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For me, the challenge was by far, learning to create campaigns that were not just fighting monsters.

I was never a railroady, asshat, or adversarial gm.

But man, when I started out, my games were combat focused.

Fortunately a player told me "Bill, all we do in your game is go into dungeons and kill monsters. Where are the Imps selling magic trinkets? Where is the rivalry between the local priests and thieves guild? Etc.. Etc..."

I wised up fast.

Very, very, very easy. Like skim through the OD&D rules and draw a dungeon up that same night easy.

Easy to play, difficult to master. Like all the best games.

(P.S. Just to be clear, 30+ years and I haven't mastered it yet).

We were 10 or 11 someone had to run the game and I was the one who bought the books so meh...

My problem was never having seen a game I made a couple of unusual errors. So I drew the dungeon out of 2cm square graph paper (we had loads of A1 sheets of it) and used it like a board. All the secret doors and stuff were marked the player just had to roll to see if they found them.

Still within a few weeks we had it sussed. The key bit was us not being allowed to stay in the classroom through lunch so we had to play without a table and we did it all in our heads.

It just came naturally for me for some reason. I like DMing. Apparently Im good at it since people payed me to do it for five+ years.

I've known others who struggle with even the basics. An at least one who bogs down in the pre-game prep.

I generally end up GM by default as I'm more willing to read games and come up with adventures, plus my experience as a player has been largely disappointing due to lousy GMs with cruddy adventure ideas.

Coming up with adventures is fairly easy; for me the hardest part is remembering rules minutiae. I hate when we're sucked out of a game because nobody knows how far a character can jump or throw or whatever and I'm
not going to spend five minutes looking it up so stuff like that usually gets guesstimated.

Mostly natural, but clarity was a very early lesson. Not so much for description as much as campaign expectations, prep, and pacing. Taught me to assert expectations beforehand instead of wait for people to read my mind (their mind).

Why can't you all guess what I'm thinking, it all looks so beautiful in my head! :p The soundtrack is unbelievable, too.

Fairly easy.

Moldvay basic has a whole lot of awesome packed into just 64 pages. The DMing section in the back outlining how to choose a scenario, a setting, and populate it along with key points of handling the game was and still is, the greatest DMing primer for the pagecount in existence.

Beyond that, the only thing really needed is experience. Run games and have fun.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;777094Fairly easy.

Moldvay basic has a whole lot of awesome packed into just 64 pages. The DMing section in the back outlining how to choose a scenario, a setting, and populate it along with key points of handling the game was and still is, the greatest DMing primer for the pagecount in existence.

Beyond that, the only thing really needed is experience. Run games and have fun.

It may seem obvious, but I think some of the gm's and players that have 'issues' are losing the point that its supposed to be fun.

I was 11 years old in 1981 or '82, using Moldvay/Cook Basic with the Fiend Folio. The "Bad kid" in the 5th grade (Who would be dead just a few years later, killed by an infamous stretch of local country back-road that kills or paralyses a couple of teenage drivers each year) introduced me to the game and it became an OBSESSION instantly despite the fact that I was more into Star Wars and Marvel Comics than that Hobbit crap and fantasy was kinda tainted in my eyes because I knew a really creepy, abusive adult that was heavily into Tolkein and always trying to push it on me.

I couldn't understand the "To Hit" matrix at first so for my first few games everybody just hit all the time. When I got to be late junior-high/early high school age I started going to the local university gaming guild and local cons so I could learn from older referees, both good and bad (The greatest GM I ever had was a closet case who eventually pulled an Orson Scott Card and dropped everything to beat the drum for God Hates Fags, a terrible waste that informed much of my future worldview). I read Dragon magazine obsessively, but it was the shockingly literate and sophisticated early issues of White Dwarf that showed me the hobby could aim for something more than a never-ending stream of fighting.

Y'know, there is a debt to those old magazines that I often forget. For all their problems, they at least dreamed. It was a good example of DIY.

WotC's killing off its 'zines (and outsourcing their subscription list first) might actually be the stupidest thing they have ever done. Checking White Dwarf lately and it is also a crying shame of its former glories.

