With the RPG Starter Kit coming out soon, I wanted to start a thread aimed at new GMs! For those of you who are complete RPG novices, GM stands for "Game Master" or "Game Moderator", and is the person responsible for creating all of the content in an RPG that is not controlled by the individual Player Characters. You can think of it kind of like being the Computer in a video game RPG like Final Fantasy.
Anyhow, being a GM is my absolute favorite part of RPGs, and I've been doing it pretty constantly for over half of my life. When we started working on the Sentinel Comics RPG, it was very important to me (and Christopher) that we make the game really fun, engaging, and non-intimidating to new GMs. A lack of someone willing to be a GM and able to do a good job is the biggest barrier most people have to playing and RPG, and we want to fix that with ours!
I want to use this thread for GMs, especially new GMs, to ask questions about running games, and for everyone who has ever GM'd a game to share and discuss their experiences! I suspect that there will be more questions after the Starter Kit comes out, but I wanted to start out the general discussion now! A few questions I have for you all:
If you have never GM'd a game, what is the biggest barrier to you trying it out?
If you have GM'd a game, what were the biggest challenges you faced? What did you find most and least enjoyable?
If you have played in an RPG, what was the best thing a GM ever did while running a game?
I'll jump in. I much prefer GMing over playing and something that remains a consistent challenge is gauging how long players will take to do something. Before I started GMing though, I'd say my main barrier was thinking all GMs did amazing voices, had contingencies planned for all situations and knew the rules inside out. Now, of course, I know better.
I do have some articles up on my website for new GMs (and players) that I can share if people want me to.
I've never played a pen/paper rpg before. I've never really even seen one played, and if I have I was not paying much attention. My normal groups of folks I played games with never have either, especially the ones I consistently play SotM with.
If I bought the Sentinel RPG and tried to sell my normal SotM group on trying it out, what exactly do I need to do to prep to make sure the experience is fun enough to keep with it? What does this entail on my end?
My largest barrier to this product is have exactly 0 idea of what is needed/expected of myself and how to convey and manage those expectations for other new folks to this game genre.
Speaking for myself, as the GM you'll need to have a good understanding of the adventure as presented in the Starter Kit. All that entails is reading the rules and the adventure a few times so that you know where the story should go next, but you should not be afraid of improvising things when necessary. Telling your own stories requires a different manner of approaching things.
At the end of the day, role-playing is a form of storytelling. It's a game in that it has rules and an unspoken agreement that you're going to work together towards the goal of having fun, but it's incredibly free-form.
There are many different ways of running and playing role-playing games though. Your/your player's experiences and enjoyment sources will most likely be greatly different from my own.
My main trouble during my aborted attempt at GMing was trying to keep up with improvising whenever the plot went off the rails from whatever I had planned. (Which tends to be a lot harder than improvising as a player when the plot goes off the rails. >_>;)
Which was my biggest barrier in general; that having to come up with a whole plot versus just getting to react to whatever happened...
I don't know if there's any one specific most awesome thing a GM ever did, but I think the best campaign I ever played in general was where we were all trapped on a space station with an overseeing AI that had gone completely off the rails and was turning literally everything on the station into a malevolent thing out to do us in. (Flinging cars through space as missiles at our shuttle, espresso machines spitting hot coffee at us, animating the spacesuits of dead employees to have them attack us, having baggage carts trying to run us over, the blasted sentient man-eating housecats where when we trapped them in one of the bays I had to set the password to the entire lyrics of "American Pie" because they were managing to figure out anything shorter by trial and error...)
Although now that I think about it, my favorite part of that campaign might have been the very start of the game where the GM had us all take a parodic and yet still weirdly resonant employee assessment test that he came up with.
1. Your best friend has just shared a secret that could make a large amount of money if marketed properly. Do you:
a. suggest to your friend that he could patent that and recommend a good patent lawyer?
b. offer to be your friend's business partner in a new joint venture?
c. quietly patent it yourself then sue your friend for royalties?
d. arrange for your mafia friends to kill him and dump his body into a concrete foundation, then hunt down and destroy any and all your friend's associates until the secret is entirely yours, then use it as the core to your new plans to take over the world?
It could easily be summarized that my greatest blunders as a GM have come when I've tried to control the story too much.
