Welcome to week three of New Gamemaster Month! If you’re just jumping in, don’t fret—it’s not too late. You have a bit of catching up to do, but nothing you can’t handle. More on how to catch up at the bottom of this post.
In New Gamemaster Month we’re helping players who feel the urge to run an RPG—to become a GM for the first time—take the plunge. If you’re just joining us, start with the first installment. Then join us every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January, and by the end of the month you’ll be a GM too!
This week we continue to explore the rules and setting, and develop our thinking about the adventure.
Encounters!
First, let’s talk about encounters. Encounters, sometimes referred to as scenes, are the meat of your adventure. As mentioned last week, an encounter is a point in your adventure where something happens, and usually where the characters (and players) take action, make decisions, learn something, or otherwise move the story forward. Encounters can take many forms:
- The characters kick down the dungeon door, find a monster within, and fight it to get its treasure.
- The characters are in a busy market when a beggar attempts to pickpocket them.
- The duke summons the characters to carry a message of peace to his rival.
- The characters have come to a rocky ravine in their travels—is it just a difficult climb, or are there enemies waiting to ambush them while they’re vulnerable?
- The characters break into the office of an erstwhile employer, searching for papers or other evidence of the employer’s true motives.
- And so on.
An encounter has some of the same elements as an adventure: An initial situation, a compelling hook or reason for the players to care, maybe a bit of mystery, and sometimes a turning point in the middle, where suddenly things are not what they at first seemed. Good encounters leave the outcome—and the means by which the characters resolve the encounter—open-ended.
The bulk of your GMing time will be spent running encounters; you’ll generally gloss over the in-between times, because that’s not where important things are happening. The characters spend a week in town, resting up and gathering supplies for the next leg of their journey? You spend five minutes telling them what makes the town unique, and maybe some of the interesting people there, and the results of their foraging efforts. Maybe you’ll go into more detail if something important begins to unfold—that’s basically an encounter evolving spontaneously—but mostly it’s quick exposition. Then the characters set out, and again you cover several days of activity in three or four minutes. But when the wolves attack their campsite at night, you shift back into encounter mode. Now the players act and react, and you resolve their actions on a moment-by-moment basis.
Encounters aren’t the only place your players make decisions. As the party travels through the wilderness, they might come to a fork in the road. Go east, or turn north? It’s a decision—and maybe an important one—but it doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be an encounter.
Generally speaking, the higher the proportion of encounter time to non-encounter time in your game, the better the pacing is likely to feel. But that doesn’t mean you should rush your players when they need time to consider their options or just take in the atmosphere of the game.
We’ll talk more about encounters in our next post, but for now we’re going to shift gears and go back to looking at the rules and setting.
Running Your First Game Virtually
In-person RPG sessions traditionally run for several hours at a time. The four-hour time slot is the norm at gaming conventions, and many groups typically play for that long, or even a couple of hours longer, at a sitting.
But many people find it fatiguing to spend long hours online—particularly if they’re already spending many hours a week in online classes or work meetings. Fortunately, the commute to an online game is short and easy: nobody has to pack up all their gaming supplies and drive halfway across town in rush-hour traffic to join the game. That sometimes makes it easier to run games more frequently, or on shorter notice.
So if you or your players suffer from “Zoom fatigue,” don’t feel tied to the traditional four-hour-plus game session. Nothing says you can’t play two evenings in a row, for a couple of hours each, instead.
Last Tuesday we started in on the basic game rules and setting. This time we’re going to read some more detailed rules on adjudicating play during an action-oriented encounter and have a look at some of the specific setting elements that form the background of your adventure, Taker of Sorrow.
Read this rules content:
- Chapter 8: Pages 116-117 (Start at the top of the second column, where it says Action: Activate a Special Ability, and stop when you get to the Long-term Movement header.)
- Chapter 8: Pages 119-120 (Start at Action: Wait and stop when you get to the Climbing header.)
- Chapter 8: Pages 122-128 (Start at Experience Points and read through the end of the chapter.)
