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Game Master's Laboratory
241 members • Free
73 contributions to Game Master's Laboratory
5h •
A "show, don't tell" approach to proactive roleplay
I'm getting ready to start my own homebrew campaign in January. Since reading PR I've decided that I will provide the world and how the different factions will operate but my players will set their own goals and dictate where the game goes. However before they set their goals I want them to gain knowledge about the world from inside the game. My plan is to play the first three sessions as a prelude to the world. In these sessions they will learn several things that the average person in this world do not know. They will learn about two opposing factions within the theocratic government that oppose each other. They will learn about different forms of magic and get trained in that magic. They will have an opportunity to join a secret underground organization and meet several key NPCs. They will meet the BBEG in a vision and have an invitation to join him and they will be invited a secret faction that are working against him. With all that knowledge they can then make informed choices. Have any of you tried this approach to proactive roleplay?
2 likes • 4h
I tried something like it, sort of a play-in to our current season of ghosts game. We did the session zero ahead of time and characters had an outline and some desired connections. We played about eight 45-minute moistly roleplay vignettes over two sessions to explore those parts of the character and the town. After the vignettes they finalized their connections to each other, the setting, and their backstory. The feedback was that they were helpful, but I would mention that they suggested the vignettes they thought would be useful. In one example, Sloane came to willowshore to assassinate Kimiko and ended up as friends (from a MotW character web table). They asked to play out Sloane attempt to poison Kimiko to see how that came about. The Magus wanted to play out a bit where he discovered his powers. The Witch wanted to play out meeting her patron. Etc. I am not sure the same familiarization with the setting could have worked with reading materials or with traditional play. The players were in on it, so to speak. One of the best running jokes came out of the scene when one of the players not in the scene interjected "you wrote them didn't you, i knew it" when speaking about trashy romance novels in the town library. Now they are the favorite of one of the characters, a bunch of the characters are wishcasting by the librarian, and everyone makes jokes when they meet new NPCs about whether they are the inspiration of a character in the books.
Oct 31 •
Beyond The Wall (new emergent campaign)
I pulled together a group of story focused players to try an emergent campaign (collaborative+proactive). I am going to use this thread to share periodic updates on how it is going and what is working. Meetings will be sparse this fall and then weekly after the new year. It is five players from my in-person games who had to move out of town.
1 like • 15d
@Tristan Fishel two of my players have been posting NPC ideas everyday in discord to scratch their itch. I think a few are discarded character ideas...
1 like • 18h
Had an aha moment today. The players gave me this concept of a storm that transforms those caught in it into violent mindless creatures. I think it would be cool if the clues to uncover what the storm is, where it came from, and how to stop it are somehow embeded as the abilities and features creatures gain when transformed by the storm. Pathfinder2e has a recall knowledge mechanic that characters can use in combat to learn about weakest defenses, strong attacks, and the like. The party is very likely to use this action regularly. If I can make the descriptions and names of the abilities have enough of a clue in them that as they get more they realize they are in fact clues. If I can time this well, about the time they are done with the politics and ready to turn their attention outside the city these clues would come together and create a direction for action on what is likely to be a new goal of stopping the storm. I realize I am getting dangerously close to the writing a plot problem, but there ought to be something fun I can do here with hiding clues in abilities.
3d •
How Do You Bring Randomness to Your Games?
I want to run an OSR hexcrawl game whose story emerges from randomness. How do you bring randomness to your games, and what tools do you use to reference these sources of randomness? Sources of randomness could include flipping to a random page in a book, playing word association, combining the results of several random words to inspire creativity, or random tables. Tools could include pen and paper, a whiteboard, Google Docs, Apple’s notes app, etc.
Poll
4 members have voted
0 likes • 2d
For my in-person games we tend to roll physical dice and reference a table in my notes, in a book, or on a piece of reference paper. For my online game, I am making more and more use of the rollable tables in Foundry.
3d •
No More Fishing With Storyhooks - Selling Point of Proactive Games
My Kingmaker game seems to be falling apart. We have reached a stage where the players are not biting at adventure hooks and talking about their characters not being engaged with the kingdom. I think there are two problems (1) they are waiting for something in the story to engage them and (2) the end of the last chapter was wonderfully climatic and wrapped up most of their ongoing story arcs. I am grateful for the Collaborative Campaign Design book for giving me language to think about the character arcs more constructively and the Proactive Book for letting me push some fo the character engagement stuff back on them as the owners of their characters' stories. Now I think I will find out if the real problem is (3) player boredom after 94 sessions. I would love to finish the APs story, but have a hunch the best answer will be to start fresh.
2 likes • 3d
@Mark Petersen adventure path, Paizo's equivalent of modules
2 likes • 3d
@Mark Petersen yeah, I started with the red box and have played most editions, used to go to the game store and browse the paperbacked modules. Keep on the Boarderlands, Castle Amber, ... Paizo started making adventure paths as monthly releases for 3rd edition. When WotC when to 4th edition, Paizo created Pathfinder to keep the AP business going. Their APs are really series of 3-6 of those smaller modules that fit together.
4d •
Hi Folks
Hi there everyone. I'm Richard, pronouns he/they. I started playing RPGs in 2018 with 5e after seeing a group playing it on a camping trip and thinking "I want to get in on that". So I started going to a local meetup. I played in an online campaign for a few years. The dreaded 2000 plague hit and I was in 5 online games a week. I also DM, now regularly, but didn't get on with pre-written modules as it's just too many words to get through and my memory to retain. A wall of awful for my brain. So far I've stuck to one-shots but will be running a homebrew 5.24e campaign using the Proactive approach next year. While I've mostly played and DMd DnD 5e, I own several other games that I'd love to run at some point. Although I'm better off learning as a player first. I've the original West End Games Star Wars & the FFG version. Daggerheart (I soooo want to run this and think I could right off the starting line). Alice is Missing (an unusal one as it's 100% by text message yet still around a table). Goblin Quest (because it's zaney and fun). I also have both of the diceless RPGs by Guy Sclanders from the How to be a Great GM YouTube channel (they're BountyHunter and Mage Hunter) that I'd like to run as they're nice and simple and you can drop them into any sci-fi or fantasy setting. Anyway, I'm delighted I found this platform by chance via a podcast. I'm halfway through the Proactive book and have the new book on order. I look forward to learning more for people here.
3 likes • 4d
Welcome Richard. I sympathize with trying to keep everything in your head from modules. I run a bunch, but I am lucky that my group doesn't worry too much about it when I forget something or swap something.
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@eric-person-8885
he/him - player and GM of TTRPGs since the early 80s - playing mostly pathfinder at the moment
Active 3h ago
Joined May 14, 2025
California
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