Before I begin, THIS IS NOT A SESSION REPORT.
While I'm gonna fail the Joesky tax for this post, this post does have actual pedagogical purposes: to talk about what I've learned about GMing from the two? years (we started in early 2024 apparently) I've been playing in Retired Adventurer's Imperium Maledictum campaign.
RA's campaign is the kind of game I've personally always wanted to run, incredibly deep and rich and involved worldbuilding with a ton of NPCs and plots and setting elements to engage with. No matter what I ask, or what I want to do in the game, RA has an answer to make my thoughts and ideas fit the setting and his pre-existing materials. To borrow a term that I think one of the other players came up with, it's "maximalist worldbuilding;" not meaning throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, but thinking about lots of the setting and detailing it in engaging ways, allowing us as players to explore it and share these ideas and come up with fun shared interpretations.
It has been an incredible experience, and it's also illuminated some of the problems that I'm having as a player at some points, and how I've had those problems reflected to me by players in my games in the past. I didn't really know what they were or how to handle them, and I think I have a better grasp on how to approach those issues now.
We have lots of posts in the OSR blogosphere about how to play 0-level characters who didn't get a stat above 5 at character creation, or how to create effective danger in dungeons or whatever. But we don't have a lot of posts about how creating a living, detailed setting to play in actually works out in play. So that's what I want to do here, arranged as a series of lessons that have been kind of coalescing in my head as I play.
Lesson 1: The Players Don't Have Direct Access To Your Mind
I know, I know, this sounds crazy and/or possibly obvious. But I think it's something I've been particularly failing to think about when I run rich games, and I think it's really, really worth repeating because it underlies so much of the other stuff I'm going to talk about.
Importantly, the players don't have direct access to your mind means they don't have access to any of the information you do, unless you tell them. Again, this might seem obvious but it's really important: your players don't necessarily have your foregrounding in the setting, your players don't have any idea of any extant connections between any of your NPCs, your players don't know many things you think might be "obvious" from your prep.
Think about how many times you've run a puzzle or a mystery or something else along those lines and something that has seemed glaringly obvious to you is completely missed by the players until the game has come to a dead stop for an hour. In other words, unless you make something completely explicit you cannot rely that the players have understood it completely (and even then it may take repetition).
Lesson 1.1: The Players Don't Have Your Energy Level
Why does it take repetition sometimes? Simple. Your players might be tired, distracted, disabled, or any number of reasons. And all of those are valid: I'm not looking to criticize anyone for not coming to elfgames in anything less than top form and perfect concentration, I'm just pointing out that it happens. For the Imperium Maledictum game it starts at 11am my time, which is actually early for my body's sleep schedule (due to a sleep disorder) and I've got to wake up, get caffeinated and have my ADHD meds kick in before I'm really playing well. Some mornings I have been very glad I am playing a "dumb fighter" character and can just shoot gun and roll dice and kind of grunt while the other players do smart things. My brain just isn't working.
To RA's credit, this has never been a problem for him, and he's always been understanding when I need a reminder about something that he has explained. I bobble names quite frequently; sometimes I've mixed up secret identities and accidentally stated something that if I'd actually said it in character it would have ruined our secret communist plots. So when I'm saying sometimes it takes repetition, I'm speaking from experience.
Lesson 1.2: The Players Don't Have Your Prep
Unless you literally have god-tier players they're very unlikely to be spending remotely as much time thinking about or paying attention to the game outside of sessions. This is fine! This is just a basic part of roleplaying games: players don't generally need to think about the game as much between sessions, while GMs are of course working on preparing whatever is going to or might happen next (depending upon your prep style). This conversely means that for players, "the game" is often just a mental box that gets opened at game time and closed at the end of it - which means they're not spending nearly as much time experiencing the game, the characters, or the setting. This ties back into the repetition part: players may need things from the previous session repeated, because they're not thinking about them between when they happened and the next session.
