There are an infinite ways to respond to another infinite number of inputs; neither you or I want to see an article that long so….

Let me start by abstracting things completely (well almost). Whenever a player affects play, as a gamemaster, you have basically two choices, indulge or contest. (I believe you can work out the grey areas in between so I’ll skip that.) The interesting thing most people miss is the fact that there are two ways to do both. The first time you either affirm or deny what they offer and the second to build on or replace what they gave.

Now I may be a bit biased, but I never, ever, say no to what a player offers; that might just be me or it might be worth trying. You’ll have to decide for your own play. Either way, I’ll start with those. For the secondary magnify or contradict, you’ll notice they read as ‘And or But’. Be careful watching those buts! Often a ‘Yes’ with a ‘But’ can pretty much be a ‘No’ unless you tweak it well.

Yes, And….
It’s pretty straightforward, you agree with the input and embellish on it. It’s my personal favorite, but there are some problems you need to keep in mind. This kind of play can have a tendency to run away with you. This is where your offers to play need to create the kind of complications that keep the game from short-circuiting itself.

You should also ask yourself if you ready to fulfill every player offer. It can be challenging at times; you might have some pet idea that you really want to see the players react to or you might have a whole bunch of content pre-planned. You must avoid that kind of play, that kind of thinking. You have to learn to work with what the players have to offer, not something you have up your sleeve.

A long time ago I came up with the saying, “Let them have enough rope….” I want you to think of every ‘yes’ as an opportunity to let the players overdo it. Two things always happen when they ‘get too much’ and both will make them sorry (in the good way). First of all, something else in your milieu will no doubt take notice of the players hogging up all of a resource and come see what they can do about it. I call this the ecological approach; predators really don’t like you hunting on their territory.
The second thing is commonly called an ‘overdose’. I know someone who, as a kid, snuck into the kitchen and ate an entire box of cookies; they had a great time. An hour later, though, they got the worst tummy ache. You can do the same thing in the game, just make sure that the players can later say, “We should have seen that coming.” That’s the rule of thumb for gamemastering: no surprise results. If something happens as a result of a player’s offer, it should be something that could be reasonably predicted. Save the surprises for when it’s your turn to make an offer to play.

Yes, But….
Make sure you can tell whether this is a real yes and not a ’stealth-no’. Saying “yes you try that, but this is what happens instead” is just a colorful way to say ‘no’.

It’s also a ’stealth-no’ if you arrange it so that what you agree to has no significance. Let’s say you let them break through the door ahead of them, but there’s nothing beyond it; then you have what you planned come from another route. Taking away the value of what the player offers is quite disheartening and tells the player you don’t care what they want…that they don’t count. That’s just bad gamesmanship.

A good ‘yes, but…’ is tricky. You basically want their offer get them into more trouble. The trick is not letting it look like you’re picking on them. You could explain it in a way that excites you (and hopefully them) about the possibilities involved. After all, new complications should only be introduced to make the game better not harder.

A ‘yes, but…’ is how you take what has been offered and channel it into something more engaging. Keeping things engaging is all of what the gamemaster does. This is different that a ‘yes, and…’ because it takes their offer and nudges it into a different direction. The players are still moving things forward, you just alter the direction a little. You can tell when you are doing it right if the players become more engaged in the result of your counter-offer.

If they are confounded or stymied, they you may have stumbled through a ‘stealth no’ by accident. That’s when you get draconian; you bring play back in line with what the players were really trying to do. How do you do that? You ask them what they expected and retroactively work from that. Everyone will be glad you did.

No And….
Turning down a player offer is a difficult thing to do. If it comes off as a flat-out refusal, you run the risk of alienating the player. Role-playing games are to be shared; they don’t belong to any single person. If you’re trying to redirect because the offer doesn’t seem to ‘fit’, it means that the player is misinformed about what’s going on; try to fix that instead of denying their offer. Correcting misunderstandings should be something you and your group are familiar and comfortable doing; I leave that completely up to you and your collective sense of fair play. (Don’t forget, you can always compromise the ‘facts’ of the game easier than you can repair hurt feelings.)

The only ’safe’ usage for the block-redirect is when you want the player’s offer to look like a ’second choice’. As in ‘that is a really clever idea; here’s something even better you can do.’ Instead of it feeling like Hobson’s choice, you want to make your offer seem much more desirable than theirs. This would be the healthy ‘bait and switch’. Their offer is one opportunity, but you offer a better one.

