Storytelling Lessons From A First-Time GM
Reflecting on my experience as the Keeper for a Monster of the Week campaign, I realized just how much this game changed me as a writer.
Last month, after roughly ten months and 15 game sessions, my friends and I wrapped up our first long-form Monster of the Week campaign. A running joke from the campaign is that it was not planned to run as long as it did. As the Keeper (Monster of the Week’s version of a Dungeon Master or Game Master) I wanted to test the waters before committing to a longer campaign. I never accounted for my players being supremely cautious in their playstyle and investigating every pebble before launching their final attack.
As much as I tease my friends for making me work harder than I anticipated during my campaign, I am genuinely appreciative of the months we spent building the world and exploring our characters. What would have been a simple, Scooby-Doo-esque mystery evolved into an emotionally complex, tense and ultimately hopeful story about two young women healing their community after an unnatural calamity.
And during this months-long process, I learned a lot about storytelling that I will carry into future creative projects. And I felt it is worth sharing these lessons with others.
Pursue depth in your storytelling:
The campaign took place in a small town called Chaplet’s Rest which is located somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. When I first created the town, I divided it into quadrants with the goal of populating each quadrant with different enemies and pieces of lore/world information. The idea was to let the players roam freely and give them information based on where they were in town. It was an ambitious idea. But I didn’t develop it much further than a few lines on a spreadsheet.And after a few sessions, it was clear that only a handful of locations and landmarks would make recurring appearances during the story.
That was for the best. The players bounced around to several key locations and those places developed over time to fit the needs of the characters.
For example, one of the character’s (illegal) basement apartment under a Wingstop restaurant grew from a resting spot for the characters into a sprawling strip mall that operated as a central base of operations, complete with a small library, a holding cell and a pawn shop that could be raided for supplies. Many of the emotionally poignant scenes took place at or around that apartment and I doubt the emotional impact would have been as profound if it took place in a one-off location that the players never visited again. Working from a narrow map, instead of an expansive one, allowed me to focus my attention on developing those central locations so they fulfilled character and story needs.
Limit the interactions between the antagonists and the protagonists
The primary antagonists in the campaign were an ancient group of sorcerers known as ‘The Order of Gifted Sorcery.’ There were five sorcerers in total and there was a lengthy history that explained their rise to power..
Over the 15 sessions, the players encountered the sorcerers three or four times.
The players received a lot of information about the sorcerers prior to those encounters. Some of that history touched on how the sorcerers’ actions directly impacted the players’ lives. Sometimes a lackey for the Order made an appearance on behalf of a sorcerer. I wanted to build up the threat that the sorcerers posed and thus define the stakes that the players faced. The sorcerers and their abilities were a looming unknowable threat that the players had to plan around if they wanted to succeed.
In addition to this tip, it is useful to let your antagonists work in the background. Have a clear sense of their motivation and let their actions and consequences of said actions seep into the story.
Letting the antagonist’s presence be felt, but not seen, ratchets up the tension in an organic way. If done carefully, by the climax of a story, the audience should experience dread, excitement and anticipation at finally catching a glimpse of this immeasurable threat.
Have a solid frame to build upon
This tip is more in line with what I would do differently if I could redo the campaign or what I will do for future campaigns. And it helps me finally decide the ‘pantsers vs plotter’ debate for myself.
As much as I enjoyed the overall campaign, I often shared with my friends/players that I was laying new tracks as the train rapidly approached or building the plane as we flew towards our destination.
In some ways, it was stressful. Not having a solid foundation meant I was inventing on the fly and leading to inconsistencies and unanswered questions.
Part of this comes with the territory of table-top role-playing games, where there is an element of improvisation. But stories, at least the ones I tell, are better when I have sketches of the plot, antagonists, magic systems and side characters.