And then read this setting content; it’ll put your mind into the region in which Taker of Sorrow is set:
- Chapter 10: Pages 136-141 (Navarene)
One last thing: Check in to the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group, if you haven’t already. We’d really love to hear how things are going for you, and in particular, we’d love to hear back from you when New Gamemaster Month is over and you’ve run your first game.
Catching Up?
If you heard about New Gamemaster Month a bit on the late side, it’s fine to jump in now. You’ll need to catch up with us, but that’s still quite doable. Start with the first post and read through them all. Each one gives you an activity, but for the most part they don’t take too long, so with a little effort you’ll be back with the class by our next blog post on Thursday—and on the road to running your first game in just a couple of weeks!
To simplify your activity list, here’s everything we’ve done so far, gathered into one easy checklist. Please note that this is just a cheat sheet, to make it a bit easier to keep track of what you’re doing—read the blog posts for the context you need to get the most out of these activities.
- Get your hands on a copy of Numenera Discovery.
- Decide when and where you will run your first game session.
- Reach out to half a dozen players and confirm the time and place with them.
- Read Part 1 of Numenera Discovery (beginning on page 11).
- Watch the How to Play Numenera video.
- Read pages 100-110 of Chapter 8 (stop when you get to the header that says Ambient Damage).
- Read all of Chapter 9 (beginning on page 130).
- Read Taker of Sorrow (beginning on page 363).
- Chat briefly with your players about what they like and expect out of an RPG, and maybe share some of the hooks or info about shin obligation with them.
Encounters are a little different in Magical Kitties Save the Day than in other RPGs. While they CAN fight their way out of a situation with Fierce, players more often choose to think their way out with Cunning, or sweet talk their way out with Cute.
As mentioned above, an adventure works best if it plays to the interests and expectations of the players. So it’s time to think about your particular players, and how your adventure will suit them.
A Little Writing …
Make a list of your players. Use a notebook that has enough room to take more adventure notes later.
Note their table seating needs. If you have siblings in your group, make a note to separate them at the table if they have a tendency to bicker. If you have a younger player who’s not a strong reader, make sure they’re sitting next to an older player who’s willing to help them with reading and rules. If you have a player with speech issues, think about placing them near you at the table so you can hear them easily. A player with ADHD or other behavior issues could benefit from sitting near you, too.
Note their triggers. Also write down any content sensitivities you know your players have that appear in the adventure, and jot down some ways to avoid those. For players who are kids, this often includes violence and death, which is easy to avoid in Magical Kitties Save the Day since “incapacitated” never means “dead!”
Later, add their characters’ magical powers. Your players will create their characters at your first game session. Leave space in your notebook to write those names and magical powers, too. You’ll want to think about how their powers will work in this adventure, since everyone should have at least one chance to use theirs. For example, a Phasing kitty could go through the wall to get inside the library. That’s easy enough, but you may need to add elements to the story for a power like Technocat. A computer catalog could look up the location of the Portal Tomes, or the library’s video cameras could show what’s going on in other sections. Be creative!
… And a Little Talking
An adventure works best if the players know what to expect from the game, and if it’s customized to their expectations. So have a chat with them.
Ask them what their favorite part of roleplaying is. Some players will be happy to go on at length. Others might not have ever roleplayed before, not really know what they like best, or be unable to articulate their preferences, which is all fine. In that case ask them, “You’ll be playing a kitty. Which do you think your kitty will be best at? Cute, Cunning, or Fierce?” The goal here is to get a general sense of what your players want to do, so you can include a chance to do just that!
Ask them what their LEAST favorite part of roleplaying is. Keep an ear out for those “triggers” we talked about before.
Ask what their favorite book is. If they can’t decide, ask what they’re reading now.
Give them The Big Adventure comic book to read. This will give them a better idea in advance of how the game works, for both the setting and the rules, than the video alone can. You can download it from the sidebar here.
Add notes from this conversation to your players list. Then brainstorm things you should change or add to the adventure, so that everyone will be comfortable with it and enjoy the game. Emphasize the parts they’ll like, and remove the parts they won’t. For example, if someone REALLY likes the CatStronauts graphic novels by Drew Brockington, then include one as a talking book, or even as a Portal Tome that leads to the space station from Book 3: Space Station Situation!
