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Running a modern game, the struggle for modern storytellers

jay_rab

New member
I love fantasy themed roleplaying and am part of many groups were we run DnD, Pathfinder, GURPs in high fantasy, but for me I am mainly a GM for Vampires: the Masquerade which takes part in our modern nights, which has many things I was not prepared for when I first took the dive into the modern world, I want to use this post for me and others who play modern games to give insight into a couple of differences and what is expected from a GM who is playing a modern setting.


1. While you can have a fictional modern city, there is some expectation from players that to be more grounded in reality that these cities exist in some way with the real world. Meaning you will have alot more legwork ahead of you if you want to make it fictional, questions like "who is in charge of the public works department or other councils" would not normally come up in a fantasy world but many times my players are asking me questions about infrastructure, who is in charge, who is doing the work, and where those departments are located.. sure I can make them up on the fly but picking a real city and having a decent city website to reference saves you a ton of time and energy...oh and its real which makes the question "is this believable" obsolete.


2. Density in cities, this is a big one as while you could have a huge kingdom in a fantasy world your only dealing with three tropes (are they a peasant, a merchant, or a noble) which at the same time gives them a background, as their status also dictates their living and lifestyle, meaning that you could have 10 peasants walking around and the if the party is interested they talk to one and they have the whole story and they dont need to talk to others. In a modern setting this gets thrown out the window, if you have 10 people in an area that is 10 identities all with different backgrounds, all with a different story to tell about their jobs, family, hobbies, and every player is going to expect them to have a personality that would normally only be true for Key NPCs in fantasy worlds. One of the ways I address this is with this generator: http://chaoticshiny.com/modernchargen.php which gives me a good baseline to start with and allows me to not worry about creation as much as flushing the character out to fit the scene.


3. The lack of "bigger on the inside", in a fantasy world if your party comes across a castle, cave, or city, distance and size are storyteller tools to make things more grand, to streamline players to a given location, or just put more there then what would realistically be able to fit in that space, in a modern setting these no longer become tools and are restraints one has to work with, you dont have a neverending forest or park, players can exit and generally pretty quickly if they dont want to be there and you can only fit so much into one area, and a secret room in a house cant be an expansive alchemist lab behind a bookshelf in a 3 bedroom house, and will more then likely be a small room with a desk and chair and thats about it.


4. Resources, in a fantasy world if a player says "I want to buy a healing potion or create one" the storyteller is in complete control if someone exist in that given city or if there is the ingredients around to make it, to say "oh there is no one nearby that sells that" in a modern setting will only get you an odd look, specially if your dealing with a world were amazon and most of the larger cities import anything you want with you only having to travel a couple mins to get to it, transportation and online ordering has made it a thing that unless the government has a ban on it a player can get their hands on it quickly and generally in the same scene without having to wait.. which means fetch quests are not normally something that you can involve a player in unless they are on a grand scale (supernatural object, one of a kind, etc)


5. six degrees of separation, while this can hold true in a fantasy world, its much more relevant in a modern one just due to 2. and one of the major hooks I rely on in most of my stories, any time a character interacts with someone, that is going to effect a handful of other people both positively and negatively. Relationships are specially important in vampires: the masquerade as its all about who you know and who has favors from who, if a player slights someone, more then likely that is going to make some people happy, some people mad, and in the end that interaction will come back to the forefront down the line. This honestly is one of my favorite reasons for doing a modern setting as its very easy to create a rich interactive world were I can create family, friends, foes, allies, and contacts that are all in the same place and can quickly become a factor in the story, and I dont have to wait on word to reach someone, and then making a journey to come face the party, one day you killed a man and the next day his brother took a flight and is now looking for answers.

(suggested by ELF)6. Internet used for solving problems, whether its a riddle, a image puzzle, or looking for someones password, the internet can be one critical issue for GMs just like players look up guides for their favorite games, so too can the characters seek help from the web or even their friends with a cellphone, sure you can put it to a roll but that sometimes feels cheap when the info is ready and available in real life with a couple search words. How I address this is account for the web and calling, if they call a friend for help I make note of who now can request a favor from them, if they use the web my puzzles sometimes include free websites I made to direct them in the direction I want and on rare events I have even have had discord servers made with friends in them that would give them hints if they got there.