Whatever you do, don’t block what’s been offered. While it can be good for play to have the occasional dead end, you really need to salt that with other possibilities. Don’t go from ‘No’ to ‘just because’; always leave ways out. And before you get started planning the ways, don’t. The players will never see the opportunities, no matter how clear you think you are making them. Worse, when they follow your ‘opportunity’ they will again feel like their choices are naught. What you will need to do is make the specific offer blocked, but leave enough room that they can more play quickly past it in a way they choose.

No, But….
This is the last resort, the double negative; it is your worst case scenario, something to avoid at all costs. It is actually very hard to pull off a ‘No, But…’ without the appearance of the gamemaster ‘has a better idea’, which is always bad play. If absolutely necessary, hide the language of denial under heaps of praise; it works for the conman, it can work for you.

You have to ease players into the idea that what they offered isn’t going to fly. You do this in part by revealing to them, the beginning of a broad number of alternatives. (At least that’s the best case scenario.) If you find that you can’t give them better choices to work with, you should really take a hard look at whether you’re managing play or directing it. (Hint: the players direct play.)

The players should be the ones taking the initiative and moving the game in interesting directions. The gamemaster should be managing the actual play of it. (You speed things up or slow them down with a variety of options, but you don’t control where things are going.) If you feel a need to direct where play goes, remember, good gamesmanship is founded on everyone getting to do their part; so you don’t want to take over the players’ part. If necessary, don’t think about where you can get play going but how you can get it going it any direction.

The best reason to say ‘no’ is because the current offer is boring or seems really unrelated. Think of this as when a lawyer objects based on ‘relevance’. There are a whole number of reasons you might want to say ‘No’ depending on the social circumstances; if someone’s offer will make someone else upset, try to quietly void it.

Other good reasons to say ‘No’ include hinting at something that the players are overlooking, primarily things that are more fun. There will be many occasions where the players will be looking mostly to make their characters’ lives easier; that’s normal. However, it isn’t very exciting or engaging as play goes. One mantra I often offer is, “Don’t make it easier, make it more interesting.” When things get slow, it’s time to complicate players’ lives.

The worst reason to say ‘No’ is when you think you know better. When you have a singular thing that you think will be fun and you don’t give the players much option, you aren’t letting them play. If you find yourself offering a situation where the players have to figure something out your way or make just the right choice, you are offering a Hobson’s Choice, which isn’t really a choice at all.

Where to Go From Here
Those are the four ways to respond to player input. The most important thing to remember in all cases is that the players are directing where play will go. Don’t change the direction for them; if that’s the only way it looks can be done, what you need to do is clarify their understanding of what is in play.

This principle of sharing is one of the harder things to learn about both good gamesmanship and great gamemastering. Once you realize that the players are giving you more than enough to make great play out of, you will be taking another step towards becoming a game master.

In the first part of this article, I explained how to put on your ‘gamemastering cap’ and look at the complications in your game. This time I’ll talk about how to manage those complications deliberately…to have fun!

Life is So Complicated
Forget micro-managing your game or its complications. The players are going to throw things at you faster than you can handle. Why? Because there are more of them than there are of you and they are just as interesting and creative as you are. They can’t help but come up with more stuff than you.

Don’t worry about it.

Part of the illusion of control is the illusion of creativity. (Control isn’t just about directing things to go where you want.) You know you can’t create more things than your players; so don’t try. Here’s the secret: let them do all the work; just don’t let them know that they’re the ones doing it. Your tool is cliché. Cap on; think about the complications you want to work with in terms of the clichés that they represent. If you start most descriptions with what sounds like a cliché and pause (just a teensy bit little longer than seems comfortable), someone will often jump in with more detail. (If not, keep trying; they’ll learn to do it.)

What appears to be creativity is when and where you break with cliché, where you break with convention. A dragon in his lair…with a sense of humor. A gang of streetwise mobsters…who want you to lead them. Take any cliché and twist off just one of the knobs and everyone will think about how creative you are. This way, you cut down on the creative ‘work’ of gamemastering without losing the illusion of creativity or the illusion of control. (Besides, if you look confident, players will assume you know what you’re doing.) Don’t forget to grab a hold of the clichés that the players are offering; take those and embellish! (I did say to let them do the work.)

