I returned to tabletop role-playing games in 2022 and have absolutely loved playing and running games as a way to make friends and to have fun creating shared experiences together. In that time, I’ve run two campaigns and multiple one-shots, over fifty sessions. I’ve also tried to experiment with different approaches, running many different games and learning about and experimenting with different styles in an effort to refine my own style of running games.
Each gamemaster has their own distinctive approach to planning and running tabletop role-playing games. The more games I run and experience, the more I try to refine and define what appeals to me. There is no right answer, there’s only the answer that you and your players find fun.
So, heading into 2025, I’m taking what I’ve learned and leaning into these eight strategies to create games that are more fun and exciting for both me and my players.
What is a Narrative-Focused Game and Why Might You Want It?
Apart from loving role-playing games, I love stories. It’s what brought me to writing fiction and it’s what brought me to playing and running role-playing games. I have always loved the idea in role-playing games that the players and GM are forging a story together. To me, a narrative-focused game is a game in which the narrative matters.
That’s it. Story matters. It sounds obvious.
It’s so obvious, why even talk about it? Why wouldn’t you want story in your role-playing game? Isn’t that what the game is about?
We talk about it because a story in a role-playing game runs the risk of turning into a certain kind of trap. As a GM planning an adventure or a campaign, we tend to think up an overarching story that the players will engage with. And players begin to expect a story to be fed to them that they can follow along with. There’s nothing inherently wrong in that approach (most published D&D campaigns follow this format), except that it runs the very serious risk of falling into the plot trap.
That is, if you the GM have constructed an overarching plot—a sequence of events that forge a pre-planned story—you risk taking something powerful away from the players: the ability to make meaningful decisions. At its most extreme, this can devolve to railroading—that is, forcing the characters down a certain sequence of events in order for the plot to unfold the way in which you, the GM, planned it.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are games where there is little or no story at all. Where player decision is all that matters, and “character” motivation and decision-making is solely based on what the player thinks will be fun or interesting or challenging or make their character more powerful. This is your classic dungeon crawl.
These approaches to narrative can be seen in different styles or “cultures of play.” If you’re at all interested in this topic, I highly recommend you read this article as it has been very influential in shaping my thinking on this topic.
For me the goal is to find a middle ground, where as the GM you have a hand in shaping the story, but the players’ characters and their decisions are what ultimately create what we traditionally think of as the “plot.” I want to run and play in games where the goal is to create a story at the table that is surprising for the GM and thrilling and fulfilling for the players.
That starts with the first strategy, almost a golden rule, which is to give players the ability to make meaningful decisions that impact the story.
The question is, how do you do that?
Plan Situations, Not Plots
First up is this classic bit of advice from Justin Alexander over on The Alexandrian blog. Go read it. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
Summary: a plot forces your players down a linear series of steps in order to solve a problem. A situation is a problem (or series of problems) without a scripted plan of how the characters will resolve it.
It can be challenging, as a GM, to prep situations without planned solutions. You may think, “what if I’ve made it too hard? What if I’ve made a problem they can’t solve?” And in that, you may be tempted to come up with ways they can solve the problem.
That’s okay if you have some ideas – you can use those ideas as clues (see the next topic on Node-based scenarios).
The truth is that your players will come up with approaches to solving the problem—the situation—that you could never have dreamed of. They’re going to do that whether you prep a plot or not, so save yourself the headache. When you plan for a situation, you may develop locations, NPCs, villains, factions, events, and hooks that might be relevant for the PCs. What you don’t do is make a plan for how the PCs will deal with the situation.
Trusting your players to figure that out will lead to sessions that leave you feeling surprised at how things turned out and your players will see that their own decisions shaped how the events—the story—evolved.
The “plot” – that is, the sequence of events that made up the story – happens at the table during the session.
In my Dragon of Icespire Peak campaign, the players were hired to clear a mob of wererats out of an old mine. I used the mine location provided in the campaign book and fleshed out the few named NPCs with motivations and attitudes. I expected the PCs to treat it like a dungeon crawl, clearing out the wererats room by room using spells and weapons. Instead, the PCs began to negotiate with the wererats. The PCs’ employer pressed the PCs to drive out the beasts, and the PCs wound up in an argument with one another about how to deal with the situation. Several of the party members left the negotiation and found a back entrance into the caves, where they were captured by a group of wererats. This prompted the other wererats to attack, driving the negotiating PCs out of the caves. Still disputing amongst one another on how to resolve the situation, they ended up betraying their employer and creating a temporary alliance with the wererats, helping to find them a new home. I prepped a situation. What played out at the table was a series of events—a plot—that I could never have planned.
