[Discussion] How do you recruit & keep GMs?


Organized Play General Discussion

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Paizo Employee 5/55/5 ** Organized Play Coordinator

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Between my convention travels and the after-action reports, I learn a lot about conventions & events happening worldwide. One point has continued to come up this year no matter where I go.

We could run more tables, if only we had the GMs!

GMs are the lifeblood of our program, Organized Play literally doesn't happen without them. Recruiting new GMs, converting players into GMs and keeping GMs involved and appreciated is vital to what we do.

As a forever GM, I never needed any encouragement to get behind the GM screen. I was GMing RPGs before I even understood what they were. As a result, I find myself somewhat at a loss on how best to incentivize new GMs, so I'm polling the community!

If you're an organizer, what have you done to get players to step up to GM? What sort of tools and resources do you provide them, and what do you to do recognize them?

If you're a GM, especially a new one, what got you to take the plunge? Was the the promise of a shiny boon unlock, a sense of duty to the community, or that the local VO promised you a set of dice if you did it? Is Org Play providing you with the rewards and opportunity you need, or is there something else we can do?

And if you're a player who's GM-curious, what would get you to the other side of the screen? How can we support you as you take the first steps into running games?

Hopefully this thread can be a useful resource to us all; please share your best tips and tricks with each other. The third tenet of the Pathfinder Society is Cooperate, after all!

Second Seekers (Roheas) 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ***** Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia

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I will say that the biggest challenge as an organizer in terms of getting people to GM are these two percieved factors

1) The rules seem really complicated and prospective GMs always seem to feel that "they just do not know the game well enough to run the games". There is an intimidatiom factor

1a) The game is completely asymmetrical. So just playing the game doesnt really prepare you for running the game.

2) It seems like a lot of work and a lot of money. Long-time GMs can take for granted that these scenarios are basically their own genre and things you read as second nature now can sometimes be near impenetrable for a new person. Toss in that each scenario requires 1-3 flip mats, maybe some flip tiles, and a drawn or printed custom map. From the outside, GMing looks pretty expensive both in terms of money and time invested.

There are three things I have seen done in my region that have put a dent in these two factors.

A) Some kind of reward always helps. The old boon system was great for this but there are other ways we can do this. One local VC gives every GM a free mini the first time they run a game. Another has name tags with spots for 5 glyphs. Run pnce and get the tag, get a glyph, you get a glyph on the tag.

B) Offering/promising as VO that youll be there the first few times to help with amy rules and to offer mentorship as theyre working through the scenarop. Plan ahead. Asking someone to run a game 6 weeks from now can give them a chance to take their time.

C) Have a library of resources available. One local lodge prints every adventure and every map from every adventure and lovingly cuts out and tapes together the maps. Those folders then can be lent out to whoever is going to gm. They still need to study the scenario but now maps, chronicles handours and printing are done and the investment is significantly lightened.

The downside to all this is that it DOES mean an increased investment in terms of time and treasure from the venture officers and not everyong can do all of this (including me, i barely have time to do any of this).

If my wildest dreams were to come true Paizo/OPF could offset some of this expense somehow or provide some of these resources.

****

Pathfinder Adventure Subscriber

I used to GM for friends. So when I decided to start playing RPGs again it was only a matter of time before I took the plunge. Of course, GM'ing for people you know and running games for total strangers are two different things but I've found as I got better that I actually liked running games. Maybe because it makes people happy. As it is, GM'ing also lets me let go of the real world.

So, long story short -- what keeps me active as a GM? Most likely it's the fact that I like doing it. Not so much the rewards or the boons, though they certainly are nice...


Alex Speidel wrote:
If you're a GM, especially a new one, what got you to take the plunge? Was the the promise of a shiny boon unlock, a sense of duty to the community, or that the local VO promised you a set of dice if you did it? Is Org Play providing you with the rewards and opportunity you need, or is there something else we can do?

First, I am a play-by-post exclusive. I have sworn off playing in-person any more for both disability reasons and physical location in the world. And that does change things. There are some adaptations that need to be made when playing Pathfinder/Starfinder asynchronously and text-only than when playing in-person.

And I feel that play-by-post is not well supported by the game rules as a whole. The adaptations needed are not mentioned in the game's core rules, and they really aren't mentioned in PFS rules and guidelines either.

-----

I am currently running my first PFS scenario for our group. I volunteered for the role because our primary GM was having some IRL time sink events come up and wouldn't be able to spend the time needed for running the game. So mostly it would fall under the category of 'I did it out of duty'. Or at least loyalty to my online friends that I game with.

This isn't my first PBP GM experience. I have one other game (A Fistful of Flowers) that I have run to completion.

What I have learned about myself personally from this is that my biggest hurdle in being a GM is in enforcing the rules. I know all of the rules at least as well as anyone else. But when I notice someone post something that is mechanically incorrect, I find it very difficult to have the courage to say something about it.

While that may be the particular problem for me, I expect that many people who don't play the role of GM avoid it because of their own anxieties and social assertiveness problems. I don't know how to fix that. That is a psychological thing, not something that can be bribed away.

What would help for me is if there is someone else at the table that I could delegate that particular aspect of being the GM to. In my case, if there is someone else who either knows the rules or who I can send private messages to and then they can mention in-game that the actions that this character took are not valid and need to be revised to be rules-legal.

So that is my idea to throw out there. Promote the idea of having a limited-power co-GM who can take over specific aspects of being the GM that are causing either overwork or anxiety.

Silver Crusade

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GM-curious player here. I second #1 & #2 from eddv's post above.

I have GM'd some games for my husband and kids at home, and frequently came across situations that I didn't even know had rules for them. One scenario took place in a town, but the description of the town was only provided in the sequel. Granted, that's not going to happen all the time, but I tend to freeze and draw a blank when put on the spot over something I'm not prepared for (not fun for anyone). Folks like me are better suited to GMing over PbP, where we have time to look things up, but it's still intimidating.

