When I first started gaming, not quite at the dawn of time but definitely a ways back, I was in awe of Game Masters. Whether they were good or not was beside the point, they were the masters of the game. They knew the rules backwards and forwards, brought the world to life, and kept all the wacky, fickle players in line following some semblance of plot. Theirs was an arcane and incomprehensible job that I never thought I would ever be worthy of even attempting. As far as I was concerned, that was impossible. No way in hell was I GM material.
Obviously, something changed between then and now, but it wasn’t necessarily an easy or a quick shift. For me, it took the persistent but gentle(ish) prodding of a particular gaming friend along with a growing understanding of what I liked in a game and might translate into enjoyment for other players. Every player to GM transition is going to be as unique as the people involved, but that sense of insurmountable barrier between player and GM is unfortunately common. Many players have told me they couldn’t possibly run while new GMs mention how hard it was to take those first steps in running a game of their own. Maybe some people fall into it easily, either out of necessity or desire, but it’s not as easy for the rest of us.
Beyond the confidence needed to run, there are the rules and the prep. Race statistics, attribute distribution, initiative order, encounter creation, monster abilities, combat resolution, damage and death, equipment stats, and so on. Even when you see the GM pick up the rulebook to look something up, it still feels like they know the rules better than you ever will. Phil recently wrote a great article on how to approach a game system for the first time, but if it’s your first time ever GMing, it’s a little scarier. I started playing with AD&D and Champions, so I was completely intimidated. Maybe I could get a handle on the character creation rules, but the rest was an overwhelming mountain of data I felt I HAD to know before I could run a game.
So how do you get past that barrier to entry between player and GM?
For Potential GMs:
Simply put, it takes time and determination. For me, I had been playing long enough that I’d played with some really good GMs, but I’d also played with some really awful ones. Those awful ones eventually start to make you wonder whether or not you could do a better job. How could I complain about poor GMing if I had never even tried to run a game of my own? There’s also the push that comes from wanting to play a certain type of game. A married couple I know both really enjoy military games and Cthulhu games, but their fix on those games at conventions. Eventually they said to heck with it and dove into GMing side of the pool. Now they both run the games they love at various conventions.
Ultimately, it can only hurt so much to give it a try. Find a game you like, gather together some gaming friends you trust, and run it. You can read all the GMing advice out there, but you won’t truly learn how to be a GM until you just do it.
For Experienced GMs:
If you’ve been running games for a while, it’s easy to forget how hard those first, tentative steps into GMing can be. Consider taking some time to encourage and nurture the potential GMs among your players. Unless you’ve got a bit of an arrogance problem, your players learning what it takes to run a game can only help you. Gaining an understanding of what it takes to actually prep and run a game will create a new appreciation for all the work that you do. You’ll also be cultivating additional GMs in your group to help alleviate burnout and give you the chance to relax and play on occasion.
Whether you’re nudging the newbie GM into action, offering guidance on the best game for them to run, or providing feedback and constructive criticism on how to improve their games, you’re a vital resource in helping create the next wave of GMs.
There’s no one perfect or correct path for becoming a GM, but I know it was the support and encouragement of the GMs around me that lead me to where I am today. Hopefully I can pay it forward with a nudge or two of my own towards the next generation of GMs.
The biggest problem with starting as a GM is that almost all games out there don’t really do anything to explain how you run a game. They tell you how combat and skills work and then expect you to figure everything else out by yourself, as if it were completely obvious. If you are simply playing “go into the dungeon, kill everything, and sell the treasure you find” that can be enough. Though even that type of game can be greatly enhanced with a few simple tricks to make not everything in the dungeon instantly attack, add alternative routes, and make some monsters hate each other. But even that little effort is almost never made. If you want to do anything with a story and NPCs, you’re usually completely on your own.
Fate Core is the only game I’ve ever seen that even tries to explain gamemastering. For anything else, the only resource I know are the blogs of GMs who figured these things out over decades of trial and error.
In indieland, there are several good systems that explain how to GM this game. They have to be more clear, because they know that you’ll fill in the rest with “how you always GM” if you don’t.
Dogs in the Vineyard is my primary go to: here is how you run the character creation session. Here is how you build an interesting town and wind it up like a clockwork tiger. Here’s how you play NPCs, why you play them passionately, and how to resolve the mechanics. For a first time GM, there’s a clear procedure for everything.
Similarly, GMless and games with non-standard GM roles are usually quite clear. A Penny for My Thoughts has specific read aloud text to teach the game, as does Kingdom. Primetime Adventures is very clear about what the producer preps, how the system resolves, and what you need to look out for in a scene.
If you’re intereste, but no one in your group has GMed (to model your efforts upon), those games have good text to teach you what you need to do. Try ’em!
I’m just throwing in my agreement with Scott: there are games out there with great GMing sections, and even if you’re not going to GM those particular games, you can take a lot of the advice with you. As much as Dogs is Scott’s primary, mine would probably be Apocalypse World, where the GM instructions are pretty codified as part of the rules of the game itself. Outside the actual game of AW, though, the philosophies behind the rules are still great pieces of advice. “Be a fan of your players” is one I come back to again and again.
That might be cheating though, since both Dogs and AW are by the same guy. 🙂 In a more classic sense, though, I think the latest edition of D&D has done pretty well in this regard.
Well said!
GMing can be intimidating, no matter how much experience you have–there’s a new group to read, new rules to master, so many ways to fail. When the alternative is not playing at all, though, even a novice GM looks good.
I was fortunate to start GMing round robin when I was in grade school; at that age, it’s common to move from curiosity to enthusiastic evangelism. We didn’t have high expectations of each other, which is a great, low stress way to begin.
On Wednesday, we had a new GM cover a table while an old hand drove in after a work delay. While the new guy ran the end of a combat, we old hands commiserated quietly on the sidelines about reining yourself in. It’s too easy to give in to habit and snap out opinions and judgments when someone else is running, to keep the game moving. It’s much better to be there when they’ve got a question, but support their authority at the table. There’s plenty else they’re juggling!