However, my other games that have failed utterly, or at least the events that caused them to do so, have also come from the Players. I've had players who made characters who had connections that made the game nearly impossible ("My boyfriend is a God because my character is part angel" was an early one that I still remember) or they made characters who just didn't exist in a state I could work with. Making a character who is a social pariah with no skill in talking to people in a game where I needed them to have conversations, or a shut-in who refused to leave their house when I needed them to go exploring.
My point, is that it is a balancing act. You need to give the players freedom to make choices, but you also need to keep enough of a grip to prevent things from becoming an unworkable mess.
The other big thing I've been learning is that despite wanting to give utter freedom to the group, every group I've ever played with has done so much better with a goal. Every game of "Here is a world go explore it" has felt directionless and uninspiring, but a game of "You have a Bounty out for this Bandit" gives them a goal to pursue and keeps them focused on moving instead of floundering.
Oh man, I understand this perfectly. Everything always takes longer than I think it will, until they decide to skip over everything and just blaze through a section.
I'm a literal person, to my detriment at times, and part of my answer to you is I don't know. Every system is different and the types of things you would need to prepare for a game of Dread is vastly different than the information you would need to prepare for DnD 3.5 or 4E.
However, general advice is different from specific.
You don't need to know exactly what is going to happen, barring perhaps the first 20 or 30 minutes of a given game. For Example, I have a game session tomorrow for a Steampunk DnD setting. I know the first few minutes of that game is going to be the players going thru the wizard's lab and finding magical items, because that is where we ended last week, so I've obviously prepared it. I've fleshed out the area they are in, because they've been in this abadoned facility for two weeks and I knew that there had to be certain rooms, like a dining hall and a bed room for the master.
Outside of those obvious things, I'm not certain what is going to happen. They are planning on going to the Dwarven City, so I've considered the types of challenges and encounters that might exist within that space, but I haven't put a lot of work into it, because they aren't there yet.
All of this to say, prepare a little bit of the story. IF you're running from the adventure, be familiar with the adventure, but then do what makes sense. If the players decide to go off the rails, build what you can in front of them to make sure it seems like this was all part of the plan. It doesn't even have to be that good, most people will give you a lot of leeway, because they can tell you're working behind the screen.
So, at the core, know what you can about what is happening in the world, know the rules, and be ready to improvise when the players turn left and start blazing a new trail. Really, it is increbily easy in some respects, and from what I've seen of the system, a lot fo the pitfalls you would normally fall into are paved over, but the hard part is feeling comfortable enough to go off script and be ready for anything.
I have GM'd a lot of different systems. One of the biggest "obstacles" is my players. Not in the way that they are a problem, but when running a game the players will always, Always ALWAYS think of some way to try to do uh... the thing... that you either didn't think of or didn't account for because trying to do it that way is pants on head retarded.
On the other hand, that makes things fun and interresting. For example the Star Wars Edge of teh Empire game. While coming in from the ground or waiting to pick of the outside to gain the element of surprise are both ways that would've worked to get into and take out the Imperial outpost, what my players wanted to do was steal a tank, hot drop the thing into the middle of the thing & start blasting everything that looks vaguely Imperial while ALSO crawling through the sewers to get the info they wanted while the tanking was going on the surface. However, as wild as the whole thing was, the ease of runnnig the game; and all the rules that let me easily create and introduce unique challenges on the fly lets me keep up with whatever wild and wacky plan the players come up with.
The second part that I Loved about the FFG Star Wars system was the fate system. There are lots of other systems that use similar things. In the new star wars system you can use these Fate Points to quickly heal yourself, help with a check at the last moment. Or in my oppinion more importantly, use these points to retcon things they forgot. Like if the group didn't SAY they brought night vision goggles but that's a thing that would've been reasonable to prep they can just spend a fate point and Yep, Johnny totally packed those before we left, Definately; Hand 'em out. This helps the party in situations without stressing or forcing them to write out everything they can concevable think of that Might be a help eventually. Meanwhile, when someone flips their fate point the GM can then use those to cause complications on the fly to help create tension. Like oh, nope you can't just grab the death star plans here you have to climb up & get them, Oh your door hacking droid just got shot you've got to find another way to open the door.
Overall the most important part of running rpg's is knowing your party, if they want a more structured vs a more abstract game, and what type of mood the adventure should maintain
I've mentioned this to several forum-goers, but I'll put it here for posterity.
