Many experts including psychologists and sociologists as well as astute observers have often claimed that the pursuit of perfect is unhealthy. Let's cut this off early: pursuing perfection as a realistic goal is in fact unhealthy. It will drive you crazy and make your performance worse. Let's consider something more realistic and less unhealthy: considering how to improve so that we get better (also known as approaching perfection). So in this article, when I talk about considering what would be perfect, we have to start from the foundation that I mean intellectually analyzing a hypothetical ideal to learn from it without trying to be perfect.
So what does perfect GMing look like? Two distinct truths become evident immediately. One is that we all have different opinions on what would be ideal. Someone could be the most talented combat GM in the world and still be non-ideal for hardcore roleplayers (and vice versa). But at the same time, a lot of the opinions we would hear would have a lot of overlap--there would be certain things that most (if not virtually all) people would generally agree upon.
I have aligned three sets of three general nebulae around which most players experience their games, and working to improve at these collected nine skills can help any GM in their pursuit of improvement. The first set of three skills are simple to consider: they are the game's past, present, and future. I'm talking about worldbuilding, improvisation, and planning, respectively. Then, the second set is about the kind of direction and information the GM gives in-game: clarity of description, characterization of NPCs, and allowance of freedom for a player to define their character. Lastly, any GM should be at least partially well-versed in all three playstyles common to tabletop games: strategy and combat, antics and silliness, and storytelling and roleplaying. Let's get into each individually.
Worldbuilding is the past, the stuff that makes the world what it was leading up to this moment. Any seasoned GM can tell you that any part of your world can radically change at a moment's notice if a player affects it, and that basically makes all worldbuilding a description of the past, the world before the players. Worldbuilding doesn't have to take some typical progression of overall map to politics guides to social customs, either. I highly recommend just writing about the things you find fun and interesting (after all, the point is to have fun). I wrote guides to tattoo art and popular literature before I actually described what cultural values define my homebrew groups because I love tattoos and reading, and they were much easier to write and pick up momentum with than an all-encompassing definition of humanity. I think that people forget that there are not key details you have to describe as a GM to do it well. You can offer a really colorful, specific description of something that doesn't really matter to the game, and it will still stand out as good worldbuilding, a memorable moment, and something impressive about your creativity. I had a player who's played with me for years who was stunned when I had a unique funeral ritual on hand when it came up in-game--I'm weirdly obsessed with death and hang out in cemeteries, so it was fun for me to write the funeral details. That's what your worldbuilding should be--you making your world more colorful and interesting while having fun doing it.
Then comes the present: improvisation. Improv is a skill that people spend their lives working at, but we don't need to become a renowned improviser so much as have the vital spirit of improv alive while GMing. Improv is fundamentally based on a simple idea called "yes, and": whatever is said in the scene must be accepted as true (yes), and there must be a back-and-forth where every time someone speaks, they are adding to the scene or at least moving it along (and). Some GMs have a more "no, but" style, which is to say, "You the player cannot reach as far as you said you want to, but I can offer you this compromise." That's fine too; I prefer to give the players as much agency as possible, so I try to avoid "no, buts" unless I have to, but it's really to your taste. What matters is that you can recognize what the players are doing and respond directly to it. This means no ignoring what the players want, do, or say because it isn't aligned with your story or worldbuilding. It also means trying to stay one step ahead of your players, who are also trying to get one step ahead of you. The biggest skill in improv is to keep going no matter what. Things will get wild and potentially out of control--this is a TTRPG we're talking about, after all. You have to see the madness, accept it, and add your own direction. (This is not to say you can't challenge your players, which you should do. The acceptance of what the players say does not mean agreeing with it or letting it work if it wouldn't. The acceptance of what the players say is about recognizing that they are telling you how they want to have fun, and you should listen before you respond.)
