The problem with making this s$&% up as I go — which, believe it or not, is actually what I do — the problem with making this s$&% up as I go is that I don’t always think about what I’m saying. So, sometimes, I blurt out some crazy thing like, “why, I bet I could get a whole article out of this tiny little throwaway thing I just said.” And then you all start dancing because a whole article about that tiny little throwaway thing sounds totally awesome. And then I have to write that f$%&ing article. And then I discover there isn’t actually an entire article in there.

On an unrelated note, you all asked me to write a whole article about this throwaway thing I included in an article about Player Do lists. Remember that? Well, funny story. Turns out there’s not a whole article in it.

Sorry.

But fortunately, there is a whole article in the thing that I do with my Player Do lists. It’s something that’ll make a lot of you improvisationalists a mite twitchy and it’ll lead to all sorts of comments about railroading and agency. And I’m not in the mood to deal with that s$&%.

Sorry.

But fortunately, I just remembered that I don’t give a s$&% what screaming morons do in my comment section and I can delete anything I want to. So, today, I’m going to tell you all about how to script out every session of every role-playing campaign you ever run with the help of a Player Do list. And I’m really going to try my damndest to help you see how valuable this scripting thing is. Because I don’t just use it for RPG sessions. I actually use it for all sorts of things. Like articles and design projects and s$&%.

Hell, I could probably write a whole article about all the different design tasks that can benefit from a good script right from the start.

The Power of Scripting

The article title’s a lie. Let’s get that out of the way right now. It implies this whole article is about those Player Do list things I mentioned in my last Angry’s Open World Game article. But it’s not. It starts with them, sure. But it turns those dumb little tasks into an even more powerful game prep tool: the Session Script.

Scripting — the trick I’m going to teach you today — is an incredibly useful pre-planning tool. Hell, sometimes it works as a full-on planning tool. No pre-. Sometimes it’s the only planning tool you need. I use this scripting thing for pretty much every f$&%ing design task I undertake these days. I used it early in the development of that module I published, The Fall of Silverpine Watch. And I’ve already started using it to lay the first bricks down in the SMAFARGE! lot. Of course, only a few of you lucky ducks with access to my super-secret club know what the hell that’s about.

And I’m pretty f$&%ing sure I’ve shared a script or two in my articles about designing s$&%. I just didn’t call them that.

Point is scripting’s a really powerful planning tool. I’m going to focus on Session Scripting today. But if you’re clever and you pay careful attention and you’re willing to f$&% around with the idea, you might find a really useful, general-purpose pre-design tool for just about any undertaking you undertake. If you’re attentive. And if you’re clever. Which counts out about 90% of you, I’m sure.

Sorry.

Anyway, the Session Script.

The Session Script

This is probably the simplest, most obvious tool I have ever or will ever try to crowbar into your cranium. And that’s a problem because it’s really hard for people to see how useful or beneficial or powerful simple, obvious things are. And some of you will think it’s an evil, bad idea only a terrible railroader GM would ever use.

Don’t worry: I’ll address that stupid-a$& notion in a bit. So if you have a visceral reaction to the definition in the next paragraph and find yourself actively chewing back your own bile, just calm your tits for a minute. I promise I’ve got a few hundred words for you.

A Session Script is just a little piece of prose you — the GM — write or type before a session of your game that describes what you think’s going to happen at that session. It’s a summary of a session that hasn’t happened yet. The summary of the session you’re going to run.

At the start of the session, the heroes are finishing up a long rest in the Forlorn Hills where they made camp. They’ll strike camp and continue their hike to the hopefully misnamed Temple of Horrific Death. It’s a ten-mile trip and, if they travel at a normal pace, they’ll arrive after five hours. Just after noon. In that time, they will probably have at least one random encounter.

Upon arriving at the temple, the party sees it comprises a single, cross-shaped building in the center of a large, walled courtyard. If they approach quietly, they’ll notice a flock of harpies roosting on the building. There’s an obvious entrance to the courtyard, but they’ll probably circle the perimeter first and notice the broken patch of wall through which they can enter unseen by the harpies. If they use that entrance and come up with a clever plan to get on the roof and make a stealthy approach, they can eliminate a few of the harpies before the fight breaks out. Otherwise, it’ll be a straight-up fight until the harpies break morale and fly off.