What about everyone else? does any of this play into your stories? what are some of the things that really stand out to you for the modern setting?
 
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ELF

Generator Sage
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
It's a bit strange, but for me this depends on the medium.

For table-top roleplaying, low fantasy with recognizable ties to ancient history resonates with me most powerfully - something like Robert E. Howard's antediluvian worlds or those stygian centuries in Dark Ages Europe, after the classical civilizations have fallen before the barbaric tribes. This allows me to utilize powerful symbology and to hint at some forgotten past, as well as employ historical references to some potential futures.

For live action gaming I prefer modern settings, and it's not just about props or locations. That medium feels more intense and the interactions between the characters are direct, without everything being processed via a GM. Modern settings allow the themes to feel more relevant and the characters more real. This can produce really powerful emotions - I remember uncontrollably shaking for a long time after I had to resort to actually shooting a civilian in one of our LARPs, taking place in the Finnish civil war of 1918.

For me the greatest problem with modern settings is the easy access to information. Especially if mobile devices are in play, it's so easy to check facts, reach out to someone, inform the authorities, etc that it has a profound effect on story elements such as mysteries and puzzles.

Also the limits of suspension of disbelief are closer when the world is familiar, so every plot device that would work in a more fantastic world would not fly when converted into a modern setting.
 
Please pardon the "point at a time" approach, but I'm not much of a walk-and-chew-gum kinda guy.

re: "... is this believable..."

It may be real, but that doesn't mean it's believable. I'm trying to help and not snipe, but the distinction does matter.

There are many things that really happen, that few who weren't witness would not believe.

For example; would you believe a white donkey, with beautiful eyes, giving your position away during a firefight?

TL;DR - Real existence isn't "suspension of disbelief" insurance.

Feel free to tell me to take a hike; I don't recall being issued feelings.

Good thread, either way; thank you.
 
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jay_rab

New member
Please pardon the "point at a time" approach, but I'm not much of a walk-and-chew-gum kinda guy.

re: "... is this believable..."

It may be real, but that doesn't mean it's believable. I'm trying to help and not snipe, but the distinction does matter.

There are many things that really happen, that few who weren't witness would not believe.

For example; would you believe a white donkey, with beautiful eyes, giving your position away during a firefight?

TL;DR - Real existence isn't "suspension of disbelief" insurance.

Feel free to tell me to take a hike; I don't recall being issued feelings.

Good thread, either way; thank you.
Your totally right! I could of worded that better.

Ultimately when you have real sources it gives you the information to make things believable as they are founded in fact and they aren't going to contradict one another without some sort of reason. The last two presidents for the United States for example, politics aside, both were not expected to be the front runners and someone coming into a story were they see these two figures would question it, hence what you brought up, but it does give you a pool of information to bring the player back on board if they start questioning it.

Also that white donkey is a jerk!
 
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Thoreau, via "Walden"

The following is an example of people wanting to have their cake, because it's neither believable, real, or rational: (this isn't a jab at you man, but at players who have insane notions about sane worlds)

"In a modern setting this gets thrown out the window, if you have 10 people in an area that is 10 identities all with different backgrounds, all with a different story..."

Is that true, effectively or actually? How "special" or "different" are people anyway? Ever been to, for example, a Vamplarp? I've never met a bigger group of people that are special, just like everyone else.

Also, for example if you're downtown, just how many different types and jobs are likely to be there really, even after hours? Given the WoD, and the nature of the IRL world, the fact is that part of the "personal and political horror" is the "quiet desperation factor". People get more drone and clone by the day.

TL;DR - an arguement can be made that the shit shovelling peasant of the past, as "oppressed" as they were by crown and court, had stories, more free time, and more individuality than the "enlightened", post-modern, misnomered man.

to tell about their jobs, family, hobbies, and every player is going to expect them to have a personality

Ditto prior

that would normally only be true for Key NPCs in fantasy worlds.

