Getting Back My GM Mojo

Previously I talked about some of the circumstances that killed my creativity. Here I'd like to talk about a few things that helped bring it back.

1) Following John Cleese's advice about how to activate an open mind
I used to spend a lot of time thinking and prepping with the TV on for background noise. The problem is that the noise was still a distraction that my mind would latch on to because it was easier than trying to think. Also there was the pressure I was putting myself under, which extended into the time when I wasn't even running a game. So not only did I have to find a quiet place but I had to accept that I was just going to think about rubbish. No idea was finished, no idea was needed. I had to free my mind to explore strange and new things and be okay with the fact that a lot of it was going to be crap.

2) Rediscovering my self confidence
Somewhere along the way I forgot that I can improv, and had run games off the cuff for a long time. I think when the writer's block first began, I looked to prepping more as a means of fighting back. This started the pressure as I felt like I had to create finalized adventures every week, forgetting that the reason I like GMing is reacting to how the players dragged me in unexpected directions.

One of a few days that I simply couldn't prep anything, I just started running something off of the top of my head. I started with the heroes overhearing a shot from an alley way and discovering a dead body. The dead man held the recently fired gun and showed no signs of violence or self-inflicted wounds. What was going on? I had no idea. I just surfed the wave of speculations coming from my players. The man may have been the victim of something supernatural, or he was poisoned and upon realizing it he had fired at the poisoner. It was up to my players to drive the direction of the story BUT... I didn't tell them that. I was so desperate for ideas that I felt I needed to cheat the system. In fact what I did was run one of the best games ever, and the entire time my players believed I had created the entire adventure before hand. 

One player enjoys breaking my carefully planned scenarios so I felt compelled to do extra prep for things she might attempt. This time she asked me if she ever broke my game. I told her the game broke as soon as I sat down.

But I had rediscovered why GMing is fun, and my players loved just how flexible the adventure was. They never got the feeling that there were railroad tracks because there weren't any tracks at all.

Now I know that improv GMing may sound scary. I can't bottle it or quantify it for you. I can't teach you how to improv, at least not right now because I never thought much about what or how I do it. However I will say that the good folks at Gnome Stew have taken a stab at it with their new book Unframed. I haven't read it yet but I have read their other works and found them useful. Once I have the disposable income I fully intend to order a copy.

3) Becoming a Lazy GM
I won't link to the post because it is an older post on RPG.net. Just do a search for The Lazy Man's Guide to Gamemastering and read the first post. It was a big wake up call for me.

What I needed to do was less prep, not more prep. I needed to trust myself and my abilities and stop trying to control everything. because no adventure plan survives first contact with the players. I used to know that.

This is one of the reasons I love Savage Worlds. I don't necessarily need to make an npc beforehand because it can easily be done on the fly. I can't do that in games like D20 and Pathfinder as there's just too much math in character creation.

Next time I will talk about my methods of prep (at least at the moment).

Game On!

Adventure Monday! - Part 2

It's that time again. Time for ten more adventure seeds.

• A Hidden Monster is loose and ambushing people in a confined area.
• A tinkerer is selling dangerous items (cursed or poisoned) to unsuspecting buyers.
• One of the heroes learns he has a claim to property, title, or money. However there are groups that dispute it and want the prize for themselves.
• A Carnivorous Monster has picked up the hero’s scent and is hunting them.
• The heroes have been framed for a crime and must clear their names. 
• A lost Person or Group must be found somewhere in Monstrous territory.
• A wronged noble or friend is facing a duel he cannot win as a part of a Villainous plot.
• A large cash prize has been offered to whoever wins a cage fighting tournament.
• Vengeful ghosts have descended on the area, and begin possessing children to begin new lives.
• A wronged person turns to the supernatural to get revenge against their oppressors.

Losing My GM Mojo

No free stuff today, just internet therapy.

Some time ago when I first discovered Savage Worlds, my head was full of ideas and adventures. I wrote some of my best plot-lines that year, found a group, and was off and running. A year later I floundered. The game I had imagined had changed, one of the players was creating problems both in and out of game, and although my players said they loved my game, they wanted me to change systems to D20.

I lost my mojo for six years. Suddenly I couldn't plan an adventure. I forgot everything I knew about GMing and the biggest thing I lost was my self-confidence.

I spent years hanging out on RPG.net and browsing the web for adventure and campaign advice. While I learned a great deal about things I didn't know and things I didn't realize I knew, the deluge of information that I absorbed just added to the brain fog. You see I wanted to find the magic bullet, the step by step instructions to GMing success that I could look at and find where I got lost.

No such road map exists. It was time I looked around on my own and find out where I was and how I got there. Warning, Here There Be Dragons.

