Lessons from GMing for Children

I've mentioned elsewhere on this site that I'm a teacher and that I run the Dungeons & Dragons Club at school. Additionally, my school offers a program where the last week of school is a made into a variety of projects--mine has always been to play Dungeons & Dragons. It's a cool way to reach the students on a different level as well as to get a lot of solid gaming time in--the project week added up to 20 hours of game time in one week! And with all of this experience, I can tell you confidently that kids play in ways that are both similar to and different from the ways we learn to play it as adults. I'll consider both as I reflect on the lessons I've learned as a GM who's running a game for children. 

It's worth noting before we get started that there's a general timeline that most kids go through with tabletop games. Before 10, most kids like a whimsical story-based game--the imagination is more accessible than the rules for most kids, so this is where the emphasis is placed. Between 10 and 15 or so, the rules become more accessible, and the excitement of combat becomes more the emphasis. After 15, kids tend to start developing personal styles, placing emphasis on whatever elements of the game appeal most to them. I've generally played with kids at the middle school age, so they've wanted mostly combat. Which leads me to my first lesson:

Moreso with kids than adults, you need to compromise. Now, I've written elsewhere that there are things you shouldn't compromise on, your personal style as a GM most of all. But deliberately not giving child players of a tabletop game what they want has a different has a different impact: they haven't developed a complete sense of what the game(s) is (are), so you're their entire introduction to tabletop games, so a bad introduction could turn them off the game(s) altogether. And that's a heavy weight to carry, I'll admit, but that doesn't change the situation. When I play with kids who have never played before, I ask more questions than normal about what they want and expect. "On a scale from one to ten, how much fighting do you want? On the same scale, how much story? How much goofing around? What kinds of enemies do you want to fight? What kind of treasure do you want to discover? Do you want to be powerful heroes who can solve any problem, or heroes going up against things that challenge you?" All of these questions can help you tailor the game to what they want, and knowing that the game can be changed to fit their interests will carry them far in the tabletop world. 

One lesson I have especially struggled with has been adjusting my expectations and patience for rules-related misunderstandings. Veteran players and GMs know that having a beginning player at the table can slow things down; oftentimes with kids, everyone is a beginning player. That means that the slowdown is exacerbated by a factor of as many players as there are. Reading this, you might be thinking, "They're kids! Of course they don't know every rule." And I agree. What I'm talking about, though, is different. Playing an entire combat-heavy adventure and still not knowing how to roll an attack at the end is the kind of thing that happens often with kids and much less often with adults. But the flipside is very nice: playing tabletop games with kids makes me more patient with my beginning adult players, and I actually end up feeling grateful for my adult players. On this note, most kids are pretty curious by nature--when they don't understand a rule, it's a good idea to entirely explain the rule as well as all related rules. Being especially clear about how the many rules of games are connected is important so that a child can really grasp why things are the way they are, and grasping that is a step towards being a regular tabletop game player. 

One surprising lesson I seem to keep learning is that while many details about GMing change when you're playing a tabletop game with children, but the complexity of the story doesn't have to change. A specific example from the recent week-long D&D stint at school: I offered three base stories for my players--a combat-heavy dungeon crawl fighting magically-changing monsters, a story-heavy quest to enlist gods to help end a blight on the greatest forest, and a mixed story about breaking out of prison. To my dismay (but not surprise), the story-heavy campaign was not selected by anyone. But it ended up that one small group wanted the prison break concept more than the forest blight concept but still wanted a story-heavy game. And as we together developed a story out of the prison break concept, I noticed that I would veer away from complicated ideas like having people locked up for silly charges or corrupt guards working with prisoners--but when I'd include some tiny detail in that direction (like the guards' sadistic glee at making them fight animals in the cell as a punishment), they'd light up. Getting really into colorful details about the prison and the people in it was what ended up making the campaign more fun and memorable. And I was playing with 7th graders! They surprised me by enjoying a more mature approach to the story, and while they also littered their campaign with absolute silliness, the darkness also played an important role in their enjoyment of the campaign. 

