Category Archives: GM Advice

Of course I know what a GM is. . . What I am trying to figure out, is how to explain how to be a good GM in as little space as possible because I’m rewriting the GM’s section for 3rd edition right now. I have a few thoughts on this so I thought I’d share them in advance.

It’s easy to watch a GM do a good job and understand what a new GM is supposed to do. It’s somewhat hard to coherently explain what a GM is supposed to be doing on paper. You can use the tactic of listing things a GM shouldn’t do and by explaining what a GM isn’t, what’s left should be the right thing. Like chiseling away at a block of stone to get a statue, you could remove unwanted ideas and traits until you have what you want. But that’s not what I’d like to do. I’d like to explain what a GM is, not what they aren’t. Why? I don’t know, I just like to do things the hard way.

I started thinking about it yesterday and I realized that even the name “Game Master” really gives the wrong idea. A good GM is not the master of the game, any more than the president of the United States is master of Congress. A good GM adheres to a system of checks and balances and a starting GM is probably anything but a master in the sense of skill.

What about other terms, like referee and arbiter? I’m not fond of these titles either because they explain part of the job but not nearly all of it. They’re too passive, like the players are going to duke it out and the referee is there to make sure it’s all above the belt. No, it doesn’t begin to describe the job.

When it comes down to it, the original term Dungeon Master makes sense. That player ran the dungeon, they were “master” of it. Except DM doesn’t make sense for any other game and it makes less sense in the current kind of play RPGs see.

A Definition

Misnomer titles aside, a GM’s job is actually not that hard to describe. It’s their job to present rewards to the players and assign costs to  the rewards. The rewards can be money, allies, new toys, new abilities, experience, knowledge or anything else that the players might find motivating. The cost can be just as diverse. In fact a GM should have several costs in mind for various ways the players might try and get the rewards. There are often multiple potential rewards in a game and there are even more costs for each of them. A starting GM will most likely do best with one reward or a few and expand the potential rewards for their games as they become more skilled at handling the game.

Balancing the value of the reward and the cost of reaching for it is crucial to keeping players excited and interested in the game. When the cost is too great, the players will not reach out for them. If the reward is too great, their progress in the game will be too rapid and the excitement of a challenge will be lost.

This description works for linear scenarios or for sandbox play, so it holds up well. But it isn’t complete yet. This is the 30,000 ft view, someone being introduced to being a GM needs some more detail.

Tools

A GM has a host of tools to accomplish their goals. Each tool should play some role in delivering the reward or exacting the cost. The tools I can think of off hand can really be used as either the cost or the reward and it’s usually in using the tools that a GM can make their worst mistakes.

Story

This tool is the narrative that the game forms overall. Playing out character roles is the main way that all players make the story. A measure of control to the story is one very common reward and it is usually thought of as good form to give the players as much of it as possible. By default there is a very low threshold for a player having control of their character and the actions the characters can take.

The main way a GM uses story as a cost is by giving the characters challenges to overcome. There are other story based costs such as losing the potential for a story arc but in almost every game there will be story based challenges that the PCs will try to overcome. Challenges may use other tools like NPCs or spending resources but the other tools are present because of the story (hopefully).

What can go wrong? – If a GM takes away control of how the players will deal with challenges or unnecessarily chooses the challenges the PCs will face they are said to be “Railroading” the players. The idea here is that a train cannot turn off the rails to go to a different place. If a GM constructs a story too tightly so that the players make no (or very few) meaningful choices they are Railroading.

NPCs

Non-Player Characters are all the characters that come into the story and are not one of the Player Characters. The GM takes on the role of these characters.

NPCs can take the form of a reward when they are friends and allies. They take the form of a cost when they are foes.

What can go wrong? – Most commonly, a GM may make a “Pet” NPC. This NPC is used like they were a PC but has the power of the GM behind them. The pitfall here is that the pet NPC will often steal the spotlight from the players, denying them agency or control in the story. There’s really very little point in playing the game any time NPCs become the deciding agents of a story.

