Play with a purpose - filler content in streams and actual plays, looking at RPG Blender

Recently I've been watching some RPG Blender actual play of Exalted 3E and I've noticed something about a few episodes or scenes - there was basically little of note happening in them! You could summarise entire scenes or hour long episodes down in a sentence or two and not lose much. As someone that is also a part of an actual play group I think there is something to be learned here.

It's time to talk about optimising air time!

Disclaimers

There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.

First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.

Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.

Thirdly, since I’m also a part of an RPG Actual Play Podcast that features Exalted games, I might be biased towards one interpretation and way of handling things in Exalted that might not agree with how others view and play the game, that’s to be expected. That and some might see criticising other podcasts a conflict of interest or something, so here is your disclaimer.

With that out of the way...

The offenders - idle chat, planning, combat and downtime

So here is an overview of the kind of situations I noticed are just "filler" in the episode, in a sense that you could cut them down or out without losing much of the story.

In Season 1 Episode 1 Welcome To Nexus the second half of the episode boils down to "buy supplies, go down a sewer pipe, dodge molten metal that barely does harm to you, find some tracks and follow them". This takes a good half an hour to get through. Sure, part of it is due to the group being new to the system (they only ever played a one-shot of the system, and Exalted 3E is a bit of a dense game), but the other part is everyone in the party interacting with the same tracks (looking at them, smelling them, tasting them) while mostly chatting idly and repeating what the GM told them.

In Season 1 Episode 11 Freedom For Arvia the second half of the episode consists almost entirely of the group planning what to do next, going over their options for where to turn in their quest basically.

Season 1 Episode 8, 9 and 10 are almost entirely made out of one extended fight.

In Season 1 Episode 13 Perchance to Dream the players describe how they spend a week of downtime, day after day, which boils down to "get paid, do a research in a library, talk about the dream they are having, steal some things, tail someone and do some training".

So let's go over the concepts one by one.

The idle chatter is a bit of a difficult one to avoid. You want your players to be talking to one another and engage with what is being presented, since that is a step up from players being rather passive and not filling the airtime. But on the other hand, if they are already good about creating enough content, you don't want everyone commenting on everything that's going on. If someone is focused on finding a trail, the spotlight is on them to lead the group to follow them. It's their time to shine and have the spotlight! Heck, Exalted 3E even incentivises you with a Role Bonus - you get XP for letting others have a spotlight and being cool according to their character concept:

Over-planning is one of those problems a number of more modern RPGs try to solve. It's a hard habit to break - players want to make optimal decisions and they want to anticipate problems that might arise, but that not only leads to overly-cautious play, but also a lot of air time devoted to chatting about the things you're going to do rather than doing them. Heck, in our Princes of the Universe game those things would even end in a deadlock because players couldn't agree on what to do, or didn't like what others wanted to do. It fostered an attitude of "just do what you want, since the group is more likely to forgive you after the fact since they won't care anymore than agree to let you do it in the first place"...

But at any rate, this kind of planning and deliberation not only takes a good deal of time in the game, it's also not that terribly engaging in comparison to the players actually doing something. It would be much more productive to develop some trust between the players and the GM and speed things along. Players shouldn't deliberate too much on what to do next, and the GM shouldn't punish them for acting without considering everything. Heck, it's more entertaining when not everything goes the way the players wanted and there is some obstacle to overcome, but those shouldn't be seen as a punishment but as a cool action scene you get to do.

Combat being slow is unfortunately the staple of Exalted 3E and many other systems, so it's kind of unavoidable. Heck, in one of our own episodes we spend like, 3 hours doing a fight that amounted to like one or two cool situations. There is a good deal of back and forth in Exalted combat, which is not helped by players being able to "stunt" their defence (cinematically describing how they counter an attack to get a boost to their defense). In a pre-recorded game, ideally you'd edit out a lot of the pauses, rolls, rules lookups and all that, but it can be a bit of a problem for streamed games.

Unfortunately, there isn't a great time saver to be had here unless you'd switch out what game you're using, which might not be the option for every group. Save that, maybe you could try optimising your game to speed things up a little. Maybe limiting the amount of combatants in a fight, maybe cutting down on some stunting (like, assume everyone gets a stunt so people don't have to describe how they parry a sword with their sword for the 20th time), etc.

Downtime, on the other hand, is something that can use a good deal of streamlining. Players should come into it with a purpose - what they want to accomplish. Based on that, everyone could get a scene where they do just that and focus on that being a cool moment, rather than switch between one player and the next every minute as they incrementally do what they set out to do. Give them some time slots. Heck, give the players a heads up that they will be doing a downtime and ask them to come up with interesting things they'd like to do ahead of the session so you'd come into this freeform time knowing what cool stuff will be going down!

