Dungeon Master's Guide Introduction

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The role of the Game Master is one of excitement, wonder, and imagination. You are a narrator of heroic tales of futuristic marvels, cosmic forces, and interstellar adventures spanning across the universe. Even more than that, you become the architect of these galactic stories and the wondrous places in which they take form. While the Player's Handbook or the Basic Rules lend advice on how to run a sci-fi campaign, the Game Master's Guide expands on those rules, allowing you to create, manage, and customize your sci-fi campaign. This book is one of three core books that may be referenced in any Esper Genesis: Stellar Winds adventure or supplement. The Player's Handbook has the basic rules for gameplay and has the options needed to create characters. The Threats Database provides pre-designed creatures, hazards, and threats you can use to challenge your players and populate your sci-fi setting.

MASTER OF YOUR UNIVERSE

The Esper Genesis game is one of cinematic action, dramatic suspense, and high adventure. The Game Master (GM) is the guiding force behind this universe. The worlds you create become the backdrops for adventures designed to engage the players and their heroic characters. By running adventures, your creations work in harmony with the players’ actions to craft a storyline, which evolves even further with a series of linked adventures that make up your campaign.

THE MANY ROLES OF GM

Where players take on a single role that defines how they engage with the setting, the GM takes on several roles that drive the story and world with which the players must interact.

CREATING THE SETTINGS

Creating the Setting As GM, you are the architect and developer of the campaign’s setting, which you design by placing scenarios, threats, and discoveries which your player characters encounter throughout your story. You can build your setting using published content, ideas from your own imagination, or a combination of the two. Along with the setting comes its cast of supporting characters. You play the roles of the creatures, allies, antagonists, and other personalities that live in your setting.

NARRATING THE STORY

Every adventure, scenario, or campaign you design is a story crafted by you in which the player characters are the main protagonists. This story should have a cohesive plot that makes sense, with major events that lead to its conclusion. Your players’ actions and decisions fill in most of the story’s details and can easily change or influence the story’s events and eventual outcome.
As you help the players visualize the places and events around them, your descriptions also set the mood and tone of your campaign. Fast-paced action, dark intrigue, cosmic mysteries, and deadly horrors are some of many themes you can adopt to build your setting’s atmosphere.

ARBITRATING THE RULES

Your main goal is for you and your players to have a great time while keeping your game exciting, fun, and intense. The rules help you accomplish this in the form of tools and guides for how encounters and events are handled. That is the limit of their function, as tools. You determine the flow of the story and resolution of events. Remember, the rules do not run your game.
You do. You are also the final authority on how the rules are used and interpreted. That said, the adjudication of the rules should be done with the express purpose of creating a story and universe that evolves due to the actions of your players and their characters. Using the rules in a fair, consistent, and objective manner allows them to work for you in the background while you focus on having fun.
As the Game Master, your role is to present and narrate a fun and immersive experience for yourself and your players.

STYLES OF PLAY

One of your main responsibilities as a GM is to take the content of a setting or adventure and transform it into a collaborative storytelling experience between you and your players. Your players breathe life into their characters while their actions help you breathe life into their surroundings. This form of creative camaraderie keeps everyone entertained and interested.
Knowing how your players like to roleplay their characters and what they enjoy about the game can help refine your adventures into ones they will enjoy and remember. Tailoring your adventures to accommodate preferred play styles helps keep your players engaged and coming back for more.
The following are several common playstyles. Out of these, it’s important to note that there is no “wrong” style of play. Players can adopt any one or several of these playstyles. Finding the harmonious balance between them makes for interesting and fun roleplaying experiences.

ACTING

Players who enjoy acting like getting into character and speaking in their characters’ voices. Roleplayers at heart, they enjoy social interactions with NPCs and their fellow teammates.
Engage players who like acting by …

• Giving them opportunities to develop their characters’ personalities and backgrounds.
• Allowing them to interact regularly with NPCs.
• Adding roleplaying elements to combat encounters.
• Incorporating elements from their characters’ backgrounds into your adventures.

EXPLORING

Players who desire exploration want to experience the wonders that the universe has to offer. They want to know what’s around the next corner. They also like to find hidden clues and gather loot.
Engage players who like exploration by …

• DDropping clues that hint at things yet to come.
• Letting them find things when they take the time to explore.
• Providing rich descriptions of exciting environments, and using interesting maps and props.
• DGiving antagonists secrets to uncover or cultural details to learn.

