Campaign Mastery

Writing – Adventures, Fiction, & Non-Fiction,

This section focusses on the process of writing, and in particular, of writing for RPGs.

• The Campaign Pacing subsection of the Campaign Plotting page can be relevant to other forms of writing, including Fiction.

• Melodramatic License: Drama in RPGs – Drama vs Melodrama and their roles in an RPG.
• Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe? – I apply the principles of good software design to work out how the perfect game mechanics for a tabletop RPG should be constructed. There’s interesting discussion in the comments.
• One word at a time: How I (usually) write a Blog Post – This article describes the process I usually use to write. I had been asked a number of times how I manage to write as much as I do, and how I keep it all organized – here are the answers, so that you can do it, too. I use variations on the same process for writing everything from Novels to RPG Adventures.
• Good Storytelling Technique Or Bad? – Chekhov’s Gun and RPGs – I consider the application of the literary principle commonly known as “Chekhov’s Gun” to RPGs and conclude that it doesn’t necessarily apply in practice (though it does in spirit) due to the unique nature of the genre. Along the way, I offer a listing (and analysis) of what I consider to be ‘Good Writing’ for an RPG. The eight items I list may not be exhaustive, but they’re a good start. This article should be useful for anyone who adapts RPG adventures into another literary form (short story, game report, etc) and anyone attempting to adapt a traditional work into an RPG adventure. Again, there’s some interesting discussion of the issues in the comments.
• Adventure Structure: My Standard Formatting – I describe the standard format and nonclemanture that I have evolved for writing the adventures that I run. Also deals with prep management. In the comments I describe how much game prep I do and how long it takes me to write an adventure.
• Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity – I consider professionalism when it comes to blogging, and the implications of inspiration when it conflicts with that value. I then apply the question to game prep and show how to employ top-down design principles to the problem, illustrating the process that I use to plan my game prep. Which is the same process that I use to plan my Holidays, writing, TV viewing, shopping… you name it. You might find it useful, too.
• The Seven Strata Of Story – Any narrative – including RPG adventures – consists of multiple layers working together to tell the overall story. Giving PCs their independence from the central author (the GM) simply adds another layer, or perhaps a sub-layer. This article breaks down these layers of story, shows the relationships between them, and how they can be exploited or enhanced to improve the game – or the story, in any other medium – for everyone.
• Ghosts Of Blogs Past: An Air Of Mystery – Using an RPG to write mystery fiction – I resurrect an article from my 2006 personal blog to reverse the usual process (adapting fiction to an RPG) to argue why mystery writers should use RPGs to develop their plots.
• The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs – How to use descriptive language more effectively when conveying information about a location or event to the PCs. With a fictional D&D city invented just to serve as an example.
• Adjectivizing Descriptions: Hitting the target – I offer a seventh entry into the Blog Carnival with practical advice on How to describe locations, especially Wonders.
• Epigrams Of Life and Gaming: Selection #2 – Some of these are more directly gaming related, which only made it more surprising that these articles did not seem very popular on the website. I might bring them back as an occasional “extra post”, because I fervently believe there’s some good stuff here. In this particular post, there are insights about Genres, Writing, Randomness in real life, and Values, amongst others.
