely focused and specific to the adventure, deeply involved in the story. You may even create pre-generated player characters for a one-shot (see Pregenerated Characters). Preparation for a one-shot is also easier, as it does not need to continue beyond a single story. In one-shots, the overall focus is usually a story with a simple plot hook, dramatic enough to provide some points of action and/or conflict, and an achievable goal or goals.

Campaigns are better for in-depth roleplaying and players who want to see their characters grow and improve over time. They may consist of a grand overarching plot with smaller adventures either tied to or independent of that plot, or they can be united only by the characters’ presence in the adventures. They are more challenging to create, as they require a bit of continuity and between-adventure work, but many find the campaign to be the truest and most satisfying part of roleplaying. Basic Roleplaying’s experience and character improvement systems reward campaign play.

The Setting

The setting is the time and place the game happens in, whether a one-shot or a campaign. The setting can be any place or any time you can imagine. See Chapter 10: Settings for more information about settings. It covers historical and popular settings and if one of these doesn’t appeal, it might serve as inspiration for you to adapt an existing setting from some other form (another game, a movie, television show, book, comic, etc.) for your use.

Generally, as the gamemaster, you get to choose the setting with the players’ agreement. However, excitement is as contagious as disinterest, and if you aren’t enthusiastic, your players won’t be either. You may even have an open discussion of the desired setting to play in, a creative improvisation where many voices are heard.

Getting Started

Now pick a place and a time you can all meet, whether a physical space like a living room, coffee shop, or even online through a videoconferencing system or tabletop roleplaying platform (of which there are many). Gaming can happen anywhere but is more enjoyable when free from distractions. The time you spend gathering is called a game session (or sometimes just a session).

Time is an important consideration, as sessions usually take a few hours or longer. Pick a place you won’t be abruptly kicked out of, and budget time for getting started and finishing up (these always take a little longer than expected). You and your players should decide what time you’re meeting, and whether that means that the game begins exactly at that time, or whether everyone should begin trickling in at around that time. Online games are easier in this regard, as they usually just involve opening a browser from the comfort of one’s home.

Determine what you and your players prefer and plan (and adapt) accordingly.

Describe the Setting

Once you’re ready and have gathered the players, explain the setting to them. The ones in Chapter 10: Settings are easy places to start and provide relatively concise descriptions of each setting. You can customize one of these as desired or come up with a completely new setting.

One of the best ways to think of this part of the game is that you’re ‘selling’ the players on the setting, or the premise. Try to condense the description to a few quick sentences, providing clear answers to the following questions:

• What is the setting like? If you can think of a movie, book, or television show that your setting resembles, you should name it outright. Don’t be shy about naming your inspirations! If you’re creating something original, try to boil it down to a high-concept Hollywood pitch, combining two known properties in a way that sparks imagination and interest.
• Who are the player characters? This isn’t a list of professions; it’s a purpose, telling the players where they stand, and what they stand for, in the setting. This is usually the element that ties them together as a group, rather than just being a bunch of individuals with no reason to interact.
• What do the player characters do? This is the overall description of what kinds of adventures you’ll be creating for the players, whether investigations, exploration, political maneuvering, urban skullduggery, overland survival, etc. This affects the sorts of characters they will want to create, so be clear here.

This can also be a collaborative effort, enlisting your players to provide input. Once you know the answers to these three questions, you can begin with character creation. Hopefully everyone is excited about what’s in store for them in the game sessions to come!

Gamemastering Character Creation

Chapter 2: Characters provides a ten-step guide for character creation. Walk the players through that process, answering their questions. It’s useful to ask the players to decide what type of character each is going to play, to eliminate any potential redundancies or weaknesses. Most of the time, it’s good to have a well-rounded group of character types, to better handle a wide range of situations and to give each player a specialty or area of focus that they’re best at. This is sometimes called niche protection.

Optional Rule Checklist

Following are all the optional rules and their effect in play.

Characters and Character Creation

• Choosing Characteristic Values: Players assign characteristics where they want, resulting in characters more suited to their preferences.
• Higher Starting Characteristics: More robust and generally more competent characters.
• Education/Knowledge Roll: Useful for games in the modern settings.
• Cultural Modifiers: Best in settings with dramatically different cultures and societies.
• Nonhuman Characters: Used in high fantasy and science fiction settings.
• Point-based Character Creation: Characters are designed by the players, allowing for precise customization.
• Step Seven: Results in competent and well-rounded characters.
• Increased Personal Skill Points: Characters are professionals with prior experience.
• Hit Points per Location: Useful for very combat-intensive settings, ideally with Armor by Hit Locations.
• Total Hit Points: Characters can survive considerable damage. If only player characters and important nonplayer characters use this, gameplay becomes very heroic.
• Fatigue Points: Best used in gritty, combat-, survival-, or travel-focused games.
• Sanity: Useful in games with horror elements.
• Distinctive Features: Primarily for flavor, useful everywhere.
• Freeform Professions: Useful for customized, difficult-to-categorize player characters.
• Aging and Inaction: Useful for long-term campaigns where characters age significantly.

Skills

• Skill Category Bonuses: If skills are important, skill bonuses are useful. Not compatible with Simpler Skill Bonuses.
• Simpler Skill Bonuses: A simpler approach to skill bonuses. Not compatible with Skill Category Bonuses.
• Complimentary Skills: Useful in any game or setting.
• Acting Without Skill: Allowing a minor chance of success in any skill, regardless of training. Freak luck might break suspension of disbelief in some games.
• Literacy: Useful whenever reading and writing is less common.
• Skill Ratings Over 100%: Essential for high-powered settings with hugely competent characters.

Powers

• Projection: Necessary when using superpowers.

System

• Opposed Skill Roll Systems: Largely a matter of preference.
• Encumbrance: Useful for grittier, combat-, survival-, or travel-oriented games, especially when paired with Fatigue.

Combat

• Eliminating or Reversing Statement of Intents: This speeds combat considerably.
• Initiative Rolls: This adds randomness to combat round-to-round.
• Power Use in the Action Phase: Emphasizes powers in combat.
• Attacks and Parries over 100%: Best with high-powered fantasy and superhero adventure, though combat gets somewhat slower.
• Dodging Missile Weapons: Best for games where combat is exaggerated and unrealistic.
• Dying Blows: Useful for giving a beloved player character (or hated villain) a dramatic ending.
• Armor by Hit Locations: Best for detailed and simulation-oriented games.
• Damage and Hit Locations: Best for detailed and simulation-oriented games.
• Miniatures, Maps and Virtual Tabletops: Best for detailed and simulation-oriented games.

