Game Mastering for the Newbie


Gamer Life General Discussion


As a relatively new GM ( 1-2 years), thought it would be helpful to get some advice from more experienced GMs and players.
Anything input is appreciated.

Grand Lodge

Don't be scared to F up. We ALL do it...no matter how long we have been doing this. Just learn from it and move along.

Sovereign Court

Making sure that I am well prep'ed helps things run smoothly for me. Acting as though you have everything under control tends to help the game move along. If you don't know something that comes up feel free to ask the table or even to assign one of the players to look it up while you move on. Once in a while you might run into something that isn't called out specifically in any rulebook. Understand that the players are waiting for you to make a decision when that happens. Do your best; make a choice and go with it. That decision will almost never be life or death for a character; if it was there would be a rule. Two final things. Number one: remember that you are in charge, if you act like it you will do fine. Number two: you are there to orchestrate the table's fun. So try to have fun so the players can too.

Grand Lodge

You are not expected to know all the rules.

Nobody can do all that. The GM relies on the players to speak up on rules issues, to know their characters inside and out.
However, the game needs to flow. You can't take 30 min out to research an ability and have a rules debate. Pre-research the abilities, the feats and the spells before the game. Don't do it at the game and destroy the flow. If you do need to do it, limit the interruption to 5 minutes.
Learn from every rules issue though.

Experiment with your voice. You don't need to do accents. Get in front of a bathroom mirror and experiment with your voice becoming deep, low, husky, feral or overly polite. You only need to change your voice a little to make the change from GM voice narrator to actual npc character. And you'll get better with practice.

And remember it's not you vs them. It's you crafting the best, most dramatic story out of what you've been given. That means having the power to increase the danger, the suspense, with the tools you have.

When people do fall, player tears are delicious and serve as valuable spell components in a range of profane spells.


Close enough for state work is close enough for a role playing game hobby.

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