First time Gamemastering? Are prospective players asking whether you run your table Rules as Written or Rule of Cool, but you don’t know how to answer? Are you new to TTRPGs and want to get your friends to join you at the table? Have you wanted to give your Forever GM friend a break? Come to “So you want to be a Game Master?”, where our panel of experienced game runners will teach you how to lead an RPG, and ensure the fun is spread evenly around the table.

I’ve done posts and videos about being a DM before. I’ve also run a workshop at Balticon in the past for first timers. I like the idea of empowering others to invest in creating something wonderful and fun for everyone. For the record, I am very much a ‘rule of cool’ kind of game master. Here are my notes for this panel:

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?

Finding an RPG you like is partially about the game itself and partially about the people you’re playing with. Both parts matter. These games are by their very nature social. The single biggest challenge is finding a group, or a series of groups of people that you really, truly enjoy gaming with. The people are the key to it all.

As for the games themselves, part of that is learning what your group is into, and what you are all looking for in a game.

How many people do you want the game to handle?

You don’t have to be an expert on fantasy lore or a master rules lawyer; anyone can be a GM.

The hardest part of it all, battling the demons of three to five other people’s schedules.

Find inspiration (in art, in books, in movies, in conversation with others)

Prepare to the amount you feel comfortable with – SET A SCENARIO, NOT A STORY PLOT

Roll with choices your players make – be flexible

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 (Cabbage 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?)

Even the best, luckiest and most talented groups don’t last forever, and sometimes that’s what makes them truly magical. Take advantage of having fun while you can.

The description for this panel:

Countless tales are told of the legendary “That Guy,” the fiend who destroys the good times of tabletops everywhere. But little is said about the others, the celestial beings who remember names, piece together plot points, and work with their GM on narrative and theme. This panel of GMs and Players will tell stories of the best player moments, and elucidate what makes these angels so special.

I’ve been playing various role playing games for a very long time. I’ve played a lot, and over the most recent years I’ve been the game master more often than not. Running a game and staying ahead of a group of creative, talented and smart people is a fantastic challenge. Here are the notes I had for this panel.

Chemistry.

We play these games because we want to have fun. It’s definitely no fun if the person sitting next to you is the verbal equivalent of a pebble in your shoe while you walk.

Finding your people is NOT easy. It IS a role-playing game, so you will have to get past the anxiety part in order to make it work… unless that’s your whole party and the game adventure becomes who’s actually going to be forced to speak to the service person you’re facing…

Flexibility.

You’re here to have fun, right? Sometimes that means getting outside your comfort zone and pretending to do a thing you would NEVER do in real life, for whatever reason. Sometimes you need to change a little to allow others to do the same.

No Judgment.

This one is a balancing act. It ties in with the chemistry thing. What if your rogue character does something that you, on a deeply personal level, find abhorrent? Is it just the game? Is it how the character would actually behave because reasons? You can’t leap on the judgmental band waggon or it will kill certain creative parts of the game.

Pay attention.

Sounds dumb, matters a lot. When in person games were more common than virtual there was always that one person that was on their phone or who fell asleep on the couch. It can hurt the flow of any session if we all have to stop, back up five minutes to tell you what you weren’t paying attention to and then wait for you to re-read your spell list to figure out what you were doing.

Be creative.

Not everyone is a mastermind with 56 plot lines weaving in and out of their minds, but do any little bit you can. Take on something small if you feel like you don’t know where to start. Look at your character and create from there. What do you really know about? Slide some of that into your character, and use that as a starting point. If you’re a hair stylist, allow your character to wear a hair style that you’d love to see, then leap off from there and make it a quirky part of that character – the character constantly tries to get others to color their hair or braid their beard or something. Those little bits of flavor make a very rich game.

Be understanding.

Sometimes gamers need to take a knee. The real world intrudes. This ties together with chemistry and flexibility. My best games have come after we’ve had to skip a week because of family stuff or during really tough real world issues for my players.

Favorite things from my players? I had a OCD person with a color coded notebook. She wrote everything down. I have a great note taker in my campaign now. She takes the greedy character to a whole new level, so she tracks all the party wealth.
New players rock because they don’t have tropes to rely on. They do something weird every time!