Summary: I find the 10 people in an area that is 10 identities all with different backgrounds, all with a different story both unreal and unbelievable.

BTW: just how do they get these allegedly different people's stories and identities anyway? If some snaggle toothed weirdo dressed like they caught a fashion grenade full in the face kept pumping me for personal information, (with absolutely what justification?), I'd exfil double-time, call a cop, something.

Add to this the WoD factor: Mages in any iteration I recall have a weird vibe usually, with a spec. background to mitigate this.

Vampires are limitied by many things, like their humanity v. social pools, their humanity period, the law of large numbers etc.

I think that you need to take another, careful look at what they are, word for word.

E5 makes these things even more pronounced.

TL;DR - they're monsters, they have enemies, and not everyone you meet is special, and you'd better watch out for the exceptions, because they might be the ones who notice that your breath never fogs.

Hope that helps, at least as a perspective check.

Oh, and another thing more rp related; All WoD PC critters have to fight to not be alienated from humanity; this is uphill, and over time.

The reason that I mention that is that this means a tendency to not particularly even notice, let alone care about, the run-of-the-mill kine.

"They're our food." - Deacon Frost in "Blade"

Substitute the word "cattle" for "people" in your entry, and see how it reads, and what you then think.

It's a "storytelling game of personal horror"

Personal, i.e. not something readily accessible to strangers, esp. really strange, sera sucking, snaggle-toothed psychos or the like.

You'll find the individuality there.

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." ― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina
 
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re: prior - practicalities and realities.

You're not God; anyone believing, even tacitly, that you are, or who expects you to be has an IRL, i.e. game/story distinct, problem; that includes you.

I'll break it down; what's the next powerball number?

GM's are outnumbered; they're doing players a favor, even when they're doing a "bad" job.

On the practical level, the word "story" is abused in the RPG realm; RPGs, with possible theoretic-to-rare exception, don't do stories; they do tales.

These aren't the same sorts of critter.

That said, you can at least emulate stories, and use some of the tools of stories; why are these "ten people" being pestered to start with? What's the objective.

Unless you're playing "Sim's of Darkness", then have your narrator (hopefully you have one, to cut down on 'Gamese'/Metalk) voice the cut, and drive past the "story" irrelevant nitty-gritty.

The game is to "tell a story", and not to endure interrogations via characters; is what they're doing something done in stories, or even tales?

If it isn't, then why do it?

In any event, fiction is about "could"; things have strings, and actions have consequences.

What are the possible interesting consequences of a particular act? Can I use these things to make engaging problems for the character?

Esp. in horror, make them "pay" and suffer when you can, in measure. "No free chicken" for chatting up the passerby.

Pressure, risk; they should be "reminded", when they forget, that they're a monster.

Tension and suspense. They aren't normal. The law of large numbers. Maybe the kine you snack on has friends and relatives, that knows what it means when your breath doesn't steam.

In short, if they choose to run with scissors, then someone is getting stabbed; that includes things like even the normally simple thing of interacting with "kine".

Never let them take you, the world, or their circumstances for granted; when they do, it's time for a wakeup; perhaps a nice stake breakfast?

Esp. in E5, they're being hunted; perhaps not as a PoI, but as a kind; humanity caps social pools with humans. BEing a vampire caps pools with Garou; being a vampire makes you a subject for lab rolls in mage...

Walk on the edge long enough, either way, and you cut your feet.

Law of large numbers; it's only a matter of time, and there are more things than humans after kindred.

Anyway, I've nailed that board to splinters; they can't take the same things for granted that "mortals/kine" do.
 
