Since those steps will soon stop leading to Planszówkowi Astronauci (that board game & RPG pub is moving to a new location), I got into a sentimental mood and decided to write down my summary of those times.

Back in the Gdańsk days. My beginnings with RPGs

Nowadays most people more or less know what TTRPGs are, just because they’ve seen any movie or TV show where the motif appears (Stranger Things, IT Crowd etc.). When, twenty years ago, my neighbor friend Heavy invited me and a few buddies to a session of Warhammer, we had no clue what we were signing up for. We sprawled out in his room, lit so much incense that we could barely see each other, and Heavy started running the game, transporting us into a completely different world… I don’t know if Heavy carried RPGs further into his life, because our paths split, but he planted that seed in me forever.

After that, I had different RPG groups—permanent, temporary, brief, random. Longer campaigns, stretching over several or even a dozen sessions (or more), we played at home, with candles, incense, and atmospheric music (for a while Warhammer, later for a long time Earthdawn). In such conditions, large systems with complex mechanics and/or detailed worlds made sense, because we had a steady crew and lots of time to learn everything. The longest campaign I ever ran back then was in the wonderful post-apocalyptic fantasy Earthdawn—it lasted over 150 sessions!

One-shots I ran under all sorts of circumstances (during free time, on walks, when skipping school, during breaks in school, even during classes) and everywhere (in the forest, in clearings, on the beach, in school, in parks, on the street). Sometimes I even ran games walking along the sidewalks! As Game Master I would walk in the middle, with players on both sides. We’d play normally, dodging pedestrians, waiting at traffic lights, and from time to time stopping so someone could roll dice on the paving slabs. The systems varied: Arkona (a not very popular Polish RPG about Slavic warriors and gods), Deadlands, Frankenstein Faktoria (), Neuroshima (popular Polish TTRPG in the style of Fallout), Earthdawn, Warhammer, and when we didn’t have a rulebook, we just whipped up something on a single sheet of paper.

As for the culture of play, for many years my sessions were what RPG players call “trad” games, which in practice meant that as GM I took too much on my shoulders. I was afraid I might not know something and players would notice, or that I’d create a poor session and disappoint them. Before each game I spent long hours on research so that as little as possible could surprise me. I made very detailed notes. I wrote out descriptions of places and items, as well as full backstories for recurring characters. I mapped out decision trees with possible player choices and planned scenes for each branch. In most cases I managed to create fun sessions, but it cost me a lot of work and stress.

In the Łódź days. The discovery of Planszówkowi Astronauci

After moving to a village near Łódź I had no one to run games for, since I didn’t know anyone here, so for a while I dropped out of TTRPGs entirely (well, I still bought and read rulebooks, just didn’t play). Then I discovered the Łódź pub Planszówkowi Astronauci, run by a lovely couple—Martyna and Marcin. Honestly, from the very first visit I felt at home, because Marcin sat down with me and we started talking for a long time.

One word led to another and we ended up talking about TTRPGs. I said I had experience, but no one and nowhere to play. He offered to let me use a room and manage sign-ups in exchange for me running sessions. He even gave me rulebooks for Warlock, since he had a partnership with the polish publisher Hengal; that was supposed to be the first system I’d run there. Looking back, I think it turned into a really fruitful symbiosis, which gradually expanded to more and more Game Masters.

Systems and settings I ran in Planszówkowi Astronauci

Warlock and Warpstar

Indeed, it started with Warlock by Greg Saunders, which turned out to be a cool dark fantasy system. I ran a lot of sessions (for a while I had one every week) and got so engaged that in the second, revised Polish edition my name is even listed in the editorial credits (I found a lot of mistakes). The easiest way to describe Warlock is as a “simplified Warhammer,” because it carries the same muddy grimdark fantasy feel with lots of down-to-earth professions, but with simpler mechanics and without a dense lore that makes it hard to enter.

In Warlock I like several things that work really well when playing one-shots with random people in a pub and that also fit my current preferences. The mechanics are simple; after a few sessions I almost completely stopped looking into the rulebook (once I even forgot to bring it to a session and only realized after it was over). Characters are created quickly, and thanks to the evocative professions (thief, beggar, miner, rat catcher, grave robber, boatman, tomb robber, etc.) and additional elements that—if you want—you can roll for, players quite naturally step into their roles. The rulebook specifies starting equipment separately for each character, plus additional items for each profession, which lets you skip poring over price lists tables during character creation. The core book contains no setting, which means I can invent everything exactly as I need it at the moment. Besides, even the Królestwo (Kingdom) supplement that proposes a world is more a collection of loose suggestions you can fill in yourself, rather than a tightly bound, extensive lore.