Overall, I feel like there's *so much reading* of things that are largely written like history books and technical manuals (yawn) that I would have to do in order to understand the rules, world, and lore before I could GM a game without missing important things. And *so much prep* to do before I can even start.

Despite all that, I feel guilty only being a player. It feels like I'm only taking and never giving, so I am planning to run my first PbP game soon-ish. Wish me luck!


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Honestly, as an adult with a full-time job and two kiddos under 5 the idea of GMing a game is a tough sell to me due to:

1. I'm not entirely familiar with all of the base level rules and the system as a whole.
2. I don't have the time and/or mental energy to properly prep a scenario for a society game.
3. Proper minis/maps/other necessities are a cost that I can't realistically afford right now.
4. I would want to be able to make a commitment to show up, but with my work schedule requiring evening releases it's difficult to keep a consistent schedule.

I would love to take some of the weight off of the local GM's shoulders and step up if only to give them a break, but those factors together make it a pretty daunting task for me.

***

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For both me and my partner, it was a need-based decision to step-up to GM.

As the forever GM in my home group, PFS was my way to play characters I thought I'd never get the chance to. However, as I noticed the same people gm'ing time and time again, I stepped up.

My partner may be Gm'ing for the first time this weekend, as most of our usual GM's are at conventions, so we needed people to run games for the influx of new players we got (college town).

I don't really know if an incentive would have helped my partner jump into GM'ing quicker, as he's often too worried about it being "perfect," and not ruining the immersion.

For me, double the achievement points really helped, but I also know that many of our players don't really care about achievement points, as they just want to play their character each and every time.

Something that might help, is repeatable GM credit for non-repeatable scenarios. An issue we're running into with non-repeatables, is that most of the veterans have both run and played in those scenarios, so there's no one to run/play in them with newbies. Even with "boon-hunting" allowing a GM to get the boon on multiple characters might be enough to get them to GM more often.

5/55/5 *** Venture-Captain, Online—VTT

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Warah wrote:
Despite all that, I feel guilty only being a player. It feels like I'm only taking and never giving

I just wanna chime in here since I've seen this sentiment before:

Players are just as important as GMs. The game doesn't happen without the players. GMs might be a linchpin, a point of failure, but players are not "taking".

GMing should be fun, it shouldn't be a chore required to not feel guilty.

That's just my two cents, and I understand and sympathize with it being intimidating.

Dark Archive 3/5 **

Obligation to my community has been what drives me to GM and continue to GM. I try to GM once for every 3-4 times I play and when possible, GM for the local con for at least 2 tables. The rewards (Glyphs, PC Credit) are a motivator to do this more and without having necessarily played the scenario first, but they're not required.

I come from the before times of Living City/Greyhawk/Arcanis. Until later in Arcanis' life, there were no rewards for GMing save RPGA points. A lot of thought was put into making sure the folks who would GM locally got a chance to "Session 0" an adventure, usually run by someone who got to play it at a convention. Sometimes, there were folks who just took turns "eating" an adventure to help the local group get moving on it.

Because there were no tangible rewards (and sometimes you lost the ability to ever play the adventure if you GM'd it first), it was a community norm that we had to take turns GMing if we were regular players with the rules knowledge and skills to do so. We still had folks who really like GMing and would step up regularly, but you'll always have folks who like GMing more than playing.

This isn't me advocating to remove rewards for GMs to motivate folks. GM rewards is one the best and more important differences in Pathfinder Society compared to its predecessors in the d20 Org Play space. I just want to illustrate how we had to make it a community norm that folks take turns GMing or we wouldn't be able to have regular game days/cons at all. The stakes were just higher, because the ask that someone run an adventure cold also meant they would never get to play it and would have nothing tangible to show for it. It was reasonable for people to refuse to do so and we didn't have a game day that week.

At GM "crunch points" in PFS1E and 2E, VOs at the Austin Lodge have had to work hard to impress upon players (especially newer ones), this cultural norm that everyone who can, should GM just a little bit. Most of what I see is them trying to communicate this value that in older campaigns, was much clearer to folks from the get go.

So here's the TL;DR: PFS sometimes fails to communicate to new players that once they are comfortable with the rules and have their footing, it's a community standard they help out GMing, even if they do so only a few times a year. And we often don't step in and reinforce this until we face a shortage of GMs or there are otherwise consequences that keep us from playing regularly because we lack GMs. It's important that Lodges/Cons let folks know as they join that we'd love to help them along to GMing some once they're comfortable, instead of waiting until we're running short to discuss this.

*****

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Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

Hearing long-time GMs ask about rules question while running their own game and hearing other long-time GMs who were playing give an answer (or sometimes: discuss among themselves!) was helpful – to see that not every GM has to have every rule memorised.

GMing with long-time GMs (at least the first few times) is helpful because they're usually more patient and also because they can answer rules questions if you have them. (See point one.)

So a good easy start is to GM for people you have already seen GMing. (Maybe you can't have all 6 players be experiences GMs, but even just two or three helps a lot when you're starting out.)

When playing face-to-face, the map expense is real. I bought literally dozens of flip-mats and a couple of boxes of flip-tiles during the time I GMed face-to-face. Now that I'm 99% virtual, just being able to snip something out of a PDF and put it onto a VTT is a lot easier. Even if I do often buy the flip-mat as a PDF to get a higher resolution than what's in the scenario PDF.

Knowing that you don't have to have minis that are perfect, or even minis at all -- when I started out as a player, some GMs used minis but several just used dice or other simple tokens. The big red d20 was a kobold; why not?

If you have a regular group of players, then being able to rotate the GM (so that you don't have one or three forever GMs and none of the others take turns) is good so that you get to play as well.

Failing that, I know that some GMs will sometimes have game sessions that are only open to other GMs.

4/5 ****

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Organizer

GM recruitment. This is actually a huge part of the work of organizing a game. Clicking on warhorn and putting up regular schedules is easy compared with the work of managing people.

In my experience, the biggest thing you can do is instill a culture/expectation of "Everybody GMs"

I've been involved in organizing PFS in various role for quite a few years now. I have the extreme advantage of standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before me.

