Good GMing

[Joose]

Now that we have three active GM's (myself, pete and Pants) and another one on the way (Grimmie), I thought it might be a good idea to pool our resources on things we have learnt about effective GMing. It would also be good for players to give us feedback about what you guys like/dislike in general. Im sure the other GM's are of the same mentality as me in that if you tell us we are doin it rong in some respect, we wont take offence. Hopefully, either we will be able to adjust so things are better for you, or we will be able to explain why so you are happy with them.

At the end of the day, the aim of all this is to have fun, after all.

Brief, non-laboured points are probably going to work best. If things get into deep discussions on something specific I will probably split them off into their own threads to keep this one running smoothly.

I'll kick off then:

1) GM's are basically god. If you want something to happen in a certain way, it should happen in that way. If you have to fudge dice rolls or break rules to get to that point, so be it.

2) On the other hand, the point of a game is for everyone to have fun, so the GM has to put the enjoyment of their players slightly ahead of themselves. Remember, in nearly all games there are more players than GMs, so if the only one having fun is you, the balance is off.

3) Dont break too many rules. If you think a rule in a game is totally stupid, talk to the players about it, change it as necassary, then make sure everyone understands the change. If in doubt, dont change anything.

4) Its a game, not a simulation. You will never get a fully realistic depiction of everything, and even if you could it would be fucking dull to play. Abstractions are necessary to keep a game flowing.

5) Dont railroad players. Players should feel like they are in control of what they are doing. If they are flailing around not knowing what to do next, give them hints, but if they are about to do something stupid, let them. They wont do it twice (hopefully!) and some of the most fun RPG moments come from when things go fubar.

6) Prepare, but dont overprepare. If players are likely to go to a location, work out the layout of the place and put some basic stats together for it, but you dont need intricately detailed maps of every location ever, nor do you need full character sheets for every NPC. Indeed, if the npc is only ever going to be talking or something similar, you probably dont need stats at all.

7) Sort of following on from the above, have some pregenerated stuff for emergencies. Make some stat blocks for generic goons of varous types, so if you run into a situation where your players do something totally unexpected, you dont have to put together stats for things on the fly. That rarely works well.

8 ) Understand the maths. For instance, the shadowrun system works in such a way that on average one in three dice come up as a hit. So you can quickly work out average dice rolls: a dice pool of 6 will average 2 hits, for example. This can be tremendously handy working out how difficult things should be. Other systems will have similar tricks: work out yours, and work out what it means.

Im sure I'll come up with more. Feel free to chip in/comment/argue

[Dog Pants]

I've been writing a GM guide for SLA for... um probably years really. Much of it is SLA specific, but the intro is all about good GMing. Not that I claim to be perfect - I tend to fall down on Joose's point 5 by being stingy with hints - but I've been playing for about 18 years and GMing for probably slightly less. I still remember the mistakes I made back then. My tips (may overlap Joose, but I'd rather spew them in their entirity):

1. Remember it's about the players having fun. For you it's watching them follow your mouse-maze and seeing how they handle what's thrown at them. For them it's uncovering what you've written and finding out about the world you've created.

2. Pay attention to the difficulty level of the game. It's not an exact science, so the odd glitch is refreshing, but you don't want your players to be beaten down all the time and constantly on the bones of their arse, nor do you want them to breeze everything and have nothing to work for. However, some campaigns benefit from particularly downtrodden or powerful characters, just as long as the challenge level is about right.

3. Similarly, weight the reward by the risk. The first adventure I ever ran I stacked with magic items thinking I was doing the guys a favour. I wasn't, they got bored quickly as they didn't have anything to strive for. On the other hand give them enough so that the things they want to buy are actually within reach, even if not immediately.

4. As Joose said, prepare only what you need to. Players will inevitably do something completely different to what you expected, so you're wasting your time trying to prepare for every eventuality. You'll know which set pieces are guaranteed to be seen so plan them out, then put a few details in for whatever eventualities you can think of for your own future reference. Then prepare to improvise...

5. Improvisation is essential, and the less obvious it is the better continuity your world will have. This can only really be done by knowing your system, but as long as you know a little more than your players it should be okay.

6. The players are in control. The GM simply describes the world around them once in the adventure. I've played games where the GM wouldn't let us do things because it wasn't part of his written adventure. Even trying to do it subtlely is often blatantly obvious and guaranteed to put your players off.

7. Similarly, avoid deus ex machina. If the players do something crazy that might screw your adventure up, or themselves, just let them. magically correcting something with a thin explanation to cover up your mistake is worse than having them live with the consequences in many cases as it breaks the immersion and the players' feeling of control. If you do fuck up and are on the verge of accidentally killing off your entire party, make sure they never realise you've changed something.

8. Conversely, don't let your players wreck your campaign. Sometimes someone will want to generate a character that will completely fuck up the group dynamic. Make them play something else. Sometimes a player will decide to rebel and start taking the party down a path of self destruction. Feel free to throw the advantages away from that character and take them out of the game. It's you who puts the effort of writing everything after all. The distinction is whether they're doing something to deliberately spoil the game, or have just made a silly mistake.