Going Even Lower Prep for a Second Game

Jon Hodgson doing his thing

I’m looking at running another game on Tuesday. The Grim North continues on Sunday nights and the Tiny Prep method is keeping things ticking over nicely there. However as soon as something starts working it’s time to fuck it up, so now that I’ve established I have enough time to run one weekly game I shall try and run two. 

At Dragonmeet this previous year and probably every other year proceeding, those of us that meet up there have expressed our desire to meet up online like we used to in the G+ days and ply a game or two. This week we’re actually going to get our act in gear and do it. 

In order to manage this with the minimum impact on our time, we’re going to play Beyond the Wall in the manner the book intends. So using playbooks to generate characters and a shared village setting; and then using a scenario pack for the evenings adventure. It’s a good way to get things going with zero prep beforehand. I’ve used Beyond the Wall a couple of times in this manner and Through Sunken Lands as well. Through Sunken Lands being the Moorcock/Howard/ sword and sorcery genre take opposed to Beyond the Wall’s Prydain/Earthsea/Dark Rising presuppositions. They’re both good games that do exactly what they set out to achieve and it’s nice to have something like that in your back pocket for such as occasion. 

Beyond the Wall had campaign tools in Further Afield and while I have not employed them at the table, they look sound. If we decide to extend Beyond the Wall past a couple of sessions I’d be interested to see how they work out.  

What I Do When a Player Misses a Session

Play with who turns up.

What? Yeah, seriously, just play with whoever turns up and find a way to make it work. 

In most gaming groups there will be times when you all just can’t make it on the same Wednesday or whatever. This is just a fact of modern life. Something will come up for someone at some point which means they just can’t play. 

I saw a thread on Reddit recently where there was must handwringing on this subject but it’s all a bit nonsense. If one player can’t make it or two players or something please don’t cancel your game. Just play.

Having time for play is a rare thing, allowing that time to be subverted to something else because of scheduling is a shame. Sometimes it can’t be helped but the game should continue regardless. That way great campaigns are built and I think that is what we’re after. If you consistently run your game week in, week out with the players that are available then the game will inevitably grow. If that game is cancelled frequently then it will probably end up in the great campaign graveyard; Hiatus. 

It helps if you have baked into the setting reasons to be flexible about attendance but it’s not necessary. The famous OG West Marches campaign always started and finished in town to allow for its rotating cast of players to always have the same start point. My Grim North campaign exists mostly within one huge city to allow for people wandering off mid adventure to go shopping on their own and rejoin the others later (like next week.) 

Or alternatively Time in the Grim North is mutable. So this past weekend I had two players available out of five. One of whom has just returned from a two week holiday is out of in game continuity. Currently the PCs are involved in exploring an abandoned mansion and dealing with various squatters. I gave them the option of continuing this without the others or taking an alternate branch of the timestream to do something else for the evening, try and resolve it in one session and then pick up the mansion exploration when more people were available. This is a very meta thing to put to the players but it was game time and I wanted to play. They took the alternate timeline option and the two of them became embroiled in a heist to steal the last owlbear egg in the Grim North. 

The campaign continues and that’s the main thing

Setting Appropriate Random Tables

These are worth their weight in the precious metal of your choice. In order for an entry on a random table to have significant value it must be something that the GM couldn’t just make up on the spot. So if entry 23 on your Open Country encounter table is “2d6 Peasants,” it’s not working hard enough. 

The way the Black Hack handles this is interesting, and I expect it’s not the only example of this. It gives each monster entry two small (d6) tables of what they’re doing and what with. See Banished Elves above. This way we’re not just getting “2d6 Banished Elves, fight ‘em” as a result. You could argue that the old school reaction roll helps add variety to general tables and I would agree and wholeheartedly encourage you to use them. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes you need something general but random in order to introduce an element of chaos (with a small c) into your highly structured plan for this evening’s fun. If high structure fun is your and your group’s bag. I always roll on my “What’s Complicating Tonight’s Grim North Session?” table for this very reason. And despite my preference for more detailed and setting relevant results in general, this is just a big list of potential antagonists. This works for me in that it often throws in an unforeseen or incongruent yet possible wrinkle into a session or scenario. The advantage here being that it can be easy to get drawn into George RR Martin thinking when quickly crafting hooks and scenarios.  By this I mean too thematic. When travelling George’s Seven Kingdoms you will often encounter the Fisher Folk who are ruled by the Fish King and sit upon the Cod-bone Throne or whatever. This sort of theming is useful in differentiating between lots of what would be otherwise broadly similar places. Indeed the Districts of Nox Aeterna are themed in this way for that exact reason.  However, if we’re stealing a minority religious item from a cult and there are other thieves, other cults and the Watch involved then that’s fine but it’s all a bit obvious. If we roll on our random complication table and the mysterious Lamprey Men are now in the mix then we’ve got to get creative and that’s where the adventure is. 

