🔥 How to play RPG | The forgotten style of play
Rules? What rules?
That’s right. We are gonna use no rule system at all. Just 4d6 (four six-sided dices) and your untrained gut feeling. Isn’t that exiting? “B-but I wanna dee and dee” — No you do not, for reasons that are WAY beyond the scope of this article.
So how do you play without a rules system? The process is simple: if you and your players do not know if someone will be able to do something, you roll dice. Highest side wins, meaning success.
“Want to jump that chasm? How far is that jump? Almost 3 meters? Ok. Are you wearing heavy armor or something like that? No? Ok, I am still not sure… roll 2d6, I will roll 2d6 as well. If you get a higher number than me you manage to jump across.”
“The dragon breathes fire towards the group! Henry was already prepared, so he can escape without a roll, but for the remaining of you guys… I rolled 8 on my 2d6, everyone roll your 2d6s and try to beat mine to dodge the fire breath. What is it, Grog? Do you wanna use your magical shield to block that? Ok, you still have to roll but if you don’t succeed you only get 2nd degree burns instead of instantly becoming ashes.”
That’s it. We will cover character creation later in this article. Leveling up is beyond the scope of this article, so subscribe to the newsletter if you wanna be notified when the article for that comes out.
Knowing your goals
First and foremost, you should think about what scenario you want your game to be in. Personally, I think medieval fantasy is the easiest to start, because no one has cellphones, cars and planes, making it easier to create stories from emerging conflict. Because there’s magic, it’s also easier to come up with bizarre and unexpected ways to surprise your players. Recently I’ve written the article dedicated specifically to magic itself, if you want to dig deeper into the theory.
Our goal here is to create an environment that makes it easy to engage your players creative imagination and their interests, to only then create emergent stories from it. But first, you need to understand the harsh truth: you, as the Referee, do not create the story. You are the conflict designer and the one who plays the world. So, before you go writing the spectacular ending for your great campaign, I suggest you to take a step back and stop. You must not be in control of the story. You should be in control of the world, and how it operates regarding your own previously established rules.
Your first session
I can go on and on, talk about the four pillars, talk about the hero’s journey and the theory behind it, but this is too much to put in a single article. Instead I will only provide the step by step process, with ocasional commentary. If you have any questions, feel free to comment or email me directly.
Below is the check list for your first session prep.
Someone, something or somewhere related to the…
…conflict.
How the information can be given to the players.
A revelation, present during or after players try to resolve the conflict.
The Status Quo. When the session starts, where are the players the moment the information arrives?
Mapping the relevant areas and neighborhood.
I prep every session with this method. If possible, in this specific order. Notice I am suggesting prepping the conflict before even mapping your world. That’s because if you do it this way you have infinite possibilities, so anything you come up with can be worked with. After some sessions you will naturally begin to reference places already visited or known by the players.
Take notes in your notebook, with a pen. Don’t worry about writing “beginning, middle, end”, because the beginning of the session would be the last thing we will write about. You can write your notes in topics or connect them using simple diagrams. Drawings also help to reduce the clutter, compress visual information and keep the pages more visually appealing.
Note: We will use the episodic West Marches (aka. Open Table) approach to tabletop gaming. That means you will only prep for the very next session and that’s it. It’s like placing the road in front of the moving car you do not fully control. At the end of the session, everyone returns to the safe area (aka. Main Town), to a new Status Quo. Then, next week, one week passed in the game world as well, so it’s easier to deliver hooks in the beginning of the session again and again, because you know where everyone is and there’s no problem with absent players because there’s no plot attached to anyone.
Prep (1/6): Someone, something or somewhere - The Core or Catalyst
As you will see, the title almost says it all. In this step you should think about someone, something or somewhere related to the conflict. You can change your mind later in the process as you need. You can also choose multiple things. But avoid discarding your previous ideas. For that, I suggest you to always take notes using a pen, instead of a pencil or going digital.
A great choice for this step is to choose the villain and determine his or her goals. If you already thought their evil plan and all that stuff, great, you are already in the step 2 and you didn’t even noticed. If not, try to understand their greater purpose and the reason of why their morality seems (or is in fact) twisted.
