GM Guide

There are many resources out there already for being an effective DM, which all apply to Spindle. We’ll cover some of the basics, but also recommend taking a look at guides created for other systems (officially or unofficially). We’ve also highlighted some specific mechanics that you will likely want to know within Spindle.

As we mentioned in Final Thoughts, we encourage house rules and modifications to Spindle that suit the way you prefer to play. All of the notes below are meant to be taken as guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules.

Setting Resistance

As GM, you have a lot of control over how difficult a particular action will be thanks to passive resistance (and to a lesser degree, active resistance). Setting resistance introduces drama (and luck) into the story you’re telling, which in turn makes for a better story.

Do you need to roll?

If an action has no way of either succeeding or failing, it’s often better to have no roll at all. Reserve your dice rolls for situations where both success and failure create interesting progress within a story.

What does failure or success mean?

A lot of the time, success (or failure) looks exactly like what the player described wanting to do, e.g.

I want to climb this cliff

You might dress up the “how” of these situations (e.g. “you just barely manage to grab a root that saves you from tumbling back down the rocks, and scramble over the edge as the root gives way”), but the ultimate result is pretty straightforward.

But sometimes, the player’s goal is at odds with what success is feasible. In this scenario, you may have to get creative about how the story is affected by a very high or low result. For example, if your players are attempting to negotiate with the BBEG who consistently just attacks them, even a critical hit is unlikely to melt their heart — but it might give the players an opportunity to prepare before the inevitable attack.

Passive Resistance Scale

0 (Trivial)

You probably don’t need a roll at all (but it might be fun to have one, especially if the character is very bad at the relevant ability)

Representative Actions: Walking to the next location, opening a door.

5 (Easy)

Most characters will succeed, regardless of whether they have relevant abilities or specializations.

Representative Actions: Getting information from a friendly character, lifting a sack of flour.

10 (Average)

Some characters will succeed, especially if they have relevant abilities or specializations.

This is the default resistance for every-day actions.

Representative Actions: Healing, talking to a neutral party, sparring with a partner.

15 (Moderate)

Characters without relevant abilities or specializations will have a hard time succeeding. Those with relevant abilities / specializations may fail occasionally.

This is the default resistance for skill-specific actions.

Representative Actions: Picking a lock, giving a rousing speech, succeeding in a duel.

20 (Difficult)

A character will need to have relevant abilities / specializations to have a chance of success (and even then may fail half the time).

Representative Actions: Climbing a slippery cliff in the rain,

25 (Extreme)

Even highly-skilled characters will fail more often than not.

Representative Actions: Winning an archery contest blindfolded with your non-dominant hand.

30 (Nigh-Impossible)

A character will need to expend a tremendous amount of energy to succeed, even with relevant abilities / specializations.

Representative Actions: Passive-aggressively persuading the moon to change its rotational cycle

Environmental & Interpersonal Resistance

With environmental or interpersonal spells, ask players to specify what effect they’re hoping to achieve before setting a passive resistance score. This ensures that players don’t end up massively overpowered compared to where they are in the story; a level 1 player wishing to unlock a basic chest may face passive resistance of 10 (average), but trying to unlock the quadruple warded door hidden in the prison walls probably faces resistance of 20+.

Modifying Active Resistance

When players are encountering active resistance from characters who are significantly more or less powerful than the players, you may want to use the advantage / disadvantage system to appropriately adjust the difficulty of the encounter.

Here are the guidelines we’ve found to work well:

• Characters that are ≥ 4 levels less advanced than the players roll disadvantage on both reactive (e.g. defending) and proactive rolls (e.g. attacking).
• Characters that are ≥ 2 levels less advanced than the players roll disadvantage on proactive rolls (e.g. attacking).
• Characters that are within 1 level of the players are un-modified.
• Characters that are ≥ 2 levels more advanced than the players roll advantage on their reactive rolls (e.g. defending).
• Characters that are ≥ 4 levels more advanced than the players roll advantage on their proactive (e.g. attacking) and their reactive rolls (e.g. defending).