If we look at a more specific example from my setting, each District of the city has a short random encounter table. They’re usually just a d6 but the encounters on them are relevant to that location in some way that I don’t have to just make up on the spot. So generally if I roll that table I get something specific to the region of the city the PCs are travelling through without having to really reference any deeper notes on the area; and it’s automatically congruent with that District and it’s inhabitants. In this instance when I create entries for these tables they include the activity taking place. So for instance if we consider this entry for Rivershore, a gentrified former fishing locale now popular with hipsters: 

1. Earnest youths seeking monthly charitable donations for blind, mute, plague ridden orphans

So yes, they’re beggars but more in the vein of the modern tabard wearing charity muggers that accost you in London claiming to want just a minute of your time (and of course a monthly direct debit from which their commission is generated.) It’s not creative genius but it’s definitely better than “2d4 beggars,” and that is sufficient for these purposes. 

In this week’s Grim North…

No one at home but us creepy, murderous weirdos

As the players continue to explore the formerly abandoned Von Eirik mansion and evict the squatters they encountered…

A cultist from the Cult of the Supreme and Baleful Eye and his new acolytes performing a ritual in the master bedroom. They paused to burn the lead cultist and his armband of preserved human flesh in the abandoned out buildings.

A very clean but lost party goer in the laundry room who hd through a mix of laundry steam and powerful hallucinogenics got lost in a small space. He renounced his life of drugs and gave his remaining stash to the PCs. He warned them of a huge caterpillar “that sucks you dry, man”

In the kitchen were a number of chrysalises and a very old jar of pickles. Once they realised what the chrysalises were, they destroyed them. 

Raskog the mystical urchin found a Ventari spell that will allow him to summon a suit of demonic armour.

A musician attempting to bring back his entirely desiccated friends by playing a symphony originating with the death magicians of accursed Xidia, on a slightly out of tune piano. 

They recovered a tiny amount of silver, some candlesticks, a blowgun, some drugs, a cult style dagger, an ancient jar of pickles and some sheet music with runic titles. 

Good job the twelve year old heiress of the place is paying them to clear it out. 

The Grim Prep Method

What I need to prep to run the Grim North:

Rumours: Each week before the game takes place I roll three times on the Big F’ing Rumour Table and then cut and paste the results into the appropriate Grim North channel on my Discord. This table is in Notes and has some redundancy. There are currently 112 entries and it’s a d100 table. So by cutting the entry, whatever is at 101 now drops to 100 and is potentially in play for next session. So, in order to keep ahead of the game I need to prep 3 rumours appropriate to the table. Some examples that have already been used: 

99. By order of the Tyrant, the wearing of sandals and socks simultaneously shall henceforth be punishable by the Blood Eagle

84. Deep within the Grimwood lies the Oakenhall, a strange fortification of a forgotten civilisation that holds the treasures of a bygone age

82. The ancient Kellites drew their power from the gods they stole from conquered cities

Encounters. Usually random ones. Each district of the city has a small random encounter table, say d6 size, that’s tailored to its peculiar nature. These are triggered by means of a random encounter roll or automatically, if I’m flagging for ideas in the session and need something to happen. These don’t need to be in depth or particularly balanced or anything. I’ll settle for thematic but thematic and interdisciplinary better. 

Locations. On average I find players will burn through 3 to 5 dungeon rooms, or the equivalent of, per session. At the time of writing the PCs are exploring an abandoned patrician’s mansion now home to some unorthodox squatters. Getting a room added a day would keep me well ahead of having to improvise in session. Adding minor locations to the city or putting some meat on the bones of something that already exists goes here too. 

NPCs: There are enough NPCs in existence to service the current state of the game, so adding new ones is not that essential. Maybe developing their movements and schemes is appropriate. New NPCs do crop up all the time though, largely because it’s hard to predict whether Miscellaneous Guard no.3 will become a campaign fixture until the PCs interact with them. 

Jobs for the Board: These are the paid scenarios that have resulted in most PC endeavours across the Grim North throughout its existence. Adding a new job is the most labour because it requires a patron, a fee, a task, locations, obstacles and other rewards. I tend to build these up piecemeal using the Tiny Prep method, adding tiny bits as I go. 

Before the game I roll on a few of my pre prepped tables for items that always come in handy and to add an element of the random to the evening’s proceedings. Examples include a random tavern table a random thieves crew table, an Omen, the weather, the What’s Complicating Tonight’s Session Table. In session I’ll probably roll at least once on the What’s in the Possession of the Formerly Alive NPC Table and some random events tables. Prepping these tables was a sound investment of time and pays off literally every session. 

The way I’ve laid this post out it seems like a follow a fairly structured method of prep but the reality is all of these things are cobbled together as they come to me and quickly jotted down in my Notes app or in a handy journal. It’s a bit chaotic but it’s what’s achievable. It might not be the best method even for me but I can’t deny that it works. 

