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Why this game?

✇Gnome Stew
Od:Phil Vecchione
19. Prosinec 2025 v 12:00

For the most part, I pick the games I am going to run by, as the kids today say, vibes. It has always been instinctual. I hear about a game, the right ones set off my Spidey Sense, and I am hooked. That has been my method for the last 43 years. At different points during those years, I have thought to myself, “perhaps there are no more interesting games to play”, only to find time and time again something that I was excited to bring to the table.  

Last week, I thought I had hit rock bottom. For the first time in 43 years, I struggled to find a game to bring to the table. One of my game groups reorganized, and I lost a few players, so I was looking for a game to offer up, and my list was empty; the well was dry. I spent several nights wandering my PDF collection and scrolling through DriveThruRPG looking for something that would vibe, that would create that spark. Nothing. I started to worry that perhaps this was the end, no more games to interest me. 

I then did what I often do when I get stuck on a problem, and started to break the problem down into parts I could name, so that I could try to get some kind of control over what was going on. I learned some things about that “vibe”.. Oh, and I found a game too. 

What was I vibing on? 

My attraction to certain games had to be a combination of different factors. When it comes to understanding the larger parts of what makes up a game, I think that Jason Pitre did best with their Four Structures. Read the article for details, but in a nutshell, the four structures are: 

  • Setting – the world that the characters inhabit.
  • System – the rules of the game.
  • Situation – the things the characters do when you play. 
  • Subtext – the hidden message or theme of the game. 

When I looked back at past games I have been excited about, I can identify which structures excited me the most. Some games may be just one thing, and others may be multiples, with the best fits being all four structures. When I think about Forbidden Lands, my initial attraction was through the System, because of its rules for travel. For Night’s Black Agents, it was a combination of System (Gumshoe) and Setting (Jason Bourne vs Vampires). For Blades in the Dark, it was the Situation (doing jobs), more than the setting or system. While initially, I liked Underground’s Setting, what really got me was the Subtext of when all you have been trained for is war, how else can you solve any problems? 

Those are broad categories. It is entirely possible to like things in a more granular way. My interest in Forbidden Lands was for just one subsystem, not the entire mechanics of the game. There is a point of diminishing returns in granularity; it would be hard for me to be excited to get a game to the table just because I think one character class is interesting. For me, there needs to be a preponderance of interest in one of the Structures for me to connect. 

Another thing I observed upon reflection was that the more I connected with one Structure, the less I needed to for the others. I really don’t love the setting of Blades in the Dark, it’s ok. But I really like the Situation of a gang doing jobs to raise their status in the underworld. 

 I want the System to reinforce the Setting, Situation, Subtext, or all of them. 

Also, if one structure supports another, that is a multiplier for me. In the case of Night’s Black Agents, the Setting and Situation are superbly supported by the System. That is to say, there are rules for all the parts of the Setting and Situation (investigations, combat, chases, vampires, etc). Specifically, I want the System to reinforce the Setting, Situation, Subtext, or all of them. I find that when the System is not tightly coupled to the other structures, it makes it less appealing to me. 

Novelty and Predictability 

Thinking about the four structures and games I enjoyed in the past gave me a framework for looking at games and trying to understand why I was not finding anything I vibed with. While scrolling through lists of games, I now found myself saying things like, “I have played that system before”, “I don’t like to run fantasy”, “What do the characters do in this game?” It made looking at games more ordered, less vibes, and now more formulaic. 

During this exploration, I began to uncover two other factors in play. I love to run things I have not run before. I love the novelty of things. I rarely play the same game twice; I would rather play something totally new than run something I have played before. At the same time, I do have favorite game systems, because they are predictable. I like the feel of a PbtA system, and I have recently grown more comfortable with Forged in the Dark games. 

As I thought about these two factors in conjunction with the four structures, I realized that there was some nuance. Not every structure had to be novel, but they could not all be predictable. At least one structure had to be novel. Also, I found I get hesitant if everything is novel, meaning I like something to be predictable. For instance, a system could be totally novel if the setting (or genre – a component of setting) were predictable. 

Just what was I looking for? 

This added information about novelty and predictability provided some nuance to my searches, but more importantly, I was finally able to articulate what I was looking for, for this group for this game.

I wanted a predictable system. Where I am right now, I did not want to take on learning a new system. But I need some novelty, which eliminates replaying any past games. The game I was looking for was going to be a system I am comfortable with, but a setting and/or situation that was novel. 

This made searching much more efficient. I was now able to eliminate systems I was not comfortable with and games I had played in the systems with which I was familiar. Quickly, a short list of candidates popped up, and within a day, I settled on the game I wanted to try: 

Transit by Fiddleback Productions.

Transit is a PbtA game. Very predictable for me. I knew I would have no problem learning the System and being comfortable running it. The general Setting is SciFi, which is also familiar to me, but the characters take the form of AIs embedded into spaceships; a novel Situation! This was a solid combination for me. A System that I was comfortable running, in a general Setting that I am comfortable running and am well versed in its tropes, but a very novel kind of story to tell. I have not, in my 43 years, run a game where the characters were spaceships. 

Just like that, I was excited to get this game to the table. The drought was ended, and the age-old question of “are there no more games I am interested in?” was staved off for another day. 

Use the Force, Luke

The alchemy of why we like games is complex and contains many factors. By giving some of those factors names, we are able to create language for why we are intrigued by and turned off by games. In that naming, we give ourselves the power to move from instinct to rationalization. We no longer have to wander, hoping something will fall in our laps, but rather we can create a set of search parameters and hone in on candidates.