Let us know how your conversation goes in the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group!
Catching Up?
If you’re new to New Gamemaster Month, welcome! Don’t worry, everything previously discussed is still there, ready for you to read. Go back to the first post about getting started. To summarize:
- Get your own copy of the Magical Kitties Save the Day game, as either the physical boxed set or digital PDFs at atlas-games.com/magicalkitties
- Read the comic book in the set.
- Find three to five other people to play, then discuss where and when to meet regularly.
- Read the intro (p3-8) and rules (p24-32) in the Rulebook to get an idea of how the game works.
- Read the adventure at the end of the River City hometown sourcebook.
That’s it! You’re all caught up. 😸
Last Tuesday we started in on the basic game rules and setting. This time we’re going to read some more detailed rules on adjudicating play.
Read this content:
- The rules for Fighting, Stability and Sanity Loss, and Refreshing Ability Pools on pages 60-82. The combats in Midnight Sub Rosa are relatively simple ones, so you don’t need to worry too much about special-case rules like rate of fire or cover.
- The Character Creation Quick Reference on p. 9.
One last thing: Check in to the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group, or tweet us at @NewGmMonth, if you haven’t already. We’d really love to hear how things are going for you, and in particular, we’d love to hear back from you when New Gamemaster Month is over and you’ve run your first game.
Catching Up?
If you heard about New Gamemaster Month a bit on the late side, it’s fine to jump in now. You’ll need to catch up with us, but that’s still quite doable. Start with the first post and read through them all. Each one gives you an activity, but for the most part they don’t take too long, so with a little effort you’ll be back with the class by our next blog post on Thursday—and on the road to running your first game in just a couple of weeks!
To simplify your activity list, here’s everything we’ve done so far, gathered into one easy checklist. Please note that this is just a cheat sheet, to make it a bit easier to keep track of what you’re doing—read the blog posts for the context you need to get the most out of these activities.
- Get your hands on a copy of the Trail of Cthulhu corebook.
- Download our sample scenario, Midnight Sub Rosa.
- Decide when and where you will run your first game session.
- Reach out to half a dozen players and confirm the time and place with them.
- Skim the Introduction of the Trail of Cthulhu corebook (pages 6-7), and…
- Read The Thirties chapter on pages 168-189
- Read Clues, Tests and Contests – pages 51-82
- Skim The Cthulhu Mythos: Pages 84-167
- Read Midnight Sub Rosa
- Chat briefly with your players about what they like and expect out of an RPG, and maybe share some information about the type of adventure they’ll be playing.
In roleplaying games, encounters are anything that stops the players from making immediate forward progress. A problem to be solved, a villain to be defeated, a wall to be climbed, a river to be swam; these are all encounters, even though they don’t fit the most conventional definition that most people think of.
Spend some time with the Cursed Farm’s five encounters: The Kale Field, The Ox in the Barley, Shattered Grove, Outlaw Country, and Meeting Death. Let’s take each of them in turn.
Getting Your Feet Wet
The Kale Field is a problem to be solved (or not) by the players without any immediate danger. The threat presented in the kale field encounter is to Björg’s family and their future livelihood. Players simply must make a hard choice on what they think is best: destroy the field (through magic or otherwise) or don’t.
The Ox in the Barley is a much more immediate and easy-to-understand problem: a dangerous, angry beast. The players again are presented with the choice to do something drastic (fight the ox and put it down) or to do nothing and hope for the best.
At this point, it’s important to keep in mind that as a gamemaster your players will often surprise you. They will come up with plans that seem either absurdly foolish or unbelievably clever, and (especially with pre-written adventures such as this one) you won’t be given any guidance on how to handle the specific course of action they take.
Even though it might not seem like it, this is a good thing.
When players are interested, they get clever. You should reward that cleverness (and that interest!) by granting bonuses, or simply letting their plan to solve a problem just work. Don’t go overboard with this, as it can lead to a clever player solving all of your problems with ease, but make sure to reward players who engage with the adventure, play their characters well, use teamwork and cooperation, or just have a stroke of brilliant inspiration.
