On “By Endurance, We Conquer” and framing scenes

Allow me another one of those posts where I think out loud about how to run roleplaying games as a GM.

Yesterday, I ran By Endurance, We Conquer for the second time. This is a Carved from Brindlewood one-shot game, meaning that it used the mystery game system of Brindlewood Bay, but with a different setting (polar exploration in the early 1900s) and with a story that you could complete in one sitting – or at least that’s what I thought.

I played it twice now, the first time being last Sunday, when I played it in a noisy board game bar. It was rough, and I blamed the environment for that – the game is dark and full of terrors and having a lot of other noisy games happen around you can break emersion really fast. Yesterday I played it in a relatively quiet, but rather echo-y and spacious room where also three other relatively quiet but sometimes noisy RPGs were being played. It was better, but I still struggled.

I mean, it also didn’t help I was still tired from playing way too many RPGs (this was my tenth RPG in 13 days).

Somehow I keep telling myself that I need to be better at playing and running RPGs. As if it’s a useful skill that I should develop. Don’t worry, I also have fun, but when I play this much, the “I must improve” takes over from “let’s have fun”.

In my previous post about how I prepare for Mausritter I wrote about how I try to find more flow in the story that I run. I compare Brindlewood Bay as a system in which I get into that flow easily: it comes with lists of locations, people and clues I can use to inspire the story in the moment. I thought this was the system, and that By Endurance would keep this up too, but I was a bit disappointed by that.

On “By Endurance, We Conquer”

The game comes in the form of a booklet, of which roughly half is dedicated to the chapter “Presenting the adventure”. It comes with boxed text full of flavor for the Keeper to read out loud, interrupted by prompts to ask questions to the players, or otherwise fill out the character sheet step by step. I really enjoyed this part of the game, as it really turns character creation into a form of play. I happily dedicated half the session to this.

What comes after, however, is a bit of a drop. The introduction gives you a bunch of fully formed characters, excited players and a captain who is missing, but then from there it’s up to you to set a scene on the next location. The suggested locations have – in full Brindlewood style – only one paragraph of text and a question to pose to the players once they arrive there. In both my runs, I freaked out a bit at this moment: what is next? Where do I send them to? And since all these locations are outside of the ship, how do I get them there in an interesting way?

In my mind, this adventure now takes the shape of a graph. There are a few interesting locations, and to get from one node to the other, I have to say “you are walking through endless night, it is cold and it snows” a few times. Some locations are too good – in both sessions we ended up in the same place – and suggest locations after that. In both cases, I had to improvise a whole world from that point on.

What is more: most of the clues that could point to the captain’s fate are objects that would be very out of place in these outdoor places. And the clues that could be outdoors are super vague about how they relate to the captain. In most Brindlewood Bay mysteries I can always find a clue for the moment or just use it as a spark for something else, but here I found myself restricted.

Finally: in both cases – after the brilliant intro that really painted great individual player characters – we end up having a game of “the party moves, the party talks, the party searches”. And in both cases we kind of forgot about the fact that the party also consisted of a bunch of NPCs. But that could be the way I ran it.

On framing scenes

Turns out this game is not really a one-shot game, but more a game for a short campaign. I think you can have a good two or three sessions with this as well, giving you more time to use and develop those lovely characters further.

In the second game I was hoping to get some nighttime in, so that I could tell about some sounds in the dark, maybe some dreams the explorers had, but also giving time for talks near a fire. But the party wanted to carry on, push past midnight to the next location because they knew they were close. I should’ve probably be more assertive, keeping them locked for the night.

I think taking your time with this game allows for such more silent moments, the moments that do not push the story forward, but do add to the feeling of it.

I think the “move” I was missing here, is to just set up a scene. State the names of the characters that are there – preferably not the whole party – and then just give the ball back to the players to start it. Or maybe I should include an NPC, so that I can say something as well to start this.

Last year, I did attend an improvisation theater course just to get better at this. I guess I am still not great at it. Playing a character freaks me out, even though I think it’s an important part of play. I keep saying to myself: let’s do it this time, and then I back down, describing what a character does, but not “playing” them.

Maybe voices help. One of the players mentioned yesterday that she loves doing “the voices”. As a child, we always played a lot of different characters in our stories, using Lego and other figures to keep track of who is who, but also using a variety of voices. It is that mindset that I should tap into again.

I guess framing a scene is an art in itself. How do you create a situation that feels compelling to play out? But maybe it can also be as simple as just making that explicit. By saying: “let’s start a scene with Tove and Redwell in it”, you are putting Tove’s player into the mindset of being there with Redwell, as well as signaling to the rest of the players to keep silent for now, to let this play out.

By making it explicit that some player characters are not present, you are also making it clearer that the party is not one entity. It creates a more realistic setting, and therefore helps emersion for those who are in the scene.

Anyway. I’ll go play some more and might come back to this.