My name is Andy Klosky; you may also see me via my pen name, A.P. Klosky. I'm the author of "Cold Steel Wardens: Roleplaying in the Iron Age of Comics", which is available through Studio 2 Publishing right now. I've worked with a number of rpg companies out there, including Fantasy Flight Games ("The Investigators of Arkham Horror"), Cubicle 7 Entertainment ("The Laundry Files: The Mythos Dossiers" and "Cultists Under the Bed") and a number of other small-press designers. I've run games in more systems than I can count and I've been GMing since I was in 5th grade.
I'm also the founder of the Wittenberg Role-Playing Guild, a gaming organization at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, which will be holding its 15th consecutive WittCon this coming March. For quite a while, I upkept the rpg-related blog "Scrolls of the PlatinumWarlock", which has since been discontinued, as I've focused on my own designs and additional freelance work.
For those of you who are new to GMing, I'm totally at your disposal. Feel free to pick my brain, ask questions, or bounce ideas off of me.
This is a very real issue, and I think there will be a lot of SotM fans in Foote's camp. Even I, who have played half a dozen different pen & paper RPG's, am not sure how the Sentinels RPG will really play out. I'd prefer to do a demo at a con, but that's just not practical to hold out for. There are some Twitch videos of people playing the game, but they're just streaming the roll20 video component of it, which is a very different experience from playing in person.
I think it would be a really good idea to stream some actual, in person, live gameplay before the Kickstarter goes live, and ideally before the starter kit hits the shelves. Have Christopher run a game for some other >G staff/friends with varying levels of experience with Sentinels RPG or pen & paper RPG's in general.
And I think it would be even better if you followed up a gameplay session with a character creation session and a GM prep session before the Kickstarter. Have two people sit down and build characters–just two, so it's not too chaotic but so we can get a feel for different approaches–and talk the viewers through the process. Then have two different people design an adventure together, again talking the audience through the process (two so that there's some banter–I find it very hard to listen to just one person doing commentary on anything most of the time). Then run those two characters, plus a couple more to fill out the party, through that adventure.
To answer the introductory questions:
Dealing with characters going off the rails is a big challenge, but it's more of a challenge in certain game types. A combat-heavy, rules-heavy game with a scripted plot is easy to derail. One with more freeform design and plot advancement goes much more easily. But a lot depends on the dynamic between GM and players. The biggest problem is when the players expect one of those types of game and get the other. A group that expects a scripted plot to play through can get lost when provided with too "open" of an environment. A group that expects freeform play can choose not to bite on an adventure hook and make hours of prep become wasted.
The best thing I've seen some GM's do and not others is encourage the players to tell their own stories. Come up with a backstory, describe themselves in detail, narrate their own actions more than just "I cast Fireball at the goblins." During each "downtime" section or roleplay encounter, focus on each player at least briefly and prompt them to describe something completely mundane: what they're eating, who they're paying attention to during a conversation, what they're doing with their hands as they talk, etc. That helps a lot to turn a page full of rules and numbers into a memorable character.
If you have GM'd a game, what were the biggest challenges you faced? What did you find most and least enjoyable?
One of the biggest issues for any GM is to establish the social contract with the players--this may be a deliberate discussion or an unspoken bond, but usually falls somewhere in between. In the end, ensuring that your expectation of FUN and your ability to represent FUN is lining up with your players' expectations of FUN and the types of FUN they want to have.
Let us imagine, for a moment, that I'm preparing to run a Call of Cthulhu game. It's my understanding that the game will be set in 1920s Arkham, with themes of creeping horror, madness, and corruption. It should--but doesn't always!--go without saying that a Jedi would be totally out of place in such a game. That's an extreme example, but the fact remains: the fun that I want to have isn't lining up with the fun that my players want to have.
Therein lies the rub: there's little that can be considered as "bad" fun, but the disconnect from player to GM and from player to player often results in the biggest issue in a given game.
A more realistic example: Let's assume that we're going to play the new Sentinels RPG. Jim makes a character designed to follow in Bunker's footsteps; he's interested in dealing a ton of damage, fighting a bunch of bad guys, and stomping on robots in a mecha-suit. Amy makes a new Virtuoso of the Void; she's more interested in exploring the relationship between the Virtuosos and Akash-X, as well as interacting with other heroes (and even villiains). Neither is having fun "wrong"; they just have different priorities of what "fun" entails.