What structures attract you to games? What roles do novelty and predictability play for you? Do you like them in certain structures or not in others? 

Background Events

✇Gnome Stew
Od:Phil Vecchione
26. Listopad 2025 v 12:37

One of the things I love about Blades in the Dark is that it has a mechanism for creating background events for your campaign. During Downtime (though I do this after a session), you roll to see how various factions make progress (or not) on their goals. Mechanically, this is a series of Fortune rolls that advance various project clocks for each faction. The result of this is that while the characters are off doing their own things, the factions in the city also progress with their agendas and goals. Mechanisms like this give a campaign a life of its own. So let’s talk about it. 

Background Events

Let’s start with a definition: a background event is a narrative element that occurs without the direct intervention of the PCs. It can take many forms, such as actions of individual NPCs, groups, or even natural events. Background events can take place in one-shots and campaigns, and they can take place during stories or between stories. 

Background Events have a few effects in the game: 

  • They create a sense of a dynamic background to the game. Having NPCs, groups, and natural events occur gives players the feeling that the campaign world is alive and breathing around them, and not just a static background that freezes when the characters change locations. 
  • They create potential stories. The players may take an interest in the background events and may want to intervene, giving you and your table a new story to play. 
  • They can create tension and drama. Having a main story and several concurrent background stories will create decision points in the game. Do the characters stay on the main story, or should they take a session and help the baker who is about to lose their bakery because of the lost shipment of flour? Which decision will they make, and what consequence will come of it? 

Several games have this built into their mechanics. Dungeon World uses Signs & Portents, and the Forged in the Dark games have the Faction Downtime actions. Even if a game does not have specific mechanics for it, they can be done narratively in any game, by just making up some news and events and conveying them to the players. 

A Framework for Good Background Events

Here is a model for a mechanized version of background events, if your game does not have a mechanism for this. This draws heavily upon both Dungeon World and Forged in the Dark: 

First, come up with some groups or individuals that are up to something. 

Second, for each group or individual, give them a goal and some arbitrary steps they would take to accomplish that goal. Here we are building a clock.

Third, decide what interval you want to update these clocks. A good starting interval is between stories. 

Fourth, at the specified interval, decide if the clock advances and how much. You can just decide this for yourself, or you can assign some dice to determine this effect. Perhaps roll a d6 and advance the clock that many ticks. 

Fifth, convey the outcomes of some or all of the clocks to the characters during the session. 

Conveying The Information

Like character backgrounds that are written down and not discussed at the table, creating background events and keeping them to yourself does nothing to enhance your game.

Regardless of whether you arbitrarily create background events or use a mechanism for creating them, the most important part is that you convey their progress to the characters. Like character backgrounds that are written down and not discussed at the table, creating background events and keeping them to yourself does nothing to enhance your game. The events you create have to reach the characters to create the effects above. 

For your game, you need to think of how news and information are conveyed. If you are playing a modern supers game, information and news are nearly instantaneous. It will be livestreamed or posted to social media before traditional news can report it. If you are playing a SciFi game where news has to travel great distances but is limited to the speed of light, then perhaps couriers jump from system to system in their FTL ships with news. News is dependent on the arrival of couriers. This will change how the news reaches the players; there could be delays or bundles of news. 

Give thought to how news travels in your setting and what constraints or features will be created in your game. The most important consideration is timing. If you want the characters to potentially act on some background events, then the information needs to arrive at them with time to react; otherwise, they will receive the news of the event and write it off because it will take too long to intervene. 

How To Present The Information

Once you work out how the information of the background events reaches the characters, take a moment and think of how narratively you can present the information. The least interesting way to do this is a GM to player data dump, where the GM just tells the players several events going on, “From around town you hear the following… blah, blah, blah”. 

The more interesting approach is to present the information in the context of how the characters would receive it. This can be solely narrative (the GM just saying things) or it could be a post or handout (for the more creative types). In a modern game, you might put the information in the form of social media posts. In a Roaring 20s game, this could be done as a radio broadcast or a newspaper front page. If you have an NPC that could present the events, they could come in and do it in character. 

In my Blades in the Dark game, the crew has an information network of newsies who gather rumors and events while selling newspapers throughout the city. The head of the newsies, Red, comes to the crew’s HQ and presents a briefing to the players. For this, I write out the events in Red’s voice, and during the Free Play phase of the game, we do a scene where Red is reporting to the crew.

Did You Hear? 

Background events are a great way to make a campaign feel more alive and can foreshadow events or create dramatic decisions for the characters. You can create these arbitrarily or using a mechanical approach. If you do use background events, give thought to how the information reaches your players, and when you do present it, think of a creative way to deliver the news. 

Do you use background events in your games? How do you create and track them? What’s the most challenging way information has had to reach your players? What is your favorite method to present the information? 

Make It Personal

✇Gnome Stew
Od:J.T. Evans
14. Listopad 2025 v 12:00

Session zero is packed. Like, really packed, with so many things to do and consider and take care of. There’s establishing the style/theme/tone of the game. Discussing safety tools. Establishing a genre to experience. Determining which system to use. Figuring out what setting to romp around in. Collaborating on character creation. Maybe even some shared world building between the players and the GM. Actually making characters. Perhaps an intro scene where the story is set and getting ready to roll before the campaign launches into orbit.

Yeah. It’s lots. Maybe too much.

However, I’m going to pile onto the stack a few more items that I think could be handled offline after session zero to help the GM really hone the campaign’s blade to razor sharpness. This can be handled via Google Forms, emails, Discord, Slack, or whatever communications methods your group uses between sessions.