Miscellaneous

• Allegiance: Useful for games with gods that actively intervene in the world.
• Fate Points: Players can spend power points to adjust dice results and introduce narrative elements.
• Passions: Allows characters to act in personality-driven fashion.
• Reputation: A useful metric for achievement and fame.
• Personality Traits: Useful to help define characters and nonplayer characters alike.

Examine the Player Characters

When all the characters are created, review them to understand what sorts of characters you are dealing with. You may check their math, making sure that all the points for skills and powers add up correctly and that the player didn’t make any mistakes. Or you may be less formal. You should decide up front which sort of a gamemaster you’ll be, and let the players know ahead of time.

Use this time to note the important aspects of each player character, such as their name, profession, high characteristics, and important skills (Listen, Sense, Spot, etc.). You may also note any skills over 70%, which can inform the sorts of things the player would like their character to excel in.

For example, if a character has high Communication and language skills, you may want to give them a chance to use those skills in play, where possible.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with a scene or plot element that focuses on desired skills and will make players feel they haven’t made a mistake with their characters.

This is a good time for troubleshooting, such as recognizing what skills are missing, or if a player hasn’t spent their skill points effectively. If an adventure calls for a lot of political negotiation and is set in a single location, and a player has invested a lot of points into skills like Pilot and Heavy Machine, you might let them know that their character may not feel very useful during much of the intended adventure. Similarly, pay attention to when a player is spending too many skill points on skills that seem uncharacteristic, based on the character’s profession and what they know about the adventure. Sometimes this is a case of the player exploiting out of character information, and you should be aware if it is happening. How you choose to deal with it depends on your players and your own personality and style, though such behavior can be an unfair advantage over the other players.

Remember, always, that it’s just a game, and try to keep people focused on the fun.

Character Goals

After the players have finished character creation, it’s useful to ask them what goals they have for their characters. This might be a little early, as they haven’t begun play yet, but if the players know the setting, ask what their characters (and they) might enjoy doing. This can be invaluable, letting you customize your game to the characters and to the players’ tastes. You can come up with heroic moments, life goals, extended endeavors, or put them where they are most effective. A player may even think it would be cool for their character to die in a particular heroic fashion, somewhere down the line.

For example, if you’re running a Wild West game, one of the players might surprise you by telling you that they want their character to run for sheriff in a small town. That sounds interesting, and since the planned setting was to have the characters based in a frontier town, having one player as sheriff would be a useful plot element and a rich source of plot hooks. The other characters should also have things to do, so they’re not all being bossed around by the sheriff, though.

Sometimes, without even trying, the players will help you write adventures, just using the ideas they provide at the beginning of play.

Know the Rules

The Basic Roleplaying rules are intuitive enough that you don’t even need to know them that well to run a simple game. You don’t have to be a rules expert, but you should be familiar enough to make sensible judgments or know where to look. Your players can also help, looking rules up for you while you deal with other things.

Teaching the Rules (following) provides a high-level overview and a single read-through of relevant rules sections before the game is always useful. One helpful trick is to provide a quick list of relevant rules and note the page numbers for those sections. Sticky notes are another useful tool for this kind of preparation, tagging frequently used sections of the rules.

For example, if your adventure has a wall the characters must climb, noting the page numbers for Climb and Falling is useful to have ready.

There are many optional rules for different settings and play styles. Choose those you’re going to use and tell the players ahead of time, when relevant to their gameplay. When in doubt about the effect an optional rule may have, either don’t use it or try it out for a limited time, such as for one session. If you don’t like the way it worked, lose it.

Teaching the Rules

Though this book has quite a bit in it, the most important thing to remember is that the players don’t need to know every rule to have a good time. Basic Roleplaying has only a few core concepts at its heart, and once your players know these, they’ll be fine.

• Characteristics are usually 3–18 (the higher the better).
• Most issues are resolved with a percentile dice roll (D100).
• Make a characteristic roll (usually a characteristic ×5) when there is no opposition and a resistance roll when there is an opposed force.
• A resistance roll is based on equal forces having a 50/50 chance against one another. The more unequal the forces are, the greater the difference. Only one side rolls: either the active side or the player. Both chances add up to 100%.
• Skills are rated in percentages (the higher the better). Roll low on percentile rolls to succeed. A roll of 99 and/or 00 is a fumble. A roll over the skill rating is a failure. A roll equal to or under the skill rating is a success. A roll of 1/5 the skill rating is a special success. A roll of 1/20 your skill is a critical success.
• Usually, roll full skill rating on percentile dice. If there’s no reason the skill can’t be performed successfully, it’s Automatic, so don’t roll. If it’s Easy, double the skill rating. If it’s Average, do not modify it. If it’s Difficult, cut the skill in half. If it’s Impossible, don’t even roll, as it always fails.
• Occasionally, skill ratings are modified by a value (usually within the range of ±20%) if an outside factor makes things more challenging or aids the attempt.
• Characters’ lives are measured in hit points. These are lost through injuries and other harmful situations. When a living being runs out of hit points, they die.
• Characters may have powers such as mutations, psychic abilities, magic, or superpowers. Most powers use power points for fuel. When these run out, they fall unconscious.

Everything else can be determined during play or explained as required. Players who understand the rules fully is always a benefit, but if knowledge of the rules is getting in the way of playing, better to keep playing, figure things out or look them up when needed, and don’t be afraid to make your own rulings where necessary.

The Adventure

The adventure is usually the core of most roleplaying games. This is not necessarily an adventure in the classical sense, but the term can mean any story with a beginning, middle, and ending with opportunities for the characters to do something and achieve a goal.

To start, you need to either create an adventure or use a published one. Later in this chapter, guidance for creating an original adventure is provided. If using a published adventure, you should be familiar with it and should make any notes that may be of interest. You might print it out and mark it up with highlighter pens, sticky notes, bookmarks, and other notes to assist while running it, or even write a quick outline or flowchart to keep things straight.

