Jeffrey Quinn is a busy freelance writer, founder of the Black Knight Gaming Guild and winner of CyberCon’s Best GM for two years in a row. He maintains a website where he posts a mixture of news, advice and link. GameWyrd’s questions appear in strange blue and Jeffrey’s answers are in typical black.
1) You’ve picked up the Best GM award during the first two CyberCons. What do you think makes a good GM?
Before I get into what makes a “good” GM, I have to comment on the quality of GMs that were at both of the CyberCons that I attended. They were absolutely fantastic! Competition was pretty fierce at both and even though I may have taken the title, I believe that all of the GMs there were the best. Which leads into your question on what makes a good GM. Patience, insight, skill, and empathy. Patience for your players when they don’t seem to understand. Insight into your players’ capabilities and how to modify any given situation “on the fly” to suit each of them and to keep their attension. Skill in your knowledge of the rules so that games aren’t bogged down by constantly referencing the rules or arguing with you about an interpretation. Empathy to how your players feel about a game, if they aren’t enjoying the current plot line or are bored with the campaign in general, it must be changed to accomodate the players. After all, there couldn’t be a GM without players.
2) What do you think makes a good player?
Utter subgigation to the GM’s will! Mwahahahaha! Good players are difficult to find, but I’ve found that the best players are the ones who are concentrating on their characters as living individuals instead of a series of stats on a piece of paper. It goes back to the difference between “rollplaying” (just hack-n-slash, video game style game play with no creative character interaction) vs. “roleplaying” (getting into character and living as a character within a story). The best roleplayers are those that keep you laughing at their crazy in-character accents or force the GM to look at the players and say things like, “Stop roleplaying so I can run the game!”
3) Let’s say you’ve been hired to write a 32-page adventure for a fantasy d20 game. You’re given a list of about 10 new fantasy races that the publisher is writing sourcebooks on and you have to use all of them in the adventure. How would you set about writing something like that? What do you do first?
First, I’d warn the publisher that I am a notorious over writer (Interludes: Brief Expeditions to Bluffside for Thunderhead Games was supposed to be a 8-12 page free download PDF and ended up as a 64 page print adventure/sourebook; and The Complete Guide to Drow for Goodman Games was initially intended to be a 32 page PDF/print sourcebook that ended up at 56 pages). Once all that dancing was done, then I’d get all the information needed for the races to be used in the adventure.
The basic plotline for combining 10 races depends on the racial makeup. If we were to use the standard 7 races (humans, elves, dwarves, half-elves, gnomes, halflings, and half-orcs) and the most common 3 evil races (hobgoblins, goblins, and orcs) the plotline could vary from being a diplomatic mission to the Goblinoid Hordes, defending a delegation on the road through the wilderness, or even retrieving an artifact that was stolen from the temple to the Gods of Peace and Unity. For our example here, I will use a strange race combination – the 5 races of elves (high, drow, gray, wild, and wood) and the reminents of the Union of Light, the 5 races of good-aligned half-dragons (brass, bronze, copper, gold, and silver).
Step 1: Getting all the stats – We’ll assume that the publisher (Publisher X) has given the racial stats for this adventure to you to use as reference. However, Publisher X wishes that you only reference the racial books with footnotes and not to include any new racial source material. Easily done with a simple line in the introduction of the module like “This module references materials available in Publisher X’s Races of the Rambunctious series. While owning these sourcebooks is not required to run this module, certain aspects of the source material are available within their pages.”
Step 2: Plot – For our plot of elves vs. half-dragons we’ve decided that a disguised drow priestess has come to the surface, assassinated the Elven Queen, and replaced her without any of the court knowing this. She is the leader of a larger drow force that is spreading across the elven homelands to finally remove her hated surface cousins, but before she can do that, she must destroy the elven allies left from the Union of Light. To this end she begins to undermine the half-dragon’s trust in the elves and provokes the normally friendly and helpful half-dragons into attacking numerous elven defensive positions. With the elven nation in chaos, the drow priestess sends word back to her underground home that the fall of the elves is near at hand.