Node-Based Scenarios
When designing a scenario using a “node-based” approach (also called a spiderweb approach), you create a series of nodes – these are often locations but can also be NPCs, events, or other elements – which contain clues that direct the characters towards other nodes. By planting sufficient numbers of these clues, you can ensure that the players will stumble across some even if they miss others.
Node-based scenarios are ideal for mysteries or investigations, and since they contain contingency clues, you don’t have to worry about the classic linear mystery problem of the players missing an essential clue that leaves them scratching their heads.
Using node-based planning is a way that allows you to plan an interconnected series of elements without forcing you to prep a plot. It’s a natural outgrowth of the prior bit of advice about prepping situations. In fact, node-based scenario design is a tool for organizing situations.
In my homebrewed Planescape campaign, I opened with a mystery for the PCs – they lost their memories and needed to figure out how they came to be in the city of Sigil. Using various published resource, I created a series of nodes containing clues that allowed them to stitch the story together. Some of these were NPCs who had information, some were locations where they found journals and other artifacts from their pasts, and some were quests that needed to be completed in order to obtain things. The PCs missed the clues I placed for them at the start of the scenario, instead stumbling into a series of hazards and traps. But they soon encountered an NPC who helped them reach a different node and who was, herself, a node, since she had secrets about their past. The way in which the players puzzled their way through this mystery and the relationships they developed with NPCs along the way created a more satisfying narrative than I could have planned had I scripted the order the of events.
A Sandbox Shaped by the PCs
Many old school renaissance (OSR)-style games espouse the sandbox style, where the GM establishes a setting, randomly determining events, NPCs, and locations through rolls on random tables as the PCs explore a map.
This places the onus of agency and decision-making on the players, which is great. But without narrative consequences, are such decisions meaningful? That is, if the outcome of the players’ decisions is the results of one random set of die rolls versus another set, is that really a meaningful decision?
Of course, that’s an extreme version of an open sandbox. In fact, many things in a sandbox are fixed or at least have enough depth planned out for the players to make decisions that are less than totally random. And with some thoughtful planning and design, you can create a narrative-focused sandbox. Earthmote has some excellent advice for this on his YouTube channel. But the main tools involve creating factions and threats for the PCs to begin to engage with and care about. You still use random tables, but you customize those random tables to tie into factions (see below), locations, and events that might be meaningful to the players and their characters.
As you learn more about what drives the characters (see Leveraging PC Goals and Backstories, below), you will refine and revise these tables and the agendas of the factions will evolve and change over time.
Factions Tied to the PCs
One of the most powerful tools for driving narrative without railroading is the use of factions. A faction is an organization – a religion, a cult, a gang of bandits, a guild, even an evil wizard and his army– with a goal. Creating factions that the PCs are likely to want to help, who want to help the PCs, or who the PCs oppose, or who oppose the PCs, is a way of making those factions relevant to your gaming table.
The game Dungeon World was the one of the first games to make faction play a central element of the story. Each faction has a “front,” that is, an agenda they pursue which, if the PCs or other agents don’t interfere, will eventually come to fruition. For example, if nobody interferes with the necromancer’s plan to raise a dracolich that will destroy the kingdom, then it’s probably going to happen.
Finding or creating factions that the PCs are driven to engage with is critical to making them narratively meaningful. Let the PCs come to care about—or despise—a local town, then introduce a faction with plans to raze it. Will the party come to the town’s defense? Or choose to participate in the destruction?
Memorable, Recurring NPCs
One of the classic tools in a GM’s toolbox is a great NPC. To me, a great NPC isn’t one who is funny or weird or especially threatening – all of those are possible traits. But for me, an NPC needs to have a few qualities to be memorable:
They have to have one or two memorable personality traits – something you as the GM can use to bring them to life at the table
They have to have an agenda – just like a faction – even if that agenda is just maintain the status quo
They need an opinion about the PCs: do they admire adventures or loathe them? Do they see the PCs as an easy mark or heroes who can help? Their attitude can, and should, change over time.
The PCs have to care about them.
You can’t force that last one, but you can increase its likelihood by creating NPCs connected to the PCs backstories, relationships, and factions. Though sometimes, even a random NPC can become memorable.
By ensuring they have a couple of memorable qualities, they have some kind of agenda, and they have an opinion about the PCs, you go a long way towards increasing the changes that the PCs may come to care about them.