With this you can create just about anything you need. How do you know what you need? I’m glad you asked. Think about the game you imagined running before it all got started. Was there anything particularly cool you wanted to run? There was? Okay, now try to divide it up into the complications involved with going through it. Don’t worry, you won’t need that many; the players will create more than enough on their own. (In fact, the true art of managing play is bypassing or assimilating some of the less relevant complications that players take on by themselves without cheating them.)

Proper Characterization
Now don’t forget your players. Imagine each of their characters in turn; just thinking about the player and character, what are they just begging for? This is not the things they designed their character to be good at, but the problems the character, in their archetype, was meant to solve. Don’t think about the superhero’s powers, but what kind of crime they beg to face. Set up these complications in such a way so that, in play, you could simply say, “Hey, you asked for it!”

When you have ideas of what each character ‘begs for’, now consider the group, in their circumstances with their relationships and abilities, what are they ‘begging for’. Is it internal strife? External strife? Being on the run? Chasing something on the run? Finding problems? Solving other people’s problems? Having problems dumped upon them? Try imagining the group of characters as a ‘character’ itself and do like the last paragraph says.

An Embarrassment of Riches
By now you probably have too many ideas to use. That’s normal; in fact, added to all the problems the players will get themselves into, this should be more than anyone could run (before coming up with even more ideas during play). If not, go read a book, see a movie or do whatever inspires you and come back; I’ll wait.

How do you choose what to use? Well, the best complications come from something the players have already done. If you want it to be ‘fresh’ think more about the unintended consequences of previous encounters or leftover complications that weren’t cleanly solved. Of course, you can’t live on bread alone, so here are a few other good filters for your ideas. They will help you decide what you need to run and what to downplay.

Think about the overall game in general. What kind of genre is it? What does that particular genre mean to you? If you heard of a movie or book in this genre, what things would you imagine happening that wouldn’t make it into the trailers or reviews. What kinds of minor complications would come up? What places would the characters have to go to, to solve their problems? More importantly, what happens in those places that complicate the characters’ lives? Which of the complications you came up with fit these? Do some of them stand out? Are there any that could wind up being the ‘ultimate’ complication?

Lastly, you need to consider the overall ‘movement’ of the game so far. Where is it going? Who are becoming the biggest complications in the players’ play? (Hint: some of these will grow up to be your ‘big bad’ in the ‘ultimate conflict’.) The best trick and a good choice for complications that fit your game is in guiding where the game is ‘going’. If your genre always has a big confrontation near the end, you know you’re going to have to do that with your game. This takes a little preparation, but when you put your cap on, the prep isn’t hard. Look for signs of who the players hate the most; these make great recurring villains. Make sure you keep bringing back these kinds of characters; the players like that kinda stuff. And if they soundly resolve such a character complication, consider who might notice them now.

One iron clad rule you have to follow is: Let the players pick their bad guy. This is a very hard and fast rule. You will no doubt have your favorite characters too, but that is a very bad reason to make them into recurring complications. Think about it; that’s taking away control! Avoid it. You are the manager of play, not the person who sets the agenda. You are there to ‘keep the ball in play’; not to coach. I can’t stress this enough.

When Too Much is Too Much
Now that you’ve got all these complications and directions going, you might feel a little overwhelmed. That means it’s time to trim away the fat. Here’s a simple rule: if it isn’t a complication, don’t run it. Seriously! Don’t do ’set up’ scenes; avoid soliloquy; kill any ‘travel’ scenes; just don’t do it. These scenes don’t call upon the players to do anything. As much as you think these are necessary, stay away. The fact is, these kinds of embellishments actually pop up in the players’ imaginations without any prompting. Let them fill in the blanks.

Why nothing else? Because, the only thing in play that matters (to the players) are the choices the players make that affect things. If a situation comes up where the outcome is obvious or of no significance, just gloss over it. Even better, skip it before it starts. Player imagination is a fantastic place; they will fill any insignificant void without slowing down or even noticing. If you cut back ‘the fat’ well enough, the players will find that they are constantly bombarded with complications that take constant attention and ‘action’. That’s exactly how you want it. It’s more bang for their buck. More fun for everyone’s time invested.

The converse will help you choose ‘how big’ of complications to be using. When things feel like the game is dragging or the current complication seems to be ‘taking too long’, gloss the rest of that complication and get to a bigger or better one. Another good trick is merging a few ‘little’ complications into a larger more engaging one.

