Beckie Blake, the author of our upcoming RPG Two Sides to the Coin, offers her guidance to would-be narrators on running a great game. 

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Welcome to Two Sides to The Coin! First of all, thank you for showing interest in my game. It’s the first RPG I’ve ever written – and hopefully won’t be the last. I’ve found a real passion for this industry and the wonderful, supportive, enthusiastic people who exist within in. My intention with this was to give players something a little different. Something a bit chaotic and crafty. Designed to be best played as one-shots, it is also a great “palate cleanser” between longer games. 

Running the game can be a challenge. That’s mainly because you’ll not only have to track what the characters are doing, but what the players themselves are up to. You start the session by helping them each generate a secret list of motives which they’ll try to achieve throughout the course of the story, and you’ll have to monitor their successes and failures as they go. Although it can be hard work, it’s also the most rewarding element of the game for the Narrator. At one of the very first playtests, the whole table fell about laughing when one player magnificently manipulated another with nothing more than a bottle of water. One of her motives was to get another player to open something for her. She’d purchased the water and sat down to play. As the game began, she kept trying to open it with no success. Eventually another player got fed up watching her struggle, grabbed the bottle, and opened it for her. All this was done without saying a word but had such a great impact on the players when the Narrator awarded her points for achieving a motive, and they all realised what she’d done. It was a perfect example of how to fool someone in the game, and at further playtests with the same group, everyone was very suspicious of anyone with a drink at the table! Creating opportunities for that type of interaction was my whole inspiration for writing the game, so it was truly lovely to see how much they all enjoyed it. 

As well as herding the chaos goblins, you’ll be in charge of creating the stories they’ll be marauding through. Hopefully, you’ll be able to really stretch your imagination without being limited to any one setting as the game is designed to be playable in any kind of genre. In the book, you’ll find a few example story ideas, all using different settings. There’s one each for sci-fi, horror, modern day, and fantasy. One of the things I like most about this game is its versatility, and how easily you can change how serious or light-hearted it feels. There’s even an optional Rule of Sabotage for when you really want to turn the heat up!  

To any group who sits down to play Two Sides - may you all have your own Water Bottle Moment™! 

Two Sides to the Coin is available now.