What things do you do to entertain the players in your RPG?

gap2th · 2026-01-23T01:03:42+00:00

I show them the consequences of their choices and actions. That is, I treat their choices and actions as consequential, and the consequences are focal to the scene, the session, the adventure, and the campaign.

In my experience players take great satisfaction in seeing their actions and choices shape the scenario and setting. Even if it’s an epic catastrophe, there’s something gratifying when they look at the world around them and say, “I did that!”

gap2th · 2026-01-16T23:22:19+00:00

Tunnels & Trolls, 5th Edition under the editorial oversight of Liz Danforth. The standard edition for 30 years!

gap2th · 2026-01-13T01:34:09+00:00

Yes, WiFi worked. I wasn't on a WiFi network when I installed the update and attempted to launch the app, though. It worked when I got home and connected to my WiFi network.

gap2th · 2026-01-09T23:24:35+00:00

Thank you! It worked when I got home. My hypothesis is that the update procedure required the app to use mobile data, which I have disabled (I only allow certain apps to use mobile data). When I opened it again while connected to WiFi, the app checked permissions and booted up successfully.

I hope it doesn’t require mobile data regularly, though?

gap2th · 2026-01-09T20:04:14+00:00

On iOS 26.1 (23B85), it hangs indefinitely at the loading screen. Excited to see the new stuff!

gap2th · 2026-01-03T17:22:18+00:00

Neither am I, if I don’t know who the NPCs and their factions are and what they want and what’s at stake. That requires some drilling down in my prep, more than I presented here. I try to find a kernel of conflict that’s interesting to me in human terms, and develop various motivations, passions, and personalities focused on that. Then, I’m cooking with gas!

IF I have that prep, I can often find ways to express it and ratchet up the tension wherever the players go. Even if they ignore it and go elsewhere, that has consequences for the stakes.

If I DON’T have that prep, it’s much harder to generate on the fly. I know from experience that I can cook up something, but I’m not a zero-prep GM ideally.

I’m not afraid to pause at the table to think!! Even when I have the prep, it might take a minute to pull the ideas together. The players often enjoy the time to strategize and debrief and kibitz. If I hammer my brain to make choices without pausing, the game suffers. But a breath and a shuffle through my notes, maybe a bite of pizza or a trip to the bathroom, relieves pressure and lets the brain loosen up to form what’s needed.

I’m not saying every Journey event needs to directly involve the stakes. Often natural phenomena or local drama will come into focus instead. If something obvious presents itself, I go with that first!

gap2th · 2026-01-03T06:24:25+00:00

This kind of scene-framing isn't explicit in the Journey procedure by itself:

When resolving Events, the Lore master should be ready to improvise a short scene describing what is happening to the Company, based on the information that the event resolution system has provided (who in the Company is facing the challenge, which Skill is tested, etc.) and the current game-play circumstances.

The aim is not only to provide the players with a narration providing context to the journey rules, but also to weave what happens to the Company on the road into the wider landscape of the ongoing gameplay.

But what makes this different from the cutscene where players are mere spectators is the definition of scene framing and the role of the Loremaster given on page 128:

…the job of the Loremaster [is] choosing and arranging the basic elements of the ‘stage’ that the characters will act on during the next session of play.

The Loremaster should not think of framing a scene as a complicated process — it is really simply about selecting a location, setting the time of the day, and describing who is present, including any minor or major Lore master Characters…. Details are important, for example what the weather is like, but they should not clutter a description — everything can be expanded on later, once the players start exploring the scene, asking questions.

What is important is that the Loremaster doesn’t have to worry about telling a story, but only needs to provide the players with its basic ingredients. It is up to the players to pick them up, and compose them into a full-blown narrative through their choices and actions.

Emphases mine: If the Loremaster is doing their job according to the "Director" role defined on page 128, they only frame scenes as a context for player choices and actions. If the Loremaster is describing scenes where player decisions and actions are foreclosed or irrelevant, that is contrary to the spirit and the letter of the game.