Designing Adventures

The structure approximates a traditional dramatic narrative structure, though it is not the only example you might look to. Usually, this follows these phases:

• Introduction: The main characters (protagonists and antagonists) and the core conflict are introduced. The player characters are usually the protagonists, and the antagonist(s) embodies or serves some central conflict that is to be resolved later. The protagonists may not meet the antagonist face-to-face here or even become aware of their existence, but they are aware of the central conflict. If the adventure begins with action setting the plot in motion… that’s even more exciting and involving.
• Complication: One or more complications come into the situation, usually to force the protagonists into action. They may discover that they cannot escape the attention of their enemies, or they could lose their homes, or will have loved ones threatened. In many cases, this is where the stakes are defined, usually by letting them know what happens if they don’t act. This is where the big conflict becomes the protagonists’ problem. Now something must be done about it.
• Rising Action: Now the hammer falls, with the protagonists coming face-to-face with the antagonist and/or their agents. This may be a single confrontation, or a series of short engagements that build to a dramatic face-off. Often, this results in the antagonist getting the upper hand, forcing the protagonists to regroup and rally.
• Loss: Sometimes the antagonist forces a stalemate, but they almost always have an advantage later. An ally of the protagonists may be killed or incapacitated. The protagonists may be captured, exiled, or lose some significant advantage. The protagonists should feel like there is only a slim chance of winning, and that the unfortunate outcome of the conflict will occur if they do not risk everything. If the story ends here, it might be depressing. Fortunately, it doesn’t usually end at this point, though this can be used as a good spot for a cliffhanger.
• Rising Action: This begins with the protagonists reeling from loss in the prior phase. It may have become personal. They may gain new or unexpected allies or discover some weakness in the antagonist’s forces. There is new hope, though it may be desperate and reckless. This leads to a second challenge, where the protagonists and the antagonist must confront one another.
• Climax: The rising action from the previous segment has reached its greatest height. The stakes are usually survival of all that matters to the protagonists. This may boil down to a single instant when everyone’s fates are dependent upon a single action, or a rising sequence of steps that must fall into place exactly (with the tension rising from when they don’t). In a heroic story, the protagonists win because they have overcome some personal doubt or weakness or exhibit some quality (such as mercy) that the antagonist lacks. Usually, if the antagonist wins it is because there will be a continuation where the protagonists have another chance at victory.
• Dénouement: This French term means ‘resolution’, and here all the aftermath from the climax plays out. Rewards are granted, and a new status quo is established (or hinted at). In heroic stories, this is the happy ending.

If this outline sounds familiar, it should. It’s encoded into a hundred or even a thousand movies you’ve seen or books you’ve read. Many stories are coded in this fashion and viewers are subconsciously trained to respond to them, even if they recognize the elements as they transpire. The structure may be clichéd, but it works and can serve as a solid foundation for your own adventures. Don’t be afraid, though, to come up with your own variations on this basic structure, or ignore it entirely, so that your adventures don’t all resemble one another. You can mix things up, add or subtract elements, and defy expectations, so long as the story you’re providing is compelling.

Players can be unpredictable and don’t always follow a desired path. They may split up or follow their own story threads, and often they’ll encounter various challenges and complications at different times than planned. This can be challenging, but not overwhelming. You can handle this by taking notes on a flowchart, or just winging it and improvising as desired.

There is no right or wrong way to do this, only what works for you.

Sandbox Worlds

Some players rebel against being manipulated through a narrative and prefer a world that reacts to their own actions. This is called the ‘sandbox’ approach, where any story elements are there dormant, waiting for the characters to interact with them. There are pros and cons to the sandbox approach. It requires a lot more setup work and proactive players, as you as gamemaster need to know what’s in the sandbox beforehand and less active players may become bored if they’re not given clear indications of what to do. As the gamemaster, you must also be ready at improvising, because the players will inevitably do something you haven’t prepared for.

The main advantage to the sandbox is that the players are the ones driving the stories, a unique and personalized sort of thrill. It’s the sort of thing that roleplaying games do better than any other form of existing entertainment. It’s even possible with sandbox gaming to throw out the gamemaster entirely, and let players take on the roles of other nonplayer characters in the environment when required, with everyone working together to forge a unique game experience.

The Campaign

Designing a campaign sounds daunting, but it isn’t, because campaigns can be as simple or complex as you want. The major difference is that a one-shot or short adventure usually consists of one basic story arc spread across one or a few sessions, while a campaign is a longer story or series of stories, spread across multiple serialized sessions, perhaps with no end planned. As the gamemaster, you can decide whether you’re running a campaign or a single adventure, and plan accordingly.

The structure of a campaign varies tremendously. You might make yours like a television show, with a finite ‘season’, maybe even ending on a cliffhanger. Or it can be figured out as you go. A benefit of a loose structure is that diversions or downtime sessions can naturally happen. However, long-term campaigns can get bogged down if players don’t feel that the resolution is achievable. A campaign that doesn’t feel like it’s going somewhere will lose player interest rapidly.

Campaigns can be ongoing and without a theme, where the characters simply proceed from one adventure to another. Each adventure can be independent of one another, their only major connection being the characters and (maybe) the setting. If you’re using published materials from a variety of sources, this might be the default campaign type. Or they can build as if with a grand unifying scheme, where events in one adventure directly impact events in the next, and everything builds to an intended endpoint. This allows you to steer things towards this conclusion, and adventures usually lead to that conclusion. Such a campaign usually features an epic ending, such as vengeance or the end of a great conflict, but it can be something less violent, like bringing about positive change on a major level. If the campaign was a success, you can always revisit it with a sequel featuring the same or new characters.

Campaign Themes

If you need help thinking of a unifying theme for your campaign, here are a few suggestions, though this list is not exhaustive:

• Quest: A quest-based campaign is the easiest to understand and works best with a fantasy setting. The characters are given a mighty task that they feel compelled to complete, and struggle and journey to achieve that quest. When and if it is completed, the campaign ends. If they fail, there are usually serious consequences.
• Duty: A duty-based campaign has the characters either employed or serving a single entity (group, an individual, a country, etc.), where they are assigned a variety of assignments. The adventures may vary each time, but the framework remains essentially unchanged. Unlike the quest, the participants do what they do because it’s their job.
• Task: This campaign structure revolves around a certain finite number of tasks that must be achieved for the story to be resolved. This may be recovering a series of items scattered across the world, hunting down a certain number of entities, undoing a series of wrongs, etc. There’s almost a countdown timer here, and when all the steps are completed, something big happens that resolves the campaign.
• Story: This campaign is strongly narrative, usually rich in drama and roleplaying opportunities, following a major plot, subplots, with the player characters as active participants. This is often the most rewarding to pull off but requires a lot of planning in advance. For this type of game, always remember that the characters should make a difference, and that it should be them, not a nonplayer character, who makes the final pivotal action or decision around which the story is resolved.
• Location: The characters are assigned to or ‘stuck’ in a particular location. It may be their hometown, some place they’ve been assigned, like a neighborhood, or it can be a remote outpost. They stay in the same place, and adventures come to them. A variation is where the base is mobile, such as a ship (space, seagoing, or even an airship). These campaigns can be episodic, but threats to the location should feature prominently.

