The Host's Handbook

[Kurotsune]

Greetings.

Creating your own world and plot to tell a tale is probably one of the most complicated aspects of roleplaying. The difference between a good and a bad host is the diference between a good and a bad story. One will flourish, and the other, well, will wither and die as interest fades.

Now, I don't claim to be good host, or a good worldbuilder, or even a good writer or storyteller - Which is probably not a good way to introduce myself within the context of this guide - However, I have many years of roleplaying under my belt and I have seen and done a lot of different things in this art to consider myself a veteran of sorts. I've condensed my experiences and the conclusions I took from them below. Hopefully, if you've interest in hosting, they will help you.

One thing to know about hosting is that it goes beyond merely writing a story. A host needs to know how to guide the party to the objectives they've set out for them, because if let alone, the players tend to wander. Because of this, experienced hosts have a plethora of different techniques they use to attract attention back to them and therefore to the objective at hand. I will explain these and give a few examples further down, but now the most important thing to discuss is hosting style.

Style is a very significant part of roleplaying in general. Normally, as a player, you have your own quirks. Some people roleplay in the third person, some in the first. Some alternate. Some people prefer to be objective and straight to the point with their character reactions, others like to describe the soft flutter of a butterfly's wings or detail the pattern a particularly leaf makes as it softly glides it's way to the ground. This is blown out of proportion when it comes to hosting. Because the host is such an important part of how the story is told, the way they choose to interact with their players in their posts will directly and majorly affect how the game develops.

The hosts sets the tone and the pace of the scene. Their posts can force players to detail their actions or to compose shorter responses. If a host likes to have a turn order, the game tends to move slowly. If a host favors quick and short back-and-forth interaction between two or multiple characters, the game tends to give off the impression of a faster pace, though it may not be the case.

While all this boils down to personal preference, the direct interaction with the players - in other words, the host's posts themselves - will undeniably always fall in one of three patterns: The player, the narrator and the puppetmaster.

The player is a host that composes characters that directly interact or participate in the party. Also known as DMPCs, these characters are usually used to subtly (or sometimes explictly) nudge the players back on track. The player is a complicated hosting style because the host needs to detach themselves from the character they're playing. Put in a situation where you are effectively the god of an imaginary world, it's hard to not make your characters seem to be special... Or as they're better known in the roleplaying community, a Mary sue. Because of this, I'd personally not suggest this to a first-time host. And even experienced hosts at times have difficulty balancing their own characters with the rest of the world. An example of a player host that I can provide is my own series, Gaelach Basm, a story with a huge focus on character development and character interaction, remaining as true as can be to the archetype.

The narrator follows a much more indirect means of interaction with the player characters. Detached from the main narrative, the narrator acts as a storyteller, merely stating how the world reacts to the players' actions. The narrator is the most passive of all three styles, and their focus is mainly on acting as the world itself rather than a particular NPC. While the narrator may occasionaly control an NPC, even then it's words and actions are described in a much less personal way than a character is usually portrayed. The narrator is a pretty good style for hosts just starting out. In good hands the narrator can spin around it a living, breathing world; but if badly executed, they can make the story seem slow, stagnant and uninteresting. For a good example of a narrator, of course, you need not look any further than Hukuna’s own Graterras, a world in peril series. A perfect example of how a powerful narrator can make or break a tale, Hukuna’s ability at detailing his descriptions almost runs the risk of completely outshining and outclassing his players.

A mixture of the other two, the puppetmaster stands as a narrator that controls the world, plot and characters in minutia, usually having several different characters, overlapping storylines, and weaving complex tales. The puppetmaster is controlling by nature. They manipulate the story to guarantee it will move the way they wish, and they usually alternate between styles to better adapt to the situation at hands. The most complex and difficult of the three, the puppetmaster stands as the most effective and interesting storytellers, and are capable of creating the most interesting and memorable stories of all; Their biggest strenght can be their downfall, however, as the puppermaster's controlling nature can lead to frustration when things don't go their way, and their actions can border on dictatorial or authoritarian, making the players feel like they don't have a choice in their actions, which is the quickiest way to kill any interest in a game. While my true go-to style, I’ve yet to see a good example of a puppetmaster within the forums, and neither have I made a game using that particular type of narration. That said, Stratos’ as of yet unreleased reboot, the Exodus: The Sons of Hope series seems to have all the common aspects of a puppermaster narration: Large amount of character background and information, as well as a large cast of NPC characters that allow the host to take an active approach to storytelling without ever actually joining the party.

It's important to understand and know all styles, and choose the one that betters fits you. While some styles are described as better than others, remember that is based on my own opinions and experiences. I stand by the fact that any writing style at all, if done properly, will weave an amazing tale.

With the style of narration decided, it’s time to craft the world. Worldbuilding is arguably the most important aspect of any roleplay, and widely considered the hardest one. Personally, I disagree, and I will elaborate on what I believe to be the hardest part of hosting down below.

For now, let’s describe what worldbuilding entails. I normally separate two things: Plot and Setting.

Plot is the story of your game. How it will proceed and how it will be played.

Setting is the world the game is located in.