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jay_rab

New member
While I did say I enjoy VtM, all of my suggestions are generalized for any modern setting so some suggestions I made wont line up with WoD completely. But in my case I generally run campaigns of fledglings of thin blood, or in the 13th generation, as I like to tell the story of what its like to have humanity ripped away from you, how to grasp with you lifestyle changing, how do you explain your new lifestyle to your old friends, and how do you deal with seeing elders so disconnected from humanity and that if you survive the night that is what awaits you. So the characters are generally still very much engage with humanity at that point in my games.
just how do they get these allegedly different people's stories and identities anyway? If some snaggle toothed weirdo dressed like they caught a fashion grenade full in the face kept pumping me for personal information, (with absolutely what justification?), I'd exfil double-time, call a cop, something.
In the end, players aren't going to be able to get everyone in the room to open up to them, many times the best they do on a first time greeting is a name, then over sessions they slowly start seeing that character again and if they have interest they can try talking, getting a little more, and so my npc's will ether slowly open up to the players or give them the cold shoulder. There is a level of encouragement I give to the players about stalking their prey, whether that prey is for information or food, so if they are doing it successfully I will drop cues in how to approach them.

I have a system in place that list what "Annoys, Enjoys, Sin, & Virtue" each npc has, and if a player is able to match up to those ideals (ether by chance or investigation) the npc, barring any personality quirks, will be inclined to open up to them, likewise a misstep hitting on one of those ideals in a negative way will generally close the player off from engaging that npc further. I use a table that started based on this page: http://chaoticshiny.com/modernchargen.php which is where the idea also came from.
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
1. Public works, infrastructure etc.
I'm very late to the party, but I think this topic is still relevant. So, I still want to comment. I've run several Vampire: the Masquerade, Vampire: Sabbath, and Vampire: Dark Ages campaigns. Legwork becomes much more important, true, but even so, it was never a dealbreaker for me. Sometimes I researched current names and structures (even called people in that office to ask questions! What a geek :ROFLMAO:), sometimes I just invented the data. But I found researching names and structures most of the time more time consuming than inventing and it had hardly any advantage over invention - apart from the awe-stricken gaze of my players when I told them that this is a real person.


2. Key NPC creation
Great link! Thank you. Regarding NPCs I seem to have a different approach. I'm always trying to create interesting identities. The 3-Line-NPC Method by Johnn is a great way to start. There's even a 3LNPC Generator online (although you need to pay a small amount for it). Also, recently we have a thread about Most Popular NPCs, that contain examples and more information on easily creating interesting NPCs. So for me, there are Story Key NPCs and Not Story Key NPCs, but there are no stunt NPCs. Even in combat, I tend to describe small aspects of the foes, so that e.g. the fighter fights that goblin grinning savagely with two forks in each hand, the rogue gets bitten in the leg by a smaller, fat goblin in a princess' gown, and the ranger is attacked from the roof by a snot-nosed goblin throwing stones like mad.
Each NPC description is an optino for me to create more setting, mood and for PCs to engage in roleplay (instead of using minion goblin 1, goblin 2 and goblin 3). The latter is forgotten after a few sessions, but the first is remembered for years. Likewise in a modern context, although we have no goblins there (sadly).
I run a lot of scifi Shadowrun campaigns, and I can include descriptions of coolness, cyberware, magic, tattoos, robots, pets, and such.
But frankly, you are right: In modern settings, it is a bit harder to describe interesting characters as you are trying to make them "normal". But even so, make normal + quirk + motivation and you get an intersting character.
Modern Setting NPC Example:
Normal:
Clerk at some mayor's office. So he wears a brown suit.
Quirk: Works in the evening as volunteer firefighter. So he has a small firefighter pin to his suit.
Motivation: Getting early off today to watch the soccer game. While talking to the PCs he is often looking at the clock at the wall.
And thus, you created an interesting NPC that comes from a modern setting.


3. The lack of "bigger on the inside"
This is a good point, I never really thought about. But for me that is the same in both settings. I try to make it realistic in a fantasy setting also. The only missing option is "magic", so I can't later say to my players: "well, it was because of magic, that the room was bigger than you would expect".


