This article is about different ways you can run a role-playing game. Different "styles," if you like. These styles are slightly different than the standard "prepare all the statistics beforehand and hope the players don't do anything unexpected." They're all designed to cut down on GM indecision when it comes to what happens next in a given session. I've put them here on a continuum from lowest to highest preparation time.
"No GM" Style Gaming
Works Best For: GMs who run out of time to prepare for a session.
How It Works: This is inspired by the Mythic Game Master Emulator. All you have to do as the GM is decide how likely or unlikely it is that a player's question has a "yes" for an answer. All questions in the game are broken down into "yes or no" questions and you roll a d100 to see whether the outcome is true, false, very true or very false. The likelihood of something being true vs. false is set by the GM, given the circumstances.
No Chance 20/80
Highly Unlikely 30/70
Unlikely 40/60
Equal Chance - 50/50
Likely 60/40
Very Likely 70/30
Obvious/ Sure Thing 80/20
Exceptional: A roll of 90-100 is an exceptional. A roll of 0-10 is an exceptional.
Benefits: No or minimal prep time needed. You just sit down with a premise for the session and a plot hook and away you go.
Drawbacks: It can get tedious to try and break everything down into yes and no questions. Combat can be especially tricky.
Tips: You should probably track when someone with a certain level of combat skill scores a hit, since another person scoring a hit with a similar roll would be almost certain to also hit. It might also be a good idea to instead roll up at least the combat NPCs ahead of time. At the very least, you should decide how many "Yes" hits an enemy can receive vs "Exceptional Yes" hits before they're killed, and adjust this according to the combat skills of the various PCs. Also, try to be a little more interesting in your interpretation of the results than just a "Yes" or a "No." Make the answers detailed. ("Do I find a key?" "Yes, you find an old iron key with a curious handle lying amid the rubble.")
Freeform Fudging
Works Best For: Games that don't have a set difficulty number to beat on a roll, games without "rules lawyers," games that are based around stories and plot rather than combat and skills.
How It Works: Forget stats and rules when writing up your sessions. Just write out the plot and the events to run the players through. When the dice start rolling, you fudge. You make it up. You look at what the players have rolled and if it's reasonably high, they succeed. If it's obviously low or bad, they fail. If it's in the middle, decide what would play out most dramatically for the story and make a note of what exact numbers were rolled so that your rulings appear consistent enough to avoid suspicion.
Benefits: Takes a lot of the headache about of game preparation and lets you focus on the fun, storytelling aspects of GMing instead of turning it into one long math assignment. You can be ready to run a game in hours or even less time rather than days.
Drawbacks: Combat is really tricky using this method. You don't have any actual stats for your enemies, so it becomes crucial to know as much as possible about the PC's stats. If players think you're "cheating" in combat, I wash my hands of what their reaction might be.
Tips: Notes, notes, notes! Write down everything. Write down what number was rolled, what it was for, what the outcome was, who rolled it. Keep notes on which PCs are best at doing what so you can reward them for the time they put into bothering with statistics that you didn't! With luck, they'll never know you didn't have any actual enemy stats.
Modular Encounters
Works Best For: Site-based sessions. The session takes place within a single area or location. Also works best for providing a maximum variety of challenges during a given session.
How It Works: Gather together all the possible individual encounters you might want to throw at your players - enemies, traps, puzzles, clues, everything. But don't tie them to any specific event or location. Think of each as an "element" and imagine it's on a playing card that you can slap down to activate during the game. You might even want to use some sort of cards if you feel it would help. You throw them their first challenge and watch the moods and reactions of the players. You decide what tone and pace the session takes by which challenges you activate and how often to use them in the same way a DJ decides the tone, pace and mood of a dance by what songs are played.
Benefits: Gives you maximum flexibility with regard to the shifting moods of the players. If they look like they're thirsty for a fight, they can have one. Too much combat? Throw them a few environmental hazards or puzzles instead. Players feel the session is getting predictable? Throw down a general plot twist you've written up and interpret it according to what's currently going on in the game.
Drawbacks: You might feel a lot of your prep work was wasted time if you don't use half the things you created for potential use during a given session.
Tips: Keep unused "elements" and reuse them in later sessions with minor adjustments to make them context appropriate. Remember - all the players see is a baby dragon. They don't have to know the stats are actually those of a goblin they never encountered during the last game.
Choose Your Own Adventure Flowchart
Works Best For: Event-based sessions. The session is following a specific plot outline or series of events rather than all taking place at a single location. Over the long term, this model can be used to plan whole campaign arcs that shift depending on the pattern of the player's choices.