Both are simple in concept, and yet entail very much more in practice. Much like everything else when it comes to hosting, worldbuilding is very subjective in nature, often the point where most hosts disagree on. I will explain a bit of my own guidelines when it comes to worldbuilding, as well as discuss the pros and cons of my own style as we go along. I’d like to open this space for other hosts to detail how they choose to approach worldbuilding; Send it to me on a PM and I will add it to this post and credit the original writer.

Kurotsune’s Worldbuilding Steps:

Now, when it comes to worldbuilding, I always begin with an idea. Specifically, an objective.

What’s the end game? What does the party want to achieve? What’s the goal of this game? The win condition?

The second step is the antagonist. Specifically, what is stopping your players from reaching that goal?

The third step is the narration. To some hosts this is a no-brainer, as they have a preferred go-to style they stick to. However,

some hosts like myself prefer to remain flexible, and adopt the narration style they feel is more appropriate for the game in question.

This next step depends on the previous one, so we will call it step three-a. This step is the creation of the character(s) you will use

in your game, in other words, fleshing out the important NPCs.

Just like that, we have our plot ready. Some of us like to heavily detail on their plots, but I personally like to keep things simple and open. An objective, an antagonist, and a party. What happens next depends on player choice, and I will make it up as we go along.

This has some drawbacks, however. The main drawback is a heavy dependence on the host being confident in their ability to not only create on the spot, but to remain faithful to the world they build, and failing to do so will cause inconsistency which will kill a story off quick.

In our fourth step, we begin creating our setting. The first decision is society. What community(ies) will the players be involved in? Personally, I take inspiration from real-life existing or extinct societies/cultures to write my own, with Gaelach Basm’s two main societies – the island-continents of Éire and Sigetto – being based in Gaelic and Romani culture, respectively, and the entire setting of Summerland being based on Wiccan culture and beliefs.

Leading us to the fifth step, which is the literal world building. Specifically, where will the game take place? Now it’d be the time to create and define the physical space the game will occur on, and flesh out main cities/kingdoms.

And just like that, our world has been built. Obviously, the setting suffers from the same issue the plot does: it greatly relies on the host’s ability to make things as they go along and not contradict themselves later.

However, even those who are more detail-oriented can take these steps and at this point be left with a structure to build upon. Myself, I take this structure and add player profiles to it to start molding the world and add stuff from the player profiles to it.

Well, with worldbuilding done, we’re free to start our RP! So I guess we’re done here, right? I mean, you’ve sat through nearly 1800 words (probably more when/if more worldbuilding tips are added) already, so you deserve a break!

Nope. Sit back down, we’ve a while to go still.

After worldbuilding is done you’re indeed free to release your game to be joined and starting, but then we enter something just as importantly – And what I personally consider the hardest part of hosting – the actual hosting.

As the name implies, the host has to keep their players entertained, and several different techniques are employed to that effect.

Before I describe them, as well as my own, I will first describe the opposite case: What I’ve observed to be the reasons why most RPs who fail, do.

1 -> Lazy worldbuilding: A direct consequence of my own worldbuilding style, lazy worldbuilding is a huge issue for hosts who don’t fully flesh out a world before letting their players enter it. Once the players are in uncharted terrain and the host is under pressure to effectively create a new setting much faster, corners tend to be cut, and writing tends to get sloppy. At this point, it’s not unusual for interest to slowly die off, with the RP shortly following.

2 -> Bad storytelling: If a host is too adamant on how they do things, they tend to get frustrated when things don’t go exactly their way. This can lead to the host employing at best inane and at worst downright nonsensical arguments to try to steer the story in the direction they want. This will invariably cause both the host and the players to lose interest in the story very quickly a it becomes a tug-of-war between the players and the host to maintain control of the storyline.

3 -> Bad story: Not to be confused with the above, a bad story causes a bad game. This usually happens when the main plot isn’t entirely thought out and the host is forced to start steering the story into the direction of what they actually know how to do, leading to the problem above.

4 -> Inconsistency: This one is a biggie, and the direct reason why the three above fail. Inconsistency usually occur when the host cannot keep up the pace of the story, or remain faithful to it’s main plot and setting. This is the biggest pitfall a host can fall in, and to avoid it, the advice is usually simple: Keep notes on your world. Main cities, main plot points, anything that will help you remain consistent.

Okay we’re finally done! Great! Go ahead and enjoy your – hahahahha I’m just kidding you’re stuck with me here forever.

Game mechanics!

So, game mechanics is a particular subject to discuss, as it’s not a concept usually applied to roleplaying games. To explore this subject, first we need to examine how a host can maintain interest in their game.

Now, usually old-school hosts didn’t employ this type of thing. The people who have been roleplaying for a while tend to be used to rely only on their ability to write an interesting story to maintain their players entertained. These people were usually writing powerhouses, capable of absolutely enthralling their players with their sheer prowess at keeping the attention on them.

Despite being an old-school host myself – I make no claims of being one of these powerhouses – I prefer to employ different techniques to attract and maintain player attention, which I call game mechanics,

Things like the exploration mode in Gaelach Basm and an as of yet undisclosed mechanic in Summerland are examples of this, working as a mean to get the RP out of the thread and interact with the players in a different way, to create a more engaging experience.