Riffing Complications Rather than Inventing Them ‘Off the Cuff’
When you bring this all together, cliché bending creativity, milieu expectations, character obligation and the gang of players as ’single character’, and when you filter it through consequences, genre conventions, direction of play-flow, the path to confrontation, trimming away the fat and keeping things moving, then you have a wealth of complications ready for play. The main reason you manage complications is so that you never have to improvise ‘off the cuff’. Thus you always appear to have control in any situation.

Using this technique never lets the players get the sense that the game is in a quandary or ‘lost’. They won’t worry that what their doing will be pointless. You’ll also seem totally prepared for anything. The players will know they can just sit back and play like the dickens. Ready gamemasters mean ready players, which is the fastest way to the fun!

Three Final Notes
When you put these complications into play, you’ll be called upon to create a lot of detail. There are two important ways to do this. First, make stuff up! Once you know what’s important (in the complications), you’ll know that most detail in the players’ minds is spun off of a few choice words from you. Don’t sweat these details; the complication will tell you what you need to remember.

If you’re ever totally stuck, roll some dice (or whatever is appropriate for your system). Dice aren’t just there to resolve tension points; they make a great way to generate some detail and make it look official. Remember those old ‘wandering monster’ lists? That’s what I’m talking about.

Finally, the most important complications to any player are their relationships. Most of the time any complication is fine, but if you really need a ‘kick’ use one that involves a relationship to one or more of the players’ characters. However you affect the relationship, you’ll know you have that player’s undivided attention.

And that’s exactly what you want.

See the second part of this article when you finish

I hope you don’t mind if I mangle an olde Shakespearean aphorism…well more of an antimetabole. This is at the heart of the con-game known as gamemastering.

“You must avoid the Control of Illusion to have the Illusion of Control.” — Fang Langford

Now I know what you’re thinking. “That doesn’t make sense; the gamemaster must take dominant control of his game!” That’s one of those pesky myths I’ve set out to bust.

I’m sure you’ve played under a gamemaster who practices control of the illusion (the actual presentation of play) for the honored purpose of having a great game (and in some cases, a great story). And you know what happens next; you find your character being pushed around from time to time ‘for the sake of the game’.

Ever notice how that feels like you’ve been robbed of what makes your character yours. More like being mugged, I think. That does a lot more than take away some of your fun, doesn’t it?

It makes it look like your gamemaster is losing control!

She’s Outta Control
You heard me, whenever the gamemaster has to intercede, hide a roll, fudge the dice or control your character, no matter how noble his purpose, it looks like he’s fighting for control. Fighting for control is the clearest sign that control has already been lost; sad fact that that is.

“So how do you run an ‘out of control’ game but look like you have control?” you might ask. The actual point is that the game is never ‘out of control’. The players are controlling their characters just fine, never once losing control. It’s when the gamemaster chooses to go against what they want to do that it becomes a fight over control. And then the game is lost.

Ever see what eventually happens? That’s right, they gang up on the gamemaster…and quit. Oh some groups can tough it out, but is that fun? Well, yes, it is. But I think there are other, easier, untried methods for gamemastering.

Safety Dance
You might also ask, “If you can’t control the illusion, why try to look like you’re in control?” That’s a very good question. The thing that most people don’t notice about role-playing gaming is that it’s a ’safe zone’. You can fight, main, kill, pillage and otherwise pilfer your weaselly black guts out, with no need to worry what people will think of you. You can’t do that out in public; you’d get arrested.

So your gaming group is your ’safe zone’ where you can explore very socially inappropriate ideas without risking your social or public standing. That’s why I always suggest people ‘make a show’ of beginning and ending play. A clear ’safe zone’ makes for better play. Having a ‘referee’ over this ‘zone’ makes it feel even safer. Ever notice how many games call the gamemaster a referee? Referees aren’t there to enforce the rules; they exist to make play safe (the rules simply codify how to play safely).

Besides, controlling a bunch of player characters is about as easy as herding cats.

So what do you do? How do you ‘control’ without controlling? I know is sounds obvious, but perhaps you might consider ‘managing’ play? “How do you manage play?” you ask. Let me tell you….

Put on Your Thinking Cap
The first, top, number one thing to do is learn how to ’step back’ from play and put everything into perspective. Take just a moment to ‘put on your gamemaster hat’. Most people, while playing, are doing a lot of their thinking within the strict context of the game. Everyone, including the gamemaster, spends a lot of time thinking about what the characters in the game are doing, based on what those characters can perceive. (That’s thinking in context.)

