Monday Morning Thoughts (Game Mastering stuff)

Good Morning Game Fans, it’s a bright, shiny morning around the office and we’re settling in for a nice long week of winter (We just had our first patch of ice). Today’s thoughts from the Interweb revolve around something near and dear to my heart, Game Mastering. There are a TON of articles, videos, streams and other consumable forms of media that go into great detail about the nuts and bolts of Game Mastering and we’re not going to necessarily dive into any of those specifically, we’re going to talk about the underlying framework of what a Game Master does for the game, and the role they play in the group dynamic. Buckle in Game Fans, it’s going to be mild ride.

What is a Game Master? (Why isn’t it called a Dungeon Master? Why are you making this weird?)

A Game Master (GM for short) is the player in a group of gamers that assumes control over the game world and handles the setting and environmental details, the nonplayer characters, and the antagonists and opposition elements. They also typically take a lead in the story in as far as they typically start the narrative and provide prompts and places for the player characters to take the story.


Now we look at a Role-Playing Game as a collaborative experience where all the players work together to tell a story of high adventure and hijinks. In this framework, the GM’s role is to give the other players a starting point to tell their adventures from and to figure out how the world reacts to the decisions they make. This is a balancing act, because we prioritize player fun as our key reason to play, and if someone isn’t having that fun, we have to work together to correct the “fun imbalance.”


Not every group prioritizes fun the same way we do (Or even use our definition of fun). That’s perfectly reasonable. As long as the people around the table can agree what fun means to them and actually have fun while playing, we think that’s just awesome. You can define fun however you like, and we hope that you find a group of people to play with that define fun the same way.


To answer the followups to our first question, Dungeons and Dragons uses the term Dungeon Master to refer to the player with the GM role. Every game has a title for this specific player role and it varies from game to game. One of our favorites is from our friends over at Chaosium, who refer to their GM for Call of Cthulhu as a Keeper. It’s all shorthand and jargon for the same roles and responsibilities.


As to “making this weird?” That’s the farthest thing from what we’d actually like to accomplish. RPGs have a ton of very specific terms and ideas that can be really hard to get into without help from people on the inside. GM is one of those terms and it’s especially important because it also carries a lot of other connotations for the rest of the group. GMs are kind of like fingerprints. No two are ever exactly the same, and the way the GM runs their side of the game has a lot of impact on the game’s tone, style and level of challenge.

So what exactly does the GM do?

Well, it varies a little from game system to game system, but in our estimation the GM has three key responsibilities during the game, and an extra one between sessions. A GM is responsible for handling the environment that the characters explore, handling the nonplayer characters that they will interact with, and controlling the opposition they will face. The GM also has to prepare the encounters, adventures, or campaigns the characters are experiencing between sessions. Let’s break those down a little, and talk about what they each mean.


The Environment is an important part of an RPG. From ice covered mountains to spaceships zooming between the stars to ancient, forgotten tombs deep below the earth, most RPGs are defined by the environments that the characters have to explore and interact with for some reason. Can the characters find the controls to extend that bridge? Are there traps in this corridor? What happens when a character throws the magical thing into the lava pool? These are all questions that the GM gets to answer for their players.


The game environment is full of people to talk to, interact with and do a host of other things with. These are NPCs, and the GM has control over them and uses them typically to help or hinder the characters in pursuit of the story. Some of them have information for the characters. Others might actually hire the characters to perform a host of jobs. Some might have connections the characters need to accomplish a specific task. All of these characters are controlled by the GM and are additional components that help bring the world to life.


The last key thing that a GM has to worry about during the session are the bad guys. Whether they are orcs on the rampage, or legions of skeletons, or an honest to god Dragon, the GM controls these creatures during the scenes where they are encountered, and controls the effects they have on the world around them. This is the most adversarial the GM gets with the players, but heroes deserve villains of equal quality.


Now between sessions, the GM also has to prepare material for the next session. If they are using a published campaign like Curse of Strahd or Tomb of Annihilation, it’s as easy as reading up on the next section of the campaign and planning accordingly. If they are using other adventures, it’s a matter of selecting the next adventure they want to run and getting it ready. If they are making their own, then they are going to need to sketch out where the story probably goes next, prepare some environments, some npcs, and some opposition. I have found in my experience that anything that needs to be randomly generated is best done here, because if you have to do it at the table, it’s going to break the flow of your game while you roll the dice and record the results.

Can i be a GM?

Of course you can. All it takes is a willingness to prepare the game world for your friends and be willing to play referee part of the time. It’s a skill (actually it’s more of a combination of skills) that takes to time to develop and you’ll get better at with time and practice. There are some suggestions and ideas i have for brand new GMs.

Read Everything. Especially the game materials for the game you are running, but i encourage you to get your hands on as much material as you feel comfortable reading. There are a LOT of folks who talk about games, how to prep, how to plan, how to run the game. Read as much of that as you comfortably can.


Be ready to ignore everything. Game Mastering takes time to develop, and what we are all offering you is advice. Most of us have a wealth of experience that we are sharing with you and offering advice and suggestions to help you get used to running the game. That advice isn’t always universally applicable, and if it doesn’t work for your circumstances or GMing style, be prepared to ignore it. You won’t hurt my feelings by telling me that my stuff didn’t help you prepare your game.


Start small. Most RPGs offer a host of published adventures or campaigns alongside their game rules. These are fantastic ways to get started with a game and can give you some of your first experiences running the game. When, and if you decide to make your own, start small and simple is usually better than complex (this is something i forget part of the time too).


Have Fun. The game is supposed to be a fun experience that you and the rest of the players around your table share. If you aren’t having fun with it, try and figure out what’s sucking the fun out of it and making changes to your game until you like what you’re doing. It may take some time to hit your sweet spot, but it’s worth the effort.

What do i need to be a GM?

In no particular order:
The Core Rulebook for the game you are running
Spare character sheets
Dice
Pencils
Scratch paper
Imagination
An Idea for an adventure
A starting adventure


Also
Patience
Composure
A Desire to craft a story
Fairness


The Game should be fun for you and your friends, so work together to have fun (storming the castle, or you know, whatever).


That’s it for Monday morning, Game On, Game Fans.