If you choose something, you will take an entirely different approach. What is the purpose and capabilities of this thing? Is it a key? An weapon? An antidote? What if it falls in the wrong hands? What if it is already in the wrong hands? Those questions will be asked in the second step.
Finally, if you chose a place instead of a person or an object, you are already establishing the tone of the conflict. A lab, a prison, a tower… THE lab, THE prison, THE tower. You can tinker with this until you get a place name you find interesting. What happens there is something you think in the next step.
Prep (2/6): The Conflict that emerges
What is the problem yourself cannot think of an answer? What are the conflicting beliefs or goals different people have? What are the dangers and gatekeepers of success?
The most important thing to understand is you must not prep as if the players will succeed/fail or even when the players will arrive and if the players will go there in the first place. Let’s take the cliche example: there’s a beautiful lady in an altar, and evil cultists will sacrifice her to their evil god. Who knows if the players will arrive before, during or even after the sacrifice ritual?
Your job in this step is simple: establish the conflict… NOT the outcome. Please. I will repeat. You DO NOT write the “end of the story”, because the “story” will write itself and you are not a writer. If you want to write a story, with beginning, middle and an end, go write a book. This is a collaborative game, and if you take away player agency, you also take away fun and stakes.
So, determine the time of when the lady will get killed. You can roll a die or simply specify what is the hour of death. It doesn’t have to be exact: “when the sun sets”, “when the rain stops”, “when the moon is completely full”. First choose the coolest moment for it to happen, and then think if it makes sense. If it does not, some tweaks might do the job. Don’t forget you can change your mind about the source of the conflict if you feel stuck.
“But how do I know when the players will arrive at the place of the ritual?” — Before the session? You don’t know. During the session? Simple. When did they leave the place they were? 3 pm? Ok. Are they going on foot? Yes? How much time it takes to walk from there to the place? 2 hours? Ok. They arrive at 5 pm. Simple.
Wait… Oh, the ritual happened at 4 pm? Poor woman. Narrate the dark clouds emerging from the place being seen from the distance. When they finally arrive narrate the blood on the floor, her corpse and the empty cathedral. The cultists are already gone. They got what they wanted, and their goals are one step closer to being fulfilled. Time to investigate what happened, and why it happened, and how to stop it from happening again.
If this happens, the players will know with certainty: the world doesn’t revolves around them. There are consequences for their actions. What action? What did they do wrong? Figuring out is their department. They arrived late by going on foot. Simple. That’s life and life does not pull punches, neither should you.
So recapitulating: determine the problem and establish a timer. Do not think of an answer, that’s their department. You might be thinking that currently the session is boring, that needs something else to spice it up. Patience, that’s why we have the forth step (Revelation), but first we need to address how the information arrives to the players.
Prep (3/6): How the information is given to the players
Notice the word “given” instead “how the players can get the information”. This is maybe the only time you give something to the players without they having to earn it.
Using the cultists again for example: Maybe the woman has a friend that tried to defend her from the cultists, got beat up and then walked to the town to tell the captured woman’s father what happened. The father is a merchant, and the players might be talking with him in the beginning of the session when this lady suddenly comes up, tired and with bruises, and tells everything.
The trick is to use a middleman. Someone else is the receiver of the information, but by proximity, relationship, fame or sometimes just plain luck, the information can get to the players at the beginning of the session. Your goal is to your players to get the necessary information in less than 10 minutes since the session started. This third step sometimes overlaps with the fifth step (Status Quo), as you saw just now.
Some ways the players might get the necessary information are:
A messenger (a person, pigeon, elephant, whatever) fails to deliver the message to someone else (because they are too tired, wounded, or hiding from someone) in front of the players.
Someone close to the players tells them about it, moments after getting the information.
If the problem has a greater impact, maybe the king himself asks in public for volunteers to resolve the problem.
One of the players is one of many people affected by the same problem. An example would be a mysterious disease affecting only one of the players, but also many villagers.
Someone has a vision.
Someone close to the players doesn’t arrive to an important event. They wait and wait… There’s something wrong. And then someone else gets the information and tells the players (and relatives of that absent person) about it.
I wrote about this specific topic in my article about lore between sessions.