Here we go!

Player Goals

 What do YOU, the player, want? 

Break the fourth wall here. Don’t think about character concerns, but what do you as a player want out of the campaign? Do you want to skulk around alleys? Maybe save a nation? Maybe be the big damn hero to rescue people of lesser abilities? Do you want to shoot between the stars, or delve deep underground? Do you want to level fast to see how the higher tiers of play run? Do you want to roll in the gold and spend as you please? What do you want out of the game? There is no wrong answer here.

Player Motivations

 Why do you want it? 

Why do you want what you want? This question is more important than actually stating goals for game play. Letting the GM peek into your brain to see why you want to accomplish certain goals will help the GM facilitate those goals more easily… and probably with a great deal more fun.

Character Goals

 What does your character want? 

Now it’s time to delve into your character’s inner self and figure out what you want your character to accomplish as you roll through the campaign. Riches? Fame? Infamy? Revenge? Redemption? Do you want to find your long lost father and reunite with him? Do you want your hard-working mother to never have to punch the clock again? Cure a disease that plagues your hometown?

When developing goals for your character, try to come up with a short-term and a long-term goal. Make them achievable within the framework of the game/setting/group. Most of all make them matter to your character (and maybe the world at large), and have fun with them!

Character Motivations

 Again, why? 

Here we go again. I’m beating the “motivation drum.” If your character doesn’t have a reason to accomplish the goal, they’ll give up on it at the first sign of trouble or when the smallest challenge presents itself. If your character has a core reason to get out there and do the thing, they’ll go do the thing!

Events to Experience

 Events are memorable. 

This (and the next few areas) come from a combined player/character perspective. Think of yourself and your character as a melded entity when venturing through these next few areas.

What events or scenarios do you want to encounter? Why? Do you want high seas danger? Maybe you’ve never swung from a chandelier while rescuing a princess during a ball and that’s on your bucket list. Maybe you’ve never actually gotten to level 23 of Undermountain beneath Waterdeep, and you really want to get there (once properly leveled up and equipped). Never owned a starship? Cool. Let’s do that! Want to command an army on the field of battle? Sure. Let’s go for it!

Location Types to Explore

 Everyone wants to be a tourist. 

Are there locations in your setting that you’ve never gone to? Maybe you’re playing in Forgotten Realms, but you’ve never been to the ruined nation of Netheril. Time to head north and go explore. Want to fly a spaceship through a black hole and see what the GM imagines is on the other side? Yeah. Set course for the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and see what’s there.

Caveat: Newer players may not know what they don’t know, so they may need some guidance on this front. On the other side, veteran players may think they’ve seen it all, but there’s no way they have. They may need some nudges to get them going on the creative side of this question.

NPC Types to Meet

 Who else is in the world? 

Like with locales in your setting, there are innumerable NPCs to meet and greet and debate and fall in love with and hate with a passion. Give your GM some ideas on who (or what) you might like to encounter in the setting in a non-combat situation. This can greatly assist the GM in world building. You don’t have to go super detailed into this. Something as simple as, “I want to haggle with a spaceport junk seller who has a gambling problem,” will work beautifully. There are numerous hooks just in that one quote that any skilled GM can hang onto and run with.

Monsters to Defeat

 What do you want to slay? 

Never fought a dragon? (WHAT?!?! You need to fight at least one dragon in your career as a gamer!) How about a mind-flayer or a beholder? Those are great challenges even for a higher-powered set of characters. Want to kill a lich and successfully destroy its phylactery? Yeah. Send that to the GM as something you’d like to experience. Have you ever had to cleanse a small village of a doppelganger infestation? What? No? Propose that to the GM as an idea, and let them run with it! You never know what cool stuff your idea will implant into the GM’s brain.

Conclusion

As I said at the start, this is not session zero material, but something to take offline. If your GM puts time and effort into posing these questions, answer them. Don’t forget to answer or fully ignore the questions. If the GM is asking about this kind of material, then they truly do care what you have to say. Don’t consider it a waste of time. Consider it your contribution to the story arcs, campaign setting, and general campaign material the GM will pluck from to formulate future sessions.

Preludes

✇Gnome Stew
Od:Phil Vecchione
29. Říjen 2025 v 11:00

In my current Blades in the Dark game, I started to post preludes in our Slack channel a few days before the game. These preludes are short narrative pieces, centered on one of the characters, and convey some information to the players about the upcoming session. It is not the first time I have employed this technique, but I have not done it in a while. So I thought I would talk about it today.

The Prelude

By definition, a prelude is: an action or event that serves as an introduction to something more significant. In RPG terms, it is a small scene that acts as the introduction to the session. Typically, the scene is a short narrative piece that the players read; however, there may be cases where this is an actual playable scene between the GM and one or two players. For simplicity, let’s stick to a short narrative piece. 

What Does a Prelude Do? 

There are a few things that a prelude will do in your game. The first, and most obvious, is that it introduces the coming session. The second is that it can convey information. Third, it is a form of metagame (the game outside of the game), which is a tool for creating emotional investment. Fourth, it helps to get the game started. 

Let’s talk about each of these in more detail:  

Introduction of the Coming Session

The prelude introduces the coming session. It is a free scene to frame out the coming adventure. It helps set the tone, set up the first scenes at the table, and foreshadow things to come in the game. 

Conveying Information

The prelude is a place where you can infodump useful information for the session. You can name NPCs, provide facts that might be commonly known, etc. By including information here, the players arrive at the game with that information, without you having to do it at the table.

