So you want to run an RPG. Maybe you got a D&D essentials kit as a gift, found a Shadowrun core book at your local library or maybe you just finished playing your first game as a player and you want to take a crack at running your own game. Becoming a Game Master is something that can be enticing but also be truly daunting. It can feel like there’s a lot to do when you decide that you want to run your first RPG, no matter the system.
All the different things that go into running a good RPG game can feel overwhelming. How do I learn all the rules? How can I keep track of the story? How will I remember everything? The short answer to all of those questions is, you won’t. You won’t be able to learn everything before you run your first game and you won’t be totally prepared, but that’s okay.
I first started playing RPG games back when I was a wee lad of six. I knew right away that I wanted to run my own games because the idea of telling the type of story my friends would enjoy sounded like fun. When I look back on those first few games that I ran, I didn’t even use any books! Sure my mother bought me a copy of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but I may have only read through the book once and I know I didn’t understand most of it (what six year old understands the rules for hirelings?). When I ran my first game I don’t even think I opened the book. I just thought I knew what the rules were and if I was wrong, I just made them up new rules. I was six, I didn’t really care. My friends had fun and so did I, rules be damned!
Since that time I have run more stories than I can count in a multitude of systems. I’ve also actually bothered to read a few rulebooks. As my experience has grown I’ve learned a few basic tips that apply to any game system I run. Since they’re so universal I wanted to share some of these things I wish I knew when I was just starting out as a GM.
Notes, Notes, Notes
Get a note pad. Whenever you’re running a game, or playing for that matter, it’s a good idea to have a notebook. Something cheap like spiral notebook will do just fine. I’ve also recently started using google drive for organizing my notes. I like google drive because I can hyperlink between different sections when I’m running a game. If I spend time writing about a city, or an organization, I can put a hyperlink into the notes I’ve written for a particular session I’m running. However, if you don’t have access to a computer when you’re playing or you just prefer to use a pencil and paper a normal blank page will get you the same results.
Names for people, places and things…
For some reason the idea of quickly coming up with names for characters is a huge stumbling block for some GMs. There’s no shame in that, naming things can be hard. How else can you explain the multitude of books written on baby naming? Add to that, a character’s name can really say a lot about them. There’s a reason Lord Voldemort doesn’t call himself Tom. Tom sounds like a guy that bags groceries. Lord Voldemort sounds like a dude that fronts for a thrash metal band.
Creating a list of NPC names can help you to get ahead of that unease about naming someone a silly name. Creating those names in advance is something I’ve seen different GM’s use their note pads for over the years. Usually they’ll take three sheets of paper and dive them up by men’s names, women’s names and non-gendered names that can be used for people or places. As their players enter a town or encounter a random NPC they can flip over to their notes section and quickly pick a name from the list. If players ask for the name of an Inn, the GM has it ready. This type of rapid information availability can help GMs feel more confident when their players interact with an NPC they may not have been ready for. By keeping the game flowing a GM can help the players stay engrossed in the world around them.
Flavored Text
Flavor text is any text that is unrelated to rules or gameplay and is included for effect. Examples of flavor text can be a description of a city the players are entering, or a monologue from a villain. If you’re trying to develop a rich world for your players, try and pre-write some description of a new area or character that you read when your players first encounter it. Try to describe the smell and the sounds of the new city or the intricate detail of the coat that the villain is wearing. Writing down flavor text in your notebook allows you to have some dramatic elements pre-prepared for your players. Even if your players don’t enter the new city or meet the new villain right away you can have it tucked away for later.
Rules
Weather it’s D&D or Vampire: The masquerade, the game your playing is bound to have at least some rules. I’ve found my notebook a helpful place to jot down notes on rules that I may want to reference or look back at when the session is over. One example of this is the rule for grappling. I’m not sure if it’s just how I play a lot of my characters but I usually end up trying to grab other characters and throw them around. Making sure I have that rule ready to go in case any questions arise mid game is a great us of my notebook. Additionally, if any other questions come up regarding other rules mid session I like to write down the rule in question so I can go back and clarify it after the game is over.
Write down your evil plan
Write out your evil plan for your villain. This may sound simple, but it makes a huge difference. As a GM you probably want to have a villain in your story, but you don’t want to reveal everything about their plans to your players, at least not right away. I’ll probably go into greater detail about villains in another article but for now I’m going to assume you know who your villain is and what their plans are.
Keeping a list of tasks that your villain will try to accomplish each session can be a great use of your notebook. You know what’s happening with their plan even if the players are nowhere nearby. If you keep track of the progress of their evil plan you know where and when everything is happening. That way if the players are, or even aren’t, seeking out a way to stop your villain you know where things are happening and what the players will find when they arrive.
GET TO KNOW YOUR PLAYERS
Getting to know my players is essential. For most of my life I ran games for my friends. These people were my classmates, co-workers or neighbors. Regardless of how I met them, I already knew something about them before we all agreed to play D&D or some other RPG. I knew what kind of stories they enjoyed, I knew their likes and dislikes and I knew what they would like in an RPG campaign. However, as I’ve gotten older I don’t know many of the people I run games for. As a result of this I’ve become much more intentional about getting to know them.
The things I try to focus on learning about are, what types of characters they like to play, what kinds of adventures they like to be a part of and how they feel about things like combat granularity or how comfortable they are sticking to all the rules. Everyone is different but the more you learn about your group of players the easier it will be to create a game that is appealing to them. Even if you’re running something pre-prepared you can make little tweaks to it for your player’s enjoyment.