Part of the downtime in RPG Blender that make it a little longer was also down to calling for some rolls that didn't need them. The big goal of that session was figuring out a vision the characters were having - where in the world is it located. That was accomplished by paying for a library access and two characters bunkering down to study it over the course of multiple rolls. The thing is, this was basically a start of a new quest for them, so from the narrative perspective, the players couldn't fail to find the location otherwise the entire quest couldn't begin. This makes it so strange why they were rolling to do the research, other than it taking up some time...

How other games streamline this

It's one thing to talk about some lofty theory on what to do and another to point out some systems that are already solving these issues. So let's talk about Fellowship!

Lesson one - supplies. In Fellowship you don't generally buy gear, your character comes with a gear list you pick from during character creation. The game knows you're an adventurer, so you have the basic supplies that don't matter for the story (something to sleep on, clothes, all that jazz). If you need a piece of gear to solve a problem (like a climbing rope, a ladder, some consumable tool, etc.) that's covered under Useful Gear:

So bam - no shopping is needed, if you want to come prepared make sure you have Useful items, no need to plan anything specific. Easy peasy, squeezed lemons.

Lesson two - working together. In Exalted, if multiple people are working together, first person rolls a check and the number of successes are added as dice to the next person's roll. Also, since this is Exalted, both of them will be stunting to describe how they are helping and so on and so on. That's like twice the amount of descriptions and rolls than you need. In Fellowship that's Bond That Bind Us:

People declare they are doing the same thing together, only one of them rolls, but adds an extra die to the roll and everything's easy. You don't have multiple people doing the same roll, but cooperation is still useful. Easy!

Lesson three - failing forward and investigation. Fellowship very much wants your game to progress, even if it is through failure. So when you are examining some clues or doing some research, you will always learn something, even if it backfires in some way. This ensures there is no gridlock in the game because the players roll badly and fail to get the clue they need to unlock the next step of the quest. This is done through Look Closely:

And of course, if you have other people helping you with the research, you use The Bonds That Bind Us so only one person rolls even if multiple people are contributing and so on. It's more efficient!

Lesson four - combat. In Fellowship, the combat isn't turn by turn, but more flowing. The spotlight is on you, you continue rolling until you fail and get into trouble, then the spotlight goes to someone else. If you're not saved from your consequences by the time the spotlight comes back to you, you have to deal with it yourself, usually by taking the hit. This basically means there will be less moving the combat beat by beat from player to player, but having more action scenes going down one after the other.

Lesson five - downtime. In Fellowship, this is a structured activity called A Little Downtime:

This covers doing research, training, having some other cool moments over the course of time passing and so on. It usually takes only minutes though, after which the group accomplishes what they need so they can get to their next objective. Sometimes to deal with a situation you have to "spend" enough scenes of the Downtime addressing the issue. It's still simple and efficient (and ties very neatly into a long rest, healing up, changing gear and how the BBEG progresses their evil plans, but that's a story for another time when we discuss Fellowship in more detail).

Conclusions

When you're creating an RPG stream or an actual play, you want to come into the game and every scene with a direction and a purpose. You want to entertain your audience and respect their time. Chatter for the sense of chatter shouldn't exist - you want to have scenes that further the plot, explore the characters, entertain, world build, etc.

And if you can pick games that streamline the game, or at least steal some good ideas from them to help you with your game, all the better ;).

Persona time slots and the three part structure of an RPG session

My group tends to experiment with different systems and techniques. One day we decided to try playing some Chronicles of Darkness, and our GM tried experimenting with a mechanic inspired by Persona - "time slots". The idea boiled down to this - every day was broken into a few time slots, and in each time slot our vampire characters could do one thing - go hunt for some blood, engage with their Touchstones, research something, etc. After one time slot where our PCs each did their own thing we would meet up and usually spend one time slot working out problems from last night, before the final time slot where we'd go out and have "the big set piece" of the session. We didn't realise it at the time, but we did find some pretty neat pacing structure for any session.

When we played through some Mouse Guard, the game came with its own pacing - the GM Turn and the Player Turn. In general, the session would start at the GM Turn, in which we'd be presented a challenge that we'd have to overcome - perhaps we'd be travelling between towns and dealing with a snowstorm, only to find out we needed to venture further into the blizzard to find some missing mice. During that set piece, every player would be accumulating "checks" for overcoming challenges with a hindrance. Finally, after that GM Turn was over, our characters would have some downtime to spend those checks to resupply, heal up and interact with NPCs in a more relaxed manner. In essence, it was a similar structure to what we have done in CoD, but in reverse - you'd first have the big set piece, and then you'd have the smaller stuff.

As it turned out, that pacing felt off - you'd usually start the game off with the action and then peter off at the end with things that didn't seem that meaningful in comparison. You might have the characters having a thousand-yard stare after fighting a band of weasels and expecting the players to have a follow-up. At least having this contrast allowed us to refine our approach.

