Finishing Blow
I firmly believe that anybody can GM. All it takes is an idea, a couple of friends, and the willingness to make shit up along the way. That said, the most important part of that last sentence is the word “willingness.” That’s for the simple reason that, even if anybody can GM, it doesn’t mean that everybody should.
This isn’t about being a “good GM” (whatever the hell that happens to mean). Instead, I think it boils down to a much simpler concept. If you think GMing sounds like fun, then congratulations. You’ve got the stuff. Grab your dice and your DM screen from the pile in the corner.
I’ve never managed to articulate this idea before, but my own personal take on “fun” involves learning and pedagogy. That’s because we all have mental toys that we like to play with. For some people, the mental toy of choice is politics. For other folks it’s sport that occupies the idle space of their gray matter. For others the obsession is makeup, or muscle cars, or music. And for the likes of us, it happens to be tabletop RPGs. But whether we’re discussing mathletes or epicures or any of the other fabulous, mad pastimes that take up a billion man-hours of humanity’s time, it’s enthusiasm that drives us to it.
This may all be a fancy way of saying “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.” But from my experience in academia as in gaming, you can’t force someone to fall in love with a subject. If a GM is excited to run, they’ll run. If they’re bursting at the seams with enthusiasm, with story hooks, with exotic subcontinents and monstrous denizens and entire pantheons looking down from on high, then they will work to bring these things to life. They will write binders full of notes. They will hang out in forums. They’ll read rulebooks until they burst wide open with the raw grist of Creation. But it won’t be work for them. It will be play.
Clearly, none of that sounds like fun to Fighter. I guess it stopped being fun for BBEG as well. I know there are times in my life when I’ve got tired and busy and hung up my own GMing hat for a while. But if you have that little spark of joy inside of you—the thrill of imagination and creation—the fire will come roaring back one day. In the meantime, try not to force it. This stuff is supposed to be fun! Just be patient and let it be.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we talk about our own mental toys? What tends to fill up the surplus cognitive cycles kicking around your cerebellum? Are you building settings in your head? Fantastic creatures? Are you fitting together interesting mechanics like Lego pieces and imagining the kinds of people they describe? Whatever your imaginary entertainment environment happens to look like, let’s hear all about it down in the comments!
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That is both a “What a relief!” as well as a “Took him long enough”-moment.
Annnd now he has stabbed the Diegetic Tome.
With Mr. Stabby.
Eh-oh.
To answer your question, I am constantly building up settings in my mind.
I love creating stories, worlds, characters. Those of my friends willing to indulge me know a lot of it is going into my webcomic (I also love to draw), but I have probably years to go before I can show even part of it off.
I haven’t GM’ed or played regularly in years – I burned out around the start of the pandemic – but I might slowly be getting ready to try again. There have been brief games. I have stories. I might want to try my hand at crafting my system again.
Maybe.
Mr Stabby was stabbed through the Tome, when Fighter first found him.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/origin-stories-mr-stabby
Why was the book there? Why was it Stabbed? Who put them there and when? Did Fighter unelash BBEG into the world years ago, by taking the sword? Is it all a metaphor for being attracted to the tactical combat of DnD, and getting hooked by the narrative and/or social aspects? What are the cosmological consequences of returning the sword to the book?
If anyone in the comic cares to answer these questions (Quest Giver? Lady Celestial? Dying monologue of BBEG?) I firmly expect Fighter to interrupt it to announce his intention to search BBEG’s body for loot.
Sounds like time-travel shenanigans to me… Fighter now goes back to where it began, to leave the sword to his past self.
Eh, who am I kidding. We all know he’d kill the brat, consequences be damned.
I’m not clever enough for time travel. Got a nose bleed watching Primer.
Really? I thought Primer was pretty straight forward… up till the end. There are some wild shens going on at the end that require multiple rewatchings and a graph to figure out…
Every time I think about the sword-through-book thing, I flash back on Dorkness Rising:
https://youtu.be/tOUksDJCijw?si=3Dn_w8HP8EuMHnJ6&t=4450
Right there with ya on the system crafting. It’ll be good to put my time toward a new creative project.
Best of luck with yours!
