Aranna's Rule of Five: You should limit your helpful rules to just five. This prevents your message from getting watered down and lets your audience really get a good solid picture of what your rules mean.
Lets look at my Rules of Good Game Mastery. They are listed in order from most important to least. And each level gives you new skills as a game master helpful in running great games.
Aranna's Rules of Good Game Mastery:
1- Learn the Rules: At the heart of every game is the game master. And the most fundamental skill is rules knowledge. You can't run a great game without first learning to arbitrate rulings. So the game master should frequently study the rules of the game. The broader your knowledge the fairer your rulings become. I rank this skill as number one because it is the trust builder. It is easy for your players to trust you if they know you will rule fairly. (Build Trust)
2- Learn your Players: A game is funner if you have players. And by studying what each of your players want out of the game you can learn to alter adventures to cater to that special love each of them is searching for. NOTHING draws a player into your game stronger than content tailored to his or her own personal tastes. (Draw them into the game)
3- Learn the Story: Beyond catering to individual tastes is the story itself. The story and it's events both planned and spontaneous are what people will be talking about years from now. Learning how to incorporate good story telling techniques into your play along with the study of the storyline as presented in the adventure you are running will bring that tale to life in a way that is pure magic for game master and player alike. (Make great memories)
While the first three are the most critical the last two will elevate you past stumbling blocks many GMs struggle with.
4- Learn Balance: Beyond the rules themselves there are the challenges the players face during the story that make that moment either a brief footnote or an epic struggle. Learning how to adjust encounters to create just the right level of challenge you want to paint at that particular moment is a skill all its own. It isn't an easy skill to master, too much and you kill the party, too little and the players are bored. Practice makes perfect in this lesson. Try slight alterations to encounters first to test the impact each will make and as your skill at finding just the right adjustment improves you can safely make bigger and bigger alterations. Mastery of this skill allows you to adjust encounters on the fly or as part of a story to get that perfect fight you need at just that point in time it's needed. Whether a player can't make it or the players had some bad luck in an earlier encounter you can confidently keep the game moving forward. From the little fight that depletes resources to the epic final fight and everything combat, skill, or social in between this skill keeps the story moving and removes hurdles. (Make the challenges support the story)
5- Learn Creativity: Armed with the first four skills you are now ready to tell YOUR story. From making an adventure from scratch to crafting an entire campaign setting they all rely on creativity. Look at setting as a good example. Some settings have a strong flavor and an involving storyline while others lack in one or both of those and become uninteresting backdrops. This isn't something that can be taught easily, however if you are reading this then you are a gamer and probably fairly creative already. The best things I can offer as advice here is to familiarize yourself with what works in creative works by others. We all want to tell a tale. Writing classes and being well read both help you focus your creativity and make a compelling tale. (Share YOUR vision)
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Terquem: Nah, that's a rule for this thread, not a rule of GMing. ;)
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Here are 5 guidelines of my own, listed in no particular order...
- 1. Be up-front with expectations. If your players are in the mood for a more lighthearted, animé-inspired game whereas you want to run a dark and gritty game, you may have a problem. Houserules, gameplay style, rules on PvP, allowed alignments, etc. should all be discussed before you ever start playing.
- 2. Group character creation. If everyone creates a mage, and no one creates a healer, you might have some issues. Likewise, if the campaign is going to be RP heavy and based around intrigue, the player of that half-orc barbarian with penalties to every Int, Wis, and Cha-based skill is probably going to feel left out. Get the players to create characters and backgrounds together so that they actually have a reason to work together and function as a team.
- 3. Socialization is important. The GM is not some soulless game server, and the players are not his pawns. Being friendly and communicative outside of the game is important to maintain trust and camaraderie. If there is no friendship there and everything boils down to just the game, hard feelings are that much more likely to fester into full-blown problems.
- 4. Don't be a dick. Should be self-explanatory, but seriously you are not a school teacher and the players are not delinquents in after-school detention. Treat each other with respect and don't purposefully try to bait people into getting their character killed or starting intra-party fights. If there is a cliff/waterfall 20-feet from the party, tell them about it. If the player forgets something that would be obvious to their character, remind them of it. The whole world exists in your head and ESP is not as common as we might think.
- 5. Talk with your players! Conflicts will occur. Out-of-character issues are seldomly resolved in-character. Just like 100s of threads on these forums will tell you, the best solution is to talk with your players about the problem like human beings... not to make their paladin fall or their druid's pet get turned into a snack.