Two Ultimate GM Hacks You Should Know

How do you make your campaign world in Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, or Star Trek TTRPG come alive without going insane tracking everything? This video features two critical concepts that are the ultimate hacks for any DM, GM, Narrator or Storyteller wanting to bring their RPG campaign to life!

Today we are looking at how to make your world feel as if it’s a living breathing space
without having to track a thousand different things at the same time.

There are 2 things that can happen that are useful for this:
• Foreground events
• Background events

These are things that happen in your world that are eithermajor or minor.
Foreground events are things that should only occur once every 6 – 8 gaming sessions. The
reason for this is that they will fundamentally change your world space. But they do have to
happen!

Why? Because although the PCs will be running their adventures and having an impact on
your world space, they are just one entity within a greater space. So, if you want to make
this greater space feel like it’s alive – other stuff needs to happen that the players are not
responsible for but that the players will feel the consequences for.

Background events are events that can happen on a more regular basis but are also there to
let the players know that things change in the world space. We add these in as we need to,
to spice things up a little, but also to keep the game feeling as if its alive. These events won’t
have world shattering effect but will just have a small impact on the world and the players.
Important to remember! No impact = no value! If it doesn’t impact the PCs at all – it’s a
waste of time! The PCs must learn about these eventsin some way.

Foreground events:
• Revolution
o Rebellion, change of government, coup, liberation, uprising etc.
• Birth of a new nation
o Political ramifications, trade opportunities, new laws, new ways of doing
things.
• Natural disasters
o Floods, volcanoes, droughts, tsunamis, banana milk shortages.
• Magical calamity
o Something happens that is caused by magic: no magic, more magic, broken
magic, dimensional rifts etc.

Background events:
• Tax changes, legislation changes, new items for sale, old items no longer for sale,
discoveries etc.
• New guild is formed, new form of entertainment.