Rules

The rules of the game define what a character can and cannot do. They are not usually a reward or cost in themselves, they are frequently the delivery system. To make sure rewards and costs happen fairly the rules have to apply consistently. Although many games give the GM license to alter the rules as they see fit, players may view them as their safety net that protects them from an all powerful GM. In our survey on game design, people universally wanted the GM to stick to the rules.

There are some circumstances when a rule could be a reward or cost. When a GM gives a bonus or a penalty to rolls they may be rewarding or exacting a cost.

What can go wrong? – Often the rules are the rules and a GM may feel the only way to reward a character or have them pay a cost is according to the written rules when in fact many of the rewards that an experienced GM will give his characters have more to do with story. On the other end of the spectrum a GM may not like the results the rules present and will skip them entirely to get the result they want. This can make players uncomfortable if they can no longer predict what will happen in the game because the GM decided to ignore the normal order of things.

Resources

Resources are things like hit points, experience points, money, food, fuel, vehicles and so on. They can be spent to overcome challenges or possibly to trade for other rewards the players want.

Getting access to more resources is an obvious reward while running low on or out of a resource is probably the most common cost the GM will use.

What can go wrong? – Being too stingy or generous with resources can spoil the feel of a game. Having to little in the wrong setting will be frustrating to the players. Having too much of some resources can remove the tension of a story, such as, having too many hit points can make a fight just an issue of outlasting an opponent.

That’s my thoughts on GMs at the moment. I may be making a glaring omission or two. When you read through this, was there anything that popped out at you as wrong? Is there a situation that you could think of where this would give a novice GM the wrong idea? Let us know in the comments please!

There are many kinds of problem players out there. Me? I was one of them. I memorized rule books and when my group wanted a stat on an NPC or how a power worked, they would hand the book to me and I would flip the book open to the exact page. In most cases I probably knew the information anyway but they wanted to see it for themselves.

I did this for twenty one games we had actively been playing. (I find it hilarious now when I forget rules that I wrote.) Why did I do this when I wasn’t the GM? One reason was that I just really like mechanics, I like well made systems. So to understand the ins and outs of a game is fun for me. (Sick huh?)

That’s the happy side of my player behavior but I would go further than that. I would also use my knowledge for evil, I was a rules lawyer! So why did I create chaos and strife at the table because of the interpretation of a rule? Why did I argue about minutia of words?

The first reason is that I was immature. I argued about a lot of things, I debated subjects endlessly. An argument was like a mental wrestling match to me and I enjoyed winning. All I can say is that it was probably the testosterone. How does a GM deal with that? One, talk privately to your rules lawyer about it. If it is a form of aggression that’s causing the arguments, then having a public debate is going to get them in a fighting mood. I can’t guarantee a calm discussion privately, but it should be at least better. Explain that the arguments are stopping game play and that hurts the other players.

The second reason was tactics. I would string together information on how “best” to beat an enemy. When the GM didn’t stick to the rules as I had understood them (sometimes it was a difference of how to interpret a single word) it would invalidate a strategy that I wanted to use. Frequently I’ll admit I was actively trying to break the system to my advantage. On occasion I just wanted to use an exploit to do something cool. This makes a GM’s job a little harder, you want your players to be able to do cool things because. . . it’s fun. You don’t want them breaking the game so that it can’t be played anymore though. In those cases you have to plug the hole with a house rule. Explain to your rules lawyer why breaking the game is bad. One successful tactic that defused me in the past was the GM saying that the exploit could be used this first time but it could not be used again. I would get the reward I was looking for, the GM would plug the hole, nobody’s perfectly happy but it’s usually good enough.

The third reason was fear. It’s scary to have a GM wield unlimited power over you. I looked to the rules to be a kind of safety blanket that would protect me from unreasonable rulings. You have to remember we were teenagers and the GM was not always guided by the high principles that we’ve come to think a GM should be. A rules lawyer may be reacting because they feel they are being treated unfairly. They want to play the game, they just don’t agree that how it’s being played is fun. In this case the GM should think about maybe changing the atmosphere that they’re setting the game in. It may be that the GM is going for dark and gritty and the player wants heroic.