The Metagame

 If you release your prelude days before your session, then your players are engaging with it and thinking about the game before the game starts. 

Preludes are playing the game outside of the session, which is a great way to build engagement in the game between sessions. If you release your prelude days before your session, then your players are engaging with it and thinking about the game before the game starts. It can often be a struggle to get players to think about the game outside of the session; the prelude is a way to jump-start that process.

Getting the Game Started

You can use the prelude to get out of the way of slower narrative parts, and let you start the game closer to the action. You can have a prelude that describes the characters facing down their enemy as the enemy monologues (infodump), and then when you start your session, you can go in media res, and jump right into an initiative roll for combat, which will make the start of your game far more exciting. This also works great for things like missions and heists, where the prelude can infodump some of the more common facts, allowing the game to start closer to beginning the mission or heist. This is how I use it for Blades.

Creating A Prelude

Now that we have discussed what goes into a prelude, we can look at how to create one. My personal favorite for this is a small piece of flash fiction, just a few paragraphs long. I like this form for a few reasons. One, it’s not too much work to prep, and you can make them entertaining. I will always work as much information as I can into the prelude so that I don’t have to find ways to inject that information into the session. 

Once you have your prelude set, you need to get it to your players. In this day and age, you most likely have an electronic forum where you can share this — Discord, Slack, Group Chat, etc. Drop it into that. The more important consideration is when.

You want to do it a few days before your session, so that people who do not check the Discord all the time will have time to check it before the game. At the same time, you do not want to do it so early that everyone sees it, and then enough time passes to forget what was written…that will undo all the benefits of the prelude. 

I find two days before the session is nice. It is within the window where people start checking the group chat heading into the game, far enough out from the game that if someone were to post a question about the prelude, I would have time to answer it, and close enough to the session that people will remember it. 

Prelude vs. Recap

These two things are different. The prelude is the introduction to the coming session, while the recap is an infodump about what happened last time. It is possible to do both of these online, but it’s more work for you. If you want to use both a recap and a prelude, I would do your prelude online, because it builds engagement, and do your recap while people are setting up for the session and getting settled in.

Recaps are good to do in person because if there are questions or discrepancies, the group can address them in real time. 

The Man Stepped out of the Shadows…

The prelude is a simple tool that can help start your sessions. It is a bit of extra work to create, but it has a number of benefits for your session and your campaign. It is not something you need to use every game, but like any good spice, its occasional use spices up your upcoming session. 

Do you employ a prelude for your game? What form does it take? How often do you use them?

Small Groups vs. Large Groups

✇Gnome Stew
Od:J.T. Evans
24. Říjen 2025 v 12:00

How large is your RPG group? Small? Large? Average? What are the ramifications of each size of group? Do you have too few players? Too many?

It all depends on what you’re looking for in your games and sessions. Back in early high school, the largest group I was part of had 15 players and 22 characters spread across those 15 players. Joe, our wonderful GM, ran it all with ease and style. He did have a co-GM sitting at the far end of the table to wrangle the players and help keep them focused. Joe made all final rules arbitrations, but if a rule was clearly written (kinda rare in those days of the late 1980s), then the co-GM could make a ruling for his end of the table. Joe handled all story elements and NPC interactions. Of course, this is an extreme example of a large group.

Then again, people think that my current group of 7 players (plus the GM) “too large,” but it works very well for us. We can continue playing even if 2 or 3 of the players have to miss for various reasons. We like being able to consistently get together on a weekly basis for our 6-9 hour sessions. Yeah. You read that right. Our “short” sessions are 6 hours long, and it’s not unusual for us to hit 9 hours of game time on Saturday. However, the length of sessions is a topic for another day.

Today, I’ll be talking about how group size changes up how the sessions are played and managed. While talking about “group size,” I’m working with the assumption of a single GM and the numbers presented below are the player count.

Size Definitions

I’ll be using the phrasing of “small,” “average,” and “large” to describe group sizes. For the purposes of this article, a small group has less than 4 players. A large group has 6 or more players. This leaves the middle ground of 4-5 players being average. These numbers area all based on what I’ve seen across 41 years of tabletop RPG experience.

Spotlight Time

 How much time do you spend with each PC? 

Small groups allow for more spotlight time for each PC during a session. It can also cause the spotlight to change or cycle between PCs in a faster fashion than with larger groups. This high level of attention being quickly moved about leads to less boredom, downtime, or lack of involvement with each player. This is generally considered a good thing, which is why recommended group sizes have shrunk over the decades since those days of yore when a dozen players could be called typical.

Larger groups are on the other end of the spectrum. Even if the spotlight cycles quickly between players, there are more cycles to get through as a player waits their turn. This is not just during combat, but during all other facets of the game. This puts some more weight on the GM to be aware of when a player has not had the spotlight in quite a while.

Average-sized groups seem to be the sweet spot for spotlight time. The GM can spend a little more time with each PC to get things accomplished with that PC before shifting to another PC. Also, each player doesn’t have to wait overly long before their turn to get the attention comes along.

Threat Level

 How deadly are your encounters and situations? 

With smaller groups, the threat level has to be carefully considered and balanced by the GM. Even one monster too many in a combat can leave the entire party in danger. This is especially true if the monster has some method to neutralize a PC (or more than one!) with a single action. Things like hold person, paralysis, petrification, knock-out poisons and such like that can remove one-quarter (or more!) of the party’s potency in a fight. This can turn an “easy” fight into a “difficult” one or even up to a “deadly” one.