Now, I'm not going to lie, after 2+ years of this game, it has started to seep in and I do think about the next session and what needs to be done outside of it. But I know I don't have great recall, so what I'm thinking about often means I'm sending a Discord message to RA asking for clarification on some small part I can't remember (for example, "who did that third slave control rod belong to?") as part of thinking through the game in downtime. For next session we need to find this assassination sniper dude, track down who in Torrence Kanal's company Bondak Human Resources exactly worked on manipulating the slave control rods, and make sure we get all this evidence to the Arbites or Lloyd Croydus-Yeerkus (wait has that name been an animorphs reference this whole time I would not put that past RA) to "win" our current problem. But for me, especially as someone with ADHD, that is definitely in a "not now, tasks for later" box mentally that I'm not going to be thinking about until Saturday morning. (In contrast, writing this post is a task for right now kind of thing.)
Lesson 2: Player Engagement Is Good, Even If It's Wrong
One problem I've had running richly detailed games in the past is that when the players did attempt to engage with the game outside of the actual sessions they'd write session reports or whatever and I'd always feel it was a bit of a drain on my energy/time because I'd actually have to look at what they'd did and then I felt like I had to correct it. Like I was their mom or a schoolteacher or something. Because they had it wrong.
And I don't mean big things, like if someone had the party accounts wrong and they only got 20,000 copper pieces out of that last hoard when they thought they got real rich off 20,000 gold pieces. I mean that I would get frustrated at players getting character names, places, or other identifiers wrong. And, sad to say, I was judging them for it. This is my really cool game that I spent all this time and energy working on why can't you understand every name I tell you perfectly the first time and repeat it correctly forever. Do you not like my game? Why don't you have the energy or attention to get it right? That's not too much to ask! GM SMASH
Suffice it to say, that was a really shitty attitude and I'm sorry for any of my last players who had to deal with it. I was wrong and bad and yes I do go to therapy. (And if you're wondering why I was wrong, see the entirety of Lesson 1. Just simple human interaction stuff.)
To get out of this bad cycle, it's worth reframing player engagement: any interaction with the game outside of the time of a regular session is extra energy and time a player is choosing to dedicate to the game, and that dedication is worth valorizing. That action, even if it appears "incorrect," is a player opening that box of thoughts that normally only comes out at game time, and intentionally adding something to it. As a GM, that is exactly what you want.
And really, what's the problem if it is wrong? If an NPC's name is mispelled slightly incorrectly, it doesn't matter a ton, unless it's creating confusion with other NPCs or betraying some truth of the setting (hidden noble blood or something.) Correct the engagement only if you need to, but otherwise just provide a correct counterexample in your own GMing. For example, I mentioned the NPC "Torrance Kanal" above. Well, his name is actually "Torrance Kunal" but RA just didn't say anything about me spelling it incorrectly, it's only when we looked at his name written down that I noticed I had it incorrect. And now I know to write it correctly in future!
Lesson 3: Explication is Good if The Players Ask For It
Some of the best worldbuilding in RA's campaign has come from him explaining a part of the world and then us players taking it and running with it in silly/unexpected ways. For example, we were taking a long train ride at the beginning of our first adventure, and us as players were bouncing off each other, describing how we'd be killing time on the train ride. One of the PCs, Massud, mentioned that he'd thought his character would probably have some sort of video show equivalent he'd be binging to keep busy. "Hey RA what kind of show might that be?" "Oh, well there's To Love a Saint, the longrunning popular series about a young bumbling member of the Ecclesiarchy solving crimes." And that answer has spun into the PCs buying bootleg video CDs of the show to stay up to date when we'd otherwise miss the airing, the actress herself showing up as a celebrity at a society party, and the main character's haircut becoming a shorthand for 40k Karen-types in our game.
It doesn't need to be that silly, either - the planet the game has mostly taken place on is a producer of dranj, a natural product which can be converted into promethium (40k fuel for all kinds of vehicles, power production, etc). I did outright ask RA once how the actual chain of promethium production on Kangyur works, and that has been relevant because the various companies involved in that production are some of the factions we've been working with and against in various ways. (And also it helped illuminate why a Chaos cult was trying to turn all the dranj into a chaos demon.)
