What I Learned GMing for the First Time

This is a re-post from my G+ page.

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This is being written from the point of view of somebody who is very new to the hobby (less than three months of actively seeking out games and groups, though I’ve been a part of a Friday night group off-and-on for about two years) and is an extensive reader. I really hope I don’t make this too long, but I hope that it does help those who want to step into the role of GM but don’t know where to begin.

When I first started playing I had no interest in being the GM for anything. It’s a lot of work, you have to know what is going on with just about everything, and everybody’s attention is on you. If the game sucks, you’ve probably had a hand in that. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve only ever played in one game that was a one-shot that I didn’t really enjoy, and that really drove home the lesson that the GM really sets the tone for the game, from their preparation to keeping the game on track. I may have been really sensitive to it since by the time that game occurred, I was already looking into GMing something.

So what was it that made me change my mind? I ran into a little game that not many people in the US have heard of called Symbaroum. Initially I saw the name on Modiphius’s website when I was looking through their pretty amazing catalogue of stuff. I had found their page due to their new Fallout Wasteland Warfare miniatures war game because, as you may be able to tell, I love Fallout. It took months before I finally looked at Symbaroum, but when I did, the art blew me away, and the more I looked into the setting, the more I knew I had to play this game. But nobody around here has ever heard of it so it’s not like I was just going to be able to find a group. Also, the more I learned about it, the more I wanted to be the one to introduce this game to other people (after I played it, of course; thank you roll20!).

Fast forward to the mini-session I had with my niece – just my niece – a couple of days ago. I had nothing prepared. I had driven up to visit family and had determined that my niece would love this hobby, so I wanted to introduce her to it. I had planned on running her through a scenario in the back of the Tiny Dungeon book, but flipping through, nothing really caught my eye. So I tried to use the random quest generator, rolling dice on tables, but what I got back wasn’t very cohesive. Since I didn’t want to handle anything too weird, I used tropes I’m familiar with from reading fantasy and filled in the blanks. She seemed to have fun with it and even though she died in the end (I was rolling like a fiend, her rolls were not so good), she has expressed an interest in playing more. Win!

That was all context for the real meat-and-potatoes that starts here: What I learned on my very first run at GM.

Probably the first thing I learned is that if the story doesn’t work for you, change it. If it’s not a story you want to tell – or it’s too complicated or combines elements that don’t make sense – your players are almost guaranteed to sense that and it’s going to eat into their enjoyment of the game. Don’t just go randomly changing things willy-nilly, but don’t just run something by-the-book if you can’t get into it and your players aren’t liking it.

The second thing I learned is that if you’re worried about every little rule, you’re going to spend far too much time searching through a book and not enough time giving the story the flow it needs to be effective. Your players will disengage. With that in mind, I highly, HIGHLY recommend starting out with a rules-light system. I used Tiny Dungeon by Gallant Knight Games. Alan Bahr (the owner) has written a whole series of games using the Tiny system, so if the typical fantasy setting isn’t your thing, it’s a good bet that GKG has something that will interest you or they’re working on something that will. I’m not saying you have to go with one of their games, it’s just a series I’ve got some experience with and have really enjoyed. Rules-light systems – whichever one you pick – give you a lot of freedom to move around in the game. Crunchier games like Pathfinder or D&D 3.5 are going to require at least an hour or two just to create a character and then everything your players do has to be checked against the stats on their character sheet. A rules-light system is a lot more flexible with rolls.

Third, I learned that it helps if you’ve got a picture of the scene in your head. Telling your players that they’re in a big room with some boxes and a big post in the middle won’t draw them in as much as telling them they’re in a dimly lit circular chamber littered with the remains of rotting wood boxes, centered around a large stalagmite reaching for the ceiling curving high overhead. Give them something to visualize so they are on the same page as you.

Hand-in-hand with that is that story construction is just as important as story presentation. Any entertainment you enjoy, from books to TV shows, has an arc and pacing. If something is paced too slow, you run the risk of boring your players and making it feel like they’re in a slog. Pace it too fast and they’ll get confused as to what is happening. You don’t need action happening at every second. Give people time to breath, to situate their character, to process the scene. And there should be a story arc. Give them something to make their characters strive for and that will help develop their character over time.

Fifth, you are not there to kill your players’ characters. You are there to run the story. If they die, make sure you’re not giving off the vibe that you were actively trying to kill them off. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of competitive games so that sort of thing tends to turn me off to playing. Maybe your group is different, but you still shouldn’t be trying to frustrate them and kill their characters anyway.

And I think the last big thing I learned is that the dice are going to do what the dice are going to do, but it is entirely possible to take the worst rolls and turn them into story gold. So far my favorite scene from the Symbaroum game I’m currently a player in was when the GM decided to go off-script, I got some terrible, TERRIBLE rolls, and things just went crazy. In the end I was able to pull out some really stellar rolls and we ended up with one of the most exciting games of any kind I’ve ever played. It was fun and completely dictated by the dice rolls. It’s the gaming version of making lemonade out of lemons, and you can make some pretty tasty lemonade out of some pretty sour lemons in an RPG.

To wrap up, one piece of advice I’d give is to GM for a sympathetic group or, if you can managed it, just one person. That might not work for you, but that ended up working really well for me. I had less to keep track of so it didn’t feel like I had quite so much pressure to distract me. Your mileage may vary.

Ultimately, make it fun. Change what you need to, play up what you have to, and remember that you’re just collaboratively telling a story built around a scaffold of rules. It can be silly, it can be serious, it can be a combination; as long as everybody is having a good time, it doesn’t really matter.