Even the best GMs struggle with this; when you have 5-6 (or more!) people at the table, you're juggling a multitude of preferences, character backgrounds, desires, and interests. And you're catering to everyone. It's hard, but so very rewarding, especially when you hit that moment when *everyone's* bought in on the story you're collaboratively telling.
From the perspective of a player, at least, RPing is basically a lot like performing a play except that the vast majority of the script is improvised by the actors with a basic outline from the director (who also acts every needed character the other actors aren't playing).
This! Clear communication about expectations is incredibly important. Re: narrative design and plot advancement vs. player responses, I try to have a few things I want to happen per session and fit those into the direction the players take the story, rather than forcing the players into a certain course of action. It's a fine balancing act to find, being able to provide direction to the players whilst giving them agency and power over the ongoing story. As is mentioned upthread, knowing a few sections of the session ahead is more important than knowing everything in detail, but with published adventures, the more you know what is planned, the easier you can react to the unexpected. Don't be afraid to alter the published material to end up at the same place.
This is what I use all the time to help with player engagement and immersion.
If you have played in an RPG, what was the best thing a GM ever did while running a game?
I've been lucky enough to play with some phenomenal GMs over the years, in a number of genres and systems. In the end, all of those GMs have one common thread: immersion. The best GMs make you feel like you're a part of that world, like your decisions will change the setting, and like you yourself are witness to the story being told. This feeling of immersion can be achieved in a number of ways.
Firstly, there's something to be said for the physical element. Props, music, hand-outs, and other physical items bring in atmosphere, helping to get players to buy in on the game world itself. If you ever manage to make it to the Origins Game Fair, I'd encourage *everyone* to play in a game run by the Rogue Cthulhu organization. Their ability, as a group, to provide a unique table experience is unsurpassed in any organized play group that I've ever known. I've watched players literally hiding under their table, reading their character sheets by flickering flashlights--horror, indeed!
But immersion doesn't simply come in terms of physicality. Dramatization--even something as simple as using the first-person, rather than the third-person viewpoint--can go a long way towards bringing players in. While it's easy to say something like, "The chief of police tells you that they apprehended one of the Citizens of the Sun", it's so much stronger to say, "Well, Bunker, we've got Citizen Doom locked up in one of our holding cells, but I don't think we can keep him here much longer. Are you able to escort him to the new Block?" Even if you can't do voices or take on some affectation, that simple level of immersion builds your players' investments in the world and encourages them to respond in-kind. Done well, that's where the mechanics can just melt away as both you and your players enter that world whole-hog.
Q1: If you have never GM'd a game, what is the biggest barrier to you trying it out?
A1: My biggest abrrier is thinking on my feet. I have a hard enough time with my own character, working with multiple NPCs, and communicating with everyone seems too daunting.
Q2: If you have GM'd a game, what were the biggest challenges you faced? What did you find most and least enjoyable?
A2: N/A
Q3: If you have played in an RPG, what was the best thing a GM ever did while running a game?
A3: Making it about everyone, and giving some people a time in the limelight. Also, has lots of patience with slower (me) players.
One of the biggest problems I've seen with new GMs is them misunderstanding the job. I view GMing as directing a movie. I've got a story to tell and while the players can and will come up with their own interesting solutions to the quandries I put before them, they're still essentially walking the path I'm laying out and we're all focused on the same thing -- having a great time experiencing a well-told story.
When I see a GM start the night by asking players to make up whatever random characters they want, with conflicting backstories and motivations that often as not work against the story I'm telling, I know there's going to be trouble. I know it's not impossible to have fun with an adventuring group comprized of a fanatically pious paladin, a backstabbing assassin, a thief who only wants to steal the other player's stuff and a bard with a delusion that he's living inside a play, all while I'm trying to tell a story about political machinations between two rival guild factions, it'll be tougher for sure.
