As a man of gaming, the core of roleplaying branded into my upbringing now over a decade ago, I have seen gamemasters capture the attention of a flock of players with ease, spellbinding them and creating perfect atmosphere. I have also seen the direct opposite. Stumbling storytellers who fail to manage their pre-made adventure, turning the experience into a bogged down embarrassment for everyone involved. Noone wants this, least of all those of us who burden ourselves with building the world around the players. Now, I cannot say I am excellent at gamemastering, but nevertheless I thought I’d go over some of the things I think might make a difference. For some this may well help, or you might want to add to my own list of experience. Both are great, and input is appreciated.
Firstly, let’s look at two commonly used words for your chosen profession. Storyteller and Game master. Which one of these would you rather use to describe yourself? If you picked Storyteller, I would urge you to read the following.
A Storyteller, something World of Darkness among other roleplaying systems seems fond of calling you, is a person whom devotes his time entirely to telling a story, either on paper or verbally. He is the sole controller of his chosen fiction, and the directed work may well end up in book form or told to young kids around the globe. You are not a storyteller, regardless of what the books what tell you. Devoting yourself to storytelling in such a way that you are given this label is –negative- for roleplaying, as it means you’re directing your players, and while some may enjoy this lack of freedom, there are no players who will enjoy being told they cannot do something because of an arbitrary decision that they cannot.
A Game Master is the director of a game, as the word implies. He leads and operates from above, making certain all flows nicely, and that his players are all enjoying themselves in the world he directs. Note that storytelling is often a necessary aspect, but the proper way of doing so is to allow freedom, and thus the notion of calling yourself Storyteller is incorrect. A Game master’s job may be to kill the players, to send waves of mini baddies at them, to encourage their investigation of a crime, oversee a player character marriage, but his primary job is to entertain. If your players are not enjoying themselves, you’re doing something wrong, and there’s no shame in this. Every one player likes different things, and catering to everyone’s needs can be a tough task in itself.
Regardless, let’s get on with the show:
Railroading
Railroading is what most new Game Masters fall to by mistake, and it is the act of taking away the players’ freedom in order to carry on the adventure as previously planned. This is wrong. The only case in which it is not wrong, is when the adventure is built around the strict control of the Game Master, and the players know this from the start. In both cases, it’ll be near impossible for you as the overseer to predict every possible idea your players might have, and you will be faced with a time when they inadvertedly steer away from your plans. Don’t despair, and most of all, don’t say they can’t. When you start building invisible walls around the players, their irritation will build, and most players will stop having fun after they start getting shot down for the wrong reasons. Instead, build on their ideas! So they want to desert the convoy they’ve been assigned to help instead of following it around until the bandit attack you planned happens? No problem, go with it! The convoy will face certain doom, and the players might just get hired in the local militia fort to wipe out the bandits instead of following their retreat. Every plan is adjustable, and as many of my friends say, not one of them survive ten minutes with creative players. Never panic, and you will be fine. You can still lead them to the castle where the vampire lies, but if they don’t want to go there immidiately, that should be fine too. You could even create villagers that boo them out for shirking their duties, or begging them to end the blight upon their lands to further the atmosphere of a living world. Practice makes perfect.
Atmosphere
Some players are gung-ho dicemunchers, and scoff at the prospect of your puny descriptions, caring little for the cities that you’ve built, or the frothing mouths of the attacking beasts. Most aren’t. Even those that are will usually enjoy detail to some extent. No player will enjoy static roleplaying, or being bogged down by a three hour combat in which he gets to speak numbers once every fifteen minutes. Small additions of detail go a long way! The warrior hits his opponent for 26 damage? Describe him cleaving into the leg of his foe, crushing the armour beneath his battlehammer. Anything can bee spiced up with short, hasted descriptions, and will help make your game friendly to both you and the others. ”This one enters this square as a move action, and does a bullrush at Billy. 25 against AC. He misses.” – Though that is less numberspeak then most games can fall into, it can still just as well be described as; ”Another orc joins the battle from the rearmost door, buckling his shoulder down to send himself at Billy. A squeal of surprise exits him as he passes you by entirely.”
Of course, there are times when you will need to talk numbers, and don’t feel pressured to use explanations like the above all the time, but spicing it up from time to time will help, I promise. Atmosphere is important outside of combat too. Describe places and people that players pass by or visit, but don’t settle into the Storyteller category, as discussed above. Going into great depths and long monologues will bore all but the hardiest players, and they may as well read a book to get the same enjoyment. Still, a brief explanation of towns people they speak to is appreciated. Groups vary, of course. Experiment, and see how light of an explanation and immersion you can sink into your players and have them riveting for more.
Rule Discussions
There will be a time, unless you’re playing freeform RPGs, when someone in your group will say ”Wait, no, that’s not the way it is here.” And start leafing through his pristine laminated rulebook to show you how wrong you are. This is fine, as long as he doesn’t disturb the flow and enjoyment for the rest of you. Solve arguments over rules during set out pauses or after sessions, and either look up the rules at the same time, or let a player find it and calmly butt in to state the rule during, when it won’t be disruptive. You are not always right, and while anything you say goes, the players may not be enticed to play if you force your own rules on them without alerting them first. I make a habit of telling my players to note down whatever they disagreed with, and take it up when we’re not playing, whether that be a bathroom break, end of session, or pause for phonecall. If I was terribly wrong, i’ll compensate the players somehow, all the way from a retcon, or if it’s far too late for that, maybe that next guard decided that this was a good time to take the security system down for maintenance. If it was a minor issue, most players will be fine if you take note of the rules in the book, and either run with them from then on, or suggest you use yours for the future. (Magic rules in EON, fear my editing wrath.)
I feel this is getting long now, I might add to this in the future, and I implore others to do so too. Just touched on some basic things! SRM out.
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