Similarly, having the games suddenly make sense to you in a way is a transformative moment, and realizing that you want to try your hand at GMing can be very powerful. I believe that in that moment, there is a twin comfort with the game system (or game systems in general) and a desire to use your own voice to tell a story. With these, anyone is ready to be a GM. It may be a rocky start, but you're ready. You just need some practice, and you have to GM for that. But a bit of inspiration might help get you started, so below is an account of the moments that made me sure I wanted to be a GM.
I got invited to my first session of D&D (we played 3.5 back then because it was the newest edition) when I was in high school. I was given a pre-generated character--an elven monk who I named Algar Gwennodel--and I had my revelation as a player pretty quickly. I knew there was more, so I jumped at the chance to join a second campaign and labored lovingly over my new character. The rest of the party, all evil characters, left her to die in a fight, so I started over and made a character with dozens of colorful details, including sketches, backstory, and a profile on his most dastardly deeds (he was an evil cleric/wizard). I had realized the potential of D&D as a player, and I had come to get very comfortable with both the rules and using them to create my own story. I would later learn to go beyond that, but I would need the right groups and GMs for that.
I graduated from high school and went off to college. A few weeks into my first term, I got to missing D&D pretty bad. I asked around to see if anyone had a game going, but I found only other people searching for games. I realized that the only way I could play was if I started GMing myself. I invited a combination of friends and people I'd met who were looking for games. Literally every one of them had never played. So with my one Players Handbook and my well-rehearsed memory of the rules (I used to sit and re-read the PHB over and over so I would know how to work within the rules), I taught 53 people to play D&D 3.5 in my freshman year, playing three or four times a week in groups of 8-10. I got my practice in a pretty overboard fashion, but that's more or less how I do everything (there are nearly 200 articles on this site as of the time of writing, for instance).
I stepped into GMing ultimately because I wanted to play, and it seemed like the only option. But what about when I realized I actually wanted to be a DM? It happened during that practice phase. I can remember it so clearly, like it was just a few days ago, but it's fifteen years ago now. I was in my dorm room at Northern Arizona University, and there were eight friends new and old gathered around the lower bed of a set of bunkbeds in the middle of our tiny room. I had a vinyl battlemat on the bed, and the players' pieces were positioned around a simple piece, a guard. They had just been arrested for breaking into a manor with suspicion of burglary, and they were each loudly protesting, proclaiming their innocence. I had an idea. I said, "You, elf, come with me." My roommate Patrick, who played an elf with rainbow dreadlocks, followed me across the room. We sat together in the corner. Quietly, I said, "Okay, then--please tell me about the other elf with rainbow dreadlocks in town who committed this robbery." Patrick's face fell, but he was smiling because the rest of our massive party was laughing and yelling. They had been a pretty hijinks-related party, but the moment I realized I could add a bit of tension and drama in a serious way, my GMing transformed. I suddenly really wanted to be a GM.
This was my moment. I knew the capacity of good GMing. I was incredibly lucky in that my first GM was a talented one. He worked from modules, but I always kept him scrambling with my out-of-the-box ideas. He improvised seamlessly and kept the stories going. I knew it was possible, and I knew when I drove my party crazy that I had it in me, and so I strove to make it happen. Realizing that it's within your grasp to create interesting fiction and share it with your friends is powerful. It made me work so hard to make my ambitions true. I examined my games. I was improvising well, but I wasn't working to create big stories. I decided, with my newfound passion for GMing, to change that.
I started drafting campaign ideas like mad. I spent the summer after a freshman year developing big, conceptual campaigns. I imagined a gnomish leader who systematically takes over the whole capital city, and the party would have to free the capital from his grasp. I imagined a blight upon a massive forest, the home of the elves, that would need a cure directly from the gods of nature. I imagined a princess whose anarchist beliefs would lead her to destroy her own kingdom from the inside out. That last one, I actually did get to run later that year once I found a group with a slightly more serious approach. It remains some of my proudest work--it never would have been possible without the practice I'd gotten and my drive to do something special as a GM.
The interesting thing about this realization is that it's not a one-time thing; you can realize the potential of playing or GMing again and again. My ambitions carried me from scattered adventures into my royal assassination plot, but carrying it out was another story. Midway through that adventure, the party turned on the questgiver, realizing it was the princess. They split in half: one half, led by the group's bard, followed the princess in an anarchist assassination plot, and the other half, led by the group's cleric, sought to defend the kingdom against their plot. I had never dealt with a serious party split before. I tried to come up with a solution that was both interesting and fair to the players. I decided that simply playing things out and allowing the players and the dice to decide was best. And in the end, it was an incredibly close finish that did come down to strategy and dice. The anarchists won in that they destroyed the kingdom, but the city's defenders installed a new democratic government in its place. I adored how it came out, and the realization that I could make a single call that would be so important and that I could make that call correctly helped to empower me to want to do even more.