Now back to the matter at hand: the ox. Get a grasp on the ox’s abilities and attacks. It’s a fairly straightforward creature with just one attack. It’s driven to near-madness by the curse of the scorn pole, so don’t worry about using any particularly complicated or clever tactics on its behalf. It’s a mad ox, whoever messes with the bull (whoever is closest or hurt it the most) gets the horns.
Shattered Grove is primarily an investigation, but leads directly into the optional Outlaw Country scene below. For Shattered Grove itself, think about how you’ll present the devastation that has befallen the grove. This is the center of the curse itself, the location of the root cause (no pun intended). Be ready to describe the scene to your players using as many of the five senses as you can.
- How does this place smell? It still has the tang of smoke in the air, even so long after the fire died down.
- What sight draws the eye the most? The husks of the dessicated currant bushes, the scorched earth from multiple strikes of lightning.
- How do the ground or the burned bushes feel when you touch them? The ground is hard, almost like fired clay, and even touching any of the burned bushes causes them to collapse into piles of ash.
All of these answers are just options, suggestions that might spark your imagination. Feel free to change the answers to anything you like, but avoid answers like “everything looks normal” or “there doesn’t appear to be anything unusual here.”
You don’t need to wait for your players to ask these questions, especially if they’re obvious things that don’t require interaction to discover. As the gamemaster it’s up to you to offer the first spark of interaction in any given scene. If the players have nothing to gauge their reactions against, they can become confused or simply wait for more information to be provided.
Next, consider exactly where the sword is hidden, what the sword looks like, and how it might feel to pick it up. Remember that the sword is part of an entire “escape package” that Leifur has readied, including clothes and supplies like food and water, and even a meager handful of silver coins that he’s stolen or saved. The sword itself should feel strange and unusual in whatever way you find most interesting.
- The blade is cold to the touch and heavy, as heavy as a blade twice its size should be.
- The blade is light as a feather, but gripping it causes the bearer to taste bile in the back of their throat.
- The blade grows warmer the longer you hold it, eventually growing hot enough to feel as if it’s scorching your hand, but it leaves behind no burns.
- The blade seems normal in every way, but the scent of rot and death hangs in the air around it.
If the heroes conduct a thorough search of the grove, finding Leifur’s getaway package is as simple as a successful skill roll. If they don’t… well, you can’t find what you don’t look for. Either way, if you intend to use the optional Outlaw Country encounter, this is when it triggers.
Decide ahead of time if the outlaws are going to attack before the heroes have a chance to search the grove or after. If they attack after the heroes can search, the heroes might use the cursed blade against them. That’s okay–it might even be good! It could reinforce the power that rests in the blade, tempting a hero to try to keep it for themselves and add to the drama of confronting the draugur and Leifur later. It also gives the players a chance to play with a fun toy before they are met with the possibility of giving it away.
The Optional Encounter
Outlaw Country is probably the most complicated encounter in ‘The Cursed Farm” since it has so many characters involved.
If you feel comfortable running a complicated battle (if you’ve played war games or tactical games before, for example) then you can feel free to stretch those muscles a bit here. Divide your outlaws into two small teams and plan to have them move and attack together, trying to drive the heroes apart.
If not, just keep things simple. You can either just pair off an outlaw and send one at each hero, or send about half of the outlaws forward to fight in melee while the rest take shots with their bows. The most important thing for now is to have a general plan for how the outlaws will engage with the heroes, and for you to get comfortable with how they attack with their various weapons.
The outlaws are all individually simple, but the encounter’s potential complexity comes from how many are on the field. Even if it seems overwhelming, you can get through it easily by just taking each turn one at a time. This isn’t a grand strategy of warfare, it’s a messy and quick skirmish where everyone is doing their best to survive for the next ten seconds.
The Finale
“The Cursed Farm”’s final encounter is Meeting Death, a frightening meeting with a draugur.
Eiríkur is by far the most complicated and dangerous single creature in the adventure. Not only is he powerful, but he has several different options for how he can choose to fight any given challenger. Eiríkur will likely fight differently depending on if he’s challenged to duel or battling all of the heroes at once.
