“He skulked down the alleyway, blending into the shadows and taking care to avoid the occasional patche of loose cobblestones…”   Sounds good, doesn’t it. Sounds literary, the way you would read – or write – it in a novel or short story. Let’s translate that into typical Game dialogue, and see how well it stacks up.

Image courtesy freeimages.com / Thomas Pate Note that this image has been heavily modified by Mike for illustrative purposes.

 
Sounds lifeless, doesn’t it? Perhaps if we also incorporate the bit with the cobblestones, by continuing the scene:
 

 
No, that’s just made the problem bigger by having more of it.

Juicier Narrative?

Perhaps if the GM takes some advice from my 2014 series, ‘The Secrets Of Stylish Narrative‘, and from the more recent article, Narratives Of Skill: How To ?Improv? Outcome Descriptions In Advance? Let’s try it.
 

 
Well, that’s definitely better. More immersive, it paints a picture for the player and even sneaks in a lot of background information and setting description. The player now knows that it’s night (he probably did already), has a graphic sense of it being overcast with moody breaks in the clouds through which the moon occasionally shines, knows that the walls of the alley are made of red brick, has a bit of information on city maintenance practices, and has received a hint that this alley has seen unusually heavy traffic – perhaps from wagons making deliveries, perhaps from something else.

The word count is revealing: The GM’s dialogue in the initial example was 38 words; in the revised version, it has risen to 98 words. So 38 words conveyed the necessary instructions and basic information to the player, and 60 more have been used to convey both the added color and all that extra information.

Precision Skill Definitions

There is nothing technically incorrect in the dialogue. The GM is using the character’s skills and abilities to assess success or failure, in a way that’s appropriate for those skills and abilities. But do you really need to ask for three die rolls for such a simple sequence?

That necessity has arisen from the way the GM is interpreting the rules. He is assuming that each skill or ability does exactly what it says on the tin, or in the Player’s Handbook, to be more precise, and no more.

His way of thinking is, “Fishing is the skill of using a rod and reel, and/or a net, to catch fish. If you want to know how to clean and filet them for cooking, you need a cooking skill. If you want to make your own lures, that’s a craft skill. If you want to repair a broken fishing rod or torn net, and it’s not explicitly included in the fishing skill, that’s a couple of different craft skills.”

This is an example of Precision Skill Interpretation, and there are game systems that expect the GM to take this approach. There are even times when it’s advantageous to the simulation of reality; this is especially true in modern and futuristic times.

Take, for example, the rules system that I use for my superhero games.

• Stats come in two varieties: Primary, which are simply bought with character points, and Secondary, which have base values calculated from Primary stats. (There is a third category, “Tertiary”, which are calculated from both Primary and Secondary stats, but that isn’t relevant here).
• Each of these generates a stat check value which the character rolls against to make, say, a STR check.
• Stat Check values are also used to calculate base levels in Aptitudes, which represent a character’s innate ability in certain broad areas, e.g. “Linguistic Aptitude”, “Numeric Aptitude”.
• Aptitudes are used to calculate base levels in 55 specific Fundamental Skills, place limits on how much those skills cost to improve, and determine how much such improvements cost. These are skills that everyone has to some degree, like “Digging” or “Running” or “Draw Weapon”.
• Basic Expert Skills, also known as Common Expert Skills, are skills that not everyone gets. They have a base value, improvement limits, and costs, that are derived from a combination of Aptitudes and Fundamental Skills. In fact, what defines an Expert Skill is that it is based on a Fundamental Skill. They include things like Acting, Bureaucracy, Seduction, and Persuasion.
• Advanced Expert Skills are just like Basic Expert Skills except that they derive, in part, from one or more Basic Expert Skills, in addition to Aptitudes and Fundamental Skills. Characters rarely have very many of these.
• All expert skills also have the option for the character to buy a specialty, which is a bonus in a specific subtopic within the skill. A historian might buy a specialty in 19th century France, for example, or in the 19th century in general, or in France in general. All specialties cost the same price, but the definition (by the player constructing the character) dictates how big a bonus the specialty provides in answering specific questions or accomplishing specific tasks. In theory, it’s possible to buy specialties in Fundamental Skills as well, but we’ve never found a case where it wasn’t more useful to define such as new Expert skills.

The reason for the multiple layers is to firebreak each layer. In the past, every time a stat was improved, all the skills had to be recalculated; now, such improvements are restricted in impact to the immediate level below. It takes a far bigger change than ever occurs during normal stat improvement in the course of play to have an impact large enough to transmit further down, except in terms of increasing what the lower tier can be improved to.

All told, the system lists more than 1,000 skills, and is capable of distinguishing between a character with Applied Organic Chemistry specializing in Pheromones or Perfumes and an Industrial Applied Organic Chemist who designs chemical manufacturing plants and processes, defining how much knowledge they have in common, and how much knowledge and expertise is only possessed by one of them.

For campaigns where scientific specialties are important, such a system works very well, compartmentalizing and categorizing every task or field of knowledge (the details were actually derived from the course structures laid out in my University Degree Curriculum references).

For campaign settings where that is not the case, Precision Skill Interpretation is not the right answer.

Holistic Skill Interpretation

Let’s go back to the Fisherman example. What if skill in Fishing implied that you not only knew how to use rod and reel, but how to make your own lures, fix a broken rod, know how much fishing line should cost, and how to clean fish ready for cooking?

The skills are bucket lists that contain everything related to the subject that is not explicitly defined as being part of a seperate skill.

