Author: Stefan

Picture of a bookshelf with books who have each a prompt written on their spine. Daily Prompts 1) Patron 2) Prompt 3) Tavern 4) Message 5) Ancient 6) Motive 7) Journey 8) Explore 9) Inspire 10) Origin 11) Flavour 12) Path 13) Darkness 14) Mystery 15) Deceive 16) Overcome 17) Renew 18) Sign 19) Destiny 20) Enter 21) Unexpected 22) Ally 23) Recent 24) Reveal 25) Challenge 26) Nemesis 27) Tactic 28) Suspense 29) Connect 30) Experience 31) Reward Question Prompts (roll D6) 1) Who 2) What 3) Where 4) When 5) Why 6) How Mood Prompts (roll D10) 1) Envious 2) Nostalgic 3) Proud 4) Enthusiastic 5) Confident 6) Optimistic 7) Lucky 8) Grateful 9) Contemplative 10) Excited Subject Prompts (roll D8) 1) Adventure 2) Character 3) Genre 4) Rule 5) Accessory 6) Art 7) Person 8) Lesson

#RPGaDay2025 Day 20/21: Enter/Unexpected

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I didn’t make yesterday’s prompt because I just didn’t really feel it. Nothing came to mind for “Enter” — at least not anything interesting enough to talk about.

Today’s prompt is “Unexpected,” so let’s just combine these two into one thing: Mythic GME.

I’ve talked about using Mythic many times at this point. It’s an engine that can replace the GM, enabling solo or cooptative play. To me, however, it’s also a great tool to prep for and run games. Let’s talk about entering something unexpected into your games.

Once upon a time, after we had enough of 5e, my players and I played a short game of Savage Worlds–a gritty, gonzo lore-agnostic game. I really like it, so I convinced them to try it. See, the game that made me want to quit D&D for good was very heavy on prep. It was a full campaign after all, and the characters were all really cool. So I did my best to keep things just as cool and intriguing. But, due to life being life, the game fell apart. The campaign itself was written so poorly, I had to change pretty much everything; two players left due to scheduling issues, right in the midst of us exploring their character beats. It was a bit much. So, when we started Savage Worlds, I decided to actively use Mythic GME to run it. Not just in the background, no, but together with the players. We would use Mythic’s system to establish scenes, check for random interruptions, and roll on prompts together and talk about them as we go. I still had the final say on GM-related parts, of course.

That was a lot of fun, and changed the game in so many interesting ways.

They game was about them playing a criminal gang in the town of Luskan. I set it up that way to warm them up the idea of playing Blades in the Dark, and it worked well. As part of that, they entered into a relationship with an up and coming crime boss, Lady Von Smoot. We all pictured their relationship as a strained one, it being only a matter of time before one side would turn on the other.

One day, we were down a player. Since we weren’t really in the middle of anything, I just used Mythic to roll up a random event to get us started. I don’t remember all the details, but the event itself was “NPC negative” and another random roll told us it was “Lady Von Smoot” who was affected. How interesting? We rolled more prompts, asking questions and letting the inspiration guide us, and in just a few minutes, we came up with this really cool hook. Apparently, Lady Von Smoot was making a deal with a Pirate Boss who backstabbed her. Literally. Now, the Lady was stumbling through the dark streets of Luskan, a dagger in her side, blood mixing with the rain. Nowhere to turn, she sought out the party. She didn’t trust them much, but they were the only people she didn’t suspect to be part of that coup against her rising crime enterprise.

See. None of us would have thought of that–I sure wasn’t But we entered a random event, let us be inspired by the random prompts of Mythic GME, and talked it through together. And it led us down such a cool story.

I think preparing big campaigns and stories, NPC, worldbuilding, can be a great exercise. But most of that, the players won’t ever engage with, right? I have started to use Mythic in my prep work pretty much all the time. It doesn’t tell you what to do–what would you do with a prompt rolled on two tables that reads “Reward/Safety” or “Waste/Group” in a vacuum? It’s nonsense. But what if you ask a question, like, “What happened to Lady Von Smoot?” and you get “Harm Energy” as a prompt? With everything you know about her, maybe you start thinking about someone casting a spell to hurt her. Maybe she tried to harm someone in a fit of rage. It’s not about what the words actually mean, it’s the images and ideas they conjure in the moment within the context of all that came before.

