Loaded Dice: Books 1-3: My Storytelling Guides

By Aron Christensen and Erica Lindquist

After three years of writing for The RPGuide, we've talked a lot about running and playing role-playing games. Thank you for listening for all these years!

 

This is a collection of our best and favorite articles from all three years of RPGuide posts. It includes three volumes of Loaded Dice, each one covering a year of our ramblings. There are sections on Storytelling, plotting and pacing your game, non-player characters (NPCs), game rules and mechanics, and advice for players to create characters and then play them in a team sport like RPGs.

 

Whether you're new to role-playing games or have been gaming for years, come learn from our mistakes and take advantage of our experience. Most of the posts included in this boxed set build on the ideas that we set out in our first guidebooks: My Guide to RPG Storytelling, My Storytelling Guide Companion, and From Dream to Dice. You don't need to read them, but it might help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Loose Leaf Stories
• Release date: Sep 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781643190686

Aron Christensen

Erica and Aron are the science fiction and fantasy authors of the Reforged Trilogy, In the House of Five Dragons and the recently completed Dead Beat occult detective serial. Their short fiction has appeared in eFiction and Abomination magazine. They also write paranormal adventure erotica under the porn names of Natalie and Eric Severine. Aron and Erica live together in Sacramento, California, but miss the dark pines and deep snow of the mountains. Their education included medicine, biology, psychology, criminal justice, anthropology, art, martial arts and journalism before they finally fell in love with writing fiction. Now they can’t quite remember why they bothered with all of that other stuff.

Book preview

Loaded Dice, volumes 1-3Title page

Copyright © 2021

Aron Christensen & Erica Lindquist

and Loose Leaf Stories

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781643190686

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Cover art by Tithi Luadthong

Edited by Erica Lindquist

This book and its author are not associated with any specific role-playing game company or system.

Find more of our books at LLStories.com

CONTENTS

Loaded Dice 1

A word about this book

I. About table-top RPGs

What is a role-playing game?

Keep an open door & put out the welcome mat

Why I call myself a Storyteller

Level-based versus purchase-based RPGs

II. On running a game

Storytelling for first-time players

Storytelling for kids

One-on-one role-playing

Why I don’t use combat or RP scene XP rewards

Running a campaign for the second time

Building the game world for your players

Playing to your audience

Equipment & consumables

Play to your Storytelling strengths

Don’t try too hard to surprise your players

Collaborative character creation

A case for group character creation

Follow the NPC

The lies we tell

Putting the fear of death into your players

Multiple choice

When PCs fail a critical roll: Success at a cost

RPG combat: Maps versus Theater of the Mind

Character buy-in

III. Playing in an RPG

Yes And

Reusing an old character

Wheelhouse characters

Making a sad character

When Storytellers are players

Playing a trouble-maker

Nurture your badass

When in doubt, play an investigator

IV. RPG combats

Maybe don’t kill everyone

High defensive value or lots of hit points?

Minions in a boss fight

V. Handling problems

Storytelling for part-time players

Last-minute NPC saves

When combat goes wrong

When players get sidetracked

The ol’ switcheroo

Using a Costoryteller & maintaining authority

Loaded Dice 2

A brief introduction to this book

I. About Storytelling

Being the only Storyteller

Making the change that you want to see

Protecting boundaries

I love your enthusiasm, but hold on a sec

Creating characters with my players

Following your own advice

II. Plotting, Pacing & Running the Game

What to include in the first session

Less is more

Pacing an RPG

Plotting a romantic arc

Emergency exposition

The room where it happens

Animosity as a tool

Layering scenes for impact

Scenes with more than one goal

Mystery plots & investigations

Quicksand: Navigating the sandbox

In-game rewards

What to include in the last session

III. Non-Player Characters

Anatomy of a guide NPC

Beware self-awareness

De-Flanderizing an NPC

The best NPCs suck

Quirky NPCs

Knocking NPCs down a notch

Careful with the kooky

Let your players build your NPCs

IV. Rules & Mechanics

Balancing crunch

Character versus crunch

Flexible crisis scenes

Creating a crisis on the spot

V. Players & Player Characters

Advice for a new or returning player

Finding my voice and my agency

Flanderizing characters

Playing a character from a book or movie

Role-playing a jerk

Flawed characters

Pivoting a scene as a player

How to play with the party

Loaded Dice 3

Introduction

I. About Storytelling

Table talks

Curveballs

Brass tacks

Exposition cuts both ways

Always give your players a goal

Pyrrhic victories

Player buy-in: Storytelling edition

How to foster role-playing when you’re bad at characterization

Putting some meat on a scene

Front-load your story guidance

Role-playing handholds

Tactics outside of combat

Collaboration

II. Plotting, Pacing & Running the Game

Crises as combat scenes

Take a crack at crises

Plot armor

Player-initiated scenes

Don’t sweat the plot reveal

On surprising your players

Short first acts in RPGs

Short session pacing

Pacing dramatic arcs

So you’ve figured out my evil plan...