Again, just come up with a general plan for what Eiríkur might do in a few simple situations. How will he react to being challenged to a duel? What will he do if the heroes attack outright instead of talking? Get familiar with his abilities. If you’re confident in your ability to roleplay, you might even prepare some lines for Eiríkur to say when the heroes first approach him. Deepen your voice. Practice a growling tone. Put on an accent! But only if you want.
Remember, as always, that you don’t need to memorize any of this. Just be familiar enough that you can quickly reference the adventure and all of its creatures when the time is right. You just don’t want to be surprised about how any of the creatures work or what can happen in each of the encounters. Your players will surprise you more than enough on their own.
What Makes Up A Threat
Let’s look a closer look at the threats in our sample adventure, “Dream Away the Time”. In the last post, we covered the mystery concept (what is going on), the hook (why the hunters might get involved), and the countdown (what will happen if they don’t or if they fail). This the backbone of the mystery.
We also mentioned threats provide challenges to the hunters. Each threat has a different type:
- Monster: The creature to be defeated, Bonecruncher the redcap.
- Minions: It’s worth noting that the most dangerous supernatural being here (Oberon, King of Faerie) is not the monster. Oberon has set certain things in motion, but Bonecruncher is the immediate danger to the town and the hunters. Threat types are defined by their role in the mystery, which is why this one has Oberon as a “minion” even though he’s really in charge. Violet the Changeling is also a minion.
- Bystanders: Here, they are primarily the inhabitants of the town of Handfast—a dozen of them, and random tables to create more as needed as the hunters investigate.
- Locations: The locations in this adventure are the town of Handfast, the Tornado and Flood Wreckage from a recent event, the Crowne Tavern, the Handfast Children’s Park, the Old Forest Nature Reserve, and Oberon’s Fortress.
Each threat also has a motivation (as discussed in the last post) and may have a special move and/or a weakness. A special move describes a distinctive action that type of threat may take. For instance, bystanders may Go off alone, Argue with the hunters, Get in the way, and so on. Weaknesses are self-explanatory.
As the Hunters interact with threats, the adventure unfolds. In a typical episode, the Hunters:
- Hear about events caused by the monster (the hook)
- Investigate to discover the monster’s weaknesses (by interacting with bystanders)
- Meet some obstacles (locations and minions, escalating to the monster itself)
- Eventually have a showdown where they use what they learn in their investigation to take down the monster.
The hook and the showdown represent the beginning and end of the Mystery, but investigation and overcoming obstacles can be mixed into the game in any order in between. Instead of giving you a hard and fast plot to follow, the motivations and special moves of the threats serve as prompts to help you develop the mystery interactively as the players explore what’s going on.
Picking the type and motivation for each threat gives you a sense of how to use that threat, what it’s trying to do in anticipation, opposition, or reaction to the hunters’ actions. Each type of threat has its own set of special moves it can make. The threat type, its motivation, and special moves are all there to help suggest to you the kinds of interesting things the threat might do in response to the actions of the hunters.Use these threat elements in conjunction with soft and hard moves when you need to describe what a threat is doing.
Sections to Read and Review: Introductory Mystery: Dream Away the Time (pages 149-161); Threat Moves (pages 176-179).
If You’re Using Roll20
When creating threats in the Keeper’s Mystery Sheet, you will notice that selecting different types of threats reveals different options. For example, monsters and minions have a space for powers but bystanders and locations don’t. Some types of information fields behave in special ways:
- Adding a power, attack, or weakness to a list will cause another field of the same type to open immediately below so you can keep adding more.
- Adding a move opens sub-items as a bulleted list so you can list what happens on a roll result of 10and above, 7 to 9, or 6 or less.
- Name, description, armour, and notes fields are simple text fields.
Not all of these fields need to be filled either: some minions don’t have powers, for example, and most bystanders don’t have a harm capacity or custom move. Take only what you need to survive!
Wise Delta Green Agents avoid the unnatural whenever possible. They do not “encounter” the unnatural. They ambush it. They bury it. They smother it in its crib. Fights are never fair and the winners are the first to cheat. If the unnatural threat knows about the forces arrayed against it and has a chance to respond? Something has already gone terribly, irreversibly wrong.