Painlord has a great post here on how to recruit GMs. It's from 2011 but it still makes a lot of sense.

---

So with an expectation that everybody GMs, how do you actually do it?

1: Don't GM every single time yourself. Set some boundaries. If a game won't happen because nobody is willing to GM it's not your job to GM the 5th time in the month instead of playing the 1 week you reserve to yourself. (Personally I try and GM about every 3rd to 4th game, but end up doing more every time we have an influx of new players. I'm much more willing to make personal sacrifices to help new players than Jimbob the player on his 28th session who won't ever GM)

2: Most players aren't ready to GM at game 0, but they'll in general be ready much before they think they are. Expect players to start GMing after around 10 sessions (have a character up to level 4 or so)

Talk to them in private, maybe aside hanging out after game, or via email. Tell them something you're impressed by that they're doing and explain you'd like to see them try out the GM side. Remind them of the full character rewards with no risk/consumables spent and the double ACP for more boon shopping.

They'll almost always respond "I don't know the rules well enough to GM" That's okay, you expected that response. Tell them it's okay, you don't need nearly as much rules knowledge as you think, and let them know how you'll help them get set up to GM:

Provide them all the help in the world for this first slot. Maps, minis etc etc. If they want talk ahead of time and help them prep. Show them resources like the GM thread on Paizo. Make sure it's clear who's printing things like chronicles and sign-in sheets.

Remind them that they don't need to know all the rules, just the ones in their scenario, players are responsible for knowing their own rules. If a player does something it's fine to ask them to explain it.

In my experience most of the time people after GMing will go "oh, that's not bad at all"

3: Extra things to do to make that GM onboarding even easier.

Set up special slots for making learning to GM even easier:

My favorite is a pair of bounties/quests, with 2 GMs and 3-5 more players. Each GM runs one quest and gets to play in the other.

It really helps set the tone for "this is a cooperative process." No matter which side of the table you're on it's all about coming together and having a good time with the adventure.

It also means as a first step you only have to be in charge of a table for ~90 minutes instead of 4-5 hours, and everybody works together to have a good time.

---

4: Continuity of Leadership
When you're ready to move on from leadership, don't fumble the ball. You need continuity to maintain cultural things like Everybody GMs. Hand it off to your successor who you've already got it up and running.

How to do this? Train an apprentice. Work with somebody else. At first just show them the process and use as a sounding board to check that your scheduling makes sense. Eventually involve them in more and more of the process.

Eventually, eventually turn over the reigns and step up or step down. Stick around and provide advice as needed and make sure they get their own apprentice.

---

Not a VO currently but can still look at our local stats for 2023....

78 Unique Players
30 Unique GMs

Not too bad.

If I only include players with say 5+ sessions...
Then it's 40 unique players

Horizon Hunters ***

Pathfinder PF Special Edition Subscriber

To begin, I'll say that I GM for a few reasons (in no particular order)
1. It gives me a chance to practice leadership skills that I utilize at work.
2. I enjoy the operational side of running a game, and learning adversary mechanics
3. I love it when players get really into a scenario and have a lot of fun
4. Our lodge is amazing and it only exists because people volunteer to run games, so I want to contribute to that.
5. The bonus ACP, GM credit, glyphs, replays, community recognition, and extra lore in scenarios is great, but pales in the first four points.

I expressed the "I don't know the game well enough" before running my first game, and I've heard others say it as well. One way this gets addressed in our lodge is our VC makes sure that new GMs have a more experienced GM (usually himself) at their first few tables when they're just getting started. Additionally, our entire lodge, GMs and players alike, support everyone else (from top to bottom) in understanding and knowing the rules. Immediately after running my first game, I was ready to keep going because I felt confident in the support I would get from my community.

This mainly works because we have a large, consistent group of core players/GMs, but for lodges that don't have those same things, a mentorship program where experienced GMs got some sort of minor bonus for sitting at a new GM's table might support this. Some ideas for bonuses would be implementing one of these:
- 6 ACP instead of 4 for a GM with more than one glyph sitting at a table for a GM with no glyphs.
- A boon program in line with the bonus that the Promotional Boons program grants (like +1 to rolls with Hero Points)
- In-game boons that grant the experienced GM a character bonus, similar to the existing faction mentorship boons but in reverse.

It doesn't have to be something big, just a little boost to say thank you for helping spread the game to others.

I'd like to second Wendy and Abigail's comment about GM re-running for extra GM credit. Even if it's just being able to use replays as a GM instead of as a player would let me bring some of the character ideas I have to fruition without pulling the access from another character.

Also, I get all of this ACP for running games, but I struggle to have the character slots (that I can actually get time to play) to use the ACP to buy boons for. Adding in more late-game boons to give established characters more options and flavor would be great. Ancestry and Heritage boons don't do my level 6 character much good. (I know that item/spell/summon access boons do some of this, but I'm looking for more of it).

Dark Archive 5/5 5/55/5 *** Venture-Captain, Germany—Rhein Main South

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I started GMing org play as I wanted to ease the burden of the regular GM at my lodge, it helped that I was a home-game GM beforehands for a long time.

As an Organizer I asked a lot of my regular players if they were interested. For weekly games I offer providing a repeatable scenario they played at my table with me as a player to help them if they have problems. If possible I seed that table with some of the easy players/helpful ones (and ask them to not use their weirdest chars)
What helped here (anecdotally) quite a bit were the RSP-boon and SF-boons with “check 1 box as a player, 2 boxes as a GM”
As a convention organizer *nothing* helped more to get someone in (and in my experience the 1st table is the important one) than the race boons of 1e/early SF where you got one shiny thing for doing one table at the convention. It also helped motivate recurring GMs WAY more than the small boost in ACP. (Especially as that boost has to be compared to a “I could also play in that slot” proposition, which would also grant increased ACP)

Sovereign Court 3/5

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You want more GMs?

Tell players to stop arguing with GMs and crack down on broken character builds.