III. Non-Player Characters

Cabbage heads

That… did not go as planned

How to use NPCs to lead players into story areas they are ignoring

IV. Rules & Mechanics

How to build a house (rule)

Taking control of player characters

In-world rules before game mechanics

Crisis scenes – D&D 5e style

Combats are chaos, crises offer control

V. Players & Player Characters

Reassuring your players

Killing off player characters

Getting wallflowers off the wall and helping them bloom

Main character material

Try and try again

Make sure your player characters shine

Apparently aimless role-playing

Also by Aron Christensen

More by Aron & Erica

Loaded Dice 1: Collected advice on running and playing from The RPGuide

A WORD ABOUT THIS BOOK

– FOREWORD, BY ERICA LINDQUIST –

Hello again, gamers! Chances are good that this isn’t your first RPGuidebook. You’ve probably read Aron’s Guide to RPG Story­telling, the Companion, or maybe From Dream to Dice, and that’s what brought you around to this little collection. You know the deal – everything in this book is just advice. Some of it will work for you, and some of it won’t. Take or leave any of it to tell your best story and build your favorite RPG campaign.

But if this is your first RPGuidebook, welcome! Don’t worry, you don’t need to read any of the other Guidebooks first – Loaded Dice can be used on its own. We’ll even begin with a What the heck is a table-top role-playing game? chapter.

For new and returning readers alike, though, I want to offer a brief word of explanation. The articles and essays in this book are a curated and edited collection of our posts from The RPGuide, our role-playing blog. So each chapter is a more or less stand-alone piece, and you can skip freely around to whatever subject interests you without losing any intermediary material.

You will also notice that there are two authors in this RPGuidebook. Most of the chapters in Loaded Dice were written by Aron, but there are more than a few pieces contributed by me.

Hi! I’m Erica, Aron’s Costoryteller, coauthor and editor. I haven’t run nearly as many table-top role-playing games as Aron. He’s been doing this for over thirty years, while I didn’t discover RPGs until college. But my relative lack of experience means that I have a new­comer’s perspective, and that’s proven useful in talking to other new players and Storytellers.

Each chapter is marked with the author’s name just below the title, so you’ll always know if it’s the old hand talking, or the newbie.

– Erica

Part 1: About table-top RPGs

WHAT IS A ROLE-PLAYING GAME?

– ARON –

We get asked this question a lot. Erica and I like to go out and grab some food after game, and when asked what we’ve been up to, we answer role-playing… And get a lot of blank stares. If you’re here and reading our books, you probably know what a table-top RPG is.

But maybe not! A lot of people don’t know much about gaming. This chapter is for anyone who doesn’t understand what RPGs are, or who struggles to explain role-playing to someone else.

This is for your parents, your kids, your co-workers, your non-role-playing friends who are trying to imagine what is it you’re doing when you tell them what you’ll be up to this weekend.

Role-playing games are also known by the shortened acronym RPG. And these are the table-top variety, so they’re not video games on a console, your phone or computer. They’re not a field game like soccer or baseball. They aren’t quite choose-your-own-adventures like the books or Netflix’s interactive film, Bandersnatch – but they’re closer than anything else, so let’s use choose-your-own-adventures as our jumping-off point.

RPGs are like a choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) in that they are centered on a narrative story that you have some influence over. In both an RPG and a choose-your-own-adventure, when a story event occurs, you get to choose what to do, which determines what happens next. Some video games – also known as RPGs – let you do that, too.

But a table-top role-playing game is far more open-ended. And you get to play with your friends! So grab some imaginary dice – we’re going to play a sample RPG.

Here’s how it goes. I’m the Storyteller – also called the Dungeon Master, Game Master, Holmeister, or several other titles depending upon the game system – and I’m marginally in charge. I’m the one who created the story and who narrates the events of the campaign.