Finally, the future: planning. Planning is a radically different beast depending on the game you're playing. I ran a mystery campaign that required some more planning than I typically do (which is not very much, admittedly, but still--a mystery is a pretty tightly-wound story). I also ran a very silly antics campaign that not only did I never prepare for, but which I always got inebriated before GMing to increase how dumb everything became. Over the years, I've realized that planning is not a monolith. How you plan for one session is not true of every other session, and knowing how much to plan and in what way is the hardest skill involved here. I have some generalizations to offer. Combat campaigns need prep. Calibrating encounters, devising interesting strategic situations, generating enemies that are interesting--these are things that take time and effort. I personally don't enjoy these kinds of prep, and I'll openly admit that when I try to improvise combat, it usually doesn't feel as vivid as some other GMs' combat. It's something that I need to work on. Antics campaigns don't need much prep, usually just a premise to get the group started. I once had an antics group spend two full hours reenacting the movie Shrek because I asked them to stage a community theater play. If you're running a stoytelling or roleplaying campaign, I'm going to suggest using the form of notes I use these days for those games, a sort of profile on the major NPCs who will factor into the campaign and what they want and why. It's relatively spare, but since I wanted an organically evolving campaign led by the players, all I really had to do was have a good idea of the NPCs, and everything else came naturally. I will say that outright planning sessions for storytelling is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a GM. It ends in railroading or worse every time. It will burn out your players, who you will be dragging along on a story only you will be connected to. Don't do it. Plan the people meticulously, but let the players decide what the story is.
This leads us to the description triad, starting with clarity. I place this first because it is absolutely crucial. When a GM speaks, everything they say becomes reality, and what is not defined is filled in by the imaginations of your players. This often means that at a table of a GM and four players, there are five different imaginings of the same image or place or action. I've had moments as both as player and a GM where vagueness, non-specificity, or misspeaking caused a serious and sometimes lasting misunderstanding about things. In the real world, if I say something incorrectly, you can see in reality what my mistake is, and we can fix the misunderstanding easily. But everything in the entirety of existence is in the GM's head, so they have to work extra hard to be clear. I suggest visualizing what you're describing it and going about 3 times more into detail than you think you do. The worst that happens is that you provide a very clear description of something at the cost of a few extra moments; the worst that can happen if you give only a few broad strokes is that the players are lost without any idea what you're talking about. It's easy to get caught up and try to move quickly, but it's worth taking the time and effort to slow down and really say what you mean to say.
The second in the description triad is characterization. Whether you realize it or not, sentient characters (usually humanoid and vocal but not always) are the heart and soul of the story. Yes, an epic tale might cover a massive conflict that involves thousands, but the actual stakes of the story is the safety of the people. Yes, a story might involve colossal governing bodies, but the impact is on the people in those groups and who the groups affect. And having a bland, faceless NPC be the object of pain for the sake of the story is hollow and meaningless. To get the players to care about how the story goes, you have to get them to care about the people in the story (including negative caring, also known as hatred). Give every NPC something unique or strange or distinctive. They're allowed to be similar to each other and even share traits or backgrounds, but adding details to a character is generally what makes them feel real. There are some highlights for developing NPCs and groups of NPCs to refer to, but the basics boil down to trying to make NPCs more interesting by giving them more to say than whatever advances the plot. This is where my advice to develop NPCs but not storylines above can doubly help: good characterization assists in both realms.
The final note in description is freedom. Players of tabletop games have been sat down and told what tabletop games are: they are a way to imagine literally anything together and make choices that affect this shared reality. To see this, to see absolute creative freedom before them, and be restricted by GM choices--it's a horrible disappointment at best and a reason to leave tabletop games forever at worst. If players are not free to act as they like, there is little reason for them to be there at all. It is vital, and I do mean it is necessary to the success of your game, that you grant meaningful freedom when appropriate. This does not have to be given in a radical way. Sometimes freedom looks like letting the players do non-story-related things without interruption. Sometimes freedom is letting your players get away with a crazy idea. Sometimes freedom is simply stepping back as the GM and trying to figure out what your players want so that you can help them get it. But whatever form it takes, freedom must exist in a tabletop game.
This leads us to the final triad, that of style. I want to note here that working at any of these is helpful, and there is no real game which is entirely one style or another. So as I go over these styles, I want you to be thinking about how these complement each other as opposed to work against each other.
