Quote from: Abyssal Maw;446035It is an open book test, so it isn't hard.

Yeah. It's just a way to a) make sure people who are connected in an official way to the company have at least a little bit of a clue about the rules of the game and b) prevent just any old person from asking for free stuff. I don't mean the LFR adventures - I meant the other free stuff you can get by being an "official" DM and running an "official" game.

Seanchai

well if you want a REAL proper certification test then I would

i) Sit the wannabe DM down.
ii) get 3 interviewers
iii) Tell the DM that the three of you were X (any race/class/level from the game system) and you just walked into Y (any suitable environment)
iv) Get him to run a game for 15 minutes that included 1 combat (or possible combat), 1 great roleplay experience, 1 explorational thingie (could be a great room description or a trap that needed to be bypassed or whatever) and 1 skill check of some type.

If he did that with no rule books, no hesitation, no cliches (unless they were ironic), no bollocks rules that didn't make any sense and the three interviewers were amused and entertained then give him the certificate.

I think it'd be hilariously funny if "GM Certification" involved some process of having to write a series of paragraph-length answers to a bunch of "theme" questions or whatnot. Like "what is the REAL opportunity in an attack of opportunity?" or "What does a Prestige Class mean to you?"

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;446498I think it'd be hilariously funny if "GM Certification" involved some process of having to write a series of paragraph-length answers to a bunch of "theme" questions or whatnot. Like "what is the REAL opportunity in an attack of opportunity?" or "What does a Prestige Class mean to you?"

RPGPundit

Its a shame that you guys seem to have D&D as the 'default game system'. The thread title refers to a GM , not a DM.


What about TRAVELLER?

SHADOWRUN?

GURPS?

HERO System?

Call of Cthuhlu?


- Ed C.

I stipulated at least two other major games as well as D&D.  I don't think you can have a professional organization and then ignore the industry standard.

No I don't like the industry standard but I haven't noticed that altering the nature of the marketplace much.

If the industry did exactly what I commanded we'd all be playing a Palladium / Rolemaster hybrid that uses GURPS vehicles as a substructure and the standard miniatures scale would be 1/32.

Quote from: jibbajibba;446009It may be the British cynic in me but I can't help but suspect that people willing to take some sort of ego-massaging certification exam for what is basically playing a game would be a bit arsey.

People pay thousands for golf lessons, cooking classes, community college seminars, and martial art sessions to achieve some sort of "level".   In golf, its all about your under par and karate is all about belt color.  Nothing innately arsey about that...except for assholes who don't even need any ego massage to unleash their arsey-ness.  

Quote from: Koltar;446499Its a shame that you guys seem to have D&D as the 'default game system'. The thread title refers to a GM , not a DM.

Because D&D is the default game for the entire hobby?  Also, people have been talking about the RPGA and its history of DM semi-certification.

My concept of a GM certification would not be system specific.  I would want to focus much more on player interaction, storytelling, pacing, roleplaying and group management.

Jibbajabba's idea would be quite good as a "final exam"

Well, sometimes certification really means something. But a lot of times, it just means you can jump through hoops or satisfy some utterly arbitrary standard or personally sit well with a supervisor/instructor.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;446862Well, sometimes certification really means something. But a lot of times, it just means you can jump through hoops or satisfy some utterly arbitrary standard or personally sit well with a supervisor/instructor.

I believe that's called a college diploma.

Quote from: Arry;445959I would suggest that being certified under the Mental Health Act might be a good start

I disagree: IMHO, anything involving "living creativity" (i.e. imagining worlds, characters, how they talk, personalities, iteractions etc.) it's only a conscious form of schizophrenia.

I.e. a good GM can imagine a good scenario built around Harvey the Bunny, and give a sparkling portrayal of Harvey. He simply (more or less) knows that it is all in his head.

Quote from: Koltar;446499Its a shame that you guys seem to have D&D as the 'default game system'. The thread title refers to a GM , not a DM.


What about TRAVELLER?

SHADOWRUN?