4. Resources
I understand your point, but with items from Amazon they are really common items, right? I wouldn't restrict them as I also wouldn't restrict a fantasy setting PC to get some kind of food in a town or big city. In a modern village, you would still have no constant access to specific items, either they are not available in that village or they need a lot of time with Amazon due to the postal system in that village.
On the other hand, you have time restricting situations that you couldn't have in a fantasy setting: "You are on your way to a Walmart to by XYZ, when your mobile phone rings. It is your cousin and there is an emergency." I can think of several other situations that you can use instead in a modern setting, it is just a matter of choice I believe.


5. six degrees of separation, family and friends
I totally agree. But what do you mean with "six degrees of separation"? Is this some standing definition, I don't know about? Could you please elaborate?


6. Internet
As I said, I run several Shadowrun campaigns. There we have the ever dominant matrix (a kind of always accessible VR/AR-Internet). The Shadowrunners often need to get information. I often try to make this a process. From contact A they get a part of the information, that can be used to search for in the internet / matrix and with the help of a call or such, they finally know more. But there is always more to find. In relation, it can take a short or long while. So by spending the resource time, they could get more of the resource detail. And the PCs decide themselves how they are going to try to acquire this information. I like this part a lot!


There may be posts after your first post that already addressed these topics, so please excuse me posting already before reading all of it. Hopefully, it still helps someone.
 

Hiruma Chico

New member
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Hi. I'm also late to this party, like Stephan, but I'm new to the forums and am keen to learn more from other modern genre RPG GMs. I found this an excellent thread concept, and I hope it can be properly resurrected and continued.

I totally agree. But what do you mean with "six degrees of separation"? Is this some standing definition, I don't know about? Could you please elaborate?
@Stephan: Six degrees of separation

I feel that jay_rab's #3 is one that plagues me the most as a GM, particularly in the new world of VTT's. I would state the problem differently, as one of mobility rather than size. I run modern action/espionage games, and the simple fact that a PC has pretty ubiquitous access to planes, trains, and automobiles makes for significant challenges. I will have created a location map of an antagonist's house or business or a similar mission target location, but it's not long before my players want to go off the map. And not just off the map to a few squares/hexes off the edge, but sometimes 10s/100s/1000s of miles off the map and to new buildings, facilities, etc. that they fully expect to be present and available.

I use Google Maps a ton, which is a boon and curse. I may have set an antagonist's hideout in a warehouse on the port city's waterfront or in an non-descript office building in a real city and I place its location with a pin on a Google Map that I share with my players. Invariably, my players will end up starting a chase or some similar situation and then they are 5 blocks away and want to go in some other building for which I have no detailed map, but they're screaming for details because this is where they have been cornered by the bad buys or have cornered the bad guys and this is where the real fight goes down. I don't want to railroad, but it is very challenging to keep them inside the boundary lines of my preparations for that session, and if I don't, then sessions often end prematurely. I've been pushing them to be open to using "Theater of the Mind" more instead of expecting elaborate VTT maps for every situation, but they are very reluctant because of the tactical nature of the modern RPG combat that we (me and my players) all enjoy.

I've tried some other options to force some boundaries, like missions on trains or ocean cargo freighters, but I am trying not to reuse those obvious tropes too often. I would love some feedback on this issue and how others handle it in their modern games, particular VTT games. Thanks for reading.
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Thank you for the link, @Hiruma Chico.

I've never really run into this problem you describe. My players love the theater of mind theatrics that I describe much more than tactical combat, so I have no problem improvising if they go way beyond the current scene.

For specific sessions, I definitely prepare maps. Mainly for combat diversity's sake. Or specifically after the PCs have gone through a special agents' training week and were still practicing tactical movement and combat (Shadowrun system and setting). Also, when they were able to plan beforehand and searched for detailed maps of the location.

Nevertheless, I have an arsenal of maps for nearly every occasion that I collected over the years. Thus, I can easily look for a map that may become useful the next session or even during a session when the decker (basically a hacker moving in the matrix) still searches for the right information.

So, I would suggest
  1. Talk to your players about this. They can't possibly expect you to come up with a detailed map on the fly once they go off-board. In case you achieve it though, they should be very grateful, even if it is a map they have seen before.

  2. Rehue old maps. A modern map can easily be used for a cyberpunk scenario, if you give it a quick hue of pink and blue, for example.