A Stealth Check includes things like awareness of the environment and any hazards to successfully achieving the goal of moving covertly from one place to another, especially if it is an environment and location that the character knows well.

Those three rolls in the Alleyway example described earlier become one, reducing the unnecessary verbiage and delays to play, heightening the experience and the immersion within it.
 

 
A far more cinematic and engaging result. The player has time to digest what he’s being told without being distracted by additional die rolls, can focus more on what the character is trying to do, and look at the bigger picture being painted in words by the GM. The game will run more smoothly, more quickly, and be more satisfying to everyone involved.

In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass

We’ve all encountered situations in which a player has made a catastrophically bad roll. There are two ways to look at the original three-die-roll situation: either as inherently limiting the scope of one bad or good roll, so that overall performance more closely matches the overall capability levels of the character, or as increasing the opportunities for such extreme outcomes three-fold.

Both interpretations have a kernel of validity, but make assumptions that simply aren’t universally valid.

Let’s say that the player makes a catastrophically-bad roll for his initial “Sneak”. First question: will running with that result destroy/ruin the campaign? Second question: will running with that result destroy/ruin the adventure?

If neither answer is yes, run with the “comedy of errors” that results. And if the player complains, tell them to thank their lucky stars that the catastrophic roll didn’t happen on a more important occasion.

Even if the answer to one of the questions is yes, we’re still not at battle stations. Third question: can you think of a way to avoid these cataclysms while still permitting the player the full “catastrophically bad roll” experience?

If the answer to question three is yes, there’s no problem – simply put your contingency plans into effect (even if you’ve only just thought of them). But, if not, you still aren’t up the creek without a paddle.

You can always shift gears to a multiple-roll plan – in the case of the example, Spot + DEX save – in the event of a catastrophically bad (or good) result, limiting the impact only when you really need to do so.

The Lazy GM

It’s not often the case, but there is one interpretation in which the term “Lazy GM” can be a compliment. It can mean not doing anything more than you absolutely need to. Drop the PCs in an area that is adventure-potential rich and let the players write the adventure with their choices. Do a lot of broad outlines and bullet-point ideas, catalog and structure them so that you can quickly find the right one, and only develop the ones that you actually need just before you need them.

The less time you spend on irrelevancies, the more time you have to spend on polishing the things that really matter, or taking care of the real-world tasks that might otherwise get in the way of game prep to the point that you feel it necessary to give up the hobby (don’t tell me it will never happen, I’ve seen it more than 50 times, and can safely presume that it’s happened in at least another 40 cases – out of 102 gamers that were active in the hobby a couple of decades ago. Heck, I’ve been forced to ask the question myself a time or two in the last 40+ years of gaming).

For other ways to deal with emergencies and catastrophes like critically-bad or good die rolls at exactly the wrong time, check out A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies.

Big-Picture Memoranda

There’s one tool that can help answer those questions: Big Picture Memoranda. Look, I don’t know how you structure your adventures, in general terms; I use a structure like that shown to the left, at least most of the time.

For a long time, I’ve advocated and used the one-line synopsis as an adventure-development tool (and for just about everything else that I write – refer One Word At A Time: How I (usually) write a Blog Post. So I start with a one-line synopsis of the adventure, from which I produce one-line synopses of the introduction, each part or phase of the adventure, and any epilogue or afterword. I then use the one-line summaries of each part to write one-line summaries of each act of the main adventure. Then I use the one-line adventures of each act to break that act down into scenes, and finally, use those one-line summaries to write one-line summaries of the different elements of the content – who, where, and so on. The only things that might not be self-evident on the structure shown are “flags” and “bits”. “Flags” are content that only happens under certain circumstances, for example a PC asking a key question or making a skill roll, and “Bits” are instructions to the GM, for example to go directly to a scene if “X” happens. Oh yes, “GM’s Notes” deal with any setup (such as taking a specific book for a photographic reference) and “Metagame” is dealing with any rules questions that came up during play and handing out XP and things like that.

Once the entire adventure has been broken down in this fashion, it’s relatively easy to actually write, because you have detailed information on how each building block fits together to create the adventure.

Unfortunately, once you’ve finished, it can be hard to find the forest for the trees. If you’re like me, you’ll have preserved a copy of the one-line synopses, but trying to go through that to find what you’re looking for can take too long.

The solution is to preserve copies of some of these one-line synopses at the top of each building block. How does this adventure relate to the campaign big picture? How does this act relate to the adventure as a whole? How does the scene relate to either of these things? I don’t preserve them all – just the ones that are significant, as reminders. So that if any scene takes an unexpected turn, I know how that scene is supposed to fit into each of these bigger pictures, and can immediately assess the impact of the unexpected event. That’s a “big-picture memoranda” or “BigPic Memo” for short.

It means that if a scene is supposed to introduce an NPC who will become a significant enemy down the track, but who is a relative nobody right now, if the PCs do something significant with the potential to change their relationship to the NPC, I can adjust plans accordingly. It’s a cliche but not far from the truth: No plan survives contact with the PCs. Not theirs, and not yours!

A Holistic interpretation of the skills within the game permits a temporary retreat into precision when you need to use it to save your metaplot-bacon. Starting off from the precision interpretation removes that weapon from your arsenal; there are other benefits in some campaigns that justifies that cost, so a precision interpretation should not be ruled out, out-of-hand; but it should always be part of your GMing approach for a reason.

But too many GMs, and too many players, seem to think that it’s the only game in town. Well, now you know better – spread the word by making intelligently justified choices in your games!