Leveling Up as a GM (Patreon)

In the last month, I've managed to stretch my GMing skills and feel that excitement of reaching a new level of proficiency at a skill you've practiced for a long time.

I started GMing with StartPlaying.Games last fall, and the Blades in the Dark game I run is nearing its 30th session. In addition, I just ran the sample adventure "Dressed to Kill" from the Candela Obscura quick start guide as a two-parter. Between that and running Valloward, the last few sessions I've run have gone really well and I've been able to go deeper and farther in a few ways.

Of those recent sessions, only the Valloward session was recorded for the public. It turned out to be a pretty good stand-alone episode of the series. Court of Blades: Valloward (Session 9) - https://youtu.be/JBSicAqU4Dc

The two big places where I feel like I've gotten better are in managing consequences and improvising description.

1) Consequences That Hurt

I most frequently run Forged in the Dark rpgs, which (like Powered by the Apocalypse games), don't generally have the GM make rolls. Instead, the GM moves are often activated by the PCs' rolls - creating consequences on a fail or mixed success. Consequences can be any number of things, from introducing new obstacles, escalating the stakes with the existing threats, reduced effect of the character's actions, separating the characters, cutting off an opportunity, harm, and more.

As I've spent more time with FitD games, I've come to lean on consequences outside of harm more often. Advancing a clock that would lead to mission failure, raising the stakes, and so on. In the two-shot of Candela Obscura, one consequence I gave on a Sway roll to deceive an NPC was this - rather than suspecting the PC of lying or having something fishy about them, I went the other way, saying that the PC had something of a disastrous success. Not only did the NPC buy the deception, they insisted that the PC needed to help them and would be responsible for getting them out of the jam that they'd gotten themself into. Rather than a consequence that pushed back on the PC, it was a consequence that pulled them deeper into danger.

And then on the other hand, I had a fun time dealing out harm in session nine of Valloward, using the description of the harm to convey the stakes of the situation and just how terrifying the cause of the harm was. 

It's one thing to say 'this thing is very dangerous' and set up the threat, it's another to follow through on the threat. FitD games are especially good for this, due to the fact that PCs can resist consequences. So for a consequence in a truly desperate situation, the GM can just say "He cuts you in half. Take level 4 harm, Bisected." In this case, the player could mark armor to take the harm down by some amount, and then roll Resistance to reduce it even a bit more. Depending on how much they're able to mitigate, they might end up with level 2 harm, deep gash or level 1 harm, abdomen cut.

The fact that the players can push back on those consequences mean that as the GM, I am not expecting to *actually* kill the character. In fact, PCs in Blades cannot die unless the player wants them or if they're left in a vulnerable situation after going unconscious from maxing out on stress. What that hard swing does, instead, is convey to the players that the character *would* be dead if not for their armor, their exceptional skill at dodging attacks, the protection of their teammate, or whatever else is used to resist the harm. It's the kind of thing where a character gets shot in the chest only to reveal that the bullet hit the locket their beloved gave them before sending the PC off into danger. This spotlights character and player agency, preparation, and the toughness of the characters.

In a storytelling paradigm where hard-won victories feel all that much sweeter than a cake walk, this is a powerful tool. Plus it's fun to come up with wild, evocative harm descriptions.

2) Improvised Description

I'm primarily an improvisational GM. Same as how I am mostly a pantser, doing a bit of prep and then generally trusting my instincts and skills to explore the space and play out the scene. The biggest difference between writing and GMing, for the purposes of this point, is the fact that RPGs are done live and not revised later. There might be some back-and-forth editing in the moment, and the occasional retcon, but generally, the first draft in an RPG is The Thing.

Involved description hasn't been my expertise in fiction, and in rpgs, I often frame scenes more in terms of the people and a rough description of the space rather than something that is more thoroughly vivid. 

My confidence in descriptions was already somewhat uneven. I can drop a vivid fight description quite easily due to having more practice at it in my own writing as well as my martial arts background. But I know less of the specifics for describing clothing, architecture, interior design, and things like that.

But since I GM for a paying audience, one of the things I've tried to do with those games is keep pushing myself to go one step farther, to hit my marks more decisively and thoroughly. Which has meant digging deeper on description. I've found it easier to do this in more overtly fantastic situations, like describing a supernatural vision or, as a player in another game, taking a bit of control of the camera to give an evocative description of my character's actions. If I have a meter or pool of energy for more substantial/evocative descriptions, I've become more confident of when and how to deploy that reserve for maximum effect. 

This has doubtless been assisted by all of the text RPing I've been doing over the last year in a home game where all of the other players are also authors/writers. My character in that game is an interesting juxtaposition between being relatively ineffective at Persuasion/Deception/Charisma things and being eloquent. So, like, speaking in rich imagery and evocative language, but unevenly, awkwardly, and self-consciously. 

So the character can't convince a pack of centaurs that the character's groups are worthy allies due to their prowess because their statement comes out like a threat, but in discussing how they feel boxed in, like they are not more and cannot be more than a living weapon, they can bust out something like:

My people love me, loved me. And I chose this life. A bone can be crafted into the spine of a cart or the cross-beam of a tent just as easily as it can be carved into a sword. But that same bone, once it's been shaved down and sharpened, can not hope to know the joy of hearing the sweet songs lovers sing to one another under the tent from inches above them, working in tandem with a hide to shield them from the sun. A sword cannot know the steadiness of holding up a hundred other pieces and carrying a people's water across the dunes. A sword knows blood and sweat. A whetsone's touch from a loving wielder is not those other things, no matter the depth of the wielder's care."

as pretty much a first draft.

And spending a lot of time writing in and for a character in this mode has, I think, made it easier to feel confident in describing a characters' vision granted to them as they float in an improvised sensory deprivation chamber and then remember enough of what I said an hour later to relate a cut-scene style tag to the session that  shows the vision coming true with more specifics.

Practicing description in different areas than I have been previously comfortable has made it easier to dig in for that deeper description wherever I need it.

And sometimes, brevity is all that's needed. So on a limited result gathering information about a bodyguard, I can say,

"The thing about him is that he isn't a fencer. This man...is a killer."

Conclusion

So it turns out that spending a lot of time on deliberate practice with intention leads to skill development. :P I've been playing and running RPGs for so long that there were times when I was confident in my skills and not especially interested in pushing myself to take one or another part of that skill to the next level. But GMing with Start Playing, running Valloward, and playing in the lots-of-text game referenced above has provided ample opportunity and motivation to push myself. And the results have been very satisfying.