• If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis – You may be wondering what a synopsis from my superhero campaign’s archives is doing in this section. In a nutshell, this takes what is essentially a fantasy idea, wraps it in a classic sci-fi trope, adds a new perspective on life if you could shrink to a quantum scale, and makes the whole thing palatable in a sci-fi or superhero context. The quantum stuff alone makes it worth including, never mind the implied example of how to “retool” ideas from one genre to another.
• Writing The Game: Using RPGs to Create Fiction – As soon as a non-writer discovers what RPGs are about, they immediately seem to think of using them to write. I examine the notion – the benefits, the pitfalls, and the verdict, which was borne out by those with far more experience as a fiction writer than I have.
• The Expert In Everything? – I may sometimes give the impression of being an expert in everything. Such an impression is a long way from reality, but being a good GM means knowing how to fake it. In this article, I share my quick-fire research techniques, how I build up layers of expertise in a looong list of subjects, the techniques I employ to look more educated than I am (while behind the metaphoric GM screen), and how to use technobabble and how to misuse it to further enhance your credibility as an expert. I even show how to get out of trouble when confronted with someone who really knows the subject.
• Rat On A Stick – In remembrance of Terry Pratchett – I discuss the work of Pratchett in general terms, contrasting it with that of Robert Asprin and Douglas Adams and Monty Python; discuss the problems that the “Clacks Code” suggestion of memorializing Terry will (in some cases, did!) entail, and conclude by drawing a fundamental connection to RPGs.
• Traditional Interpretations and Rituals Of Culture – Using traditions as plot mechanics and ways to impart background and verisimilitude by stealth.
• Getting Into Character pt 1: NPCs – If your characterization is too deep, you’ll never be able to retain it when the time comes to quickly step in-and-out of character. In this article, I offer 7 techniques for getting into character as an NPC, and they all come down to extracting key points and simplifying either the characterization or the situation in some way. But the article goes beyond that, discussing how to use plot to show off the characterization and uniqueness of the individual, and how to use characterization to solve some plot problems..
• The Challenge Of Writing Adventures for RPGs – I look at the reasons why RPGs make for the most difficult literary challenge there is. The final paragraph addresses Burnout.
• The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies – Using conflicting prophetic techniques to generate history and settings. Followed by a brief review of a Kickstarter that, unfortunately, didn’t make its funding target, “Fortune’s Wheel The Game”.
• Lessons from the Literary Process – takes quotes from a half-hour TV show about writing and the Literary Process and examines the RPG applicability and relevance, and how the RPG writing process differs from the literary. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it all comes down to confidence, so I then examine that in some detail, listing for substantial reasons for even a beginning GM to feel confident, and a way out if none of the four helps in your current situation. Note: the source TV show had 13 parts (but the channel went belly-up half-way through showing it), the article is a standalone item, not the start of a series.
• Visualizing what’s going on is a critical GM skill, but any reasonable list of exactly what’s involved makes the task seem almost impossible.Obviously, it’s not, but beginners can be overwhelmed at first. With experience, we develop new techniques that are far more efficient and effective, so subtly and gradually that we’re hardly aware of it happening. Which makes it kinda hard to study other GMs’ techniques. In I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization, I detail (with examples and an exercise for the reader) the six techniques that I use to develop and manage my visualizations, how to translate them into description, and the big differences (aside from being able to try different things to see whether or not they work) that doing it in advance makes vs improv.

