GM Notes: The Adventures of Blok Grubat

Hi everyone! Jillian here as the referee of our Teenagers From Outer Space (TFOS) game. First off, this episode would not have been possible without your support! You helped us reach our first goal, which was to break even on podcasting costs. It is a huge accomplishment that this little podcast we started just over a year ago is now a sustainable financial endeavour. 

And now some thoughts on GMing, Session 0s, and the game we played!

We waited many weeks once quarantine was announced before deciding to continue recording Lakeshore remotely. To test our audio set-up, we ran this one-shot to see what it would be like to record online. You’d never know based on the final product but it was not smooth sailing! My internet has been on the struggle bus for months and I didn’t know I could adjust my discord audio threshold to be more sensitive to my quiet voice at that time. Needless to say it was a stressful day, but we told a silly story together and had some great laughs.

I love running games, but I still get anxious about it. If you've listened to our other one-shots, you've heard me facilitate a few games before like Sleepaway (Toad's Hollow) or All My Exes Are In Mech Suits (Cat's Eye). You maybe noticed my GMing/facilitating style is always very collaborative. I've struggled to run high-prep games like DnD as, say, an Auteured experience that I could write and design to delight my friends because I could never prep enough. Jesse, on the other hand, is a very skilled wordbuilder by themself, and a much more practiced improviser than I am, so he makes running games like DnD look easy. It never was for me. I'm really grateful for the current discourse around WotC and DnD highlighting more accessible, approachable, and inclusive game systems, because those are the kinds of games that gave me the confidence to actually run an RPG and have fun doing it.

When Jesse got me into RPGs, even as a player I was so anxious about improv and rules and "doing it right" that it was hard to enjoy playing. I started co-GMing games with him to build confidence and develop a sense of control that I thought I lacked as a player, but I think my biggest takeaway from the few years we did that is:  Working together and having discussions about game/story content is the way to get what you want out of that game! 

TFOS is a fun low-prep RPG that I had a blast running for the group (despite tech issues). FYI the TFOS rulebook, published in the 90s, has its own issues with gender and appropriation so read with a critical lens. That aside, our session 0 was all the prep I needed for this episode because everyone got a chance to share what they wanted out of the experience, what special moves or personality traits they wanted to use, what the world was like, and what their stake in the "mission" was. My job as referee was to synthesize all the great ideas that were shared and then present each character with an opportunity to shine and show off their unique skills.

I came up with this VERY COMPLEX structure for the episode (copy-pasted straight from the google doc):

1. Hella security on the set

2. Blok is missing/locked himself in the trailer

3. Giant crab army

4. Home on time

And that was it. I love that I can "delegate" or just share world-building and plot hooks with my players. I never want to have all the answers. Everyone at the table has so many great ideas to contribute, and the game becomes so much richer with all of them woven together with shenanigans.

Some conscious decisions I made were pairing up the characters for the project. I paired Agg & Octilla (Jesse and Eli) and Kip & Oozabelle (Jordan and Jorie) to get some dynamics that are fun to explore. Eli and Jordan lean heavy on the chaotic side of the spectrum which I love, but together that energy is too powerful! Giving them each a foil made for more balance and more interesting friction.

The other thing I did was pull from the movie Galaxy Quest. I thought it would give the episode the satiric-tropey flavour I wanted. We do touch on concepts of real/unreal (Is Blok Grubat a fake??) and soap opera violence (Killing Lady Laserheart) which can get messy really fast if dealt with uncritically.  I also had the Truman Show top of the mind because I had watched it a month before we recorded this episode. Mostly we wanted to make fun of film culture since we all met studying film at university together.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into my brain.

Until next time,

Jillian