Searching the courtyard won’t turn up anything. The temple has only one entrance. While they could move straight up the hall to the temple’s central room, the heroes probably sweep the side rooms. In the left room, they’ll encounter the disemboweling trap and then find the Cursed Book of Intermittent Eye Bleeding. They’ll probably read that and that means one PC will be randomly blinded until they can find the remove curse scroll in the Rectory of Doom.

In the central chamber, they’ll find the block of magical razor-ice surrounded by the magic circle of icy entombment and they’ll be able to see the trapped demon inside holding the bow of improbability that they came to find. They should conclude they’ll have to break the circle to thaw the ice, thereby freeing — and fighting — the demon to acquire the bow. If one of the players is dumb enough to fiddle with the magic circle, they’re going to get trapped in razor-ice so the party will be a man down until they can find the instructions for disarming the circle in the Library of Gouging.

The party can search any of the three remaining wings of the temple, but they’ll probably head east first because…

And so on.

And that’s it. A script. It’s just a few hundred words summarizing how the session’s likely to play out. Given, of course, the player’s goals, their stated intentions, their past behaviors, their resources, and whatever’s going to come up during the adventure to throw wrenches at their plans. Or their character’s skulls. Whatever.

Note, by the way, that the script’s limited to one session. It ain’t for summarizing an entire adventure or campaign. Just the next four hours of play. That’s it.

Now, I realize that that script doesn’t seem particularly useful or powerful. I mean, if you’re a prepping sort of GM, you’ve already got a map and notes about what’s where and you can just handle the s$&% as it comes up. You don’t need to guess, session by session, what direction the party’s going to take and summarize what your notes already tell you.

And if you’re an improvise-from-your-a$& GM, the idea of scripting is blasphemy. Anathema. The worst thing a GM can do. And it’s impossible anyway. I mean, who the f$&% can predict with any accuracy what players will do? And if you can’t predict something with perfect accuracy, there’s no point in guessing anything at all.

So why actually bother with this s$&%?

To Organize Your Thoughts

There’s a big difference between a bunch of maps and walls of text and notes and stat blocks and all that crap and a single page of descriptive summary. Ask anyone who’s tried to run one of WotC’s s$&% modules. They’ll tell you. Scripting’s a great way to run through all that crap in advance and to separate the useful from the unlikely-to-happen. Or at least the unlikely-to-happen this week. It helps you see what’s important to know now, what to put aside for later, and what to flush forever.

To Clarify Your Goals… And Your Players’ Goals

Players don’t actually act at random. I know it seems like they do sometimes, but that’s just because most players are stupid. Players act with a purpose. And so should you. Players act to accomplish their in-game goals. And whenever you resolve an action or add some content to your game or eliminate some content or roll for a random encounter or roll for literally anything at all, you should have a clear, deliberate intent in mind.

Which ain’t the same, by the way, as saying “everything must advance the plot.” Because that’s a dumb thing to say. The plot is one goal. One thing to serve. But there’s lots of other goals too. All of which come down to providing a satisfying gameplay and narrative experience. I mean, that random encounter thing? Why did I note there’s some random encounters in the hills? Pacing. It’s about pacing.

Scripting highlight’s the players’ goals — find the bow of improbability in the Temple of Horrific Death, for example — and scripting lets you — the GM — focus on your goals and make sure they’re being served.

To Highlight Problems

Scripting shows you where your session is likely to get into trouble. To get bogged down or derailed or otherwise degenerate into not-fun for some reason.

In that example script, when the players reach the central room, they’ll see the demon with the adventure’s prize encased in ice, right? And if I know my players, they’re going to try to break the ice somehow. This means they’ll probably spend a whole lot of un-fun time trying to solve a puzzle with no information. A puzzle they can’t really solve without the right clues. So, I added the magic circle to suggest the ice isn’t the real problem. They can’t break the ice until they solve the puzzle circle. And I can use a low DC Arcana check to prod them away from the circle if I think it’s really a problem. Though, personally, it’s just funnier if someone gets trapped in ice for tinkering.