Between Warlock sessions there were occasional games of the twin system Warpstar—the same mechanics, only modified for science fiction. A cool and fairly universal system, because you can use it to run an adventurous space opera about a starship speeding through the cosmos, planetary surface exploration, or even cyberpunk-style settings. I ran fewer sessions of Warpstar, because it’s much harder to find players interested in science fiction than in fantasy, but I had a good time.

Shadow of the Demon Lord

I also had a short fling with Shadow of the Demon Lord (Cień Władcy Demonów in Polish). If you’re looking for a classic, expansive fantasy system you can get involved in for years, this is one of the best choices (and a very nice alternative to Dungeons & Dragons or Warhammer). Robert J. Schwalb is a well-read and intelligent author, thanks to which the lore surprises with many interesting (often crazy, creating exciting situations) motifs and depth.

Although I could talk for an hour about why I consider Shadow of the Demon Lord one of the best complex systems of classic fantasy, in my case this system did not stay with me for good (at least for now, because I still have all the books, the Game Master screen, the spell card deck, and the dice on my shelf).

There are several reasons.

Classic fantasy with elves and dwarves has become a bit stale for me (at least for now), and other things inspire me more. Rather the 20th and 21st centuries than the Middle Ages. Rather the juxtaposition of the “ordinary” world that we all know very well with supernatural motifs appearing at its edges, than worlds of omnipresent magic.

Complex systems usually have complex mechanics, with a multitude of rules designed for very narrow situations that might happen once a year of running. I like mechanics that are simple enough to understand in a moment, and flexible enough that—with a bit of creativity—you can adapt them to any situation. During a session I want to focus on the story, the mood, and the characters, not flip through the rulebook.

At this stage I also don’t really “feel” systems with a whole collection of supplements from which you have to read the lore and memorize it by heart. I have an overactive imagination, with more ideas in it than I need. Using extensive systems clips my wings, because instead of just writing a scenario with my ideas, I desperately look for any gap in the lore where I can wedge my idea.

Since I currently run mainly for random pub customers, complex systems are simply a bad idea. Learning any lore for a several-hour one-shot misses the point. In such circumstances the systems that work best are those with simple mechanics that you can grasp on the fly, based on a world everyone knows.

Supernatural Poland

I created a setting which have been working great for me for quite some time. I call it Supernatural Poland. The idea is always the same: the action takes place in authentic Poland, in places known to the GM and players, but with the addition of supernatural threads. Only the system I base it on changes.

Savage Worlds

At first it was the universal mechanics of Savage Worlds. This is a very cool system if you’re looking for one where you can, for years, play out completely different adventure genres (fantasy, horror, western, superhero, etc.) without having to get used to new mechanics each time. The system of Hindrances and Edges is very nice—assumption is that by giving your character Hindrances (flaws), you gain additional points with which you can increase your attributes or buy Edges. This makes the characters in this system distinctive even before you invent them an additional background. Another plus is the set of skills, which is designed flexibly enough that you can easily adapt it to completely different universes, eras, and premises. Even supernatural powers have several variations, depending on whether you want a world of classic mages, psionics with mental abilities, or faith creating miracles.

From my perspective Savage Worlds also has certain flaws. The biggest one is the binary focus on success or failure. The player rolls the appropriate die and checks the result—a 4 or more means success, less than 4 means failure. It’s true that an incredibly high roll means spectacular success, and a 1 on the die means disaster, but these are only spiced-up versions of zero (failure) and one (success). What’s missing is what I love most in RPGs (and what I consider the most interesting push for the plot): success with consequences.

For me there’s another problem. For my Supernatural Poland it fits that the characters are in many respects ordinary people, only with a passion for the unknown and/or supernatural abilities, while the solutions in Savage Worlds focus on extraordinary daredevils, and it’s quite hard to change that

Broken Compass

Then came Broken Compass, and that turned into one of my greatest TTRPG loves, perfectly tailored to my current needs and the conditions in which I run games. There are several things I fell in love with in this system!

Broken Compass Advantages

Character creation is based on Tags, which allow you to create characters in no time, and since each character is a combination of two, they naturally turn out ambiguous.

The mechanics are simple enough to learn that my players usually pick them up in fifteen minutes (even faster than Warlock).