Last week’s actionables were about developing a plan for the scenario.
- Primary Objective A: Sketch a mind map with all the scenes in “Last Things Last” (post office, apartment, and cabin)
- Primary Objective B: Write a cloud of details from the text and your own imagination around each scene. These tags should be used in descriptions of that scene to enhance the mood of the game.
- Primary Objective C: Connect the three scenes with a single plot line, made up of clues the characters can’t miss.
- Secondary Objective: Download and study the flowcharts contained in this entry, if you don’t want to make your own.
This week is about the plans of the Agents: specifically, what happens when they go wrong. Wise Agents avoid danger. When that fails, threats to their sanity and safety must be tracked by the Handler.
Familiarize yourself with the rules of combat and sanity on pages 34–37.
In “Last Things Last,” the Agents are unlikely to have run-ins with other armed characters. That means most combat encounters are likely to be determined by a Firearms test against an unarmed opponent (no Dodge roll allowed) or a Melee Weapons or Unarmed test against another character’s Dodge roll (see “Opposed Rolls” on page 33). In fact, combat is only likely when they face Marlene (page 45). If something else goes down, assume an NPC combatant has any skill they need at 40%.
The physical encounters Agents face closely mirrors the threats to their sanity.
As you know from page 36, there are three threats to Sanity Points: violence, helplessness, and the unnatural. Those categories also neatly describe the physical threats they face.
Threats from violence tend to come from other humans or the environment.
Of course, the Unnatural can be very violent, too. But Agents often come into conflict with other humans who assist or are influenced by the unnatural threat. For instance, if the Agents decide Mrs. Janowitz (page 43) knows too much and must be killed, the threat to their sanity will come from violence, as well as whatever physical means Mrs. Janowitz uses to defend herself—or, if the Agents are incautious murderers, from neighbors or police responding to the crime.
Threats from helplessness tend to come from the danger of exposure.
Helplessness threatens an Agent who realizes that she left DNA evidence under the clawing nails of poor Mrs. Janowitz hours before. Helplessness strikes as the Agents nervously wait for the screams of a dying monster to stop (page 45). Helplessness threatens when Agents fear they won’t be able to escape the consequences of their actions or the doomed trajectory of life working for Delta Green.
Threats from the unnatural worsen all other threats.
In “Last Things Last,” that which was Marlene (page 45) is the main unnatural threat. Seeing or even understanding what Marlene has become damages an Agent’s Sanity Points. This corrupting effect is cumulative. The dangers to body and mind only get worse if Agents allow Marlene out of the tank (violence). If they burn the thing in its container, ignoring the pleas of an old woman begging for her life forever haunts them (helplessness).
In preparation for the Marlene encounter (and any other messes the characters might get themselves into), complete the following tasks this week.
Actionables
- Primary Objective: Read the combat and sanity rules on pages 34–37.
- Bonus Objective: Consider other possible threats to safety and sanity that Agents might invite upon themselves. Prepare accordingly.
Last Tuesday, we started on the basic Tales of the Valiant game rules and settings. Today, we’re looking into more detailed rules on adjudicating play during action encounters and some setting elements to keep in mind.
Begin by reading this content:
- Chapter 6: Encounter Game Play – Page 221–224
- Chapter 6: Combat Encounters – Page 225–235
- Chapter 7: Spellcasting – Page 239–245
If you’re looking for more inspiration and to earn extra credit, download the Guide to the Labyrinth for free and read the setting content; it’ll give you more information on the Labyrinth and inspire the adventure you’re going to run:
- DOWNLOAD GUIDE TO THE LABYRINTH
- Read Chapter 1: The Labyrinth – Pages 8–17
We’d really love to hear how things are going for you as you continue to play. Make sure to join the New Gamemaster Month Facebook page or the Kobold Press Discord to join in the conversation and hear from other up-and-coming Game Masters.
Catching Up
If you’re just hearing about New Gamemaster Month, now is a great time to jump in! You’ll be up to speed if you start with the first post and read through them in order.
