Mistborn RPG

[Kyar BlaseHawk]

Hello! Last summer a group of my friends got together, and attempted to play the Mistborn RPG. I was the Narrator, and they all played the charcters they had created. It was kind of a flop, and this may be simply self-depricating, but I feel as though that is largely my fault as new and inexperienced narrator, DM, GM, whatever title you want. i'm hoping that I may be able to find hep through this forum. 

If any of you have suggestions as to how to put together an effective story, or can point me to previous posts in the shard, it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

[Shqueeves he/him]

Welcome to the Shard! Have a complimentary upvote and a warning to stay away from any and all food items offered (especially the cookies) 

As for your question, the roleplay section probably has what you're looking for

[StrikerEZ he/him]

Hey, welcome to the Shard! Have an upvote, and don't listen to @Shqueeves, have a cookie! It's perfectly spiked safe!

Spoiler

As for the roleplay, Shqueeves is right, the roleplay section is what you're looking for. 

Also, which Cosmere book is your favorite? Which magic system is you right favorite?

[C. M. Hayden he/him]

2 hours ago, Kyar BlaseHawk said:

Hello! Last summer a group of my friends got together, and attempted to play the Mistborn RPG. I was the Narrator, and they all played the charcters they had created. It was kind of a flop, and this may be simply self-depricating, but I feel as though that is largely my fault as new and inexperienced narrator, DM, GM, whatever title you want. i'm hoping that I may be able to find hep through this forum. 

If any of you have suggestions as to how to put together an effective story, or can point me to previous posts in the shard, it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

 

Nothing really to add, but I wanted to say that sounds like so much fun!

[Quiver he/him]

Tagging in  @Herowannabe @Claincy since they are the two guys I know here who have the most experience running RPG's  

[Claincy he/him]

Welcome!

The first piece of advice I can offer you regarding the MAG (Mistborn Adventure Game) is to visit the Crafty Games Forum too. The level of activity in the Mistborn sub forum varies but there is a lot of discussion about the game there and there are a number of people with experience playing & running the game who check the forum regularly  Steel ministry is another MAG focused website where we've done a bunch of play by post and the people there are also very friendly. (There's a significant overlap in users between steel ministry and the crafty forums, several of us are also on 17th shard).

I've had some experience Narrating the MAG/GMing in general though I'm far from an expert, I'm happy to offer advice. I can't offer too much specific advice without knowing more about the story you ran and what worked/didn't work but I can offer some general advice.

In my experience the MAG tends to work best with a large degree of player freedom, the setting and mechanics don't lend themselves well to a strict linear experience. When I prepare for the MAG I tend to plan the following:

• What's the problem that needs to be solved?/Job for the crew to accomplish. (In an ongoing campaign this may take the more general form of a couple of different hooks, mysteries or job proposals that the players can investigate as they please.)
• How do the player characters find out about it? Or what incident incites it.
• Who might be involved? (3-5 characters is usually enough. Name, profession, a distinguishing feature and what they have to do with the narrative is all you really need to know.)
• What are a couple of obstacles the players might face?
•  What are a couple of things the players might decide to do? (The players will likely come up with something you haven't thought of, but briefly considering this can help you think about the other questions.)

This pattern of planning works better the more comfortable you are improvising. The aim is to give you a framework to help you improvise around. The less comfortable you are improvising the more details you are likely going to want, to a point. Beyond a certain point you get strong diminishing returns as you are mostly creating stuff the players will never see.

If you have a small number of encounters and NPCs ready you can slot them in where-ever your players end up going. Nothing is canon until it enters the game. For example let's say you have an obligator by the name of Todd (please don't actually name an obligator Todd :P). Now you know that Todd is a minor obligator who works at the Canton of resource and handles a lot of the paperwork to do with the warehouses near the Tin gate. He's very intelligent but open to bribes and tends to be a touch sarcastic, he also tends to repeat himself using different words. Great! You're all set for when they look into the records for those warehouses.....except they don't. They go their directly to scout them out and talk to people in the area to try to get information that way. Oh look: Todd happens to be doing an inspection of those very warehouses at that very moment! Or perhaps the players instead decide to try to bribe someone from the Canton of Orthodoxy for a lead on sensitive reading material (banned books) that the players think might be stored in one of those warehouses. What do you know? Todd is actually a minor functionary at the Canton of Orthodoxy! As another example there's nothing wrong with subtly switching which house a planned nobleman character belongs to either.

You can do the same thing with combat and other encounters. The important thing to be careful of here is that you don't tell the players when you do this. So long as they don't realise that they were going to encounter that character either way it's all good. If you do this now and then you're fine, if you do it all the time the players will start to guess what's going on. Just try to make sure that their actions have significance and their choices matter.

The two biggest specific tips I'll give are these. They're simple in concept but if you do them (and you don't have to do them amazingly well) it will have a significant impact on how much the players enjoy the game.