Research

Writers often need to find information in a hurry. When you’re a GM prepping a campaign or an adventure, that requirement is often squared and sometimes cubed.

• The Expert In Everything? – I may sometimes give the impression of being an expert in everything. Such an impression is a long way from reality, but being a good GM means knowing how to fake it. In this article, I share my quick-fire research techniques, how I build up layers of expertise in a looong list of subjects, the techniques I employ to look more educated than I am (while behind the metaphoric GM screen), and how to use technobabble and how to misuse it to further enhance your credibility as an expert. I even show how to get out of trouble when confronted with someone who really knows the subject.
• Phase 4: Development from the “New Beginnings” series – Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major “bones” of the campaign skeleton.
• Part 1 of the Basics For Beginners series, Beginnings, details what you really need before you start, with exercises to help you develop it if you don’t have it. Re-reading it, I was struck by how down-to-earth the advice was on Roleplaying NPCs (it’s harder than roleplaying a PC), Rules Knowledge, Materials requirements, How often you play, how long a game session will be, game complexity & continuity, explaining the fantastic in-game, setting aside time for research and self-improvement, resources and how to accumulate them, and giving yourself permission to fail. One example needs to be excerpted and echoed: Don’t try to make your dream campaign your first campaign.
• Ask The GMs: The GMs Help Network – Where does a GM go for help and advice? I discuss the history of GM connectedness from GM Bull sessions through to social media before creating a list of places where a GM could go for advice in a reasonable time-frame (read: a couple of days or less). Most of the advice contained in this post is still 100% accurate – the one thing that stood out is that these days FBook won’t even show you all the posts that you’re specifically tagged in, just the ones that IT thinks you are mostly likely to interact with. That’s a good thing – just because I liked a movie or a book or a TV series or whatever doesn’t mean that I want my FB timeline to be filled with posts about it, and you are still more likely to get a quick response through Twitter. I’m listing this in all the categories for which help has been asked and seen to have been recieved in recent years through my Twitter account, and redundancy be damned.
• Oddities Of Values: Recalculating the price of valuables – This article starts off talking about currency conversions and getting a ‘feel’ for the price of things in a pulp campaign using modern currency values. It then defines a pair of new “units of currency”, NTDs and Ms – “NTD”s is “Nineteen Thirties US Dollars” and “M”s are “Modern US $”. These are necessary because many of the values that we have recorded are from different time periods – our main sourcebook only goes up to 2005, for example, and there’s been significant changes since then. We then turn to the pressing question that sparked the discussion – How big is a LOT of money, say, M100 million? In Pulp Campaign currency? In large bills? (The answer is, 122 lb and the size of a large suitcase). I then look at the same value in Gold, which works out to 16.6 TONS of gold; and diamonds (7.7 lb of 1-carat diamonds, or a stack 3 inches by three inches and 2 1/4 feet tall. Unfortunately, by now, most readers seemed to have decided that there was no value in the article for them because they hand-waved encumbrance in their campaigns. This is shortsighted – even ignoring the encumbrance issue, don’t you want to know how many rubies can fit in that pot? But it was at this point that the article took a turn to the left, relative to where I had expected it to go, by looking at the rarity of larger gemstones, game treasure tables (especially those in D&D / Pathfinder), and how to value them. I also look at Collectable Coins, other Collectables, Art, and Land, then devise a fast and simple universal system for deriving valuations for these things for any game system, regardless of genre or commodity. Along the way, I look at three die rolling methods for generating rare high values and routine middle-to-low values. There’s also a discussion of how to use the system as a tool for delivering campaign background information in an interesting way. So those who tuned out early missed out on a LOT of meat.
• A Campaign Mastery 750th-post Celebration includes advice from a host of GMs on just about every subject as the climax of the party (and some from stragglers in the comments). So I’m listing it at the start of each page, as well as a handful of places where specific content warrants inclusion. In addition to that massive pile of great advice, there’s the usual analysis of blog performance, hints at the coming mega-series “The Essential Reference Library For Pulp And Others” (referred to as ‘Project X’, and an “interview” aimed at helping Beginners get the maximum from Campaign Mastery.

Writer’s Block

There’s nothing worse for a writer than sitting at his technology of choice, ready to inscribe, and the words just won’t come – or, almost as bad, the ones that do flow are absolute rubbish, limp and uninspred. This is called Writer’s Block, and some writers have been known to suffer from it for months or even years. GMs who have players arriving next week don’t have that luxury (and neither does anyone else on a deadline); we have to produce, and don’t have time for Writer’s Block. These are the techniques that I have developed for solving that problem in the minimum possible time, with the minimum possible fuss.

• Cure DM Writer’s Block with a Map – Johnn offers a solution to writer’s block.
• ‘There Is A Hole In Your Mind…’: Solving Mental Block – I describe a basic technique for solving mental block. This is NOT one of the solutions I offered in my series “Breaking Through Writer’s Block” (because I had already described it here).
• A tabula rasa – focusing the mind before writing – In response to the question, “How do you clear your mind before writing?” I wrote this article. Hint: I focus the mind, I don’t clear it.
• Ask The GMs: The GMs Help Network – Where does a GM go for help and advice? I discuss the history of GM connectedness from GM Bull sessions through to social media before creating a list of places where a GM could go for advice in a reasonable time-frame (read: a couple of days or less). Most of the advice contained in this post is still 100% accurate – the one thing that stood out is that these days FBook won’t even show you all the posts that you’re specifically tagged in, just the ones that IT thinks you are mostly likely to interact with. That’s a good thing – just because I liked a movie or a book or a TV series or whatever doesn’t mean that I want my FB timeline to be filled with posts about it, and you are still more likely to get a quick response through Twitter. I’m listing this in all the categories for which help has been asked and seen to have been recieved in recent years through my Twitter account, and redundancy be damned.

The “Breaking Through Writer’s Block” series

This 6-part series takes the premise that different kinds of content actually resulted in different kinds of writers block – and that by getting more specific about the problem, a multitude of solutions to the problem can be developed. Even people who thought they never suffered from Writer’s Block had discovered otherwise by the end of the series, much to their surprise. Many of these solutions are tried-and-true techniques that I have used for years. Plus I give away a heap of ideas in the form of examples.