Each one gives you an activity, but they fly by. Catch up and you’ll be on track for our next blog post on Thursday—and then on to running your first game in just a couple of weeks!
Here’s everything we’ve done so far, gathered into one easy checklist. Note that this is just a cheat sheet you can work from —read the whole blog posts for the context you need to get the most out of these activities.
- Get your hands on a copy of the Tales of the ValiantPlayers Guide and the Adventures of Dib PDF.
- Decide when and where you will run your first game session.
- Reach out to players and confirm the time and place with them.
- Read the Introduction of the Tales of the Valiant: Player’s Guide (pages 7–10).
- Watch a Tales of the Valiant actual play video on YouTube.
- Read pages 203–221 of Chapter 6 of the Players Guide.
- Read the Impregnable Fortress of Dib (pages 3–6 of the Adventures of Dib PDF).
- Chat briefly with your players about what they like and expect out of a roleplaying game. Share player options, and reveal some hooks or info about the adventure with them.
Encounters in Savage Worlds can be quick and bloody affairs. That said, heroes have quite a few ways to come out on top. The extra rules you need for combat are on pages 4-6 of the Test Drive, but you don’t even need all of them most of the time.
🎴 Action Cards
Rather than rolling for initiative, when combat begins, deal each of the characters a card from a standard Poker deck (called their Action Card). In this adventure deal one for the villains to go on. Whoever has the highest card (Aces are best, followed by King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, etc.) acts first.
💡 Pro Tip: Once a character finishes acting, take their Action Card. Look around the table for the next highest card—that’s who’s up next. Players can see who’s up next too, which helps speed things up.
🛡️ Parry
Last week we said that most Trait rolls succeed with a roll or 4 or higher. Hand to hand combat is one of the exceptions. Instead of 4, the number is the target’s Parry (usually between 2-6). If a target’s Parry is 5, for example, a roll of 5 or higher hits and a 9 or greater is a raise. Ranged combat just uses the standard 4 to-hit. If you don’t want to get shot, find cover!
💥 Damage
Trait rolls take the single best die result, but a damage roll totals up all the dice together. Every die can Ace, so truly huge damage totals are possible. This is super fun when it happens for players against their foes, but terrifying when it happens to damage the players’ characters! Take a deep breath when that happens and encourage the targeted player to spend a Benny and roll Vigor to Soak the damage. Even if it doesn’t mitigate it all, every little bit helps. A player can spend another Benny and roll again hoping to do better. A lucky Ace or two absorbs a huge amount of damage!
We’ve gone over the basics of running a game in the broadest sense, but today we’re going to look at something specific. Namely, combat.
Grab your copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics core rulebook and turn to page 77, then read the section entitled “Actions,” reading all the way through the section “Attack Roll Modifiers” on page 79.
Now, find your copy of The Portal Under the Stars and locate Area 1-4 – Scrying Chamber; it is most likely on page 458. Here you will find Ssisssuraaaaggg, the immortal demon-snake. And no, that name wasn’t a typo.
Using what you’ve just read, run through that encounter in your head. How the snake-demon might move and how your players might react. Dungeon Crawl Classics is played between a group of friends, but it is also played in the imagination. Let your creativity flow and be reflected in everything you choose to do as the Judge.
In all likelihood, whatever you imagine in your head is not how it will happen in live play. The interactive aspect of a tabletop RPG means that it isn’t a single vision telling the story, but a collective. Your job as the Judge is to guide it.
Knowing what can happen is exciting, but only half as exciting as seeing the players take it in a direction you never expected.
One last thing: Check in to the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group or Discord server, if you haven’t already. We’d really love to hear how things are going for you, and in particular, we’d love to hear back from you when New Gamemaster Month is over, and you’ve run your first game. That’s where you’ll report it, and win a fabulous prize (well, a modest prize) as an expression of our congratulations.
Catching Up
Maybe you just discovered New Gamemaster Month, and if so…Welcome! There isn’t a restriction on when you get started, the whole plan is to have fun. The best option for you is to go back and read the first four posts in this series. It shouldn’t take too long, and it will give you more insight than we can share right here.
