Pantheon Press Blog

Stratton Speaks: Surprise Yourself
By Jay Stratton, Lead Designer at Pantheon Press

 Thirty years ago, when I started as a gamemaster, I was really a dungeon master. There’s a hallway with three doors - there’s an encounter behind each door. Since the goal was to explore the dungeon, it didn’t matter what the characters did; it was just a question of order.

 But when the adventures came out of the dungeon things necessarily became more complicated. There was an infinite number of ‘doors’ and no way to control where the players went. My early failures included putting the crucial magic item in a certain building and having no clue what to do when the PCs didn’t GO there.

 Next step: clues! I started introducing hints and signs to guide the players toward the necessary information. Like a border collie, I would herd them along the storyline. Of course, this could be agonizing. My players understandably wanted choice and freewill. I can remember hearing one of my players say, “Oh, good… We found the adventure.”

Somewhere along the way, like any good GM, I realized that I had to put the adventure in front of the players. Didn’t matter where they went, that’s where the adventure happened. This worked pretty well, for a long time. I would prepare maybe three ‘scenes’ and the party would ‘discover’ these scenes almost regardless of their choices. I would even vary the order or shape of the scenes depending on PC action. I’ve heard this called ‘the illusion of choice’. This is SOP for a lot of GMs and it ain’t bad.

 But I am a hard core GM with hard core players and eventually we needed more. The ‘illusion’ wasn’t enough. My players needed real freedom. Like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, my GMing style was forced to evolve to the next level. Gradually I learned to let the players truly surprise me. I stopped preparing moments and instead became more generically prepared - for anything.

So my admonition for the Gamemaster:
Let the players surprise you. Surprise them right back. Hell, surprise yourself.

 Put the camera on the PCs and make sure that they are truly the focus of the story, not your prep work. If they do something unexpected – avoid a fight or scene or story moment – go with it and see what happens! When that safety net disappears and you have to rely solely on communal storytelling, it’s thrilling.

 

Of course, this requires a very different kind of prep. You have to have a bigger sense of the campaign and your world, and you have to think quite fast on your feet. You also have to foster real player investment. They can’t just be ‘on an adventure’ they have to be fighting for their lives!

 

Okay, this is tiny. Call it a pet peeve. I hate it when the GM gives every player a perception roll to spot something hidden.

We are searching for a secret door – very well hidden. To find the door, we have to roll a 17+ on a d20. Tough door, right? The odds of finding it are only 20%. But when all five characters search, the odds of at least 1 person rolling a 17+ climb to… over 67%!

This totally diminishes the fun of being the character good at perception! You might roll bad this time, but it doesn’t matter, no one’s counting on you!
There are four more characters with mediocre perception who can toss out natural 17s and 19s. BORING!

I like a GM who gives a single roll to spot something. If it’s a passive circumstance,ask the character with best perception for the roll. If the party is actively searching for something, either give the roll to the highest perception or to the character that takes the initiative to start the search.

The opposite rule applies for stealth rolls. The thief, the elf, and the halfling all sneak off to explore something. They leave the noisy fighter and dwarf behind. After taking a back seat in countless battles, this is the scouts’ chance to shine!

All three are really sneaky – succeeding their stealth rolls on 5+ on a d20 (80%)! But when all three have to roll, the odds of at least one failure climbs to about 50%. One of them is very likely to blow it, and the scouts are humiliated once again, as the fighters and wizards have to rush to their aid.

My GM rule of thumb: a chain is only as sneaky as its loudest link. In matters of stealth, only the character with the worst stealth makes the roll.