You’re a player! I’m probably going to need more than one player, so bring some friends. We’ll gather in my living room or a table at the local gaming shop – hence the name table-top RPG – probably with some snacks. RPGs take a long time to play, so you’re going to get hungry.

Time to make the character who will interact with my story. Unlike a choose-your-own-adventure or most video game RPGs, you get to make your own character. Not just select their hair, cos­tume or gender – though you get to choose that, too. But what’s their name? What drives your character? What are their hopes and fears? Now we’re getting into something more like improvisational acting!

As you develop your character, the Storyteller – which is me in this example – will provide some feedback and guidance. Maybe my story is a fantasy tale of political and magical intrigue, and I don’t know how much fun you’re going to have playing the castle stable hand. But maybe the wizard’s apprentice…? If you like that idea, great! Then that’s the character we’ll create. If not, we’ll work to­gether to craft some other ideas.

Role-playing is collaborative, and I’m on the same team as my player to help them have fun.

Your character also gets stats – written up on a paper or digital character sheet – to determine how good they are at certain things, like running and fighting and solving riddles. Maybe you’ll have some special tricks or powers that your character can use, like magic spells, neat combat moves or wielding political clout.

So now you and your friends have a little band – or party – of characters. We’ve created them together because as the Storyteller, I need to make sure your character has a comfy place in the game (also called a campaign). You’ve got character sheets and a handful of the right kind of dice. Dungeons & Dragons uses a traditional D20 set, and White Wolf is rolled with a bunch of D10s, while Big Eyes, Small Mouth uses just a pair of standard 6-siders.

Usual notation for dice is a letter D, then the number of sides on the die – a D20 is a 20-sided die, a D10 has ten sides, and so on.

Next, you need something to do with your new character. So now it’s time to begin telling my story and playing the game!

I start off by describing a scene. I might give a little history, or talk about the state of the imaginary world your characters are a part of… Then I come to you! I will describe where your characters – player characters, also called PCs – are and what they’re up to when the adventure begins. Then I narrate something happening.

Maybe someone comes up to talk to your character. You – speaking as your character – get to answer their questions. Maybe you ask some questions, too, if you feel like it. All in your character’s voice, using those mannerisms and motivations that we worked out together.

Unlike a video game, there are no pre-set dialogue options to choose from. And unlike a choose-your-own-adventure book, you don’t just pick one of the possibilities and then flip to another page. In my story, you can say or do (just about) anything that you want. I’ll have all the supporting and background characters react to you. And all the players get to react to each other, too.

Maybe it’s not a conversation that starts things. Maybe the PC party is on the road and they’re suddenly attacked by goblins! Maybe you and your friends fight back, or lead your attackers on an exciting chase!

This sort of action scene is what most people imagine when they think of role-playing, and it’s the meat and potatoes of table-top RPGs. You get to use those stats and dice in fights or chases, but you still get to make the choices. Of all the monsters charging at you, which one do you want to go after? What skills or powers or weapons do you want to use against it?

In a choose-your-own-adventure book, the reader only gets two or three options. In a video game, you have powers and weapons, but can only deploy them in limited ways. What if you don’t want to hit the bad guy with your sword? What if you want to catch the sunlight on its blade and shine it into the villain’s eyes to blind them as the other characters sneak in close?

In a table-top RPG, you can do just about anything you can think of. It doesn’t have to be written in advance like a book, or coded and scripted like a video game. If you can imagine something, then I can think of what your character needs to roll in order to do it. Now let’s roll those dice and see what happens!

The dice stay on the table and the rules remain on the character sheets, but everything else happens in the minds of the Storyteller and players. It’s playing make-believe with a few rules attached, so there’s a staggering number of options. And while you’re coming up with your own ideas, all the other players are doing the same thing. And the Storyteller is weaving it into a single narrative. It’s a collaborative story – one that all the players and the Storyteller create together.

When I play video games, I can’t help but grumble when I have to choose from a limited set of pre-determined dialogue options, none of which is what I really want my character to say. Or I try to shoot out a support to drop the roof on some villain’s head, but my video game bullets can’t damage background objects. I just can’t read a choose-your-own-adventure book when I can think of better things to do than the options on the page. I’ve been spoiled by the freedom of table-top RPGs, and the joy of creating a story with my friends… But it seems like a small price to pay to play in stories together.

