When you run a PbtA game, how much stuff you prepare, how much you wing and how much you you prompt from the players? Both important plot stuff and details? And for context, what ruleset/type of game?
As a PbtA rookie, I’m still trying to find best practices, and am currently running Uncharted Worlds. I think of a general plotline beforehand, but try to let the game run freely & improvise, and have been prompting way less I believe I should, so my games use perhaps 50%/45%/5%. But I’ve already discovered that when I prompt stuff from players, it tends to create an element of moderate or high importance to the game, although the effect tends to have bigger impact in the next session, where I’ve had time to ponder it a bit.
Speaking of preparation, how do you think of puzzles in PbtA games compared to ‘more traditional’ ones?
For me, pretty much 100% prompt from the players: I incorporate the PCs relationships, using what they say about how they know each other, to create the foundation of the game.
Next, I use the first session to ask them leading questions about their lives, from the simple “It’s Tuesday morning; what are you doing?” to the more pressing “You get a message from someone who nearly got you killed six months ago: who is it and what did they do?”
From there, I just keep feeding back what they’ve given me and hitting on what they’ve made their PCs vulnerable to, e.g. find out what the characters care about or rely on and threaten it.
I have occasionally prepared bits of plot for one-off games, but I’ve never yet had to use any of it: reincorporation of the player-created content does the job every time.
I don’t plan a plot line, specifically. Or well, I do, but it’s what would happen if this were a movie with other people as the main characters. Then the PCs come in a muck it all up.
For instance:(actual Uncharted Worlds game prep for tonight) Ambassador Rahgo is known to be an imposter – a vatclone of the real Rahgo. If he doesn’t report in to his employers on Gail Station soon, they’ll know something happened and send search parties. But having just entered Gail Station communication range on the way to deliver the OTHER ambassadors safely, there appear to be other problems – reports coming over the wire of an explosion and possible links to terrorism? And to make matters worse, a communication from the head of your task force asking why you’re off mission and haven’t reported in in a week.
That’s the extent of my prep, except for existing 2-3 line definitions of the pivotal NPCs from last game.
PbtA games vary in their prep time, so basically read whatever book and follow the rules. I’ve run AW and Murderous Ghosts most frequently. For both, my prep involves coming up with some imagery I think is cool and evocative, then showing up and saying ( for AW) “So I’m thinking a deep gorge with several rows of shallow cave-like rooms with like garage doors at the front of them. There’s a gritty rain almost every night and metal ladders and catwalks everywhere, so it smells like damp metal and things rust easy, so everything squeaks constantly. Maybe up on top is really wind-blasted? What do y’all do for drinking water?”
Then I follow the 1st Session rules and make my fronts and stuff after. I pretty much never make straight up puzzles for my PCs to solve; I make unbalanced relationship maps and weird things and stuff that needs addressing, like what do you do with dead bodies or where did that one scout party go and is it worth going after them? Holy cats, do NOT go into AW ( or most PbtA) games with plot points you want to hit. That will only bog you down and mess you up.
Just weighing in my agreement with James. I’m lazy so I usually just ask questions until we know what the world is like. If it’s not an easy scenario to immediately grok (for example Spirit of ’77) then I prepare a basic starter scenario like ‘You just wanted some gum from the carwash but you see some cat with a righteous ‘fro walking out the door with a briefcase that doesn’t go with his jumpsuit and there’s a pair of legs sticking out from behind the counter. What do you do?’ I don’t do puzzles, just calls to action that I can rebound off.
Even Monster of the week doesn’t really do puzzles because let’s face it, they can be frustrating, time consuming and boring. The PC’s are assumed to be competent enough that, if they make the right roll they can sleuth or bumble into the right answer.
If you are uneasy about the seeming lack of structure then I would suggest that you start using timeline or agenda countdown clocks and leave it at that.
Yeah, countdown clocks could make ok puzzles. Like, you have a clock for when the old damn at the top of the canyon finally gives way, and every time there’s an explosion down below or a car chase up top, you tick it forward one and say “there sure is a lot of dust in the air” or “there’s a tiny steady dripping sound coming from somewhere” and show them on the map where it’s coming from. Still, the thing to say is “and the damn’s about to go any day. What do you do?”
First session of most pbta game I do no prep. I think of that session as determining what kind of game the players are interested in. Sometimes this means the first session is just world building and character creation, other times we play some scenes and build from there. It kind of depends on how much time we have and how good of a feel I have for the situation. After the first session, I try to keep prep pretty limited. I might think of how the characters left things off with the npc’s and consider if I should intensify or introduce threats. Maybe I’ll write something down if it’s important. I will often do love letters before a session but I usually try to spend less than 10 minutes on them (they are always done on impulse of ‘it’d be cool it’d this happenned)
I will add that i sometimes I prep ‘beats’ for the game: for example, following on from part one of my online game of The ‘Hood, I now have a note that reads “The Back Seat of the Princess!” It’s a kink in the story that I want to introduce when it feels appropriate, but it’s such a small point that I wrote it down when I thought of it so that I wouldn’t forget it entirely.
These beats are emotional, visual or oral moments that can happen anywhere, somewhere, like Meguey Baker says about preparing cool & evocative imagery. I don’t expect the beat will change which direction the story will go in (though it might) and I don’t demand that I force it into the plot (though it feels like a natural fit with where things have been going so far) but I know, when it occurs, if it occurs, it will resonate with the characters and give the players a little bit more enjoyment of the game.
When I prep, I basically create a list of questions and some cool events (“bangs”) I want to see in the session.
Interesting! I still have a long way to running games in a PbtA way – a lot of burden from 20 years of running more or less prepared games. I can’t help from forming plot ideas when I think of starting point for a game. I think I’ll continue to do some preparations, but If I could keep them limited to threats/countdowns and similar separate components and using mostly material created during the game I’d be doing fine. To get there in practice may take some time… Even if I try to make threats, I immediately have an idea when which move should take place!
I never prep first session.
For second session, I like to prep love letters with custom moves based on what the players threw at me during the intro session.
I think it’s a good way to jump start the PC-NPC-PC triangles and to introduce some mysterious (and unexpected) elements in the setting.
I also prep the outline of a couple of threats, just in case things would move too slowly.
And from there we play to find out what happens.