After playing a Discord game for years, my friend group is almost a year in to a new in-person game night. As a TTRPG sicko with a long list of games I wanted to try, I put in the effort early on, but I’ve found myself stepping back and handing it over completely to other GMs.
It’s a weird transition. I’ve put in a lot of GM experience over the past few years, and I want to try to share the skills, tricks, and confidence I’ve built in that time with other people. It’s hard to know how to that without coming off as an overbearing know-it-all.
We’re also playing two new-to-us games: Orbital Blues and Land of Eem. That means new rules–and, more importantly, the group making some decisions about how those rules actually translate to a gameplay experience. That’s tricky to manage.
I’ve talked about being a better player, but how do we support other gamemasters (especially ones who are newer, rusty, or otherwise struggling in some way)?
Because more GMs really does make the hobby better. Everyone has their own storytelling voice and mechanical style–something that no other GM can replicate in exactly the same way. The more people who are running games, the more diverse the hobby becomes.
For example, there’s a handful of games I’ve championed, and I’d love to know how other people I play with would run them. I have an idea of how I would run them, but it’s entirely possible I’m going to miss something interesting or unique that those games or settings have the potential to do!
Besides, having more GMs produces some knock-on effects. Spending some time behind the screen can make you a better player. And it helps mitigate the problem of “forever GMs.”
So over the next several weeks, I’ll post a blog series about some ways you can make GMing easier on other people.