It’s also exciting, because it uses “gambling temptations.” When you’re not satisfied with a result, you can take a risk—if you manage to improve the roll, good for you, but if not, you worsen it and lose the chance to mitigate the consequences. This element of risk works wonderfully during sessions, when right before the roll players clutch the dice in their fists, trying to charm them.

The mechanics are also very flexible and allow you to play out a huge variety of universes, eras, genres, and play styles: 1999 in the style of Uncharted or Broken Sword, urban fantasy straight out of “monster of the week” TV shows like The X-Files, Supernatural, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the 1930s in the style of Indiana Jones, a mix of fantasy and science fiction in the style of Star Wars or Shadowrun Returns, antiquity full of warriors and gods, medieval fantasy with magic and elves, or a dystopian future in the style of Cyberpunk 2077 or Blade Runner. The same mechanics, combined with additional small rules called “what-ifs”, handle everything I’ve mentioned—and more—perfectly.

Of all the systems I’ve tested so far, Broken Compass works best for my Supernatural Poland. It’s true that the mechanics favor thrilling adventures, but they don’t force you to create only exceptionally epic characters like Savage Worlds. Thanks to the simple, flexible rules and the ease with which you can create new Tags and Expertise, it’s perfectly possible to tell stories with more down-to-earth characters.

Ukryta Prawda (The Hidden Truth)

The strangest session I’ve ever run in Broken Compass was my custom “what-if ”—Ukryta Prawda (The Hidden Truth). If you’re not from Poland, you probably don’t know this TV series, unless you’ve seen the German original, Family Stories, or there’s some equivalent in your country (honestly, I don’t know how widespread this wonderful kitsch is). It’s a drama series about ordinary people and their problems, recorded in the form of a paradocumentary—a fictional production pretending to be a documentary. It features both professional and amateur actors, who play like in a soap opera, but from time to time they stop and talk straight into the camera, as if in an interview or news bite. The effect is comical, because very often they just retell in other words what literally happened moments before.

In the session the idea was this: we play normally, but whenever as Game Master I said “Interview!”, the player currently in focus looked in my direction (as if into the camera) and described their current feelings in the style of Ukryta Prawda (The Hidden Truth). There was tons of laughter, especially since I had invited, among others, Marcin J.—my special-task player. I definitely want to repeat this!

Monster of the Week

Another system I discovered back in the Planszówkowi Astronauci days is Monster of the Week (Potwór tygodnia), the RPG equivalent of series like The X-Files (one of my all-time favorites), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Supernatural.

PbtA Mechanics

Monster of the Week was my first contact with PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse), a system created by the couple Meguey and Vincent Baker. For someone who grew up on systems like Warhammer or Earthdawn, it was an eye-opening experience, because this is a completely different approach to RPGs. Classic systems have a set of skills and attributes, all of which are tested in the same way. PbtA, however, is based on so-called Moves, a closed set of rules for that specific action. It’s as if every action (Move) were a separate mini-game, with rules tailored to its nature.

In Monster of the Week, there are eight basic Moves: Investigate a Mystery, Protect Someone, Kick Some Ass, Act Under Pressure, Manipulate Someone, Read a Bad Situation, Use Magic, and Help Out. Each of them uses the same roll: 2d6 + a modifier from one of five Stats (Charm, Cool, Sharp, Tough, Weird), but what the result means depends on the specific Move. Usually, a result of 7–9 means success with complications, 10+ – a full success, 6 or less – a failure.

Looking at each Move individually makes the rules fit the situation sensibly and naturally push the action forward. For example, in the Act Under Pressure Move, a 10+ means the character does what they intended, a 7–9 means the GM proposes a worse outcome, a hard choice, or a cost for success, and a 6 or less – everything falls apart. In the Investigate a Mystery Move, everything works differently, focusing on how much information you gain. A 10+ gives you two holds, and a 7–9 gives you one. For each hold, the player can ask the GM one of the questions listed under the Move (“What happened here?”, “What is being concealed here?”, etc.). On a failure (6 or less), you reveal unfavorable information to someone or something. In the Use Magic Move, a 10+ means the magic worked flawlessly, while on a 7–9 the player chooses one glitch from the list that has tangled itself into the spell. On a failure, the character loses control of the magic.

Monster of the Week’s Advantages

The greatest advantage of Monster of the Week is that everything in this system is tightly designed around the core premise: a group of Hunters tries to unravel a Mystery and track down the Monster. All the Moves orbit around this, making sure the path leads toward that goal. At the same time, the PbtA mechanics guarantee that the path won’t be smooth or boring, because they are designed so that exciting complications bloom at every step.