Speaking of silliness, expect to lean into it. I have played tabletop games with about a hundred different kids in my career as a GM, and I've yet to find one who doesn't enjoy using tabletop games' ability to generate silliness. It's not just that kids want to be silly--it's specifically that tabletop games allow us to use our imagination, and one of the easiest and most fun ways to use our imaginations is to be silly. An example might help illustrate what I mean: I ran three campaigns in five-minute shifts for a week, and all three campaigns tried to do the same exact thing--tame an animal they were meant to fight. Now, in real life, if a bear came lumbering up to you in the wild and starting biting your arm, your first thought would likely not be, "I want it to be my friend." But the open possibilities of tabletop games meant that the characters could roll a Handle Animal check (we were playing D&D 5E) to befriend the animals they were fighting (bears, mountain lions, and hyenas, depending on the campaign), and while I could have said, "The DC for a hostile creature is so high that none of you could ever meet it," I could also have said, "Alright, roll for Handle Animal . . . you just barely rolled high enough. He's your friend now." And I went with the second option in literally every case. It's way more fun for a kid playing D&D to charm a creature and have a pet than it is to vanquish a nameless beast in combat. It's silly, but silly is what we're going for. And that translates to most campaigns--you can get a lot out of a bit of silliness. 

I've written before about the importance of fudging rolls, and this is especially true of playing with kids. Let's address this with an example of something that went wrong with my week of GMing for kids: in one of the dungeon crawl campaigns, I wasn't tracking player HP very closely, and an attack an enemy creature made perma-killed one of the kid's characters. He was distraught. He had fought for days only to die in the final battle, and his friends weren't being very supportive. If I had been paying better attention, I would have fudged the numbers on the damage and kept him in the fight. But it was too late. I thought quickly and took action. I had another enemy unleash vicious attacks on two other low-health player characters, perma-killing them both (one through a roll I fudged upwards to hit and do enough damage). With other characters down, the first kid whose character died wasn't alone. Then, I initiated phase two: the boss, a wizard with a time control amulet, reversed time to the beginning of the fight, looking for a "fair challenge." The party got another chance to fight more strategically, and when they overcame the wizard, there was no sense that they had accomplished anything less by needing another try. They were just excited to succeed. And I think that came out right in the end, but only because I was willing to massively fudge an entire encounter to keep people happy. 

This leads me to my final point: fun matters. I've written before about how fun is the most important thing in a tabletop game, and this is especially true of playing with kids. As someone who unabashedly calls roleplaying the height of tabletop gaming, I often aspire to impress my players with subtle characterization, interesting details, and complicated plots. But a child won't congratulate you on your careful portrayal of an NPC, nor will they remark about the moral ambiguity of your writing. That's the kind of thing that only comes from like-minded adults. What a child will appreciate--and what basically any player will appreciate is something that's fun. I've written ten one-shots based on movies (the first being Cats, which I'm going to discuss). The Cats one-shot is structured around two basic ideas: the players must use their wits and their cats' skills to pass through five houses, each guarded by another cat, and those cats sing songs I wrote for the one-shot when they appear. The house cat puzzles are silly and open-ended, and the songs are ridiculous and meant to get the players to laugh at/with the GM. Running it was probably the most pure fun I've ever GMed. There was no room for roleplaying--not of any serious kind, anyway. It was just pure chaos and silliness. And my players from that one-shot still talk about it; even with adults, fun is the only guaranteed way to reach everyone at the table. 

One last note: when you GM for other adults, you are not quite one of them (you are the GM, after all), but you're still a part of the group. When you GM for kids, on the other hand, you are simply not one of them at all. When I play tabletop games with friends, I sense that I am part of the group but filling an important role to help give my players a good game session. But with kids, you are 100% filling that GM role, and you won't be part of the group. This is important to know going in. I recommend thinking about how your role is to provide a good time in a service-like role before going into playing with kids. (This may in part be due to the fact that the kids see me as a teacher, which makes me very different from a peer, but I think it's generally true.) In any case, remembering that you as GM are going to be on the outside will help you to reach them and still understand your role in the game. 

There you have it--a reflection on GMing for children and the ways these thoughts can help you with your game. Here's something to reflect on: many of us start tabletop games at sensitive ages. I was sixteen when I started with D&D. I had a kind, patient, and funny DM who nurtured me as a player, and I know I wouldn't be the GM I am today without him. He knew every lesson on this list, at least unconsciously, and it made me a passionate player and GM. Wouldn't you like to know that you did the same for someone else (or many someone elses)?

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to know what class to play, religious beliefs by cultural group in my homebrew setting, and a dark time-loop adventure in an original system. Until next time, happy gaming!