• Try to connect the job or some aspect of it to one or more of the players characters on a personal level.
• If the players come up with something cool or clever they want to try, say yes if at all possible. One of my personal favourite lines as a GM/Narrator is "You can certainly try". If they have a cool idea that sounds very difficult or unlikely, let them roll for it (and reduce the difficulty slightly for cool things). You want to encourage creativity. (Though if they do something too inappropriate for the group, outright impossible or harmful to the game in some way, then do say no.) If this cool or clever thing effectively bypasses a challenge you had prepared, good for them! The players will feel just as accomplished for tricking their way past a challenge with a clever scheme as they will engaging in it the way you had intended.

If you are struggling with developing your own story and looking for examples there are small campaigns in the back of the Terris: Wrought of Copper and Skaa: Tin and Ash supplements. If you like I'm also happy to send you a pdf of my rough compiled notes from my campaign for ideas.

Two important notes to close with:

-Everybody starts off pretty average (or bad) at GMing/narrating. (New players also generally start off being pretty poor at roleplaying.) It takes practice and deliberateling working to improve to become a really good GM but you absolutely can do it

-Don't feel bad if you feel nervous, every GM feels that way before a session. Even the amazingly good ones, so don't feel bad about it

Hope that's of some help, and don't let an average first try discourage you from trying again. (My first few sessions were....not great )

[Kyar BlaseHawk]

2 hours ago, Claincy said:

I've had some experience Narrating the MAG/GMing in general though I'm far from an expert, I'm happy to offer advice. I can't offer too much specific advice without knowing more about the story you ran and what worked/didn't work but I can offer some general advice.

First off, thank you so much fro that incredibly detailed post. What I feel didn't work the most was my creation of a story. I wanted to have my group work in Fadrex city, and that worked out fairly well, But what I ran into was a rather creatively lacking set of missions, or ar least I felt that way. So the specific advice you want to give about the story would pertain to how to make a better story.

[Herowannabe he/him]

@Claincy beat me to the punch with a lot of good advice. I second everything he said. 

Crafty's forums are an excellent source for advice to new GMs. There are several threads worth reading there and even when the forums are slow whenever someone posts a question they typically get responses within 24 hours. 

The MAG itself is a fantastic source for new GMs. In my opinion "book" 3 in the MAG- the section dedicated to Narrators- should be required reading for GMs of any game system, not just the MAG. There are some great sections in there that deal with creating adventures, specifically those that deal with players' tragedies and destinies. 

But really, before you start creating your own stories, I highly recommend running one (or both) of the premade adventures in the backs of the Skaa and Terris supplements. They're really well done and are interesting and fun, and have lots of tips for the Narrator for dealing with different situations (if you only run one, I recommend the Terris one, called "Justice, Like Ash." It has a great plot hook ;)) (EDIT: and once you've run a premade adventure or two you'll have a better feel for creating and running adventures, and both premade adventures have a handful of suggested hooks for further adventures at the end that you can use, if you wish). 

if you have any other questions, or any specific things you want to discuss, I suggest posting over at Crafty's forums. You'll get a lot of great responses there. 

(For example, here is a thread I created that ended up turning into an awesome scenario, thanks to the advice of the other Narrators on the forum). 

Edited June 10, 2017 by Herowannabe

[Kyar BlaseHawk]

Okay, one more thing. Does the group have to be focused on eventually defeating Lord Ruler, or can they just go of on their own, maybe attempting to eradicate Koloss, or trying to form their own sovereign nation? 

[Herowannabe he/him]

Their ultimate goal can be whatever you (and the players) wish! It doesn't have to be taking on The Lord Ruler. I ran (technically am still running, though it's been inactive for a long time now) a PBP game where the premise was that the crew was working to assassinate King Elend Venture during the Well of Ascension timeframe. 

Reread the sections in the MAG on characters' Destinies and Tragedies for more ideas. 

[Claincy he/him]

No worries

As Hero mentioned there is no need for the story to be about toppling the lord ruler. The narrative can be something grandiose with far reaching consequences, or it can be something more personal and focused.

The standard advice for building a campaign is to start small. In a D&D style setting this most often means creating a small town, a couple of NPCs in it and a couple of surrounding locations. In the MAG that is more a matter of creating a starting job, a couple of friendly NPCs and a couple of obstacles. However, that's not how I like to do it. For me this is the second step, the first step is to come up with a concept for a long term campaign arc. What this usually means is coming up with 1 character who wields considerable power (whether through magic, resources, influence or whatever) who has some sort of major plan they wish to accomplish. You don't need the details of the plan yet, just some idea of who they are, what they want, why the want it and some concept of the type of resources a their disposal. I'll flesh this out a little with a couple of other major players in the narrative who may have complementary or conflicting goals and then I go to planning the first job. Once you know who some of the major characters are and one they are trying to accomplish it becomes comparatively easy to seed connections with them throughout the campaign.

I love secrets and mysteries in rpgs so I pack a lot of them into my campaigns. You don't need to know the answer to a secret when you seed it either  The phrase "There's always another secret" can be something of a guiding principle

One thing I like doing in my campaigns is to drop 3 or 4 little hooks or secrets that the players could investigate and then let them decide on the ones that intrigue them, and ignore the others. Then you're spending your time developing jobs and stories that you know the players are interested in. If the players are looking into something of their choosing, there are a couple of secrets for them to uncover and if it has some connection to the player characters you are well on your way to an interesting narrative.