It’s procedural storytelling. And letting in the ideas conjured can lead to strange and interesting places you’d never consider otherwise.

Picture of a bookshelf with books who have each a prompt written on their spine. Daily Prompts 1) Patron 2) Prompt 3) Tavern 4) Message 5) Ancient 6) Motive 7) Journey 8) Explore 9) Inspire 10) Origin 11) Flavour 12) Path 13) Darkness 14) Mystery 15) Deceive 16) Overcome 17) Renew 18) Sign 19) Destiny 20) Enter 21) Unexpected 22) Ally 23) Recent 24) Reveal 25) Challenge 26) Nemesis 27) Tactic 28) Suspense 29) Connect 30) Experience 31) Reward Question Prompts (roll D6) 1) Who 2) What 3) Where 4) When 5) Why 6) How Mood Prompts (roll D10) 1) Envious 2) Nostalgic 3) Proud 4) Enthusiastic 5) Confident 6) Optimistic 7) Lucky 8) Grateful 9) Contemplative 10) Excited Subject Prompts (roll D8) 1) Adventure 2) Character 3) Genre 4) Rule 5) Accessory 6) Art 7) Person 8) Lesson

#RPGaDay2025 Day 19: Destiny

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How does the story of your character end? Do they live to see the villain vanquished? Do they leave the party after an adventure took too much of a price? How often do we think about the end of our characters and their story?

The GM might have some ideas of how a quest, an adventure, a campaign might end. Prewritten campaigns often have suggestions or possible endings for when the story comes to a close. But what about the characters? Do you, the player, have thought about the end? The goals that drive the character, and what were to happen should they reach it? After all, you thought about how they started, where they came from. Why they are on their current path.

Obviously, we play to find out. One quest at time, one mission after another. Things change, characters evolve. Though, if you were to have a vision for how their story could end, it could provide even more interesting context for where they are right now. A fully fleshed-out character needn’t only be fully formed from the past onward. We are as much the author of their destiny as we are their players.

I think it’s a great exercise to think about your character not as their player, but as their writer and their audience. It’s interesting to make decisions for where we, the player, want to see them end up, and reverse engineer their current choices to make it happen. Take a step back and look at them from the top down. See the path they have taken, and the possible paths ahead of them. Where are they going? What would be the most interesting, dramatic, surprising thing that could happen for us, regardless of what the character would want?

There’s the game called Heart. It’s a great game for many reasons–the Resistance system it uses is fantastic for drama and tension; the lore and worldbuilding are weird and bizarre and near-perfect. Your character has a Calling, a reason to explore the strange dungeon that is the Heart beneath the city of Spire. And each calling comes with Beats. Every session, you choose two of these beats to let your GM know what sort of story development you’d like to see next game. It’s a great and strange system that lets players choose what could happen to their character in the next few sessions. Some of these beats are so explicitly final, that reaching them would signal the end for your character. And in Heart, the end if always dramatic, leaving the world different than it was before, and most often deadly for your character. You chose how your journey ends, you decide the destiny of your character, and tell the GM that think their time has come.

The characters are always at the mercy of the dice, the GM’s whims and preparations, and the choices we force on them based on who we think they are. But we, the players, we don’t have those restraints. We are in charge of where they go, what they do, and how they end up.

How do you want their story to end?

Picture of a bookshelf with books who have each a prompt written on their spine. Daily Prompts 1) Patron 2) Prompt 3) Tavern 4) Message 5) Ancient 6) Motive 7) Journey 8) Explore 9) Inspire 10) Origin 11) Flavour 12) Path 13) Darkness 14) Mystery 15) Deceive 16) Overcome 17) Renew 18) Sign 19) Destiny 20) Enter 21) Unexpected 22) Ally 23) Recent 24) Reveal 25) Challenge 26) Nemesis 27) Tactic 28) Suspense 29) Connect 30) Experience 31) Reward Question Prompts (roll D6) 1) Who 2) What 3) Where 4) When 5) Why 6) How Mood Prompts (roll D10) 1) Envious 2) Nostalgic 3) Proud 4) Enthusiastic 5) Confident 6) Optimistic 7) Lucky 8) Grateful 9) Contemplative 10) Excited Subject Prompts (roll D8) 1) Adventure 2) Character 3) Genre 4) Rule 5) Accessory 6) Art 7) Person 8) Lesson

#RPGaDay2025 Day 18: Sign

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Roleplaying games are, inherently, a mental and social exercise. One player, often the GM, lays out a scene filled with objects, sounds, smells, vibes, and characters with their own subset of those. And throughout it, the players must navigate their own characters, interact and engage. All that happens (mostly) in our imagination, through dialogue and dice rolls, and somehow it forms a complete picture for everyone at the table.