Once they give up on the block of ice, they’ve got three different obvious directions to explore. If I know my players, they’re going to spend an inordinate amount of un-fun time trying to decide which hallway to go down first. Even though there’s literally no way to decide and even though we all know they’re going to explore every hallway eventually and so the choice doesn’t f$&%ing matter even a little, tiny bit. So, I’ve got to differentiate the exits somehow. Or accept an hour of committee debate over “left, right, or straight ahead.”

So You Know What to Prep

Scripting tells you what to be ready for. It tells you what maps you’ll need handy, what stat blocks you’ll need, that kind of thing. It also tells you what information the players are likely to need and what they’re likely to ask. So it tells you what questions you’ve got to have answers for. It also tells you what game situations are likely to come up. So it tells you what parts of the rulebook you need to review and what cheat sheets and crib notes to prepare.

Basically, scripting helps you prioritize your prep work. That’s useful if your prep time is limited. It’s also useful if your prep time isn’t limited but you’d like it to be because there’s other, better s$&% you can do with your time. Scripting is the best first bit of prep you can do. It doesn’t take much time on its own — fifteen minutes, usually, once you’re good at it — and sometimes, it’s the only prep work you need.

To Get S$%& Stuck in Your Brain

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: writing s$&% down is the best way to get it into your brain. But scripting’s not just writing s$&% down. Scripting is a two-part process. First, you’re visualizing. You’re imagining the game session that’s about to play out. Second, you’re writing down how you think it’s going to go. That means when you’re running the game, the parts that go according to plan — which is actually most of the parts at most tables — the parts that go according to plan are already in your brain. You don’t spend a lot of time reading, reviewing, and referencing. Moreover, with all this s$&% lodged in your brain, you feel more confident. You feel more in control. Even when s$&% does start to go off the rails. That changes your whole GMing demeanor.

And when s$&% does go off the rails, you don’t feel totally out of control. You know there was — and still is — a plan. You’re just adapting to changes. Sure, maybe the plan’s almost completely invalidated and there’s a lot of changes to make. That’ll happen sometimes. Gotta roll with it. But nonetheless, the existence of the plan helps you focus on the changes. On adapting. It prevents you from feeling like everything’s broken and you’re completely lost. If worse comes to worst, you can always repurpose parts of the plan and try to steer things back on course. You have a direction, at least.

And that’s why…

Scripting Does Not F&%$ with Agency

Scripting doesn’t stop you from improvising and reacting. It doesn’t make you railroad. When things go “off the rails,” scripting doesn’t mean you have to force everyone back on track. That’s why, by the way, you never script more than one play session in advance. Scripting just puts a basic plan in your head so you can improvise and react with a purpose. Even if that reaction involves discarding the entire script.

Honestly, it’s rare for s$&% to go really off the rails and never come back anyway. The players are headed to this temple for this magic bow, right? Maybe they get distracted and wander into the woods and chase a random encounter for four hours. Maybe they get lost for a day. Maybe they get dysentery from the elf’s vegetarian rations and have to head back to town for some colonic potions. Likely, once all that s$&%’s done, they’re still going to head back toward that temple for that bow. This means, while they’re doing all of that s$&%, a part of your mind is keeping track of “how to get back there from here.” When the party tries to recover their lost trail to the temple, a little piece of your brain already knows what checks to roll and how far off track they are and all that crap. So you’re a little more prepared to handle it. It goes that much more smoothly.

For that matter, because you’ve got the script in your head when the players do go “off script,” you’ll be aware of the consequences to their goals. That is, when they decide to run off into the wilderness chasing the glowing blue rupee bunny, you can say something like, “you know if you head off the trail you’re following, you risk being lost and it could take hours or even a day to find your way back or double back to town, right? Are you okay with that consequence?” Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. That’s not your call to make. But your job is to make sure the players know the price they’re paying for the actions they’re taking.

Note, also, that the script begins with the player’s current plans. Which is why you write a new script every session. The script doesn’t start with what you, the GM, want to happen. It starts with what the players are trying to make happen. And every line on the script is about guessing what the players do next. The script takes into account the player’s desires, the player’s goals, the player’s behaviors, the player’s likely choices. It doesn’t tell you how the session has to go. Nor does it tell you you have to run the next session. It’s just you guessing what’s probably going to happen.