I know there's a trend towards modern roleplaying games focusing heavily on the storytelling aspect, with their rules being purposely light with the goal being that whatever serves the story is OK to do and you only roll dice in limited situations. From my limited exposure to the Sentinels RPG, it seems like that kind of game, with a light rules structure holding together a storytelling-based experience. Even though I love storytelling, I'm not a fan of those kinds of RPGs. I was raised on old school GURPS and D&D, which had enough of a rules framework to give the games structure but enough flexibility for me to tell the story I wanted. Often, I'd find a fun rule in the book for how to handle exposure to the vacuum of space, or how characters were affected by extreme temperatures, and I'd build whole encounters around exercising those rules, using the limitation imposed by the rules as a challenge to the players. But when the game is essentially "tell me what you want to do and if it seems like there's a chance you maybe can't do it so we'll roll some dice", I'm not as interested.
I think new GMs may benefit from remedial storytelling advice. Maybe they could use an actual recipe for a good adventure -- (1) setting the scene, (2) building action, (3) the big confrontation/potential setback, (4) recovering from the setback and saving the day -- with a couple of important to-dos thrown in -- (1) make sure everyone has a chance to shine at least once in the adventure, (2) give the players leeway to play their characters but don't be afraid to steer the ship if it's in danger of going off course, (3) avoid too many "because I said so" moments, both in terms of being too generous to the players and too punitive.
If a new GM follows the recipe, they can feel confident they'll have a solid adventure. And as they get better at the job, they can start to add their own spice to the mix.
As has been said, ensure everyone's expectations are set before you start playing. I've had this not only kill campaigns, but also make them not enjoyable for folks who just put up with it – but make it very frustrating for everyone else.
Our regular group has a workbook with categories we review and everyone provides feedback on what they want out of the game. We then have a few conversations, basically negotiating through our thoughts and interests. The categories are things like duration (open-ended, short, etc.), involvement level (e.g., is it just set in a city or will the group be called upon to save the world/multiverse?), power level (juvenile, realistic, heroic, epic, or divine), structure (Episodic or sandbox? Have short arcs throughout? Have a campaign-long arc?), and finally a battery of campaign scales: Rating from 0 to 10, how much will the campaign be Whimsical, Gritty / Rough, Creepy / Horrific, Dramatic (in a non-combat way), Combat-oriented, and Involve Mysteries.
Obviously, not everyone needs to go to this level of ridiculousness. It works really well for us, though!
One super easy trick to counteract this having only a single NPC on the screen at a time.
Sure, you could have the team meet with the Chief of Police and six other officers and try and juggle all that, or you could have them speaking with the Chief alone in her office.
Doing it the second way means you've only got one character to focus on playing, just like when you are a player. The other cops are backward noise, they exist as extras on the screen, but don't pull them into the foreground, they aren't who the player are interacting with yet.
Following this trick is just breaking things into multiple "scenes" in your head. Sure, Bunker is talking to the Chief while Legacy is chatting with the Mayor and Tachyon is investigating some science. Each one is a seperate scene, give a few mintues to Bunker as the Chief, then turn to LEgacy and switch scenes to the Mayor. You might goof, but honestly, just admit it if you say something and then realize you were thinking of the wrong character. Your friends may razz you a little, but they generally understand. They can see you donnng and doffing the different hats and they aren't going to be disgusted if you slip once or twice.
IT sounds hard, and maybe it is to get started, but eventually it just flows naturally.
My old group was kinda the opposite of Spiff's, it seems. We used d20 but tended to run very roleplaying-heavy games with rolls mostly focused on skill use and combat being only a handful of setpieces in a lengthy campaign (and I've even played in a campaign that technically had only one combat scene, which of course was the one time I chose to play a fighter but I digress). So something like Sentinels might have possibly been too combat-heavy for my old group to want to run ironically.
But yeah, chalk me up as another person who gave up GMing because I couldn't think on my feet well enough and had trouble coming up with actual longer plots beyond the first few scenes.
While I understand that improv and short-form storytelling isn't everyone's cup of tea, if this is something you struggle with, why not have shorter plots? Have a plot per level, say, and have something from each level's plot carry over into the next. Have callbacks to earlier plotpoints, re-use NPCs, do whatever you can to provide the illusion of a whole, seemingly pre-determined storyline.
This means you don't need to have everything mapped out to start with, lets you react, and tailor, things to your players' actions and cuts down on a lot of stress if planning long-form storytelling isn't something that comes naturally to you.
At the end of the day, the players won't know that you didn't plan everything out from the start unless you tell them.
It works really well for us, though!