Podcast Hoard: RPG Mainframe on 3 Creative Must Do's
Earlier this year I did a listen back through one of my favorite RPG podcasts: the RPG Mainframe by Runehammer (the creator of many names). It was a treasure trove of great ideas for many aspects of GMing, getting the most out of our hobby, and being creatively fulfilled.
A conversation on the Sly Flourish Discord reminded me of one episode in particular. Prompted by the question "Does anyone else cackle to themselves when they prep?" (which garnered much general agreement), one person said that they often laughed about their prep with their mom. This brought to mind Runehammer's idea of a "creative confidant" - someone who is not the audience for your creative ideas, but who you can talk through them with. That is one of the things I like most about being part of some wonderful Discord communities - I love being able to ask for feedback before I try something, talk through an idea to make it better, share something I'm excited about, or gush about a great session I just finished. I also love being that for others, hanging out in our Workshop channel and giving suggestions to other people. It is also much easier to come up with ideas for other peoples games - I don't have to actually pull it off at the table!
3 Creative Must Do's
- The value of a “creative confidant” - someone you can talk to about a new idea who isn’t directly impacted by it. Lets you “dry run” your ideas. A friendly safe audience. Make it an intentional part of your creative process. Helps improve your ideas, but more importantly helps you be more comfortable and take more joy in being creative
- “Implicit Worlds” - the value of your player already having a lot of implicit details in their head when you draw on narrative concepts, settings, characters, monsters, etc that are familiar from other media. Especially movies, e.g. playing Aliens. Frees up mental energy for other things (e.g. richer RP)
- Intention in Creative Work - At the end of the day set concrete plans and goals for the creative work you will do the next day, one concrete thing you’ll make. When you do it and it feels good, creates a positive feedback loop and builds a habit. Gives you feeling of control and of capability. When you have a good habit, then you can think about larger goals - what you really want - and figure out what daily work you need to do to progress towards that goal. Helps break big goals into small manageable steps
My Thoughts
I already talked about the creative confidant idea, but the other two ideas resonate with me as well. I definitely feel a lot more comfortable running a game where we have a shared implicit world. I recently used some ideas and art from Ultraviolet Grasslands and Painted Wastelands to fill out a pocket dimension in the Plane of Dreams for my Eberron game. On one hand it was great to have these resources to draw from to make the Dream world feel appropriately strange (my players seemed to like it), but I was also glad that it was going to be a short arc - I don't think I have enough of an internalized understanding of that weird tone to do something longer. I'm not great at the kind of daily creation that his Intention point speaks to. The closest I've come is when we've done some daily creation challenges on the server. It certainly helped to break things down into smaller chunks, but even then it was much easier to do a few chunks at a time and then come back a few days later. Even with that structure, I only ever did month-long creation events.