There's zero point preparing a game for a group of folks to have fun only to see one player show up and solo all fights in one round.

Lantern Lodge 4/5 5/5

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Core rulesets!

Seriously. I stopped GMing PFS1 non core after the umpteenth expansion (I think it was kinetheiths - I can't even spell them) added yet another unnecessarily complex mechanic to the game.

I enjoy starfinder as it is much (well, prior to vanguard anyway) simpler. It kept to the core rules more or less with just tweaks for class special abilities.

I've avoided PFSv2 for a long time as it seemed quite a change from what I was used to in PFS. But now I'm playing it and getting used to it from the other side of the screen, I might well try GMing a game at some stage.

So... biggest barrier.. unnecessary additional rules complexity from additional rule books.

Liberty's Edge 3/5 ** Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Zeist

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I am currently busy with recruiting more GM's.
The things I do:
1) Have them run a bounty or quest, shorter is easier
2) Be sure to sit next to the GM so I can answer questions
3) I have put (almost) all my resources at my playing location, that includes an ever increasing stack of flipmats, cardboard miniature boxes, GM screen, combat tracker etc.
4) Lend them one of my scenario's for the session, and do that well in advance so they can ask questions while preparing.


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I know Paizo is providing Foundry support for new Starfinder scenarios, but I'm still using roll20 and by far the most time consuming thing about setting up tables is taking a screencap of each NPC and monster from the pdf, moving that screencap to the TokenStamp website to make it a circular image with a transparent background, then uploading that to a blank character sheet.

I can't overstate how helpful it would be if all the pdfs had a page at the end that was just "here's circular tokens of monsters and NPCs that you can print out and use with your flipmat, or upload to a VTT."

Wayfinders 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ***** Contributor

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Organizer Viewpoint

Man, this is a question that I just keep revisiting. It's an evergreen!

Here is my very smug answer to the question from the good old days of 2016 when we had only one system to play and so all the players were in the same community. In those days, I got everyone at my location to GM, even if it was once a quarter.

Post-Pandemic, we are still rebuilding our community. Minnesota used to have gaming days on every single day of the week, and gaming in most areas of the Twin Cities Metro. Now we have games on four days of the week, and only in a handful of locations. One of my goals is to see that expand, both in terms of number of gamedays available, and in terms of geography.

The more locations we can cover, the more players we can introduce, and the more GMs we can recruit.

Current Barriers

Pandemic -- Yeah, still. There are players we had who shifted entirely online because they're immuno-compromised. The good news is that they are playing online. But for all intents and purposes, we've lost that section of the community.

Game Store Hours -- A lot of local game stores close an hour earlier than they did pre-pandemic, which forces us to try to run scenarios in 3.5 hours on our weeknights. This need for speed is one of our biggest current barriers.

Maintaining Multiple Systems -- Don't get me wrong. I love Starfinder and Pathfinder. But multiple systems often means multiple communities that overlap only a little. To GM, you need a bit of confidence about the rules, so you need to have played enough. It can be hard to recruit GMs to cover both Pathfinder and Starfinder tables, and keep both consistently going.

Technology -- This covers a number of areas. I'm not sure that we're getting the message out that we're still gaming as well as we can. I'm trying to consider more ways to advertise our presence, because more players eventually turns into more GMs (slowly.)

Meetup also did some software changes that messed with us, including allowing us to ask more than one RSVP question. In the old days, I had a passive question that ran with every event: "Are you interested in GMing?" That passive recruitment was awesome, because most people's answers changed over time from "no" to "I'm considering it but I'm nervous" to "I will if you show me how." Now we only get one question, and we usually need to spend it on: "Which scenario do you want to play?" My super-awesome passive recruitment tool is gone.

This can also involve such basics as location of outlets, presence of wifi and sound quality in the venue. We're really had to work around the sound quality of Dreamers, from putting up sound curtains on game days to getting a voice amplifier for soft-spoken GMs.

Money -- It's not just purchasing scenarios, but having the stuff needed to draw / print maps, figure out your minis, etc. GMing can look very expensive if you are a newcomer.

Social -- A lot of our event hosts are shy about asking for help. Now, me, I'm shameless. I constantly talk to good players and say, "You are really good with the rules and are fun to be with at the table. Have you considered GMing?" This is a question that I need to revisit every few weeks, seeding it slowly over time. It's important to not ask once, but to keep planting the idea slowly over time.

One way that Bret and I used to get volunteers was by announcing once a month that we both wanted to play together. People who were uncertain about GMing are more likely to volunteer if it means offering a break to a GM they like. Now that we are no longer organizing Dreamers (we're planning to start up another location when it opens) it is harder for us to try to get others to GM for us by asking for a break. We're trying to get the current VO to assert herself in asking for breaks, but with us around as players, it's assumed that Bret and I are the ones to step up for this.

Hyper-Perfectionism -- We need to figure out how to help people see that no one is perfect, and that imperfect games are fine! It's okay to make mistakes as a GM. It's okay to not know all the rules for new classes, or assign a player to look up a rule on Nethys so that you can keep the game running. We have to overcome this mental barrier, and give new GMs permission to make mistakes.

Ideas

So I'm looking at a number of ideas.

Training in our Event Hosts

We have a number of nascent VAs now running locations, and I'm trying to think about how to improve communication channels and build their confidence. But I'm also considering how to train people to do the ask of "Have you considered GMing?" We need to build an environment where lots of people step up to GM, and that means getting out of our comfort zones and asking multiple times, and that can be really stressful for folks who aren't outrageously social.

I just started up an Event Host channel on the Midwest Regional Pathfinder/Starfinder discord and so far there is nothing in #event-hosts, but I am hoping that it will become a space where people can help each other and grow in confidence.

Revamping our Meetup page

We haven't revised our Meetup site in a while, and it shows. My goal is to make it more new player friendly, as well as helping us do the ask on GMing.

Continuing to work on building an environment conducive to GM recruitment.