The Roles that players can choose for their characters are also brilliantly designed. These are extraordinary Roles, with powers, abilities, and talents that set them apart from ordinary mortals. Each Role that players can step into has its own set of Moves which—if used well—offer tremendous possibilities. You can be a Divine, an angel with a soothing voice, healing touch, and the ability to instantly travel to places or people you know well. You can be a Spooky, who reads minds and has visions of what is to come, but in return possesses a dark side that may dominate them. You can be a Spell-Slinger, a mage hurling fire or ice projectiles. You can be The Monstrous—a vampire, werewolf, ghost, etc.—who has sided with the Hunters. This is a system for playing out epic, cinematic scenes, that’s for sure.

Monster of the Week’s Disadvantages

The greatest disadvantage is, in fact, exactly the same as what I counted among its advantages: if you don’t play strictly within the convention and want, for example, to run a more grounded session about ordinary people stumbling upon extraordinary phenomena, places, or beings, you’ll feel your expectations diverging from the mechanics.

It’s true that in two supplements—Tome of Mysteries and The Codex of Worlds—there is excellent material that helps modify the style of play, the era, the setting, and also adds lots of mechanics, including a new framework for creating Mysteries, in which instead of hunting a Monster, we try to understand Phenomena or make amends with the past. Still Monster of the Week will remain a system for telling cinematic stories about extraordinary heroes.

Strange Expeditions

Into The Odd

There’s one more current that ran through my sessions at Planszówkowi Astronauci. It’s actually one of my favorites, but it’s very hard to find willing players for it, so it comes up rarely. I’m talking about something I call Strange Expeditions—sessions where I focus on mood, emotions, and reaching a deep goal, combined with surprising motifs.

Although Strange Expeditions could easily be run using various systems (certainly Broken Compass, but I think also Genesys and probably something else), so far I’ve only ever used Into The Odd for this, the very system where the idea comes from. It’s the work of Chris McDowall (Electric Bastionland, Mythic Bastionland), one of the most talented designers in the RPG world, a wizard of simplicity, who with just a few lines of text sparks the imagination more than many supplements stuffed with two hundred pages of lore. And that’s exactly what the system is about—expeditions into the furthest corners of a bizarre world in search of Arcanum, artifacts of mysterious origin.

I’ll just add that “expeditions” don’t necessarily mean literal journeys across a map (though that too!), but also journeys into the core of mysteries, situations, and the human psyche/soul.

The Father’s Ghost

In one of my sessions, I came up with a trick: one player (greetings to the bartender from the now-closed pub Ignorantka, which means “ignorant woman” in Polish) played a son who, while far from home, learned of the death of a famous sculptor—his father. The father had neglected him his whole life and was forever dissatisfied with him, but the son—in spite of everything he had promised himself over the years—was shaken by his death and immediately set off on a journey home. Unfortunately, he reached the family manor several days after the funeral. Standing at the grave, he felt a presence. That presence grew more intense, more obvious, more manifest in the physical world.

Another player, Marcin J. (my special-tasks player I’ve mentioned before), took on the role of the father’s ghost. I made sure the two of them had conflicting agendas. I knew that the player portraying the son would—if the father showed remorse—consider reconciling with him, so before the session I gave the player portraying the ghost a special mission: to soothe the son, lull his vigilance, and then persuade him into a ritual through which the ghost would steal his body, returning to life (and in doing so, casting the son’s soul into nothingness or some other afterlife).

But I designed a devious obstacle. The ghost could not communicate with the rest of the players in a standard way. Before the session I explained to Marcin what his options were (similar to PbtA Moves), and one of them was “Contact with the Living.” This meant he had to roll dice (a Willpower save). On a failure, the ghost failed to make contact. On a roll of 1, he could speak 3d4 words. On a normal success, he could write 2d4 words on a piece of paper and hand it to me, and I would cross out two words—only then could he read his message aloud, skipping the words I had removed. Of course, I maliciously crossed out words in such a way as to strip them of love, good intentions, warmth…

What Running Sessions at Planszówkowi Astronauci Taught Me

This period of running sessions at Planszówkowi Astronauci allowed me to grow as a Game Master.

Together we’ll come up with something

The most important change is that I almost completely got rid of the fear that someone would catch me lacking knowledge or an idea.

