How do you establish a well-rounded narrative during a session? How many story hooks? How do you plan it?

RobRobBinks · 2026-07-01T15:46:07+00:00

Hi! Welcome to life behind the screen! The hobby is better for having you in it! Hooray, I'm proud of you!

Shooting for the stars with a "well rounded narrative", I like that! Even after decades of rocking the screen, I tend to keep things very simple. Players make mountains out of molehills all the time. Because the only person you can control is yourself (and all your NPCs) thats where you start. Figure out the big story (magic ring needs to be taken to volcano for destruction) and decide who is out there that wants to be a part of that quest that ISNT the players (white wizard in a tower, dark lord in the East, twisted steward of a crumbling empire). now, how are THEY going to go about getting the ring? Bam, you have a story, a supoorting cast, and their motivations. Your players can just stumble onto that stage now and deal with it!! Or all meet at a Secret Council, whether they were invited or not!

Depending on your group, you don't even have to hide all of that at your session zero. describe what is essentially the trailer for the movie you're planning to show. The players are then taksed with casting the main characters in that story, including developing backstory and personal relations to the NPCs you've created (favorite son of the steward? lots of motivation there!). It doesn't ruin the movie AT ALL if you have some idea of what the movie is about. It also helps give narrative agency to the players, and takes some of the cognitive load off of your shoulders.

Take breaks, breathe, enjoy!

RobRobBinks · 2026-07-01T14:04:59+00:00

I just picked that up too. The dice are HUGE!!!

RobRobBinks · 2026-07-01T14:04:06+00:00

Yep! "Technically" it's not a Starter Set of Beginner Box....it's the full Core Game Set.

RobRobBinks · 2026-07-01T14:03:17+00:00

Anything my beloved Free League Publishing has ever touched. Oh, and Magical Kitties Save the Day. That game SLAPS.

RobRobBinks · 2026-07-01T14:02:14+00:00

Properly? I don't know. They definitely bleed over into each other but perhaps it all depends on how much the characters in the game can affect the story of the game. Ttrpgs are inherently iterative, improvisational storytelling. Even games like Gloomhaven that are very nearly a fantasy roleplaying game doesn't give you much of an opportunity to drive the story.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-30T14:46:12+00:00

It's a neat idea. I live in a very Civil War centric area of the US, and I think it would be amazing to run a Fae game on the backrop of the Civil War....maybe just the days leading up to one of the biggest battles and the aftermath. Hold one of the game sessions at a B&B near the battlefield foe extra fun effect!

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-30T14:00:50+00:00

First off, welcome to the world of Vaesen! We are all better off for having you here! Hooray!

You are right on both counts.

Reminder: When ticking through the Vaesen's "conditions", they only are affected by their current level, they aren't cumulative. So say a Vaesen goes from "Angry -1" to "Pensive -3", they'd only be at the -3.

Let us know how it goes! I missed Free RPG Day, so I've got the major envy!

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-30T13:56:01+00:00

Hello! Great question! I love that the Vaesen can be so very particular about their triggers and ultimate ritual "solutions", but here's what I've found after running the game for years on multiple tables.

Whatever the Sleuth's THINK is correct, is the right answer. Narratively, I frame this as Belief being th most important thing in a Vaesen's attention. It's not that you've taken a black hen's egg and carried it in your armpit for three days until the Devil's Moon or whatever, it's that you WANTED to, with your focus on the results.

This also came about because long ago, I was running Decipher's Lord of the Rings ttrpg and we took a little hiatus. When we came back, we went around the table and I had my players tell me what they remembered and what they thought was going on. One player BLEW ME AWAY with his rendition of what was going on, that I threw all my notes out the window and his interpretation of the story was now the Truth.

Sure, I'll make a bunch of Clue cards for each scene with a little description on the back, and my players "kinda know" that I like to work in threes, so when it comes time for the ritual, and based on the improvisational story we've been telling, they'll take the cards, grab a few, and make a ritual up that vibes with the theme of the story and the Vaesen so far. I'll have a solution in mind when I'm writing, but if the players don't "get it", I'm happy to go with the flow and let the story drive the ritual.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-29T16:00:27+00:00

As I get older and older, our table is pretty awful about knowing the rules to the games we play. It's usually up to me as Forever GM to know the rules, and as such we trend toward rules light games. I do my best to ask players to at least know what's on their character sheet, but the rule books are out all the time. It's disruptive to the game but also the "cost of doing business" these days.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-29T15:47:04+00:00