Dragon #1) Inflexibility
I had a game that I wanted to run, and a table of players who weren't thrilled with the system. They lacked the desire & flexibility to play something new and I lacked the desire & flexibility to run what they wanted to play. I was the wrong GM for this group.

It was so demoralizing to know that these players weren't enjoying the game as much as I was. They said they were having fun ..BUT... There was always that but, and it took its toll on my creativity.

So my advice is always discuss things you would like to run with your group before you start an emotional investment in a campaign. Make sure that your players are as jazzed as you are. If they aren't that interested in the system or setting and you are still determined to give it a go, try running a one-shot: a single adventure with no commitments so they can experience both the system and the setting you have in mind. Maybe they will like it, maybe not. 

What if it doesn't work out but you are not ready to give up on the system?
See if there are any local gaming groups that do play the system. If your schedule allows time, it might be worth running your game at the FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) for an entirely new group of people. I'm not saying you need to dump your friends. I am saying that there is no rule that states you can't also pursue other interests on your own time.

Dragon #2) Biting off more than I could chew
I was running a weekly game and the adventures I worked on were mysteries. First of all, writing a mystery is no easy task. Writing one a week is a nightmare. Balancing the clues so that your players can add them up and get the right answer...priceless...and a total pain in the ass. Mystery writers have the advantage of knowing that their heroes will find the clues and decipher them correctly because the writer is in total control of everyone and everything. In GMing circles if you try to do that you are railroading your players and that is BAD.

I managed to pull it off for the first four games. Damn they were good. The problem was I couldn't keep it up. I couldn't out-do what I did last week and the more I strained to pre-plan my adventure, the more I drove myself into writer's block. It became a self-powered Maelstrum. I couldn't come up with an adventure so I stressed and the more I stressed, the less likely I could be creative. The pressure was too much and I have no one to blame for it but myself. I forgot that I was playing a game. The pressure was a dragon of my own creation.

My advice- This is a tricky one and I am still working through it. There was a lot that I did wrong. First was trying too hard to make my players like the system. Second, in my desire to make "perfect adventures" I was both taking on more work and removing more freedoms from my players. I was doing the exact opposite of making a good game.

BTW this video of John Cleese on being creative is worth watching. 

Dragon #3) I put player joy over my own
I am not saying that I should put my own joy over everyone else's, but there are two problems with putting your player's entertainment before your own. First, you can't ever be sure what is going to be fun and entertaining for someone else and if you are wrong then nobody is having fun. Second, the process becomes work when it should by fun.

Strangely enough, I find the best thing to do in the circumstances is don't worry about what your player will think is fun. Just ask yourself "Would I think this is cool?" Odds are good that if you think it is, so will your players. Don't be afraid to go a little wild and indulgent. Just remember that the players want to be the coolest characters in your setting, and you can help them earn it. A perfect example is the Penny Arcade live play of D&D from PAX 2013 where the heroes piloted a giant statue against a Kaiju. When was the last time you did something that cool in a D&D game? 

Next time I will list a few things about how I prep, GM, and links to advice that has helped me get my mojo back.

BTW, I have received a request form someone to make some supermarket standees for his Zombie Game. Of course I will post them for free downloads as they get finished.

More Standees! - Sci-Fi Doors

So here you go, Sci-Fi Door Standees, free for download.

As always you can check the new Free Stuff page for anything you might have missed in previous posts.

I think I'm going to focus my artistic efforts on sci-fi since the next big launch for Savage Worlds will be The Last Parsec. I can hardly wait. All this overtime money I have been earning needs to go somewhere.

Warning! Rant begins!
One reason I am eagerly awaiting it is because of Star Wars. I love the idea of the Star Wars universe but I can no longer game there because of the fans (and the EU).

No matter how many times I tell my friends that I am not going to use the EU (Expanded Universe), they will always whip out some nugget of information that...
a) Their character couldn't possibly know
b) Is not actually happening in my setting
c) Confuses the players who were trying to get a feel for my take on things and don't know the EU by heart.

So having an encyclopedic knowledge of a game setting is not going to add to the game play unless you are the gm as well and your players are interested in learning what you have to teach over the course of the adventure.

If you are not the gm and this knowledge is so dear to your heart that you find yourself correcting the game master every time he opens his mouth, I suggest you leave the table. You aren't going to have fun, the people around you are going to get tired of your interruptions real quick, and the more you press the issue - the worse you will look.

My players came to play a game that involves kicking space Nazi butt. They don't need someone like you to point out that the Nazis went to Argentina, and not the Moon.

So why do I hate the EU?
There were some decent books but look at the state of the Star Wars universe...
The movies... Empire and Sith defeated. Peace restored to the Galaxy. A new Republic is born.

