I'm Not Just The President, I'm Also a Client (Using My Own TTRPG Supplements in My Games)

My fellow kids who were born in the 80s will likely remember the Hair Club For Men commercials. These things were geared toward middle aged guys who were losing their hair, and they wanted to recapture their vigor and vitality by regrowing it. The man talking to the camera was a fellow named Sy Sperling, and he assured everyone that not only was he the president of this company, but that it was through the products he was offering that he had regrown his own thick, lush mane of hair.

I find myself thinking about those commercials whenever I end up as the Game Master. Because when I sit down to work on a supplement, the question that I usually ask myself is, "If I were running a game, what heavy lifting would I want already done for me?"

The files get a little bigger every month, after all.

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Being A Game Master is Hard Enough As It Is

I've been in the game for a while (pun very much intended), and there's an attitude that I've run into a lot when it comes to TTRPG supplements. Namely, there is a portion of the population that believes if you don't make everything yourself from the ground up (the RPG equivalent of homemade cooking versus a boxed mix) then you aren't a real Game Master.

I've gone on the record with this, but I feel like Game Masters should be given all the help they can get. They're already expected to craft a plot, keep track of an entire party worth of backstories and motivations, and keep the world all around the PCs spinning without letting things topple off the cliff... if they want a handy chart of random rumors, odd encounters, or just NPCs to meet at the bar, they shouldn't feel any shame whatsoever about GMing smarter instead of harder.

I sure as hell don't.

As a lot of my regular readers/viewers may have seen, I was planning a Changeling: The Lost LARP right around when Covid hit. I shelved my plans for it at the time, but I kept tinkering with the ideas I'd had, and the elements I'd already worked out for it. It was a lot of labor for a game I wouldn't be able to run till after the end of a global pandemic, so I decided the best thing to do for now would be to publish some of the better ideas I'd had, and to put the supplements out there for folks to use.

And now that my game is running, I'm really glad for all the pregaming I did with these supplements, as having them on-hand has saved me so much time, energy, and effort. This is particularly true for Buyer Beware: 10 Goblin Markets, which has the layouts and rules for all the local goblin markets in my game's immediate area, as well as 100 Strange Sights to See in The Hedge, which has helped me keep any journeys into the world next door feeling bizarre, unexpected, and dangerous, rather than letting it turn into just another fantasy forest. My players have also been loving the additions to the setting I put into 100 (Mostly) Harmless Goblin Fruits and Oddments To Find in The Hedge, which is honestly the bestselling thing I've ever written for the World of Darkness at this point.

Of course, I've done this with other systems, too.

Additionally, while modules are some of the toughest products to sell, my Critical Hits series is always good to have on-hand for folks who haven't played before, and who just want a quick introduction to tabletop RPGs. Thus far I've run people through Ghosts of Sorrow Marsh (a creeping dread besieges a marsh town), False Valor (a murder mystery where you get to kick fantasy Proud Boys in the teeth), and The Curse of Sapphire Lake (the hate child of Beowulf and Friday the 13th), and every time I was able to dedicate so much more of my energy to NPCs, scene setting, and facilitating interactions because the bulk of the adventure was already laid out in front of me, requiring no extra effort on my behalf.

I haven't run The Price of Iron (story about dark fey and a warehouse of horror) yet, but it's queued up for the next time my group is champing at the bit for a solid game with a dire threat!

Seriously... Don't Reinvent The Wheel

If you've been raking yourself over the coals as a Game Master because you feel like you don't put in all the work your job requires, or you're letting your players down, just take a deep breath, let it out, and remind yourself that you don't have to do everything for your game. Hell, this is my job, and I still don't force myself to come up with brand new, freshly-made stuff every time I get behind the screen, or put on my ST hat. Whether you're running a fully pre-made campaign arc, using a world built by someone else, or just grabbing a list of sci fi mercenary companies, sights to see in a steampunk city, or just some random prophecies to hear from an oracle, saving yourself processing power can be a life saver when it's time to run a game.

Because while most of us are capable of just making something up on the spot, if you end up doing that over and over again as the night progresses, pretty soon you won't have the necessary grip strength to run the rest of the game. So if you haven't used GM aids and TTRPG supplements at your table, check out some of mine, and maybe give one or two of them a whirl!

I wouldn't recommend them if I didn't use them myself.

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