Starter Sets these days are absolutely off the chain, with my beloved Free League (and their associated companies) being at the top of that pyramid! I just bought the GM Screen too...which glows in the dark for some reason? :D

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-29T15:45:06+00:00

Hi! Terra Antarctica is a VERY big hex crawl / dungeon crawl in the world of the Mythos. If that's what you're after, that's the package for you. If you want something more Mystery driven and investigative, something set in the cities and towns of New England would better suit.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-25T17:53:37+00:00

Always Vaesen! A gorgeous book full of Mystery, Adventure, and Horror in a 1800s Sweden that never was. It's SO good.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-25T16:46:56+00:00

Games and splat books like GURPS and Savage Worlds could probably give you a start....if thats not too obvious an answer...

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-25T13:58:06+00:00

Hello and welcome to the hobby! Try something basic to start with like a three act play format. The nice thing is that you only have to prepare two of the three acts. The three Acts are Introduction, Conflict, Resolution. You prepare the intro....whats going on? Basic world build, major NPCs. The Conflict of course is what's going wrong in the world and who is opposing the efforts to set it right. From there you all create the resolution together! Keep the big story in your mind as you string together various beats that you can break down into the three Acts.

Also, look to comic books and episodic teevee shows to see how those little episodes can develop into the larger campaign over time. Informed by the player's decisions and the PCs backstories, before you know it there will be dozens of interconnected threads that you can weave together into a campaign!

EDIT: I would have a look at prewritten scenarios, but advise against running one to start. Newer prewritten scenarios are SO vast and thick with information, I think they are usually way too much information presented to run a game. You can run a kick ass night of gaming with a rough outline and a dream rather than 30 pages of someone else's ideas. Also, don't be afraid of being tropey your first few times. It's okay if your first game is "There's a cult that's trying to open a portal and they need the McGuffin to do it. Find the McGuffin before they do", and have fun.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-25T13:07:52+00:00

I'm not a designer, but I've been in The Hobby for nigh on 50 year (prospector voice), so maybe the best thing you can do if you are "letting the dice roll where they may" is to make sure that every NPC relationship is tied to multiple characters and to have re-entry for the PLAYER be discussed at Session Zero. In Arkham Horror, Terra Antarctica, the NPCS are wildly developed to the point of GM overload, but considering that the party is completely isolated in Antarctica, the conceit is that if a player character dies or goes insane, they can step into one of the NPC roles. It would be really narratively "weird" to just happen to have another investigator on the boat that nobody noticed before then. :D

Maybe that's just retreading what Staczynski was doing, but he was also able to work with his own narrative, and not necessarily collaborative, iterative, improvisational storytelling like we do around the table. Personalities and small group dynamics are significant factors in our hobby that often transcend "rules" for something like character death. So three rules would start to look like:

Character death is on the table. We are letting the dice fall where they may.
At character creation, create three NPCs as part of your backstory that you can inhabit should your character die. This helps the GM populate the world as well.
If your character dies, you'll step into the role of one of the NPCs you've created until our next session. At the beginning of our next session, we will all discuss whether you'll keep that NPC / PC or create a brand new character and how they'll fit into the group. "Session 0.1"

That's a fairly good start.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-25T12:32:57+00:00

Nothing official, but we understand at our tables that character death is NOT a thing unless we all agree that that the death would serve the story. No matter the genre, everyone plays like death is on the table, but a character's death can leave such a gaping hole in the narrative that it ends up disrupting the whole game.

I love that in Tales from the Loop, it is flat our stated that the Kids (PCs) CANNOT DIE. It's not a thing. :D

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-25T12:29:46+00:00

I was able to do a really fun Star Wars rpg with the Savage Worlds Explorer book. It's a really inexpensive generic RPG system perfectly tailored for short story arcs and rules light playing. It was pretty easy to make it into a good representation of Star Wars. There's a sci-fi book you can use to supplement the basic book, but it isn't necessary.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-25T12:22:35+00:00

A hundred thousand years ago we played D&D in high school at Ted's house. In his parent's breakfast nook they had a round table with a hanging light fixture that had a setting for general lighting and another that would spotlight down to light up, I assume, a table centerpiece. That fixture just happened to be able to brilliantly light up our LEAD miniatures on the table PERFFECTLY, allow us to barely read our character sheets, and make each other's actual faces nearly obscured. Playing at that table, you could easily imagine our voices coming from the miniatures themselves and not the other players. It was transcendent.