So, how do you make that guess?

How to Script a Session

All this s$&% starts with a thing I called the Player Do list. It’s just a little chore list. It’s the list of things the players intend to do during the next session of play. And the directions they’re likely to go to do those things. It could be a linear-as-hell checklist like:

1. Go to Dungeon
2. Find Bow
3. Go Home
4. Profit

Or it might be a big ole laundry list of chores to do in no particular order while the party’s dicking around town. Doesn’t matter. That’s the Player Do list. And it’s the start of any session script.

Thing is, when a session starts, the players are going to pick up wherever they left off, right? They were probably in the middle of doing something or just about to do something. And then you said, “that’s it for tonight, everyone out of the pool, see you next week.” Either way, when the session starts, they’re already pointed in a direction and raring to go.

Given that, you’ve just got to figure out what’s probably going to happen next. And what’s probably going to happen after that. And after that. And so on. The party in my example started at their camp and they’re headed toward that bow in that temple. So, the first thing they’re probably going to do is resume walking to the temple. And then I look at my notes and see what they’ll find when they get to the temple.

At some point, you’ll have to start making guesses. The Player Do list won’t do you any good. Maybe the party runs into some obstacle or decision point or whatever. Maybe they do the thing they were trying to do; they check it off the list. Or maybe some kind of new goal or emergency or disaster happens to distract them. And when that happens, you’ve got to guess what’s going to happen next. My script above — and all my Session Scripts — use the words “likely” and “probably” and “maybe” a lot. Along with a whole bunch of other uncertain adverbs that remind me I’m just guessing.

It is important to guess, though. The point isn’t to make a flowchart. To show all the branching possibilities and the different paths and all that open-ended crap. Flowcharts are for planning adventures and campaigns. They ain’t for running sessions. A Session Script is a narrative. It’s prose. It’s you guessing how the players are going to meander through the next little chunk of flowchart. Or gauntlet. Or open-world space. Whatever.

I’ll tell you why it’s important to guess below. But let me continue with this “how to write the script” thing, okay?

Like I said, you sit down with Player Do list and whatever notes you’ve got and you pop open Microsoft Word and you start typing the story of what’s gonna happen to your hapless player-victims next. Whenever you hit some kind of decision point or revelation or distraction or new piece of information, you try your damndest to predict the player’s responses. And whenever you hit something that’s got an uncertain outcome — an encounter, for instance — you assume success, but acknowledge failure.

I guessed, for example, that my players would scout the outside of the temple before heading in. I guessed they’d clear the side rooms before heading into the central temple room. And I guessed they’d go east first from the central room. And if I ever hit a point where I couldn’t guess what was going to happen next? Well, I had a problem.

See, the reason you make these guesses is that, if you can’t figure out the most likely next course the players will take, they probably can’t either. And that’s bad. It means the players don’t have enough information and they’re probably going to spend a lot of time standing around gormlessly blinking at their options, unable to choose. Or they’ll collapse into meaningless committee debate for a f$&%ing hour.

And the reason you acknowledge failure — as when I noted that some idiot player might freeze himself to the block of ice or might read the cursed book and end up with intermittent eye bleeding — the reason you acknowledge failure is because the players might fail. They’re probably going to succeed at pretty much every challenge, but when they suddenly don’t, they aren’t going to catch you off guard. You’re ready for failure. You know what it looks like. And you’ve accepted the Terms of Service on that failure. By writing it down, you’re saying, “…and I am totally okay with this happening in my game.” I am okay with inflicting random ocular stigmata on a PC. I am okay with sidelining a PC for a few hours if they’re dumb enough to lick a demon-popsicle in the Temple of Horrific Death!

That said, I didn’t spell out “…and if the PCs lose the fight to the harpies, one or more or all of them are probably dead.” That’s a fail state that’s assumed for any life-threatening encounter. Like a combat or a trap. And if you’re not okay with killing a PC — or all the PCs — you’re a pussy. But that’s fine. The world needs pussies. For something. I assume. Because otherwise there wouldn’t be so many of them. But if you aren’t okay with killing one or more of the PCs, then you’ve got to figure out how every life-or-death encounter in your game can end without anyone actually getting dead. That’s part of the script too.

