Welcome back, students. Professor Crunch here again to talk about Wrought Iron Episode 5.
This episode was completely devoted to role playing. I think we rolled the dice once. Since this campaign is still developing, this type of episode is very important. It’s all about giving you, the audience, a chance to get to know these characters and to understand their world. And from a player point of view, this type of game session is all about figuring out their PCs and the relationship they share with both the other PCs and the NPCs.
This episode started with me basically asking the players what was going to happen next. And that’s because I really didn’t know. My original plans for this campaign ended with the showdown in the cave in the last episode. Based on what happened in those first few sessions, I started to develop a few rough ideas about the next series of events. But when starting this episode, I had no plans.
As things played out, this episode ended up giving each character sometime in the spotlight. As both a GM and a podcaster, I really liked this. It gave the players opportunity to define their roles in the world. And it also gave me details that we hadn’t thought of before. After the events of the last episode, I had to alter some of my ideas. The details that were invented during this role play session ended up being a terrific help and pointed me in a new direction. And I’m really excited about some of these ideas.
These spotlight moments also helped define the world of the game. Even with all of our planning during our extended session zero, we created a very big picture with broad strokes. We outlined basics concepts of the island, but we didn’t identify any specifics. This episode did not establish every single detail of life on the island, but it did start to create a foundation for further development.
The biggest story moment of this episode started with the events at the dock. Since these articles are all about an honest look behind the GM screen, I made this all up on the spot. Michael came up with an idea during our game preparation that I was having trouble figuring out how to incorporate into the larger story. In a moment of inspiration, I figured it out during the events of this episode. You’ll see more of this concept next week. This also helped clarify in my mind the ultimate shape of the campaign. Since I have only a few scenes planned, this new development let me start to see how the events will fit together.
The most important thing to take away from this episode is the importance of development through role play. Everything that happened in this episode was driven by the “yes and” principle. I let my players submit an idea and then I responded with more ideas based on their input. This is a great way to play a game and share the responsibility of creation and world building. For me, this is the best part of gaming. The social dynamic of creating something together is the best thing that players can experience when around a table. This practice also makes your life as GM much easier both by easing some of the work load and by providing a new source of inspiration.
Next week, the action will kick up and I think that you will all be as surprised as my players with what happens.
