Blowing Chunks (of knowledge)

A problem facing new GMs is the information overload needed to run a session. Often, this results in them over-preparing and the game falling flat anyway, as npcs are stale or the GM isn’t prepared to go off the rails. My proposal is this comes about from the lack of an important memory tool:

Chunking.

People can only hold a certain amount of objects in their memory at one time, varying (depending on what you read) between four or seven “chunks” of working memory capacity. Chunks are numbers, words, or other mental objects that can be represented as singular, unique representations. These chunks, however, can be decomposed into smaller chunks, and can be retrieved much quicker through this link than by racking your brain trying to find it. They act as briefcases for organising your game tools, and each briefcase has trays, each tray has modules. By using top-level chunks as pointers, you can find the information you need much faster and with much less brain-draining effort.

Some examples of these top-level chunks may be:

• Game rules: The rules, both their interactions with players and their limitations. This may take more thought in especially complicated rule sets.
• The players’ group’s reputation, goals, and composition: When NPCs deal with the group as a whole, they deal with the group’s reputation and their history. Often combined with knowledge of the party face, this module keeps the information content low enough to use.
• The group of players: Instead of the group, this is used for quick retrieval of individual character’s information. Keeping full information about a player’s character ready for access can be very useful during more intimate roleplay, when a character is singled out, or when there are only a couple of player characters present.
• A single NPC: chunks for NPCs should be kept singular, to keep them responsive and interesting during interactions. While this may not apply to the lowest of npcs (basic soldiers/servants), any NPC that merits more than a one line response should have its own module.
• A Crowd: Crowds generally act as a single NPC, but enough mental capacity should be given to make them believable and responsive.
• World details: Generally referring to the current locale of the world, including its local map, laws, population, and other details. These details are referred to fairly sparsely, but frequently enough to keep them in memory.
• Game Direction: Major plot points, near future events, and consequences of current player actions.
• Mood Lighting: Theme, tone, and mood are kept here and used to modulate your responses. Without mood lighting games tend to feel inconsistent as the feel varies wildly. This is of course not saying the mood must always be the same, but sudden silliness during a high point can feel anticlimactic.

Let’s assume for the moment that starting out, you can hold the smaller four items in your mind at once (this will increase through practice). You change your current chunks with scene changes, swapping out unneeded chunks with the ones which will be immediately useful:

1. During a combat, you will need one chunk for rules, one for world details (the local combat map and details), one for enemy behaviour, and one for the party.
2. Combat ends, you clear things out and load chunks for Mood Lighting, Game Direction, a single surviving NPC, and the player who is interrogating the NPC.
3. The group gets information of a local bandit lord, which they decide to clear out. Surveying the lord’s hideout, you choose Mood Lighting, World details, Game direction, and the bandit lord NPC (does he require discipline in his men? Is he paranoid and have the place well fortified? Does he pay his men well so they’re well equipped or are they in rags and salvage?).

This should also demonstrate why some GMs get burnt out: searching for information not readily at hand is mentally intensive, especially if the GM is having to do this during preparation work. Multiple hours of searching their minds for creative links, then spending hours running the game quickly becomes exhausting. Having the required chunks close at hand reduces brain usage, allowing more responsiveness, control, and pacing of the situation. With practice, a GM will hold more chunks in memory, and access them faster, allowing for more responsive, quicker, but most importantly fun games.

Attention spans and how to exploit them

In a GM’s endless quest to run fun sessions, one thing often overlooked is how long players can comfortably pay attention. Attention comes in two types: transient and sustained. Transient is a quick response to a new event, giving you a moment of intense concentration to decide if the event is worth your ongoing attention. Transient is fleeting by nature, lasting as little as 8 seconds (different sources put the number anywhere up to 20 seconds, it’s hard to find good numbers on).

Selective sustained attention is concentrating on a subject for much longer periods of time, anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes, and can be re-focused to maintain it. An easy way to capture someone’s Selective attention is by a Transient event, allowing them to easily switch their Selective attention to the task at hand.

A Transient Event is a stimuli that captures the immediate attention of players, anything that stands out from the current environment. These events could be audible (Raised gm/player voice, clattering of dice, sound effects), visual (Moving objects on the table, an animated talker), or mechanical (a change in game state that causes a meaningful decision). Anything that grabs the attention of the players is a Transient Event.

While your group’s attention spans will vary, for the sake of this article we’ll assume Transient span is 8 seconds, and the Selective span is 10 minutes. These timings have consequences for how we should run our games, and how we should design our games:

• Player Involvement: players should go not more than 10 minutes without major interaction. By major interaction, something that requires the player to focus on the situation, not just rolling a save.
• Scene Length: Scenes that go for more than 10 minutes should be generally be avoided, as the act of re-focusing takes far more effort than refocusing through a Transient event. Scenes often do not require the Selective attention of all players, often only one or two, requiring re-focusing.
• Combats: Each combat should be a scene, and therefore limited to 10 minutes. This is especially true of games where some players’ turns consist of “I move forward, roll to hit, roll damage, done”. These players don’t require much concentration in a combat, nor require many meaningful decisions, so keep combats short for these players. (Alternatively, this is a sign the system is not as good as it should be, search “D&D quick combat” and look at the results)
• Make events big: Scene changes should be started with an event to capture the players’ attention. A sound effect or a loud voice attracts Transient attention, helping players to re-focus on the next scene.

Following the above guidelines, you can keep your players interested and attentive all session. As a note to game designers: if during play testing you find combats frequently going much longer that 10 minutes, you should probably re-think your design.

Entry Barriers

Recently I have noticed a hurdle for new players often overlooked – pregenerated characters. Especially for inexperienced players who must comprehend the rules for playing, along with the (admittedly sometimes convoluted/difficult to understand) character creation rules. When creating a character, a new player will often be at a loss as to how to build their character. No gameplay experience means no knowledge of pros and cons of choices.

Pre-genned character sheets take away this barrier and allow the player to gain precious experience without a “sacrificial character” – a first character that will most likely be less powerful than the other characters. Playing at a lower power level to other characters is often much less fun as other players overshadow your character.

Pre-genned characters come in two varieties – full character or mechanics only.

A mechanics only character lacks any “fluffy” bits, so allows the player to determine the direction of the character’s personality. Unless the player makes an effort to specify this character’s personality, the character will naturally reflect the player’s personality. Especially for inexperienced players, this may be a better option – inexperienced players can react naturally to situations and allow them to concentrate on learning the general etiquette of role play before attempting to play a personality alien to them.

A full character generally comes with a short backstory/personality for the player to mould themselves around. These back stories can serve a narrative purpose – simultaneously explaining the character’s place in the world and allowing for later connections to be used for the story. These connections are especially powerful, giving immediate access to NPCs which can progress the story/provide good side plots.

This is of course not to say GMs should prefer players use pre-genned characters at every opportunity, but having the option always on hand gives options. A new player arrives to the game, a player wants to try a new play style, or a new player needs an example of a completed character.

tl;dr: Budding game designers, please include pre-generated character sheets.