When it comes down to it, rules lawyers like systems. They like to have a protection and a tool they can use to influence the game. They’re probably a bit power hungry. As a GM, you may want to have a grievance system for you games. Let them write their complaints down and at the end of the game read it to the group. Vote on if the grievance should change how the rule was interpreted in the future. The grievance is the only chance the player will have to argue their point, they don’t get to argue it during or after the discussion. This is to avoid the discussion becoming heated.

I haven’t tested the grievance system, I don’t have any rules lawyers of my own at the moment. If you do, test it out and let us know if it works.

In a some games, not all characters are created equal. This can be a source of variety, giving the players the ability to play high power campaigns at times and low power campaigns at others. Each one can have it’s specific appeal. I find that when starting a new game players often like to try out the high power characters first and then slowly migrate to the more nuanced low power characters.

That works if the players pick all of one kind, either high or low. Sometimes it can even work if the group is split 50/50 between them. You can have the characters work as two teams, one defending the group and the other running the soft skills that are needed to solve a puzzle. Or the high power guys punch through a barrier to deliver the soft skill guys to carry out the main goal. But what happens when the group is truly not balanced? This usually happens when a very small fraction of the players (maybe only one) picks low power characters. Even if you do segment the plot to spotlight the characters, the small portion of low power characters will feel marginalized because they are ineffective throughout most of the game.

I have this problem at the moment. We made a group of PCs that were heavy hitters of a Raider, a Tank Pilot and a Train Operator. One player does have a Field Scientist which is a low power character, but none of the other characters cover the scientist’s skills so she can still be useful. Then another player joined the group with a preexisting character, a Scout. The problem is, a Scout is not very useful to this group. In a low power campaign a scout on a motorcycle is fast and is very useful for tracking. In this situation, the combination of the Raiders Delta and the Train make the scout’s motorcycle almost laughable.

The low power characters have to have a place throughout the game, not just a spotlight where they make one critical roll and then their purpose is complete. In the last game, I was able to get everyone out of their vehicles (willingly) because there was no direct danger to them, they were engaged in a puzzle. This works occasionally, but if all the games are like this, the high power characters will start to question why they have all this firepower if none of it will be useful. Characters have to be used in the way the players are expecting them to be used or they will get disgruntled.

The Protection Principle

One way of handling this is the protection principal as was mentioned before. One group of characters protects the other, but the protected group needs to be free to finish a job. This can work in either direction though, the low powered characters may have to protect the high powered characters so that they can stay high powered. In The Artifact, this could come in the form of vehicles having their computers hacked by an outside source with a Comm Officer protecting the vehicles.

In my case, the scout character is free to work while the others are busy piloting. By putting the characters that are busy in danger in a way that the Scout can help out with makes the player feel that their character is valuable. In this case the Train Operator’s train is the opening for the Scout to act. The inside of the train is large enough for the Scout to be able to use his skills and be valuable.

To have the protection principle work, there has to be a task which will take time to carry out. A group of characters can work through the task while the others defend them from distraction.

The Separate Paths Principle

Another way of handling a power disparity is to have two or more tasks that need to be accomplished each task is best handled by a skill set that is only available to some of the characters. This can be difficult to set up properly and can become boringly formulaic if not handled well. It also can make the player group feel less like a team if they don’t see their efforts as playing off each other. Lastly it can be a major disappointment if one group fails and blocks the other from succeeding.

That’s not to say this principle should never be tried. It can be exciting and a nuanced way of structuring a game. If the player’s separate paths reinforce each other, perhaps even allowing one group to occasionally bail the other out with a success, it can keep the group feeling like a team.

The Unprepared Principal

This is probably my signature method for challenging the player characters. I’ve often overused this principle to challenge the players so I need to back off from it a little.

This principle puts the PCs in a situation where the skills that they have are not well suited for the task at hand and they have to work around the problem. When done properly the challenge looks like the player’s skills and abilities will carry them through but at a certain point they become less or totally ineffective and a different set of skills that the characters do not have (or are not very good at) are needed to finish the task. This makes a situation that looked like a cakewalk suddenly much more challenging.