Thank you. ^_^
DM-ing can be difficult for me, not because I lack creativity, but due it being of a problem solving variety. I’m really happy to try and fill plot holes or find explanations why something in a setting is that way, neither of which helps with creating a world from a blank slate or to weave compelling narratives. (Also, lack of proper executive function doesn’t help either.)
That said I have a friend who is far better at it than I am, and I love hanging out and workshop his settings or homebrew mechanics.
This biz is part of the difficulty when you’re a genre buff teaching fiction writing. World building and plot building are two separate skill sets. The tricky part is using the former to facilitate the latter without getting lost in details.
Personally, I enjoy all of the bits of GMing — apart from actually running the game. All the setting development, coming up with situations and scenarios… that’s all fun… I love worldbuilding. But actually running sessions always feels more like work than fun, and since others in the group do enjoy that part, I run games rarely myself.
Ain’t nothing wrong with being an adventure designer. It’s a perfectly respectable hat to wear!
NPCs. The characters and monsters (and the lore behind them) is what I spend most of my time on. It’s gotten to the point where I get attached to them or backstory NPCs on the player side of things and want to play them as full characters themselves.
Sequel campaigns are a thing for a reason! I think that may be what BBEG is hoping for anyway.
Rules systems and subsystems, and using them to make a story. I like playing around with the fiddly bits, and working a story around that. As a player, I tend to stick to RAW, but as a GM where I can edit which bits to present to the players and expand small subsystems to make it a thematic part of the story? That is where I want to be.
I always get frustrated implementing subsystems. They’re always thematic and cool in my head. But teaching them while simultaneously using them in-game creates pacing issues. If you have any insight into getting around that I’d be all ears!
Sadly, not a lot.
I think it’s best to share the rules with the players out of game. If there’s some secret consequences to certain options, hold that back, but I think treating it like other game rules works best. They can reference it like unfamiliar spells. If you can talk to people ahead of time and sell them on it, all the better.
If no one is interested, no one is interested. Frustrating, but can’t force a horse to drink. In the end, they’re usually a nice to have instead of a need in most campaigns I run, and game time and attention span is at a premium.
I like creating the *suggestion* of immersive backstorys for pregenerated PCs. There are few things better than someone asking “This says my sword was found in the Hidden Labyrinth of Dagoth. What’s that?”
“I dunno,” I reply. “That’s up to you.”
I also like constructing a cohesive narrative for even routine encounters: “The orc guarding the chest in this 10’×10′ room is here because the 5 orcs in Area#12 thought it would be funny to haze the rookie by having him go do something pointless, boring, and clichéd. The orc does not know that the chest holds only copper pieces and a potion of delusion.”
This is my take on world building as well. I appreciate that Tolkien took the time to write up the Silmarillion, but it actually cheapened the Lord of the Rings for me. I *liked* the sense of history and depth that comes with suggestion rather than outright exposition.
Politics is not a toy.
Naw dawg. It’s a game. That doesn’t mean it’s unimportant.
For me, I find that coming up with concepts is the thing that I find the most fun. One of my most memorable in-game moments came from me thinking idly “well, no hold on, what if I did this?” It’s unfortunate that it was memorable for ALL THE WRONG reasons, but still.
Plus, GMing is good for me because it’s easier on my focus than playing, I find.
Picture of you in-game: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/areyousure
the willingness to make shit up is present in most players.
what is also required is the willingness to be at the receiving end of the shit players come up with.
We few… We happy few….
We band of buggered.
When not filling my mind with the minutia of daily life and the time sink that is the web, I tell stories to myself. When I was still actively DMing, it was more “what if the players do this particular not good for the game thing” or coming up with/fleshing out NPCs, locations, etc.
I’m going to just put a very unpopular opinion out there. There are a LOT of DM/GMs out there that really, really shouldn’t be doing that. Particularly the ones who didn’t get their favorite toys or weren’t able to screw the party over as players. The ones who have massively OP NPCs that are there simply to screw with the other players characters. The ones who consider a TPK “winning”. The ones who LOVE new players, because they have no clue how toxic the DM/GM is being and end up turning them off of the game forever.