I had the books, we were bored and so it started for me. Mainly hack and slash initially. As we got more sucked in it was more or less I who GM'd since I was the one who spent money on the books and also the only one who enjoyed the mastering part ofbthe games we played.

My early games were using BECMI (or, really, just the BE part of it) to more or less run a combat boardgame. There was some puzzle solving, but it was 90% about the combats.

Then, in the late 80s, I got the old Marvel Superheroes RPG, and tried it with the gaming group I was with. It was eye opening. Comic books have all these word balloons, and their best villains all have plans - and suddenly, the RPG wasn't about beating up whatever was in the next room, it was about saving people, or thwarting a scheme, or making a tough moral choice. When we went back to D&D, all of these ideas came with us, and we started playing what I consider Role Playing rather than Roll Playing D&D, and it was (and still is) wonderful.

Like many others, I started out not as much because I wanted to GM that much, but I was the least one to not want to be the GM.

Then, after a year or two, I preferred to be one. Nowadays, I vastly prefer GMing to playing, though it is much harder.

That, and always wanting to be in a centre of the attention.

Not hard. I was 11, and while the Holmes book I learned from was largely incoherent, I learned quickly by playing with more experienced groups. But the other groups included the dickhead older brothers of friends, so within a few months I was DMing for my buddies. We were only a year or two removed from playing toy soldiers and Star Wars figures, so the imaginary world and organic storytelling thing came naturally. And I loved drawing and maps, so creating dungeons was a pleasure. The rules were never much of a problem, as we played a stripped-down game, and there were no rules-lawyers in our group. My best friend and I took turns DMing, so we learned from one another, while never losing the perspective of a player. And ultimately, if you do something 3-4 times a week you quickly get good at it.

Easy enough, I was the one who wanted to play, I really wanted to DM, had recently made a bunch of rather nerdy new friends and the only other guy who wanted to DM wasn't exactly trusted to do a decent job.

Now, becoming a decent DM was bumpy. My brother used to Roleplay, so I thought I knew what I was doing. Some things actualy worked well from the start, though cliched as hell. I actually started the very first adventure in a Tavern with a hooded old man giving out the quest.

I think the social aspect of DMing was the toughest to learn. Knowing how to deal with disruptive players, making sure everyone gets their share, making sure everyones comfortable, handling expectations.

I quickly found the most profilic forums, lurked a year or two and devoured every resource offered. I think that really eased the process.


Really, not being a crappy player when my buddies started taking their turns as DM a few years later was harder. Not being able to give up the reigns and being the most familiar with the rules in the days of 3.5 does not make for a good player at all and I think I almost got myself kicked before I admitted that.

Like a lot of other people, "I had the books."  Other people were interested in the games.  I was willing to help them roll characters.  

80% of it is just showing up, and all that.

My brother excelled at GMing after he started buying books. My english major friends wanted to run our D&D groups.  So, although I started as GM, I wound up stuck in the player role for years.

Easy, and I found I loved drawing dungeons and spacecraft deck plans on all the graph paper I had, after that it was only fill in the blanks. Generally we rotated GMing duties though, and I like being a player also.

Like the others I found it easy to pick up and be a GM. I started playing in 1980 and my buddy RL was the first GM. As I recall Gamma World was the first RPG we bought but we also quickly got into the the Basic D&D red book, then Expert and so on. Later we got Star Frontiers when it came out. Dragon Magazine became a staple in my hands. I was always the kid in the neighborhood with the most board games, the most imaginative, the biggest reader, etc. So all of that came easy to me. I could think up more plots, scenarios and characters than I had time to put to paper.

I still cringe at much of what we did in those days but we didn't know better and it was still fun. Yeah, I too filled up piles of graph paper with various dungeons and forts and wrote up how they were stocked but we ran lots of the published modules too. The 80's were a fun time to be a teenage gamer.

The big problem was there were only a few of us game players in the neighborhood and in school and we all had conflicting interests and after school stuff to do. Almost all of my early gaming was 1-on-1 or 2-on-1 at best. I didn't play in a large group until college.

I found it pretty difficult. I still find it pretty difficult.