Lessons from 15 Years of GM Notebooks

I've been GMing tabletop games since 2008, 15 years ago at the time of this writing. In that time, I have dedicated about a dozen notebooks to building and planning games (not to mention the many folders of online notes). I looked back over all of them in preparation of writing this, and I was struck by how my writing changed over the years. My early notebooks had lots of story ideas and logs of games--they mostly planned the part of the game that I was most anxious about, which was creating an interesting story. All these years later, my notebooks are almost entirely additions to and expansions of the games we're playing--I've become comfortable spinning a story along with the players, so I focus instead on personalizing the experience to each player. This sometimes expresses itself in the form of mechanics, like when I created custom classes for every player in a campaign, or in the form of tailoring the narrative to characters. But as I continued to study my notebooks, I noticed a few other things which I think bear some investigation. So below is a selection of the lessons I learned looking back at all those notes. 

One thing I know for sure is that you need to do what works for you. Some people like the structure of the many available guided notebooks that prompt you for various details as you write; others of us prefer to just write down what we know in the system that makes the most intuitive sense. Looking at my notebooks, I can easily see that I am the latter type. There is almost no discernable organization--I simply filled the pages in chronologically. This does mean I sometimes have to search for a specific set of notes, but it's functional for me in that I tend to build off my most recent work, which is conveniently right there. And I'm sure that some GMs are grinding their teeth thinking about this lack of clear organization, but it works for me. That counts for a lot. 

Another expression of this lesson is seen in the example I began with. My early notebooks focus on story ideas, and that was because I was playing with people who focused on wild fantasy adventure stories. I wanted to give them something good, so my notebooks were dominated in big campaign ideas, profiles on interesting NPCs, and exotic places they might go. This served my needs at the time. My early experience as a GM had been mostly goofing around. When I wanted to take it seriously, I needed to prepare something that would help, so I focused on the story elements. My first serious campaign was about a mysterious questgiver who commissioned the deaths of every important figure in the royal retinue; it would turn out later that the princess of the kingdom, a committed anarchist, was the questgiver, sabotaging her own kingdom for her beliefs. That story was something born of my work then, and my notebooks show how. I did what would serve my purposes at the time--I did what worked for me--and it created a great campaign. 

I also learned the value of good note-taking. Taking notes for a tabletop game when you're a player is pretty straightforward; you write down the major events that take place, and you might include specific ideas about your character--plans, special abilities, or other details. But taking notes as a GM is a massive undertaking. You need to track events, your plans, information about the world, game rules, and combat information, sometimes all at the same time. Things are bound to fall through the cracks, but you can still practice good note-taking skills. One practice I encourage is being more specific than you think you have to. I can't count how many of my notebooks have cool phrases that I have never been able to recall the significance of. An example of this appears on the first page of a mid-career notebook: "Uses reality-bending to make himself harder to kill." This was listed as the entire description of an NPC who was the BBEG of the campaign I was using him in. It's a cool idea, but I had nothing else to go off--just that he uses reality-binding in a way that helps him survive anything. I never got to find out what would have happened with this NPC because the campaign ended due to a pair of breakups, but I do remember feeling at a loss when trying to develop him. I just wasn't sure what my notes were communication. 

Another important factor in good notes is related to the first lesson: figure out the details that work best for you, and focus on taking them down. I have a weakness for remembering the consequences of the sillier parts of the game, like when players spend half an hour in danger so that they can have a picnic or when they want the narrative game you're leading to be a restaurant ownership simulation. My mind tends to process really strange things as too far-fetched to exist for real in the gameworld, so I often forget to note when one of these bizarre actions affect the reality of the story. I've learned as time has gone on to notice that and write it down so that my plans aren't actively foiled by some detail I've forgotten about. When I look at the combat notes I've written in my notebooks, I see that I write down the NPC combatants' vital numbers, notes about effects on combatants, and not much else. (I do usually give first names to every combatant, even in meaningless fights, to help me differentiate the various enemies. It's also pretty funny when the party kills some mythical creature and I say, "You killed Vanessa.") Because I focus on descriptions of combat in terms of how attacks miss or land, I need reminders of the numbers behind it, but I don't go beyond that. Take notes on the things you need, but try to stay focused on the game. 

Which leads me to my next lesson--it's worth taking a moment while GMing to take some good notes. This is true when something big happens, but it's especially true when you have an idea about how to plan for the campaign. Whenever you think you need to remember something, don't rely on your memory alone. I often say to my party, "Okay, give me a minute here to catch up my notes." And I've never had a player who was anything less than understanding about it. I've written before about how important it is to begin every session with a review of last session. This is something that would be totally impossible without good notes. I've noticed that the quality of my notes has increased since I switched to mostly digital notes--I find that I can type and edit quicker on a screen and keyboard than with a pen and paper, which is helpful when you're trying to return to the game quickly--but that's what serves me best, and you should do whatever you're comfortable with. And remember that since you've paused to take the notes, it's worth taking enough time to make it good notes. Pausing to write notes and not recording enough to make sense of later is a double loss--both time and information. Don't be afraid to take the time to be detailed. 