One style of GMing focus is combat. Many tabletop games exist where the whole emphasis is combat, and many others are combat-focused uses of broader games. The big picture with these games is that combat is meant to be frequent, strategic, and epic. Set pieces are common here, and the stories told usually frame the combat around a quest of some sort. While I'm no expert at GMing in this style myself (I have a lot to learn about the care and precision of it compared to my freewheeling style), I can recognize these as the strengths of the combat style. The core skill here is using creativity applied to pragmatic problems (how do I make this fight balanced and interesting? how can I create an exciting second phase of the fight? how can the geography impact things?), and mastering the combat style of GMing requires a great deal of consideration of the players' abilities and what they would find exciting.
Another style of GMing focus is hijinks. The players and the GM are not sitting down to take a storyline seriously or master combat so much as they are there to joke around and hang out with their friends. That description is by no means judgmental--the point of tabletop games is to have fun, and an antics game makes a play directly for that fun. Crazy NPCs, inane plans, wild cause and effect--all of the really unpredictable side of tabletop games is most present here. Generally speaking, the GM's job is to play it seriously to the players' shenanigans; the GM doesn't shut down the antics so much as challenge the players to make things even more ridiculous. Mastering the hijinks style means knowing when to match the ridiculousness of your players and when to challenge them with an obstacle that makes them do something even wilder.
The last style of GMing is storytelling/roleplaying. I have been unabashed about stating my regard for the roleplaying style of tabletop games, and I won't go back on that here now. I do truly believe that this style accomplishes something unique in the world; video games simulate combat exceedingly well, improv comedy exists for laughing with your friends, but what else is like experiencing a shared story in your mind by proxy? Roleplaying styles are generally marked by a focus on a story that the GM and the players tell together. Generally speaking, a roleplaying GM is at their best when they are using well-developed NPCs to interact with the players, who are fundamentally pushing the story along with their actions. That means being good with characterization and freedom from the above triad, and it also means (in my experience) being comfortable not having 100% control of the entire game experience (since some of that has been given to players).
We can align some of these skills in the triads to understand them more fully. Let's take a look:
Despite the appearance, this is not an alignment chart joke. Rather, we've set our three triads horizontally, and vertically, we have the most related ideas. This is to say that worldbuilding is the first step in running a session (triad 1) and is similar to characterization (worldbuilding applied to characters) and the roleplaying/storytelling style (which I prepare for with worldbuilding and characterization). Or hijinks, which is in triad 3 with the other styles, while being grouped with freedom (which is often most radical in hijinks games) and improvisation (the most important skill with a hijinks game). Or clarity, which is triad 2 with the other overarching ideals our description must look towards and the last row, with combat and planning, the two most pragmatic approaches to running a game, not to mention all three being integral in some campaigns.
So what does perfect GMing look like? Is it a fulfillment of all nine ideals? Is it mastering the skills required to succeed? Is it crafting a campaign so unflawed that it can't go wrong? No, none of that. Remember up at the top--we're not pursuing perfection. We are simply recognizing that these nine ideals are important parts of tabletop games which we can all benefit from. Because again, these things are relative. If a combat GM presented me with a perfectly clear and perfectly planned session, would I have fun? Not really. I don't enjoy conflict, I crave radical freedom, and it's just not my style. But they could be, in theory, perfect as a GM. Only I didn't have fun, and fun is the point.
What I'm driving at, reader, is this: your skills as a GM are not some objective measure. You can't take a test and be scored on your performance. What makes you successful or not is whether you, in the moment, can help your players have fun. I think that the nine ideals I outlined can get just about anybody the right ideas to get going in the right direction. With persistence and time, you can become excellent at any of these skills, and you will be able to use that to be a great GM to someone at your table. Hey, maybe your practice has paid off, and you found the right player, and you're the perfect GM for them.
That would make it all worth it, wouldn't it?
That's all for now. Coming soon: a pirate D&D one-shot, a guide to the planes, and imagining the future of tabletop games. Until next time, happy gaming!
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