User Blog:
Holy Crap! We Have Game This Weekend? - Too Many Chefs and Hunter Free Stuff

“This is a game for four to six players. Most everyone portrays a character, while one player takes the role of the game master.”

We’ve heard that one, right? Let’s play with it.

Sometimes you want to focus on a single character’s story. This works great for side plots, background, preludes and similar things. Why not just let everyone run the game, then? Clearly, this takes some trust, but can be very fulfilling. If it works once, pass around the duties, let a different player become subject to the five GM game every session for a few weeks.

The goal is to build a collaborative story, just like you would normally in an RPG. The difference is, the behind-the-scenes stuff is being developed by a committee, not by a single participant. You have a number of people able to portray NPCs, allowing for more verisimilitude in games where meetings with a group of NPCs are important. The best part is, the game usually doesn’t need planning. Between three to five people, the whole plot can be improvised. I promise, improvising that plot will be just as much fun as playing a PC.

Where does this work? I think it’s amazingly useful in a mystery game. If you have a detective character that really needs to jump out and do work alone, devote a session to it. It’ll allow players that don’t usually run games a chance to, without the regular commitment required to run a long-term game. It’ll also give them a bit more investment in the overall story.

What’ll happen? You’re going to get players that find pet NPCs. That’s a good thing! Let them slip into those roles during other game sessions. It’ll give a bit more variety to your campaign world, and it’ll allow them to get out of their normal skin for a while, to play something outside their normal comfort zones.

That aside: Have you ever played Hunter the Vigil? If not, you should. White Wolf has been kind enough to put up two quick start adventures for free download. One’s here, the other is here. While I wasn’t involved in the creation of Hunter, I’ve done some work on the game line. Recently, I wrote a little sample adventure. You can find it for free here. It’ll work well with Hunter, but the ideas port well. Even outside of the World of Darkness line, I know some people have been using it in the Supernatural RPG. It’s a barebones scenario, with an antagonist, victim and setup information to make it click. So go check it out. It’s free, so why not?