A very important lesson I learned was that ideas might not come to fruition when you first write about them, but that doesn't mean that you won't get to enjoy later on. The ill-fated and ill-conceived reality-bending NPC I talked about earlier came from a campaign with a setting I was still designing. I knew it was a big, sandy, mountainous island that would be at home in any western story, and I had designed one town in very specific detail--I still have the document profiling literally every resident of the town. But the other eleven settlements? The campaign died when they'd only been to one of them. I had ten practically blank pages in my notebooks. And they stayed blank for several years. Then, I got a new group together who was interested in my western setting, and I got back to developing the island's settlements. That island is now Ramsey, a setting I created along with more than a dozen maps, all in distinct styles. Once I had a group who was interested in the setting, the development became easier, and I had the ability (as well as time and space) to actually use it. And getting to see more than half of the island in the campaign was incredibly enriching--I loved getting to see people enjoy what I had created. 

On the other hand, not all ideas have their day. My notebooks are littered with notes about directions I thought would be interesting to take the story. In the margins next to my notes on major actions, I have often written in ideas--"Come up with x" will appear next to ideas. In some cases, I went back to these ideas and implemented them in the campaign. But not all of those ideas could work. And accepting that is hard, but it also frees us as GMs. When something we come up with doesn't make it to the game, we should remember that we got to share our other ideas and appreciate that success. Honestly, looking back at some of these notes, I'm glad I ignored them. I love the way my campaigns have turned out, and I wouldn't want to go back and fiddle with the way that they came out. 

One of my notebooks is almost entirely lists. It includes the list of names that became my NPC database, the list of taverns that became my Taverns and Barkeeps Database, the table which I would revise to create my Chaos Table, and my Wheel of Voices. It also includes organizational breakdowns of major groups in my homebrew setting as well as information about who's in charge of various settlements and what their values are. This type of information could be categorized as information that gives me partially generated content. My NPC database tells me who a character generally is, but it's up to me to decide how that applies in the moment given the story and the player character(s) they're talking to. My Taverns and Barkeeps Database gives me the same sort of information, but with the addition of atmospheric elements. The Chaos Table gives me an effect--I have to decide how to apply it. The Wheel of Voices lets me pick a distinct character voice, but I still have to interpret that into the character's personality. And the organizational information is far from complete--it's not thorough guides to every detail of a settlement, but instead just enough inspiration that I could improvise a story about the place. This all reveals that I'm a pretty improvisational GM, and I am again doing what works for me. But what I'm arguing for here is ultimately that knowing what you don't want to devote mental energy to and giving yourself an advantage there is really helpful. 

That's actually a larger point I want to make here. When you GM, you're thinking about roughly two dozen different things, and you have to constantly both take in more information, process it, and give back new input. It's mentally exhausting to say the least. I found that as I GMed, I would often stall out trying to come up with character names, business names, random things, and voices. Walking into a town I'd never developed made me anxious. And the reason is that I'm juggling those two dozen things, and coming up with a name for an NPC who will speak three lines in this scene and disappear forever is not energy I want to spend. So instead, I decided to pre-generate a bunch of material that I liked and just plug it in as necessary. Next time you GM, pay attention to the things that slow you down, and then do something that helps you deal with it more smoothly. The benefits will surprise you. 

The last lesson I'll mention is that things you write don't have to serve the function you set out to serve when you make them. I mentioned above that I created my NPC database to help me come up with names. Well, the names that appear on that list in my notebook (the same names that appear on the linked page) didn't originate there. I didn't start that list by sitting down and writing as many names as I could think of. I looked back through my older notebooks to see if I had any material I could use. In my notes on Ramsey, long before the second campaign would explore the continent, I had generated a bunch of basic governmental and leadership information about the towns. I created NPCs who ran the towns and the organizations in them. Each settlement had about 5-10 NPCs like this. Every one of those names was salvaged for the NPC Database list. That gave me about a third of the list done without real effort. I never could have known when I wrote those notes that the most important part was the NPC names, but that's what they became. Don't dismiss anything you've written--one day, it may be just what you need. 

