So I’m having a bumpy ride with GMing UW.
How do you prep to a session as GM.
Do you prep like a mission jump point with few questions like the example from the book or from “21 jump points”
or do you prep a mission by yourself
or do you let your players drive the narrative and you are there to react ??
Colin C
So, your mileage may vary, but this is my “prep”:
1) Think of a cool scenario or situation that you’d like share and experience. Don’t get bogged down in the details. It should be big, notable, and encourage interaction. This will usually be the very start of your Jump Point.
For example: “Finding a destroyed civilian ship” or “Getting a cargo truck through a security checkpoint” or “A great big planetary celebration”.
2) Decide on the dynamics you want to grow out of that initial situation. Where’s the emotional meat? Is it combat? Discovery? Horror? Politics? Greed/Profit? Again, feelings and experiences, not details and facts.
For example: If I wanted a Political situation using the “Destroyed civilian ship”, then there will be survivors of [a faction] and a traitor. The traitor will belong to [a different faction], and will demand/beg for asylum.
3) Consider the repercussions, implications, and potential story paths of a few obvious answers. Keep those in your back pocket. Example: If the “civilians” were part of the smuggler/space pirate Faction, they were escaped prisoners from a an asteroid prison colony. If the civilians were part of the rapacious commercial Faction, they were prospectors and surveyors (potential branching story to the secret excavation site on an uncharted planet).
TIMTOWTDI, but I look at what happened last session, where the players said they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. Then I sketch the situation in a couple of sentences, and ask questions to set up threats, add twists, or establish motives. I also look at what’s hanging from previous sessions in case I need to introduce a new threat or an unwelcome fact. Beyond that, its reacting to the players and the dice.
And that said, that’s the way I do it. I run UW in a very improvised style, whereas in other games I am an obsessive prepper. Do what works for you and your group and the level of input they want to have.
In my case any new ‘chapter’ was started in media res, using 21 Jump Points in conjuction with some pre-generated system data.
Used a sector map and planetary data generated from ‘Stars Without Number’ as the backdrop and to provide prompts for myself in-game.
My pre-game prep mostly consisted of constructing a bare-bones situation for whatever new system they were visiting based on the SWN prompts
Example: ‘There’s a struggle over the cultural practice of turning people into cyborg thralls to repay their debts, and the terraforming system is failing’
Having explained that very basic situation (again, bare-bones!) to the players, I would cut straight to one of the ’21 Jump Points’ scenarios and let things roll from there.
The exception would be when we ended a session at a cliffhanger or with too many loose ends (basically, a situation where the characters couldn’t easily leave the system and move on to other business). Then I would forgo the jump points, instead reviewing my notes and picking up where we left off.
Hope that helps!
Colin C I use questions even when I pick up where we left off, to develop the situation further, explore motivations, or introduce new twists.
At one point or another I’ve done all three of the approaches you mention. They all more or less work.
When starting from scratch, I’ll prep more, and make sure I’ve got a ready list of potential threats & complications on-hand and ready to go. I’ll imagine a few different ways I could see the starting scenario play out, and jot down some one-line thoughts on what would make for interesting consequences or funny/thrilling scenes.
I’ve also found it helpful to pre-make a few flavorful descriptions of people/places I’m pretty sure the players will encounter: I’m terrible at colorful descriptions on the fly while I’m also trying to balance the rest of GMing.
For follow-up sessions part of a larger campaign, I basically create a running list of active/dormant threats & potential objectives and carry it over.
I like to write up NPCs and events and let PCs collide with them. 🙂
Todd Zircher I like to play Urban Shadows and Apocalypse World that way but that games are stationary, how do you handle game that moves around and any second players can say “we board the ship and skip to next station/planet”.
How do you prep NPCs and events for a game that is constantly on a move?
Until an NPC has been ‘used’, they can appear anywhere that seems appropriate (and quite a few inappropriate places.) I tie most of mine to one faction or another and factions are everywhere. Similarly with events, until they make the news, they are sleeper agents waiting to do your bidding. You can do that with people as well as things.
For example, Chekhov’s Nuke. I put a live nuclear warhead in the PC’s cargo. I didn’t say a word about that and left it to the PC’s to discover or not. If they found it, they now have a hot potato and a mystery to solve. If they don’t, well, it will be fun when it gets found in customs. Turns out that there was an option C and the damned thing got on the station right past customs. Play to find out, right?
Very bad things did happen, loved ones where lost, and the PCs became big damn heroes for rescuing so many survivors. So now, the cold war between factions is heating up or was it an act of anti-slavery terrorism? [The station that got destroyed belonged to the clone maker Faction.]
The short answer is that PCs are always on the move to places you can anticipate such as stations or as part of a job. In my game, a lot revolves around the ship and the crew which they carry with them. Events like encountering ships and wild jumps can be planned and inserted as needed.
Larp Wellington This system is great for improvisation. I love it for that reason. As Sean Gomes said and as the maxim goes, do broad strokes. Draw maps, leave blanks. We had a session last night that went in very different directions than I had anticipated because I gave the players the reins and “yes-and’ed” to build from what they said.