And so you keep banging away on your Session Script. Predict actions, make guesses, spell out your reasons, acknowledge potential failures, et cetera, and so on, ad nauseum, until you think you’ve got an entire session worth of gameplay scripted out. Or until you can’t go any further. And if you can’t go any further, you’ve got some troubleshooting to do. Which I’ll get to.

Assuming you do manage to crap out a whole session’s-worth of script, the next step’s to read it back to yourself. Evaluate it. See if you spot any problems. If you don’t, you can use that script to do the rest of your game prep. Or decide the script’s enough game prep by itself. If you do have problems though…

Fixing S$&% Before It Hits the Fan

This Session Script can help you spot lots of game problems before they torpedo your crappy game. That’s one of its superpowers.

The biggest problem to look out for is also the easiest to spot. It happens when you just can’t write the script. Either you hit a spot where you can’t guess with any probability what the players are going to do or you hit a spot where there’s nothing for the players to do. That’s bad. Players always need a way to choose their next course of action. And they always need a next thing to do. Otherwise, they’re acting at random. And while it’s likely you’re going to make some really wrong guesses when you start this scripting thing — I’ll talk about that below — if you can’t make any kind of guess at all, there’s probably not enough information in your game. Or leads. There’s nothing for the players to orient by. So you’ve got to give them a quick shot of information or show them a nice, shiny direction to go in.

Most often, the game hits these dead-end stalls when the players finish all the things on their Player Do list. Now they’ve got nothing else to do. If you’re running an open-world game and you’ve trained your goobers to head off to their contacts and look for their next job, fine. The game will never stall. But until that’s second nature — or you go with some amateur-hour crap like a mission bulletin board in the middle of town — until the players know how to drum up work for themselves, you’ve got to make sure there’s always another sentence coming after you say, “and with that, the adventure is complete.”

But even if you can actually tap out a Session Script, that doesn’t mean it’s problem free. That’s why you read over it. And you look for trouble. Now, I can’t tell you every possible warning sign and every single way you can screw up your game because genius is limited, but incompetence is boundless. What I’ll tell you though is to trust your gut. Read your Session Script and ask yourself “does this sound like a fun session?”

Of course, you have to be careful with that question. You’re an insecure little monkey. All GMs are. And you’re really good at assuming you suck at everything. Especially GMing. So, when you do that little “sniff test” — does this smell like a good adventure — you’ve got to compare your script to the scripts from other successful sessions. You’ve actually got to say:

The last three sessions have turned out pretty fun. I don’t know how, because I suck at this, but the players keep coming back and they seem pretty invested in what’s going on. So obviously I accidentally crapped out three good sessions. Does this Session Script I just wrote look like the scripts I wrote for those other inexplicably not-awful sessions?

If the answer is a hesitant, uncertain, nervous “yes-ish,” your script passed the Sniff Test. Congratulations! Your script probably doesn’t stink.

Another problem you might have actually doesn’t seem like a problem at all. If you’re writing your Session Script and you never, ever have to pause and think about what’s going to happen next — you never struggle for even a moment to figure out what your players are likely to do — you’ve probably got a crappy session coming. You’re probably not offering your players any choices. At least, not any deep choices. Either that or you’re not writing the script correctly. You might be writing the scripts as if you were playing the game instead of struggling to guess how your players will play it. That happens. Guessing what the players will do next shouldn’t be impossible. But it shouldn’t be easy-breezy every time.

For that matter, if there’s no hedge words in your script — words like “probably” or “likely” or “maybe” or “hopefully” — you’re either writing the script wrong or you’re not offering your players any good choices.

See? Session Scripting actually helps you identify badwrong evil terrible railroading!

Look out, too, for any fail states that you’re not willing to actually impose. I talked about that above. And that includes watching out for assumed, “…or they die” fail states if you’re not willing to bury a body. Make sure you acknowledge a non-death failure possibility for literally every encounter in your script. Have fun with that. Maybe you can write some crappy system with KOs and Fenix Downs and Critical Lingering Injuries. Those are always great.