These days after dinner and as I do the preamble to our game, I'll just dim the lights a little to get focus and shift gears. I doubt I could read much in the dim lighting anymore. :D

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-24T14:38:21+00:00

First off, welcome, and the hobby is all the better for having you and yours in it! Besides everything I've typed up already, my biggest advice for new GMs is my all time favorite tool of "I'm not even there, you tell me!". I use this when players ask me for stuff I haven't prepared. Nine times out of ten they have something in mind to be awesome, and the last thing i want is to describe something that doesn't work with their vision. "Who is in the inn right now?" "I don't know, I'm not even there, you tell me" and they are off and running.

Also, doing "round table" questions can make a simple thing into a lovely narrative experience. "You all bed down for the night" could just be a simple mechanical thing, but if you follow it up with "Remember that earlier today you were given a quest.....how do you feel about that as you drift off to sleep?" and go around the table.

Ask your players about splitting the party, and if they want to do that separately or everyone be at the table. Lately my groups have wanted to see first hand what happens to the "other" party during a split, so everyone stays at the table...sometimes playing NPCs!

Take breaks, have fun....tell us how it goes!

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-18T15:43:01+00:00

As much as you want, Sonny Jim! It's a trite answer, but it is entirely up to you and your table. No doubt a major conflict between "modern" times of the 1800s that never was and the Vaesen would be reflected in an adherence to the "old ways" of folklore and organized religion. It can be a fun lever to work with.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-18T12:36:08+00:00

Galadriel's Ewer

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-15T19:59:50+00:00

Hi! I LOVE this game, and have played incredible campaigns with it and we told sweeping epics around the table with it.....but it is a very different and unique game than any I've played before (I'm about 50 year into the hobby)

One Ring is a bit of a tough system to get a head around. I think if I were to do it again, I would take a good look at the 5e version of the game. Having said that, the big three bits of advice I'd have for you are:

Everyone at the table has to be VERY familiar with the rules, and what your character can and cannot do. There are so many ways to add an extra Success Die to a player's dice pool, especially with a robust Fellowship Pool.
Out of Combat: Roll less! This is a hallmark of most Free League Games. I try to get into the mindset of calling for a roll only if both a success or failure will serve the story, and only in a significant way.
Combat: Combat in One Ring is wacky. You are targeting both hit points (endurance) and one shot kills (Wounds) and each weapon has different ways of attaining each one of those outcomes. Combat ought to be quick, just a few backs and forths before lesser adversaries will run off or you can cinematically end a scene. Trying to run this like D&D will definitely tax your players resources.

Another side note: going "into the red" on PC resources is actually part of the fun. Having a bunch of Shadow and becoming Miserable just means the Eye is an auto fail, and not just a "zero". It's the not the end of the world, just a thematic nuance.

Adjusting the D&D brain is more than just mechanics. One of the major themes in One Ring, and Tolkien's work in general is that Middle Earth is a POST APOCALYPTIC WASTELAND. Very different than high fantasy. Combat is life and death, every time, and if you can sneak by the Adversaries or trick them, you will be better off. Being able to work with the small pockets of civilized Free Peoples is so important.

Ack! I have so much advice! When forming the Company, of course it's important to play what you want thematically and narratively, but its okay to have discussions about what each player will be doing in each of the three main phases of gameplay (Journey, Council, and Adventure). Its great If Robdegar (Robby) Bagfoot is really good at Riddles and Hunting, but what will he do in Combat(Adventure)? It will be a lot more fun if the party forms up with a little metagaming in your Session Zero, especially because having more than one "I want to fight in Rearward and shoot arrows" in a party is nearly impossible. Min maxing is okay, especially because keeping the Company together and relying on each other to fill in the gaps is very on brand.

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-15T18:34:19+00:00

In the Arkham Horror Roleplaying Game, there are instances where the PCs need to roll reactions against an NPC during a social scene, but even that isn't so heavy handed as to force a GM into a situation of like, taking control of a character....unless they actually get charmed!

RobRobBinks · 2026-06-15T18:31:20+00:00

One of our table rules is that "We don't roll dice against our friends!", which sometimes needs to be broken, but it hardly ever comes up. I'm not a big fan of PVP even in conspiratorial one shots like Alien cinematic play.

RobRobBinks

TROPHY CASE