Foreshadowing

In a campaign, you can introduce things early that have a payoff much later, through incidental details, bits of dialogue, or nonplayer character actions that seem small but turn into very important plot elements. Be extremely careful about abusing this technique, as it can lead to paranoia or the idea that the world is too interconnected, with every minor character or detail expected to be somehow important in the grand scheme of things.

Recurring Nonplayer Characters

Determine who the important nonplayer characters are, whether helpful or antagonistic, and give them options for survival or continuance. If your players kill the supposed villain in the first story arc of a long-term campaign, they may be retroactively determined to be just a pawn of a greater villain and be prepared to use the same tricks that player characters use to stay alive. Dramatic, impossible escapes and unexpected returns are perfectly suitable for many genres.

The Supporting Cast

Once the adventure is created, it must be populated with nonplayer characters, monsters, and other encounters. These can add to the general theme of the adventure or be purely incidental, for flavor or tied to the characters somehow. This rulebook provides many ready to use example nonplayer characters and creatures, easily modified to suit the setting, adventure, or power level.

Maps

Maps and visual aids are always useful in any adventure, whether a one-shot or in a campaign. If miniatures are used, a map is essential. Even if miniatures are not being used, a map can help explain an area to players in a way that a great deal of description does not. On the other hand, sometimes a map can be too limiting, especially in indoor areas. If you prefer to improvise descriptions of a setting or let the players add background information, a map can sometimes stifle and contradict this creativity.

A good map doesn’t have to account for every tree and bush to be effective, and overland land maps may only have some major geographic landmarks displayed. This way, you can always improvise or add elements to the area as required, so if the characters are sorely in need of a place to rest after a combat took an unanticipated turn for the worse, they might discover a small little inn alongside the road, unmarked on their maps. If the map presents every farm and road-stop, it is more difficult to make such a change, as it contradicts the visual evidence before them. Similarly, sometimes a map can tell too much, especially when the players see so many places they want to visit that they may stray from the intended path because of all the options displayed on the map.

Maps can be easy to make (a quick drawing on a sheet of scratch paper), meticulous (done on graph paper with a key and legend), using a graphics program, or using one of the many online mapping programs. Programs allowing for layouts of houses and homes can prove invaluable in modern games, allowing the gamemaster to create isometric and top-down maps, to scale, complete with furniture and landscaping. A gamemaster with an artistic flair may choose to create maps hand-drawn in colored inks on parchment, artificially weathered through various means, or can find a quality map from some online source and alter it with a graphics program, and even print it onto fancy paper.

Ultimately, if you’re using a map, find a level of detail that seems comfortable and allows for some flexibility. Not everything needs to be set in stone from the first session, and you should be able to add detail when it is required.

Integrate the Characters into the Story

Now that you know who the player characters are and their goals (if any). You should look at the adventure (or the campaign) and figure out how to involve them. It’s usually important to provide a reason why player characters care enough to embark on the adventure at hand. Why do they feel that they must do this thing, and why are they present in the initial scene? This is important, because it provides motivation for them to stick around and see the adventure through to its conclusion. If the player characters don’t feel compelled to be in the initial scene, it will be that much more difficult to keep their interest throughout the adventure.

There are countless ways to begin an adventure (or campaign), with these as common choices:

• The characters already know one another and have been hired to do a particular task. You can begin as they’re hired, or assume they accepted and begin as they’re planning or executing the task.
• The characters encounter for the first time at cross purposes, such as each having their own reasons to be in a particular place at a particular time, but quickly the circumstances change, and they are forced to work together to survive.
• The characters don’t know one another but are asked by different patrons to perform a particular task. Things are not as they seem, and they must find a common cause quickly.
• The characters are thrown together in the same misfortune, either being captured by enemies, caught up in the middle of a greater conflict, or just in the aftermath of a natural disaster. They need to put aside any differences and work together to get out.
• The characters are unrelated, but at the same time and place when something dramatic happens or an opportunity arises. Their reactions shape what happens next.

A great method with maximum player freedom is to present an opening scene and ask the players why their characters are there. The players can then come up with their reasons, including subplots or past relationships they may have with the nonplayer characters, each other, and the overall premise. This method requires some improvisation, but often is more rewarding to the players, as their motives are their own.

You should be prepared to help players who aren’t able to improvise on the spot, and you may have to veto any outlandish reasons or those that contradict your background and premise too much. One of the best methods for dealing with this is to ask for a compromise, but give them something in return, such as an interesting piece of information that they’d normally have to discover through and nonplayer character. That way, you can shift some of the story work to one of the players, rather than a nonplayer character, and you can give the player some personal stake in the story.

This sort of integration can continue well into the adventure and the campaign. If possible, make contacts and nonplayer characters known to the player characters, and maybe even suggest some history with them, so that they react more interestingly than to total strangers. This process makes the setting seem more alive, and the player characters a more important and integrated part of it, rather than just visitors with no personal history or connections. On the other hand, if it’s a “stranger in a strange land” sort of game, it would be strange for the player characters to know too much about the area or the people, so only use this method if appropriate.

It is also useful to try to spread any contacts around the group of player characters, and make sure each of them has some integration with the adventure. If it’s a longer campaign, this doesn’t have to be a part of the first adventure, but players often get frustrated if one player dominates all the time and is integrated into the world far more than they are. Generally, it’s a bad idea to concentrate all gameplay or world interaction through a single character. Spread the riches around!

Connecting the Characters to Each Other

One of the most challenging parts of dealing with a group of player characters is finding reasons to keep them together and to get them to work with one another in a way that makes sense. Some settings and campaign structures lend themselves immediately to groups, such as having all the player characters already part of the same team, organization, or faction. Some or all the player characters can be close or distant relatives, old friends, co-workers, classmates, colleagues, or connected through other affiliations. Depending on what is expected of them in the campaign, the player characters can have been assembled by a mysterious benefactor or hired for a specific purpose. These last two lend themselves well to some missions, though this often stretches incredulity and assumes that the player characters are for hire or willing to work with one another.