My growing confidence as a GM pushed me in new directions. I became aware that I wanted to experiment with a more open approach. I created huge sandboxes. Below are campaign maps I created in this vein--both have a dozen or so settlements, and I allowed my players to simply move about the campaign map as they wished.
 |
| Ramsey, a western-inspired island setting. |
 |
| The Eastweald, a dense woodland in the northeast of Evanoch. |
In both of the campaigns that I ran in these settings, I learned the advantages and disadvantages of open-world games. I ran both games more or less concurrently with different groups, and I noticed a few things. Firstly, this kind of game is very much my style. Both as a player and a GM, I enjoy the prospect of total freedom and direction by the players. When things worked in these open-world campaigns, I had new revelations about the game. I realized that I could lead a story along subtly through small details that add up over time; I learned that it was possible to GM entirely in response to players, never purposely leading them anywhere. Secondly, this kind of game is not necessarily everyone's style. There were a lot of times that my players, especially my more antics-oriented group, were at a loss with total freedom. They were always asking about what they were supposed to be doing, and my explanations that there was no "supposed to be doing" about it were never really accepted. From this, I learned that I need to offer at least some direction in an open world. This in turn has helped me balance my approach--now, I try to give as much freedom as possible without leaving every detail up to the players to have to work out. When I ran the mystery campaign, I compromised between the two, offering free reign over the city with mandatory check-ins with an authority figure, and the result was a big success. And that going well makes me realize again how much I want to be a better GM.
The last major evolution of my commitment to GMing has come in a way that has surprised me. It wasn't from GMing--it was from being a player in someone else's game. It's really helped me in two ways. Firstly, I'm lucky enough to be playing with a talented GM--his setting is fascinating, and we're getting to thoroughly explore it; he walks the line between prepared material and improvisation very smoothly; and he's a patient and courteous GM who has given me so much of his time as I obsess about my character. Being with a good GM helps you learn from them. I've made the decision to tend more to the details of my plot because I admire his moment-to-moment storytelling so much; I'm making an effort to make my worldbuilding more apparent when I GM to match his subtle work with that; and I'm reminding myself to be calm and patient--that kind of presence helps keep a game going. I wouldn't have had those ideas in my head going into my games without his example, so remember to give yourself opportunities to play, too.
The second way that playing has helped me as a GM is in showing me I have the capacity to do work that I have resisted in the past. I have grown to really dislike writing much plot in advance when I GM--I feel like it closes a lot of doors before they can even open, and I find it exhausting to try to figure out what the players will do in advance, so I prefer to react when my guess will always be wrong. But that's not a very complete view of things. The truth is, you can develop material and just edit it on the fly if it needs changing. And I wouldn't have come to the realization that I could do that unless I realized it was in me to write extensively about things in the game world. No, I didn't realize that about myself with almost 200 articles--I'm bad at giving myself credit. Rather, I realized it when I wrote about my character in this campaign. I figured out in the first few sessions that I didn't have much of an idea what my character's personality was like, so I started writing about her. I wrote a short story, then a few others, before realizing it was actually the start of a novel. I wrote 600 pages about my character (which my GM was kind enough to read). It served its purpose--I know very well who she is now--but I also realized I could write a great deal about people in the gameworld. My aversion to writing plot ahead of time is still present, but it doesn't prevent me from doing good planning anymore. And that's worth quite a lot, so I'm grateful I got the opportunity.
I've talked about how I knew I wanted to be a GM, but I haven't yet said why I wanted it. Unlike my often-changing style as a GM, the reason has never changed. I think back to being in the living room of my first GM's house. The living room was sunken a few steps below the kitchen it was next to, and one of the party always seemed to be descending those stairs with fresh snacks. The party was being goofy and childish in game--typical fare for 16-year-olds--and our GM as an NPC we were hassling said something really clever that shut us all down. Our GM, who we called Judge, had been pretty reserved up to that point. It was a moment that really redefined that. I saw that he was playing many roles at the same time. He was our GM, of course, and he was my friend's dad, but he was also hanging out with us without being removed from us. He was playing a game with us. Sure, he was the leader of it, but he was one of us in a way. That role--storyteller, referee, controller of everything, creative mind, all these honors--paired with a special social place--elevated but not better than, respected and trusted, but one of the people--it just seemed so enticing. To be everything to everyone as long as the game was going.
I started with my history as a GM before saying why I wanted it because I think it's vital to note that my reason for wanting it was not necessarily a good one, nor is it one I'm proud of. I looked at the GM and thought that it was special, that it would make me special. And that got me started. But once I got started, I ran into all the lessons I listed above. I began to see that it wasn't about status at the game table or power or anything like that. As I've learned and matured as a GM, as I've experienced all the realizations I mentioned here, I have learned that being a GM is a responsibility. A GM is not everything to a game, but they can make or break a session or campaign easily. I strive to GM now because I want to give my friends the opportunity to play and have fun, and I try to increase that fun as much as possible. When I first started out, I didn't see that it's about helping other people have fun; playing the game allowed me to see that it is. So the journey is more important than where you begin--just trust that you can figure it out on the way because there's no knowing it all from the start.
Final thoughts: Whatever got you into tabletop games doesn't matter. What does matter is that these games have struck you in a meaningful way. Your relationship with them will grow and change, and that's almost always for the best. Trust your experience, allow yourself to keep learning and growing, and you'll be a better GM or player before you know it.
That's all for now. Coming soon: why I think philosophical conundrums make the best inspiration for a campaign, home décor by culture in my homebrew setting, and lessons from GMing for children. Until next time, happy gaming!
No comments:
Post a Comment