I mention this because one of the usual indicators of a "bad" GM is someone who's created all this setting lore or story and won't let the players actually play, they're just reading off their notes and assuming everyone else will be interested. The distinction between that and what RA is doing is that he has that information, we know that he does, and he provides it when we ask for it. Because it's something we've asked for, we're already displaying interest, and then we're able to take what we're interested in, work it further into our play through our PCs, and cooperatively build the world and the story together.
Lesson 4: The Players Are Excited To See Your Prep (Your Living World)
Going along with this is that the players are excited to see what you've come up with. Of course they are! If they weren't interested in your deep detailed game they wouldn't be playing in that deep, detailed game after all. So don't be afraid to show that prep. Don't be afraid to make it explicit, to show how excited you are that the players have finally figured something out, or that something unusual in prep is finally being used.
My example from this (and what got me thinking about writing this blog post) happened last session. Those three slave control rods I mentioned, I needed to establish chain of custody for who had them at what time as part of the murder mystery case. So I went to the one group I needed to ask, and questioned who had their control rod. I already knew their answer (a slimy fixer dude named The Worm) but I needed details about the when. The answer was a bit off though: the group in question confirmed the Worm had taken their control rod at some point, but they couldn't remember exactly when or how. The previous session had involved a lot of discussion of psykers manipulating memories, and the way the group was acting matched manipulated memories perfectly. But that was even odder - they weren't even trying to hide they were manipulated, and the Worm himself didn't really have any connections to psykers to do this memory manipulation. I realized what it was - someone else had manipulated the group's memories to target the Worm. There was a whole other player involved in this situation, and I had no idea who it was (or even if it tied into the murder mystery!)
That was when RA showed his prep: he outright told us that whatever this was, it was a result of campaign faction play ongoing beyond our characters. It was immensely cool to hear that, and to know that the setting and the characters were existing beyond just our 3 hours on Saturday morning. It made the setting come alive in a whole new way.
I'm not saying to show the players everything; don't make a point of drawing attention to it. But when you have the opportunities to show the players parts of the larger world - news updates, tavern rumours, or just the effects of a monthly events table - go for it. They'll love it.
Lesson 5: Use Durable Player Resources
This one is a pretty common idea for many long-running games, and you've heard it before many times I'm sure. Having a durable, reusable source for all (or most) player information, especially about the setting, that can be referenced whenever the players want to (ie: not only during sessions) is really important and helpful for long-running games with lots of detail.
Whether you use Miro (RA's resource of choice), Obsidian or WorldAnvil or a wiki or whatever, we've all heard this suggestion before, and I like many of you have started these and haven't been sure if players actually get use out of them.
RA actively makes them part of play, and that makes it much fresher and easier for us to engage with. When we want to look something up, we already know that it's there, because we've been shown it. When we start a new adventure, we're told that the map or other important details is available on the Miro board, and then we know to reference it ourselves when we need to.
Conversely, RA has also been responsive when we work from the Miro board. In our last session we were trying to focus on Torrance Kunal, and we looked at his part of a prepared relationship map, which is this:
But spending all that money could be worth it, if we get this other part of the Miro board cleaned up as a result:
This is basically the relationship map for our current mission. We're trying to get our group (Solomar Holdings) into the Water Cartel, and keep our enemies out. The thing I really, really like about this setup is how "tactile" it is (obviously it's not actually touchable it's a cloud collaboration platform but you get the idea). It feels like a setup for a children's playground game. When the timer (days left) runs out, we want to be in the middle and we want our enemies to be outside of the middle. It's very graspable and easy to engage with, and it's felt solid to see the various pieces move in and out and around as a direct result of our actions (the water cartel itself and the presence of the Antler King being products of things my character has done).
RA showed us a peek of what next adventure's part of the board is going to look like and it's got like a hex and counter exploration/territory control thing going on with a bunch of sites that already sound great to explore. I'm excited for it!
By bringing this resource directly into the game, by making it something directly approachable to our characters during play, and by letting us affect its structure and results, the "Miro board" has become a living part of our play, not just something that we reference for worldbuilding as an adjunct to play.
This is everything I can think about for now. I'm sure some other stuff will come to mind, I'll try and keep some notes and make another post when I've got some more ideas to share. Hopefully some of this is useful to you!