There you have it--a variety of lessons learned from 15 years of GM notebooks. I hope that these serve you in your efforts to plan and preserve the fun you have with your party, and I hope that your games benefit from valuable notes. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why I originally wanted to become a GM, why I think philosophical conundrums make the best inspiration for a campaign, and home décor by culture in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

The 10 Most Important Lessons I've Learned as a Veteran GM

I've been running tabletop games for over half my life at this point--more than 17 years as of the writing of this article. And as any GM does, I have learned a lot from my experiences. If you're not learning from each session, I suggest spending more time in- and out-of-game reflecting on those experiences--it's the doorway to growth in the art. Of course, there is a shortcut: learning those lessons from people who know. That's why I thought that after over 200 articles on this site, it was worth investigating what I've most importantly learned as a GM. So here is a list of ten of the most important lessons I've learned as a GM in my time with gaming (in no particular order). 

1. Follow every idea for a while--you never know what you'll find. 

In a standard TTRPG experience, there are loads of crazy, half-formed ideas that get suggested, debated, and often enacted. Similarly, wild suggestions about what might be going on in the world get made frequently. It's tempting as a GM to try to work around these distractions--they're getting in the way of your story, right? 

I disagree. Following the trails of these little distractions are often why some players enjoy the game. The kind of bizarre shenanigans that arise in a common tabletop game don't come up in most other games, and some people come seeking that. At least get a sense of what your players enjoy before curtailing this kind of thing. 

In a campaign I ran that focused on these kinds of strange antics, I struggled at first to know when to keep things focused and when to let the players run wild. I quickly found that their style of play was best suited to me setting up a situation before they would try to take advantage of it. Most of our playtime revolved--much to my players' enjoyment--around these moments, and I wouldn't have been able to offer them that without allowing every idea to be explored as much as the players wanted. It's what TTRPG memories are made of. 

2. Treat the game as an emotionally safe space for your players (unless explicitly agreed upon). 

Playing a tabletop game, even without focusing on roleplaying and immersion, can be a vulnerable experience. I know that when I'm deep in character, the imagined violence around my character gives me a strong reaction by proxy. And even if you're not pretending to be someone else entirely, you're looking for a fun experience. For lots of different reasons, most of the people who come to tabletops are looking for a positive experience (even if there's tension involved). 

Nevertheless, there are GMs who tell stories of deep and disturbing trauma. I won't deny that exploring those themes in an imagined space like TTRPGs makes them more accessible, but I would counter that it's also not everyone's definition of fun. I've tried running really dark campaigns before, and my players balked and really engaging with it. It just made them uncomfortable. I realized then that I had been trying to make our collective game about a vision of art only I had, even though my dedicated audience (my players) were not on board. It made me start to put together the idea that game time is better safe--though that's doesn't mean boring. 

A safe space at the table merely means that you're not going to spring anything upsetting on your players. If I get the urge to add very serious or dark material to a campaign, I ask the permission of my players to do so before I develop anything. Asking questions like that have kept me from running into potential conflicts between players and from putting them in a position where their little free time devoted to fun turns into something else entirely. I also include under this lesson that there should be genuine positivity and respect between players--anything shy of that prevents the game from being enjoyable. 

3. Knowing the rules well and being a good GM are not the same thing. 

When I started my first D&D games as a fledgling DM--we played 3.5 back then, as it was the newest edition--I had basically memorized the rulebook. I would impress my gaming friends by asking for a topic in the Players Handbook and give them the correct page number to reference that topic. As a DM, no rules question fazed me, and the rulebook would sit quietly and untouched on the table every session. I was a terrible DM. My players quickly learned that if they dallied from whatever task my NPCs had assigned them, meteors would begin to swarm them or dangerous gods would appear to push the party on. I out-of-game demanded lots of behaviors of my party. It was miserable (at least compared to what I can do now). 

As I continued to DM, I began to gain experience and perspective. I gathered many of the lessons in this list. 4th edition came, and I stuck to 3.5 for a handful of reasons. 5E came, and I jumped aboard. I had to unlearn almost every rule in the Players Handbook and relearn new rules that were just similar enough to the old ones to be confusing. I still accidentally transpose 3.5 rules into 5E games. And none of that really changes the game experience for my players. They don't seem to care if I say something and correct myself a moment later. But following the lessons on this list does make a difference. They know the difference--even if they can't articulate it--between an engaging, dynamic story that allows for collaboration and a story that is set in stone before they ever encounter it. Rules familiarity won't fix that. 

