This week I had a chance to play a trad game[1] without any prep. Boo. Hiss.

What did you play?

WFRP 2nd Ed

How did it go?

Mostly okay. Started off making characters. Hooked them up nicely, plopped them into an interesting starting point…

What would you have done better?

I didn’t play the extras[2] very well. They had no barbs. By trying to paint the world, I forgot about painting the game. Characters that are introduced on the fly are like brush-strokes, colourful and intentional. It’s important to give greater importance to the latter. That is, what can I do with this character[3]?

More problematically, I curbed player interaction, for example, the rain thing. One of the players asked me if it was raining. I said no. Very. Bad. Form. Do you know why? Leave a comment if you do.

Favourite bits?

From my point of view, I particularly liked playing Penny, the pregnant mother who wouldn’t be escorted to the church (fearing for her baby). She had intentions beyond herself which contrasted with the short term goals of the PCs. She was the only character that mattered, and that was because she could cause problems.

I also liked the character creation, and my part in it: Finding out what made the characters tick, asking probing questions, putting players on the spot, enjoying the feedback.

What about the trad style made it bad?

When I said zero-prep, I lied. I spent a few minutes devising a tiny plot for the players after we’d generated characters. But instead of hooking them into it, it just hooked me. By trying to create an interesting story vector which the PCs could steer and alter, I narrowed the bandwidth of creativity, and not in a good way, and only for me. That is, I had an expectation of what would happen and rather than let something novel blossom, I kept regressing to that expectation.

Plus, the zero to hero style of the game rules meant that the PCs couldn’t succeed at anything. It was a lesson in emasculation.

How to trad game on the fly?

Peel the story.

Start in the middle of the action and let the meeting point of the story tell itself. It’s not always interesting to detail character intersection. But it is always interesting to see how new characters cope under stress.

For example, in our game I might have started the session with a night-time chase through the woods: The player characters  are being chased by a mob. They come upon a homely village atop a shallow hill, protected on one side by a babbling river and the other by a tall palisade. How do they escape the mob? Why are they being chased? Why are they together? These things can be worked out on the fly.

Players set scenes.

You don’t know what the players want. So ask them. Where are you now? What time is it? What are you trying to achieve? Who is there? This is all fairly standard stuff if you’re used to indie gaming, but it’s easy to forget when you break out your (proverbial) GM’s screen.

Dangle carrots.

Now you know what they want, drop in the who. If one player sets the scene in a tavern, and he’s looking for glory, it’s time to drop in the wealthy, handsome, wench laden adventurer. If another player sets the scene in a market square and he’s looking for riches, drop in a fancy looking agent with an enormous to-do list. Provide!

Antagonise.

He giveth and he taketh away. Whatever the player wants, they gotta earn it. It’s the “Not soooo fast!” rule of thumb. Either the player gets it the hard way (=consequence) or he gets it easy but has to make a difficult choice (=consequence).

Time out.

And every hour and a half ask for a time out so you can piece some of the characters together. Maybe this sailor knows that wagon driver? Wouldn’t that be interesting! Could the wagon driver be a spy? What happens if that thug wants to betray the barman? Etcetera.

If you’ve run some indie games, nothing here will be new. If you’re like me, though, you may have forgotten to burn your old uniform before you visited the old school.