When you’re doing that, you can’t be managing the game as a game. You’re busy thinking in context. So, every now and then, you need to step back and ask yourself, “Where is this game going and will we like it?” That’s when you’re putting on your ‘gamemaster hat’.

That’s the easy part.

When you’re looking at this game, your game, how do you break it down simply so you can work with it? You might look at the obstacles, those things you put in the player’s way. However, that would lead to you thinking like an antagonist; it’d be you against them. Not good.

Actually, you need to look at things a little bit like the players don’t know that they do. When they make a character, they think about the things ‘they want their character to do’. Or more accurately, they think of the complications which they want their character to face and overcome. With your ‘GM hat’ on, you need to think about providing and managing those complications.

When you look at the complications facing the characters of the game as separate aspects, it becomes easier to put them together into ‘the big picture’. When you relate and contrast these units of game (the complications), it makes it much easier to manage the overall game as a gamemaster. It let’s you ask yourself, “Is this for the game?” and “Can I this complication?” It also let’s you focus on story (if that’s your thing) based on the escalation of tension through the complications available (or to create more). And that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

I’ll delve more deeply into complication management in part two of this article.

See you then!

It is having fascinating world, scenarios and characters? Being able improvise, but not railroad? Perhaps if one lets players act whenever / however they like? I’m a big proponent for keeps things moving; is that it? Maybe a perfect gamemaster can handle a split party with perfectly equal spotlight time? Memorizes all the rules? Is fair to the players but not the NPCs? Yeah, you’ve probably heard this all before.

But How Do You Do It?

Well, the basics start with consistency and focus. These make your game familiar and yet lively. Surely pacing is an important part of this, but it doesn’t lend itself to consistency much, does it? If you want consistency, you have to know what you’re playing. You must understand the genre conventions involved….

…Or You can Just Fake It

Here’s a quick trick you can use. I use it all the time for improvising those tough spots. Make a game write-up; list off all the coolest bits of the games you want to run. These can be types of scenes (slogging through the sewers of an ancient city) or types of ‘natives’ (the toothless beggar who secretly knows everything that goes on) or maybe some of the tense relationships (if it turns out the princess isn’t a virgin, it’ll mean war). You can use still imaginings from any movie you liked (even outside the genre) or the overall structure from something else (the way that character quested to the big bad). Anything goes, just keep them really, really short.

The Game’s Character Sheet

Statistics

What I actually do is write up the game as though it were a character all its own. For ’stats’ I dwell on how I would rate things; like how bloody will it get (quick and clean like the old west or rough and messy like those boxing films). I might assign a number to ‘how magical things are’ (I use 1-10 because of my familiarity with ratings) or how ‘gritty’ things can get. The reason I start out with these is because it gets me to focus on two things.

First of all, consistency is what the numbers will remind me to keep to. Second, when I look at the whole list, I can see if the game is focused on mostly one area. If you write up your game’s ’stats’ and you see too many numbers in around the same value, you know there won’t be that much focus. This will also give you a chance to compare the things you would rate. For example, if you rate social class and you rate supernatural powers, is it possible that you could just look at wealth or high station as just another power? (Helps you focus on how you want to use the ’stats’.

Ads and Disads

Next, I think about the games ‘advantages and disadvantages’. This is where I put most of my ‘coolest bits’ from before. If I think getting the heroes into deathtraps is way cool, I make it a high disadvantage. Why a disadvantage? Because, it goes without saying that the first thing the players think of is automatically the way to escape it; that makes it harder for my game to shine and easier for the players to feel cool. If there is a ‘mountaintop lair’ that would be a advantage because the players will know they have to go there for the ‘final confrontation’.

One quick note about what I call ’storyola’. Watch the way you lay out your ads and disads; they will pretty much make it obvious if you want your game to start slow and build to some final climax. If you have that, make sure you watch your tension level at all times; make it a stat like hit points. You take away a point every time things get tenser or close to the climax; the most important thing to remember is after each step, never back down! When your tension stat reaches zero, it’s time for all the cards to be laid on the table. (Just a quick storyola shortcut, here.)

Skills

When you come to choosing your game’s ’skills’ what you’ll be doing is choosing predictable settings. The back alley, the CEO’s office, at the club, on the run, these are all setting for possible scenes. Treat each like a skill; rate them based on how often you want to be able to use them. Let your mind really wander here; you won’t regret it when it’s time to improvise.

