Take a Peek Behind the GM Screen at Running RPGs On the Fly

The subject comes up all the time: how much to prepare for a tabletop roleplaying game session and how much a Game Master makes up on the fly in the moment during a game. A recent live chat with Seth Skorkowsky over at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel and my own experience running our weekly Nerdarchy team game and others gave me a few ideas to share. Plus, over on our own Nerdarchy the Discord one of our Patreon supporters let us know they’ll be taking a turn behind the GM screen for the first time themselves. They only recently started playing fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons and I love these stories! Whenever a new RPG player feels inspired to take their shot running a game I feel re-energized myself. Since I’m a couple of hours away from running our own Nerdarchy monthly one shot, all of these things coalesced this morning and I thought it might be useful to read about how my approach and how running RPGs on the fly proves rewarding and fruitful for the players and me as the GM. So let’s get into it.

Preparation vs. on the fly Game Master techniques

In the live chat above guest Seth Skorkowsky totally validates what I’ve always felt was kind of a cop out for myself when it comes to preparation from the GM side of things. Basically what Seth explains is how a significant part of GM prep for him involves organizing information. Rather than furiously typing or writing out meticulous notes and narrative cues, preparation can mean making sure the material you think you’ll need is convenient for yourself as GM. For a game like 5E D&D this means getting together monster stat blocks, treasure, traps and other crunchy content you feel pretty sure will come up during the next session (or content you want to remember to include). He also mentions the time spent thinking about and considering the campaign, characters and potential scenarios part of preparation.

Vindication!

There’s a space where preparation and improvisation overlap, and for me this is the sweet spot. Whether I’m running a published adventure like Ghosts of Saltmarsh for my home group, continuing a homebrew campaign session by session like our Nerdarchy team game or grabbing some dice and laying the tracks down in front of the moving train for an impromptu one shot there’s always at least a dash of preparation and a heaping helping of improvisation. It’s my belief anyone can run an RPG and facilitate fun experiences for players new and old with minimal prep. It’s worth mentioning if preparing for a game means careful reading and notation of a published adventure or zero forethought those GM anxieties always precede a session (at least for me).

The trick I’ve found works for me is having something — anything — as a resource to fall back on. Nothing in your game is set in stone until the players experience it, so these resources can be anything from a 200 page published campaign to a random roll chart you found in a book or online somewhere. Every adventure becomes unique to the players in the game, and even playing the same adventure multiple times can yield a much difference experience. Incidentally this is one of the benefits of running and playing published adventures, so you can swap stories with others and see how the story of your characters turned out compared to others.

But all that is only preface. You’re looking for solid tips! Here’s a list of resources and how they can help you blend preparation and on the fly improvisation in your RPG sessions. Since I run my games as theater of the mind experiences, I can say with confidence any of these suggestions do not require a tabletop (virtual or otherwise), miniatures or really anything beyond your imagination.

Maps

Poke around Pinterest or simply do an online search and you’ll discover countless incredible maps of dungeons, wilderness or urban environments. There’s no harm in starting a game session at the dungeon entrance or whatever your map represents. From here, use the map to guide your description of the characters’ surroundings. For example, check out this Elven Tower map called Crime at the Guild.

“Before you, a stone archway leads into a hallway 25 feet long and 10 feet wide. A statue stands along the western wall. Ahead you can see the hallway opens into a larger room. A large table sits in the room, and you see several smaller tables with odds and ends placed on them against the far wall of the room ahead. What do you do?”

With this simple description, players already have plenty to work with and they haven’t even seen the map since you’re only describing the features to them. You can be fairly confident they’ll check out the statue in the hallway, probably with a modicum of caution. They’ll grow intrigued by the objects in the room ahead too. Once they make it into the room, which could take anywhere from a second to several minutes of game time, they’ll find a variety of choices. Three stairways lead off to other parts of the map. There’s something on the large table (a map?) and additional things they couldn’t see from the entrance. Are those figures more statues? The inhabitants of the location? Are the objects in the room clues?

Monsters

Curating a collection of monsters you’re interested in using for your game goes a long way toward preparation without the need for meticulously constructed encounters. In our last Nerdarchy team game session the party continued their series of tasks for Thessaly Threefaces, a dusk hag they found themselves bargaining with to help accomplish their primary goal. The final task involves a corrupted dryad. I knew I wanted to use a wood woad somewhere, and not too long ago I fell in love with the killmoulis from Mordenkainen’s Fiendish Folio, Volume 1: Monsters Malevolent and Benign came. Vine and twig blights make appropriate allies for their forest foes, so my collection was ready.

How and where the party encountered these things during the session is irrelevant. But knowing what the creatures capabilities are and how they factor in to the party’s adventures meant I can deploy any of them as needed. In the adventure, the dryad turns people into blights, and inside their new plant forms is a personal trinket important to the person, which can be recovered after defeating them. Inside one blight they found a hag stone, and looking through it they were able to see the killmoulis, which was otherwise invisible because it resides in the Dreaming World (the Feywild of my campaign setting). The players spent a good deal of time interacting with the cute little fey creature. Naming it Sweetie, it’s now a beloved companion. None of this was planned whatsoever, even the how and why they might encounter the tiny fey creature.

