Starting Situation
Wordpress has been uninstalled and I'm looking into static site generators. For now, a plain index page and some thoughts.
Lectures, podcasts, and actual plays are only so useful in learning how to forge in the dark. Improv classes are definitely another method, but nothing local presents itself. Running the game, ostensibly the best way to learn, requires other humans with compatible schedules and temperaments (the true BBEG of every TTRPG).
Making failure interesting feels like what will have the biggest initial positive impact on my GMing. I've consumed a lot of media talking about GMing and playing to find out, but I need to do something to actually practice.
Stras Acimovic said somewhere that when hacking Blades, watching referenced touchstone media and taking notes about what the characters were doing helps shape the Actions for your game.
I've seen a lot of the referenced touchstones for Blades In the Dark and Scum and Villainy (the two games I've played and run so far), but I haven't ever really analyzed them.
The Approach
Scene by scene, beat by beat, rewatch touchstones with the Pause button at the ready. Things to look for and name:
- what Actions are people taking?
- when a character takes a risk, what could the consequences be?
- what costs are characters willing to pay?
- what could a Devil's Bargain look like in this scene?
I think the same thing could be done for other GMing skills. But it's probably better to focus on one thing at a time.