The reason I like this method (too much) is because it allows the players to be effective at what they are good at but then challenges them in ways they are not effective. Players can feel unstoppable one moment and hard pressed to complete a challenge the next. This often leads my players to generalize their characters and not specialize. This may be a good thing or a bad thing, dependent on your point of view. The main strength is it also allows everyone to contribute because no one is especially good at the task at hand, making the plot open to anyone to be the hero of the day.

Those are what I have in my bag of tricks, what do you use? What have you had a GM use on you?

If you’re like me, on occasion Friday sneaks up on you. I completely forgot to get a post ready for today but you know what, I’m okay with that. There’s a time honored tradition among GMs called “It’s the weekend already and I forgot to think of a game.” or something similar. Sometimes, we think that all of our games have to be these great masterpieces when, you know what? A lot of times the players just wanna roll some dice and get some XP. Last week we sat down to game, we didn’t know if we wanted to play The Artifact or Steampunkfitters. We settled on an Artifact game, the gang rolled up some characters and just for fun, the players asked me to decide what their characters classes should be. I picked a few characters type that I thought the players would enjoy but I tried to give them something a little different than their usual fare.

Then came making a game with those slightly unusual characters. I actually used an idea I wrote about here on the blog, so I guess I was pulling out one from the archives and not just coming up with something on the fly. I had to make the quest significantly simpler than I had at first intended because we spent some time making characters. In the end, I threw a little combat in there, at first just a warm up of a few E-Suits and then gave the players a real challenge of going up against a Demolisher. The starting characters were quite competent (really good rolls this time round) so I wasn’t too worried about them being able to handle the challenge. The “Treasure” ended up a fun reward too (see the earlier post for more).

What Went Right?

It was in general a fun game because the players know the setting and they were able to succeed in a bunch of tasks that they know are not easy. This gave them a feeling of accomplishment. The game was fast, I didn’t get bogged down in details which is my Achilles heel. The science stuff was all technobabble anyway and so I handled it all with character skill rolls which they were equipped for (One of the characters was a Field Scientist).

If There Was To Be a Point

The point I think I’m going for here is, other than an interesting treasure, there wasn’t any kind of twist in the game. There were no tricks and that was fine. I’m not going to win any award for the game writing but the players still had fun. Two of the characters are now insane but the players are fine with that. So the formula if there was one, would be a quick game with a little bit of challenge.

It’s been said before but it’s worth repeating. Simplicity and a little head thumping can be very satisfying.

So when it comes to doing it wrong, I was having trouble with Play by Post games. I could not wrap my head around how the game should be run. Pacing that you come to expect in a face to face game is non-existant. Involvement by players can be spotty because they start out wanting to play but life throws a curve ball and they disappear. System mechanics that have always worked intuitively in a face to face setting completely fall apart. I wasn’t able to find a handy dandy guide to fix my PBP woes but I stumbled on some answers, one of my players gave me some more and the rest got stitched together by some of the PBP players on RPG.net.

So what’s the result?

#1 Slow it down

It sounds obvious but your play style has to fundamentally change to accommodate the pace. Be prepared to write more than you would just say. GMs have a little more experience with describing scenes at some length so it may not be a problem for the GM. Players on the other hand can be short and to the point because they’re used to having to state what they want to do quickly which is not a consideration in this situation.

#2 Players get to narrate more

This is really vital to a good game. The players have to have the freedom to narrate their own plot elements. As long as it doesn’t contradict what has already been stated, doesn’t take away another player’s agency  (including the GM’s over NPCs) and is reasonable, it should be allowed.

#3 Forget about initiative

With the time scales involved and the possibility that a player could suddenly be unavailable can bring an initiative order to a screeching halt. In PBP initiative order is who posts first.

#4 Take it easy on rolling dice

Rolling dice is slightly problematic. Players should just assume they should roll for their actions even if they’re confident of passing. Nothing brings PBP to a screeching halt like a player saying “I’m going to hit him”. Then the GM saying “okay roll” and the player not posting for the next two days.

