Hook Line and Sinker

Reeling in the Players for Your Campaign

Earlier this week I had an interesting back and forth on twitter about different ways to start a game. Someone asked about how I liked to begin a campaign. I guess what the question really was, “What is your hook”? This person was fond of the someone runs into town asking for help method, but we came up with quite a few more ideas. This article is probably more for new GMs looking for hooks, but it might spark some ideas in veterans as well.

Before I even get into some of the hooks, let me speak for a moment to the players. When a game starts sometimes you have to just bite the hook to get things going. I don’t tend to complain about players too much – I’m a fan of them they make my games what they are – but in this instance I need to say it: Don’t be that guy. On occasion I get that one player who just sits there and says, “But my character wouldn’t care about that”. You need to make a character that will care.  Take a look at these five characters we should stop playing and pay careful attention to number five.

One of my favorite standard beginnings is “You all meet in a tavern”. Now don’t get me wrong, I know this is the most tropey of tropes on the planet, but really to this day local eating and drinking establishments are common communal gathering places and it was even more true in the times generally represented in most fantasy RPGs. But I’ve spoken extensively on this subject so you can check out my four-part series on really making the tavern the place to be.

The tavern, though, is really just the backdrop to the plot hook. And probably one of the most used plot hooks is “the event.” As the person on twitter mentioned, a person running into town begging for help is one way to drag people in. It is an event that requires immediate attention. Many adventures begin with an attack, the players just being near each other are thrust into combat and must fight together to survive. This is another event.

I’ve also spoken before about having your PCs connected to each other right from the get go. One of the ways I mentioned is perfect for plot hooks. Characters that are all part of the same organization put on the same mission together. It allows for disparate characters to be thrust into the one situation and it gives you a means to hand the players their quest. No one says no to the boss.

Another way to give everyone a connection is having the players all linked to a single NPC. Both the Curse of the Crimson Throne and the Carrion Crown adventure paths do this. Whether they are all hunting the same enemy, or they were all friends with the same ally, this gives the character a reason to be together and a hook to become embroiled in the adventure you have set before them.

Some adventures have the players forced into a situation. You wake up naked on an island, in a prison, in an empty room. The players don’t have to know why they’re there in the beginning but they’re all together and they have to figure out why and how they got where they are. A play on this is to have them all start as captives, say being taken in by slavers or pirates.

One of the other methods of just having them all be together is to begin the adventure past the beginning. Start literally in the middle of a big combat. Now this honestly works better in books than it does in games but I had one amazing GM at a con I went to pull this off. If you can do it right, it starts the game off with action and then allows the players to build the hows and whys of getting to that point as they move forward.

There are one thousand and one other ways to hook your players into an adventure. Most of them are variations on the common themes I’ve presented. One of my last homebrew games all the players were from the same little hamlet. They were eating at the only inn when a woman came in saying her son was missing. So I mixed the ideas of ‘ everyone’s connected,’ ‘you meet in a tavern,’ and  ‘event that needs immediate attention.’ Think about what will motivate your characters to be involved, and work with your players to make characters that might follow the hooks you give.

What are some of your favorite ways to start an adventure? As a player how do you expect the GM to hook you in? As a GM how do you help your players want to follow your lead? What tropes do you use and which do you let fall by the wayside?

Have you been hooked by the CRB? Consider becoming a contributor. Monthly donations of as little as one dollar can be made to my Patreon. A one-time donation can easily be made to my Paypal. Every bit helps me keep the lights on so I can concentrate on bringing you the content you deserve.

The CRB has been growing as a community on social media. Please join us on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter. My inbox is open on all forums for questions, comments, and discussion. If you don’t want to miss a beat make sure you sign up to have the CRB pushed directly to your e-reading device with Kindle Subscriptions through Amazon.

You Gotta Start Somewhere

Musing on Helping New Players

At some point we were all new to roleplaying games; whether we were brought in by someone or we just picked a book up ourselves, we had to start somewhere. Last week when I wrote about my early gaming experiences leading up to figuring out I was going to be a GM, I mentioned that my group of friends taught ourselves directly out of the red box basic dungeons and dragons set. I’m glad I stuck with it but it may have been easier if there were someone to teach us, so today I want to talk about helping out new players.

New players come from all walks of life. Some new players are young and have a lot of free time, just giving them the book and guiding them when they ask questions can work. Some gamers are older and don’t have all the free time in the world. Work, family, and commuting among other things can take up vast swaths of time. You also have to consider that some new players may have reading issues like dyslexia. So basically what I’m saying is don’t just say “read the book” to new players. Beyond the fact that many of these books – especially Pathfinder, which is around 800 pages – can be quite daunting, some people just may not have the time or ability to parse information that way.

Regardless of whether or not a player can get through the book, or even just small portions of it, I’ve come up with some ways to help out my new players. The first thing I do is run a session zero. I’m sure this has been spoken about a million times but it should be stressed a million more. Working together to build characters helps everyone find a niche they like and allows the GM to help them mold their character to the campaign they want to run. Before I even knew there was a term for it, I always ran a session zero.

Another thing I find helpful is to make printouts of the information players need. Index cards are helpful, color coded to class abilities, race abilities and traits for Pathfinder. You can just print out on sheets of paper but I find that for those people who have difficulty with reading the book in the first place, even a three or four page wall of text can be daunting. Beyond the aforementioned abilities, I will also print out any skills they are good at or think they might use often.

A common response when people ask about teaching brand new people the game is to limit what classes they can play. Sometimes limit their racial choices as well. Making them play a fighter because it’s easier can seem like a good choice but I personally don’t think so.

The problem I have with limiting, especially which classes a new player can use, is that the player may not enjoy that style of play. When you tell a newbie you need to play this, if it’s not to their taste it may drive them away from the game altogether. And yes I know casters have a lot more moving parts, but really that’s what teaching the game is, helping the player learn the moving parts.

There is one shortcut I like to use when letting newbies play casters: I use spell cards, which are easily printed out from this website. For spontaneous casters it’s fairly easy to just print out their spells known. Memorized spellcasters can learn a lot more spells as they level. For these casters I will print out a few of each spell they know so the player can make a deck that has all the spells they can cast in the day. This way they know exactly how many of each spell they have left.

But the most important thing is that the only way to keep this hobby growing is bringing in new blood and keeping them interested. For those of us who are GMs this is especially true. So tell us your tips and tricks on how you like to bring new players into the fold? Where do you find new players? How do you teach them?

If the CRB has given you ideas for teaching new dogs old tricks, please consider becoming a contributor. Monthly donations of as little as one dollar can be made to my Patreon. A one-time donation can easily be made to my Paypal. Every bit helps me keep the lights on so I can concentrate on bringing you the content you deserve.

The CRB has been growing as a community on social media. Please join us on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter. My inbox is open on all forums for questions, comments, and discussion. If you don’t want to miss a beat make sure you sign up to have the CRB pushed directly to your e-reading device with Kindle Subscriptions through Amazon.