RBF: GM's Guide

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This page gives a simple and light guide to Guardians of Mystery, or GMs, wanting to run this system.

The RBF Core Priorities:

Core priorities are what all the players and GMs should focus on during the conversation that constitutes the game. Every other rule supports these.

1. The Rangers' lives should be exciting, interesting, and vulnerable, for everyone, during each game.
2. The game should be full of interesting dilemmas and trade-offs for the players. Conflicts can't be perfectly resolved and players should be pressed to choose what they value most.
3. The game should be immersive, with the players exploring and the GM revealing their discoveries to them.
4. The players should occasionally surprise the GM and the GM should occasionally surprise the players.
5. Everyone should have a good time.

For players, there is less off-session preparation required, but players are the majority of the table and have the greatest power collectively to make it an epic experience.

Principles for RBF Players:

• Players should be ambitious with big epic goals in-game. Overthrowing the government, achieving immortality, restoring ancient nations, etc.
• Players should keep aware of which players are engaged and who are not (not participating in the game or not paying attention), and help work to bring everyone into the game, often by addressing them in-character.
• Players should spend time building in-character relationships between party members to encourage camaraderie.
• Players should speak up OOC when the game isn't fun for any reason, and work with the group to address the issue with a specific solution.
• Players should have one backup character idea at all times in case their current character dies.

GMs concieve, prepare and drive the game so they have the most individual power to shape the game.

• GMs should challenge the players, but never or almost never take away their ability to make choices. Ensure that every player has freedom of choice in attempts.
• GMs should cheer for the players to overcome the challenges, but make the challenges tough.
• Gms should prepare interesting problems with no prepared solution--that is the players' role.
• GMs should generally avoid killing players, but should still kill them when the circumstances AND the dice make it the most logical outcome.
• When a player character dies, the GM should bring a new character in to the game in the following scene after the current scene resolves.
• GMs should take players' skill levels as representations of professional competence, only calling for rolls in risky situations where failure is interesting.
• GMs should rotate spotlight and attention to ensure each player gets a moment to be the focus of the story
• GMs should ensure that challenges are all solvable in multiple ways, and avoid any linearity or 'railroading' unless agreed by everyone at the start.
• GMs should create lots of interesting difficult decisions in each adventure.
• GMs should ensure that magic, gods and spirits are always a mysterious force that defies full understanding or stability.
• GMs should have fun building worlds and running the game. If they are not having fun, they should take time to assess, discuss and make changes to fix the issue.

RBF Scenarios

Starter Kit Scenarios

Here are 4 starting campaign scenarios for RBF. You can roll 1d4 or choose one for your first scenario. Each campaign should run roughly 7 sessions, but can be shortened with fewer steps or expanded with additional side missions as you enjoy.

*SPOILER ALERT* ! Players, do not read the campaign details if you plan on playing!

1. The Gangs of Nuradda

   • This urban campaign can be resolved with a variety of creative solutions.
   • On the heavily built-up and overpopulated city-moon of Nuradda, rangers investigate a tangled trail of gang wars, terrorists, mad science, rebels and C.E.O.s to solve a major conflict.

2. Traitor's Prayer

   • This campaign focuses on the rangers as military special forces, so players with combat skills or combat psionics are a must.
   • The reptilian Horde has been conquering and exterminating world after world, but Admiral Holland has a last ditch plan to stop them. You will be assigned a wide variety of infiltration, alpha strike, and sabotage missions to take out their leaders and stop their advance.

3. The Spiral Path

   • This campaign focuses on religion, psionics and gods in the setting.
   • Fragments around the galaxy describe an ancient evil leading to the cyclical extermination of life on a scale of millenia, and now is the time. But how can you sort between vague superstition, honest piety, grifting doomsday preachers, and true cosmic peril? And can four young rangers really hope to defeat a god?

4. Rise of the Pyre

   • This political conspiracy campaign focuses on the rangers building support among various political factions to stop a hostile cabal.
   • Resentment for the egalitarian meritocracy of the Alliance has been boiling among the Cinterian nobility for decades. Through twisted and selfish alliances, a dark circle of would-be tyrants has hatched a plan to revive the most evil weapons once more, but exactly who is behind this is a mystery. Can you find them before the galaxy is embroiled in civil war again?

Other Settings

You can also run games in very different settings as long as you keep the same general idea of daring, vulnerable characters in science-fantasy situations.

