Designing an introductory booklet: the art of supporting the director and bringing the table along

When we create a role-playing game, we too often forget that the introductory booklet is not aimed at a passive audience. It is aimed first at one key person: the person who runs the game, that famous game master who agrees to be the bridge between our imagination and the group gathered around the table. If that person panics, doubts, or ends up lost in the middle of a disorganised wall of text, the game collapses. Conversely, if they feel guided, supported and in cahoots with the creator, they can work miracles and turn complete newcomers into adventure enthusiasts.

At Obhéa Editions, we design the introductory booklet as a genuinely kind directing manual. Our role as publisher and author is not to hand down rules in an authoritarian way, but to give the game master the concrete keys to understand the course of the story, pace the dramatic tension and introduce the world to the other participants without ever demanding any prior reading from them.

The game master as director: spelling out the intention

For a beginner game master to be completely at ease, it is not enough to coldly describe what the characters see, room after room. They need to be told why this scene exists in the economy of the story. This is what we call conveying the author’s intention and the narrative intention. From the very start of a sequence, the booklet must state clearly the dramatic goal being sought: are we trying to create an oppressive sense of urgency, to test the group’s solidarity in the face of a moral dilemma, or simply to have a specific skill practised in a safe environment? When the director understands the intended effect, they no longer need to learn the text by heart. They make the scene their own and know exactly where to take the table, even when the players’ unexpected initiatives upset the original course.

This complicity also relies on a fundamental design tool: the natural course of events without the characters’ intervention. Too many scenarios freeze the setting, docilely waiting for the heroes to decide to act. A didactic booklet tells the game master what will inevitably happen if the characters stay passive. If nobody steps in, the breach gives way in ten minutes, the clandestine convoy sets off at dusk, or the rival dignitary finalises his deal with the opposing corporation. Knowing this mechanical march of the world gives the game master a wonderful compass. They never stall the story on a lack of initiative: they simply move the threat forward a notch, which immediately brings dramatic tension back and forces the table to react.

Finally, the booklet must clearly separate confidential information from what is meant to reach the characters’ ears. The text offers direct sensory hooks that the game master can deliver spontaneously: the dull clang of armour plating under gunfire, the acrid smell of overheated circuits, or the hesitation in a speaker’s eyes. By marking out the colour of the scene and the expected level of stress in this way, we give the game master the tuning note to pace their session without stress.

The dramatic framework: prologue, epilogue and the dynamics of three acts

An introductory scenario does not begin abruptly with a dice roll against an armoured door, and does not stop dead on the neutralisation of an opponent. It has to breathe through a rigorous dramatic structure in three acts, framed by a prologue and an epilogue.

The prologue sets the initial context before the gears of the fiction start racing. It is the moment when the world is described in its ordinary state, when the characters’ daily life and the bonds that already tie them together are introduced. It lets the table find its bearings, picture the setting and hear the voice of the universe before the disruptive event breaks the routine. For the game master, the prologue is a safety net: it quietly gets conversation going among the people around the table, checks that everyone has understood their role and sets the general atmosphere in a calm climate.

Act 1 plunges the group into the heart of its familiar setting. The characters go about a maintenance task or a routine patrol, discovering how to use their character sheet in a calm context. Then the break comes: an alarm sounds, an accident happens, or vulnerable members of the group disappear beyond the permitted limits. Urgency sweeps routine aside. With the authority figures held up elsewhere, the protagonists are given the mission of following their tracks. The group crosses the protective threshold of its refuge and plunges into the unknown.

Act 2 raises the pressure a notch. The characters enter the outside environment and discover the reality of adversity. They follow trails, notice disturbing clues, put up with the whims of a hostile environment and cross unstable areas. This is the test of the terrain, where mutual help becomes a matter of survival: route choices and collective trade-offs cost time or energy. The act peaks when the characters finally locate their objective in a critical position: hanging over the edge of a chasm, trapped in an unstable machine, or surrounded by an imminent threat.

Act 3 orchestrates the resolution of the crisis under intense time pressure. The rescue demands the coordination of every talent: diverting dangers, securing escape routes and extracting the survivors. The team gets back to its original sanctuary exhausted but victorious, welcomed by the relief of their own people.

The epilogue, for its part, is the moment when the table reaps the fruits of its choices. It is not a simple end credit that cuts everyone off. The epilogue makes it possible to analyse the consequences of what was done, to make official the success or the cost paid by the group, and to see how the environment has changed under their impulse. It is a space for narrative debriefing where everyone’s shining moments are valued. Above all, a good epilogue succeeds in its mission when it leaves an opening towards the future: an anomaly that persists on a terminal, a worried look exchanged by two notables at a reception, or the discovery of a clue suggesting that this first crisis was only the symptom of a much greater disorder. It is this final suspense that lights the spark and makes people want to carry on the adventure in a full campaign.