That is, I still come to sessions prepared, but my research is now entirely different—I spend less time on it, and it’s more of a collection of inspirations than an obsessive attempt to predict everything. Now I prepare a few bits of past information so I know how a given situation came about, keyword seeds for a few NPCs and a few places, plus the key facts about the opening situation at the start of the session. The rest is improvisation.

Today I know there’s nothing to stress about. Players are not customers who came to the theater to be entertained. They’re not there to grade the GM, but to co-create an exciting story. At some point I started doing this: if I ran out of ideas, I’d turn to a player with something like: “You open the door and for a moment you can’t see anything because outside it’s blindingly bright. Tell me, what was making the sounds you heard? What’s out there?” The overwhelming majority of players will take up the challenge and come up with something, and if they’re out of ideas, you can always look to the others—someone else will step in with their idea.

The key is to have fun, and there’s no point in stressing. Together we’ll come up with something.

Additional GMs

Then I went even further and began to see the players as additional Game Masters. I pull them into co-creating the story not only when I’m out of ideas (or feel my idea isn’t all that good), but at any moment when it feels like a good idea. If I’ve prepared some kind of mystery, I keep that to myself so the investigation/exploration remains coherent. All the other gaps we fill in turn—partly me, partly the players. This makes players more engaged and more connected with the places, people, and situations.

Players Love Having Secrets

It’s well known that players sometimes enjoy shining—whether directly through their ideas or roleplaying, or through their character’s skills and talents. I’ve noticed, however, that the fun is even greater if it’s something other players cannot peek at on the character sheet or overhear during character creation. Before the session, send each player a message and give them a secret.

It can be an unusual ability that others don’t know about. It can be a memory that adds new context to the situation. It can be something hidden, known only to that character.

If they are a guard for aristocrats, let them know secret passages and chambers in the estate. If there’s an investigation during the session, give the character something only they know or have seen. If they have an artifact, describe what they know about it and let it remain unspoken in the inventory. If they have a special ability, describe it and let the player describe the first scene in which they use it, surprising the other players.

These kinds of secrets not only give players joy, but also make their characters deeper and more believable.

Campaigns for the GM

Finally, something I invented for myself.

Running sessions for clients at Planszówkowi Astronauci required me to break through my own barriers. For the first time, I was running games for strangers, who also constantly changed (sometimes showing up once, sometimes returning for future sessions, in different combinations). I had to account for the fact that people are different, with different traumas, problems, topics they want to avoid, etc. And finally, I had to adjust to running one-shots, which had previously been just a supplement for me.

After a while, however, I managed to develop a system that works. I use smaller systems that don’t require learning complicated lore or mechanics. When writing the story, I make sure not to overload too many plot threads and that it can be completed in a single meeting. One thing I strongly missed, however, was the continuity that campaigns provide—observing how the situation changes over weeks, months, or years (within the game). Seeing how the player characters evolve.

At first, I felt completely powerless about this. It’s still somewhat a challenge for me, but I managed to partially address it by using what I call “Campaigns for the Game Master.” The idea works like this: I run a series of one-shots in the same system. A different set of players attends each session. Each time, there is a different set of player characters, a different situation, and a different task. For the players, it’s a one-shot, but I know the broader context, which gives me great enjoyment.

It can be small, symbolic references. For example, players fish out strange black stones from the bottom of a pond. They don’t know, however, that it’s not a pond but a crater left by a huge fireball hurled by a dark mage at the team from a previous session, annihilating them. Rain turned the crater into a pond, vegetation grew over time, along with frogs and fish. The stones, however, are remnants of the spell.

It can also be direct continuations. For example, it could turn out that the stones contain a fragment of the mage’s soul. Or another example: the player characters all receive the same message in a group chat from their friend, saying “something’s happening.” The friend doesn’t send any follow-up messages or answer the phone. Worried, the friends go to check on him. At his home, they find him dead on the floor near a large black feather. For the players, it’s new information, but as the GM I know this is a character from one of the earlier sessions. That session’s team had outsmarted a strange human-like figure with a crow’s head they encountered in the streets of Łódź and stolen a feather granting superhuman speed and agility. Now possessing this artifact proved fatal.

I started using this approach to get more enjoyment out of one-shots and create a semblance of continuity for myself. Later, I noticed another benefit—as a GM, I’m more invested in telling the story, and it’s audible in my voice that these aren’t random plot threads, which results in a better session.

I know that in the future I want to continue developing this habit of “Campaigns for the Game Master.” I have more and more ideas.