An MC in Action
There’s some confusing aspects to this style, so I thought I’d give a more in-depth example of when MCing goes right. This is taken from session 1 of the last game I ran in this style, set in a post-apocalyptic city.
The Cast (PCs)
- Vega: Runs the local settlement with a fist of steel
- Stomp: Vega’s chief enforcer, never seen without his mask, that he refers to as “Norman” and occasionally converses with.
- Spector: Resident weird-tech specialist.
- Phoenix: Local courier, best driver in the city.
The Threats
- The Ruins: lonely, with an impulse to conceal
- Power plant: capricious, with an impulse to consume
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Mad Dogs: local gang - violent, with an impulse to destroy
Newton: Warlord of the Mad Dogs - scary, with an impulse to possess things of value - Norman: Stomp’s Mask - intense, with an impulse to demonstrate strength
- Many more: including the car, the weather, all the NPCs and the general mood of the population, but these are just the most relevant ones.
The Events
Setup
To give us something to start with, I picked the power plant more or less at random from the list. We kicked off the session right in Vega’s office as she fielded complaints about the fluctuating power from various residents of her settlement. The NPCs were giving her grief, and I used the opportunity to let Vega have some input: “So Plover comes up to you, and he’s pissed because the power situation means that he can’t work. What does he do that needs power?”
Vega obviously had no way of dealing with this, so she went to go find Spector who had already been trying to get to the bottom of the problem (I asked the player, he said that it made sense he’d be in the middle of his own investigation). Spector made some investigative rolls and succeeded, working out that whatever this problem was it went right to the source; the power plant on the far side of the ruins.
Now Vega knows what the problem is and Spector can probably fix it, she just needs to get there. There’s plenty of vehicles around, but if she wants to maximise her chances then she needs Phoenix and his car.
Meanwhile, Phoenix and some other PCs are out scavenging, which I RP with them for a few minutes, making a few rolls. They’re just hauling some valuable loot out of a pile of rubble when the radio crackles into life and Vega requests Phoenix’s presence back at the settlement.
Journey
Vega gets into the car with Phoenix, picking up Spector (who’s needed to fix the power) and Stomp (for some extra muscle). They set off, and to keep the journey interesting I look to my threats. I hadn’t decided where the Mad Dogs lived yet (I actually hadn’t even decided they existed at this point, so I made them up on the spot) but just to be inconvenient I told the PCs that this violent local gang was right on their route to the power plant.
With everyone on edge, a couple of perception rolls were thrown out from Phoenix and Spector. Usually I wouldn’t allow two simultaneous rolls for the same purpose like that, but the dice hit the table before I could interrupt and they were both failures! I look to my threats for ideas for “fail forward or success with a twist”.
Phoenix is driving, so I make his the most straightforward: he spots the ambush (that I just invented for this failed roll) too late, a ruined bus crashes out of a side street to block the road and Mad Dogs pour out and start shooting up the car. This cascades into some defensive driving and suppressing fire, and at the end of the encounter they’re free and clear. But not so fast! I still haven’t interpreted Spector’s fail. The ruins like to conceal, and Newton likes to own things, so I combine the two and have Spector fall from the car in the chaos of the ambush. When he wakes up, he’s tied to a chair in Newton’s headquarters.
The Rescue
After eventually noticing that Spector was gone, the group in the car turn around and try and get back into Mad Dog territory. The Mad Dogs themselves are still around, so they’re definitely in for a fight.
Meanwhile, I want to give Spector the chance to do something other than waiting for rescue. After a tense scene with Newton, where she breaks his knee with a hammer, he’s left alone. He’s still in the ruins, which have an impulse to conceal, so I tell him that he has the opportunity to sneak away provided he’s okay with risking the climb out of the open window with a broken knee. He agrees, and slowly and carefully sneaks his way out of the window onto the fire escape.
The fight with the Mad Dogs is short but bloody, and ends with Vega unconscious. Phoenix goes back to get the car while Stomp is in charge of resuscitating Vega so they can move out. Stomp technically has access to the Heal boon through Presence, but it’s really out of character for him and he can’t explain it, so that’s out of the picture. With no other ideas for what to do, he asks his mask for advice. Norman isn’t quite on his side, even if he has Stomp’s best interests at heart, so he suggests that a sudden burst of pain and adrenaline would wake Vega up while simultaneously displaying Stomp’s dominance.
Stomp looks at his machete, then the player looks up at the Legend Point token I’m waving above my GM screen. With a heavy sigh, he kneels on Vega’s forearm and hacks off two of her fingers. Vega takes some lethal damage, but wakes up. Stomp experiences regret, but also gets that Legend Point. We called the session there, and went into session 2 with plenty of drama to springboard the emergent plot off of.
Minimal Prep
So after 20 minutes spent writing down threats, I already have a living world. With zero time spent planning it out, we already have the beginnings of a plot; with a clear goal, a villain one of the party has a grudge against, and a group who didn’t even exist at the start of the session ready to be a persistent nuisance. It continued on in this manner, with maybe 10 minutes of prep per session (spent reevaluating the threats) being transformed through the magic of the MC into a huge, sprawling plot with betrayals and love triangles and hidden agendas. All of it was a surprise to everyone at the table, including me, and that is why I love to MC.