In my Dragon of Icespire Peak game, the party encountered Toblen Stonehill, proprietor of the Stonehill Inn, early in the campaign. I had decided that Toblen was manipulative and a flatterer, accustomed to conning the local miners out of their hard-earned coin. His agenda was that he wanted to get rich through seizing control of local mines. His attitude about the PCs? He saw them as dumb outsiders and believed that with a little flattery and subtle suggestion, he could turn their violent aims towards seizing control of a local mine from some unsuspecting dwarves. This served doubly by connecting some narrative tissue to one of the adventures in the campaign. The PCs were immediately suspicious of Stonehill’s motives. They spent several sessions trying to thwart Stonehill, who became a minor villain simply because the party disliked him! His attitude towards the PCs changed – he began to see them as meddlers and set out finding ways to make their lives more difficult. The Campaign Guide gives only three sentences on Stonehill which amount to “he’s good at running an Inn.” By giving him some personality, an agenda, and an attitude towards the PCs, I created a reason for the PCs to care about him and wound up with one of the most memorable NPCs of the entire campaign.
Leverage PC Goals and Backstories
Perhaps the single most effective way to create a narrative campaign but also one of the most challenging to do well is to encourage your players to create characters that are tied into the factions of the world through their backstories, and characters who have their own goals and wants. If your players all have characters with their own goals, they have done a lot of the work for you. Simply create obstacles, NPCs, factions, and locations tied to those goals and backstories and let your players go after what they want. The narrative emerges from the PCs actions and decisions.
You can make sure the achievement of those goals is challenging and narratively satisfying by pitting the goal against something – for example, the PC has been trying to recover the lost artifact from the demon lord, but to do so, they have to sacrifice someone or something from their backstory. Or maybe a PC discovering what happened to their missing brother requires facing down some unpleasant truths about their family, causing them to question who they are.
Avoid pitting PCs goals against one another, though, without careful consideration and discussion between players. That’s a good way to create frustration, boredom, and/or disappointment in the game.
One thing to keep in mind is that your players may not know enough about your world and your campaign to create well-defined character goals and backstory. They may need some sense of the hooks of your campaign setting – the factions, major NPCs, etc. – to be able to establish goals that make sense in the context of the game. Giving the players enough hooks in Session 0 when building their characters is one way to help mitigate this issue. Also, PC goals may evolve and change over time – that’s totally fine as well.
I recommend checking out Jonah and Tristan Fishel’s book “The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying.” Ginny Di did a great video on this topic as well.
In my Dragon of Icespire Peak game, one of my players was a half-orc who decided based on our session 0 that he had never known his father, an orc, and that his human mother, on her deathbed, revealed that his father was a savage warrior from Neverwinter Wood who had been unable to sacrifice his life within the tribe to settle down with her in a human city. The PC resolved to travel to Neverwinter Wood to seek out the truth of his father and discover what had become of him. This gave me the perfect opportunity to make his father an important NPC in the campaign – an anchorite of the Cult of Talos, a powerful faction in the region tied to several key quests in the campaign.
What Is at Stake?
As an author, one of the ways we create compelling characters is by making sure our characters have goals and that those goals have stakes. That is, whatever the character wants or needs really, truly matters to the character. There are all sorts of ways to twist this – maybe the character believes something false or maybe achieving their goal will upset things worse than not achieving it – but the point is those stakes ensure that decisions made and actions pursued through the story are meaningful. They have teeth.
If you want to ensure your scenes and encounters are narratively impactful, try to clarify what’s at stake. Maybe it is as simple as the characters’ safety – this can be a powerful motivator – but oftentimes you can tie something else into the scene. The party has to fight a bunch of monsters in a dungeon. Why? What happens if they don’t do it?
If you have connected the scenes in your game to the factions, NPCs, and character goals you and your players have established as narratively significant, that question should answer itself. If the answer is, nothing happens, then why are the PCs there?
A word of advice about this practice: don’t overdo it. Not every scene needs to have crazy high stakes. Sometimes a scene of the PCs having a laugh together at the tavern or playing out a shopping session can be fun and relaxing. Sometimes exploring a random dungeon or chasing down a lead that goes nowhere can be an enjoyable aside. And sometimes, those unplanned and disconnected bits can provide the fodder for meaningful plot hooks you can deploy later.
What strategies do you use to draw your characters into your game and create meaningful stories and narratives? Do you have your own approaches? What challenges do you face? Let me know in the comments below.
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