Wandering, Mentally

My mind, although that should probably be musket smoke

I’ve been on holiday in the past week. It’s given me more available thinking time between glasses of wine and plates of fish. That is a bonus, it would seem, given that I have struggled to find time to prep and think about games recently. However, I found my mind wandering away from the actual game I’m running and dwelling on other tangential material. Adventures I’d not finished running for one reason or another, campaigns I’d like to bring to the table, that sort of thing. All of which is fine, and good,  but it doesn’t help when the actual game I’m running is about to start. So I have guided myself back mentally to do a little bit of prep everyday for the Grim North whether I like it or not. Generally it turns out I do, after all it is my creation and everyone likes their own brand. However it is important, I believe to allow the mind to wander a little bit too. It is an essential function of minds to do so if we intend to stay creative in the long term. So I’ve noted a few things down in the belief that ideas can often stop ruminating if they are captured in ink and commuted to the page 

It’s interesting, to me, where my attention goes in these moments and there is a definite theme. A few years ago, in the G+ days, I ran a few sessions of an English Civil War era game of Lamentations of the Flame Princess I had devised but I allowed it to fizzle out before it really got going. One of the players had to take a break from our sessions and I placed the game on “hiatus” until their return. Hiatus, the death of campaigns. I never picked it back up, moving on to other things but for whatever reason it has recaptured my imagination. I have no intention of binning off my current Grim North campaign to pick it back up but if I get time to run some extra sessions in the week…

Ha, there’s no time for that. 

However, in the Grim North this week; a new player joined and the PCs began to explore an abandoned mansion in the Patrician district with the goal of kicking out a bunch of squatters. Good times. 

Tiny Blogs

Trees and things. It’s Druid stuff, best steer clear.

I was going to try and do tiny blogs to go along with my tiny prep. I haven’t yet achieved it. Just like daily thoughts on games and things, nothing necessarily too in depth or with an eye on how well it reads. No joy so far. 

The tiny prep is going well though. Each day I add something to the Grim North. It’s not necessarily the most useful thing in terms of what might get trotted out for play in the next session but material accumulates.

Organising it is probably the next step. I mostly type things up in Notes on my phone although I’ve been trying to use a journal to hand write things. Handwritten is good, it allows me to doodle maps and draw weird stuff in the margins but it’s not as editable as digital. The chaotic nature of my handwriting is both a feature and a bug. 

This week I added some entries to my big f’ing rumour table, drew some smol dungeon maps, gave a a few of them a very basic key, added a couple of NPCs, wrote down the names of some locations to flesh out later and probably most pertinently added some notes on a location the PCs actually expressed an interest in: an abandoned mansion with a huge tree growing out of it.

Pocket Doors

Door magic. It’s a thing

Pocket Doors are doors you carry around in your pocket. They lead to strange places, generally to Temporal Dead Ends, branches of the time stream that did not come to fruition. These items are generally crafted by the Lords of Synchronicity and the pocket dimensions they lead to used as sanctuaries and safe houses in their unseen war with the Achronos.

This is what happens when one of your players (Hi, Brian *waves*) states he might have to go shopping with his other half instead of playing and that “You have not lived until you have shopped in person for pocket doors.”

Because the Grim North is planned as a drop in game, it takes place in a near infinite fantasy city. This leads to mainly city based capers, so each session starts and finishes in town. That way player characters can wander off or rejoin the group mid adventure as suits their availability. It being built on top of the ruins of a thousand civilisations is one way I can introduce a dungeon crawling mode of play. After all the city is almost entirely made of dungeons if you scrape the surface. 

Additionally the implementation of secret paths, portals and mystical doors allows other modes to be explored as PCs dimension hop or merely fast travel around the Grim North as a whole without ruining the start and finish in town presupposition. 

Achievability and Tiny Prep

IRL I’m super busy so I’ve returned to running the Grim North. This is what’s achievable right now and it’s a lot of fun to run. 

Just an average day in the Grim North

Because I’m short on time I’ve tried to embrace the principals of Tiny Prep. Just doing something every day to contribute to the weekly game is enough to maintain or even spur on my creativity. Tiny Prep is the brainchild of Che Webster of Roleplay Rescue. He’s got a book out on it now, which admittedly I haven’t read but the idea resonates with me. His blog posts on the subject are collected Here

I am not a prep heavy GM. I don’t generally have a lot of material prepared in advance. I certainly don’t get involved in virtual table top bells and whistles. I play on line using video chat and theatre of the mind. Some prep is required however no matter how well developed the ability of the GM to improvise. The reverse is also true; even the most well prepared GM must improvise at some point in response to player action. In returning to the Grim North I realise how much I have prepared to improvise. There are tables for things, adventure seeds, a big d100 rumour table, omens, weather, small encounter tables for each district of the city, a loot the body table, all things I have created piecemeal over the years to support myself in session. In going the Tiny Prep route I can add one small thing each day that will be useful in session: an NPC name, some detail about and existing NPC, add a room to a smol dungeon, add an entry to a random table, etc. The accumulation of such tiny additions pays off in the long term and often spurs further creativity so more gets done. 

 So, as much learning and playing the systems I have purchased over the years seems like a worthy pursuit I’m focusing on what is achievable right now. After all this is supposed to be fun, not work.