The books...It's Tuesday so that means more Sith have showed up and overthrown the Republic of tissue paper. Vader's sacrifice was pointless. Luke's struggle was just a transitory victory. The new Sith get beaten, but then Tuesday comes around again.

And other than a Sith lord with lightsabers on is elbows and knees, jedi Ewoks, even a jedi Hutt, there is the jedi power creep. Every book has to outdo the threat of the previous novel or movie. "Death Star, pah! See my Sun Crusher!" And the authors have a choice, to have their characters use the tools already available to them in a new and intelligent way or...Invent New Jedi Powerz! Powerz Moar Powerful so they can stop the Moar Powerzful Sith! Guess which path the authors chose. The Force Unleashed was just a matter of time.

So I patiently wait for the Last Parsec, a mostly unknown universe, with expectation and glee. I'll strap on my goggles, prime my drives, and explore it hand-in-hand with my players. And the legends of my game will be the ones we make.

May the Force be with you. Not the Force you want, but the Force you deserve.

Game On!

Oh, I Ain't Done - Fantasy Standees

Yup, as I finish up a lot of half-completed projects you can reap the benefits. I originally did these as flats since I have a whole lot of Pathfinder stands thanks to owning the first three Bestiary boxes. This first set for fantasy games is trifold  and includes double doors, single doors, secret doors, bookcases, and weapon stands.
Fantasy Standees Part 1

If you have any requests for a specific standee, just holla in the comments section.

My next set will be sci-fi doors and computer panels. I'm hoping to have quite a library of sci-fi tokens and standees built by the time The Last Parsec launches <drool>.

Adventure Monday! Part 1

Today I am going to do something different. I am going to put out ten generic adventure pitches.

I used to try random adventure generators but I found that many times they didn't help unblock my brain. At times they were just too random. So instead I perused and distilled plot lines, breaking them down into their essences and removing anything that was setting specific, and while doing that my creative brain got jogged to writing more pitches.

So here goes...

• The heroes are caught in a siege.
•  Law Enforcement suspects the heroes of criminal activity and attempt to apprehend and interrogate them. The heroes may be innocent but do they have something else to hide?
• The heroes are caught up in a slave/poverty-stricken revolt.
• A new drug is causing random outbreaks of violence.
• The heroes get caught up in an epidemic that affects everyone, the poor, or makes the local animals dangerous.
• The recently acquired item of a player bears a terrible curse, the only remedy for it lies in a distant temple.
• A cult has sprung up that engages in ritual murder, and has claimed a party member’s childhood friend as a victim.
• One of the players is mistaken for a wanted murderer by a group of vigilantes.
• Hostages have been taken and one of them is important to the heroes.
• Teenagers on a joyride steal from the players and start a fight. If the players fight back, they find themselves in trouble with the law thanks to the connections of the teens’ wealthy parents.

And speaking of adventures, my girlfriend tells me she wants to go camping on Mount Hood. My twisted brain came up with this...

"He spent the night making love under the stars...on a volcano."

Your life is more interesting than you realize, if you think about it. 

Game on, my friends. Game on.

Another Rant

You might be asking why I have been so productive lately. It's because I miss playing rpgs.

Currently I am on day 18 of working without a day off. Sure the overtime is good and I really need it, but I haven't played in over two months. I haven't even played or run Savage Worlds in over two years! Mostly I have just been piddling around with Pathfinder.

Don't get me wrong, I love Pathfinder Society. But when I hear people talking in the group, they aren't talking about who they saved or what they fought or why. They talk about their character builds. They brag about their character builds.

I think that the reason people like complex games like Pathfinder, etc, is because they enjoy navigating the rules. They want to see just how powerful they can make a legal character. 

More than once I've had these people tell me what to do during a combat when my turn comes around. I start with a gentle reminder that it's my character and I get to play the game too. If the don't get the hint, I start holding my actions. This tends to drive the worst offenders bat-shit crazy, especially when it causes a TPK. I don't mind character death, but I do mind when people make decisions for my character.

Sure they may be right and their plan is of incredible tactical value. I don't care. This is supposed to be a group play thing and Pathfinder Society doesn't exist solely for the advanced players. In fact it's a marketing campaign to get new people to play. I for one want to see our hobby grow, but if newbies are sitting at a table being told what to do then the game isn't going to draw much interest.

I wish there were more Savage Worlds gamers in my area. In fact I wish there were a Savage Worlds Society in my area.  

*sigh* PC/GM LFG!

<Rant End/>.

Screw it, lets end on a joke.

An Archaeologist and a Priest are walking through the desert in Israel when they come upon a cave.
The Priest looks around the cave and exclaims "At last we have found the tomb of Jesus!"
The Archaeologist looks around and says "But there isn't anything in here."
The Priest shouts "That proves it!"