In some ways, this is a bit like throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. Sometimes, all you get is a mess. But other times, the experimenting pays off, and you manage to instill the environment that you want to build.

Hosting more 'GM Potlucks' or GM Training Games

It's pretty easy to build a round-robin game where we encourage new people to try GMing a bounty. I'm thinking of hosting these at a number of locations after we get through SkalCon to encourage more GMs to just try it out. When doing this, it is important to seat friendly players at these new tables, and support folks.

Building out a Map Library

There are a few GMs who loan maps, but I'd like to see us have an actual flip-mat library here in Minnesota. I have no idea where we would keep it, but I'd love to see it happen! This idea is still in the draft stage.

Anyway, those are some of ideas. What are yours?

Hmm

Wayfinders 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ***** Contributor

Pirate Rob wrote:

Not a VO currently but can still look at our local stats for 2023....

78 Unique Players
30 Unique GMs

Not too bad.

If I only include players with say 5+ sessions...
Then it's 40 unique players

Great job getting almost half of your player base to GM! I'm impressed.

(Though you do realize that you are really a VO, just an unofficial one? You keep statistics!)

4/5 Venture-Agent, Wisconsin—

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I start to GM so that my forever GM friends also get to have fun, then I joined Org Play last September and start to GM soon after. After 12 month I got 3 GM stars. Somehow my GM star is not showing up like everyone else's does, I don't know why. Anyone?

I think the intimidation from the complexity of the rule is a big factor, especially if the GM-to-be comes from an edition with simplier rule set. Based on my experience as a new GM and seeing other takes up the GM mantles, there're two main things that helped:

Support from fellow GM/Organizer. When I first start to GM for my home group, my old GM is there to answer any question I have, and give suggestion on how to make game great. When we have player who want to try GMing, the we as the veteran GMs give lots of advices on how to handle tricky and unclear situation, as well as helping the new GM with the technology they gonna need (set up Roll20 room, align map, config dynamic lighting). We also teach him about common combination of class/ability that often result in unexpected sitation and how to handle those.

Support from the players. When I first try to GM in Silicon Valley Org Play, I have to deal with essentially 6 strangers. Luckily, they're all very kind and supportive of their new GM, and we had a great time. Just like if you throw a "CR 1" orc barbarian with butchering axe to new players will scares them away from the game due to the horrible experience, same thing goes the other direction. Don't throw a summoner, optimized magus ,or worse a Shadowdancer and his incorporeal summoned Shadow at the new GM. Those things are stressful enough to handle for veteran GMs even if the players are good players, and will be a nightmare to the new GM. Brings simplier characters, be nice and communicative, and had fun.

Oh, let them GM scenarios/module they played before as player helps alot, since they will be familiar with the flow of the game and its story already.

** Venture-Agent, California—Concord

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My lodge is less than a year old, so while we've had great success in developing our player-base, we have struggled with bringing new GMs into the fold. I won't bother touching on the common anxiety-based complaints against making the jump, as that's been covered. However, there are four important barriers that have stopped people in my area from either GMing at all, or have kept them from becoming regulars.

1) Cost - Whether it is maps, printing sheets or buying adventures, costs add up pretty fast. This creates a barrier that you can smooth over, but it is definitely a barrier.

My store provides wet-erase maps for GMs to use and I have been building a library of flip-mats and pre-printed adventures for people to run off of. I also have taken on the cost of printing chronicles and sign-ins.

2) Time - It takes a number of hours per week to prepare to run an adventure. That is significantly more 'homework' than just showing up and playing. I've had people drop out of GM bootcamps because they didn't feel like they'd had enough time to read a quest.

Whenever I can, we talk about adventures that a new GM could run a few weeks in advance. Sometimes engaging in a plan can help.

3) Jargon - There's a lot of information that needs to be translated into a usable form in an adventure. Stat blocks are utterly dissimilar from character sheets. Where to find information for a given scene. How to parse information for the GM only versus information that you might need to give to players. There's a lot of skill development here that takes quite a bit of effort on the part of a new GM.

We do semi-regular GM bootcamps where players who are potentially interested in running games can break down a quest and talk out how to best prepare for running it.

4) Repeatability - New GMs are almost always uncertain about their ability to run games, but they often also have issues with how to prepare particular adventures as well. Telling those same GMs who have stepped up and tried running an easy non-repeatable adventure that they cannot grow more comfortable with a scenario and still get rewards is a really tough conversation. AND it has been made significantly harder with the introduction of Replay points.

I currently try to offer easy to run, repeatable adventures to new GMs, but I haven't found a satisfying way to have that conversation so far. Some sort of system of GM replays would make it much easier for new GMs to build confidence with material they are comfortable with.

*** Venture-Agent, Online—VTT

For me, as a GM, the biggest barriers to doing more GMing are time and funding. The new Org Play Foundry scenarios do a great deal to help with finding the time, but they make it that much harder to wrangle the funding.

I don't love suggesting this because I think it's great that people can play for free (if they own the books), but a subscription model could go some ways toward evening out the cost imbalance. Say that players and GMs both pay the same reasonable amount per month and in return they receive access to all available org play Foundry scenarios and in-game access to all legal character options. An additional subscription could grant you the same access for APs. In this way, the players are contributing to the cost of staging the game just as much as the GMs and because the pre-built scenarios are included, the bar to them becoming GMs themselves is that much lower.

Still not sure how I feel about this, but it seems reasonable.

5/5 5/55/55/5

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Repeat after me. Close enough for state work. Close enough for state work... Ohmmmmmm....

Grand Lodge 4/5

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Purple Dragon Knight wrote:

You want more GMs?

Tell players to stop arguing with GMs and crack down on broken character builds.

There's zero point preparing a game for a group of folks to have fun only to see one player show up and solo all fights in one round.

This is why I left the PbP community.

I have no time or energy to spend on people that don't make the game fun for everyone at the table. I'm as guilty of bad attitudes as the next, but when someone comes at me confrontational about rules, it makes it that much harder to be graceful and explain where I was coming from.