I’ve seen a few games run by people like that, even played in them for a very, very short time. The players who like those DMs were usually players that I wouldn’t want in my games. You know who I’m talking about. The ones just like the toxic DM, just on the other side of the screen. The ones who take great pleasure in ruining anyone else’s fun, try to screw the party over every chance they get and tend to constantly belittle the other players. And because the DM is “one of them”, they let those players get away with all that BS.
I don’t care how “good” one of those DMs is at world building and storytelling (usually they’re crap, but there are exceptions), they shouldn’t be running ANY games.
And yes, I’m in one of those moods today, so I’m hiding in my cave until the desire to draw blood goes away.
Lol. Naw, you’re good. And you’re right: RPG Horror Stories is a thing for a reason.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/
That said, my point is something closer to, “You shouldn’t be afraid to try GMing for the first time.”
True. And the fastest way I’ve found to get someone to jump into DMing, is for me to say, “I’m taking a break, who wants to run”. Because unless I do that they will just expect it to be me. It’s how I got hubby into finally GMing.
“They will write binders full of notes. They will hang out in forums. They’ll read rulebooks until they burst wide open with the raw grist of Creation. But it won’t be work for them. It will be play.”
Nope, nope, nope… that right there? It’s all still work.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love GMing, but writing it all down, especially in advance? that’s work and I skip it. I write out the barest minimum and get right to running.
Just so other “that looks like too much work” type proto-GMs can know, you don;t have to do all that work to run a good game. But if you don;t, you need to have a decent memory, take notes while running, and have a strong sense of your world and what your Players like.
Or just toss it all and figure it out as you go. As long as you and your group are having fun, game on.
How many GURPS books have you read to get to that point?
Ha, just what I wanted to say! I’m like that too. usually just a (slightly wacky) idea, and a deep knowledge of, or feel for, the game world, and off we go! Apparantly I am quit good at getting the feel of a setting. Despite having seen less than 1o (?) episodes of all Star Trek (TOS, TNG, VOY, DS9) series, I was always asked to GM, by all the Trekkies that wanted to play, but could, or would, not GM
Personally I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid, so GM-ing (even playing, I might write encyclopedia sets for backstories) to me is like writing in real time. Collaborative writing at that – which is harder but always makes for better ideas.
For me the absolute best part is making someone laugh uncontrollably, or cry just a little. It’s not just the writing, it’s the watching your readers in real time!
I don’t entirely feel how someone could NOT love GM-ing, once they understand what TTRPGs really are. But I suppose there’s always going to be people who believe these games just another “Risk” or “Monopoly”?
Hmmm, and then I dropped a “to be” toward the end. See if you spot it. I blame my tablet. So hard to type on this thing!
I’m a natural performer as well. Love feeding in the energy the group generated together. Probably why I like IRL Games more than the online version.
I hear ya on the online gaming. Somehow the tech just isn’t up to it. On the other hand I used to play MMOs many years ago, before voice chat was a thing; and while you had to type until your fingers bled (I’m an awful typist… if it wasn’t obvious) they managed to make that chat interface infinitely more engaging than talking over .
(ugh. Today is not my day to post. That was supposed to read “insert favorite voice app here”, or similar, but I put angle brackets around it. So I guess funky formatting instead. Going to stop typing now!)
I’m about to run my first game today, and I do love the idea of showing the players my world and letting them loose to wreck it like the PCP-addicted chimpanzees they are. But god I hope I don’t need all those binders of notes, because I’m starting with a retrofitted pre-written adventure and a big ol’ lore document. Planning and plots who? I’ll get there once I figure out what the characters are like as everyone plays them…I really hope!
I meant “next Tuesday,” IDK why I wrote “today.” Blame spending too long at work.
Woo! Congratulations on taking that first step. Retrofitting pre-written adventures is an awesome path to take. Hope it is the start of something wonderful for you and your players. 🙂
Sounds like a blasty blast. Good luck laying the groundwork, and happy gaming!
I’d say the one caveat to that is; “Is it GMing that sounds fun to you, or is it having a captive audience for your own story ideas that sounds fun?”
A “Good GM” has to be willing to support the stories of the players, even for the players that don’t really have a story idea themselves. Rather than being a storyteller, the GM is more of a sandbox builder, Madlibs generator, and referee for a game of “imaginary bullet vs imaginary shield”
And in the long line of BBEG’s I see he is a let down too. ;p