There are many ways that the connections between player characters can be developed, and sometimes the players themselves are happy to help with this. At the beginning of the game, you might ask players to identify one other character that they have some connection to (personal history together, past rivalry, friendship, etc.) and a nonplayer character that they know through that other player character. These connections do not have to be mutual, and it is often preferable if they aren’t. When this is done, each player character has a connection to one or more of the other player characters, and a nonplayer character or more that they both know. This helps to connect the player characters to one another, and to the world. You should ultimately approve or disallow any connections or nonplayer characters that don’t work for the campaign or scenario, but it’s best to guide any player choices toward something that works, or accommodate them, rather than vetoing them outright. If you’re using passions, these nonplayer character relationships might be represented as Loves or Loyalties.

However, if this method isn’t useful, skip it. Sometimes it’s best to let the players figure out why their characters need to stick together, and why they shouldn’t be left behind or otherwise shunned. In these cases, work with your players and make sure that they’re not excluding anyone in the group.

Set the Initial Scene

The opening scene is often crucial, because it sets the tone for the rest of the adventure or campaign and gets the players (and their characters) interested in what is happening and eager to continue.

There are many ways to do this, but an initial scene almost always needs to consist of the following elements:

• Location: A location that is either symbolic of the challenges the adventure presents, or a natural starting spot. The more interesting or dramatically appropriate the initial location is, the better. It sets the tone for the rest of the campaign.
• Introductions: Describe any nonplayer characters present, but more importantly, each player should describe their character as they appear to the others present. The players might do full introductions, giving their names, professions, important skills, etc., or keep those ‘secret’ for now, and reveal them later through play.
• Motive: Why are the player characters there? As noted prior, either provide a reason for the player characters to be involved or let them come up with their own reasons.
• ‘The Carrot’: As in ‘the carrot or the stick’, a carrot is some clue or spark of action that provokes the player characters to engage in what’s happening. If you don’t use a carrot (letting ‘hunger’ drive the characters), you should use a stick (see below).
• ‘The Stick’: This is a threat, either to the characters, their loved ones, people they feel responsible for, or the world at large. Usually this means an attack or the looming potential for violence, usually connected to the antagonist in some fashion. If it is not a person, then it’s a threat of the environment that prompts the characters to action.
• Drama: Usually, the initial scene needs to really kick off the adventure with some sense of the stakes. A strong visual or emotional conflict, setting up a required payback, is always helpful. Unless there’s a reason to begin in a mundane fashion, it’s usually best to start by interjecting drama into an initial scene to sell it to the players that they’re here to have an adventure!

Once these elements have been introduced, let the scene play out to its natural conclusion, and make sure there are clear avenues to proceed from there. If this is the first time the players have played Basic Roleplaying, take things slowly and introduce rules systems gradually. Combat and actions may take longer to resolve than they will later, as players may spend a bit of time figuring out how the system works as well as how their characters should act.

From here, you’re ready to move onto the following scene or scenes. Depending on how much information you’ve provided and the nature of the adventure and setting, this may be a guided progression to a single location, or you may favor a more free-form approach allowing the players to find their own way around the adventure, taking the encounters in the order that they choose. Some styles of gamemastering favor the first sort of plot structure. At its worst, this is called ‘railroading’, where players feel that they’re stuck on a track and cannot deviate from it. Other gamemaster styles allow for more freedom, such as the sandbox approach mentioned above.

Keep Things Moving

Regardless of how you’re running the game, it’s vitally important to keep things moving. The adventure doesn’t have to be like an amusement park ride, but you should try to keep the players from getting bogged down in overlong discussions or rules debates. These can lead to boredom, which dampens enthusiasm. It’s contagious: if one or more players have ‘tuned out’ of the session, you should try to shift gears to keep things interesting for everyone.

One method for this is to have something unexpected happen, or someone unwanted show up, a twist no one saw coming, a dead body where there shouldn’t be, etc. This sort of sudden interjection of drama can break a slow portion of a game and make the players get more active. However, you shouldn’t do this so often that the players feel like their characters are at the whim of some giant broom that continually sweeps them along.

House Rules

If there’s a rules argument, don’t be afraid to say something to the effect of “For now, let’s do it this way. Later, if we learn differently, let’s use the new rule.” You’re the gamemaster, and one of your duties is that of a referee. You are expected to make calls when there’s a dispute. Do so fairly, and try to be consistent, from instance to instance, and from player to player.

There will be situations that aren’t covered in these rules, so from time to time you may need to make up a rule or just decide how something goes. If a similar rule isn’t obvious, don’t be afraid to make up a new rule. If it works, write it down. This becomes a ‘house rule’, like those used in card and board games, where the rule essentially applies only in the house (or with the group) it originates.

You can tell other players and gamemasters about your house rules, perhaps online, but don’t expect any of them to use these house rules. Often, you can find house rules on forums and discussion groups relating to your game. Basic Roleplaying has been around for a long time and there are many places online where you can house rules and eager players and gamemasters to discuss those rules.

Nonplayer Characters

One of your most important jobs as gamemaster is to be “the rest of the world”—meaning every nonplayer character and creature the characters may encounter. This is perhaps the most challenging task, presenting a variety of characters with different personalities and goals, each interacting with the player characters in a slightly different manner. You should play each significant nonplayer character as if they have an agenda and potential goals, when appropriate. If it doesn’t make sense for a nonplayer character to fight to the death, they should surrender or flee. However, you should always keep in mind the difference between important and unimportant nonplayer characters. Usually, the act of giving a nonplayer character a name is all you need to make the distinction. A fully developed nonplayer character with a name is important, while ‘Guard #3’ may be all the name that particular nonplayer character needs.

Some of the ways you can make your gamemasters more distinctive is to give each of them some quirk or individual aspect that makes them stand out, like a peculiar accent, a distinctive physical characteristic, a striking bit of gear or costume, or a vocal tic or catchphrase. Feel free to use the distinctive features to characterize them. When you’re thinking of your nonplayer characters, it helps to tell the players about any of these mannerisms or visual elements that they would notice right off. The more you do this, the more your players think of nonplayer characters as unique individuals, and that makes your job that much easier.

A couple of quick methods exist for this: basing a nonplayer character off someone you know, or some actor (or a role played by that actor). If it’s a real person, try to avoid someone too obvious that the players know, as the character disappears, and it just becomes the person they know. If using an actor or their character, you can describe them physically and use those mannerisms, but be careful, though, as it can lead to too many in-jokes or doing impression rather than an actual character.

Remember, though, that it is the player characters, not the nonplayer characters, who are the leads in the story. They may not be the most important people in the world, but they are the protagonists of the story you’re creating together. Gauge the number and presence of nonplayer characters accordingly. You should probably try to avoid too many random nonplayer characters on hand, or having extended periods where the players are sitting around listening to nonplayer characters explain things (or, even worse, having two nonplayer characters discussing things to one another).