Build a better community by rehabilitating the bad elements or cutting them loose.

Dark Archive 4/5 Venture-Captain, Online—VTT

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spacecat11 wrote:

I know Paizo is providing Foundry support for new Starfinder scenarios, but I'm still using roll20 and by far the most time consuming thing about setting up tables is taking a screencap of each NPC and monster from the pdf, moving that screencap to the TokenStamp website to make it a circular image with a transparent background, then uploading that to a blank character sheet.

I can't overstate how helpful it would be if all the pdfs had a page at the end that was just "here's circular tokens of monsters and NPCs that you can print out and use with your flipmat, or upload to a VTT."

I'd strongly recommend giving Token Tool a try, it has an option to import a pdf and then scroll through all images as drag and droppable onto your desktop (or whatever file you like) whilst retaining the alpha channel assuming the image has one (so you avoid that pixelation around the edges).

Silver Crusade

Alex Speidel wrote:


And if you're a player who's GM-curious, what would get you to the other side of the screen? How can we support you as you take the first steps into running games?

Help with the 'technical' side of things. I've run many in-person tables during the LG and LA era but not Pathfinder. However the Google Slides, maps, etc. are the real stumbling block for me since I've never used them except as a player.

Silver Crusade

Colin_Mercer wrote:


Support from the players. When I first try to GM in Silicon Valley Org Play, I have to deal with essentially 6 strangers. Luckily, they're all very kind and supportive of their new GM, and we had a great time. Just like if you throw a "CR 1" orc barbarian with butchering axe to new players will scares them away from the game due to the horrible experience, same thing goes the other direction. Don't throw a summoner, optimized magus ,or worse a Shadowdancer and his incorporeal summoned Shadow at the new GM. Those things are stressful enough to handle for veteran GMs even if the players are good players, and will be a nightmare to the new GM. Brings simplier characters, be nice and communicative, and had fun.

Oh, let them GM scenarios/module they played before as player helps alot, since they will be familiar with the flow of the game and its story already.

I would suggest a 'new' GM, even if they're experienced as a player, should start with Quests or low-level tables to get acclimated to the difference between running and playing.

*

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Alex Speidel wrote:
How do you recruit & keep GMs?

By offering at least minimum wage. (Seriously.)

*

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Purple Dragon Knight wrote:

You want more GMs?

Tell players to stop arguing with GMs and crack down on broken character builds.

There's zero point preparing a game for a group of folks to have fun only to see one player show up and solo all fights in one round.

What broken characters? How does one even make a broken character in PF2e? I didn't think it was possible.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

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Out of respect for the goal of this thread, I will not speak examples here. That can be done in another thread.

Horizon Hunters *

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As a player who is relatively new to RPGs (only since the summer of Covid) and is even newer to Pathfinder, I am interested in GMing and have already mentioned it to the local Ventureperson (I don’t know her rank offhand).

My biggest concern is exactly the concern I had when I first GMed for my kids, and later my friends. As a brand new GM, I felt that the adventure was vague in ways that forced some degree of adlibbing and/or improvisation. Not knowing the world or all the rules, that’s intimidating. I’m also an engineer, whereas my friend who is our regular GM was an English major and he has done this for years.

I would *love* to see some adventures written with a lot of handholding for new GMs. Even giving guidance and/or examples of how to deal with players not following the script the GM is reading would be an immense help. I don’t know how practical it would be, but it would definitely make it easier to onboard potential GMs who share my fears/concerns.

Grand Lodge 4/5 * Venture-Agent, Texas—Houston

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Magus Tata wrote:

As a player who is relatively new to RPGs (only since the summer of Covid) and is even newer to Pathfinder, I am interested in GMing and have already mentioned it to the local Ventureperson (I don’t know her rank offhand).

My biggest concern is exactly the concern I had when I first GMed for my kids, and later my friends. As a brand new GM, I felt that the adventure was vague in ways that forced some degree of adlibbing and/or improvisation. Not knowing the world or all the rules, that’s intimidating. I’m also an engineer, whereas my friend who is our regular GM was an English major and he has done this for years.

I would *love* to see some adventures written with a lot of handholding for new GMs. Even giving guidance and/or examples of how to deal with players not following the script the GM is reading would be an immense help. I don’t know how practical it would be, but it would definitely make it easier to onboard potential GMs who share my fears/concerns.

I like this idea. As a long-time 1e GM just starting to pick up 2e, it would be nice to see adventures designed and tagged for those learning to GM the system.

Currently, I have to look through available 1-4 adventures and rely on the reviews to see if a given adventure takes a more experienced GM or not. Having some scenarios designed around introducing GMs would alleviate that.

4/5 5/5 **** Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro

The Contrarian wrote:
Purple Dragon Knight wrote:

You want more GMs?

Tell players to stop arguing with GMs and crack down on broken character builds.

There's zero point preparing a game for a group of folks to have fun only to see one player show up and solo all fights in one round.

What broken characters? How does one even make a broken character in PF2e? I didn't think it was possible.

Its easy if you cheat.

TOZ is right though Im not entirely sure how managing 1000's of people doesn't become messy.

I need to think more about the question because its kind of personal.

Wayfinders 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ***** Contributor

I would like to encourage moving the discussion of Problem Players to its own thread, so I created one.

Hmm

Second Seekers (Jadnura) 1/5 5/55/5

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Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

I cut my GMing teeth running non-Org Play games for friends first; by the time I realized that Org Play was "A Thing," I already had enough confidence in my GMing that I only had to worry about the additional layer of Org Play stuff, rather than "how to GM" plus the Org Play layer. That was a lot more manageable, and learning how to GM with friends has many advantages over learning how to GM in front of vague "game night" acquaintances or, even worse, complete strangers on the internet, at a convention, or what have you.