GURPS?

HERO System?

Call of Cthuhlu?


- Ed C.

Hate to break it to you, but D&D has more players than all of those games, combined, by like 8 times.

Well, let's have fun thinking about "certification".

IMHO a good GM must show competence in two fields: the objective (i.e. the rules) and the creative.

Certification for the first one is easy: a written exam like the ones you have in schools and universities. "Do these bonuses stack?" "When, in this system, a character is allowed more than one AoO?" "What are the requirements for the Spinning Monk Prestige Class?" etc.

Then, maybe, an oral one about the history and evolution of the rules: "What was the rationale behind this change between 1E and 2E?" "What alternative rule you can use to speed up combat and why it is a bad idea to use it if there are less than six combatants on the board?" etc.

The hard part is the creative one. I have friends who study art and practice it (not only painting, but sculpture, for example). Once you get the fundamentals, what you do with them becomes part of your unique artistic expression, so there are no hard and fast rules.

However, IMHO a "certification" could start with a test about the basic understanding of narrative structure (the "three acts theory", for example), recurring motifs, how to tie "themes" to characters etc. Then the next step could involve a list of "tricky" situations that can come up during gameplay, and how the GM hopeful would tackle them: when to cut short an unimportant scene by solving it with a simple die-roll vs. when to play it out in detail etc.

I can give a practical example of when I failed to heed my very own experiences - with sad results.

Last session of the campaign before the summer break. I knew that the storyline had a fake ending, followed by a BIG plot twist - thus to leave the players a cliffhanger until the end of summer. So far so good.

During the previous months the characters had done EVERYTHING AND MORE: won a global war, saved a goddess, sent two evil demons in rehab for some millennia and stuff. There still was a small, UNIMPORTANT loose thread: a local Queen was possessed and not yet exorcised.

I check the watch and I see that we were running late. Remember: it was the *last* game before Summer break. So, I had the Queen exorcised by a NPC priest, all ended well, and then the BIG PLOT TWIST hit.

Reaction: "WE DIDN'T EXORCISED THE QUEEN!!! WE WERE MERE SPECTATORS OF THE MASTER'S PLOT!!!!"

There was no amount of explanation that changed the players' idea: how for nine months they had played pinball with planets, how they had saved a couple of universes, how the very priest who exorcised the Queen got his powers back thanks to the players, how exorcising the Queen was unimportant in the first place and I showed it in the story only not to have loose threads hanging. Nothing mattered: I still have to hear the end of it.

Where I failed? In not heeding what I do teach *everytime* in my creative writing seminars: "To the reader, it may or may not matter what the main character(s) do in the whole story. But the one thing that ALWAYS matters is that he/they do THE LAST IMPORTANT THING in the story. If the universe is saved by the Pleiadians and in the last scene the main character pushes the button who saves his wife and childrens, the readers will be happy. If the reverse happens they will not.

Simple, practical theory at work. Truth is: in my game *I* fumbled.

So, this is an example of one of the tests I would give in a "GM certification exam".

Quote from: Soylent Green;445818The sad thing is, I think WotC could probably pull that off. Hard core fans are.. well, hard core fans.

One can argue the RPGA DM tests are exactly that.

A few years ago, they announced Star Wars Saga was going into beta-testing; but to be a beta-test group, you had to have the 2nd-tier RPGA DM (Master?) credentials.

I had my Herald-level GM status for years, but had to take that damn Master-level test 3 times, cause all the questions were D&D3.5 questions (I play Star Wars d20, not 3.X D&D).

(Still never got into a Beta group either...)

Granted, they don't charge money, or I'd never have done any of it!

Quote from: Koltar;446499Its a shame that you guys seem to have D&D as the 'default game system'. The thread title refers to a GM , not a DM.

My "Default Game System" is HackMaster!

Which of those other games you listed won "Best Game of the Year" award? :worship:

Quote from: Spinachcat;446864I believe that's called a college diploma.

I was pretty much getting to that, yes. Among other things.

RPGPundit