Prep (4/6): The unexpected Revelation
That extra spice to an already great session is the cherry on top. I will go over this step briefly: The Revelation (aka. “Plot” Twist) can happen anywhere, anytime. It’s just a single topic you write on your prep that may be revealed is the best/worst possible moment, probably near the end of the session. Depending on what the revelation is, you might need to also write the reason of why it was concealed in the first place.
Maybe the person who provided the information (step 3) is the “evil cultist”. Or maybe the conflict is bigger than everyone thought. It can be an escalation of the conflict, like: “The ‘boss’ has a second phase” or “they killed the king!”.
You should be able to deliver the revelation near the end of the conflict, or… if they went far away from the conflict you can use one of the techniques of delivering the information as step 3 suggests, by improvisation. It’s also perfectly ok if the players figure it out before the reveal, just make sure to keep your mouth shut and wait till the actual reveal. “I KNEW IT!” they will say, and probably will be a wonderful time.
You can also take this to another level, by introducing a DOUBLE revelation. That is: you bait the whole session that the revelation might be X, but is in fact Y. I can write an entire article just about this. A perfect example of it is from the movie Baahubali — from the director of RRR, S.S Rajamouli —, but to explain I would need to give out a major spoiler, so I won’t.
Prep (5/6): The Status Quo
Where the players are? In the main town, their safe zone of course. In Star Trek, the safe zone is the USS Enterprise. In Doctor Who, the safe zone is T.A.R.D.I.S itself (though I do not suggest the use of it because it’s better the safe zone to be crowded with people).
What are they doing that would allow they get the information (from step 3) right from the beginning? Shopping? Drinking beer? Hanging out? Sleeping? Walking in the fields? Talking to a neighbor? Visiting their relatives? Playing games outside? Working? Anything that would be plausible and in-line with their day to day life is great.
Here you have the opportunity to describe briefly to them what happened in the last week. How is the weather? You can foreshadow how will the weather behave by describing the wind, clouds and temperature. What are the recent news? Also another opportunity to foreshadow the information or something else that is happening in the world.
Prep (6/6): Mapping
Depending of what type of person you are, this can be the most fun or boring step of prepping your game. You will map out only what’s essential for this very next session. How? There are many ways of doing it. I suggest dividing your maps into four types, or four “zooms”. From closest to furthest:
Dungeon/Place Map: A map mainly composed by rooms, stairs, doors, corridors, etc. Going from one point to another should take seconds, since they are only a few meters apart. It’s the most detailed map type, and maybe the most time consuming one to make.
County/City Map: A map of approximately 5x5 km, mainly composed by roads, shops, inns and touristic spots. The only time I draw this kind of map is to establish the roads of the center of the main city. You can also keep track of some important characters here.
Region/State Map: A map of approximately 30x30 km. Maybe the most important type of map, because it’s composed by areas of 5x5km counties. So, if we were to make a grid, it would be a 6x6 grid. Give the whole region a cool name, like “Volcanic Valley” or “Land of the Shadow Fortress” and establish the biome and 5 to 7 interesting places to explore, one of them being the main town, probably in the center, and the other one being the place where the conflict might happen.
Kingdom/Country Map: A map composed by several regions of 30x30 km, everyone having names. It connects multiple regions together, and it is basically your world. If you are interested an article where I talk about why your world should be a country, not an entire planet.
Handling travel:
On foot, it takes around 1 hour to go from one “county” to another. But after 2 hours (2 counties) you become considerably tired. Can travel up to 2 to 4 counties in a day.
By horse, it takes around 30 minutes to go from one county to another. After 2 hours the horse needs to rest. Can travel up to 6 to 10 counties in a day.
For your first session, you will basically only really need 1 map: the Region map of your starting region. If, and only if, you want a more granular and detailed exploration of a specific place, like a dungeon, a prison or a tower, you might also draw a Place map. If in your prep you focused in your main city, you can make a sketch of a City map too.
With time, after each session, your kingdom will grow in size as you need it. The good thing about mapping is that it’s reusable prep. The bad thing is you get locked on with that specific vision of the world, and this might hinder your opportunities to improvise cool locations on the fly.
Warming up with solo play
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