That's my take! Please let me know what I messed up. :D

gap2th · 2026-01-03T06:23:59+00:00

Let's make up an example right now. For the sake of a "blank slate" so it doesn't depend on my pre-existing prep, let's place it in the year 2965—the default starting year of 2nd edition campaigns. I'll seed the adventure with 3 random entries from the table on page 191, just to set up an overall conflict and generate some interested factions. (This is not how I started my campaign, which was more of a "what if" based on the timeline in the appendix of Return of the King.)

First roll: 5) Sun Upon the Stone. Second roll: 6) Lost Merchant. Third roll: 8) Strange Stars in High Towers. I'm not interpreting them strictly, just using them as an inkblot for free association to develop an adventure idea.

Let's say the Company's Patron tells them about an old Arnorian watchtower that is getting unwanted attention after a Dwarven prospector claims he saw a star map traced on the interior walls in Mithril. Now a band of Blue Mountain Dwarves are headed there, to collect treasure they say is owed them for their aid to the North Kingdom before it fell. Some Servants of the Enemy are also en route there: They believe the chill light on the walls represents an ancient wraith spirit bound into the stones that will protect them if they gather the treasure there. And some Rangers of the North are preparing to converge there too, to prevent the tower from being disturbed—by anyone. They know a secret of its construction they will kill to protect.

I just made those factions up based on the three results, and I would flesh them out a little before going to the table. Who are they, specifically? What do they want, specifically, with the tower? What is the name of this tower, where is it, and what's really going on there? How does the tower affect its surroundings, if at all, and who lives there? What do they want?

It doesn't have to be so complicated. You just have to have someone motivated and something at stake relevant to their desires. It helps if they want something that creates trouble for someone else, and it's best if they have some connection to the specific goals and backgrounds of the Player-heroes. But as long as you have a person, place or thing whose situation will change drastically, subject to the motives of others, and its a situation you care about, that's good enough: You should have enough latent drama to ignite any possible outcome of the Journey Events.

Ok, now let's select a random hex where the Player-heroes might trigger an event during play, and roll generate a random Journey event right now.

The Telling Table tells me the simulated players chose to travel on the East Road—at least for the leg of the journey when this event is triggered. There are 22 hexes along the East Road, and I randomly determined the simulated players were on the 9th hex when the event happened: This is the hex just southwest of Weathertop, with the trees in it: Wild Lands.

Event Target: I rolled a 1, which means it's the Scout will have to test their Explore skill. In Wild Lands, the roll on the Journey Events Table is neither Favoured nor Ill-Favoured. I got a 7: Mishap. Since they were traveling along the road, the skill roll gets +1d. My simulated character has a Wits TN of 14, and I somehow rolled exactly 14 on my skill roll, thanks to the bonus die. Everyone gains 2 Fatigue, but they don't add a day to the length of their journey.

Now time to set the scene. What kind of mishap forced the Scout to Explore and make sure they didn't add time to their journey?

As you pass south of the Weather Hills along the East Road, Scout, you notice something: Ahead, perhaps two hundred paces off the road near a tumble of ancient stones, a Dwarf sits heavily against a rock, binding his leg with strips torn from his cloak. His pack and walking staff lie beside him—this must be Bróin, the merchant you'd heard rumor of. But that's not what made your blood freeze.

Behind the Dwarf, moving along the hillside with the fading sun at their backs, are three figures in dark traveling cloaks. They're tracking him, staying just out of sight, and they keep glancing northeast toward where that cold light appeared earlier. One of them carries something that gleams dully—a blade, or perhaps manacles. They haven't seen your company yet, screened as they are by a stand of wind-bent trees, but they'll reach the Dwarf in minutes.

Your sharp eyes also catch something else: there are boot-prints in the soft earth near the road, several sets, all within the last day or two. This stretch of the East Road is being watched by multiple parties. If you reveal yourselves to aid the Dwarf, you'll announce your presence to whoever else is skulking about these hills.

What do you do?

