Loaded Dice: Books 1-3: My Storytelling Guides

Copyright © 2021

Aron Christensen & Erica Lindquist

and Loose Leaf Stories

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781643190686

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

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

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?