Finding the time to put everything together, learning the game rules, walking a group through character gen and rules... that's not easy. That requires confidence, not everybody can pull it off. When you actually get to the game, you've then got to be referee, MC, stage director, and every other actor, all at the same time, and be good enough at all of this to justify three hours of your friends' time. I was damn terrified. It never felt like I was prepared enough. Every decision felt like it took too long.

And rules. Oh, I hate fucking rules. I hated running Rogue Trader, that was awful. Dungeon World had the only GM rules I liked - ask what they're doing, think about what seems right, then have it happen. I can handle that. I learned a lot from that book.

Sure, the players said they had fun, but every time they looked at me, or there was a pause in the session, it felt like everyone was saying YOU AGREED TO AMUSE US, SO START FUCKING TALKING, LADYBIRD. Did I babble nervously? I've probably babbled nervously. And were they having fun, or were they just humoring me? I like constructive criticism! Constructive criticism is good! I didn't get any.

Clearly that means I was actually awful, because there is always something that people can do better.

So, yeah. Not easy. I wouldn't keep doing it, but I like to challenge myself, because that's the only way to get better. And I want to be better.

Quote from: Ladybird;777205And rules. Oh, I hate fucking rules.

They do, esp when a game gets so mechanistic in that they get in the way of actually playing.

I have had to laugh it that a table full of us have played through an encounter for a couple of hours, then later in the game, someone re-reads the rules and finds out we did it wrong. Oh well, play on through!

I started with published adventure modules, and no particular plan what to do with them; fortunately, our local library had a decent selection of adventures of the system we played back in the day and a few of those where not that bad to learn the ropes; eventually I dared to create my own adventures, but it took me years to get out of the "this is what is supposed to happen" mindset of a true train operator GM.

It was always easy and natural for me. I've always been a "take charge" kind of guy in my social groups and thrive on rallying everybody to do some activity, so it was just an extension of that.

I'm also the type to study whatever I'm interested about in meticulous detail and want to get it right, so I inevitably end up being competent at it. I love to voraciously devour every piece of GMing literature I can get my hands on too.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;777215It was always easy and natural for me. I've always been a "take charge" kind of guy in my social groups and thrive on rallying everybody to do some activity, so it was just an extension of that.

I'm also the type to study whatever I'm interested about in meticulous detail and want to get it right, so I inevitably end up being competent at it. I love to voraciously devour every piece of GMing literature I can get my hands on too.

This is pretty much my exact experience, except that I became a "take charge" kind of guy BECAUSE of RPGs.

GMing got me to grow a backbone. I was an introverted kid and GMing helped me become outgoing and assertive in organized social activities.

I guess that it is a bit ironic that role-playing games made me become a more outgoing, social person. At least in the pop culture sense.

EDIT: Note: At around the same time, I listened to a lot of Metal and Industrial and became a goth, so it might be a bit more complicated than that, lol

Not hard. I played the game one night as an introduction and the next day I was drawing and keying my own dungeon.

 35+ years later, I am still learning how to be a better DM.

Trial and error. Lots of error...  :-)

I had similar experiences. The Easter Bunny left me a red box at 10 years old, read through it, fell in love instantly and recruited friends to play (as suggested in the box set...).

We stumbled around until I hit my stride. I feel I had a strong grasp of the rules and my role when running 2er, so it took years to really be where I wanted to be at (but people we're having fun, so it wasn't a tragedy or anything).

I also made terrible mistakes and had to make apologies and amends along the way. I think I picked up the basics pretty fast, but really eased into an "expertise" with it, which is really more a lifelong professional hobbyist pursuit versus a static end goal. :-D

I GMed for years before I ever became self-conscious about GMing as a "thing". I started in '78, and someone needed to do it.

I'm uncomfortable with GMing being "easy" - it means I'm not trying.
I think I always thought I was good (mainly because people I gamed with said so /yank yank) but without fail, I'd play with another group and there would be a GM that showed me what GMing could be.

By the time 2e was under full swing, I remember being really confident in my GMing skills. I could run a game at the drop of a hat with anyone. As it happened, I was asked to play in a demo for this new D&D game called Spelljammer. I was between games (I was running a 4-day tournament) and I said sure! why not?

