Query: I’ve been having a few practice sessions with MotW and other Apocalypse hacks that seem to have gone well but I tend to have my story sidetracked/hijacked by interesting things that players are doing during the average 3 hour session.
During my last MotW game the Spooky decided to summon a fire breathing monster to defeat the big bad and it pretty much took an entire session just to deal with the ramifications of that.
Heaps of fun but has anyone got a tidy system for keeping a game on time whilst not dismissing the stuff that springs up unexpectedly but is worth exploring?
I call it when time’s running out, and declare that was part 1 of a 2 part story. No need to dismiss anything, just stop at a cliff-hanger point if you can. Sometimes they become 3- or even 4-part stories. Which is fine.
I’ll also say that when the hunters go off on crazy tangents and don’t really deal with the current mystery… well, that’s working as intended. Just follow what they do, and be sure to let them know the consequences of what they didn’t deal with!
The countdown. You should always be looking back to the countdown, looking for ways to tie complications into the plans and advancements of the Big Bad of the episode.
You could also use a custom move to wrap up something like that.
I asked this mainly for con purposes but your points are well taken. Maybe if I just keep the timeline ticking over with a sort of twitter feed of updates to pound home a sense of urgency?
Oh yeah–and if it’s a con game, everything should be linked up tight. So figure out a connection. What’s the relationship between the fire-breathing monster and the next Big Bad?
Has anyone ever tried anything like bringing a clockface to a game, putting it on the table and advancing the clock during the game without telling the players exactly what is advancing or when ‘bad stuff’ will happen?
Not for Monster of the Week, but I’ve played in a Call of Cthulhu adventure that had a timer counting down. It was a good way to increase tension (especially when we worked out what it was counting!)
That’s awesome. Now I wanna do that.
For con games, I find it’s good to push hard for action: if the hunters are busy talking and wasting time, have the monster actively pursuing its evil plans.
The Keeper moves “reveal off-screen badness” and “reveal future badness” are great for this. Cut to someone being killed, or something like that, then back to the hunters.
Just divide the story in two sessions. It’s done in TV series anyway, you can do it too.
A note re your first paragraph: it’s not “your” story. It’s theirs. This is actually very important.
Why don’t let the players just summon it in about 1 hour?
I’m speaking for con games. Usually at Cons I bring very straight-forward mysteries: a monster, no minion, 2-3 bystanders and 2-3 places. The countdown is all focused on the monster activity. It helps staying focused. 😉
When they investigate be plentiful of details and give them the right information, with few middle steps of investigation.
For a con game, I think it would also be totally feasible to explicitly NOT deal with all the ramifications and tangents on the spot: just have the fire monster disappear off screen and do its thing there, and then focus on the main story with some urgency, every now and then revealing the (not-so-urgent) badness of the fire monster off-screen.
When the main baddie has been dealt with, you give them a great final scene, and while the credits are rolling, so to speak, you give a preview of the next episode (which of course they won’t play, because, Con Game), which highlights the fine mess they have triggered with their inconsiderate summoning. So people go home with a sense of continuity and coherence-of-plot without having played more than one game…
Rudy Barbieri
Because it was really fun to see how much worse all those terrible rolls made things when dealing with a portal to another dimension and it’s hive of fire breathing furry slugs.
Felix Girke
I like this answer…I’ll have to think about it and work out a way to incorporate it into my GM style.
Andrea Ungaro
Fair comment, I misspoke and should have said my plot rather than my story. My gming tends to the reactionary rather than dictating what happens next so you are of course correct. It’s my groups story which is part of the problem when it comes to keeping a game inside Con time constraints.
I definitely think it’s fun to watch this stuff unfold, although for a con game, you really do have to balance that with completing the scenario.
You are the Keeper of Mysteries. The limits of magic are in your control. Don’t let a player either play a monster or summon/create one that will hijack your mystery or threaten the world further. The PCs are supposed to be heroes. Maybe flawed ones, but heroes nonetheless.
Alternatively… play to see what happens. Say, “Yes, but…” or “Yes, and..”
and just see where your players’ crazy imaginations take them. That can be fun, but requires quick thinking to make a complete story happen in a one-shot at a con.
Bottom line though, is you are there to have fun, too. And you’ve gone through some trouble to create something for the group. You also have veto power over where the story goes, just like any other player at the table.
This is meant to be empowering rather than encouraging a dictatorial GM.
Cheers.
I can see how that advice is good but I’m not sure how those points are applicable to my problem. I like to see where the characters decisions take them. If they want to use untested magic to summon a monster I am cool with that (unless I want to play a less magic powered game). I think the best advice so far is that I should emphasise the countdown clock and pass time whenever it makes sense to jump up the urgency.
I think the biggest point is that, like a movie editor, you’re gonna have to cut material to make it all fit, no matter how cool that stuff is. 🙂
As one of my players pointed out for a “joke” character he was considering for a Marvel Heroic game, Dinosaur Summoner, who has the power to summon any dinosaur. The power he was lacking was dinosaur control…