Nonplayer character followers who are more competent and steal the spotlight from the player characters are rarely a good idea, unless the point is for them to lull the player characters into a false sense of security, and then get out of the way quickly and thrust the player characters into adventure. Whenever you can give an active role to a player character in place of a nonplayer character, do so. You can provide any background information on a note card or feed it to the player when they make successful Knowledge rolls (or some equivalent).

In addition to the acting challenge of evoking all these different nonplayer characters, you must represent them on a mechanical level. You roll for them, determine what actions they take, and note how injured they are during the course of a combat. You should have key attributes for important nonplayer characters, if they’re essential, using those in Chapter 11: Creatures if needed. Usually, in a nonviolent encounter, you need only a few characteristics (INT, POW, CHA) and relevant Communication-based skill ratings for a nonplayer character. For combat, you need the opposite set of attributes, with characteristics like (DEX, CON, STR), other statistics like hit points, power points, armor value, any combat-oriented skills, and any applicable weapons and/or powers (and their levels).

A great and subtle trick for a gamemaster to do is to make copies of the player character sheets, and use these as the basis for nonplayer characters, making changes where necessary to disguise their origin. Often this is a great source of well-designed characters who are the relative equals of the player characters.

Absent Player Characters

Sometimes a player misses a session but their character is still present, such as when you are continuing an adventure from a prior session. You can handle the player character as if they were a nonplayer character, or let another player handle that character, whichever works best. If a player isn’t present, any successful rolls their character makes do not yield experience points.

Alternatively, you might find it easier to come up with an in-game reason why a player character has suddenly disappeared. This can range from them simply being called away on an unrelated matter, falling through a collapsing floor, being swept away suddenly, disappearing mysteriously, teleported away, or even being captured, depending on the setting. Their rescue can be the source of a future session, or it might simply resolve itself when the player is available again. It’s not advised to begin a session with one player character incapacitated and waiting for the others to get to them before they can do anything.

Take a Break if You Need It

You may find that the players are overwhelming you with requests, or things have become exhausting. It’s always a good idea to take a quick break (anywhere from five to fifteen minutes) every so often during a long play session. For the gamemaster, this may give you a chance to regroup and plan for the next part of the game. If the players have surprised you by going beyond what you were expecting, and you find yourself needing a few minutes of downtime to get your own notes in order and decide what you want to happen, call a break.

It’s also just good to get up and stretch. Tabletop gaming, or online gaming, is sedentary, insomuch as it involves sitting at a table or some other more comfortable seating arrangement, talking to one another. You may do a lot of gesturing, but this isn’t very much physical activity. Every hour or two, you may want to just call a quick break for people to stand up, stretch, move around, refill their beverages or snacks, and even go to the restroom. Sometimes if things bog down too much, a quick breather is just the trick to break a slow point and have players return to the table refreshed. Breaks can also provide players a chance to do some of their own bookkeeping, and make plans of their own, and you should probably allow players to call breaks if they feel that one is required.

You might even start a break with a cliffhanger or at the beginning of a big endeavor. You should assume that the game world just pauses, with no time whatsoever passing between the beginning and end of the break, or you can use the break as a good way to indicate a break in the game time. For example, you may tell the players “You arrive in town just before dark. It’s quiet, but you find an inn with some open rooms. Your innkeeper warns you to stay off the streets, as it can get a bit dangerous. Let’s take a break now. When we get back, you can tell me what trouble you get into before morning.”

If a break indicates a lot of time has passed, it might be time to handle healing, experience checks, and training.

Set the Tone and Mood

There are many ways to establish a tone and mood for your game, varying greatly by setting. Here are suggestions for some easy ways to evoke the desired setting through more than just narration.

Music and Sound Effects

You may want to have some music playing in the background, like a television or movie soundtrack. Choose carefully, based on the setting and your players. You might use ambient music and run it indefinitely in the background, or specific pieces of music for scenes of importance. You may even have a campaign theme, played at the beginning of the session, such as a television show’s intro. Online music services allow for customized playlists and very specific sound landscapes, including a vast number of music services specific to roleplaying game sessions. It is possible to put together highly customizable soundtracks for an adventure, but should be used with caution, making sure not to distract from gameplay with inappropriate pieces of music for particular scenes.

Similarly, there are many sound effects libraries available online to spice up scenes or events, and some ambient sound sites offer environmental background loops, which can be layered or customized.

Props

Sometimes, having a few tiny props on hand might help evoke the setting, such as strange dusty old books in stacks next to the gamemaster for a Lovecraft-inspired game involving horror at a remote and antiquated university. For a martial arts game set in modern China, some Chinese coins scattered across the table might be enough. Try stacking some old disk drives, circuit boards, cables, and various adapters around the play area to provide flavor to a cyberpunk game or light the table only through laptops and computer monitors.

The Game Environment

This is perhaps the most optional of all the methods of evoking a mood, as it is the most labor intensive. You can alter the play area in subtle ways to evoke your setting, putting posters up related to the setting, or colored lights to evoke strange environments. If playing online, a virtual background of the setting always helps. A visit to a party supply store provides many cheap and easy means of decorating your play area. If you and your group play together in a physical space, you may serve a meal appropriate to the setting or have everyone bring thematically appropriate snacks or drinks (within reason).

However, don’t go so far that it’s distracting to the actual play, and be considerate of the players comfort and convenience. Don’t expect people to splurge on expensive foods or make them uncomfortable for the sake of ambience. Mood lighting is great, but when players can’t see their character sheets, it’s a problem. Do what’s comfortable for you and your players, and no more than that.

Note Taking

You should try to take notes or even ask a player to help with it. This helps keep track of who the players talked to, what they learned, who they killed, and what the general situation was when you left off, if you’re going to continue. This can be done during the session or afterwards by reviewing the game notes. It is often useful to provide a brief “Previously…” overview at the beginning of a new session, refreshing everyone’s memories. You might have a shared online document to update during or between adventures, with notes about things the players need to keep in mind or bookkeeping they need to do before the next session. You might handle this via email or a shared online repository of game-related documents, maps, images, and references.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this, no correct amount of documentation, so use whatever method—or none—that feels best to you.

Wrapping Things Up

At the end of a session, try to bring things to some sort of dramatic conclusion. If there’s been a big fight at the end, you might want to stop right afterwards, or if the story arc has wrapped up, conclude with a scene of reward or epilogue. Players should get a feeling that things are either going to continue or that they’re finished, and if there is a continuation, some clues as to what might come next are always useful.