Larger groups don’t suffer from this as much since the still-standing characters can fill the gap of the fallen character, or come to the rescue to revive them and get them back into the fight. Taking out a large percentage of the party’s firepower in one fell swoop is much more difficult in larger groups. Of course, this means the GM will need to increase the power level or numbers of enemies found in a published adventure.

Trying to stick with the average party sizes works well for published adventures since this is the expectation in modern games and their published adventures. A good adventure will have advice throughout for scaling the adventure up/down based not only on character power levels, but the number of PCs involved in the adventure as well.

Energy Levels

 How high is your player energy level? 

Here, I’m talking about the player energy levels. Smaller groups can exhaust everyone (player and GM alike) more quickly since they don’t have as much mental downtime between actions or spotlight time. This can lead to shorter sessions, more breaks, or a need to just pause for a bit to let everyone catch their breath.

Larger groups usually don’t have this problem, except for the GM. Juggling 6, 7, or 8 players’ desires and actions and reactions and consequences and abilities can be mentally taxing for a GM. I personally can’t run Fate because I can’t remember (even with cheat sheets) the aspects for 3 PCs let alone more than that. I couldn’t imagine trying to run Fate with 6+ PCs at the table. I’d completely and totally melt. The GM energy levels might dictate shorter sessions like with small groups. This can lead to the players leaving the game session amped up and ready for more while the GM just needs a glass of wine and a hot bath to recover from juggling all that was in front of them.

Like with above, average-sized groups are perfect for maintaining the energy levels of everyone involved. There’s just a good balance there for downtime, activities, and allowing the GM mental space to track the PC vitals (just the vitals, not every little detail).

Plot Complexity

 Complexity can lead to plot confusion. 

This area gets tricky. With fewer PCs, the GM can inject more complex plot elements into the story because there are fewer details to track and get involved with on the players’ side of the screen. With more PCs, the plot can naturally be complex and deeply interwoven as each player brings their character’s goals and motivations to the story. With larger groups, the GM might have to let the PC’s desires and goals direct the flow of the game. There is nothing wrong with a PC-driven plot.

With an average number of players, everyone (including the GM) can get involved in putting things into the plot elements of the story. While some will float up to be an “A plot” and others are relegated to “B plots” and “C plots,” everyone is involved in the story.

This is another article topic on juggling plot elements, but don’t let one PC’s goal become the “A plot” for too horribly long unless several other characters have their backstory or other aspects wrapped into the A plot as well. Let the A, B, and C plots shift and change position on the priority scale as makes sense and to allow different PCs to have “story spotlight.”

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many different things that come out of having different groups of different sizes. There’s lots to handle and juggle here, but I hope this insight and information can help you be better prepared for what you present to your group (regardless of size), how you manage the group at the table, and how to be a better GM (and player!) within your cohort of gamers at the table.

How to Steal a Story (to Use in Your Campaign)

✇Gnome Stew
Od:Josh Storey
10. Říjen 2025 v 16:05

“Everything’s a reboot. There’s nothing original anymore.” Boring statements. Defeatist. Ironically, not even original complaints.

“Everything’s a remix.” Punk as hell. Creates opportunities. Empowering.

Whether we’re talking about Marvel movies, the latest Disney live-action reboot, or an American remake of a popular foreign film, the idea that we’ve “run out of ideas” runs rampant amongst those of us who hang out in creative spaces or care deeply about the stories we consume.

And while I don’t think this article will save us from the ump-teenth reboot of Batman’s origin story, I do think there’s something important we can take away from this storyteller’s lament — if nothing’s original any more (and really, it hasn’t been original since before Classical times) then everything’s a remix, and all stories are fodder for our stories.

So, in the punk spirit of DIY, I’m gonna tell you how to steal a story and get away with it.

HOW IT’S DONE

To steal a story, you have to step back and train your brain to look at stories like recipes. You know how a good cook can taste a dish and tell you the ingredients that went into it? (And how great cooks can then give suggestions for substitutions that would transform the food into a completely new experience?) That’s what we need, and that’s what we’re gonna learn how to do.

So, if you’re new to this deconstruction thing, start by taking notes on five key elements of the story: the characters, the situation they find themselves in, their goals, the obstacles that prevent them from completing those goals, and your favorite thing about the story.

(For the rest of this article, my go-to example will be my current obsession: K-Pop Demon Hunters, or as I like to call it, “Hannah Montana meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”)

 The more we study stories and how they work, the easier it will be to come up with our own. 

Characters

You know these folks. They’re the heroes, the sidekicks, the villains, and bystanders. When we’re thinking about stealing a story for our table, the characters in your target story are important, but a lot less so than you might think. That’s because your players should be the main characters, but you can’t expect your players to make the same choices those characters did.

And that’s a good thing.

If you expect your infernal pact warlock to hide their contract from the party the way Rumi hides her demonic heritage from the other members of HUNTR/X, then you’re making some huge assumptions about your players and taking away a lot of their agency.

So what will this ingredient be good for? NPCs, of course. Especially villains. Hell, you can twist it around so your players end up fighting the world’s favorite supernatural idol group.

Situation

You may be tempted to call this “the plot,” but I want to veer away from that word because plot and story tend to be synonyms in most people’s minds. I don’t want us prescribing the route our players will take through the adventure.

Instead, think of the situation as the context for the action. It’s all of the various external events that bring the players together and propel them towards the climax.

For example, if we say, “a demonic boy band is using their music to steal the souls of their fans,” we’re giving our players context for the situation without dictating how they should solve it.