  3. Collect as many standard maps as possible and categorize them for use. Here is an extract from my maps collection
  4. Lately, I also use pictures as maps. You can find out (and see with pictures), how I use VTTs beyond the Battlemap.

  5. As you clearly have a bunch of players that all like tactical combat, you can focus on this and use much of your initial prep time to prepare maps and tactical encounters.

  6. Speaking of tactics, maybe it is helpful to you to read about some more combat tactics? I try to regularly update the GM Tactics & Stratagems thread. Although all examples are set in a fantasy setting, I believe that it may be helpful to you too.
 

Hiruma Chico

New member
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Very good suggestions Stephan, thank you for taking the time to provide them. I am slowly nudging them towards theater of the mind, but it's like getting a kid to let you take the training wheels off their bike. I somehow need to hide that I've done it so then they don't realize that they're doing it without the extra support ;)

I too am using pictures as battle maps, but I still find that it takes a non-trivial bit of manipulation to scale them properly, get the grids to align as desired, etc. I'll give your other thread a read and see if I can get any more pointers. Thanks again!
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Why do you nudge them towards theater of mind? Do you believe your group is going to enjoy it as much as tactical combat?
 

Hiruma Chico

New member
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
No, it's because I think it will let us decouple spontaneous locations from the expectation of having high-quality VTT grid maps ready and thus reduce my prep 😬. I believe that the tactical joys do not necessarily have to be lost when one loses the battle map. The WOIN rules have a nice side bar section on playing the game using TotM instead of a grid. One just breaks out the space in question into zones and deciding what each one may have in terms of barriers to LoS, terrain effects, range increments between zones, how many move actions it takes to move from one zone to another, etc. One example given is as follows: Flaming balcony. Hot, smoky, high. Access requires 2 actions and a successful Challenging [13] AGI/climbing check.
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
So basically you say you want to reduce your prep stress by reducing the number of quality maps. If I understood correctly though, your players are wargamers, for whom fun of the game not only stems from tactics but also from tactical 3rd person view tactical movement and positioning. If they really are, unknowingly you are cutting away their fun.

This is described in this article:
Glenn Blacow (1980): 4 Aspects of Fantasy Role Playing Gaming

In his article Blacow not only describes 4 playing types (Power Gaming, Role Playing, Wargaming, Story Telling), he enlightens us about what it means to GM for those player types and how combat (and other scenes) will be expected to be experienced differently. Thus, what captivates some, will make others roll with their eyes.

I would suggest to carefully check whether this is the case before doing something unexpected for the players.
Rather try to get the map making easier done, if you also enjoy the wargaming aspect very much.

Do you have a link to WOIN?
 
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Hiruma Chico

New member
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Sorry, your article link did not work, got the "Ooops!" page. My players are longtime tabletop RPG guys, but who have spent a lot of time in MMORGs and other online video RPG-like games over the years and so they are spoiled by the immersive graphics and forget the old ways sometimes. VTTs have brought us a little closer to that video game experience and thus they are hungry for more immersive visual settings. But they are very good to me, and I will admit that some of my anxiety on this issue is a self-driven desire to keep impressing them. But each time I notch the bar a little higher, it's also means a little more prep time. ;)

Here is a link to the general game introduction for WOIN: http://www.woinrpg.com/about-whats-old-is-new
Here is a link to the Open Gaming Content SRRD for WOIN: https://sites.google.com/site/woinrrd/home?authuser=0
Here is a link to the online user forum for W.O.I.N.: https://www.enworld.org/forums/en-publishing.12/?prefix_id=222

The game rules and supplements in PDF or print format for W.O.I.N. can be found on DriveThruRPG and the like.
 

ExileInParadise

RPG Therapist
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
No, it's because I think it will let us decouple spontaneous locations from the expectation of having high-quality VTT grid maps ready and thus reduce my prep 😬. I believe that the tactical joys do not necessarily have to be lost when one loses the battle map. The WOIN rules have a nice side bar section on playing the game using TotM instead of a grid. One just breaks out the space in question into zones and deciding what each one may have in terms of barriers to LoS, terrain effects, range increments between zones, how many move actions it takes to move from one zone to another, etc. One example given is as follows: Flaming balcony. Hot, smoky, high. Access requires 2 actions and a successful Challenging [13] AGI/climbing check.