It’s not that you will necessarily change the whole story to match what they want to do, but if you learn some things they’ve done in past games that they really like, it can help you to maybe add in new elements into your storytelling. That small change will make the experience more fun for them and you. This can also allow you to challenge your own ability as a storyteller.
Familiarization > Memorization
You will never memorize everything. It’s impossible. You will always need to look stuff up. You don’t need to memorize the whole rulebook. In fact…you don’t even need to read the whole core rulebook. At least not at first. Depending on the game you are running it’s good to focus your energy on a few basic things:
- Character creation rules
- Basic combat mechanics
- Basic Role Playing Mechanics
All the other stuff like spells, setting, monster stats can be filled in later. When you’re running your first game as a GM your priority is to tell the story and have fun. You may try your best to get all the rules right but even if you don’t it’s okay. The whole point of being a GM is to have fun while you’re playing. As long as you’re familiar with the rules of whatever game you’re playing you can develop your descriptive chops over time. After you’ve run your first couple sessions, you will eventually go back and familiarize yourself with it while going through the storytelling process. If you can get through one or two sessions you’ll find out what you need to be more familiar with based on what you may have forgotten or what your players did that you may not have expected. Later, if you’ve enjoyed your first few sessions as a GM FAMILIARIZATION NOT MEMORIZATION, it really does just make things that much easier for yourself from the beginning, and makes it feel that much less intimidating to start the storytelling process.
Mistakes will happen
It’s tough to accept sometimes but you will make mistakes. Learning from the mistakes is important. Without mistakes we cannot evolve. This is true in lots of things. Understand that if you make mistakes, or your players make mistakes, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It just means you get the chance to improve next time. There is a really good acronym I’ve heard from a professor of mine, OOPS, which is an acronym for: Other Opportunity For Improvement. Human beings are going to make mistakes, and it’s better to notice when you make a mistake as a storyteller (maybe point it out to your players, maybe don’t), and not to dwell on it, but keep the story moving with that knowledge in place. If you dwell too much on the mistakes you make, it can often stifle your creativity as a storyteller.
Don’t over prepare
Preparation paralysis is a real thing. I’ve seen so many would be GM’s get hung up on the idea that they don’t have enough prepared to become a GM. They don’t have enough story, or their villain isn’t scary enough, or their town doesn’t have a properly constructed calendar system.
Stop.
You don’t need all of that stuff right away! If I really wanted to make sure I had that kind of stuff prepared, I’d ask my players what kind of information they feel like they would want to know before I created my world or my campaign plots. That way I wouldn’t spend time making an intricately constructed system of planets, stars and celestial movement that my players may not care about at all. If your players eventually do express an interest in things like holidays, or history you can develop that content later. It doesn’t have to all be ready before you play.
Yes it can seem intimidating to start your first game as a GM, but I try to tell new GMs that their fear of unpreparedness isn’t something that should dictate weather or not they take that first step as a GM. Whenever someone asks me, “What’s the one thing I need to prepare to be a good GM?”
The most important thing is: be prepared, to be unprepared.
A GM cannot, ever, know what their players are going to do at all times. That level of precognition doesn’t really exist. I’ve been running games for almost thirty years and I’m still constantly surprised by the choices my players make. If I tried to prepare for every different contingency and choice that my players could make I would spend more time preparing to run my game than actually running my game. This over preparation can lean to an inverse correlation. I believe that the more time a GM spends preparing to run their game, the less likely they are to actually run their game. I’ve seen many would be GM’s get so hung up on getting their world perfect before they run their game, the opportunity to play passes them by.
Don’t get too invested in having a specific way that your plot is going to play out. Having too much of the story already laid out, without room for change, can often stop you from moving to the next plot point. Your players might make a decision that could completely derail your storyline if you’re too overprepared. If you’re going to run a game, it’s a fine thing to get familiarized with what you want to do, and what part of the story you want to tell. However, don’t over prepare.
Helmut von Moltke said that “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Your players are not the enemy. But the inference is still true. Your players have free will and they may not go exactly where you planned. That free will is a good thing. Be prepared to be unprepared. If you know that you’ll have to think on your feet then you won’t be surprised when it happens. If you are having difficulty with the preparation process, there are a lot of good independent and official pre-planned adventures for games, that can be a good foundation for you to build your story off of. Run the first game, then you will know what you need to prepare for the next game.
Take care of yourself
Know when to say you’re done. GMs can get stuck as the #FOREVERDM, and that’s not a bad thing. I prefer to run games more than play. I also know that puts me in the minority.
If you need a break from running a game that’s fine. Tell your players. You need to have fun too. Nobody can survive on a diet of ice cream no matter how much they like it. The same thing applies to DMing. You will need to stop at some point and that’s okay. It’s a game for everyone at the table. If you’re not having fun, or the players are treating you poorly you don’t owe anyone anything. You have to take care of yourself emotionally and mentally. Playing or running a game requires you to give something of yourself. If you’re tapped out, you have nothing left to give. So, taking a break helps you recover enough to start telling the story again, but only when you’re ready.
You can do this.
A multitude of people, from every walk of life, have started running games before. You don’t need special training. There’s a lyric from the artist Talib Kweli: “if you can walk you can dance, if you can talk you can sing.” I think this spirit is true here too. If you can listen you can tell a story. If you have heard a great story before, and you want to tell your own, you can. You have all the qualifications you need already to tell a story.
Tabletop Theory 