Combat

GMing combat that feels challenging but feasible is one of the more difficult parts of all systems. We’ve tried to keep combat within Spindle as close as possible to what players will experience, but there are a few nuances or changes that you may want to take advantage of as the GM.

Balancing an Encounter

Because all characters (player or otherwise) experience leveling up the same way, you can balance an encounter by creating opponents at the same level as the players, equal to the number of players. You can also introduce larger numbers of lower-leveled opponents, or reduce the total number of opponents to introduce more challenging opponents. We recommend increasing or decreasing the number of opponents by 1 for each level difference.

For example, with 3 third-level players, a balanced encounter could look like:

• 6 half-level opponents (a half-level character has 3 health points, no energy points, 2 ability points and 2 specializations)
• 5 first-level opponents
• 4 second-level opponents
• 3 half-level opponents and 2 second-level opponents
• 3 third-level opponents
• 2 fourth-level opponents
• 1 fourth-level opponent and 3 first-level opponents
• 1 fifth-level opponent

If you already have a set of opponents in mind, you can see how balanced it will be with the following equation:

If the result is between -1 and 1, it will be balanced. Less than -1 and the players will find the combat pretty easy. More than 1 and the players will find combat pretty challenging.

NPC Groups

Sometimes, it makes the most sense for NPCs to act in parallel rather than as individuals; in these cases, each NPC won’t have much that defines them on their own. When operating as a group, it’s easier to define the level of the group, then divide up the relevant stats across all the members. For example, a group of 3 first-level characters can be treated as a single third-level entity, giving a pool of 3 energy points, 6 resilience points, and 5 specializations that each of the characters draw from. Generally, the resilience points stay distributed

All characters within the group get their own actions, but operate on the same turn. Generally, each character within the group maintains their own resilience, but you can choose to pool them for all characters in the group to draw from. In that case, when the group takes damage that would cause them to fall unconscious, all characters not directly hit run away from the situation

Determining Turns

Because combat requires strict turns, you will want to have a system to be able to determine turn order. There are two options we’ve found to be pretty effective.

Players first. All players take a turn before any of the opponents, in any order; all opponents then do the same.

Ask the dice. Every character makes a roll (optionally within a particular ability). The characters who roll higher go earlier. In the case of a tie, players go before NPCs. This is similar to D&D’s initiative system.

NPCs and Consequences

NPCs are beholden to the same limits and opportunities as players in combat, including the ability to take consequences. However, we recommend only taking advantage of consequences if the NPC in question will continue interacting with the players. Otherwise, combat will drag on as opponents opt to take consequences instead of falling unconscious, and the players will never have the opportunity to see the consequence affect that opponent.

Addressing Severe Consequences

Depending on the setting, you may want to allow for alternative paths for players to resolve consequences within the story itself. For example, a character with a severe consequence of “PTSD” may be able to transform it to a description by finding a capable therapist and regularly attending sessions rather than reaching a milestone level.

Determining Milestones

Because milestones determine how a character levels up, it’s important to determine where those milestones actually are.

Milestones are points in the story that demonstrate character progress. This could be quest completions, big battles, or fantastic accomplishments. The actual content of a milestone will vary based on your setting; if players are detectives solving a mystery, this might be the discovery of a major clue; in a fantasy setting, it could be climbing a difficult mountain; etc. A milestone could be obvious in advance (e.g. taking down a big bad evil guy), or it could be based on an unexpected twist that came up only through playing the game (e.g. discovering that the royal heir does not have the parentage they claim).

A good rule of thumb is that players that are pre-fifth-level should be leveling up every 2 sessions, and post-fifth-level, every 4 sessions. Milestones make a great end to a session, giving everyone a sense of accomplishment.

Making House Rules

We are big fans of house rules (for any game system, not just Spindle – every system we play with has some modifications we’ve made to better enjoy playing). That being said, house rules can sometimes backfire and result in games that are either too easy to feel satisfying or so difficult that progress is never made. Make sure you’re keeping an eye on how your house rules are getting used and whether it’s helping tell more interesting stories, or resulting in players checking out.