If you’ve never role-played, I highly recommend it.

KEEP AN OPEN DOOR & PUT OUT THE WELCOME MAT

– ARON –

The previous chapter was a basic explanation of role-playing games, mostly because it’s come up a lot for me recently.

Hey, what are you doing this weekend?

Answer: Role-playing.

What’s your new book about?

Answer: Role-playing!

When I explain, people sound sincerely interested and I want to send them out to try gaming. Go for it! Jump in with both feet and have an adventure!

But then I pause. I would love to be able to take everyone into my group for their first RPG experience, but scheduling game time with my regular group is already hell. I have to work a day job, too, and can never find the time to run as many games as I would like.

I encourage other people to pick up the core rulebook of whatever system has caught their eye and find a gaming group, but I worry because it’s not always a safe environment. Most gamers are very friendly and welcoming… but not all of them. Not yet, at least. There are people and groups out there who make nerd culture toxic for new­comers that want to play with us.

I can see how it happens. I’m from a generation for whom nerdy stuff was sometimes a point of deep social shame. When I was young and people asked me what my weekend plans were, I sure as hell didn’t say role-playing. If I did, I would get teased and bullied. I felt unsafe being myself and being open about my hobbies and interests. So I became scared and defensive of my nerdom, protective of my private creative space… And it can be hard to let that go.

I can see how we might say comic books, video games or role-playing is for us. Some of us suffered for our nerdy loves, and re­sent anyone new coming in. When someone else holds the doors open to bring others into the fandom, we can get angry and feel like our space is being invaded. Role-playing games are becoming more mainstream and accessible now, and maybe that makes some of the old-schoolers feel like it’s being taken away from them.

But it’s not. RPGs aren’t a pie; there’s not a finite amount to go around. There’s plenty for everyone.

I’m a cisgender guy, but most of my RPG gaming groups have included at least a couple of women. My nerdy loves have always connected me to people who were different than me, and it’s great to have something in common. There have always been nerds and it doesn’t belong to anyone. We can all share, and we can all defeat a necromancer together. Hell, half of any RPG campaign is the party learning to get along!

Yeah, I was excluded from the popular cliques of my generation – but because of that, I want to be welcoming to anyone who wants to join mine now. I felt like an outcast, and now the best way to stop feeling like an outsider is to invite as many people into my circle as possible.

If nothing else, the more nerds there are out there, the better my chances of finding someone at the office party or standing in line at the coffee shop who can talk about Dungeons and Dragons with me. More fun for both of us! So let’s all hold the door open to any­one who’s curious or interested in role-playing.

WHY I CALL MYSELF A STORYTELLER

– ARON –

The person who creates and runs a role-playing game gets all sorts of titles: Dungeon Master, Game Master, Referee, Narrator… And, one of my favorites, Holmeister. But the one I identify with and which I use in my books about role-playing is Storyteller.

I want to be more than just the guy who sprinkles monsters around a dungeon like deadly cake toppings. Game Master sounds all tied up in rules. I don’t want to just Referee my players or Narrate a scene to them.

I want to tell a story, just like when Erica and I write novels. I’m here to create a story just like my friends and I see in movies. But gaming isn’t handing players a script, or beating round pegs into square holes with a Storytelling hammer. It’s just finding a mood and infusing my game with it, using recurring themes so that it saturates the story and resonates with my players. It’s about making them feel like the heroes of a great story, about making them laugh and cry.

And when I make my players cry, I don’t mean just torturing their characters or screwing them over with the rules until they cry tears of frustration. No, I mean getting them so emotionally in­vested in my game that they truly care about what happens to the characters in it – the player characters and non-player characters (NPCs) alike. We’ve all cried during movies, or when our favorite character dies in a book, so why can’t we do that in an RPG? Why can’t that kind of story move us the same way?

That’s my goal. That’s why I run role-playing games. And why I call myself a Storyteller.

And if you want to know a secret, I think of my players as Storytellers, too. Oh, I’m definitely the one who comes up with the plot and portrays the NPCs, but role-playing is collaborative and my players each have scenes and themes to contribute to the story. I try to weave them all together, so that the end result is so much more than the pile of notes and outlines and stats that I came up with. But the end result I’m looking to create together, isn’t a handful of high-level characters, it’s a story we can enjoy just as much as any book or movie.

