Skull RPG: Game Masters Tell Your Story

Hey Storytellers,

In today's episode you will hear how Matt can plan a game session in less than 10 minutes and how you might be able to incorporate this into your gaming sessions as well.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

Get the free Tell Your Story course here: https://skullrpgbooks.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1047566/?action=signup

Matt consumes a lot of media and chooses to rely heavily on this knowledge. Learn how to quickly prepare by watching / reading / etc. your favorite concepts and blend them together.

Learn how to do NPC character creation on the fly as well. By basing characters on known characters you can quickly let the players fill in their back story.

Hey Storytellers,

In this episode we discuss several ways to handle the party if it decides to split up. Never split the party is a rule for many but even then the rogue scouts ahead sometimes and now you have one player in the spot light and the rest of the party hiding around the corner in case a trap goes off or is found.

Get the free Tell Your Story course here: https://skullrpgbooks.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1047566/?action=signup

Get Your Game On Book - how to run 19 different adventures in your game session: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NQ38H2K

Listen to the episode to here how to handle the rogue scouting ahead and still keep the rest of the group engaged.

We even cover how to run an entire campaign if your players aren't playing as a cohesive team. We played this in Vampire: The Masquerade where the players weren't the same clan and spent about 90% of their time working toward a goal but from different angles.

 Hey Storytellers,

In this episode and the next one, Jacob asks Matt (first) and Dwight (second) to build a game campaign with no prep. Jacob asks us to create a three scene campaign for a Drow war.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

Get Your Game On Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NQ38H2K

Dwight has the upper world invading the Underdark because a Drow leader is uniting the warring clans. Act 1 explores hearing these rumors and leveling up. Act 2 involves more espionage to figure out who the Drow leader is and see if allies in the Underdark could be found.  Act 3 was the war between the Drow and those on the surface of the world. The aftermath of the campaign and ideas for a new campaign are also explored.

Give the episode a listen to see that creating a game campaign doesn't have to be scary or take a long time. 

Hey Storytellers,

In this episode and the next one, Jacob asks Matt (first) and Dwight (second) to build a game campaign with no prep. Jacob asks us to create a three scene campaign for a Drow war.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

Get Your Game On Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NQ38H2K

Matt tackles this from the viewpoint of figuring out there is a Drow scout party that is discovered at the end of act 1. At the end of act 2 the heroes have gathered legendary weapons and allies to fight the war with the Drow. Act 3 is the war.

Give the episode a listen to see that creating a game campaign doesn't have to be scary or take a long time.

Hey Storytellers,

We have a guest game master today to talk about how he weaves multiple ideas from different media sources into his games.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

Get the free Tell Your Story course here: https://skullrpgbooks.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1047566/?action=signup

Matt Burch has a totally different take on how to be a game master than I do. In his games he likes to braid together three or four different concepts from media that he has consumed.

He consumes a lot of media so he has a big foundation to build on. He also isn't afraid to have the players know what he is drawing from. In fact, he counts on it.

Listen to the episode to get some great ideas on how to quickly pull together a game session if you find you are stuck coming up with one.

Another way to not be stuck is to check out our book: Get Your Game On - 19 tabletop RPG adventure ideas to run in any game system today.

Hey Storytellers,

Learn how to build up notable NPC's in your game world for a town that your players will be located in for several months. Breath life into their home town.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

Get the free Tell Your Story course here: https://skullrpgbooks.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1047566/?action=signup

After tackling that aspect we cover how well known the player characters will be based on their level.

At high levels, the characters would be famous (or infamous) in their world. Even a hundred years later their characters could still be known. This would be a fun addition if you play in the same world.

The concepts we cover help you flesh out your world and make it a living thing. Check out the episode for several other ideas to make this happen in your world.

Hey Storytellers,

Today we are going to talk about how to plan a world in chunks so you don't go crazy trying to get ready for your campaign.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

Get the free Tell Your Story course here: https://skullrpgbooks.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1047566/?action=signup

Think of your RPG like a procedurally generated video game. If you have played Minecraft they don't generate everything in the world.

Take this concept into your game planning. If you are starting at level one they can't explore more than 50 miles outside of their home town. So you may need to know what is in the haunted forest, the cave system, and the farms nearby.

This is a different way of thinking than plotting out the 7 kingdoms, with their liege lords and their banners and lesser banners. I am not building out parts of the world they may never see. I should have the world planned to the extent that I know there are 7 kingdoms and I know the ruler of the kingdom we are starting in, but overall I will spend my time on the area the players are in or could be in shortly.

Also if you are interested in our fantasy locations / npc names / tavern and place name generator / 100+ premade maps. https://skullrpg.com/fantasy

Hey Storytellers,

Because of Tolkien's influence on RPG's (and countless other video games and books) many game masters feel like they have to write a tome or multi-volume set in order to tell their game.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

Get the free Tell Your Story course here: https://skullrpgbooks.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1047566/?action=signup

Instead of writing a 17 page back story tell your players enough information about the world so they know if there are any prohibited classes or a common enemy. So if they will be fighting a standard type of enemy (undead, goblinoid, demons, etc.) then your players need to know.

If you want to tell a cool story you don't need to write the Similarian to support book one of the Lord of the Rings, or have the Wookiepedia fleshed out to tell the story of Luke Skywalker.

I would say scale that back, unless you really want your players to know that. Then I would have them play out a game session (or many) so that they could uncover that backstory in a way that impacted their day-to-day world and not a blurb in your novella you handed them 8 months ago.

Give the episode a listen for more ideas on this to save you time and energy.

Hey Storytellers,

Have you ever thought to yourself, I wish we could play in the [insert movie or book] world? Well today we will discuss how to do that effectively.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

Get the free Tell Your Story course here: https://skullrpgbooks.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1047566/?action=signup

The first rule of playing in LOTR / GOT / Harry Potter / Star Wars / etc. is to NOT play as the characters in the story. If you are playing the story as written, first of all there is little storytelling, but what if one of your key scenes goes horribly wrong? What if the player that is running Frodo Baggins dies at Weathertop before even getting to the Council of Elrond and the ring is taken by the Naz Ghul? There literally goes your entire campaign.

Instead play before or after the events of the book/movie, or if everyone really wants to play during the same time frame put them somewhere else in the world where they can do good and anything that happens to them is technically already figured into the story they are familiar with.

The LOTR War in the North game is a good example of this. You are keeping evil at bay in the northern part of the continent. You are helping the heroes of LOTR but they don't know it and your help is indirect.

If you wanted to play in the Harry Potter universe you could play as ministers of magic that are hunting down Death Eaters during the timeline of the 7 books for example.

Listen to the episode for more tips.

Hey Storytellers,

After discussing the types of gaming groups it made sense to classify the players as well. Some players need a hand up, others might need a private conversation, and others might need the game master to find out how to engage the player back into the game.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

Get the free Tell Your Story course here: https://skullrpgbooks.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1047566/?action=signup

We cover about 7 or 8 different types of players in this episode. Give it a listen to see if you have a player that might be disrupting your game but could easily be steered toward another course of action.