Powers

Another section of the game sheet (you don’t need to do they in any particular order, just make sure you do all of them) is the ‘powers’. (Or spells and so on.) These are the things that give your game the ‘juice’ and the ‘punch’. What kinds of things do you want to repeatedly hit the players over the head with? Should they feel that they are up against great odds? Will there be a lot of backstabbing and betrayal?

This is where you pick up the parts of the motif of your genre shines with. You can also pick things like chromed cybernauts or gnomes underfoot. You could have things like everyone doing magic in the town by the wizard’s college or constantly running into the prime deity and his wife and concubines. Whatever really makes your game obviously ‘in genre’. This is also where you list your running gags. Perhaps, since there are televisions everywhere, you have a particular commercial on them that every quotes from.¹ Don’t forget! The powers must also work within the tone of the game or set the mood or reinforce the atmosphere, just the same way that a wizard or a superhero have a ‘theme’ to their spells and powers.

Whatever you choose, these ‘powers’ are what you keep bringing up to make play lively. (Make sure you have enough of them or flexible enough ones that they don’t get repetitive.) Whenever you can improvise a scene out of one of these, you’re going great guns. The difference between these and the ‘ads and disads’ is that you invoke the ‘powers’ and the ‘ads and disads’ pop up because of the turns of the game. (In fact, some of my groups know my ‘ads and disads’ so well, they will invoke them by themselves.)

Finishing Touches

When you have all this together, you can double check it by thinking through a few scenarios. Try to imagine what kind of background most, if not all, of your ’skills’ fit into. What kinds of interpersonal relationships are ‘ads and disads’ and which are ‘powers’? Your powers ought to make you imagine specific turns or twists of plot, if you wrote them right. Likewise the ‘ads and disads’ should apply to some of the player characters as well. How are they connected to the background? What relationships are the responsible to maintain or will suffer without? Do all of your ’skills’ have enough flexibility to not seem repetitive? Could the ‘back alley’ function as the metropolitan platform for underground transportation services? Do any of your ‘ads or disads’ lend themselves to genre-related props? Come on! Ya gotta have genre-related props.

Takin’ It to the Streets

Now, the first thing you do when you finish your game’s character sheet is share it with the players. You don’t have to simply turn it over to them, because you might have a few secrets laid out on it, but you darn well better regale them with the straight and narrow of it. This is essentially the game you’re going to run. The better they understand that, the better they will play in it. It also allows them a chance to go, “hey! I wanted to play a .” Either they change their characters, or you alter your game; this way no one waits around for the part they planned for and no one is disappointed.

Fang Langford

¹ Robocop’s “I’d buy that for a dollar!” springs to mind.

Lately, I’ve been working on the Scattershot presents: Advanced Mechanics, ‘Naked’ Playtest Edition for Scattershot as a relentless drive towards getting playtesting started. Gnome Stew recently mentioned some of my seminal work on game (and character) design.

Excerpt: Advanced Mechanics, ‘Naked’ Playtest Edition

Solitaire Play

Solitaire play is when you play apart from your group. You can make only changes and decisions about the stuff you ‘own’ (and within reason), usually your persona. Dice are rarely used; when they are it is only to create extra detail. You could even roll up a whole persona, if you wish.

Persona

Basically, you play your persona through a series of integrated, hypothetical situations involving the other players, overseen by the gamemaster (in his milieu). The point of view of your persona is the context you play from. The circumstances and relationships to other persona, props and the milieu are what frames your hypothetical thinking. Your persona will also interact with the background and props implicitly (using Scattershot’s mechanics to augment the results).

The most basic way to make a persona is to idealize it’s sine qua non. From wherever you derive your inspiration, try to think of the most basic and necessary components of this persona. Focus on those aspects that would significantly alter the persona if you took them away; the rest is all detail. The K.I.S.S. principle in Scattershot is ‘Keep It Simple and Share’.

An easy mnemonic for sine qua non is ‘3 up / 3 down’. This means you should write down the first three things you want people to think of about your persona and then write down the last three things you want them to forget. When you have time, share these with the other people in the game before you write everything up. You’ll find that people will enjoy helping make your persona better and it prevents them from accidentally writing up something too similar; it also helps keep the persona fitting in the milieu too (even if the milieu must change for it).

How to Create a Persona Write-Up

The best thing to start a persona with is a simple description. Use any creative outlet you like (drawings, photos, prose, lists, et cetera) and make a simple illustration on the top of your persona write-up. Keep your sine qua non in mind, but try to make it more fluid and intriguing.

Thanks for stopping by!