Depending on the length of the story you’re stealing, the characters could find themselves in a lot of different situations. Make note of them, and save them for our synthesis phase (coming up shortly).

 What happens if you mix up Star Wars with Downton Abbey? Or Edgerunners with Fraggle Rock? 

Goals

When you’re analyzing your story, look at the characters’ goals — what they want. Rumi, for example, wants to energize the Honmoon so she can banish all of the demons in the world and live a normal life.

Ideally, your players’ goals should be determined by the players themselves, but the more you train your brain to think about the goals of the characters within your favorite stories, the easier it will be for you to pull out the appropriate elements. Then, when your paladin player comes to you with a tragic backstory and says, “My paladin is hunting her father, who betrayed his knightly order and brought shame to my character’s family,” you’ll know where you can situate that character within the rest of the story.

A traitorous father is not the same as a secret shame, but it’s close enough that you’ll know what to do when the time comes. And by that, I mean…

Obstacles

Now we’re getting into the real meat and potatoes of what it means to steal a story. Obstacles are the things that get in the way of the characters from achieving their goals. A demonic love interest, for example, forces a character to realize there are shades of gray in a world she once thought of as black and white. Or having your secret shame outed in front of a room of people you’ve been lying to for years. These are the roadblocks that create delicious, delicious conflict. The kind that keeps our players on the edges of their seats, wondering how they’re going to get out of this one.

When you combine the situation with character goals and obstacles, that’s where the “plot” develops. Where the story comes to life. And studying the kinds of roadblocks your favorite stories throw in the path of their protagonists will help you port those obstacles into your campaigns.

Your Favorite Thing

Maybe it’s a derpy demon tiger. Or themes of found family and self-discovery. Or really cool outfits. Make note of your favorite thing(s) in your favorite stories. It doesn’t have to be big and important — like the way all of the Saiyans are named after vegetables in Dragon Ball Z — but it can be a big thing too — warp technology in Star Trek.

I want you to note your favorite things for a couple of reasons, but mostly because they’re the elements that draw you back into the story. So, regardless of how important the tiger is to the plot, it’s important to your heart. And if you can find ways to incorporate Derpy into your campaign, well, that’ll give you even more investment, and your excitement will spill over into your players, creating a wonderful feedback loop of awesome.

Take this list and go through three or four of your favorite stories, making the notes I mentioned above. 

Once you’ve done that, come back here because…

IT’S TIME TO GET WILD

Now that you’ve got a stack of notes about characters and goals and giant blue tigers, it’s time to start synthesizing them and turning them into your next game session. How do you do that? Well, you pick up your elements like they were action figures in a toy chest, and you smash ’em together and make ’em kiss.

This technique works best when you mash up two stories from different genres. Take my “Hannah Montana/Buffy the Vampire Slayer” joke above. From Hannah Montana, we’re taking elements of musical acts and the pull between two lives — one very public and one very private — and we’re mixing that up with the supernatural demon slaying from Buffy. 

What happens if you mix up Star Wars with Downton Abbey? Or Edgerunners with Fraggle Rock?

I don’t know, but it sounds like fun! And when you’ve broken down your stories into their elemental components, you get to find out. 

Use the goals and the situations to create hooks. Then lean on the obstacles to create your encounters. Sprinkle in NPCs from the characters you’ve studied and bam! Your campaign is ready to rumble. Just add players and chase your favorite things through the new story you totally didn’t steal.

THE CONCEIT

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably figured out that I’m not really talking about heisting a story like it’s a diamond in a vault. I’m talking inspiration. Where we find it. How we call on it. And most importantly, how we can teach our brains to find it even when we’re not feeling inspired.

The more we study stories and how they work, the easier it will be to come up with our own. Original or not, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we love them, even a little, and that our players are having fun.

What are the wildest mashup ideas you can think of? Leave them in the comments and let’s figure out how to turn them into campaigns!

 

Basic Elements of NPCs

✇Gnome Stew
Od:J.T. Evans
29. Září 2025 v 12:00

NPCs in your RPGs come in all shapes, sizes, purposes, abilities, and reasons. It’s near impossible to enumerate all of the facets of an NPC or why they are in the storyline. Despite the Herculean task before me, I’ve done my best to outline what I think are the basic elements of NPCs in your games.

Purpose: Provide Information (Rumors/Clues)

The rumor mill is hot tonight!

NPCs can provide information to the PCs. This information can be true or false, somewhere in-between, or a little of both. It can be helpful, sidetracking, direct, or indirect. The NPC might actually know things that can help the party. On the other hand, the NPC might have heard from his cousin’s best friend’s ex-girlfriend’s former roommate that something is going down on Elm Street at night. These kinds of rumors need to be couched as such instead of having them being presented as full truths. The exception to this is if the NPC absolutely believes in the truth of what they are saying.

One the point of providing information that sidetracks the PCs, this might fall into the category of a “red herring” depending on how the information is delivered and if the PCs can detect if the NPC is trying to intentionally deflect the party from the main goal or mission. Tread carefully with information that will intentionally throw the party off the main trail, especially if it will take a long time to resolve the sidetracked nature of the information.

Purpose: Provide Support

 Help is just around the corner. 

NPCs can also be supportive to the party. This could be as simple as a shopkeeper staying open late to allow the PCs to reequip at the last second before delving back into the Forest of Tears as the sun goes down. The support can also be monetary or with aid from other NPCs. Factions go a long way into playing into a support structure for the PCs.