To help out, we’ll give you a quick overview of what those initial posts were about. A cheat sheet, so to speak, to give you a guide to what came before now. Here are the main points from each post:
- Get a copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics – either physical copy or PDF
- Decide when and where you will be playing your game
- Wrangle up four to six players and confirm the details on the game
- Go over rules for The Core Mechanic, The Dice Chain, and Skill Checks
- Read The Portal Under the Stars, located at the back of the DCC RPG core rulebook
- Discuss with your players what they want from the game
Now that you’ve got the basics, it’s time to look at some nuanced and additional mechanics! These will mainly focus on adversaries (their abilities and what players need to do to hurt them), environments (a mechanic for enhancing scenes, it gives the very terrain actions), and encounters (how to activate everything you control and how the players get through encounters).
Read
Returning to the Daggerheart Core Rulebook, next focus on:
- Continue Core GM Mechanics and more of Chapter 3 from pages 160-168, focusing on Adversary Rolls and Running GM NPCs.
- Enter Chapter 4, Adversaries and Environments! Much of this chapter consists of lists of stat blocks which you won’t need for running this adventure, so focus on reading pages 193-196 (using adversaries) and pages 240-241 (using environments).
- Consider refreshing yourself on the player’s side of encounters from earlier, specifically pages 91-106 for most of the PC core mechanics, and jumping over to page 114 (armor) to remind yourself how armor interacts with Evasion, HP, and damage thresholds.
In the Quickstart Adventure, review the stat blocks for adversaries that appear throughout its acts, and review the environment stat block that appears in Act 5.
Practice
We highly recommend walking yourself through a fake combat with a Thistlefolk Ambusher (page 31) or any other adversary in the adventure to get a feel for encounter flow. Grab one of the pre-generated characters and go back and forth as the spotlight shifts between the player characters and the adversaries and environments overseen by the GM, thinking about what the player side and the adversary side might do in each situation. Remember to take GM moves when the PC rolls with Fear or fails an action roll, and that you can spend Fear to take additional GM moves as well. This mock combat is a great way to discover your gaps in knowledge, so take it slow and feel free to reference the GM Guide and Play Guide sheets from the Additional Sheets packet on our Downloads page and even take your own notes to give yourself the reminders you need!
Catching Up?
If you’re joining New Gamemaster Month late, you can still catch up! Start with the first post and read through them all. Each one gives you an activity, but for the most part they don’t take too long, so with a little effort you’ll be back with the class by our next blog post on Thursday—and on the road to running your first game in just a couple of weeks!
To simplify your activity list, here’s everything we’ve done so far, gathered into one easy checklist. Please note that this is just a cheat sheet, to make it a bit easier to keep track of what you’re doing—read the blog posts for the context you need to get the most out of these activities.
- Get your copy of Daggerheart Core Set
- Visit Daggerheart.com and go to the Getting Started page and download the Quickstart Adventure
- On our Downloads page, download the Additional Sheets packet and glance at two very helpful guides you’ll want next to you on your journey: The GM Guide, a quick reference sheet for GMs on things like difficulty setting, and the Play Guide, a quick reference on the core mechanics of the game for players.
- Watch the series of short videos called Get Your Sheet Together
- Decide when and where you will run your first game session
- Gather your adventuring party and confirm the time and place with them
- Chat briefly with your players about what they like and expect out of an RPG, and maybe share the pre-generated characters ahead of time
- Read the Quickstart Adventure and the pre-generated character sheets inside, then read the following sections of the Daggerheart Core Rulebook:
- Pages 4-9 for a brief intro and overview of the game
- Pages 87-108 for core mechanics, jumping to page 134 for a full example of play.
- Core GM Mechanics on pages 140-160
- And then do today’s reading and mock-battle assignment!
Throughout this program, we have expert GMs on hand to answer questions and provide general support at the New Gamemaster Month Discord Server or the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group. Please drop in, join the group, introduce yourself, and ask any questions you might have. Other new GMs will also be there—it’s a great place to share your experiences and support one another. Hope to see you there!