If you’re an advanced Angry student… err… an advanced student of the Angry way, you can also look out for all that narrative structural bulls$&% stuff I’ve been blathering on about for years. For instance, is the session you imagine happening in your brain well-paced? Are there recurring themes to strengthen? Anything you can foreshadow? Characters you can deepen? S$&% like that. But you might want to get used to this scripting thing before you go too crazy with narrative bulls$&%.

Speaking of getting used to this scripting thing…

There’s one tiny, little final issue I’ve got to cover here before I turn you loose to script your next session. It’s not a big deal. But it’s one I definitely have to mention.

Your script is going to be totally wrong. It’s going to be a mess. Because you can’t actually do this if you haven’t already been doing it for a while.

Sorry.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

Good Scripting Habits

Here’s the thing: most GMs don’t really pay good attention to what’s happening in their games. They aren’t very good at critical thinking, reflecting, and analysis. But most GMs also think they are attentive and they are reflective and analytical and critical-thinkal. So, when they sit down to write their first-ever Session Script and it’s all totally wrong, they assume there’s something wrong with the process.

There isn’t. It’s my process. I’m a sexy gaming genius. It’s good advice. You just don’t have the skills.

So, you misjudge what your players are going to do. You find them floundering around trying to find the path that is super obvious in your script. You write a script that’s so f$&%ing long it would fill ten sessions of actual game. Or a script that barely covers the first hour of play. Because you have no actual, practical awareness of how much game actually happens at your table. Or doesn’t. And even if you write a great script, you might still waste a lot of time solving problems that aren’t really there. Worrying about s$&% that, perhaps uniquely for your group, just doesn’t cause a problem. Some groups don’t give a crap about linearity and the lack of decisions. They just want to crack skulls and gather loot.

Scripting’s a thing you get better at over time. I’ve actually only started doing it recently. And my scripts have been getting better, but they’re still off the mark sometimes. Kind of. After each session, I look back at the script I wrote and highlight the things that didn’t happen the way I thought or the places where problems arose that I didn’t see coming or the big blank space where I needed another two hours of game but the script had already stopped or all the crap that we never got to because we ran out of time. I don’t think too hard about it. I don’t analyze it. I don’t try to get better at it. I just do it every week and then highlight the s$&% I got wrong.

And that’s exactly how it should be. Because the whole point of this scripting s$&% is to harness your intuition and your experiential learning. You can’t do this s$&% critically. But if you just pile the information up and let your brain analyze it all subconsciously — just call out when it works and when it doesn’t — the subconscious starts to pass the patterns it recognizes up to the conscious brain that’s writing the next script. You might not even be aware of it. Gradually, you’ll just notice you have a sense of how much script fills one session. And you’ll find your guesses about what’s going to happen at the game? They hew more and more closely to what actually happens. Not because you’re driving that s$&%, but because all the structures in your brain that are really good at learning from experience and recognizing patterns start to build a model of how your players and your game behave.

This scripting thing? It won’t work the first time. It won’t work the first dozen times. It’s something that takes time and patience to develop. It’s a gradual rewiring of your brain. Not to understand your game and analyze it and describe it. But just to actually plan it and run it without thinking too hard about how you plan and run it. The planning and the running become second nature.

Remember, your goal isn’t to know how to be a good GM. It’s not to explain GMing. It’s not to even understand it. It’s just to be able to do it. To provide a satisfying gameplay and narrative experience for four hours a pop to a bunch of wacky audience-protagonists who behave in ways no one can truly fathom.

So, don’t think too hard about this s$&%. And don’t expect immediate transformation. Just start scripting your sessions before you prep them and reading the scripts after the session’s over. Or the next day. Or a few days later. Whenever you can. Keep at it every session for a few months. Three months. Six months. And watch what happens.

In other words, you’re not allowed to have any f$&%ing opinions on this scripting thing until you’ve done it for at least 90 days. So, I’d better not see a single comment about why this is wrong or stupid or bad or bulls$%& until at least October. Got it?!

Homework: Script Your Sessions Forever

People have said they really like the practical homework assignments. So here’s your homework: script your next session. And the one after that. And the next one. And the next one. And every other session until you’ve scripted — and evaluated the script for — twelve consecutive sessions. And then do it for the next twelve and for every other session you ever run again. And that’s due a week from today. So get cracking.