I sit down at the table, and my GM showed up, he had no books. He dumps a bunch of rubber monsters on the table. At first I'm thinking "WTF... is this going to be some kinda joke game?" I look around the table - and I notice the names on the badges and I'm playing with some of the TSR and Dragon Magazine staff - and Skip Williams was our GM.

It was an eye-opening experience. Skip was encyclopedic, he didn't have fucking books because he didn't need them. He proceeded to show me what "the next level of GMing was" (I played a Dwarf berserker and threw myself into it. I think I scared them in a good way - they took a picture of it and put it in Polyhedron, was amusing.) Truly one of the great gaming pleasures and learning experiences.

I'm not sure GMing is ever "easy" if you're going for it. I think GM's should always be pushing their own boundaries.

Quote from: tenbones;777242I'm not sure GMing is ever "easy" if you're going for it. I think GM's should always be pushing their own boundaries.

If that's what floats your boat, cool. Personally GMing needs to be fun for me and I don't see it as a sport or competition.

Sometimes fun means I decide to stretch things or try something new:

• Sessions with soundtracks.
• Sessions with recorded sound effects.
• Long multi-session adventures where each scene relates to one song on an album and the session starts with that song.
• Index cards with a weird picture or drawing of a book for the tomes and grimories they find.
• Hand made artifacts for the player to touch, look at, and hold- aged maps or jewelry.
• Troupe style play where each player has multiple PCs.
• Totally improv sessions.
• Heavily planned sessions.
• Players running all the key NPCs for other players.
• Individual pictures for each NPC they meet.
• Sessions run by lantern light with the players separated into different rooms when their PCs split up.
• A silent movie session where the players cannot speak, only gesture or write their dialog on a card.

But a lot of the time, I just want to do my usual GM thing.

Not exactly. No. It was easy to run games, harder to make those games good--that's a skill I developed over time and lots and lots of practice and I've made some mistakes down the road.

Mostly, a common problem I still have is that the pc's will try and think around difficult problems rather than try and bull their way through them. It surprises me when they DO think around the problem sometimes as well.

If I put a monster they can't fight against them, sometimes that's a sign there is more work to be done. (Example: AD&D Gargoyle guarding gate, no magical items in the party.)

Quote from: Bren;777250If that's what floats your boat, cool. Personally GMing needs to be fun for me and I don't see it as a sport or competition.

The competition is not with other GM's.

The "competition" (as you put it ) is with myself. I'm always looking to make my games better.

*I* find putting in the effort fun.

C'mon you know your campaigns that you've run where your players will always remember "THAT CAMPAIGN" - the one(s) that stand head and shoulders above all others.

That's the plane where I want all my games. I want to surprise myself. I want my games to be unpredictable - it's why I do sandbox style play exclusively - I want the players to surprise me. I want them to do what they want and push the envelope within the context of the campaign.

If I do "same ol' shit" all the time - I'd just as soon not GM because it would bore me. I'm not telling people what to do. I'm telling people what I do. But I have no problem passing judgement on a shitty game (like most of the livecasts I've seen. Does anyone at WotC actually play???) I'll call it as such. But you know, to each their own and all that.

I was the one that read the rules, and mowed enough lawns to be able to buy the books.

I never thought anything of it, any more than when I went to my friend's house and he played drums (it was his drum set, after all...).

I played in either one or two sessions of Gary 's game before getting a piece of graph paper and drawing a dungeon level.

I was 16.  I'm sure it sucked.  But we all had fun, and practice makes perfect.

It.  Really.  Is.  Just.  That.  Simple.

Quote from: Bren;777060Very, very, very easy. Like skim through the OD&D rules and draw a dungeon up that same night easy.

It was pretty much the same for me: read OD&D and Greyhawk (all that was in print when I started) and draw up a couple of dungeon levels and a small village and keep for the player's to retreat to/recruit from/etc. Of course, it took a few years of GMing almost every week before I got really good at it but it was easy to start. My players and I (mostly) had fun from the very beginning, however, and that's what really matters.

Quote from: Necrozius;777222This is pretty much my exact experience, except that I became a "take charge" kind of guy BECAUSE of RPGs.

GMing got me to grow a backbone. I was an introverted kid and GMing helped me become outgoing and assertive in organized social activities.

I guess that it is a bit ironic that role-playing games made me become a more outgoing, social person. At least in the pop culture sense.