I also, although this isn’t really a game mechanic, lie a lot in my OOCs.

In fact, you’d be better off not believing anything I say regarding plot; what’s in the OOC is usually not the real deal, and I usually hide hints about the real goal of the game between the lines.

Playing with choice and consequence is also a preferred trait of mine, often employing every aspect of a player’s personality and backstory into the game in some way, and often having things they did – even before they joined the RP – come back to haunt or support them in some way.

All in all these gimmicks, in my personal opinion, really make for an interesting experience; I’d say the key when it comes to these is creativity. Think of something fun and new and people will almost always respond positively to it.

To finish this off, below is a list of hosting DOs and DON’Ts, with their EXCEPTION listed below.

DO prioritize story over rules. A host has to remain flexible, and at times the party may be faced with a challenge they cannot surmount – games that employ a level system or something similar will eventually run into something like that – at this point, I’d personally advise you to always prioritize the story, even if you have to come up with a reason why your players got out of that situation, it’ll always be preferable than forcing a party wipe.

EXCEPTION: Games like Gaelach Basm where failure and death are actually a mechanic. Keep in mind that even in this case, you should not go too overboard with the player murder. At least not to the point you risk running out of players!

DON’T be too nice. A host has to be firm, and you can’t bend to the players at every request, otherwise you will end up losing control of your story. Maintain a core set of rules that can never be broken, regardless of everything else, and stick to them.

EXCEPTION: …Games like Gaelach Basm again, where there is a big focus on player choice and consequence. In these types of game, letting people do whatever they want is usually fine, as long as you’re willing to bite them in the ass just as hard afterwards.

DO get creative. Create a character from a race never seen before, add in a NPC from a long-forgotten magic clan, let the players discover an ancient sword deep within a set of ruins.

EXCEPTION: Although rare in reborn, in shorter games you shouldn’t really waste too much time in events and side-quests and just rush into the meat and potatoes of the storyline, so focusing on something like that for flavor isn’t desirable.

DON’T create or enable Mary sues. It’s hard not to do that when being a player host, and it’s kind of difficult not to play favorites when you will usually have players that are clearly better than others in the game.

EXCEPTION: Counter-intuitive, but there is a scenario were a Mary sue character – though keep in mind I use the term rather loosely – would be encouraged or even necessary. In games where a player or NPC is clearly significantly above others in terms of skill, it’d be wise to try and keep the character performing outstandingly.

This said, keep in mind that this is a thing.

DO alternate between serious and humorous narrative. It’s always great to break the ice and change the mood of the story at times.

EXCEPTION: Stories that follow the gothic horror genre should mostly stick to being dark all the time, since those stories are all about giving the players the sense of being crushed under overwhelming odds.

DON’T try to add shock value to a serious situation by describing it in a light and humorous tone. Important story points should always be kept serious in narrative because humorous narrative usually removes much of the impact. Keep in mind treating humorous situations in a serious manner can beneficiate the narrative, though!

EXCEPTION: An RP that’s focused on a light and goofy narrative to begin with can actually benefit from completely destroying player expectation by playing an incredibly important situation as something minor or funny and calling back to it later.

And at a staggering 3100 words, I do believe we are finally done. Thank you for sticking with me, and feel free to add your own opinions/experiences below, as well as asking me any questions about this guide and hosting in general.

[Sutoratosu]

@King Murdoc/ Hukuna: I move for this thread to be pinned whenever you guys get the chance.

Excellent guide here, excellent indeed, and we really needed something like it since... I don't even know what happened to Project Brainstorm at this point

[Raindrop Valkyrie]

I just haven't had the time to do it with being sick on and off so It kinda fell to the way side since I was running it and just didn't have the energy to do so.

[Code: PIRULUK]

Good job on this. Very detailed and descriptive. Helps me quite a bit since I'm a terribad worldbuilder XD

[Chevaleresse]

I have a project that needs worldbuilding as well. I'll be sure to check this out in detail. I'll admit to not being a particularly good host, too >.>

[Commander]

Great article you have there. I'll admit I can be a little too lenient on things at times, but I will put my foot down making sure people don't abuse it.

[Kurotsune]

Great article you have there. I'll admit I can be a little too lenient on things at times, but I will put my foot down making sure people don't abuse it.

The balance between being a harsh and a lenient host is one most people struggle with.

The problem with bending rules is regardless of whether people realize it or not, at the moment that happens nothing else is sacred. "X got Y, so why can't I?" That's I like to use a choice and consequence system. If a player wants to do something that makes them stand out and be special, go for it! But when the big bad realizes you're special and stand out and decides to kill you first, don't complain.

But as mentioned in the guide, that's rather reliant on a DM being willing to play the part of reality.

So as alternative, my go-to suggestion is to keep a hidden set of rules written somewhere - Usually with plot information - and remind yourself to always stick to those lest your story suffer.

[Commander]

Yeah, you can't win every battle, but you can't always let people have their way. I already knew something like that was going to happen in my RP which is why I prepare for it. I have something special for those people even in the first chapter.