How many RPGs have you run without having played it first?
It can feel like a chicken and an egg conversation, but obviously someone out there read the book and ran a game without ever having played it before. Sitting beside my bed are a pile of books that includes a couple of novels, a couple of essay collections, and at least two RPGs I want to run where I have no (or limited) experience playing. There’s a little voice inside me panicking at the thought of running them without prior exposure and is envious of the GMs that have done just that.
The majority of the games I have run have all been games I played first. At some point during playing the game, something clicked and I knew I could handle running it or I at least wanted to make the attempt. Some of that was from extensive experience, like Pathfinder. Others are from something about the game falling perfectly aligned with the type of games I enjoy, like Doctor Who:AITAS or Monster of the Week. Reading the rules helped hone my skill with those latter games, but I already understood the core concepts.
One of the RPGs sitting beside my bed is Fate Core. I’ve had a mixed experience with Fate so I feel it’s a game that rises or falls based on the skill of the GM. In the hands of a bad or even mediocre GM, the game can become a very frustrating experience. On the other hand, a good or great GM can give you an awesome game that will stick with you for a while. Unfortunately for me, my good experiences are not sufficient to let me feel comfortable diving into running it just yet. I see what it can be, but I haven’t quite wrapped my head around how to get there with the tools it provides. Before I run it, I’m going to have to really dig into the book.
The other game sitting there is Night’s Black Agents. I’ve only ever played a Gumshoe game once and it was a fun enough game that the system intrigued me. Beyond that, I’d heard good things about this particular game from some very vocal advocates. When I run this one, though, it’s going to be all on me. I’ve never played it and no one else in my group has the book. Everything I’ve seen about the game says it’ll be a great fit for my group, but running it from scratch is an intimidating hurdle in front of me.
I can actually point to one experience where I went from zero to running a game just on the game’s materials. This summer, at GenCon, I had volunteered to run games for Cubicle 7, but most of the Doctor Who sessions were already taken. As a result, I was asked to take on running the newly released Lone Wolf Adventure Game, based on the choose-your-own-adventure novels by Joe Dever.
At first, I was terrified. Even though I had never heard of the books, they had a strong fan base with a huge nostalgia factor. Since I was getting access to an early release of the PDF, I couldn’t even count on someone else to run it for me first. Luckily, once I dug into it, I discovered it’s an easy system that’s good for beginners and designed to capture the feel from the books. The first time I ran it, a playtest for some local friends, I didn’t do a particularly good job, but it did teach me what I needed to know about the game. The subsequent games I ran at GenCon were all successful and I got some positive responses from fans of the original books.
It’s not going to be easy for me to wade through the books of the two games I want to run, but it’s where I have to go if I want to bring these games to the table. Basically, I need to become the chicken if I want this particular egg to hatch. Okay, maybe that’s a little too dorky, but you get what I mean.
So have you been able to make the leap from reading to running? I’m curious to know the variety of learning styles among other GMs.
I agree that it really depend on the games, some feel very familiar and easy to run based on past experience. Many of the F20 games come relatively naturally to me since I played them so often. I barely read the rules before GMing a games of 5th and it was still pretty fun.
But for some other systems, it more difficult. I especially agree with you on Fate. I have played and even GMed some Fate games and I still have trouble with it. I found that it not just me as a GM but also the players that need to be at their best. If my players are tired or had a bad day they don’t contribute as much and the session often fall flat. Alternatively, even if I am just doing ok or haven’t planned much material if the players are on fire the games just roll.
Players not on their game can definitely bring a game down, but if the GM isn’t there, it doesn’t really matter what the players bring to the table. I think if you’ve go the GM holding up their end of the bargain and at least a couple of players into it, the game will go okay.
Have you tried running Fate gain, or have a plan for what to work on when you try it again?
One thing that has been a HUGE help for me is a dry run. I sit down with three-four pregenerated characters and run through several encounters. While it certainly can’t model the table experience 100%, it helps me find out what I don’t know.
I’ve used it quite a bit with homebrew systems, and found some bugs that I was very glad to know about before bringing it to the table. Not that there weren’t further adjustments needed, but at least I caught some of them beforehand.
That’s a pretty good idea. I’ve heard of making up characters for, but I hadn’t thought to put them through an encounter. It makes a lot of sense, though. 🙂
I dunno, maybe it’s just because I grew up in the boonies and more or less live there now, but having someone show you the ropes on a new game sounds like a wonderful luxury. I think D&D and Pathfinder and other really common d20 games were the only ones I really got to play before GMing. (And to be fair, most of those I’ve never GMed, either.)
Back in the day, when we bought a new game (and we did all the time, several of my good friends and I were compulsive game buyers) we never knew a person who’d actually played the game before. You just dug in and tried to figure it out.
My favorite example was just post-college, actually a bit after that time. The guys I’d been playing D&D with wanted to play Amber, and they knew I liked Roger Zelazny. I read the rules, created a character for myself just to see how character creation worked, and then helped them create characters and dived into running the first session. That first session was easily the most fun I’d ever had RPGing, and I think the players loved it too. Everyone was enthusiastic enough to come back the next day and play for another six hours.
See, I knew your type of GM existed. 🙂 I’ve been lucky in that I live in a fairly populous area with a wide variety of gamers. I’ve also been able to get pretty good exposure to different games going to conventions.