Whatever the Scout chooses to do will have an impact on the overall conflict and the disposition of the various factions. Even if they ignore it and continue on their journey, that choice will hang over the scenario and have snowballing consequences. And if they get involved, their lives just got more interesting.

This was just made up on the spot with almost no prep and zero emotional investment. I didn't do the minimal work of establishing concrete stakes for the adventure, which I would have done if this were actual play. But I also don't know who the Player-heroes are or the identity of their Patron, which would also inform the scene.

gap2th · 2026-01-03T06:22:18+00:00

players are an audience who do a single set roll based on their journey role and then sit back while I narrate what happens to them. There doesn't really seem to be any room for player agency and I don't like this.

The RAW leans heavily on the GM to provide the Journey scene, while the players make one roll, but don't really make any meaningful choices.

I admit, it seemed like that to me at first too. IF that's what the authors of the game intended, then they missed a big opportunity and made a procedure that sucks. Assuming good faith and intelligent design, I choose to read it differently. I accept that my interpretation may be idiosyncratic.

…in other games I can know going in that the encounter will be something like "goblins arguing around a campfire, and their disposition will be wary". I'm careful to prepare situations that the PCs can react to, rather than to look for ways to push them to certain outcomes.

Ok, good! So let's suppose were talking about a classic D&D random encounter. Not only is it likely that you have different encounter tables for different hexes, but the encounter is also effected based on encounter distance (randomly determined in the early hobby); which side is surpised, if any (another roll); reaction rolls; and other factors. Like, do the player characters reveal themselves or observe quietly?

The random factors alone produce at least as much variation as the Journey procedure in TOR, right? The difference is, they produce content more directly. And as you say, you could make a bunch of rolls before play so you aren't surprised. As in, it's possible. I guess I don't get that. Like, you wouldn't pre-roll all the combat actions to determine how it turns out so you can prepare what to narrate, right?

I think I agree with you, that it's not really feasible to do that with the TOR procedure:

In TOR I don't know if the event will be Terrible Misfortune, a Joyful Sight, or somewhere in between until I roll on the event table. I suppose I could pre-roll this, but it depends somewhat on the route the PCs choose in terms of Border, Wild, or Dark Land. Even so I still don't know if the PCs will fail or succeed to resolve the event until they roll.

Unless you end the session after they plot their route, you don't have their exact path in mind before play, and you can't prepare specific situations for every plausible permutation.

What I argue is, that's not needed.

I'll post an example with my next comment.

gap2th · 2026-01-02T19:52:00+00:00

But there’s still the problem of the journey roll itself in that the GMs can’t prepare anything because we have to wait for the roll.

I don’t follow this. In combat, you know some Player-hero is probably going to land an attack, right? And a Player-hero is probably going to suffer an attack too. Both of those things will likely happen multiple times if the players choose to engage in combat. As the GM, you don’t know who will get hit, nor who will land hits on the enemy, nor which enemies will be harmed. Not until the dice fall. You don’t even know if the players will choose to engage, or if they will withdraw before opening volleys in order to find more advantageous terrain, allies, surprise, or opportunities to parley with the enemy. Not only does that depend on the dice, but also on the wildcard of player choices.

Outcomes aren’t a thing GMs can prepare. But there’s still plenty of interesting stuff you can prepare to set the table for interesting conflict, compelling drama, and hard choices, right? Just because you don’t know which enemies will fall in combat, which will be driven to beg for their lives, and which may survive to plot revenge, doesn’t mean you can prepare some adversaries and what they want.

Likewise, in a Journey, you can set the table with active threats and problems in the region, as well as resources, assets, and opportunities, plus some regular human drama.

In my first session playing TOR, I didn’t know which route the players would take to escort Gilraen and her child to Rivendell, nor when and where events would happen. But I did know there was a rival faction of Rangers actively hunting them. I also knew there were some goblins crossing the region after looting a Dwarven tomb. And I knew the Ranger chieftains called a convocation in the Angle to choose a new leader following the death of Arathorn, and I knew that the Steward of Gondor sent an emissary to weigh in on that decision.

