Tiny Prep - The Way Out of Procastination

 Sometimes, Its only when you find a solution do you realise that you have been looking for one. I'm sure someone wise said that once. I woke up and on the other side of a week with a virus, (no energy and no motivation) I opened up my Feedly blog reads and came across an article about Tiny Prep. I had only recently added this blog to my list of reads and it stood out in its originality but also it scratched the itch that I hadn't known had been irritating me. 

I have a good set up, all-be-it in my bedroom, with recently added notice board and whiteboard to compliment my multiple screens and mini desk. But I had been finding my work flow interupted. It had crossed my mind that this is one of the perils of homeworking and had thought about self-discipline a number of times over the last few weeks. Anyway, this Tiny Prep author, CheWebster, started a similar journey as far back as January 2023. He identified the need to take small bites at things and link it into small habits. He produces a podcast (not yet had the opportunity to listen to his past shows) and has been developing this idea which has turned into a just-out book. Whilst I am currently between funding moments (okay- trying to get the professional GM stuff going) I will definitely invest when funds come rolling in.  

Anyway I took on board much of what he said and it seemed to fit many of the things I was juggling with. The old (Ye olde) too many things and not enough time defeating doing any of it at all. I created my own Tiny prep lists and identified micro habits to add them too. It got me going this morning and I think it will continue to work. Check out Che Webster's articles. 

Masks of Nyarlathotep Trailer

link

The Struggle to be a Professional GM (part 1)?

Unintentional life quotes!

One struggle after another. That's what each part of this story is about. And that's okay with me, because this is what I want to do with my life. This is all about following your dream. It is all about having that moment in life when you stop and think what am I doing with my life? And more importantly, what do I want to do with my life? And the answer, for me, was always in roleplaying. Its where I started as a ten year old and its where I have come back to forty years later as a fifty year old. 

So what led to this question more recently. It was not that I didn't enjoy my job. I had worked as a teacher for twenty five years, rising up to become a headteacher and even an executive headteacher with oversight of three different schools. During all this time of becoming a school leader, I found that I drew on more and more of my skills and experiences from my roleplaying days. Assembly became a performance.

I'd rather not explain!

Telling stories brought out my DM bag of voices (to the extent that I have them - I'm not a profound voice actor but I try to vary it a little). I always liked to include the audience in these performances, whether it was the children, the teachers or the parents.  And then when I saw the slight smile at their own or my antics, or every time that I saw an emersion into the world I created, it was that inner DM that felt and appreciated it. Then came the apocalyptical Corona Virus. Its impact on schools is readily documented across the whole world. But where we were working, the government had us teaching online for pretty much the best part of two years. It was during this time that I, like many many gamers, turned to the online platforms. I already had the experience of running a couple of campaigns on Roll20 but, I jumped back into it with both feet, and my arms and  my head!

Around that time the toll of the toil at work started to show. I lost my sparkle. I questioned the job I was doing. I realised that I was, in that moment, not enjoying it like I always had. And the thought of starting again in another teaching environment started to feel like the worst thing in the world. I was blessed with a completely supportive wife and some savings that meant I could afford to take that moment to look around.

Me - exhausted and fat!

My wife pushed me to step back from it all. I'd like to say I did it happily but when you step away from the work that defines you, it brings with it an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. I was not able to tell friends and family. I used words like 'sabbatical' and 'a short break'. I talked about 'the family relocating'. A favourite phrase at the time was 'Let's see what the next six months will bring.' I said that for twelve months. And all the while, the thought of online gaming sat in the back of my mind. I have to say that the rise of StartPlaying was a huge catalyst for this thinking, as I am sure it has been for many DMs looking to turn professional. 

And I dawdled and dipped and was hesitant in my approach. I wish I hadn't but I was and I let a year pass thinking about it. Why do I wish I hadn't - well we'll get to that later but its because this struggle takes so much time - I wish I was a year further down the line. I was so drained from my previous working life, that I kept putting off that jumping in point.

And it was easy to return to the timings of my previous career, i.e. term times and thinking towards September as being the beginning of the year. But the year passed in this way and around about March 2023, I started to think about making September a serious start. Well, you'll see in a moment that my serious start was only the beginning of the journey to doing things in a professional way. The summer would see the big '5' '0' birthday. I wanted to enjoy that, and I certainly didn't want to start a game half heartedly.

During that period I did start a campaign of Blades in the Dark with my long term friends RPG group. From this experience I realised that there were a few skills that were still not up to scratch so I also started a second campaign of Blades. This time I opened it up to random people. Looking back this was probably the start. It was through this game that I started to practise the professional part of the game: I communicated with players before the game, I met players online before the first session and I provided materials and scaffolding for character creation. This would all later come together as a more formal type of onboarding. 

And so September 2023 came around and I eagerly put together my first advert. I used the search tools like Pixabay, Pexels and Freepics to find images that were copyright free. I had no problem with using attributions but didnt want to pay for images at a point where I had no viable income. I found a cabin in the wood scene - suitable spooky and mysterious. I added a title that connected my scenarios and posted the advert. I waited. I got excited. I waited some more and then the session arrived and I didnt have anybody signed up. Okay back to the drawing board.

For my next advert I chose a Chaosium image, again for a Call of Cthulhu game. Chaosium's license allows for use of their game images and I thought that this could be the difference between mine and all the other adverts out there. I'd read that character faces were much more likely to attract a reader than plain landscapes and so my chosen images fit that idea. I thought my title was really clever: a combination of a play on the title of one of the modules within the Mansions of Madness collection of scenarios and also intimating the core concept of sanity loss. I showed the advert to one of my friends who was a bit roleplayer. I was shot down in one go, 'What does the title mean?'. And this advert went out and the date came and went. And still nobody signed up to my games.

So came my first failures at trying to be a professional GM. Failures that would keep coming and coming. 

What is PBTA and FITD?

 This is some acronym hell. We all like those acronyms don't we. Well I don't. But I get it. I understand that PBTA is a better mouthful than constantly saying POWERED BY THE APOCALYPSE. And FITD, while it doesnt trip off the tongue, is much better than FORGED IN THE DARK. 

Okay so that's what they stand for but what do they mean? Well, its all about the systems that TTRPGs run. (Damn, thats another acronym - TableTop Roleplaying Games) The most familiar of these is the 5e that we see in reference to the Dungeons and Dragons system. The 5e standing for the fifth published edition of the rules. PBTA is a different system so to speak. Or actually, its not so much a system but a gaming system philosophy. Its probably easier to tell it as a story.

Once upon a tabletop there was a newly published game called Apocolypse World by Meguey and Vincent Baker. This was the start of an explosion of indie game development that fundementally used the framework of Apocolypse World as its own structure, idea base or rule format. This framework is referred to as games that are Powered By The Apocolypse. The system has a focus on character and narrative structure. The story being told triggers the action rolls. These are called moves. Instead of the character sheet that is filled in by a player, there is a playbook that is then molded around the character design. One of the significant aspects is that the GM (which in this games framework is called the MC) doesnt roll dice.The focus is on player agency and the rolls that players make having consequences. 

What was crucial in this publication was Vincent and Meg Baker inviting -

"If you've created a game inspired by Apocalypse World, and would like to publish it, please do." 

This kickstarted a  flood of variants that either used the mechanisms as was or used the design to influence their own. This diagram from RPG.net captures that evolution.

Forged in the Dark began with John Harper's Ghost Lines and then Blades in the Dark. This mantle and expansion was taken up by others such as Sean Nittner, Stras Acimovic and John LeBoeuf-Little. 

Evil Hat Games and Free League Publishing are the go-to-places for the latest titles being produced in some of these frameworks.