Two-Player Games

Role-playing is a lot of fun in a group, but you can also play with just two players with some adjustments. We’ve run our 2-player games a lot of different ways, in Spindle and in other systems; here are some of the things we’ve found to make this more dynamic and fun.

• GM Swapping. Both of you build a character, and take turns GMing. When you’re acting as GM, your character takes a backseat in the story; when you’re playing, they’re front and center. If you build your characters together, you also get a sense of how your partner’s character might act, and can suggest ways for them to behave when you’re the one playing.

  
  

  This works best when you swap who is GMing at a milestone, so the creative control of the milestone story gets to stay in a single person’s head (preserving surprise and mystery). It also gives the current GM the opportunity to do some planning for the milestone.

  
  

  We tend to use this method most, with a consistent set of characters going on lots of small adventures (that start adding up to a big adventure). We’ve found it works across different levels of role-playing comfort easily, and keeps it fun for both the GM and the players (and we both get to build our GM chops).

  
  

• Solo Party. One person builds out a character to play, and the other serves as GM. Even though role-playing parties are traditionally several people who balance each other out in their skills and abilities, a Spindle character has the potential to be pretty self-reliant (especially outside of combat situations). Playing a lone-adventurer in a colorful world of other characters (who may ally briefly with you as needed) can be just as interesting as having a whole crew – just look at the mystery, thriller, or spy genres of stories.

  
  

  If both players are new to role-playing, this is a great way to get them each comfortable with the mechanics of the system they’re playing within.

  
  

  We recommend giving a solo party a couple of extra energy points to be able overcome obstacles that otherwise could be augmented by other characters.

  
  

• Extra Party Members. Introduce 1-2 characters who travel with the party, but always take a backseat. Either the player or the GM can take control of these characters, and that can either be consistent or as the moment calls for it. In Spindle, these characters have ability modifiers and specializations like every other character; they also liberally use the prepare action to give their peers advantages.

  
  

  In this model, one person is consistently serving as the GM, and the other is playing their character. This works great when the GM has role-playing experience and the player is still learning; if you’re both still learning, the GM Swapping or Solo Party method will probably be a little easier.

  
  

• Collaborative GMing. Both of you build a character, and serve as the GM when the other person is playing as that character (e.g. if a player is interacting with a character other than the two of you, the other player is acting on behalf of that NPC).

  
  

  This follows the “yes, and” rule of improv heavily; if one of you introduces a character, mystery, or just fact about the world, it is now true and you both work within that. Because of how easily each of you can change the game, it’s usually a good idea to establish a basic set of world rules and agreements of how you can change it. For example, if you’re playing in a fantasy setting, agreeing on how much magic is in your world can avoid some assumption mismatches in gameplay.

  
  

  This is a very fun way to play when you both are experienced role-players, and have good trust and understanding of each other. If you’re newer, or haven’t played many improv games together, some of the other strategies for two-player games will likely be less frustrating.

  
  

• Communism Style. This is a variant off of the Everyone is John system, where each player represents a set of personality traits inherent in a single physical person (the titular John). Each player can take control of how John acts and responds for a short amount of time, after which control diverts back to another aspect of John’s personality.

  
  

  The Spindle version of this is to collaboratively create a commune, of which each player has defined their particular style of acting on behalf of the commune. While one player is leading the commune, the other is serving as the GM. Acting as commune leader has a strict turn limit of 12 actions – then the other player gains control, and the former leader takes on GM responsibilities.

  
  

  Communism-style games tend to be much sillier and low-stakes than other styles of play, and are best (in our opinion) with absolutely zero planning. The story you tell emerges naturally out of how you each lead the commune, and the game ends when you decide it should. Like collaborative GMing, this follows the “yes, and” rule and is zanier for doing so.

  
  

  This style of game is also very feasible to scale to multiple players, where the former leader is always the GM. You can determine the mechanism through which new leaders are selected; spending energy points in order to be leader follows the style Everyone is John introduced.