LEVEL-BASED VERSUS PURCHASE-BASED RPGS

– ARON –

There are a lot of RPG systems out there. I haven’t played every single one – not even close – but growing your role-playing character seems to fall generally into one of two categories: a level-based system, or a purchase-based one.

I have a bit of a grass-is-greener experience no matter which one I’m working with… Though in the one system I played which was sort of a hybrid, it didn’t satisfy the way that I had hoped. But knowing how systems work, and how they will shape your PCs is important to running a successful RPG campaign.

LEVEL-BASED SYSTEMS

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a level-based system. It’s the biggest RPG out there and probably always will be. All hail Gygax! I’m pretty sure that every role-player is at least vaguely familiar with one of its editions, so it stands as a good example of a level-based system.

D&D characters earn experience by doing stuff, though what stuff earns experience points (XP) varies a bit by the particular system and gaming group. But when you hit a certain amount of XP – usually found in a table somewhere in the core rulebook – you advance to a new level. Higher level characters are stronger and give you access to new powers, abilities, and so on.

What I like about level-based systems is that some very smart people have already crunched a whole lot of numbers, and when my PCs level up, most of the work has been taken care of in the game system. The classes are generally play-balanced, making sure that a 10th level ranger can keep up with a 10th level paladin.

There are some exceptions. Palladium games are of the opinion that real life isn’t equal, so characters in their games level up at different rates, and a 10th level Rogue Scientist is far from the equal of a 10th level Cyberknight.

But Palladium aside, most level-based systems are pretty well play-balanced. When I’m running a level-based system, I know that if my PCs are fifth level, I can build fifth level challenges that they can take on – or warm up with something lower, then maybe challenge them with something a little higher.

As a Storyteller, level-based RPGs give me fine control over my characters’ power. I can control the flow of experience so they’re exactly the power level I’m comfortable with, or that is re­quired by my story. In one D&D game I ran, I didn’t even award experience points – I just leveled the characters up as they pro­gressed through the plot. But it goes just as easily the other way: hand out whatever XP the characters deserve or earn through their actions and just level the game up with them.

But there are drawbacks to level-based RPGs. Most of them are tightly connected to a class system. After all, those classes dictate what skills you get when you level up and which new powers are unlocked. When they level up, what exactly do the characters gain? Combat classes gain some combat abilities or get tougher, healers gain more powerful healing, and so on.

Now, I’m not dead-set against RPG classes. Classes give me a predictable and reliable expectation of what my PCs can do – not what they will do, who knows what those crazy buggers are going to pull – but at least I know up front which abilities they’re working with. And classes can provide a lot of gameplay guidance, from suggestions in various players’ guides to the abilities each class is given.

But classes can also be painfully restrictive. If you’re a fighter, you need to be strong, and being smart doesn’t really help you. In most level-based systems, it doesn’t often pay to play a genius fighter. Your intellect is probably a dump stat – the term for a stat that is so unused by a given class that number-crunching players will quickly reduce it to its lowest level in order to bump up something else, something more important to their ability to swing an axe.

I’m certain that there’s a build out there with which you can give your fighter a high intelligence and choose all the right feats or perks to make that a killer combo. But you have to find that magic combination – and if you don’t have the system knowledge to pick that specific build, then that high intelligence is right back to being a liability.

HYBRID SYSTEMS

Fantasy Flight’s Edge of the Empire offers a sort of hybrid system. At character creation, you pick a career – which functions like a class – and then you pick a specialization, which is a build. But then you spend earned experience to buy up levels in skills, or to progress down your talent tree. You can buy extra specializations, which open up new talent trees, and sort of super multiclass. No one in our group had played Edge of the Empire before, so I think I sucked at making a Fantasy Flight character. I felt like I had all the restrictions of being confined to a class, but made all the mistakes of a purchase-based system.

PURCHASE-BASED SYSTEMS

Let’s use that to segue into purchased-based games. In those RPGs, there are no levels and usually no classes. Since we talk about them a lot, both White Wolf’s World of Darkness and Big Eyes, Small Mouth are purchase-based RPG systems. The experience that you earn is currency which players spend to grow their character. You can buy up stats or skills, or buy new powers and abilities, and it lets you make incredibly customized characters.