How It Works: Every player action can be broken down into one of five basic categories: Combat, Dishonest, Search, Socialize, Spells. Your job is to create five appropriate reactions to player actions for each encounter in the session. Then, when the players react to those reactions, it leads to the next encounter in the sequence, and so on.
Combat: Any action that is physically aggressive or leads to a fight. Might also include non-violent contests.
Dishonest: Sneaking, spying, attempting to lie or disguise, trying to poison or other devious acts.
Search: Any investigative act from looking for clues or traps to interrogating an NPC for information.
Socialize: Any action that is a social action. Engaging NPCs in conversation, giving a performance, etc.
Spells: A player tries to use one of their super-human abilities, magic, powers or technology.
Benefits: You always have a pre-planned response to all but the craziest player actions. It frees you up to focus on rules interpretation and combat rather than scrambling to respond to unexpected player actions.
Drawbacks: If you aren't careful, the branches of possible outcomes will spiral exponentially out of control. This technique is tricky to implement for large-scale sessions, such as sessions that take place with a complex plot line or a lot of different characters.
Tips: Give players the illusion of choice. When it comes to a key clue or scene or encounter, make sure that all possible actions lead to a variation on the same result. This will keep the branching possible outcomes form getting out of control.
Sandbox
Works Best For: Site-based sessions, that all take place in the same location or area. Or for GMs who like to give a very realistic portrayal of a living, independent world around the PCs. Also works well for running a session that's based around solving a crime.
How It Works: You break the session into specific sites and keep careful track of the passage of in-game time during the session. Each site will have a time-specific description written for it, so that the players can go anywhere in the game world and have a unique encounter wherever they go. Your NPCs will have their own agendas and actions, all run by the timer and modified as needed based on the player's actions. Even things like the change in weather can be tracked. Think of it as a series of miniatures plays all going on at different stages. Your notes are the script for each play.
Example: The PCs are going to enter a villager of 4 houses. Divide these into Sites A-D. The basic plot is that a menage a trois between a former lover and a lady's husband leads to the murder of the village priest.
Site A: Mother's House:
8 AM: Mother wakes up and bathes.
9AM: Mother does dishes and cleans.
10AM: Mother leaves to visit Priest, discovering him dead at 10:15.
Site B: Father's House
8 AM: Father wakes up, shaves, bathes, cooks.
9AM: Father eats breakfast.
10 AM: Father leaves house for fields.
Site C: Priest's House
8 AM: Priest awakens and begins morning prayers.
9 AM: Villain enters. Priest has a long argument with Villain.
10 AM: Priest is murdered. Villain flees
Site D: Villain's House
8 AM: Villain wakes up and eats breakfast.
9 AM: Villain is absent, gone to the Priest's house. He leaves for the Priests at 8:55 AM.
10 AM: Villain is absent, gone to the Priest's house for the first 10 minutes. Then returns here.
Weather:
8 AM: Predawn. Foggy. Chilly
9 AM: Dawn. Clearing, birdsong.
10 AM: Morning. Becoming overcast. Distant thunder.
Benefits: It can be greatly rewarding to have such a "God like" perspective of everything going on and be able to watch your players explore and discover and piece together the plots in the world around them. You'll easily be able to give vivid descriptions, even of the individuals that pass on the street. The players will definitely get the sense that they are in a real place, where things are happening even if they don't see them happening (because they actually are theoretically happening!)
Drawbacks: All it takes is a little bit of unanticipated mayhem from the players and you can be left scrambling to put your beautiful little web back together. It can be a real headache and a game-slower if you're not used to major multitasking or if you're running a very large location with multiple sites. In addition, players might become caught up in more than one subplot and not realize the two are totally unrelated. This can lead to a sense of frustration and betrayal if your players are the type who have no patience for mysteries or intrigue. Finally, players might become frustrated if they keep missing encounters by a matter of minutes and all they see is a bunch of unknown people walking around and empty rooms with nothing going on.
Tips: You'll have to fudge artistically to keep things moving. If the players are 'early' or 'late' to a place, adjust the clock a bit. Leave plenty of clues to guide them and help them sort out what's important from what's not. Take a look at how video game dialogue and cut scenes guide the player from goal to goal. Finally, if the players get way ahead of a major consequence to their actions and you're afraid they might get too reckless or even forget about what they've done because they don't see any obvious consequences within a few days of the act, then fudge realism and confront them with appropriate consequences as a cliffhanger to the next session.
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