#5 Have a post frequency

At the beginning of the game have everyone agree to check and post in a certain length of time. Usually a once a day is good. If a player slows down the game, give them a friendly warning. If it keeps happening, let them know you’re going to have to proceed without them.

#6 Use a static defense difficulty

This one’s going to play havoc with a lot of systems but it makes sense when you think about it. A static value is assigned to defense, now a player can roll and know if he hit the NPC without waiting for the GM to roll. He can then figure out damage in one post instead of three or four.

#7 Let the players know the stats

Be more open about stats and rolls, this way they can apply the rules themselves instead of waiting on the GM’s ruling. This greatly speeds play if you have players that are willing to heft some of the burden of the rules.

#8 Color code

Color code your IC and OOC conversation. I use dark blue for OOC conversation and regular black for IC discussion.

What other methods do you use? I’m finding that Steampunkfitters rule system fits these criteria very nicely.

Player: I’m going to light my torch.

GM: You look for your torch and realize that it’s missing.

Player: What? You can’t do that!

GM: You just got sucked up in a tornado.

Player: So?

GM: And then were dumped into a river with raging rapids.

Player: So?

GM: Don’t you think something could fall out of your pack?

Player: No way, I always tie my pack up securely. That’s not fair.

There are certain things that traditional RPGs just don’t handle very well. One of those things is losing equipment. Even the smallest coin seems like it should be safe no matter what happens because it’s written on the player’s character sheet.

Now usually it would be bad form for a GM to arbitrarily declare that a player just suddenly doesn’t have something. For one, it impacts the player’s agency. They feel like their influence on the game is reduced and even if they understand why the story is benefited by loosing an item, it still seems wrong.

What if the GM has a great story that would be based on an item being lost and the players trying to retrieve it? What if the item is effecting game balance and it really needs to go away? What’s a GM to do?

The Bargain

The nice thing about being a GM is that you can make your own rules when you need to. You don’t want to disregard rules, but players don’t usually mind a new rule especially if they think it benefits them.

One way to structure a rule to have a player lose something is to have it happen because of player agency. You will allow the player to choose to lose an item. It’s just that you don’t have to present it that way.

Player: Arg! I missed my roll by 1! The dice hate me!

GM: I’ll give you a plus one to that roll but it means you’ll suffer a disadvantage. (Trying not to grin too broadly)

Player: Wait, what does that mean?

GM: You’ll have to find out. It means you’ll pass your roll though.

Now the success of this bargain depends on how important that roll is. The player knows that an open ended bargain with the GM is trouble but if they really want success they may bite at your bait.

The next important step is to really give them a nice reward for choosing to go with your bargain. Narrate how passing that roll ended up being important to the group. This way when you spring the result of your bargain on them they’ll remember their success and say “Well at least it was worth it, I did save the group.”

If the goal is that you just want an item to go away, it may even make sense to say that it was damaged when the character used the bonus to their roll and that’s what made the bonus possible. Maybe they swung extra hard and the sword broke, they fired too long and the barrel of their gun melted, they passed their defense roll because the attack hit the item and destroyed it or whatever works with the situation. Be creative with the situation, this is an open ended opportunity to make something memorable happen.

Experienced or paranoid players may need a bit of reassurance to take the bait. They know that things can go wrong when they aren’t defended by the normal rules of the game. Don’t be dishonest about it, try to let them know the stakes without giving away the game. If they reject your first offer, sweeten the pot a little. Give them something else, like a situation that goes really well for them in a fight. If this second attempt fails, it’s likely that player is just spooked by the idea and will not take it.

One way to fix that situation is to show why they’d want to take the bargain with a different player. Offer a similar bargain to someone else, play up how useful taking the bargain was and give them a reasonable disadvantage later on. It doesn’t have to be losing an item, in fact it may help to come up with several different somewhat serious impacts that the player that took the bargain could have to deal with. They have to be reasonable though or no player will ever take the bargain again.

How would you deal with this situation? Have you ever needed to have a player lose something? Would your players take up a bargain like that? Let us know in the comments.