Who Are You, Game Master?

As a Game Master (GM), you have a unique role in this game: to craft literally the entire world before the eyes of your players.

Surprisingly, it's somewhat easier than it sounds.

World Building

While this may serve as the most fun and creative part, it will also be the most important aspect of your design.

Whether it be a part of your own custom setting or a setting you've grown up loving, it's important that you have a consistent format to use. Ask yourself a couple of questions:

• What are the physical features and geography of this world? How does a player get from one place to another?
• What are the important points of history that any generic civilian may know?
• How do different cultures interact with one another?
• How do Utopia's mechanics integrate with this world? How is magic flavored; how is Crafting flavored?
• Does the setting provide agency for the players to explore? Can players shape or influence this world with their actions?

It's a tall task, but a rewarding one just as much. It's important for you to have a baseline for how the world works in order to answer surprising questions about it in the future.

Scenario Design

There are a lot of ways for Players to interact with the world, whether that be objects, dreams, Creatures, characters, or something much larger than us. Although, you should have a vague narrative in mind for the players to follow.

Keep in mind how the interactions you bring to your players will guide them accordingly to their next objective, and how your players are capable of reacting. Note, your players can change the narrative, and it's up to you whether to adapt or to bring your plot to them.

If the main plotline requires that the main antagonist (we'll call them Evil Alex IIl) be detained at any cost, how will you drive your players towards this objective? Perhaps you set out a well-laid path, but your players decided to take a different route. You have a couple of choices: create a new antagonist, perhaps Evil Alex IV, or have Evil Alex IIl block their new path (given, Alex is kind of clingy).

The world is yours (literally), but it's important to keep the players interacting in a meaningful way.

Non-player Characters

There are a lot of characters in any given world, and it'll be your job to decide what they do and how they do it.

Not every character needs to have a heroic backstory or dead parents, though it may not be a bad idea to have some "modular pieces" on hand. For instance, you may have a hat full of names, a hat full of species, a hat full of personalities, and a hat full of backstories. When the time comes that you need to generate a character, you pull one piece of each hat, and now you have Tardvar the Great, a dwarven scout from the great mountains who ran from home!

Your NPCs will play a vital role in several facets of your play. Enemies, shopkeepers, even villains and mentors—all are NPCs. How these characters interact with your players will be important for immersion and gameplay.

Rules And Mechanics

Utopia has plenty of rules and guides that you can reference back to, but the number of potential circumstances will always outweigh the number of pages in this book.

There will be many times where you will need to make a judgment call, where the rules will not give you an exact answer. Stay consistent.

It's very easy to overpower your players, but it's also easy to corner your players in such a way that they can't reasonably escape. Consider your options, consider what makes sense, and craft yourself an "escape route" if you need one.

If you say no to a player being able to make a Stunt Test to avoid some amount of fall damage, don't let them do it again in the future. But do, perhaps, think of a way that they may survive a lethal fall otherwise.

Stories And Narration

The final shred of responsibility you have is simply execution.

Beyond just crafting this grand expanse, you must also convey it to the table. Describe the scenery, play the NPCs, attack as the monsters, give an unnecessary amount of exposition on Evil Alex III's plans.

Some GMs opt for Roleplay (RP), where you physically embody each character, alter your voice according to their dialect, and reasonably act out the scenario. Others may choose instead to describe the scene, the occurrences, and the actions of each creature. The choice is up to you, but stay consistent, and stay immersive.