• Part One identified 19 types of writer’s block in a number of broad categories, and offered solutions to the phenomenon most commonly associated with the term – what I call “Blank Page Syndrome”.
  
• There are 7 primary types of writer’s block besides “Blank Page Syndrome”. Part Two offers solutions to the first three of them Conceptual blocks, Specific-Scene Blocks, and Setting Blocks.
  
• Part Three then addresses two more of the remaining primary types of writer’s block: Action and Personality Blocks.
  
• In Part Four, I wrap up the Primary types of writer’s block with solutions to Dialogue Block and Narrative Block.
  
• Part Five Discusses translation blocks, also known as transition blocks, and shows that the solutions already provided work just fine – if you have plenty of time to implement them. But, when you need a solution in a hurry, this article will come to your rescue with emergency solutions to five subtype types.
  
• Which leaves five more to be covered in Part Six, plus a solution to another type of problem, “Crowding Blocks”, and some final advice on the subject.

Burnout

Writer’s Block is an intellectual issue, as Writing is an exercise of the intellect. Burnout is something worse – it’s an emotional state of malaise in which you just don’t care what you are doing anymore, at best you’re being propelled forward by routines, your output is a cross between garbage and distillation of laziness, and if you were to give up the whole thing tomorrow, it wouldn’t bother you. Writers are supposed to be, even need to be, passionate about writing to find satisfaction in the tedious process of putting one word after another to create something greater by several orders of magnitude than the sum of its parts, and polishing, and refining, and correcting, and editing, and… Burnout is the absence or dissipation of that passion. When it strikes, you are no longer a writer. Not until you find a solution, anyway.

See also the Stress & Exhaustion Section of the GMing Page.

• Lassitude is not Burnout – Sometimes we all feel flat and uninspired. Here’s my cure.
• The Challenge Of Writing Adventures for RPGs – I look at the reasons why RPGs make for the most difficult literary challenge there is. The final paragraph addresses Burnout.
• Ask The GMs: The GMs Help Network – Where does a GM go for help and advice? I discuss the history of GM connectedness from GM Bull sessions through to social media before creating a list of places where a GM could go for advice in a reasonable time-frame (read: a couple of days or less). Most of the advice contained in this post is still 100% accurate – the one thing that stood out is that these days FBook won’t even show you all the posts that you’re specifically tagged in, just the ones that IT thinks you are mostly likely to interact with. That’s a good thing – just because I liked a movie or a book or a TV series or whatever doesn’t mean that I want my FB timeline to be filled with posts about it, and you are still more likely to get a quick response through Twitter. I’m listing this in all the categories for which help has been asked and seen to have been recieved in recent years through my Twitter account, and redundancy be damned.

Descriptions

Novelists can spend pages on a description, if necessary. Script-writers expect costume and production designers to do that work for them, or don’t even have to bother, in the case of those writing for non-visual media. Those who write non-fiction are rarely called upon to satisfy in this area, though they sometimes do as though they were writing a novel. As fiction shortens, the scope for description also compresses – novellas have slightly less room than novels, short stories have a lot less, and short-short stories have no room for anything not absolutely essential to the plot. RPGs are somewhere in between short stories and short-short stories in this regard – and yet, we expect to populate them with entire worlds of people and objects. Descriptions are the vehicles for telling the players what’s “there”.

See also “The Secrets Of Stylish Narrative” in the “Writing Narrative” section below.

• Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs – after exploring what Negative Space is in art & layout design, mounting brief excursions into Optical Illusions and Eyewitness Testimony along the way, I examine the benefits and pitfalls of leaving things out in eight areas of RPGs: Narrative, Descriptions, Characterization, Maps, Adventures, NPCs, Rules, and Campaign Planning.
• Writing to the limits of longevity – As GMs, we have to do a lot of writing. Every minute spent writing more than is needed is time wasted forever. Therefore, it makes sense to adjust the way you write to match the longevity that you need that writing to posess. I divide time into three general categories – short-term, medium-term, and long-term/forever – analyze the differences and potential problems (with as many real examples as I could sneak in), and then offer practical advice on how best to write for that degree of longevity. Even experienced writers usually find something of value in this article, because there are some mistakes that we all make, learn from, forget, and then make again.
• Ergonomics and the Non-human – As the title suggests, this shows simple techniques for applying the principles of ergonomics to non-human physiologies, showing how everything from furniture to staircases is affected. Elves are studied as an example.
• By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – After foolishly mentioning the possibility in “Ergonomics and the Non-human” (above), I got lots of requests for giving Dwarves the same treatment. One reason I was readily persuadable was that while many races (including Elves) had been featured in the Orcs And Elves series (see the subsection below), Dwarves weren’t one of them. One day there will be a part three, applying the principles to Octopoidal creatures, and maybe even a part four looking at Kobolds.
• Stream Of Consciousness: Image-based narrative – This article describes how to use Google Image Search to flesh out location descriptions so much that you need never be caught without specific details again. The feature image is not only on-point but demonstrates what can be done with some simple photoshopping.
• Studs, Buttons, and Static Cling: Creating consistent non-human tech – This is the second article for the November 2014 Blog Carnival. I contend that GMs underestimate the value of giving alien/non-human races technology an appropriate but unique look-and-feel, and set about providing a technique to remedy the shortfall with minimal effort. This article deliberately applies itself to Fantasy and Superhero campaigns as well as Sci-Fi. It identifies five fundamental principles that should apply, then provides a step-by-step process for creating the right look-and-feel for a race by using those principles.
• The Gradated Diminishing Of Reality – Travel in FRPG – The players want to get to the interesting stuff, the GM wants them to feel what the world around the PCs is like, to immerse them in its colors and textures, and to make them feel like their characters are part of that world and not simply passing through. Over time, a series of level-based compromises has evolved (this article is specifically about D&D / Pathfinder and similar level-based games) in which both sides get some of what they want – and in which the GM gets compensated for giving in to the players, whether they realize that or not.
• Taking advantage of the sensory heirarchy – This article was prompted by the invitation of Campaign Coins to review a kickstarter campaign they had underway at the time – a successful one, raising more than US$150,000. The article starts with the flat statement that there is a hierarchy of human senses, and that the wily GM can take advantage of it. I then step through that hierarchy, starting with the weakest senses and proceeding to the most powerful, pointing out along the way that the ease of working with these senses at the gaming table also increases as you go up the scale. Under the sense of hearing, I provide a list of resources about Oratory, some free, others links to the option to purchase. I also discuss the use of audio backdrops and campaign soundtracks. There’s a sight trick in the relevant category but for the most part, I simply refer people to other dedicated articles I’ve written on the subject. Finally, I discuss several ways of using props to engage the tactile sense before reviewing the kickstarter campaign that started the whole train of thought. There’s another product mentioned in the comments for those interested in the campaign soundtrack part of the article.
• Part 2 of the Basics For Beginners series, Creation, could be more accurately entitled ‘creativity’. It starts by positing the proposition that the need for creativity is overrated when it comes to entertainment, including RPGs, and then go on to discuss 8 areas of creativity and how to fake being more innovative and creative than you are in each of them. The areas are Monsters (with a new monster as an example), Maps, Places (and place descriptions, with a training exercise), Adventures (very superficially), NPCs (ditto), Dialogue and expression (i.e. the presentation of the dialogue – one is the content being delivered by a statement, the other is the the style in which it is delivered), and Descriptions. I then look at the pitfalls that creativity can open up beneath the feet of a GM, which leads me back to the subjects of New Monsters, making maps, and creating locations. I conclude the article with a couple of pieces of general advice that never go out of fashion – “The Players Come First” and “Keep It Practical”.
• Visualizing what’s going on is a critical GM skill, but any reasonable list of exactly what’s involved makes the task seem almost impossible.Obviously, it’s not, but beginners can be overwhelmed at first. With experience, we develop new techniques that are far more efficient and effective, so subtly and gradually that we’re hardly aware of it happening. Which makes it kinda hard to study other GMs’ techniques. In I see with my little mind’s eye: The power of Visualization, I detail (with examples and an exercise for the reader) the six techniques that I use to develop and manage my visualizations, how to translate them into description, and the big differences (aside from being able to try different things to see whether or not they work) that doing it in advance makes vs improv.
• When I create a building, there are six questions that I use to visualize it from blank page to ready-to-describe. These are simple enough that the answers can be determined on-the-spot in improvized play. Part of the secret of the power of the questions is the order in which they are considered and the impact that they have in both practical and stylistic terms. Those six questions are what Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration is all about, but the value of the technique doesn’t end there – interpreting a little more metaphorically and deciding that walls are an unnecessary detail permits the creation of any space, such as a forest clearing, using the same six questions. And treating them a little less literally again lets you use the same questions to create an encounter and build a plot and context around it.

