Hey Storytellers,

Today we cover the wonderful game of Shadowrun. If you want futuristic Dungeons and Dragons with some Oceans 11 - 13 and Italian Job thrown in? Well play Shadowrun.

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Check out our new book - 19 RPG Adventures for Game Masters to Run in any TTRPG: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NQ38H2K

Pros: 
Cyberpunk themed
Heist themed
Can still play an elf / dwarf / orc who can now hack the really cool internet of the future
One book is enough to play and run a game (same book)
Not as steep of a learning curve

Cons:
If you don't like cyberpunk 
If you don't like heists
Enemies are other people (90% of the time) and heavy lift on Game Master
Not a lot of premade modules

Hey Storytellers,

Today we cover how Dungeons and Dragons works for both 3.5 and 5 editions as a part of a new series on RPG systems.

Check out our courses for Game Masters: https://skullrpgbooks.vipmembervault.com/

Check out our new book - 19 RPG Adventures for Game Masters to Run in any TTRPG: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NQ38H2K

We started playing TTRPG's with D&D 3.5 and it is the gold standard for games.

Pros:
Everyone has heard of it
Lots of supplemental help (podcasts / books / YouTube / courses)

Cons:
3 Books to become a GM
Game Mat
Wet-Erase Markers (NOT WHITEBOARD MARKERS!!!)
Miniatures (The reason I bought a Resin 3-D Printer and some Kickstarters / Patreon Sub)
Even more things to buy (did you check out our book and courses above? Sorry couldn't resist)
Can be a huge learning curve to pickup

Hey Storytellers,

Today we are going to cover power vacuums outside of a dungeon setting. We covered dungeon power vacuums on November 16th in Dungeon Crawl with a twist in your RPG (https://www.buzzsprout.com/1367386/6381820-dungeon-crawl-with-a-twist-in-your-rpg.mp3?blob_id=26621521&download=true).

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

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Instead, we are discussing what happens if your players remove certain people, armies or even entire cities or kingdoms in your RPG.

How can you use the conclusion of a great campaign with an epic story and ending to build a new world maybe 20 - 100 years later? By figuring out what will rise to power to fill the vacuum that the players have now caused you can create some fantastic stories that build upon one another in the same world for years or even decades.

Hey Storytellers,

In this episode, we are going to cover a handful of tips and tricks that can be very helpful to keeping control of your game.

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

I (Dwight) was running a game when my brother-in-law (Matt) dominated a monster that basically had 5 attacks a round. It broke my game plain and simple.

Listen to how I recovered and how you can implement strategies in your game to prevent this from happening to you.

Hey Storytellers,

Sometimes you need a good hook to get your players to another location to move the game forward.

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I have seen two types of players: 1) Those that love to create and role-play their character or 2) Those that barely come up with the name of their own character, let alone their character's backstory.

It seems easy to use a player's backstory as a hook to move your game forward if your players have a backstory, but what do you do if your players barely have their own name memorized?

That is what we talk about in this episode and the answer is pretty simple - if they don't give you a backstory then the game master can create one.  Yes, we even talk about how to do this if all of your players say they were orphans with no friends.

Hey Storytellers,

If you are looking at a campaign that has key events happening in the future you may want to consider a timeline in your RPG.

For 19 different adventures to use in your RPG (no matter the system) check out our book "Get Your Game On" on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NQ38H2K

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

How do you set this up? Well, you take out a piece of paper or word document and you create your major events if your players were not in the world. Then I start the ball rolling with the players starting out in the campaign.

Give us a listen for how to incorporate this into your game and how to be flexible when the players change your timeline, because that is the entire point of the timeline.

Hey Storytellers,

Too many times we feel like we have to tell the entire story, but if you look at media it is ideal to skip the boring parts and that means starting close to the action.

Learn 19 different adventures you can put into your RPG - works with any system - check out our new book Get Your Game On here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NQ38H2K

In this episode we talk about how you can skip the boring parts in your game to engage your players better. We suggest you skip long monologues, show don't tell. If they need to know what happened in the long council meeting just inform them afterwards with one or two lines from an NPC.

Think about possibly skipping scenes to get to the next conflict. Stories are driven by conflict and resolving conflict. Conflict doesn't mean combat, but it can. 

Hey Storytellers,

Ever wonder how you can make your RPG game sessions more interesting? Well add variety to them.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

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

In today's episode we talk about how movies and your games keep you interested. Harry Potter in the first book uses about 6 different things to keep the final act interesting.

You could do this in your game session by looking at different types of adventures (see our podcast for those or pick up our book on Amazon (Get Your Game On: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NQ38H2K) for 19 different ideas you could mix and match in your RPG session.

Hey Storytellers,

Welcome to the last part of how to plan a game session in minutes. Matt reveals his totally different way of planning RPG game sessions.

Learn more at https://skullrpg.com

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Learn about how sometimes great stories you come up with may not be able to be told by you (yet). It isn't bad to scale down your ideas to something you can actually handle.

Game of Thrones has almost 3,000 named characters!!!! Maybe you only name 12 people and scale it down so that you can actually tell the story you want to tell. Maybe focus on one small part of the world.

Don't feel bad about incorporating NPC's that people will recognize, but don't feel like you need to bring in the plot points that that NPC has in the media, but rather his characteristics.

Finally we end on tips for engaging your players.

Hey Storytellers,

Continuing our 3 part how to create a game in minutes.

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 shares that you should start a game in the genre of the media you are most consuming at the moment - or switch to that genre so that you can quickly create a game campaign and individual game sessions.

Learn how to look at modern media and ask how to change this up if it was going to be an RPG.

We explore Stranger Things and GOT at length in this episode.