Saturday rolled on with more gaming, and a topic I love even more than board games, role playing games.
You Can Start GMing Now: Tips for First-Time Gms
If you want to play RPGs and you don’t have a GM, you should consider stepping up. You don’t have to be an expert on fantasy lore or a master rules lawyer; anyone can be a GM. We’ll talk about common struggles like setting expectations, keeping everyone at the table engaged, finding and playing to your own unique strengths and style, and the hardest part of it all, battling the demons of three to five other people’s schedules.
My personal house Rule #1: It’s just a game.
We’re here to have fun, and if we’re not having fun, then why are we doing it?
Find inspiration (in art, in books, in movies, in conversation with others). I’ve talked about this in other places before – Attacks Of Opportunity being one example.
Prepare to the amount you feel comfortable with, over or under prepared is relative to how you play.
Roll with choices your players make – be flexible – because they WILL change it all. Constantly.
Adapt encounters that were ‘missed’ into something else later in the campaign (save your work).
Keep a list of names (like sounding names from a similar area – on hand just in case random NPC).
Keep notes – particularly of who all those random NPCs are, b/c they might stick and come back (melon guy from Avatar the Last Airbender anyone?)
Feel free to watch shows like critical role – but understand what they’ve got going on behind the scenes (and if you don’t have that, how can your game match that?).
Those were my notes, and many of the other panelists / game masters seemed to share some if not all of those sentiments. There was a lot to pack in during our hour, so I think we did well, but it’s always a challenge. Gaming is such a wide ranging topic it’s tough to squeeze all that in during an hour.
I’ve been running various D&D games for years so there are a lot of things I’ve internalized. Have you run a game? Do you have any thoughts for first timers?