In a recent White Wolf game, I played a fire marshal, and was able to construct a character who was equal parts burly, physical character (for busting down doors to rescue people), and science-based investigator (for looking into arsons). I had to split my points between those aspects of his life, but I made it work in a way that left me satisfied.

Building and growing PCs in a purchase-based system gives you a lot of flexibility. Want to play that brilliant fighter, deadly with a sword, but also a student of the Art of War and history and chess? You can do that.

Of course, you can min-max as much as in any system… But I’ve always felt more free to break molds and make characters with in­teresting combinations of skills.

But I’ve also seen players purchase their characters right into a corner. There’s little to no built-in play balance with purchase-based systems. It’s all up to the Storyteller.

A while back, Erica ran a Trigun game and one of our players – wholly embracing Vash the Stampede’s famous pacifism – made her character to inflict no damage in combat. Status effects, sure, but no actual damage. I can’t say that she was no help in combat… But when her turn came around, she couldn’t clear out any of the enemies that we were up against. It made things hard on the rest of the group, unbalanced combat, and could be really frustrating for the player.

In a purchased-based system, unless the Storyteller provides quite a bit of guidance, any player is free to pour all of their points into stuff that will never be called upon by the campaign.

CHAPTER REWARDS

But there’s a solution! I run most games in a purchase-based system because I like the freedom. So to mitigate this lack of built-in play balance, I began giving out chapter rewards. I wanted to make sure that my players could grow their characters however they wished, but also ensure a minimum level of competency. At the end of each section of my campaign story, I added a sort of level bonus – usually made up of health, attack bonuses, and story-vital skills. Even if the player didn’t invest in anything else that I wanted them to, these chapter rewards made sure that they could keep up as the campaign progressed.

Level-based or purchase-based, there’s no wrong answer. Just consider what you and your players want, and which will suit your campaign best.

Part 2: On running a game

STORYTELLING FOR FIRST-TIME PLAYERS

– ARON –

Recently, I had the chance to run a game for a group of first-time role-players. Erica and I talk about RPGs enough – hey, it’s our job – that anyone who spends more than five minutes with us hears about it. And sometimes they’re curious. Sometimes they want to try it. And sometimes they even follow through, order pizza and have you over to run a game for them.

I picked a House Game for their first time. House Game is a term that I picked up somewhere in high school for a one-night game, as opposed to a full campaign. Just because my friends were curious didn’t mean that they were ready to commit to a months-long saga. So I wanted something that they could just dip their toes into and see if they even liked RPGs.

The analogy I gave them for a House Game was that it would be like an escape room – the goal was just to keep their character alive for a single night, and escape… if they could.

I had three new players for this game: Heather, her daughter Bri, and Shawna. The story I made for them was called A Night of Magic, featuring a Waffle House full of normal people for my brand new group to play. As the story unfolded, I planned for an injured sorcerer to stumble in, forever changing their lives – but the Waffle House offered a simple premise to start with.

Since the game was set more or less in the real world and the players would be playing relatively normal people, they didn’t have to worry about memorizing pantheons of fantasy gods, learn a pile of fictional nation names, or figure out what an orc was. My goal was just to get them into a story to see if role-playing was something that they enjoyed.

To that end, I also made up some character templates: a trucker, a highway patrol officer, a hitchhiker, as well as the Waffle House cook and server. Character creation can be a long, drawn-out affair, even with experienced players who know what all of the stats mean. Templates let us skip that whole part so we could get to the actual gaming.

When I handed out sheets, Heather picked the hitchhiker, Bri selected the highway patrol officer, Shawna picked the cook, and then Erica chose the trucker. Erica named her new character Jenny Brown, and everyone else swiftly decided to use colors as names, too. So we ended up with a Reservoir Dogs-esque group – Jenny Brown, Rachel Green, Sammy White, Charlie Black – and the game’s first round of laughs.

Erica’s coming up on her twentieth anniversary for role-playing, so I started with her trucker rumbling down the highway in the middle of the night, when she spotted a hitchhiker. Heather was ready to get into things and eagerly accepted a lift. I had made the hitchhiker character a wandering student as an excuse to make sure that she had some skills. So Heather decided that she had been an art major but dropped out, already spinning her own story from the base I had created. Erica played right along, sympathizing with Jenny, and then deciding to stop for some coffee. Trucker’s treat.

At the diner, I got to introduce everyone else. Shawna’s cook and Bri’s officer were at the Waffle House, along with a couple of NPCs. I gave the diner a server to take the orders, and a family on a hellish all-night road-trip who had stopped for food and caffeine.