Random charts and tables

My favorite! Just about every published piece of RPG content contains a random table or chart somewhere and these an invaluable resources. Anytime you’re unsure what to do next you can pull out a table and roll to find out. The best part of this technique is putting the GM and players on an even playing field because no one knows what will transpire. Almost every time I bust out a random table or chart I call on a player to make the roll. This achieves two things. First, it provides players another opportunity to roll dice and interact with the game. Second, it gives the GM plausible deniability. You didn’t put the stone giant there in the mountains, that’s what the player rolled!

The best part of using random charts and tables is injecting new ideas and unexpected twists and turns into the adventure. Even if you’re running an established adventure like Tomb of Annihilation you can really differentiate your experience with elements generated through random rolls. Depending on how players react to these situations you could discover a new path to explore, new NPC allies or enemies, new goals and so forth.

The secret to on the fly improvisation in RPGs

In all three of the resources described above, a unifying theme is pacing. This is true for GMs anywhere on the spectrum of preparation. Getting a feel for when to do things in a lot of ways is much more important than what events take place in your game. I’ll break down what I mean by pacing through the lens of the three resources described above.

1. Maps. Did the characters spend an inordinate amount of time examining the statue in the hallway? Clearly your description captivated the players. How will you reward this engagement? On a macro level consider placing importance on the statue. How can it be related to the party’s overall goal? The statue could be a representation of an individual they know. If this individual is an ally, why is there a statue of them inside this dangerous place presumably occupied by enemies? If the statue is an unknown persona, characters can glean some clues for future adventures. On a micro level, map details can become terrific opportunities for characters to shine. Maybe the statue is related to a character’s personal story somehow. Conversely it could be a chance for a character’s unique skills to become important. Is anyone in the party a sculptor or stone mason? They could recognize the work of another artist or determine the stone used to make the statue is significant in some way. Anytime players engage with the surroundings you describe from your map is your chance to asses the pacing of the session, adventure or campaign. If you want to advance things a bit, drop some important details to help the party move closer to their goal. If you’re looking to stretch things out, make their discoveries mysterious.
2. Monsters. By keeping your collection of monsters untethered to particular places you give a tremendous amount of freedom to players and yourself. In my experience players love to roleplay with each other, and I’m more than happy to give them this time. By listening carefully during these times you can add dynamic elements to a game session with any of your creatures and make these scenarios impactful. In our Nerdarchy game the party traversed a deep forest heading towards a destination given by the dusk hag. On the trek they talked with each other about what was going on, if the dusk hag was trying to trick them and so forth. This told me they were uncertain if they’re doing the right thing and what to expect when they got there. When the conversation lulled, they were attacked by vine blights. I decided to include the trinkets inside their plant bodies on the fly to give them a clue. They correctly surmised something was transforming people into blights, so they felt confident whatever the dusk hag’s schemes, doing something about this was worthwhile.
3. Random charts and tables. These are your opportunity to slow the pace down. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a good idea for a game session and after only a short time playing realized the party is going to surpass my planning very quickly. Maybe they missed all the clues and details meant to provide more context or activities to engage. Maybe they’re super paranoid and sneak past every danger, bypassing the adventure part of the adventure completely. Whenever a GM finds themselves unsure what to do next, random charts and tables are there for you. One of my favorite examples is from the 5E D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide. One of the random events results is something like 300 feet of chain falls from the sky and coils up on the ground before the party. There’s no explanation how, why or where this chain came from but I guarantee players will spent at least some time pondering the situation. Time you can spend figuring out what comes next. Congratulations, you’ve just extended your adventure. As a bonus, the players could very well inspire new ideas for you to explore later.

In Chickening Out an unusual encounter at sea gives adventurers an opportunity to discover the seedy underbelly of illicit trade in their campaign setting. [Art by Kim Van Deun]

Ready to run your next 5E D&D session on the fly?

Over at Nerdarchy the Store you can now get a copy of our premier product Out of the Box: Encounters for 5th Edition. This book of 55 encounters represents our Game Master philosophy and provides all the tools you need to create memorable experiences with players at the gaming table. Each encounter includes gorgeous illustrations from Kim Van Deun and evocative maps from Darryl T. Jones. Rather than presenting whole adventures, these scenarios can be dropped into your right into your games at any time, encompassing the techniques shared in this post.

I’ve run these encounters tons of times in all different situations and they’ve proven incredibly effective in my games. Sometimes they provide fun distractions from a main quest and other times form the basis of entirely new campaigns. The whole point of Out of the Box is giving GMs precisely the tools and resources I described here along with valuable insights into player psychology so you’re ready for the kinds of out of the box thinking players are famous for.

I’ll leave you with an example from a campaign I ran inspired by The Mandalorian. In session one the characters received a bounty to hunt and their guild arranged passage aboard a ship to the target’s last known location. During the voyage I thought it would be fun to give them a bit of team building and character development opportunity so I pulled up the Chickening Out encounter. This had zero to do with their mission, but by the time they resolved the situation they docked in port with new allies and enemies, illicit goods to unload and an introduction to the gritty world their campaign would unfold in. The characters’ actions during the encounter helped inform their personalities and group dynamics going forward, and all of this came from dropping a random map and monster into our game.

You can get your own copy of Out of the Box right now in Nerdarchy the Store here. We’d love to know how these encounters play out at your table so if you were a backer from the Kickstarter or getting your copy after you finish reading this captivating post, leave your comments and reviews over on the product page.