I'm still on a quest to better learn the rules of 5E. They're not useless, but if not being entirely familiar with a rule means you need to look it up, that's not a big problem. Not knowing how to respond meaningfully to your players? That's a big problem, and the rules can't help with it. I know lots of GMs who focus so much on the rulebooks that everything else takes a backseat, and as I said in the second lesson, not everyone plays for that reason. Rules are meant to create a strategic experience, not define the way a story is told, so be more attentive to the game's experience than its rules. 

4. Homebrew for yourself first and your players second. 

I'm very passionate about homebrew, as the thirty (at the time of this writing) articles on this site about my homebrew setting and the twelve (again at the time of this writing) one-shots in custom systems on this site might attest. The thing is, though, I set out initially with something of the wrong idea about how to worldbuild. I thought that I was looking for ways to give my players the exact experience they were looking for. And while that's close to true of many other elements of gaming, it's not the case with worldbuilding and other homebrew material. If you build for your players, you'll always be either guessing at what they want or interrogating them about their tastes and trying to approximate that. Neither is a fun addition to a game. Instead, homebrew basically entirely for yourself. 

This may sound surprising, especially if you're a regular reader on this site. But I do mean it. When you homebrew for your players, you give them what you think they want. In the case of the example above, where I was first starting out as a GM, I gave my players what I thought they wanted: a classic D&D experience. I didn't change anything about the game, but I did add details to it to make it more vibrant, and to a degree, more mine. My initial worldbuilding foundation for my homebrew setting demonstrates this well. Very little changes a common notion of elves or orcs or fantasy life. But as I grew as a GM, I started to make my gameworld more distinct, more my own. Each of the other homebrew guides on this site are examples of this--they take big strides away from the average imagining of a fantasy world, even while staying within the genre. 

Imagine how you would deliver a worldbuilding detail that you believed in, then imagine how you would deliver a similar detail that you didn't. I imagine that you felt yourself selling one much more. This matters. When you're GMing a game and you have an opportunity to characterize your world, how you describe it will affect how the players feel about it. If it's a cool idea that you had and decided to implement, it will come off differently from an idea that you grudgingly adopted from a player suggestion. Of course, the perfect solution is making their suggestion your own while still respecting the player's inspiration, but your motivation should be first to create something you're proud of. And on the topic of tempering player desires into the gameworld . . .

5. You absolutely can and should modify your homebrew materials to give your players what they want. 

So you've created that awesome homebrew world according to your specifications, and now your players want something that doesn't fit. Maybe it's that they want a specific character race that doesn't work in your world (been there). Perhaps you have a player who insists on a backstory that won't fit your setting (done that). Or your homebrew material diverges from a common piece of game lore, and now your player's backstory is based on something you changed (had that happen, too). My solution is best explained via metaphor about computers. 

I keep my homebrew world in a special place in my mind. I mean, I do treasure it, but what I'm saying is that I think of it in a kind of vacuum. That's it's base state. When a campaign fits well within that world, I think of it as being edits to my base gameworld. Most of the campaigns I've run are like this--they fit into and respond to my homebrew setting, so they're canon in my game world. My first real campaign ended with a city destroying itself and starting over as a democracy rather than a kingdom, so that's the new reality of my homebrew setting. People who have played in my world in subsequent campaigns have heard stories of it. But sometimes, things don't fit together right. So those things take place on an alternate saved file of my gameworld. I can keep it exactly how I want it--consistent and canonical--and still make changes to offer my players what they want. 

Maybe this is a thing I'm just particular about, but I suspect that many other GMs have a similar feeling. I've run campaigns where players who said they were up to serious roleplaying turned out to be more inclined to silly shenanigans, and I got really frustrated. I had placed one such campaign in charge of a major piece of my world's history, and they ditched it at the first possible moment in favor of antics. So I made the campaign take place in its own vacuum, and I can preserve that moment in my world's history for another group or my own writing. And in terms of changing things for your players, go wild. I once created custom classes for each player so that they could each feel more in-control of their character and the gaming experience. The only limit to what you give them for character creation should be your own boundaries--how much time will you happily dedicate to homebrewing for them? 

