Hey Alex! Glad you like the game.
There will eventually be a section on this in the game guide. But for now, here are some mostly unedited thoughts on prep for ItD –
The most important thing is don’t overdo it.
You don’t have to prep as much as you think. You don’t have to come up with the cleverest idea for everything. You don’t have to plan out every possibility.
Trust your instincts. Trust your players. Trust the game system.
As GM, your tasks are:
- Offer the players interesting opportunities & choices.
- Ask provocative questions, listen to the answers, and make those answers matter.
- Portray the world reacting to player action.
Notice how prep isn’t on that list? Prep just a tool to support what you actually do to run the game. So do less of it.
When I run a 4-hr one-shot at a convention, I do all my prep at the table. I can get away with this because…
- I know the playsets & playbooks inside & out, and more importantly, the genre conventions & expectations each one embodies.
- I don’t guess what the players want from the game. I ask them. And then I make that happen.
- I’ve practiced. A lot.
What does this look like?
First, I do world & character building with the group (this is steps 1-4 on the Quick Start page).
Discussing what playset the group wants tells you what genre & tone they’re interested in. Creating key places with the players gives you a set of locales the group is already invested in (because they made them). Picking the crew type tells you what kind of mission the group wants to play. Picking factions gives you the groups they want to interact with, and how. Picking a contact gives you a starting NPC to act as a mission giver, guide, ally, or rescue objective. Playbook selection tells you what each player wants to do on their mission.
Second, I ask for a 10-15 min pause. Then I take everything the group created & link it together in a basic structure.
The crew starts en route to or at one of the locations they created. They have an objective based on their crew type (assassins have a target to eliminate, thieves have something to steal, smugglers have something to transport, etc). Make the mission simple – your 1st idea is likely your best. The mission can be given by their contact, who may or may not be with them (or they may be en route to meet the contact). A faction who dislikes the crew wants to interfere with the mission (give them a leader & a reason to interfere). Start with an immediate hook – a mystery, an attack, an obstacle.
Once the group is in the action, any prep you would’ve done is out the window anyway. Follow the cause & effect of introducing new obstacles to the mission, the group trying to overcome them, and the dice determining how that goes (& potentially introducing new obstacles to start the cycle over). Think about what (simple things!) NPCs & Factions want, and how they’ll try to get those things if the crew wasn’t helping or interfering.
A practical example:
The group picks the Desperados playset & the bandits crew type, so they’re a gang of Old West robbers. What’s a classic Old West robbery? A train heist. The group has already created a few locations – Deadrock Springs (a boom town), Spire City (a desolate maze of rock towers), and Fort Fredericks (a Union Army fort) – so the train can start at Deadrock, go through Spire City, & end at the Fort.
What’s the crew stealing from the train? Well, it’s going to an Army fort, so how about the Army payroll? Now you have a train guarded by soldiers, with a lockbox of greenbacks the crew wants to steal. And there’s a built-in ticking clock – the crew has to get the money off the train before it gets inside the fort.
The players invented a contact – another outlaw named Hawk, who’s actually in a rival gang. So that’s the mission giver. Why is Hawk giving the mission? Maybe his gang is planning to rob the train, but he thinks he can get a bigger cut from the PC crew, because the leader of his gang (let’s call him Dalton) takes an overly large share. So now there’s a 2nd faction interfering.
Now all we need is a hook. Let’s start them as close to the action as possible – ask how they’re getting on board the train and throw them right into the moment the plan begins. No need for much more prep if you’re just going to react to the players’ plan.
So that’s the method! Ask players for interesting aspects of the world, ask yourself how they’re connected, and go from there.
(That was a real example, by the way – I put it together in about 10 minutes at PAX Unplugged 2024. My entire “prep” was the filled crew playset & 4 bullet points. Setup ran an hour & gameplay ran about 3 hours.)
Definitely wrote more of an essay than I intended, but hope that’s helpful! I know it's a lot to keep in your head and can seem distressingly abstract, but try it out with a group you trust. You'll probably stumble a bit, and that's okay. Keep at it, practice, & I promise it will get easier every time.
As I said, I’ll add a game guide section on this at some point (and will probably use the above as a 1st draft).
Cheers!
It's happening