If there’s any ‘homework’, now is the time to assign it. This might include doing experience checks, planning what happens between sessions, or doing some other form of wrap-up. If a big story ended, you might want to provide a short coda to the adventure, letting players know how the story flowed from the final scene. Keep in mind also that not everyone can do work on a game between sessions, and that you should always allow for some time at the beginning of one session to take care of anything that didn’t get done between sessions.

Something you might do periodically is to informally ask the players how they felt about the session. What sort of things they liked, disliked, or anything they weren’t expecting. This doesn’t have to be a critique but can instead serve as a barometer of what went right. If you’re the sort of gamemaster who doesn’t take criticism well or have players who aren’t comfortable talking about things they didn’t like, don’t bother with this wrap-up.

If an adventure is over, but the campaign is continuing, you might also ask the players what they’d like to see happen in the next session or adventure. Sometimes player feedback can push you in interesting directions and provide unexpectedly rich content. As noted, this is entirely optional, and should be casual. You could even do this via email or one-on-one later, as appropriate. Oftentimes, post-game chatter is almost as much fun as a game itself, which is a reason games sometimes tend to run long!

If you’re meeting in person, you might ask to collect the character sheets at the end of a game session, or scan them so you have copies. This insures against lost character sheets, or absent players when you need to run their character for them. If you’re doing things electronically, you might ask the players to update their characters in the online repository. Virtual game platforms can store character sheets, as well, letting you update them electronically, with no paper involved.

To be Continued…?

At the end of a successful game, you should determine with the players whether you’ll continue. Sometimes a one-shot can turn into a campaign, and sometimes a campaign doesn’t really go as well as hoped and turns into a one shot. You might ask your players at the end of an adventure if they’d like to continue if it hasn’t been established already. If you already know the answer, don’t bother, but it’s always good to know how interested your players are in continuing the game you’re running. Naturally, if you’re not continuing, you shouldn’t bother with experience checks, notes, or trying to establish continuity, but if there’s a chance of coming back to the same group of characters and the setting, you should make sure that the possibility exists, so don’t accidentally destroy or discard your notes or the character sheets.

Gamemastering Techniques

The following aren’t rules or even guidelines, but suggestions to aid you in the complicated and incredible task of game mastering. None are required, and some may run contrary to your style. Take these suggestions for what they are: tools in your gamemaster toolbox.

Introduction

A good introduction can set a campaign off to a bang. This is where you read a short, scripted introduction, giving a bit of relevant background or framing the current sequence. In movies this can be a ‘title card’ or an ‘opening crawl’ of text providing the information about the setting and bringing the audience up to speed. It’s different from the initial scene in that it’s usually not roleplayed through and is often just narrative. Ideally, you want to keep it short (not more than a few sentences) and if one of your players has a good voice and talent for that sort of thing, ask them to do it.

The Player Characters Are the Stars

The player characters are the stars of the adventure. This doesn’t make them the most important people in the universe, but it makes them the most significant people in the game. Their actions should be significant, and unless there’s a good reason for it in the setting or adventure, they should be the ones who get to shine. Having nonplayer characters around who are more competent and heroic than the player characters is fine, but making the players feel like they’re watching someone else’s adventures from the sidelines is usually a surefire way to lose player investment.

Encourage Player Investment

Do what you can to get the players to contribute to the campaign and their characters. Encourage them to create things that will enrich the game experience without affecting it directly, such as in-character journals, illustrations of their characters or nonplayer characters, or even performing real world tasks such as aiding you with some of the notetaking and bookkeeping. This could also be basic things like agreeing to host the game sessions, contributing to the group’s food and drink, or running the shared online group document. If the reward of simply making the game better isn’t enough, offer small rewards such as free experience checks in relevant skills, so long as they don’t become too much of a distraction and are distributed fairly.

Show, Don’t Tell

Whenever you can, be as visual as possible with descriptions of locales, nonplayer characters, and events. When coming up with your plots, always ask “Is this something the players can experience firsthand?” For an event that the characters need to be aware of, if you can get them on the scene to experience it firsthand, the experience will be much more important and significant to them. Rather than their characters being told about something that happened and asking them what they want to do about it, put them in the middle of it and let them experience it viscerally. This doesn’t have to be a full-fledged scene. You can easily begin with such a scene, summarize how it resolved, then jumping to the point where the characters can act.

Flashbacks

You can even have the players play through an earlier event or prologue, where they enact the roles of other (likely pregenerated) characters. You might even split a flashback adventure between a modern setting and a historical one, with parallels between the two, with players taking on the roles of their modern characters and their ancestral forebears. For a variation on this, you might have the player characters transported to another time and place in some strange fashion, where their dreaming selves must enact a scene in the past. Or you could do a ‘flash forward’, where you give the players a glimpse of what is to come with their player characters in the near or distant future, or some alternate branch of history. Basic Roleplaying has all the tools for play in different periods, genres, and even alternate realities, all in the same campaign.

Cutscenes

These are commonly used in films, but they can be used in a tabletop setting to great effect. Essentially, a cutscene occurs away from the characters (hence, we ‘cut away’ from them) and involves other significant characters. In a game, this is a scene that occurs elsewhere, and involves one or more nonplayer characters, usually doing something significant to the plot or adding foreshadowing to the player characters’ future.

The challenge of cutscenes is that they usually focus on out-of-character knowledge, and it requires the players to watch while the gamemaster tells a little story or enacts a scene. A great technique for introducing a cutscene is to have the players read a scripted version of that scene, roleplaying it as if it were their own characters, or as a news broadcast with multiple anchors and interviews, etc.

If you’re a story-based gamemaster who wants the players to feel like they’re the active parts of a narrative, then this might work well for you. If you’re more episodic with your adventure(s), you might not bother with this trick. It can also be used to great effect in a light-hearted or comedic game, where out-of-character knowledge can be explained away easily, and it can give players a chance to inhabit outrageous or extreme characters other than their own.

‘Jobber’ Sequences

This storytelling trick and term comes from professional wrestling, introducing a formidable opponent (or several) and emphasizing how frightening or powerful they are. Then, a newcomer arrives and dispatches them, demonstrating the newcomer’s prowess. To ‘jobber’ is to make someone else look competent at one’s own expense. This can work for heroes or villains, protagonists, or antagonists.