6. Don't perma-kill a player character without discussing it with the player first. 

This is a sweeping rule, but it's an important one. It's also controversial in the gaming community, but I stand by it. It's possible through creativity and fudging rolls to never permanently kill off a player character. But it's not only possible--it's truly advisable. Years ago, when I was running the Eastweald campaign, Carric's player came to me after a session. He said that he had grown tired of Carric. We had had different hopes for where the character would go, and he wanted to start over. He said he wanted to kill off Carric. I considered things for a moment, and I asked him to give me a few sessions. I felt that Carric had grown complacent in his morality (a big deal as a paladin), so I offered him some evil powers. He accepted. Carric's player was engaged again, quietly orchestrating an attempted overthrow of the rest of the party. His player later thanked me (multiple times, actually) for convincing him to continue. I tell this story to make the point that even when a player does think they want their character dead, there are still superior alternatives. 

Perma-death is not fun as a player. I remember watching as my first two characters in D&D were tragically killed. My first was raised sessions later by the party, but the campaign ended there. The second was abandoned by the evil party. This instilled in me the beginnings of this lesson. It's not fun to get killed in tabletop games unless there's a mechanic that means continuing after a character's death. Just being out of the game is a forceful way for the fun to end. GMs who swear by unfudged die rolls in the name of fairness are missing the point. Players generally don't want to die, and killing off their characters is a huge change to the potential fun of the game. 

That's why I recommend talking to players. If you have a plot mechanism that requires a player to do, approach them and discuss it. I think it fair to give them the option to mull the decision over, of course first providing details on the new character to be created unless the player is leaving the group. Ask the player for their input on how the killing scene should go--this is their final moment, and they deserve a say (even if you don't listen since you have something better planned). I will reiterate, though, unless there's an out-of-game reason that you're killing a character, there are better ways to go about it. Magic exists in D&D and a variety of other games--you can always change the character rather than kill them. 

7. Every campaign deserves a little silliness. 

I went through a period as a GM where I was very committed to the idea that because tabletop games are capable of incredible art, then necessarily everyone must agree with me, and I set out to create very serious campaigns that demanded utter commitment to roleplaying and included dramatic scenes meant to surprise. It was good material, but hard to use. Even the most serious tabletop gamers don't want constant drama. Remember that tabletop games are just that--games. They're meant to be fun! And one fun thing that tabletop games seem to be made for is just being silly. 

I tend to get overly focused on my goals, and that carries over to tabletop games. When I'm building towards some moment--a plot twist, a big secret, a craftily-worded detail--I get tunnel vision. I will, sometimes whole scenes in advance, start pushing things along narratively to get to the moment. Sometimes I'm aware of it, but it's still hard to resist. And the times that I've slowed down and stopped pressing forward have proved instrumental. It always seems that as soon as I let off the story's reins, the party fixates on something and starts being really silly. They're course correcting. I made things a little too focused and serious to be fun, so they seek up something silly and light. And as I said with the first entry on this list, you want to allow that silliness to take hold. 

The thing that kept me from embracing the silliness initially was that I saw it as detracting from the other things we did in a session. But that's not the case. The silliness can and should be a part of every game in some way, and if it isn't there, then the GM might be suppressing it. Besides, most any tabletop player can tell you that the most beloved NPC are the silliest ones. The humor of tabletop games is truly important to players, and they latch on to reliable sources of that silliness. So don't steer away from it--embrace silliness in your campaign. 

8. Know what your dealbreakers are as a GM, and don't compromise. 

It's important as a GM to be like a flexible tree--you should bend to meet your players but never break from straining too far. I've been strained too far as a GM before. Years ago, I was running a campaign, and I carefully assembled a group of players. I'm particular about party building and group dynamics--I was cautious and exacting in crafting the party in question, and I was thrilled to see how everyone got along. But there was a hitch: one of the people I invited decided to invite someone I had never met to permanently join us. That person proved to be a challenge--they were sometimes hostile and made most of the rest of the group uncomfortable. My instincts at the time told me to ignore my own discomfort and try to be accepting. I regret that. As the campaign stretched on, we all accepted that game nights would be accompanied by awkward questions and aimless rants. It wasn't good, basically. 

What I learned then was that I have a dealbreaker: my party composition is very important to me, and it also affects my players. I should have simply said on the first session, "I'm sorry, but it matters to me a lot that I decide how the game runs. Maybe after we've gotten to know each other, we can talk about adding you later." Instead, I didn't recognize that I had a dealbreaker, and I compromised. People who were in that group still tell stories about how strange our group had become, and I also feel responsible. Had I been more direct about my own boundaries, the issue probably never would have happened. 