I believe having a foundation to work from is better than having no foundation at all (at least for my work). A foundation could be anything. A detailed outline with full descriptions of characters, settings, plot. It could be a well crafted opening line or paragraph. In my case, I prefer a loose outline with 3-4 sentences that cover major scenes and enough flexibility to add on as the story unfolds and I discover new ideas. Having those central elements in place makes it easier to build based on what has already been established.
Trust your instincts
Most creatives worry about our audience before anything else. Writing with an imaginary audience at the forefront of our thoughts stalls the creative process. Many of my own creative projects are in a limbo or purgatory state because I lost sight of my original creative north star and instead fretted over the audience that would encounter my work one day.
With mediums such as table-top role-playing games, my audience is right in my face. There was no barrier that shielded me from my players’ first reactions. As nerve-inducing as that was, it meant that I had to commit to a story beat and forge ahead, trusting that I would arrive at a satisfactory conclusion before the campaign ended.
In the immediate scenes of a game session, there was little room for self-doubt. And the decisions I made behind the Keeper’s screen were good ones simply because I had a clear sense of storytelling and character development.
How did this manifest in our campaign? One of the characters, Eden, used the ‘Mundane’ playbook, which in the world of Monster of the Week meant that Eden was an everyday, non-magical or paranormal person. But as the story progressed, Eden’s story reached a fork in the road. She could remain the mundane person, completely untouched by and uninvolved with the magic in town. Or she could pursue sorcery and gain access to powerful magic.
In the earlier sessions, I warred with myself over whether to offer a path to magic to Eden. My friend picked the Mundane playbook and I didn’t want to stomp over that decision just because I thought it was cool. But in the end, I trusted myself and I trusted my player. Had I not listened to my instincts and made a firm decision, the campaign would have missed some incredible scenes as Eden grew into her magic and navigated her family’s legacy.
Trusting your instincts means accepting your role as creator and audience member. As a creative, trust that you are equipped to tell the story you want to tell. Leave the self-doubt at the door, especially if that doubt will keep you from making any concrete decisions about your work. Things can also be adjusted or modified, especially in the early stages of the creative process. But, you can’t modify anything if you don’t first make and stick with that initial decision.
Mine those natural gems
In one of the early sessions of the campaign, one of the characters said something that radically changed the entire story. The two central characters, Persephone and Eden, lived fundamentally opposing lives prior to the start of the main story. And it was a source of mild contention in those early sessions as the characters started to get to know each other.
I don’t recall Persphone’s exact words, but more than once, she teased Eden because Eden’s family “owned” the town.
And as the Keeper, I thought why not make that true?
Persephone’s offhand remark became a focal point in the campaign. Not only was it too good of a lead to pass on, it made the antagonists much more concrete and tangible than I planned. The Order of Gifted Sorcery was no longer a centuries old shadowy organization. They were people the characters knew like Eden’s mother and Eden and Persephone’s teacher. They were responsible for the mining accident that killed Persephone and others. (Persephone and her fellow miners were revivified prior to the campaign and eventually became known as the ‘Twice Mortals’. This moniker was one of the player’s decisions.)
There is a lot of intention in storytelling. We make decisions about genre, structure, POV, setting, etc. But there are moments in the creating process where you stumble upon an opening that naturally formed through no intentional effort on your part. What would happen if you followed those leads? How would your project(s) improve if you stopped to admire and investigate this bit of gold peeking from below?
This also requires a close reading or a close examination of your work. Being critical, especially of something you created, can be challenging. But it is a skill worth sharpening. It is okay to get lost in the creative process, but don’t shut that analytical or critical voice off completely. Work alongside that inner critic during the discovery process and see what comes out.
These are a few storytelling lessons learned during my time as the Keeper/Game Master. I think there are more lessons to be learned from collaborative storytelling (such as how to pace a story in a natural way). Ultimately, what was most important and valuable was balancing my natural storytelling skills with a desire to improve in certain aspects using a different storytelling vehicle. Experimenting with new storytelling mediums can be jarring, but there is plenty to be learned in the end.