Here are a few scenarios for alternative settings:

• Alien Apocalypse - 1 to 3 shot.
• The Wreck on Dark Planet - one to three sessions.
• Colonial Marines Search & Rescue - one to three sessions.
• Nightmare at Europa Ice Mine - one to three sessions.
• Aldar's Last Hope - 5 to 10-session campaign.

Random Generators & Oracles:

When you need some inspiration for new content for your game, you can use my free Random Generators to get ideas.

Guidance for Custom Scenarios:

• Overall Missions and Quests:
  1. Create open-ended problems to be solved.
     • Preparation is easier and faster, and the stories created by the game are more interesting and exciting, when you focus on preparing a situation as opposed to a linear story.
     • If you simply designed a mission where "the party must assassinate the pirate king during the paradise island masquerade" then if the players skip the masquerade or ally with the pirate, you would have to rewrite a new plan.
     • However, if instead you simply planned "The pirate king is making alliances with the sea witch, the fish people, and the leviathan to destroy Port Imperial", then you will easily be able to improvise a flow of scenes and quests regardless of players' actions or which side they take.
  2. Use competing factions to aid follow-up consequence improvisation.
     • Having quests and missions flow from faction conflicts makes preparation much easier and helps establish various peoples' identities and allegiances in the world.
     • If you had a mission to capture a lone murderer, then when it is complete, you would have to design a new mission from scratch.
     • However, if you established that the murderer was secretly hired by the Chemical Research Corporation to kill an inspector from the Core Imperium Guard, then after the mission is resolved, you already have some ideas about what each faction will do next.
• Exploration Scenes:
1. Fun Exploration is defined by interesting problems and interesting decisions leading to interesting rewards. You need something but there are obstacles in the way.
2. Come up with main hazards that could be addressed in multiple ways by various players' skills.
For example: We need a McGuffin. However, it is far underwater, there is a large shark, a deep, narrow tunnel, and an automated killbot, blocking us from it.
3. The fighter, stealth, navigator or biologist player could help deal with the shark. The hacker, fighter, stealth or engineer character could help to disable the killbot, the scientist, engineer and navigator could help deal with the water, and the athlete and navigator could swim through the narrow tunnel.
4. Along the way, as players succeed or fail, you can add more interesting discoveries.
   • Searching for a land route could lead to an interesting volcanic cave filled with opaque toxic fog.
   • Failing a navigation roll could lead to an interesting shipwreck with useful gear or potentially repairable vehicles.
   • Following the robot could lead to an enemy outpost with people that can be negotiated with or intimidated.
• Travel Scenarios:
1. Travel scenes occur when the party is going from one place to another and the challenge is generally to do it quickly and safely.
2. When you plan travel sequences, establish consequences for being late to the destination (increased enemy presence, lost opportunities), or various resources that could run out (oxygen, power, food, fuel).
3. Before the players begin the journey, plan a few interesting decisions and interesting dead ends.
   • A failed navigation roll in the wasteland might lead into territory infested by mutants that lair in ruins. They demand players by force to do something to help their ailing queen.
   • A failed navigation roll in the haunted forest might lead to a witch's magically looped territory that players cannot escape without negotiating a deal with the witch.
   • A failed navigation roll during a hyperspace jump might lead to a fuel explosion and crashing on a strange toxic planet, or going back or forwards in time.
4. Browse the internet for random generators to get more idea of interesting things that could occur
5. Keep an eye on player engagement as well. If players seem frustrated out of character, then skip ahead to the destination, with a single simple navigation roll and application of consequences.
• Sci-Fi Campaigns:
  • Sci-fi campaigns really allow a wide variety of skills to be used because of the greater division of labor and power of technology.
  • Interplanetary diplomats, hive city gangs, bold space-explorers, and apocalypse or alien invasion survivors all make for excellent sci-fi campaigns that can be violent or more subtle.
• Fantasy Campaigns:
  • Fantasy campaigns usually rely more on familiar tropes and violent solutions. For most (thought not all) fantasy campaigns, players will need to be capable with mundane or magical combat.
  • A pair of elf and dwarf buddies that roam around killing goblins, ogres and dragons is a reliable formula.
  • However, you can also make a very flavorful fantasy campaign about a grand diplomatic journey to negotiate an alliance versus the dark lord's army.
• Magical Artifacts:
  • Magical items and unique gear can be found in any game, but they must obey one important rule: They can never give more than +1 to only one skill or statistic.
  • Therefore, it's much better to design magical items and artifacts that don't have numeric power increases but instead enable a new avenue of play or "horizontal" new action or ability that does not modify game numbers.
  • A magical item that allows entry to a strange dimension, or that causes strange psychological effects in people