From that perspective, and taken with what a lot of others have said above (namely, it's great if you can have a more experienced GM/mentor there for first-time GMs, mentoring is really valuable, etc) maybe there should be some kind of formal program or mechanism that allows prospective GMs to dip their toes in the GM Pool in a safe, friendly, forgiving, environment, with a "low GM complexity," ideally free, scenario, before they're thrown into the deep end? I guess, to keep the swimming analogy, I'm suggesting a formal "GM Shallow End" program of some sort?

(May write up another post about GM motivation and special boons, widget counts, idk. Stars/Novas/Glyphs are a complicated subject, lol.)

5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Online—PbP

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Shadow Dragon wrote:
Alex Speidel wrote:


And if you're a player who's GM-curious, what would get you to the other side of the screen? How can we support you as you take the first steps into running games?

Help with the 'technical' side of things. I've run many in-person tables during the LG and LA era but not Pathfinder. However the Google Slides, maps, etc. are the real stumbling block for me since I've never used them except as a player.

Well, we as a community can definitely help with that. I have a "PBP GM Handbook over on the Roll for Combat discord server that is about 80% generalizable that I am planning on making available to all PBP lodges in a general format soon. I can provide that, as well as answer any questions you may have.

Please send me a DM here on the paizo forums, or pop onto any of the discord lodges and DM be (I am bigrin42 everywhere.)

5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Online—PbP

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Magus Tata wrote:

As a player who is relatively new to RPGs (only since the summer of Covid) and is even newer to Pathfinder, I am interested in GMing and have already mentioned it to the local Ventureperson (I don’t know her rank offhand).

My biggest concern is exactly the concern I had when I first GMed for my kids, and later my friends. As a brand new GM, I felt that the adventure was vague in ways that forced some degree of adlibbing and/or improvisation. Not knowing the world or all the rules, that’s intimidating. I’m also an engineer, whereas my friend who is our regular GM was an English major and he has done this for years.

I would *love* to see some adventures written with a lot of handholding for new GMs. Even giving guidance and/or examples of how to deal with players not following the script the GM is reading would be an immense help. I don’t know how practical it would be, but it would definitely make it easier to onboard potential GMs who share my fears/concerns.

Have I got a deal for you!

Soon we will be starting up a PBP GM School where those topics and more will be covered, as well as giving every "student" a chance to run a short bounty or quest for the others, with guidance and mentorship. It is geared towards PBP, but the majority of topics will apply to GMs of all game formats.

If you have questions, please send me a DM here on the paizo forums, or pop onto any of the discord lodges and DM be (I am bigrin42 everywhere.)

5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Online—PbP

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Arutema wrote:


I like this idea. As a long-time 1e GM just starting to pick up 2e, it would be nice to see adventures designed and tagged for those learning to GM the system.

Currently, I have to look through available 1-4 adventures and rely on the reviews to see if a given adventure takes a more experienced GM or not. Having some scenarios designed around introducing GMs would alleviate that.

Have I got a deal for you!

Soon we will be starting up a PBP GM School where those topics and more will be covered, as well as giving every "student" a chance to run a short bounty or quest for the others, with guidance and mentorship. It is geared towards PBP, but the majority of topics will apply to GMs of all game formats.

If you have questions, please send me a DM here on the paizo forums, or pop onto any of the discord lodges and DM be (I am bigrin42 everywhere.)

5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Online—PbP

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Warah wrote:

GM-curious player here. I second #1 & #2 from eddv's post above.

...

Despite all that, I feel guilty only being a player. It feels like I'm only taking and never giving, so I am planning to run my first PbP game soon-ish. Wish me luck!

Good luck!

If you ever have questions about the PBP side of things, I am happy to answer as best I can. please send me a DM here on the paizo forums, or pop onto any of the discord lodges and DM be (I am bigrin42 everywhere.)

3/5 5/55/55/55/5 *** Contributor

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When my husband and I first started playing PFS at one of the venues that Pirate Rob discussed and Painlord wrote that linked thread about, the “everyone GMs” culture was very clear to us right away. I think I played for over two months before I had the same GM twice. Dennis and I had both GMed at home, so we stepped into GMing for PFS pretty easily. When that culture is present, it does a lot on its own.

Wayfinders 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ***** Contributor

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^ This. It's hard to implement it if you don't do it from the very beginning, though. Your first thought as a new Organizer is 'Who can I recruit to GM with me?'

4/5 5/55/5

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I like to think there's a lot of players out there who would be curious to try GMing, but are held back by the perceived hurdle that is moving to the other side of the GM screen.

There can be several reasons for being apprehensive about GMing, but I hear 'I'm not ready' a lot. Which, from my perspective is sad, because I've had some of my most memorable games with GMs who were just running their first few games. I put it down to a bit of experimentalism, which gives exciting new twists. It's like having that fresh new teacher in class instead of the grizzled veteran.

I'd have a couple of reflections for you on-the-brinkers out there:

There's different play styles, and there's different GM styles See what works for you. Do you want to focus on storytelling, do you want to go into sandbox mode, or keep a bit more structure? There's a bit of back and forth there to see what works with you and your players.

You don't have to do everything Being a GM doesn't mean you have to be the centralized source that does all the work. You don't have to know every feat of every character at your table, as long as you're willing to accept the occasional 'Yes, but my character has trapspotting' and ret-con a roll.

You don't have to know everything There's a lot of lore out there, and more books than you can hope to learn by heart. Make up your own stuff. Let players tell you their stories. My personal quirk that I like to use in games is 'what kind of music would they have on this world', which recently gave me the undead easy-listening trio 'The Carrior Crooners'.

You don't have to perfect from the start Participating in a game is about having a good time, so that's a good first goal to set. Did you finish the game? Was the story clear to everyone? Did you enjoy it? I like to think about what I can aspire to, so rather than being intimidated by the GMs that are better than me (there are some really great GMs out there), I would just ask 'what did I like about what they did', and see how you can improve your style in a way that works for you.

Also, if you need some coaching or encouraging to words to bring you to the dark side (of the GM screen), just drop me a PM.