Dealbreakers like this can take any form. I know GMs who are especially particular about how players roll their dice. I know GMs who must have absolute secrecy about their planning and won't discuss the game with their players outside of play time. I know GMs who have incredibly strong opinions about things that 99% of players don't really think about. Whatever your dealbreaker is, don't think of it as a weakness. It may be frustrating to have, but remember: this is about fun, and that means your fun, too. Don't make choices in the name of the game that go against your fun or comfort. 

9. Focus on the people--otherwise, it's just writing. 

I mentioned above that I've penned a pretty ludicrous amount about my homebrew setting. I've also got probably six fully prepared campaigns at the ready. And from the player perspective, I have more character ideas than I have games for them. Maybe it sounds impressive, but I don't know that it is. Without other people around to play with each of these things, it's not much. It's a lot of nice writing, but it's no game. That's why, when I GM and play tabletop games, I try to make it as much about the people as possible. Without them, I'd just be writing another adventure that might not ever see the light of day. 

By "focus on the people," what I mean is that your preparation for sessions as a GM should most have to do with your players. I've written before about how to create challenges specific to your players, which is a big part of what I'm talking about. But it's also more than that. When I GM, I pay special attention to the reactions my players have. The things that make them laugh, the things that get them excited--I take note of these things. I have one player in a group I run who gets really excited when he can bring his silly character backstory into the game, so I try to include plenty of moments where he can add details about his earlier life. I have another player in a different group who loves to act bizarrely and get reactions from his party, so I try to regularly drop strange items around his character to fuel his shenanigans. This kind of GMing simply allows the players to get what they want from the game. 

Focusing on the people also means being aware of people's emotional reactions. Knowing whether a player is relaxed, tense, irritated, distracted, upset, giddy, or something else matters a lot, and it should affect how you GM. I remember years ago running Listen Check, an early D&D podcast, I had been building up to a dramatic confrontation between the party and a murderous, possessed monk who threatened and harmed them for sessions. In the torment that led to the climax, I was pretty wrapped up in the moment, but I noticed that one of my players looked genuinely upset--not just concerned in-game. I checked the other players. They were similarly on-edge. I decided to back off a bit and switch scenes to a player who wasn't with the conflict. When we returned, I offered a few subtle hints to bring the scene to a close faster. It was important to recognize that my players needed a break from the tension, so as much as I was pleased to be able to generate that kind of feeling, I also acknowledged that it's not pleasant to feel for very long. In all ways, focus on the people. 

10. Never decide the direction of the story without your players.

Although this list has been in no particular order, this last lesson is probably the most vital. I think that the ending of a campaign is, of course, one of the most important parts of the game. It's tempting to plan it exhaustively so that every detail goes off perfectly. You want to send your players off right, right? Well, sending them off right might mean different things. To me, the best definition of sending your players off right means giving them as close to complete control over the ending as possible. This is often our goal: to give them complete agency over the game. This is especially true of the ending. I can anticipate that some GMs are protesting--"But the players won't tie everything up neatly!" You're right--of course they won't. But that doesn't mean you don't get a neatly tied-up story. My solution is simple: let the players control the final session, which you follow up with an epilogue that ties everything up. (I did this with the mystery campaign's finale, for your reference.) Then you get player agency and a nice, satisfying ending at the same time. 

I know it's tempting. You could just script a couple of events for the ending, and it would all be so smooth . . . Except there's only two ways GM plans go: either the players ignore it right away, or they follow it up to the end and derail at the last second. That means that your ending plans either don't apply or they force the players into something that they didn't choose. Neither option is good. Go into your final session the same way you went into your early and middle session: just see what happens with minimal guidance. And this is true even of the rest of the campaign. I ran a campaign early in my GMing career where I devised 20 devious assassination contracts for my players. They killed one target, kidnapped another, and then turned on the questgiver. If I hadn't been able to follow my players instead of guiding them, the whole campaign would have been lost. 

So don't push the players' story. Remember that it's their story as much as it is yours, arguably moreso theirs. There are generally more players than GMs in a game, so they already have a greater share of the game that you. And while you may have more power, that doesn't necessarily mean that the players will be happiest if you fully use it. The longer I've been a GM, the more I have recognized that my players are happiest when they're operating on only minimal input from me. They want to explore the world and create stories and experience something fun, and adding more order to the story they're interacting with rarely fixed the problem. Don't decide for the players--forging a path through the world is literally what they are there for. And to go even a step further, I'd advise giving the players as much power as you reasonably can--their investment will be worth it. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: parenting by D&D culture in my homebrew setting, a guide to my homebrew Underdark, and how I connect with my characters. Until next time, happy gaming!