Back in 2019 I had the opportunity to speak at a work conference; Litmus Live London. This time around I spoke on something a bit different. To be frank, it wasn’t a serious speaking proposal – I’d put in other topics as well, but the conference team came back asking for this one. So I set out to fulfil the brief; using D&D to build better teams. Here’s the synopsis Litmus and I put together:
Every team member has strengths and weaknesses. The key to a truly effective team is understanding them and establishing a team dynamic that takes advantage of both. In this session, Jonathan Pay from Holistic Email combines two of his passions (D&D and email) to show you how a classic role-playing game can be used as a tool to examine teamwork and build a party that finally comes together to work towards the same goals.
P.P.S. I’ve decided to include some of my experience with RPG on my LinkedIn given that I did a presentation on this it makes sense as there’s a lot of administration, organisation, as well as creative and reactive thinking that goes on in running an RPG campaign or being a player. I encourage all LRC members to do the same if they think it’s relevant.
LRC members test their D&D combat skills against endless tides of monstrous foes! Led by DM Jonny, players Youki, Hailey, Morgan, and Will try to survive for as long as they can and kill as many as they can on a livestreamed game of MCDM’s “Against the Horde”.
Originally streamed on Twitch, we uploaded the stream to YouTube for posterity.
As London is gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, the London RPG Community had little choice but to move its games online after pubs and gaming cafés close their doors for the safety of everyone. As we became aware that many of our members would be spending Easter at home with naught to do, the LRC decided to organise a four-day online RPG convention over the long Easter weekend, hosting a boat-load of games from various systems at our Discord server to keep people from getting bored. And thus, the first ever Together @ Home was born.
We saw a total of 21 games being played over the 4-day weekend, most of which were at full capacity that 2 more games had to be added to the initial line-up in order to accommodate more players. We drew in more interested gamers to our community and we met many other RPG enthusiasts, some of whom are scattered across the globe, from the safety of their own homes.
Here’s the full list of the RPG systems that were played during the first Together @ Home:
Alien RPG
Delta Green
Dialect
Dungeons & Dragons 5e
Heart: The City Beneath
Into the Yonceverse
Lasers & Feelings
Powered by the Apocalypse (Demigods, Dungeon World, Masks, Monsterhearts 2, The Sprawl, and two homebrewed hacks of PbtA by our members called Smooth Sailing and Hogwarts: A Pisstake)
Savage Worlds
Together @ Home had a fantastic reception from our members and we are certain to hold more of these conventions as lockdown continues, with even more RPGs to try.
One of our (once) resident Game Masters, Nuno Teixera, developed this simple formula for plotting out a 3-hour game session — it’s his not-so-secret to running games!
Although it was originally created for Kantas games, it is generic and universal enough to suit most RPG systems, with or without combat. So, let’s get to it:
Summary
You will need to prepare:
1 Concept 2 to 3 Obstacles 3 Locations/Stages
Concept
The starting premise of your game. Can either be player-facing or not. Just needs to be something to get your creative juices flowing.
Example of player-facing concept:
“This village is very creepy and you are here to investigate.”
Example of non-player-facing concept:
“You are in a village.” – The village is very creepy and they don’t know.
Other types of concepts can be: Monsters, an NPC, a magic item, etc. Everything works as long as you can build a story around it.
Locations/Stages
These are the pivotal points of your story and are moments you should pause the narrative timeline to describe/explain what’s going on.
Examples: An abandoned house, an NPC walking into the tavern, reaching a haunted clearing, etc.
For an extra kick you can prepare more stages/locations to give the players real choices. This is not necessary as long as they have the illusion of choice – that’s what matters for it to be an enjoyable, immersive experience.
Obstacles
Your classic conundrums.
Examples: Combat encounter, puzzles, negotiations, a lengthy story exposition, interrogations, etc.
As a rule of thumb if you choose to have 2 combat encounters as obstacles, you probably won’t have time for the 3rd Obstacle. If you choose to have only 1 combat encounter then more often than not you’ll end up needing the 3rd Obstacle.
Prepare an extra Obstacle that can easily be included before your climactic Obstacle, in case your players blitz through everything.
Endnotes
This is a formula that works for me, with players engaging in average to low amounts of RP. If your players start RP immediately and do it often, be prepared to cut locations/stages or obstacles.
Even if you don’t prepare for multiple choices/different outcomes, always give the players the illusion of choice. They will never know there was no alternative outcome.
If you know your players well, use this as a skeleton and cut/add sections depending on their gameplay style! If you’re DMing for strangers/new players I’m pretty confident this will work out for you.
Nuno DM-ing a Kantas season finale at the Bad Moon Café (central London), June 2019.
Follow Nuno on Twitter and check out his games on itch.io.
An actual play & interview of London RPG Community put together by Kalum from Rolistes Podcast featuring Andy, Nuno, Dasha, and Riah. Each episode is about an hour long and includes interviews mixed throughout the session’s plot.
Part 1
Released 14 November 2019
Part 2
Released 28 December 2019
Part 3
Released 21 February 2020
Part 4
Released 27 April 2020
A very special thank you to Kalum from The Rolistes Podcast for putting this together and featuring our community!
