I found my players had an easier time not over-thinking goals, and all their criteria, when I prompted them with simple, straightforward questions. The one that helped me with short term goals was "what do you plan to do next session or two?" But I never came up with an equally down to earth way to ask about mid or long term goals. I recently found a video about game loops and TTRPGs. Stephanie proposes these 3 loops, at different scales: Meta loop: Why does your character care? Progress loop: How do the characters move forward? What are they striving for? Core loop: What are they doing right now? (Or next session) To me this seems super helpful for assisting my players with goal making. To me they line right up with Long, Mid, and Short term goals. https://youtu.be/9HXCPiP54R8

Hey everyone! I'm back after about a year off. I haven't been playing, but recently I've had the energy to get back into things. Jonah might be excited, but I'm considering giving 13th age a try. I just got 2nd edition, and now I'm figuring out how to mesh it with proactive/collaborative.

Here's the signup for next Wednesday's game! Gold members get first pick, but anyone can join us for free.https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0B44AFA723A2FB6-63905757-blades Sorry that it's late going up! It's been a busy, busy week but I'm getting back on track. Can't wait to play with you all! We play Blades in the Dark every week, Wednesdays at 7:00 PM ET. For folks interested in joining but don't have the time, feel free to fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflqZ48v2fJs9eZpWKTUSjsmgfjgee8c2Sxb6COwI5YFEcvlQ/viewform?usp=publish-editor This will let us know when folks are available and vary up our schedules a bit! We're planning on throwing in extra games at times when other people can try out the system and chat a bit.

Some players like starting their character design from the mechanical stats, while others like starting from the inner/outer conflict. What do you all do to make support both of these character writing styles, while making sure the invidivual players don't paint themselves into a corner? I struggle with helping my party align their characters in way that pulls the party in the same direction while not stepping on each other's toes.

So I recently finished reading through Jonah and Tristan’s role playing book as well as Return of the Lazy DM. Both excellent reads by the way and you should check them out as a game master, but does anyone suggest other books on running games?