EDIT: Note: At around the same time, I listened to a lot of Metal and Industrial and became a goth, so it might be a bit more complicated than that, lol

For me it was the opposite, as I had to unlearn a slew of "the players are always right" style GM literature.

I don't remember how I starting being the GM... I think there was just a bunch of us who wanted to play and I was the only one who had played before and had the books.
It wasn't hard... but I wasn't particularly good at it either, though everyone seemed to have fun.

Quote from: Doughdee222;777193I still cringe at much of what we did in those days but we didn't know better and it was still fun. Yeah, I too filled up piles of graph paper with various dungeons and forts and wrote up how they were stocked but we ran lots of the published modules too. The 80's were a fun time to be a teenage gamer.

I want to cringe about doing the same thing in the early/mid 90s.  Then I remember that we also had fun. Sometimes I want to cringe when people imply that "we had fun" is somehow worse than "we created a superb narrative, indicative of the human soul. The Great Kobold Raids over HammerPort were a metaphor for our own fleeting youth."

I did dumb things.  I did a lot of them.  They were fun things, too.  I regret nothing.

Quote from: cranebump;777061Easy to play, difficult to master. Like all the best games.

(P.S. Just to be clear, 30+ years and I haven't mastered it yet).

Veritas!

I think my first time GM'ing was the Darkstryder campaign for Star Wars d6. I tried so hard to stick to the script that first game, and quickly realized it was killing both mine and the players enjoyment, so it went a bit gonzo after that.

I soon found myself running three different Star Wars campaigns, as word got out. :eek:

Quote from: Novastar;777329I think my first time GM'ing was the Darkstryder campaign for Star Wars d6.

Well nothing like jumping into the deep end of the pool to learn to swim.

I have that campaign and most of the other WEG adventures and supplements. I never ran Darkstryder though. Partly because we never had enough players to make it work. Because of the mix of pregenerated characters, important NPCs, and underlying plot and background secrets, combined with players running multiple PCs, I'd say that is easily the most difficult of any WEG Star Wars supplement to run.

I was the players' choice for GM pretty much from the start, except for when Doug was in town (The college guy who had introduced us all to D&D). Whenever he was around everyone wanted to play in his killer dungeons, just to see how long we would last with our lastest "uber" character.

I never ran railroady modules, and took his lead in building a sandbox style post-apocalyptic D&D world where we would often run Gamma World instead of D&D. The two games were completely interchangeable and we were playing one or the other depending on if the characters hit the remnants of a high-tech pocket or were exploring the vast uncharted wilderness which was all that remained of civilization.

A bit later on I migrated to running adventures and mini-campaigns in a custom built entirely fantasy homebrew world largely inspired by the early Thieves World series of books, Sanctuary, Vulgar Unicorn, et. al.

My first game was pretty much a disaster, but I got better with practice, at least I think I did.

My first game was a homebrew low-fantasy setting using rigorously simplified GURPS. I didn't find it difficult but that's probably mainly because of the easy-going nature of my players (and possibly their low standards).
My weak spot has always been that I would like to be a bit more adversary and should really throw in some more combat. Also, I'm not good keeping track of complex/elaborate/extensive rules. Switching to other systems took care of that significantly.

With another player group, I'm not sure I'd be all that great a GM.

Quote from: Bill;777053For me, the challenge was by far, learning to create campaigns that were not just fighting monsters.

I was never a railroady, asshat, or adversarial gm.

But man, when I started out, my games were combat focused.

Fortunately a player told me "Bill, all we do in your game is go into dungeons and kill monsters. Where are the Imps selling magic trinkets? Where is the rivalry between the local priests and thieves guild? Etc.. Etc..."

I wised up fast.

But the "dungeon" is brilliant simply because it gives new refs such a bounded area to start.  And your players told you the other stuff they were interested in.  Sounds perfect to me.

Not too challenging, though I was a late bloomer.

When I was younger I mostly enjoyed playing. I had older friends that ran some very entertaining AD&D, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret campaigns, so I never really was driven to pick up the reins myself. It wasn't until the later stages of high school - after playing for 6 years - that I started running short campaigns.

