March 30, 2025

In Austin Walker's Realis, the GM needs to come prepared

I’m not averse to prep,

I like to have some nicely ordered notes when I facilitate a game. The mystery sheets that Brindlewood Bay uses—usually two or three pages of suspects, locations and clues—are a great example of the type of preparation I prefer. Enough material to fall back on, but nothing that would stifle me. Likewise, when I ran Slugblaster, I had about a page prepared per mission. In line with its parent game, Blades in the Dark, all those notes were potential fiction, not a predetermined reality. Should the players take an unexpected turn, I would have room to improvise.

Reality is actually what I’m writing about today. You see, I just came out of a short trial run of Realis, the melodramatic sci-fi game that created a minor stir in the indie role-playing discords when its ashcan dropped.¹ Not because of its setting per se, but because of its innovative diceless mechanics. During my three-session dip into the game, I got to thinking about GM prep. It seemed to me that Realis demanded something else than the loosely held notes I’ve grown accustomed to.

Simply sentences

Everything that mechanically matters in Realis has the form of a ‘Sentence’: a short phrase ranked 0 to 3. This rank represents the level of reality of whatever facts the sentence states. Facts about your character, about their interpersonal bonds, about their equipment—they’re all sentences that are more or less ‘realized’. The Duelist, one of the character options in the game, starts with the reality 0 Sentence ‘I always win a one-on-one fight’. Every sentence is phrased like this: as an absolute statement. The more realized it is, the more specific it will be. ‘I always win in a one-on-one fight if I’ve had a chance to prepare’ could be a reality 1 Sentence, for example.

The moment ‘there isn’t obvious agreement on what should happen next’ sentences come into play. More precisely, if ‘something is uncertain or opposed’, the acting party, either player or GM, will have to say what sentence they’re drawing on to resolve the uncertainty or conflict. If there is conflict, the opposing party will need to do the same. That’s when the player and GM will compare their sentences’ realities. A higher reality beats a lower one and ties go to the defender. Simple enough, right?

I think that simplicity is what drew the indie crowd's attention. With the introduction of these weighted sentences, the divide between fiction and mechanics would be thinner than ever. Like moves in a well-made Powered by the Apocalypse game, the sentences would point to the areas of the fiction the game is interested in. On the GM's side, though, this simplicity could demand some pretty specific prep.

Prepared palette

At time of writing, the GM advice for Realis is one page long, and half of it is spent emphasizing that Realis needs a collaborative instead of an adversarial GM. ‘Whether you’re trying to embody a solitary storyteller, a cunning strategist, or a clever mastermind, you will find yourself frustrated by the ease with which the player characters overcome your challenges,’ designer Austin Walker explains.

So there's a clear idea about attitude. From the mechanics, we also know how the GM takes part in the conversation of the game. What is a little more ambiguous, is the type of preparation involved in GM'ing a game of Realis. A player character's sentences come from their class, mostly. Where do the GM's sentences come from? Do they prepare them all in advance? Or can they improvise them on the spot?

The ashcan itself hints at an answer when it, characteristically flowery, says: 'the successful Realis GM prepares a wonderful palette for an improvisational mural.' Then there's also the materials itself the ashcan supplies beyond a page of GM advice. Namely: a dozen pages of factions and locations, each with their own sentences.

Impactful improvisation

I expect the full release of Realis will come with leagues of moons, factions and non-player characters to choose from, but whether the GM curates sentences or writes some themselves, they have to be there when play starts. I think the mechanics call for that 'palette' if opposition is to be anything else than arbitrary.

That's because any confrontation between forces in Realis is resolved by a comparison. One sentence's reality is held against another one to discover which direction the story will take.² Say the GM hasn't prepped any sentences beforehand—no phrases, no ranks. When the conversation reaches that 'moment of uncertainty', they'll have to improvise a sentence if they want to oppose a player's. That is to say: they'll have to decide if they want to oppose the player and also if they want that opposition to succeed when they decide on their improvised sentence's rank. This way, the next beat of the story becomes the GM's decision.

Compare that to a situation in which the GM, like the player, only has recourse to a select number of sentences. The conversation reaches the same point of ambiguity. The player declares their sentence, looking to the GM to do the same. In this case their prep influences but doesn't determine how the situation develops. Do they have a sentence that fits the situation? If so, what is its level of reality? Here, the moment of opposition becomes a moment of discovery, the improvised realization of a prepared palette. What comes out of it?

Proportional power

Leaving it to the GM to decide the outcome doesn't seem to be Walker's intention. If it was, it would need a different kind of support, if you ask me. There are definitely freeform games out there in which the GM serves as an arbiter of the fiction, but that type of play is based not only on agreements about tone and genre, but on far-reaching trust.

A big part of the conversation is left to the traditional GM role as is. In his blog post about Apocalypse World's GM Agenda³ Jason D'Angelo writes:

The players can say things about their characters’ actions and speech; their characters’ thoughts and feelings; and, when asked, about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Everything else in that conversation is given to the MC. That’s why the MC needs to have all these rules governing their speech. Your power is too great to be left unchecked.

And so, Apocalypse World checks that power by telling the GM to always say what their principles demand, what the rules demand, what honesty demands, and: what their prep demands.

Staying true to their prep seems to be exactly what checks Realis GMs too. A foundation of prepared sentences makes sure they, together with their players, get to discover the direction the direction the story will take after a moment of uncertainty.

And that's it for now,
Hendrik ten Napel