INSTIGATING

Players who like to instigate action are eager to make things happen, even if that means taking perilous risks. They would rather rush headlong into danger and face the consequences than face boredom.
Engage players who like to instigate by …

• Allowing them to affect their surroundings.
• Including things in your adventures to tempt them.
• Letting their actions put the characters in a tight spot.
• Including encounters with NPCs who are as feisty and unpredictable as they are.

FIGHTING

Players who enjoy combat like to dish out beatings on villains and adversaries. They look for any excuse to start a fight, favoring bold action over careful deliberation.
Engage players who like fighting by …

• Springing unexpected combat encounters on them.
• Vividly describing the havoc their characters wreak with their attacks and powers.
• Including combat encounters with large numbers of weak foes.
• Interrupting social interaction and exploration with combat.

OPTIMIZING

Players who enjoy optimizing their characters’ capabilities like to fine-tune their characters for peak combat performance by gaining levels, new features, and custom gear. They welcome any opportunity to demonstrate their characters’ superiority.
Engage players who like optimization by …

• Ensuring steady access to new abilities and powers.
• Using special loot and gear as adventure hooks.
• Including encounters that let their characters shine.
• Providing quantifiable rewards, like experience points, for noncombat encounters.

PROBLEM SOLVING

Players who want to solve problems like to scrutinize NPC motivations, untangle a villain’s machinations, solve puzzles, and come up with plans.
Engage players who like to solve problems by …

• Including encounters that emphasize problem-solving.
• Rewarding planning and tactics with in-game benefits.
• Occasionally allowing a smart plan to grant an easy win for the players.
• Creating NPCs with complex motives.

STORYTELLING

Players who love storytelling want to contribute to a narrative. They like it when their characters are heavily invested in an unfolding story, and they enjoy encounters that are tied to and expand an overarching plot. Engage players who like storytelling by …

• IUsing their characters’ backgrounds to help shape the stories of the campaign.
• IMaking sure an encounter advances the story in some way.
• IMaking their characters’ actions help steer future events.
• IGiving NPCs ideals, bonds, and flaws that the characters can exploit.

USING THIS BOOK

This book is divided into eleven chapters focusing on three main aspects of creating, adapting, and running an Esper Genesis: Stellar Winds campaign.

MECHANICAL MASTERY

The first set of chapters provide expanded game mechanics and options to extend and modify the core set of rules provided in the Core Manual. These rules are intended to broaden the scope of the game to fit nearly any sci-fi scenario.
Chapter 1 provides rules for running your game. It offers advice on using the major checks and die rolls. It also covers rules for cinematic chase scenes, toxic substances, exposure, and madness.
Chapter 2 focuses on expanded gear options, allowing players to modify or customize their equipment. It also introduces equipment and items especially attuned to espers, such as core bonded armaments and cypheos.
Chapter 3 provides rules for introducing futuristic technology into your campaign. This includes advanced computers, cybernetics, the SIM, and expanded vehicles.
Chapter 4 expands options for starships, including new options for the captain role and rules for running grand scale ship scenarios. Rules for building and customizing your own starship or space station are also found here.
Chapter 5 details optional rules Game Masters can use to customize their game. Unique threats are covered in this chapter. Also provided here are methods for making your own player species and variant rules for character origins.

NARRATIVE MASTERY

The next set of chapters focuses on creating and running sci-fi adventures and scenarios within your established setting.
Chapter 6 covers the creation of adventure scenarios. Different encounter types are discussed along with methods for integrating character story arcs with major plot points.
No heroic sci-fi story is complete without a supporting cast of characters. Chapter 7 provides guidance on creating non-player characters, including allies, antagonists, allied factions, and organizations.
Chapter 8 deals with creating advenure environments. Guidance is provided for designing and mapping dynamic environments for your campaign. Rules and options for creating adventure hazards can also be found here.
Chapter 9 focuses on the many aspects of galactic society and their effects on the lives of your player characters. Galactic lifestyles are expanded upon and additional options are introduced for using downtime between adventures.
GALACTIC MASTERY The last couple of chapters covers the creation of a sci-fi campaign and how to establish a rich, detailed setting for your players to explore.
Chapter 10 provides guidance on forging your own galactic setting, defining the role of espers in your game, and establishing universal standards for how things work in the cosmos. Tables are included here to let you quickly create a galaxy on the fly. After you’ve put together the basics,
Chapter 11 expands your universe with examples of interstellar societies and space travel, alternate dimensions, and the branches of reality that make up a multiverse. Included are rules for adapting the game to different sci-fi genres.