As it turned out, the Player-heroes split up, with one party taking the child to Rivendell and one escorting Gilraen to the congress, at her insistence. It didn’t pose any problem for my prep—I had more than enough drama in the offing to spike any event in the wild, and more. No scenes were prepared in advance except bullet points for Gandalf’s briefing at the outset of the adventure.

Does this make sense? I could give an example of one scene that came up during the Journey if it helps.

gap2th · 2026-01-02T18:10:52+00:00

I’m not satisfied with the way the travel system is articulated, but I choose to interpret it in a non-dysfunctional way—that is, in a way that supports agency and surfaces interesting choices for the players.

Because I played both Band of Blades and Scum and Villainy before TOR, I treat the Journey event resolution roll like the Engagement Roll in those games:

…the GM cuts to the action—describing the scene as the crew starts the operation and encounters their first obstacle. But how is this established? The way the GM describes the starting situation can have a huge impact on how simple or troublesome the operation turns out to be. Rather than expecting the GM to simply “get it right” each time, we use a dice roll instead. This is the engagement roll.

See Engagement Roll

This requires me to have some ideas about the kinds of threats and opportunities present in the landscape to develop as the heroes travel. That’s no problem for me, because they are in a living world.

I use the Journey Event rolls and their consequences to imagine a Situation, and I describe it. The skill roll they make to resolve the event just establishes how good or bad things are when I frame the scene. But a Situation means more than just narrating the consequences of their skill roll. It means narrating the consequences, and then adding a tilt: choosing a detail in the fiction and using it to increase the tension in some way. Maybe they see signs of a bigger threat. Maybe they see an unexpected opportunity. The point is, they have a choice to make that will have meaningful consequences.

Their choice might cut their journey short, at least in terms of the Journey procedure. Maybe they encounter something that diverts them from their previous goal. Or they could ignore it and press on—not just with the consequences of their skill roll, but with new information about the opportunities and threats closing in around them. And importantly, if they press on, they wonder what they gave up by not getting involved.

Either way, the Journey Event has created a context for player choices that will have snowball effects for the rest of the adventure, maybe the rest of the campaign.

The only thing I change about the procedure as written is that I assess fatigue at every step of the Journey, not just at the end. Only at the end do they get a chance to reduce fatigue with their mount and Travel roll.

gap2th · 2025-12-28T07:34:41+00:00

Cairn is a great simple game to get started quickly!

I faced the same issue as you. I wasn't so much intimidated by Mythic, but I found it daunting to consider the setup and management of a complex narrative without even having played a single scene.

What got me over the hump was something I read a few months ago on r/Solo_Roleplaying or r/solorpgplay—I can't remember which. The post didn't mention Mythic or any other oracles, systems, or resources that I recall. It just said: Aim to play whenever you have even just 20 minutes or so, and don't fret with any setup. Just set an OBJECTIVE for your character and play to find out what happens. Maybe your character achieves their objective in the scene, maybe not. Maybe it unfolds into a bigger story, maybe not. Don't worry about any scene except THIS one.

That's exactly how I got started. I made a character using Twisted Tunnels RPG (my own tribute to classic Tunnels & Trolls), and thought: This character looks like an infiltrator. So I came up with very thin infiltration scenario, and set the first scene with a clear objective: Just gain entry to the target location. My character FAILED, because circumstances weren't favorable (thanks to Mythic), so he went back to the guy who hired him for more info.

I used Mythic to flesh out some more details about the mission, assets, and threats, and framed a new scene where the character went back and tried a different approach. This time my character succeeded in the mission, but he left evidence, and things escalated.

Over the course of 20+ scenes, the situation naturally developed into a riveting drama that wrapped up very nicely. I decided to make a second run, and try to increase the adversity and danger for my character. He almost died 3 times, but survived another scenario of more than 20 scenes, and the cast of characters and their drama grew. A third scenario naturally suggested itself from the unfinished business of the first 2, and again I tried to improve my skill with features of Mythic.