I’ve run enough games to confidently say: Players understand about half of what’s actually going on. As a GM, especially in games with a lot of prep-work ahead of time, it’s easy to forget that just because something makes sense in my head, it doesn’t mean it will in theirs. Likewise, just because a player knows what they’re trying to accomplish in a given moment is no guarantee that the GM understands their goals and desires directly.

Hence, it’s important to ask questions. For everything. Establish clear intentions, goals, motivations. Especially as the GM, I find it best to clarify as much as possible at every given moment.

More than that, I have come to remind players of things their characters would known or remember. When they try to make a choice about some goings-on in a scene, I will remind them of context they seemingly forget–connected clues they found earlier, things other characters said, truths they uncovered. Yeah, it’d be great if everyone kept immaculate notes, but many don’t. And even if they did, they won’t always make the connections between the current scene and something that happened six sessions ago.

It’s important to clearly signal what’s happening in a game to keep the narrative straight, keep players engaged and involved. Especially when running a mystery or puzzle, it’s good to be open about clues and insights the characters would have access to through knowledge or discovery. And if they’re not clear about something, even if you’re given all the hints and signs that they’re on the right track, let them ask questions. As their characters are interrogating a clue in-game, let the players talk through it and interrogate you, the GM.

I have come to dislike reserved or outright misleading GM-styles. It’s about as bad as having a GM that is outright hostile towards the players when running a combat. Getting upset when they roll well or the monster rolls bad. Likewise, withholding clues or being cagey all the time when the players/characters ask question, or gating everything behind arbitrary dice rolls, doesn’t serve the game, the story, and it’s just a big waste of time. Roll to understand the extent of a clue, but don’t hide the clue behind failed rolls just to make it feel game-y. Don’t think a player can read your mind and get everything they need to solve the riddle simply by you given them the clues you think should be enough.

After all, you’re the only connection they have to this world. Signal as much as you can to help them forge their own path in it.

Picture of a bookshelf with books who have each a prompt written on their spine. Daily Prompts 1) Patron 2) Prompt 3) Tavern 4) Message 5) Ancient 6) Motive 7) Journey 8) Explore 9) Inspire 10) Origin 11) Flavour 12) Path 13) Darkness 14) Mystery 15) Deceive 16) Overcome 17) Renew 18) Sign 19) Destiny 20) Enter 21) Unexpected 22) Ally 23) Recent 24) Reveal 25) Challenge 26) Nemesis 27) Tactic 28) Suspense 29) Connect 30) Experience 31) Reward Question Prompts (roll D6) 1) Who 2) What 3) Where 4) When 5) Why 6) How Mood Prompts (roll D10) 1) Envious 2) Nostalgic 3) Proud 4) Enthusiastic 5) Confident 6) Optimistic 7) Lucky 8) Grateful 9) Contemplative 10) Excited Subject Prompts (roll D8) 1) Adventure 2) Character 3) Genre 4) Rule 5) Accessory 6) Art 7) Person 8) Lesson

#RPGaDay2025 Day 17: Renew

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How serious should a game be? How true is the story that’s been told? How important is it to do what my character would do?

I think coherent storytelling and character exploration is both fun and important to playing TTRPGs. I do my best to keep the fiction straight, rely context when making choices as GM, NPC, and of course as player.

But never to the detriment of the group. As important a strong narrative can be, the comfort of everyone involved is always more important. Sometimes it’s worth to retcon something, to change an established fact or detail for the sake of a player. Maybe a darker story beat came a bit too close to someone’s personal life, or maybe it was just a backstory detail that doesn’t work anymore and needs to be adjusted.

It’s fine to change facts. It’s just a game after all. It’s great if we can get lost in the story and the characters, but sometimes things don’t add up or feel right after the fact. Sometimes we should take a step back and think about what’s going on and whether we need to adjust some of it.