It sounds like you’ve got a solid handle on going from book to table. 🙂
I too was always in the habit of running games from the book; I was usually the person who was spending the time dreaming of the next system.
These days I obsess less about that games that I haven’t run yet, probably because there are so many games that interest me. The lack of focus hurts a bit; I used to read the book through a couple of times before the game, and would often do the solo-fun part of GMing using the book as reference. These days, I tend not to obsess about a game or world months in advance… though I am scheming about my next game. It’s a good feeling!
When I was a kid and first into RPGs, there weren’t a lot of players. As a result, I was usually the one that got the GM duties, so this is my normal experience: see a game I’m interested, sell some folks on it, play. It might run rocky the first time or two, but most rules sets aren’t terribly different. The function is the same, so it’s variations on a theme. For the first few times, if I’m hazy on something, I fudge the rule to make it work.
Setting can be more of a trip up. I tend to be big on verisimilitude, so sometimes I find myself worrying about background — for instance, I was shakey on Victorian history when I first ran Space:1889 a quarter century ago, so I focused on adventures that wouldn’t require that knowledge ’til I’d plugged the holes. My pilot adventure for a Hollow Earth campaign I did the last two weeks is set in West Africa. I’ve never been there, but one of the players has…to one of the cities that came up on the course of play, precisely. My response to not having the knowledge base needed..? Brazen it the $&@# out and move on.
Like any good action movie/book/series, when you’re backed into a corner, introduce a cool action sequence. All is forgotten, fun is had, move to the next scene.
I’m definitely with you on the setting stumbling blocks. My players tell me I worry excessively about getting settings exactly right. Whenever I’m working in a real-world setting, I try and do my best to get regional or local aspects of that place right and get upset with myself if I screw them up. I’ve learned over time that you’re usually on solid footing if you can get certain pieces of flavor right and then just make up the rest.
get stuck in with a sympathetic crowd is my preferred method. My most recent ‘new system’ purchase was Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. Its one of (the?) least user friendly core rule books I have read: But it does have something truly magical in there that makes me want to play it. I am lucky enough to be part of a very active role playing club and so getting people interested in a new game is not too much work.
So I carefully selected a small group of players -(which included a process of two or three awkward conversations explaining that certain people who were interested would not be invited to take part in the play test…) and we got stuck in.
Everyone at the table knew it was going to be a bumpy ride, and that ‘game collapse’ due to a lack of knowledge was a real possibility and that was OK. As it happens it more or less worked, apart from one of the major core mechanics I got very badly wrong! Despite my error, the strength of the game still shines through. When time permits I will be running it again, with the correct rules this time, and with a more open player selection criteria than last time.
Thinking about it, this is almost exactly how all my new game systems ‘play tests’ go, including going all the way back to my first purchase of D&D!
Having players you trust and understand you’re trying something new is definitely an important aspect. I’ve attended cons where the GM is obviously brand new to running the game and I’ve always been disappointed. I either chose that game over another one or paid to be there, so the experience should be worth the investment. With your friends or trusted players, though, you’ve got room to try new stuff out without disappointing them too much. 🙂
For me, it is all about listening to actual play episodes of the game I want to run. This is what I did with Eclipse Phase before I ran it, I’ve never participated in the game as a player but I’ve managed it run it for several groups.
Another great option these days is to find a group playing on roll20 and see if you can sit in with them. The online tools for playing RPGs have gotten really sophisticated, and you can get a great feel for a lot of different games that way.
That’s actually a really good idea. There are plenty of ‘Actual Play’ podcasts and videos out there that can provide a good sense of how it’s all supposed to work.
For Fate, specifically, I recommend picking up a premade scenario and running it. Since it comes with pregens and a setting already built, you get straight to play and can make better informed decisions when you’re later building a world or city.
I’ve mentioned it a few times, but Dark Star is a great one-shot.
I have yet to run a game that I’ve actually played. Back home I was always the GM, dragging new players into the hobby. I just barely started playing D&D and Pathfinder, and while I’m having tons of fun I don’t like the system(s) enough to both learning all the little details and trying to run them.
Playtesting is good. In the absence of other players you could try using the Mythic Game Master Emulator. It won’t prepare you for the tone of the game, so for a game like Paranoia it would largely be useless. But if you just want to test your knowledge for knowing how to rule things in combat, it can be a great way to just experiment and see how things play out.
I usually use Mythic first and then playtest a game second. I have plenty of younger siblings who are more than happy to help.
I think having willing test subjects is probably a key ingredient. Siblings are probably a great help in that regard. 🙂
I think this is a really interesting article, since a lot of people’s responses to ‘how do I learn to GM?’ is either ‘play a lot of games’ or ‘just do it until you get better’. The former isn’t an option if you aren’t part of many roleplay groups and the latter is tough if you don’t have much confidence or find it hard to understand mechanics without playing them.
I get very nervous about running systems I haven’t played because I know mechanics are my weakness, but there are so many games I want to run. Right now, I combine my learning styles by reading the book, jotting down adventure ideas I get inspired by, making notes on the system so I have a summary sheet for the first few sessions, creating characters using the system and listening to actual play where possible.
Running a new system still frightens me quite a lot, but prepping myself as much as possible and accepting that the first session or two are going to involve a lot of looking up of rules is helping 🙂
That said, I did actually get my partner to run me a FATE game so I could see how it worked before I ran it, since my experiences of it had been so variable between GMs, and none of them had felt like the game was really singing for me.