Mechanics in service of the story: knowing when to roll the dice, and when to forget them

In a well-designed game, the rules are not a legal straitjacket meant to trap the participants: they are a framing tool in direct service of the narration. They must give rhythm, breathe in tension and know how to fade away completely to adapt to the sensitivity of the person running the table.

The game master must be relieved of guilt once and for all: forgetting to ask for a die roll in the middle of a scene is of no consequence whatsoever. If the action a player describes is logical, obvious, or adds a good dynamic to the exchange, common sense must always win over technical protocol. Role-playing is not an accounting exam, it is a living conversation.

Conversely, rolling a die must become a meaningful event for the story again. Dice are rolled only when the consequences of the action are truly important, unpredictable and dramatic. Here we can use a golden rule borrowed from cinema: if the result of the action would be cut in the editing of a film or a series because it adds nothing to the story, then that roll has no reason to exist around the table. Nobody rolls a die to find out whether a competent investigator finds a key lying on a piece of furniture, or manages to start a vehicle in broad daylight. Rolling the dice becomes indispensable, however, when the action will create a major narrative fork, deliver crucial information at the price of a compromise, push up the stress gauge, or impose a complication that will transform the next scene. A die roll that leads to no concrete narrative consequence simply should not be rolled.

Progressive learning: zero prior reading for the table

One of the heaviest obstacles of traditional role-playing is the preparatory work imposed on players. Demanding that novices absorb a thirty-page manual, memorise the tenets of three factions and take in a table of modifiers before they have even sat down at the table is the surest way to discourage goodwill.

In our approach, the people who play arrive empty-handed. They have nothing to read beforehand. It is the very course of the game, orchestrated by the game master, that gradually delivers the principles of the world and the mechanical workings as situations arise.

The first scene of Act 1 demands no technical mastery: it involves a simple everyday interaction, resolved by common sense and an elementary die roll that explains how to read a character sheet. The next scene introduces more marked friction, naturally teaching how to use a luck resource or to ask a partner for help. It is only at the decisive confrontations of Act 2 and Act 3 that the rules for wounds, stress or coordinated manoeuvres are introduced.

The same goes for characters and the universe. Character sheets are not catalogues of abstract statistics. Each archetype presents an immediately readable human profile: a hook sentence about their personality, two obvious talents and a strong link with another character at the table. The founding concepts of the world are not hammered home in an encyclopaedia beforehand: they are discovered through the senses, in a notice board passed in the street, a confidence slipped by a worker, or an alarm tearing through the silence.

By organising the booklet around this smooth progression, this dramatic structure in acts and this invisible pedagogy, we give role-playing back its first calling. We turn a potentially intimidating mechanism into a modern gathering, where the game master enjoys orchestrating a scene without ever feeling judged, and where everyone around the table discovers the joy of embodying a story without any technical effort beforehand.

Vocabulary notes

• Game master (GM): in our philosophy, this term in no way means an absolute authority or an authoritarian referee, but the person in charge of accompanying the group, setting the scene and giving life to the secondary characters with the table’s complicity.
• PaT (Person around the Table): a term designating, without distinction, every participant gathered for the game, recalling that atmosphere, enjoyment and mutual listening are everyone’s responsibility.
• Narrative intention: the dramatic and emotional goal a scene seeks to produce at the table, guiding the game master on the substance of the situation rather than on rigid adherence to a fixed text.
• Natural course (or default timeline): the logical sequence of events that take place in the universe if the characters decide not to intervene, serving as a compass for the game master to react to the table’s unexpected choices.
• Three-act structure: a proven dramatic breakdown articulating the set-up and the disruptive element (Act 1), exploration and rising tension against the environment (Act 2), and the collective resolution of the crisis (Act 3).
• Cut in the editing (principle of dramatic stakes): a directing rule stating that a die roll should be asked for only if failure or success truly changes the narrative situation, avoiding slowing the game with harmless tests that would have no interest in a fiction.
• Prologue: opening scene presenting the ordinary setting of the world and the protagonists’ daily life before the disruptive element launches the plot.
• Epilogue: concluding scene making it possible to measure the repercussions of the group’s actions, to debrief the game and to lay out paths for future adventures.
• Progressive learning (narrative onboarding): a game-design method consisting in introducing rules mechanics and universe concepts step by step in the heart of the story, without imposing preparatory reading on people discovering the game.