NPCs can also provide non-monetary support in the form of favors asked, owed, or due. This could be free henchmen/hirelings, cheap mercenaries, the loan of a powerful item, free/cheap healing potions, or a handy map that will lead them down the safest path through the Forest of Tears to reach the Necromancer’s Citadel in the heart of the forest.

Purpose: Provide Inspiration

 NPCs don’t have to be cheerleaders. 

Rah! Rah! Rah! You can do it!

No. Not that kind of inspiration… kinda.

What I’m talking about here is to give the PCs motivation to go forth and be the Big Darn Heroes of the story. This can be a quest giver, a mission handler, a faction leader, or someone else that will put the party on the path to greatness. These don’t always have to be people in positions of power. The lonely orphan on the street begging for loose change so he can pay for a cure disease spell to help out his headmaster can inspire the party to delve into the orphanage to cure the headmaster, and/or find out what dire events are plaguing the orphanage.

Purpose: Provide Opposition

 The NPCs can hurt the PCs, too. 

NPCs can also oppose the efforts of the party. This is usually in the form of minions, lieutenants, bosses, the BBEG, monsters in the way, and other things that can result in combat. This doesn’t always have to be the case, though. It could be that the old lady in the back of the tavern is the bandit captain’s mother. She might not be proud of her son, but she doesn’t want to see him dead at the tip of a PC’s sword, either. She might misdirect the party or sabotage their equipment while they drink it up or sleep it off.

Purpose: Fill in the World

 Extras are vital as scenery. 

Lastly, there are more non-important people in the world than important people. At least, this is true of storytelling efforts. Each person is the hero of their own story, but you’re only telling the story of the players’ heroes. If an NPC doesn’t fulfill an important role, they fill the world with their presence. This will make your world, setting, tavern scene, or street movements feel authentic by having people present. They don’t need to be named or detailed or even given descriptions, but they still need to be mentioned as being there. A street devoid of people is an oddity that the PCs might get interested in… even if you don’t want them to.

Features: Notable Appearance Details

 What do they look like? 

Give each important NPC two or three appearance details. Clothing, facial hair, hair style, jewelry, level of cleanliness, smells, and so on are important to keep your NPCs memorable in the minds of the players and important to the attention of the characters. This is one reason the “affectation” chart in Cyberpunk 2020 is so incredibly potent. I just wish the list were longer, so there would be fewer repeats. The solo with the cybershades and three interface ports on his forehead is more memorable than the rockerboy with a chromed guitar. Though (and this is from one of my CP2020 games from ages ago), a rockerboy in full chromed-out, hardened body armor is certainly memorable, especially while on stage under all those lights.

Features: Personality Quirks

 Pick one unique thing about important NPCs. 

Give your NPCs a quirk. Maybe they don’t make eye contact, or they make intense eye contact at all times. Maybe they don’t blink much at all. Always smiling is another good trait. Then again, so is never smiling. Popping knuckles is a good one. Maybe the NPC has a phobia or hates the taste of ale or has zero-g sickness. Pick an appropriate quirk for your setting and apply it to your NPC.

I recommend only one quirk per NPC, and I only recommend spending your time coming up with that quirk if the named NPC is going to directly interact with the party or intersect with the story arc in some manner.

Features: Accents/Speech Patterns

 Speech patterns are more vital than accent usage. 

I can’t do accents. Period. Full stop. I don’t even try. If you can pull off accents, go for it! Yay! Though, not everyone is going to have that “odd” accent, so don’t overdo it. You might find yourself using the wrong accent for the wrong NPC or driving the players batty trying to remember which NPC had which accent.

I fall back to using speech patterns. Rapid-fire speech. Run-on sentences are good (especially if from the mouths of young children). Fragments getting used all the time. Delayed or hesitant speech. A long, thoughtful pause before answering a question or delving into a conversation. Using lots of contractions… or none at all. Another good one to use is someone saying, “umm” or “errr” or “hrmm” before each paragraph like they’re trying to piece together what they want to say. Applying a stutter to an NPC’s speech pattern will call them out as being memorable as well.

As an example, I had a great uncle who would start every affirmative statement with, “Yep, yep, yep.” He would also start every negative statement with, “Nope, nope, nope.” This happened without fault, and I found it quite endearing. My grandfather, however, found it annoying. Regardless of how we perceived my uncle’s speech trait, it was memorable.

Features: Goals

 Everyone needs something. 

Everyone has goals. Period. Full stop.

It could be to turn a coin or make a buck by the end of the day to pay for rent. That’s minor, applies to almost everyone, and is important, but it’s also a goal. The goal could be to conquer the neighboring nation, or as personal as finding their lost cat.

Each NPC that impacts the story (meaning just a handful of them) or has an important encounter with the PCs needs to have at least one goal in mind for their interactions. The more important NPCs could have as many as three goals. Yep. Three of them.

I learned from the great author, Kevin Ikenberry, that important characters in a story should have a professional, personal, and private goal. Each of those are subtly different and may have some overlap in them. The professional goal is how the NPC is going advance their position in their job, society, faction, or similar arenas. The personal goal is what the NPC holds dear in their heart to cross off their bucket list before the last day comes for them. The private goal is one they attempt to accomplish, but will never tell another soul about.

Features: Motivations

 Why do they need that thing? 

Each goal must have a motivation attached to it. Just trying to accomplish something is hollow. It doesn’t ring true. There are motivations behind every goal, so when you attach a goal to an NPC, you need to attach a motivation to that goal. Just ruling the world for the sake of ruling the world creates a “mustache-twirling evil person,” and you want something deeper than that to drive your plot, your story, and your PCs into action.

