Cooking Up the Big Show

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2010/07/28 – 00:00 -

My wife is a fantastic cook, she can do things with seasonings that would you make you sing praises to your maker. She’s always telling me that cooking isn’t terribly hard and can be distilled down into a couple of main points. Use fresh ingredients (preferably organic), season well, and always salt the water. Gaming is like cooking, you have to be prepared, have all the rights ingredients and a little TLC goes a long way (that way they really don’t expect the traps).

The Hook

The beginning of every story starts here; the event that starts the characters on their course. Your hook has to be strong; enticing players with its alluring provocative scent. A good hook should scream of enchanting mystery and adventure. It should waft out to the players luring them in until it’s too late, and the jaws of the hook sink into them. Slamming around them and thrusting them into the adventure, powerless to stop the course of events that has been set into motion their only course of action is to follow where few dare tread.

The Plot Twist

A good soup is one that is done slowly, the ingredients have time to soak in the juices of everything and really bring out the flavor. Good seasoning is a subtle art, too much and the dish is spoiled; too little and you can’t taste that it’s there. The art of the plot twist is that it’s unexpected (I mean it is called a plot twist) so letting it fester in the background until the last minute is half the fun, well at least for the GM. When coming up with the plot twist try coming at it from unexpected angles but be wary of being to over the top as it becomes rather obvious.

The Big Finish

They say that presentation is the biggest part of food. For me it’s the build up to seeing it, smelling the food, talking about the food, and then finally seeing the food. A big final finish is much the same way, its 90% build up. All of the careful planning and work we put into all the details leading up the end is all presentation. It’s nothing more than window dressings, which is why some fail even after careful planning. Still if all your ingredients are there and you’ve been simmering it just right, it should be one hell of a brawl.

What are your three tenants of game design? What can you compare to gaming that, like cooking, has a simple enough idea?


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Establishing the End Game: Hitting the Abort Button

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2010/02/05 – 00:00 -

We’ve all been there; your epic adventure has stalled.  Your players are in love with the game and you could care less.  It’s more than just writer’s block you’re just not feeling it, so what’s a GM to do?

Talk to the Players

Players have an excellent way of revitalizing interest in a campaign.  Ask them what they want out of the adventure and what they are hoping to do.  If your players are anything like mine they’ll have had goals from the get go and would love time to expand upon them and be able to achieve those goals.  This could prove for some good material to move the campaign forward.  With this try to focus more on the characters instead of the overall storyline, it’ll keep the game moving.  Play to your strengths, and keep working on the overall plot you’ll be back on track in no time.

Switch Adventures

During a Planescape game, Paul had three to five adventures running simultaneously.   We would be doing research on one and be tracking a villain from another. While I’m sure it required some juggling on his end as players we could pick the type of adventure we were most interested in.  As he was using prebuilt adventures, he was never at a loss for material. If your current campaign is going nowhere try changing the focus of the campaign for a couple of sessions.  The brief stint away from the main goals may prove to be enough of a refresher that work may begin anew on the main plot.

Give up the Ghost

Sometimes everything you do just proves to be in vain and you need to press the abort button.  Keep in mind a couple of things when ending.

Your players are emotionally invested.  They’ve spent countless hours playing in the game and developing their characters so try to give them some closure.  Try to wrap up as many character plots as you can.

Leave the story open to continue. Just because you’re done running right now doesn’t mean you won’t want to pick up this game in the future.  Try to leave a couple of threads around to pick up later.  Some suggestions may be that the villain they’ve been tracking the entire campaign sets a trap and lays in wait, only for the players to find out that there is another more powerful villain lurking in the shadows.

Give a sense of closure. As you are leaving some threads open you won’t be able to wrap up everything.  However, it is paramount that you give some sense of closure to the current storyline.  Choose a downer or a happily ever after ending but don’t just end it out of hand.

Have you ever had a campaign that you had to abort? How’d you go about it?


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