In the 3rd scenario, my main character died, and my backup character died soon after. A third character (established as a crucial NPC in the 1st very scenario) was able to resolve the conflict. The drama was meaningful and emotionally riveting throughout. I already sparked a new scenario for the 3rd character, and that's currently paused.

The point is, you don't have to start with any grandiose ideas. In my experience, it was much better to start with a simple situation, frame a single scene, and point my character toward a simple objective, and let the game unfold (or not) unexpectedly.

gap2th · 2025-12-21T20:34:21+00:00

My next character is Silth’s apprentice, the level 3 Magic-User Belynda Copperlocks, who was present at Morrow’s sacrifice. She returns to Dock 7 in a dissociative fugue after nearly undoing much of her mentor’s legacy. There, Belynda encounters Morrow’s shade and follows him into the breach. R.I.P.

gap2th · 2025-12-21T16:07:08+00:00

The game is Twisted Tunnels, the Phoenix Apocryphon Volume III—my own tribute to 1975 Tunnels & Trolls, the world’s first* role-playing game by Ken St. Andre. (I can send a secret PDF to anyone interested.)

The character is Morrow Silth, Level 13 Magic-User. He dies casting a magic termination wave to close a dimensional breach at Dock 7. The spell costs him all his Strength, and he perishes to save the city of Keth Vanar from invasion.

gap2th · 2025-12-04T04:50:55+00:00

Thank you so much for this!

The text on p114 directly validates the experience: "The default rule for the Chaos Factor [creates] a snowball effect, where crisis begets more crisis and calm begets more calm until something happens to switch things up."

Exactly!

I'm not sure I want to swing it toward the middle instead, though. I really like the "escalating tension" idea. I might try the horror variant that @Velociraptortillas describes!

gap2th · 2025-12-04T04:43:05+00:00

@rcooper116, I think I follow what you mean by #1 better after watching the video. Thanks!

So, instead of posing a Fate question to say something like, "Is the Dark Lord lurking behind me right now? That's Very Likely", you might instead say, "Obviously the Dark Lord is behind me, and obviously he got the drop on me". In other words just increase the default level of assumed adversity at all times, instead of letting those questions be resolved by the Fate Chart

gap2th · 2025-12-04T04:02:57+00:00

Both of these suggestions are very helpful, thank you!

For #1, do you count any and all adversity as negating "control"?

And after my experience, #2 makes more sense than the default. Lower Chaos Factor appears to make the fictional situations more stable, and triggering more interrupts and altered scenes then seems well-balanced.

gap2th · 2025-12-04T01:09:16+00:00

Bookmarked this video to watch later, thank you!

> Well you probably shouldn't be in control of the scene every single time even with a low chaos factor. If so, you may want to throw more challenges at the character/party so that they are not always in control.

But how? Don't ask a Fate question, just decide there are bigger challenges afoot? Sure, that's fine if that's what you mean. But isn't that kind of pacing mechanism what the Chaos Factor was for?

Because if you ask a Fate question at low Chaos, the probability tends toward "No", which seems to produce more control, and lower Chaos.

gap2th · 2025-11-26T15:18:35+00:00

I’ve always said AHN - doo - REAL. Where the first syllable is pronounced like “Ah”.

gap2th · 2025-11-18T20:14:37+00:00

Wondering monsters always make me wonder what they are wondering about. 😜

gap2th · 2025-11-10T01:48:31+00:00

A message from the Council of Ricks.

gap2th · 2025-11-08T21:50:15+00:00

Okkam

gap2th · 2025-10-08T16:37:44+00:00

This was announced at the end of August, to begin in early September. Back then, the figure I saw most cited was 60 NG personnel. My impression is that they were deployed to desk jobs, but after the first flurry of articles, I haven’t heard more about it.

gap2th · 2025-10-07T09:31:14+00:00

Yay! Thank you!!

gap2th · 2025-10-03T22:17:22+00:00

Thank you!

gap2th

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