Features: Secrets

 Can you keep a secret? 

Most people have secrets. Not all of them will impact your party or the story you’re telling. If that’s the case, don’t worry about generating a secret for the NPC. However, if the NPC secretly supports the bandit captain (see the mother example above), then that’s probably going to be kept secret by the NPC.

If the secret never comes out in front of the PCs, that’s okay. It doesn’t need to. However, if it doesn’t, then it must drive the NPC’s actions, reactions, goals, and motivations. This indirect influence on the NPC will make the NPC feel more authentic and three-dimensional.

Conclusion

What did I miss? Are there any other facets of NPCs that you feel are important? Let us know!

What’s Your Pre-Game?

✇Gnome Stew
Od:Phil Vecchione
26. Září 2025 v 12:26

Every week, I run a game on Sunday evenings. Currently, I am running Blades in the Dark and Neon City Blues on alternating weeks. Every Sunday afternoon, I start my pre-game so that I am ready for game night. What makes up my pre-game changes depending on the game, where it is being played, etc, but there is always a pre-game. Let me tell you about it. 

Getting Ready to Play

I try to be very organized in my gaming. Some of it comes from genetics, some from childhood trauma, and a bit comes from my time as a college DJ, where it was impressed upon me that you never have dead air. Never. I try to carry that through to my gaming by making sure everything is prepared.

Now in the prep life-cycle, pre-game is the second-to-last step. The first steps involve session and campaign prep. I talk about those a lot in Never Unprepared and with Walt in Odyssey. The last step is mise en place, when you set up your gaming space. 

Back to pre-game. It is your final chance to get things in order so that you can come to the table ready to play. 

Things to Consider

There are two components to pre-game: mental and physical. 

The Mental

 For me, this is the time when I take a final look at my session prep and start loading it into short-term memory 

The mental part of pre-game is to get your mind ready to run the game. For me, this is the time when I take a final look at my session prep and start loading it into short-term memory. I have prepped the game some time before Sunday, typically at the start of the week, so I don’t always remember every detail of what I came up with. With the game only hours away, it’s now safe to put all the details into my short-term memory. 

That is accomplished by reading my session prep and imagining how various scenes will look, or how NPCs will sound. Based on this, I may add a few last-minute notes to my prep. 

I will also use this time to check any notes (mine or the players) on the past session to also refresh myself on what happened at the last session. 

Finally, this is the time to check any rules that may come up or just browse the rule book to reinforce the mechanics of the game. For newer games, this may be sitting down and re-reading the rules; for games I am more familiar with, it could be just looking up some specific rules, powers, or spells that are going to come up. 

The Physical

On the physical side, this is the time to get the physical components together for the game. Depending on whether your game is at your place or another place, this will vary. If you are playing at your place, this may also be a time to prepare your physical gaming space, cleaning or tidying up. If you are playing online, this is the time to prepare your VTT. 

Here are several possible activities you may need to do, depending on where your game is played and what game is being played. This list isn’t comprehensive, I am sure you can think of a few more things… 

  • Cleaning and preparing the gaming space
  • Deciding what books you will need at the table
  • Gathering minis or making tokens for the encounters planned in the session
  • Getting together maps (physical or digital) for the session
  • Printing handouts
  • Gathering props to be used in the game
  • Packing your gaming materials for transport
  • Uploading assets to your VTT
  • Determining what aids you need for the game (cards, name lists, etc)
  • Charging electronics (tablets, laptops)
  • Making a playlist or loading a soundboard for the session

Pro-tip: If you are using any electronics, run updates during your pre-game. Nothing kills the flow of a game like a device that starts to update when you get to the table. During pre-game, check for updates and run them while your devices are charging. 

My Game Day Rituals

For both my games, my session is on Sunday evenings, so my pre-game happens early Sunday afternoon. It is just a few hours before the game, so I have ample time to run through all the items on the list without feeling rushed. 

For my Blades game, I am running at a friend’s house. So my pre-game looks like this: 

  • Read the session notes – load into short-term memory.
  • Optional – re-read parts of the rulebook.
  • Charge my iPad and Apple Pencil.
  • Confirm the sync of my Obsidian database from my desktop to my iPad.
  • Confirm the sync of my OneNote session notes from my desktop to my iPad.
  • Set up session notes pages in my Blades Good Notes notebook, and put a heading and page number on them. 
  • Gather my physical materials – Character sheets, rule book, Clock Cards, etc.
  • Pack my game bag.

For my Neon City Blues game, my pre-game looks like this:

  • Clear my dining room table. 
  • Read the session notes – load into short-term memory.
  • Review the open mysteries. 
  • Charge my iPad and Apple Pencil.
  • Confirm the sync of my Obsidian database from my desktop to my iPad.
  • Confirm the sync of my OneNote session notes from my desktop to my iPad.
  • Set up session notes pages in my NCB Good Notes notebook, and put a heading and page number on them. 
  • Gather my physical materials – Character sheets, rule book, Clock Cards, etc.
  • Put everything on my rolling cart in the office (it gets rolled out to the dining room table after we eat). 

Preparing for Success

The pre-game is an important step in being prepared to run your session. It gets you organized mentally and physically to come to the table and run a great game. What goes into your pre-game will be a mix of your style, the game you are playing, and where you are playing. Come up with a pre-game (and even make it a checklist if you need to), and you will be prepared to run your session. 

Also, one last time — run your updates before your session starts!

Do you pre-game? When do you do it? What is in your pre-game? 

❌