Klaatu

I've gotten a lot of great feedback on the Interface Zero play-through and the episode about getting started with RPGs I did with Lostnbronx.

People have told me that one of the biggest blockers to getting started is knowing what to do as GM.

Now, I've read lots of rulebooks and GM guides, and it seems to me that most of them assume you've either played an RPG before, and so you've seen an example of a Game Master at play, or you've seen one on Youtube or Twitch. It's a safe assumption, but it's easy to forget all of those great examples under pressure.

So in this episode, Lostnbronx and I are going to provide you with some clear and direct instructions on what exactly a GM does.

The short version is this:

Tell the players where they are and what they see around them.

Listen to the players when they tell you what they want to do.

Tell the players the outcome, based on your privileged knowledge of the game world or on a roll of the dice, of their actions.

You loop over that sequence, and you're game mastering!

But that makes for a short episode, and anyway, there are details about the process that we can talk about to make you feel more comfortable with the prospect of deciphering a game world with your friends.

To that end, Lostnbronx and I have started a website dedicated to gaming! You should check it out, subscribe to our feed. We discuss everything game-related there, plus a little tech and all manner of topics of interest to geeks.

Lostnbronx

Right off the bat, it's important to understand that every GM is different. No two styles of running a game match completely, nor should they. And while there's no one correct way to run a game, there are plenty of ways to do it poorly. The GM wears many hats, but in my opinion, the most important job is to make sure that everyone has a good time. Your players are giving you an evening out of their lives. Next week they'll probably give you another. It's your job to make sure that time isn't wasted.

By definition, games, even role-playing games, are a form of entertainment -- like reading a book, watching a movie, or enjoying the circus. When you go to that, the GM is the ringmaster, presenting the show; while the players are both the audience, and the main attraction. The GM controls the world, the people, the monsters, the history, even the weather. The GM controls everything, in fact...except for the player characters. A game master presents the situation, but it's the players who decide what to do with that information.

Now, this is all pretty vague, and describing RPG's is far less informative than playing them. Considering this is a podcast, I encourage you to go back and listen to Klaatu's aforementioned "Interface Zero" episodes. These are excellent examples of actual game play. If you're having a hard time imagining how RPG's are presented and experienced, you'll appreciate those shows.

Now then, almost all games are divided into genre types: sword and sorcery; space opera; spies; super-heroes; and pretty much everything else. And I mean everything! If there's a genre of fiction and storytelling that you enjoy, chances are there's a game or game setting for it somewhere. The most popular style of RPG's out there are fantasy. Think "Lord of the Rings". Think "Harry Potter". Think of anything, in fact, because all of it is possible.

A staple of the high fantasy genre of gaming is the dungeon. Now, that term has two meanings in this sort of game: first, the usual meaning, of what amounts to the basement of a castle, with jails, interrogation rooms, storage rooms, and more. The other meaning refers specifically to a type of adventuring environment. Both of these are usually found underground, but an adventuring dungeon ma