I have retconned events as GM at times, and I have always been open about it. On occasion, between sessions and after some time of reflection, it occurred to me that a story detail I introduced doesn’t really fit or make as much sense as first thought. Or, perhaps, a player approached me asking about a change for some reason. And if it’s something personal, I simply listen, no questions asked. I just tell my players, “Hey, we have to retcon something here.”

And even outside of the story, sometimes it’s fine to change up something that happened in a fight because a player forget about something important. Usually, I don’t retcon too much during a fight to keep things moving, and just figure out a way to adjust things within reason. Once in a while, though, a player or enemy trait or ability would make too much of a difference, it’s worth reevaluating the situation. And that’s fine, too. These are complex games, getting things wrong is assumed. But they are just games in the end.

Retcons are a great tool to keep everyone comfortable and happy, and to keep the narrative coherent in especially complicated adventures or campaigns.

Picture of a bookshelf with books who have each a prompt written on their spine. Daily Prompts 1) Patron 2) Prompt 3) Tavern 4) Message 5) Ancient 6) Motive 7) Journey 8) Explore 9) Inspire 10) Origin 11) Flavour 12) Path 13) Darkness 14) Mystery 15) Deceive 16) Overcome 17) Renew 18) Sign 19) Destiny 20) Enter 21) Unexpected 22) Ally 23) Recent 24) Reveal 25) Challenge 26) Nemesis 27) Tactic 28) Suspense 29) Connect 30) Experience 31) Reward Question Prompts (roll D6) 1) Who 2) What 3) Where 4) When 5) Why 6) How Mood Prompts (roll D10) 1) Envious 2) Nostalgic 3) Proud 4) Enthusiastic 5) Confident 6) Optimistic 7) Lucky 8) Grateful 9) Contemplative 10) Excited Subject Prompts (roll D8) 1) Adventure 2) Character 3) Genre 4) Rule 5) Accessory 6) Art 7) Person 8) Lesson

#RPGaDay2025 Day 16: Overcome

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Let’s chat about complexity in role-playing games.

A new game can be daunting. Complex, obtuse, confusing even. Rulebooks aren’t meant to be read from start to finish in page order–you must flip back and forth to get the information you seek, to reference and understand. Even if an author goes hard on their layout and sidebars and callouts, no rulebook is a straightforward affair. Combat rules refer back to basic rules, class options mention conditions, spells or perks or titles or effects call back to specific entries in other chapters. It’s just the nature of the hobby.

But it’s worth sticking with it. Rulebooks, like any other book, tell a story. They evoke ideas and concepts, excite and inspire. Triangle Agency is an actual field manual for the players/agents, and it treats the reader as such. Mörg Börk transitions from a few pages of lore straight into character creation without so much as a chapter change. Spire has bits and scraps of lore sprinkled into every entry across the book, slowly but surely creating an abstract painting of a bizarre fantasy world as you grapple with the systems and options.

They can also be dense and dry and not at all any of the things I just said. Draw Steel is practical and efficient when it presents its rules through its clean, boardgame-esque layout. It’s not ugly or even boring by any means, it’s clean and focused. It’s 400 pages of rules and lore and player options and GM advice, and it can be quite a lot.

Both of these style can be challenging to overcome. These narrative games sometimes make it hard to figure out how to actually play the game. Yeah, they have strong vibes and evocative layout, but where’s the actual game here? The tactical descendants of skirmish games feel like you reading an instruction manual for fixing a modern car. It all makes sense, but only if you already know all the other parts.

Especially if you’ve ever only played one game–one that isn’t even all that great in either aspect–breaking into a brand-new game can be daunting. New terms, different styles and presentations, and this nagging feeling that the game you know was hard and complex to learn, so this must be the same.

Do it, though. Read it. Follow the steps to make a character. Read the GM advance for the first game. Hell, if there’s a starter set, use it. New games are always a good idea if you enjoy this hobby at all. Even if you keep returning to your safe game, the things you learn from the other systems will stick with you. Overcoming these challenges can and will make you a better player, a better GM, and gives you a greater appreciation for the hobby in general.

Perspective, inspiration, excitement. That’s what waits on the other side of that complex rule-tome or esoteric vibe-check. Overcome your own reservation, and fall in love with the new and the weird.