Step 3: Getting the Players Involved – We will assume that the PCs are of different races (as most standard parties are). They could be travelling through a corner of the elven kingdom and be set on by elves (if the party has a half-dragon) or by half-dragons (if the party has an elf). The party could be travelling underground and intercepts some of the preliminary reports from a drow scout. Or the characters could be heroes that have aided either the elves and/or half-dragons before and are now being summoned to aid in the fight. It boils down to the characters discover the chaos between the good-aligned sides of the conflict and find clues to the greater evil involved.
4) Do you have any adventure creating tips and tricks that you’re willing to share with the Wyrdlings? Go on; share.
Follow two principles when designing an adventure (or source material). 1 – Write what you know and know what you write. Don’t try to be impressive or to write so that the general public loves ever inch of your material, it won’t happen. Write for your gaming group and how they normally play, this makes the adventure more believable. 2 – Follow the K.I.S.S. principle, Keep It Simple Stupid (an old Army saying). Complication leads to confusion.
As far as tricks are concerned, there are so many good resources out there for adventure design that it will just take trial and error to find the resources that aid you best.
5) Which do you prefer writing: adventures or sourcebooks?
It’s about 50/50. Even in my adventures I write source material, and in my sourcebooks I write adventure hooks.
6) How has your career as a freelance RPG writer affected the way you view other books being written for the hobby? Do you find yourself reading a new release and noting the mistakes or wishing you’d thought of that?
Yes. My view has now become very shaded on new material. I still enjoy reading the new books out there, but I don’t purchase like I used to because I don’t want it to affect my writing or to color any of the topics I may be working on.
7) Is there a company out there that you’ve not written for but would like to?
There are actually a few that I would love to write for. Steve Jackson Games, Hogshead Publishing, Fantasy Flight Games, Fast Forward Entertainment, and Alderac Entertainment are all at the top of my list.
8) Do you have another job or do you write RPG material fulltime?
I am a fulltime father, husband, writer, and GM. Some people call me insane for trying to keep that many jobs juggled around, but I believe I can’t be a good writer without having the other three firmly fixed in my mind.
9) Is there any advice you’d give people trying to become a fulltime RPG author?
Join the various Open Gaming lists out there to make sure you know what you are working on. The d20 system has email lists, offered by The Open Gaming Foundation. Other open systems (like Fudge and Action!) also have email lists that can answer all of your questions. Also try to join the RPGFreelance Yahoo group, subscribe to the RPG Freelance journal (put together by Anna Dobritt), or get over to Monte and Sue Cook’s freelance message boards. All of those areas have a great deal of information for those looking to get into the freelancing field.
Freelancing is a rough business and only a few people will be able to make it (I’m still trying). Don’t get discouraged if you can’t start your career by writing for White Wolf or Wizards of the Coast, they look for the cream of the crop and it takes a great deal of luck to land a job with either of them.
10) What do you think your biggest professional mistake has been?
I wrote a module that I didn’t follow my “Two Principles of Freelance Writing.” I swear it became cursed.
(GameWyrd notes – We’re in the Out of the Box section now. A couple of unusual questions for which we expect unusual answers!)
11) You’re trapped in a dimension similar to ours expect that there’s no concept of roleplaying games at all. By magical means you’ve an unlimited supply of core rules and they come to you entirely free. Can you think of a way to use them to make a living? If so, how?
I’d start by making a choose your own adventure series of novels. These are the earliest roleplaying games (granted they are solo). I would eventually bring the populace to the books through adventure movies and cartoons on Saturday morning. Then I’d come out with small metal “action figures” that had cards full of rules on them for how to play interactively with them and with your friends. From that step would come the suspension of disbelief as the first tabletop RPG hit the shelves.
12) Rather than finding a healthy mug of coffee waiting for you when you wake up in the morning you discover a glowing portal. Do you step through it? If so, why?
As long as I didn’t step into EverQuest, sure I’d step into it. Why? Adventure calls out to me and sings in my blood, it also sings in my wife and kids. So, I’d bundle up the family, grab the replica weapons and PVC armor off the wall, pack as much food and a can opener as I could fit in a pack, and off to adventure and glory in a new world.