So all in all, here is our time slot technique for any RPG. First, you start the session off with small, personal things. Let each player take initiative and roleplay some small thing they do during their morning as it were. Keep it light, don't do too many rolls, and keep it small - no more than two players in a scene ideally. After everyone has done their thing, let everyone meet up and make preparations. Discuss whatever needs discussing, figure out a plan of action, maybe do some small follow-up to something. Then, in the third part of the session have your big set piece - do battle, solve mysteries, engage with the world. After the climax of the session, when the big adventure is over, have a short moment for decompression and end the session soon after. Leave on a high note and give players time to formulate their plans for the next cycle.

This structure should help you transition from everyone settling at the table and still talking about things outside of the game, through the light things where people settle into their roles and get maximum focus right where the meat of the game is.

Facilitating PC's downtime activities

Over a year ago my group and I were in the middle of playing a large, sprawling game of Exalted. As it is with such large games, there is a lot of going on in the world - a lot more than can be portrayed in a session. You also get characters that do a lot more than can really be played out without boring everyone else at the table. Unfortunately, I haven't even seen that many games try to address this issue. So I figured I can chip in with some examples and ideas to help give players and GMs some useful tools to draw from.

Solo sessions

One approach to the problem of having too much stuff going on in the background that only some players / PCs are interested in is to run some solo sessions every now and then. While it's not an ideal situation, requiring either the GM to facilitate extra gaming nights or letting everyone take a break for awhile to have one-on-one sessions, it is a solution to the problem.

For example, during the above mentioned Exalted game, our group had a few sets of solo sessions (S4E4 A, B, C, D was one of them). Our GM had some spare time, we all lived close by, so we could have some week of solo sessions between two normal sessions. In this time each PC could pursue the goals they were interested in, but the rest of the group wasn't - dealing with some trading, diplomacy, gaining intel and making babies. A good chunk of them were personal goals, and another chunk set up future plot devices - one character was looking for infiltrators, another for an ancient treasure, and yet another - studying a mysterious cursed artefact.

One problem we found with solo sessions however was the fact that only some players could carry the game on their own. They either had clear goals in mind, or came prepared with a number of things they could do. This sort of approach won't be for everyone unfortunately.

Downtime Actions in Mind's Eye Theatre

Years back I was involved in a Mind's Eye Theatre LARP for Vampire the Requiem. Due to the amount of players that were involved, the game naturally had to allow for players to be able to perform actions outside of the relatively fixed sessions. The rulebook provided some good guidelines for how to do Downtime Actions that covered such mini-adventures. Moreover, the system went one step further, allowing players that want to focus more on such Actions a way to do more by the proxy of their minions and other Merits.

This system worked pretty well as far as I can remember. That is, as well as it could given the system it was tied to (MET had in my mind some mechanical issues that normal nWoD handled better). It gave every player an opportunity to bring something new into the game sessions and it was structured enough not to be too big of a burden on the GM like the solo sessions would've been.

Idea - downtime goals and point buy

I've had this idea while playing Exalted using the Godbound rules. The system had a mechanic of Influence - a measure of PC's interest they can exert in the downtime. It's usually used for them upkeeping some structure or project that doesn't matter in the long run, like bolstering some rebellion, keeping the peasants suppressed, etc. However, since it's basically a measure of what PCs do with their spare time, it would lend itself naturally to allow the players to set goals for their characters and using those points to accomplish them.

For example, you could have goals to "spread misinformation about our last battle", "gather intel on the political situation of the royal houses", or "find information about a long-lost treasure". Neither of those goals are an actual Change you would normally use Influence or Dominion for (the state of the world doesn't change, only character's knowledge), and the actions themselves are rather boring in themselves to roleplay. However, the outcome of said actions is a meaningful thing for the character or the party.

Now, you may think that you could just give the players such things without the extra steps, but that makes them a bit less meaningful to the players themselves. Just being given an intel the party needs carries less weight than having to spend the last X sessions devoting resources to obtaining that information. The latter gives the player some sense of accomplishment, that it's their actions and sacrifices that got them that information.

Mechanically, the players would give GMs the goals they want to accomplish and in what order, the GM would assign them some point value based on how much time needs to be devoted to them, and each period of time (a session, a month), the players' unused Influence would be put into those goals until they are completed. This works especially well if the players are using Influence on regular basis (making NOT committing the Influence a meaningful sacrifice), or if the players purchase Influence with their XP (which was more meaningful in our Exalted Godbound conversion than vanilla Godbound).

At some point I'd be interested in playing a character that is focused on such background machinations...

Conclusions

Sometimes, especially when playing longer games, the players will want to do things in the downtime withotu eating into the actual game time. It's generally a good sign - the players are really engaged with the game and are invested in what they are trying to accomplish. It might be worthwhile for the GM to facilitate such aspirations in some structured way to allow for this expression and not play favouritism to one player.