James sits down with Cam Rogers, novelist and fomer rlead writer for Warframe, one of the biggest game universes ever built, and the guy who's going to be running Mothership on the Good GMs Twitch channel. No Chuckie this week. Just James and someone who has been building worlds for a living for over a decade.
What We Get Into:
- Character is plot. Not the farm boy, not the chosen one...the farm boy's conflicting motivations rubbing up against everyone else's conflicting motivations. That's where the story is.
- Don't build Middle Earth first. Start with a simple person in a simple place and let the world expand around them in layers.
- Pressure mechanics: the bomb under the table, the rent that's due, the Death Star approaching Yavin Four. Tension is narrative currency - you bank it and spend it strategically.
- You're not a navigator. You're the cartographer. The world is a blank map and you're dispelling the fog of war as the players move through it.
- Don't have a death grip on your plot. The players are at least the missing third. Let them run off into the hills. Your job is to make the plot work for wherever they end up.
- Cam's closing tip: understand the structure of your story well enough that you can re-skin any narrative piece to fit the context your players have created.

Check out Cam's podcast I Love This And I'll Tell You Why, launching this week - Thursday, October 1st!

First guest: Mikko Rautalahti, senior writer on Alan Wake and Quantum Break from Remedy Entertainment, and their newly released video game, Control Resonant.

https://www.patreon.com/ILoveThisIllTellYouWhy

Support the Show: https://www.patreon.com/GoodGMsPodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoodGMsPodcast
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/goodgmspodcast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61584454320344
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodgmspod/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@good.gms.podcast