This sounds like you've run into the same quagmire I ran into with VTT - the additional "stage management" putting on the production compared to just talking over the GM screen.

Over the past few months of working through Johnn's courses, I've also learned a LOT about "just in time" prep compared to "prep when you have a ton of time".

From that, there is a compromise that *might* work for you - I've only recently been able to try it in a Cyberpunk Red game... and it worked well for me and might work for you as well.

Here's the trick: Only prep the nice VTT maps, grids, tokens, and fog of war for the big pre-planned battles ... and just whiteboard the ad-hoc stuff.

Here's the rationale:
Before the VTT invasion, how did it work at the real table? It worked like I just described.

If you bought a cool module, or map, or battlemap, you had it on standby for The Right Time To Unleash The Kraken.

What did you do the rest of the time?

Well, I personally had a blank black and white grid under a clear plastic sheet and would just dry erase up the sketchmap I needed at the moment.

How many encounters can you run on The Great Salt Flats with a clear sheet and dry erase?
All of them: http://w23.sjgames.com/products/floor-plan-2-the-great-salt-flats-1

If that's a legit tabletop experience, then it can be just as legit in a virtual tabletop.

When I got to that stage of wrestling VTT, I deployed a browser tab with box-line-text running in it, and just sketched up the map of the moment with that.
https://github.com/jncraton/box-line-text

Players had no problem with it - and some video conference and collaboration tools allow shared whiteboards and such - give everyone a different vritual marker color and go.

I also had a really good result using a team project planning site called "Miro" - rather than putting virtual post-it notes and index cards around to Kanban plan some work project - we just uploaded maps, tokens, and whiteboarded along with that.

So, that may be an approach as well.

For me, the key is to let myself focus on "stagecraft" when I want to build up a big cool encounter - cool maps, minis, tokens, whatever.

But, there's so much of the "between those big encounters" that you can just "sketch and go" and be done and save yourself the pain of trying to make EVERY SINGLE gas station stop along the way as epic as the thrilling part at the end.
 
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Hiruma Chico

New member
Gold WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Very good points and suggestions ExileInParadise! As I post today, I also realize how useful it is to have this discussion outside of my own head and with other GMs. I am realizing that some of this is me projecting my own expectations on my players, and it's not really as much pressure on my players as self-induced pressure on myself to wow them all the time with pretty staging and other accoutrement. I'd still like to resolve some of this by gently getting them comfortable with some of the TotM concepts I described earlier. We can still sketch out the different zones in relation to one another using the blank grid map and drawing tools in Roll20, without needing all the extra fancy graphics and decorations, similar to your idea of the white board. Thanks again to you and Stephan for the opportunity to discuss.
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
As soon as I had prepared on Roll20 nice Tokens for my players and some standardized Tokens for foes (either race pictures or just black, grey, and red buttons to differentiate them), I found that I had already done most of the work. As you can save those in Roll20, you can easily re-use them. And then I just drop a grid (if I want to), give the background some random texture like murky green or yellow or grey for the general terrain image and pick up my drawing pencils within the program.

I did this also on VTTs, but didn't take any pictures of those sessions (besides those already posted). Basically it is what can be seen in the following pictures of my tabletop games:

Version 1 - Only a swift drawing and some tokens.
A quick map and some tokens is often all that matters.
Just try to incorporate opportunities, options and dangers into your map that players understand and can use.