Second Seekers (Ehu Hadif) 5/5

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Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

As a GM, the thing that got me started was access to a cool boon that was only accessible via GMing. The thing that kept me GMing was the support I got from my local VO. It’s a lot though, so I don’t know if there’s a better way to support VOs/Organizers (map discounts would be great or somehow licensing the maps to the VOs while they’re active).

I will say that increased ACP is not much of a motivator for me.

1/5

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✰✰✰ GM

@Warah, you are an awesome roleplayer/"life manager!" Honestly, with your personality and skill set, if there was one person I think who could come up with something that sounds feasible on the spot, it would be you!

@Colin, you are an absolute Rules Guru! When I have the pleasure of playing a game you run, I enjoy the "gentle control" you exhibit. You make the game run smoothly with seemingly little effort. And when you include the expansion potential you offer into untapped markets, you are an asset to this community and potentially to Paizo as a company (if they could understand what you could potentially provide)

I began GMing to:

⛹ Give something back to the Organized Play Community
⛹ Desire to "lift my game" to the level of many of the excellent GMs that had run for me
⛹ I thought it would be satisfying and fun (for MOST of my players as well!), once I worked out how to do it half-decently.

Incentives

✰ I'd like to say the "stars/glyphs/novas" don't motivate me, but they do. I had an Organizer Friend say to me years ago, "Once you get that first star, you'll want more."
✰ Encouragement from other GMs and players was critical. Even today, I am not across the rules as much as I'd like to be, but believe strengths in other areas of my GMing more than compensate for this weakness.

Barriers

⛔ One component of GMing is people management, which comes naturally to some people, but not to others.
⛔ For some, the thought of constantly being the centre of attention for hours, combined with the pressure to provide a fun game is a real problem.

Remedies

✔ Encourage players verbally to GM, with specific examples of what it is about the fledgling GM that you think will make them a good GM
✔ Have organizers provide honest, POSITIVE, tailored feedback on the GM's first game or two. My local meatspace VL at the time pointed out aspects of my GMing that players loved, which I had no idea about!


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The thing that got me to start GMing was realising that I was struggling to find games running at times that worked with my timezone so I decided to help do something about it and start GMing myself. Another factor was giving something back for all of the game people had run for me. A big factor in what keeps me GMing is a desire to help support the community. I'm very much a PFS1 player, so doing what I can to help retain a healthy community around that system is something which is important to me.

I think initially the biggest deterrent for me to start GMing was the work required to prepare and run a game. Especially as I’d not GMed before, so all of my experience was as a player and I didn’t have any visibility of what went on behind the scenes, what different GMs did to prepare a game, build the table etc… . The prospect of actually running the game once it was prepared was less of a worry.

When it came to first dipping my toe into the GMing water, picking a simple, straightforward, low level scenario which I'd already played was a big help. As was making sure I had a few friendly faces who I had played with plenty of times before at the table. I think it’s important that new GMs know that they are not expected to run the game perfectly or to know all of the rules. I'd like to think I'm a reasonably experienced GM now, but there is still loads of stuff I don’t know or get wrong. One big asset GMs have access to at their table is the knowledge of the other players around the table. If you're not sure about something, chances are there is someone at the table who is able to help.

Another thing which is a big help as a GM is all of the shared resources out there, form helpful guides, to prebuilt tables and pregens. So anything which can be done to highlight the availability of those would also help. One thing I've seen deter new GMs is working out the mechanics of how to prepare and run a game. For example with online games: How do you build a new table? How do you extract and size maps? how do you fill in and distribute chronicles sheets? What is a 'normal' workflow for preparing to run a scenario? For most of these I ended up coming up with my own process by trial and error, but access to guides and examples of how other more experienced GMs do this would definitely seem to be a great way of demystifying it for new GMs.

In terms of other things which would help keep me motivated as GM, getting to play sometimes is definitely important! Another area where I would like to GM more, but feel things don’t really work for me, is volunteering to GM at major cons. It’s something I enjoy doing, and I’d like to do more than I currently do, but I personally really struggle with the move back to GMs being assigned which scenarios they run, rather than getting some degree of choice.

As regards GM incentives, while they are not the primary reason I GM, getting access to GM exclusive boons is definitely a nice perk. While getting vouchers for running at cons is also very helpful in terms of offsetting the cost of buying scenarios to run for people at other times.

1/5

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@ Mike...R, I really like your laid back/we’re here to have fun style. Your honesty/upfrontedness (yes, that’s a word where I live) is also appreciated.

And all through this, by the way you deftly manage personalities, derails, rules, etc, players remain aware that YOU ARE THE MAN!

Dark Archive 4/5 5/55/5

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I did try and craft my scenario list for 1E scenarios at Gamehole Con this year with GM input we've got, so Mike if your looking at helping with a bigger convention in the future let me know, we've still got room if you want to join us in Madison and play.


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@Yours is mined - Thanks! Its always good to know that players enjoyed themsleves. If all of the players at my table enjoyed a game, then I'm a happy GM!

@Davor Firetusk - Thanks for the offer! Unfortunately, as I'm Europe based, its probably a bit far for me, but definitely appreciated. However, that does remind me of another thing which helped with getting into GMing, specifically the availability of different formats in different places for running games. In my case running games online via VTT was the best fit based on my personal circumstances, but for others face to face games or play by post could be an easier option for getting going with GMing. So for folk looking to start GMing its certainly worth looking at the different options available out there, perhaps starting with one that works for you initially while you find your feet and then broadening out.

4/5 *****

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Joel Hagar and I wrote the official VO handbook with sections on Game Master Support including recruiting and retention.

Also has a massive section on dealing with problems.

Grand Lodge 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Lieutenant, New Hampshire—Merrimack

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Doug Hahn wrote:

Joel Hagar and I write a VO handbook with sections on Game Master Support including recruiting and retention.

Also has a massive section on dealing with problems.

Here to make another plug for Doug Hahn and Joel Hager's work. I have so many bookmark's to Doug's work and there's no reason to reinvent the wheel. I encourage people to reap the benefits of their work!

Institutional knowledge is a powerful tool!

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