When I was younger, I spent a lot of time planning D&D campaigns. I wanted to build complete worlds before I started running them, for a lot of reasons:
- I had moments of inspiration that I simply had to flesh out and get down on paper.
- Many people in our group had something we wanted to GM, and I wanted to earn the right to have my shot.
- Once I got in the coveted GM seat, I needed to prove myself. I couldn’t allow myself to fail, or I might lose that spot before the story was complete.
- If I’m honest, I think I dreamed of producing a published adventure or campaign setting ( which I’ve technically done now, I guess! )
That was two decades ago, and things have changed. I don’t think these were very healthy ways of looking at the hobby, and I’d like to talk about some ways I’ve grown in those years. Maybe it’ll be helpful for you young whippersnappers just getting into this hobby.
Trust yourself
As long as you have a good sense of storytelling and fairness, you’ll do fine.
You don’t have to know all of the rules, use flowery descriptions, be a versatile actor, or live up to players’ every expectation. As long as the players are having fun doing what they want, you’re succeeding. And it usually doesn’t take much to do that.
Players who are new to the game will just be happy you’re running it for them. Players who are experienced likely know the stress and pitfalls of GMing firsthand. There are some ungrateful players out there, but they’re not the majority.
Of course, trusting yourself doesn’t mean everything will go perfectly. Recovering from a misstep is a skill you can only learn by failing.
But if you’re transparent when something goes wrong, and you accept feedback graciously, that’s often enough to handle those cases.
And the solution to a misstep isn’t always pushing yourself to do better, as if you could will yourself into it by sheer brute force. It’s about creating routines, backup plans, and safety nets that you have ready to deploy when things inevitably go wrong on occasion.