Writing Narrative

Narrative is description of events and moods and atmosphere and facts and figures. It stands apart from Description because its relationship with other forms of literary media is different – narrative is far more ubiquitous. The problem is, once again, the need to compress information into a very small space, one that has been made smaller by the invasion of descriptions.

• Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs – after exploring what Negative Space is in art & layout design, mounting brief excursions into Optical Illusions and Eyewitness Testimony along the way, I examine the benefits and pitfalls of leaving things out in eight areas of RPGs: Narrative, Descriptions, Characterization, Maps, Adventures, NPCs, Rules, and Campaign Planning.
• An Experimental Failure – 10 lessons from a train-wreck Session – If you’re human, you make mistakes. If you’re a fair or better GM, you learn from them. Better still, you can learn from the mistakes of others. This article (and the discussion in the subsequent comments) is one big mea culpa on my part (and on behalf of my Pulp GM) for a total trainwreck of a game session. I detail what went wrong, why it happened, what could have been done to avert the trainwreck and why it wasn’t, what was done to get the campaign back on track, and conclude with ten lessons that I (and any reader) can take out of the experience, including what early warning signs were there to see but were ignored. In the comments, there’s a discussion between myself and one of the most-affected players, extending several of the threads mentioned above. How effective were the lessons identified? This was more than four years ago, as I compile the Blogdex, and not only is the campaign still running (with the same GMs) but the same player is still a regular. Now remember that the trainwreck was supposedly a bigger-than-life adventure to celebrate the campaign’s tenth anniversary…
• Stealth Narrative – Imputed info in your game – This builds on the techniques described in the Secrets Of Stylish Narrative series to further compress, compact, and polish narrative by sneaking it into other parts of the game. There are considerable side-benefits that result. One small section discusses perception / spot checks and when it’s least-disruptive to the game to request them.
• Part 1 of the Basics For Beginners series, Beginnings, details what you really need before you start, with exercises to help you develop it if you don’t have it. Re-reading it, I was struck by how down-to-earth the advice was on Roleplaying NPCs (it’s harder than roleplaying a PC), Rules Knowledge, Materials requirements, How often you play, how long a game session will be, game complexity & continuity, explaining the fantastic in-game, setting aside time for research and self-improvement, resources and how to accumulate them, and giving yourself permission to fail. One example needs to be excerpted and echoed: Don’t try to make your dream campaign your first campaign.

The “Secrets Of Stylish Narrative” series

This is a six-part series devoted to improving the ability of a GM to describe people, places, things, events… in fact, anything in the game. This directly fosters gerater engagement by players, and maximises play for a given playing time. I describe this as a masterclass in the subject, and I like to think that it delivers on that promise. Certainly, I got a lot of kudos from various quarters (including professional writers) at the time! Note that these should all be read in as big a gulp as possible, at least the first time around; getting an overview and the broader principles will get you half-way home! The other half requires work….

• Part one, Polished Loquacity, looks at the benefits afforded by adequate prep time, summing them up into a single general benefit comprising four more specific forms of improvement over improvizing the same adventure. I then show (through patient examples) that the most common and efficient approaches to narrative and adventure design are lousy at conveying narrative or even forming the building blocks. More efficient narrative is not more detailed narrative! I then offer the same example rewritten in a stylish way; it’s a fraction of the length and far more functional. I then analyze the differences, to show the benefits that the series is promising to deliver.
  
• Part two, Bullet To The Point, defines the difference between the examples and begins describing the detailed process of creation of great narrative, presenting steps 1 through 30 in as practical a method as possible – I even tell you when you must take a break to clear your mind in order to achieve optimum results with optimum efficiency. In include sidebars on style, efficiency, OH&S, and being adequately rested.
  
• Part three, Words, Like Raindrops, Fall, deals with steps 31-56. There are sidebars on acting and the portrayal of character, using Longhand or Typewriters instead of a word processor, and the benefits of collaboration.
  
