Have you, or anyone you know, ever quit playing a game after an incredibly frustrating sequence of events? Every single roll of the dice lining up, seemingly deliberately, to tell you specifically there is no hope? I’d be willing to bet that you’re lying if you say that you never even considered rage quitting a game in this way. Gamer rage and rage quitting are a well known phenomenon in video games at this point. And we all know the childhood stories of flipping over the Monopoly board when you’re losing. I’ll take the honesty leap here, and admit there are a wealth of moments I would like to forget where I was a sore loser when playing a game where I felt like nothing was going my way. But where does this rage come from? And how can we do our best to mitigate that feeling in players when building our own games? This is somewhat a continuation, and somewhat a refinement, of my first article in the Game Design series “Putting the Fun in Functional Game Mechanics.” That isn’t required r...

You are reading Lore Building, in this series I lay out some tips and tricks for aspiring and new GMs for how to keep your TTRPG sessions more engaging for your players, with a focus on narrative storytelling. Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you, you’re GMing a game and you bring your players to a crossroads. You present them with three options of plot threads that they can pull on. Avenues they can pursue to further the story. However one of your players was paying attention, annoyingly taking careful notes and cleverly trying to determine the best course of action for the party. They recommend an option you did not present to the party, a secret fourth path they believe you have hidden on purpose. But there was no hidden path. In fact you did not have any intention of them ever going to the place they now want to go. You are at a loss, completely unprepared for the curveball a player has thrown your way, and are scrambling to come up with a whole new area for them to exp...