Scene:
The PCs break into a food processing facility where a troup of strange people had fled that were believed to be behind the food shortage problem of the area. Although the guardsmen picked up on the presence of the PCs way too quick, due to magic users and superior equipment the PCs soon had the upper hand. How astonished and aghast the players looked when the scales suddenly turned! The 4 PCs in direct melee with one of the guards were sure they would win. But the guardsman had maneuvered into a tight spot, then grappled one of the PCs. The PCs were surprised and tried to get the one PC free, only to realize almost too late that the guardsman hid a high-explosive grenade (without a pin) in one of his hands. They almost died from this mistake. When about 10-20 more of the strangely similar looking guards appeared from below and the one guard who should have been dead seemed almost unscathed by the explosion, the PCs realized that these were no ordinary people, in fact they remembered that some hours ago they had found some strange acidic burns on walls and within a car. They had carefully analyzed this acid and had found out that it was a highly intensified form of acid from extremely rare ants far far away. Only later they realized that these guys were inhabited by ant spirits, who deformed their bodies and made them immune to mundane attacks. And this was probably one of the entrances to their hive! I have never seen PCs run away so fast.

2019-08-18 04.08.35 (Strice Foods).jpg

Version 2 - Pre-created objects, drawings and tokens
Sometimes, I drop in some pre-created objects (cars and such), that are no PCs or NPCs but can be moved nontheless. And it is usually no problem (rather funny actually):

Scene:
Some minutes earlier the PCs were still on their way to the Strice Foods food processing facility. They had GPS coordinates of where the 20 rented vans had all stopped before being brought back to the rental car shop. Luckily the PCs had acquired camera recordings and descriptions of those cars and their strange passengers from the food processing facilities that had been coordinately attacked. Now, the PCs had only to pass some gang turf... There was a short agitated discussion about "passage fees", when one of the PCs "vanished" and hid on a ledge of the second story of the adjacent building like the ninja she was. Another PC was almost robbed and in danger of being stabbed to death by a desperate junkie, she stumbled over. Then, the PC Yakuza razorboy of the group threaten and impress all of them by running towards an old carcass of a van, jumping into the air and kicking it so hard that not only the door bulged in, but the whole car was shoved a few centimeters away. The ninja filmed this and posted it on the matrix, and henceforth the Yakuza razorboy accumulated fans and even imitators.

2019-08-18 01.27.41 (Clash with Crimson).jpg

I have gone a long way from creating everything myself. But if you are interested, these are examples of the past:


Version 3 - Detailed gaming tiles and maps:

For a Pirate Campaign, I looked for pictures of ship models and laborously created a great map to play on. Please find the complete folder of the pirate ship Unfaithful and some sea maps with hexes here.
Those pictures of the ship were instantly useful to show them how it looks and feels. These pictures would lay on the table in front of them for later study. They could easily orient themselves, device tactics and plans, describe where they were in relation to other places, and it seemed like they had really been there and taken fotos!
The map of the ship was used immensily. As the moving home base of the group it was later cluttered with treasures, separated areas decorated in their personal preferences, places for luggage, food, water, ale, or prisoners. And of course for the trade goods they "officially" traded, as well as places where boards squeaked or where the tentacle arm broke through.
The sea maps were used with a great system for ship combat I found for the Dark Eye system (A148 - Klar zum Entern).

For the same campaign I created a puzzle for a cave map and as the PCs delved deeper into the cave system, they acquired new puzzle pieces (of passageways, caves and tunnels as far as they could see) to glue onto a randomly big cardboard. Although the cave tunnels were only black and white drawings I polished with a little bit of texture, this was really great. I loved it! And my players also. Gradually, they were really exploring these tunnels. Sounds echoed wierdly in the passage ways which were originally created by the tides and were still slick with moisture. Then, suddenly, they came upon real rooms in that cavern system! And when they found the other pirate group and their treasures, the went full overboard. I placed their minis on my self-created maps, their eyes were glistening with anticipation (it took me very long for only that level of result, but the difference between general monochrome overview and detailed colored rooms had an astounding effect!):

Schmugglerhöhlen der Blutbucht.jpg RaumDINA3_22x15(Raum3).jpgRaumDINA4_18x12(Raum10).jpg
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Sorry, your article link did not work, got the "Ooops!" page.
Sorry, I missed that you have no access to that part of the forum (staff preparing calls). I edited my post to share the content.
 
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