You can also let the players suggest their own ‘jobber’ sequences as part of their introductions, showing them shining in their field of expertise. This can extend to any specialty or skill. If appropriate, let each player give themselves such a sequence while the other players watch (or pitch in). You don’t even need to roll the dice for such a scene, as it should be a foregone conclusion that the character triumphs and makes it to the next, or initial scene.

Bait-and-Switch

This is a classic storytelling trick, where the players are given one premise (a setting, an adventure, etc.) and then quickly discover that they are in the middle of another premise. Usually this is a dramatic discovery, causing them to reevaluate everything that they know or have experienced so far. This can be used to comedic effect, or to completely transform an adventure. It should be used carefully, however, as some players can balk if they feel they’ve been sold one thing and had another substituted. This is especially true if you’ve had them involved from the start in crafting the sort of campaign you want, then abandoning it. You can ask if you feel it’s going to be a problem, or warn them ahead of time that things are not always what they seem.

Recognize Your Players

Players goals can differ tremendously, even within the same groups. If you know them, you might identify what they enjoy in games, and why they play. For ease, you could classify players based on the following general types, codified by Robin Laws in his excellent gamemaster advice book, Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering (Steve Jackson Games, Inc., 2002):

• The Leader: This player ends up leading and creates characters who command respect and authority from the existing power structure (police officers, government agents, military officers, etc.). This sort of player usually seeks attention, often from the other players as well as from the gamemaster.
• The Specialist: The player creates characters that are secondary, almost at the level of background characters, but extremely skilled in a narrow field, whether it be weapons, computers, piloting, etc. When in their field of specialty, the player wants to succeed, and succeed well.
• The Power Gamer: This player creates characters who are extremely powerful (sometimes with judicious rules application). Such characters are often after more power, whether the most powerful magic weapon, the most terrifying spell, etc.
• The Method Actor: This player will create elaborate backstories and focus on their character as if they were from some other medium, even taking on unnecessary flaws and disadvantages just because they feel ‘right’.
• The Follower: This is the simplest type of player. Often, they are just content to hang back and watch the fun, rolling dice or acting when required. They might enjoy being in the spotlight now and again, but usually don’t require, or even want, attention.

Not every player is the same type in every campaign. Sometimes a player is always one type, while other times, they may choose their role based on the setting and the campaign. Players can also act like more than one of these types from session-to-session. However, once you have a good idea about what these roles usually are after, you can see that preferences and needs are being met in the game and adjust accordingly.

Personality Traits

You can describe a nonplayer character’s personality numerically, just like a skill or passion. An easy method to do this is a personality trait scale, where a trait is described as a percentile value of 0 to 100. A value of 0 indicates that the personality trait is nonexistent, and a 100 is always representative of that character.

Personality traits are paired with an opposite, such as Aggressive vs. Passive, and the value of the opposite trait is equal to 100 minus the initial personality trait. A quick means of shorthand for this pairing is ‘Aggressive 90 | 10 Passive’, for example. Someone with 50 | 50 in a trait the Personality Traits sheet below helps make this easy to keep track of these traits for nonplayer characters. You can use some, many, or all these to define your nonplayer characters.

Personality Traits

Initial Trait	Value | Value	Opposing Trait
Aggressive	___ | ___	Passive
Impulsive	___ | ___	Cautious
Extrovert	___ | ___	Introvert
Optimistic	___ | ___	Pessimistic
Stubborn	___ | ___	Receptive
Physical	___ | ___	Mental
Patient	___ | ___	Nervous
Emotional	___ | ___	Calm
Trusting	___ | ___	Suspicious
Leader	___ | ___	Follower
Greedy	___ | ___	Generous
Energetic	___ | ___	Lazy
Honorable	___ | ___	Dishonorable
Brave	___ | ___	Cowardly
Curious	___ | ___	Incurious
Dependable	___ | ___	Unreliable
Pious	___ | ___	Irreligious
Honest	___ | ___	Dishonest
Clever	___ | ___	Dull
Humorous	___ | ___	Dour
Conservative	___ | ___	Innovative

For example, a nonplayer character is highly aggressive, with a value of 90 on their Aggressive personality trait. The opposing trait is Passive and thus has a value of 10 (100–90=10). A nonplayer character with an Aggressive 90 is ready to pick a fight, answers any challenge, and usually escalates to violence, while someone with Passive 90 usually backs down from conflicts and avoids any direct confrontations.

You do not need to determine all the personality traits for your significant nonplayer characters. Instead, choose one or a few relevant ones and assign values to them. You don’t even need to determine the opposing trait’s value, as it’s apparent. Assign values as desired or pick relevant ones and divide a D100 roll by 2 and add 50 to the result, for a spread of 51–100. Or roll 3D10+70 for extreme cases.

Personality traits can guide your roleplaying of the nonplayer character by simply looking at the value, or you can roll to see how the nonplayer character behaves. Success with one trait means they act on that character trait, while failure means that the opposite trait is followed. You may also choose to utilize special or critical results for these rolls, but only in a general sense.

For example, the characters meet the nonplayer character with the ‘Aggressive 90 | 10 Passive’ personality trait spread, and one of them behaves rudely to the nonplayer character. You know from the spread how they’re likely to react, but you decide to roll, just to see what happens. Any roll of 01–90 and the nonplayer character reacts aggressively, while a roll of 91–100 indicates a passive response. Perhaps they’re distracted or unwilling at this time to get into it with the characters?

Skills and Personality Traits

The Insight skill may be used to quickly determine a nonplayer characters personality trait spread in a general sense, or Psychology might be used for long-term analysis. Don’t reveal the actual values, but rather a particular strongly lean in one direction or the other.

Though it is extremely unlikely to have a player character performing Psychology on a nonplayer character for an extended period, you may allow a successful Psychology roll to affect a single paired personality trait in the same fashion that it restores lost SAN. Roll to see whether SAN points are restored, but instead of adding SAN, instead use the result to shift a particular personality trait by that many points in the desired direction. Treatment time is identical. This way, through patience and therapy, a successful Psychology roll can ‘help’ a nonplayer character change their natural inclinations towards a desired personality trait.

Personality Traits and Player Characters

You can also use personality traits for player characters, if desired, treating them as you would for nonplayer characters. They become like passions, augmenting activities or being consulted when provoked, with experience checks if successful. The player always has control over what their character does, but if they make a successful roll on one trait and decide to act according to the opposing trait, you should have them automatically make an experience check for that opposite trait. When one trait increases, the other is decreased. If they wish to seek treatment for this trait, see the rules for Psychology (above).