Not long after my new arrivals sat down, the wounded sorcerer arrived. That brought us to our first dice rolls – to spot the trail of blood that he left from the door to his table. I didn’t want to lay out all the rules ahead of time. Role-playing games have a lot of rules and expecting anyone to learn them all up front is a lot to ask. I decided that as the rolls came up, I would explain each one so my brand-new players could digest it a bit at a time.

When I told them to, everyone reached for the pile of dice and made their first skill checks!

It was a little awkward at first, because the group wasn’t sure what they could do or should do. They whispered suggestions to each other and offered ideas. Some gaming groups I’ve been in were strict on that kind of thing. No out-of-game talk, you only get ten seconds to confer… things like that. But this was a new player group and I wanted to give them plenty of room to think and help each other. And it meant that everyone was trading ideas and a brand-new group coming up with their own ideas is a great start!

Things began getting weird after the arrival of the sorcerer, and supernatural things started to happen. The doors were suddenly sealed and impenetrable darkness surrounded the building. Things escalated when the wizard passed out from his wounds and almost died. Thankfully, the PCs grabbed the Waffle House first aid kit and bandaged him up.

Erica had been so quick to help the other players figure out their character sheets that she only glanced at her own. So at this point, she finally saw the equipment list and the roofies I had jotted down as an afterthought. It cast a rather different light on her friendliness to Heather’s hitchhiker, and everyone laughed some more. Then they gave the injured wizard some roofies to help him sleep, but Bri’s highway patrol officer handcuffed him – just to be safe.

That’s where I ran into my first real issue, but it wasn’t with my new players. I had given myself one source of information on what was going on in my story – the sorcerer. He had already made up some bullshit about a freak storm that meant everyone should stay inside. When he passed out from blood loss, he mumbled some plot stuff, too. He had stolen something and they were coming to take it back.

But that wasn’t a lot of information. Not enough for my PCs to act on. And now the wizard was unconscious and I couldn’t have him reveal any more. Uh, shit…

I did give the characters access to the sorcerer’s diary and an ancient book he had – the stolen knowledge he had run off with and which a mysterious they wanted back. That let me give the players a little more information, but once it was delivered, I didn’t have a way to give them anything new. They had to figure out what to do without any new guidance. My other NPCs were useless, of course, being normal people just caught up in the same problem. I couldn’t use them to provide any sudden insight into the magically warded doors or extra-planar powers outside.

I had plenty of creepy stuff to pull out as the Powers shut off the lights outside – including the moon and stars – shook the whole diner, and a slimy creature that crawled out of the sorcerer’s now-dead body. So I had things to throw at the players while I tried to wiggle out of the corner I had Storytold myself into.

Eventually, I nudged my players back toward the books. I had already said that reading them both cover-to-cover would take all night, so I figured it was plausible that there were unread nuggets of exposition still there to find. And since the players now had a few little specific things to look for, they returned to the books and I was able to clear their way forward.

There were a few moments where the players were left waiting, unsure what to do, but that was really on me. I’ve been role-playing with experienced gamers for so long that I didn’t think to provide some more guidance. My usual players would have been running around and trying every light switch or weird, random idea. But my shiny new players didn’t yet know what they could and couldn’t do. They needed a more active and guiding hand from me.

For a first-time group, they were all active, participatory, and willing to talk in character. I was afraid that the faults in my story would ruin things, but we made it through, the players were all understanding, and they tackled the challenges that I threw their way. They went all-out on the crazy ideas – like testing how dan­gerous the darkness was by tying the hitchhiker’s fishing line to a chicken leg and tossing it outside, taping together industrial-sized cooking sheets to trap the slimy thing, and a dozen other ideas I had never thought of.

So… what are my takeaways?

Pre-made characters are the way to go. My players got to focus on how to participate in the game and roll the dice instead of being overwhelmed by an hour or more of rules-heavy character creation.

Simple one-shot House Games work well for a new player group. There’s not much to lose in a House Game – these characters were never designed to be around for long, anyway. That means the players can try out wild ideas and personalities, or fail catastrophically and get eaten by a monster – all with a throwaway character.

A contemporary setting means that there are minimal world details to learn and new players can jump straight in.

If you’re running for first-timers, make sure there’s plenty of opportunities to give them