• Part four, The Impact Of Polished Text, was originally intended to conclude the article – but my perfectionism, and some promises made along the way, wouldn’t permit that. I start with some examples that should have been included in the previous part before examining the implications and consequences of producing better, more effective, more stylish narrative – including the downsides, which can be considerable if you aren’t prepared for them. I then look at integrating Sandboxing and making the process more directly relevant to RPGs – the entire process is impacted, from designing the adventure through to final prep. I finally estimate how long the entire process will take you, finding that the efficiencies of the process are such that about 6 hours prep gets you enough adventure for 6-12 hours play – which is comparable to doing things the bad old way.
  
• Part five, Pearls Of Spontaneous Prose, deals with improving the in-game delivery of narrative, including how to improv better narrative. There are 12 exercises that can help improve narrative and delivery skills, and a list of other articles that might be relevant and/or useful on related subjects.
  
• Part six, The Keys to the Kingdom Of Literacy, offers a checklist for people to use and collects the entire series into a pair of free PDFs – one for those who use letter-sized pages (54 pages), and one for those who use A4 (53 pages).

Writing Oratory & Dialogue

Oratory is usually written by the very best speechwriters and delivered by a practiced professional. In an RPG, there’s only you, doing your best to pretend to be both of these things. Dialogue is an entirely different challenge – the goal here is to convey information from one character to another (even an emotional state is “information” in this context) in as natural a manner as possible within the context and constraints of the personality of the person making a statement. A second character then responds, again in as natural a manner as possible, within the context and constraint of their personality, and so on. Although we all engage in conversations all the time, it’s a lot harder to write convincing dialogue. Two different writing tasks, and yet they have so much ground in common that what works for one will often help with the other.

• Incredible Truth and Improbable Stories: Oratory in an RPG – Australia’s Prime Minister at the time this article was written had a massive credibility problem. He could say the sea was wet and not be believed by anyone but the most extreme right wing of Australian Politics. After describing how things reached this point (and providing some appropriate context), contemplation of the situation leads me into a review of how oratory works in most RPGs, and why it’s not quite good enough. I then identify five factors that dictate how well a speech is going to be recieved, and offer three different methods of increasing complexity for integrating the results into a game’s mechanics.
• Part 2 of the Basics For Beginners series, Creation, could be more accurately entitled ‘creativity’. It starts by positing the proposition that the need for creativity is overrated when it comes to entertainment, including RPGs, and then go on to discuss 8 areas of creativity and how to fake being more innovative and creative than you are in each of them. The areas are Monsters (with a new monster as an example), Maps, Places (and place descriptions, with a training exercise), Adventures (very superficially), NPCs (ditto), Dialogue and expression (i.e. the presentation of the dialogue – one is the content being delivered by a statement, the other is the the style in which it is delivered), and Descriptions. I then look at the pitfalls that creativity can open up beneath the feet of a GM, which leads me back to the subjects of New Monsters, making maps, and creating locations. I conclude the article with a couple of pieces of general advice that never go out of fashion – “The Players Come First” and “Keep It Practical”.
• Part 10 of the Basics For Beginners series covers the under-utilized subject of Rhythms. “All of the prep and improv practice and knowledge of rules and experience in the world can’t really assist GMs in nailing down pacing and rhythms and flows of the game,” wrote J.T.Evans at Ravenous Roleplaying when reviewing this article. Nevertheless, however disconcerted it might be, all games have a rhythm, and that’s the subject of this article. It might seem esoteric, especially in an article for beginners, but I contend that awareness of the rhythm of the game you are running can be a vital, neglected, and useful diagnostic tool, and one that’s more easily accessed by beginners. What’s more, attuning your inner ‘ear’ to that rhythm is the first step in tweaking it to make it more engaging and satisfying. The article first dives into the phenomenon – when it’s most observable (during combat) and noticeable (when it’s interrupted, eg by someone not being ready to take their turn). I then describe how I handle that particular problem, and offer two alternatives – one disastrous and one that works. After that brief practical interruption, I continue exploring the principles, including ways of manipulating the rhythm, before turning to ways of applying them. After an exercise that enables GMs to find their own natural rhythm, the first practical application (after combat, already noted) is in improved dialogue, both improvised and prepared (with examples), then GM-Player interaction in general. I specifically call out the relevance to another pair of related series (“Emotional Pacing,” “The Yu-Gi-Oh Lesson,” and “Further Thoughts On Pacing”, all collected in a single subsection of the Campaign Plotting page). This is one of the shortest articles in the series.