During that time period, 1988-1990, I remember pulling a few asshat GM stunts. But everyone still had a great time. Then, I gave up gaming altogether during my college years, leaving the hobby until around 1999. When I got back in to the hobby, I was driven to run campaigns. Very driven. And, it felt comfortable and fairly easy to slide into the role. There have been a few bumps and railroads over the past 15 years, but nothing that really had a strong impact on my gaming experience, and the experience of the players.

Most people want to DM but most are terrible at it.  Being the DM is hardest job at the table, that's why game designers try to "fix" DMs with their rules.  The latest fad is simplicity and more vague rules.  The purpose is to hide the incompetence and laziness of the certain DM styles.  If you can call it a style.

I personally don't get any satisfaction in a game from poorly or not prepared DMs. It's a fun exercise to just sit down and make stuff up sometimes, but I find it more enjoyable to play with a well prepared and knowledgeable DM.  It takes the game to a whole new level and makes players invested more.

Finding a good DM willing (or capable) to take time to prepare is tough, but finding someone who will just sit down and make it up as they go is easy, but less satisfying in my opinion.

Quote from: hamstertamer;777687Most people want to DM but most are terrible at it.  Being the DM is hardest job at the table, that's why game designers try to "fix" DMs with their rules. The latest fad is simplicity and more vague rules.  The purpose is to hide the incompetence and laziness of the certain DM styles.  If you can call it a style.

I personally don't get any satisfaction in a game from poorly or not prepared DMs. It's a fun exercise to just sit down and make stuff up sometimes, but I find it more enjoyable to play with a well prepared and knowledgeable DM.  It takes the game to a whole new level and makes players invested more.

Finding a good DM willing (or capable) to take time to prepare is tough, but finding someone who will just sit down and make it up as they go is easy, but less satisfying in my opinion.

Sounds like from this you feel "competence" is knowing all the rules?  This seems like a disconnect, because, as far as "making it up as they go," it's hard to do that if you DON'T know the rules (or enough of the rules to make the game work). For improv to work, you have to know the rules inside out, unless you wanna pull orc stats out your ass.

So, I wouldn't knock improv. But I wouldn't overvalue the rules either. The first editions of this game encouraged people to change them. This may even include (shudder) ignoring the rules if they wish. The GM is not the ump at a baseball game. At least, he or she don't have to be. If we want more folks to attempt GM'ing, and, better yet, become GOOD at it, we have to encourage the attempt. Playing it up as incredibly "hard" puts folks off. It's not nearly as hard as folks think it is.

I was a late bloomer, too. I had great role models -- whose examples I've never quite lived up to, really -- and I knew if I ever ran a game I wanted to shoot for something that immersive and memorable.

I had no plans to run a game of my own, but then the DM of our long-running 2ePO game (not one of the aforementioned role models, FWIW) abruptly announced that he was converting the campaign to a newer edition and resetting our hard-won XP to zero. It had taken years of meager XP awards to grind to where we were, and we already had a number of concerns over wacky game admin decisions and rules calls, so we split off into our own thing with n00bish me as the DM.

And hilarity ensued.

Quote from: hamstertamer;777687Most people want to DM but most are terrible at it.  Being the DM is hardest job at the table, that's why game designers try to "fix" DMs with their rules.  The latest fad is simplicity and more vague rules.  The purpose is to hide the incompetence and laziness of the certain DM styles.  If you can call it a style.

I personally don't get any satisfaction in a game from poorly or not prepared DMs. It's a fun exercise to just sit down and make stuff up sometimes, but I find it more enjoyable to play with a well prepared and knowledgeable DM.  It takes the game to a whole new level and makes players invested more.

Finding a good DM willing (or capable) to take time to prepare is tough, but finding someone who will just sit down and make it up as they go is easy, but less satisfying in my opinion.

The best DM I ever had didn't even refer to books anymore. He had played so much D&D that he pretty much internalized the game, and improvised everything with a system he kept in his head that was stripped-down to bare bones. Which I loved. The system got out of the way, and we instead engaged with the absolutely incredible and intense settings and adventures that he conjured up from scribbled notes on a page or two of lined paper.

Frankly, the notion that DM needs comprehensive preparation and an encyclopedic knowledge of the game is one of the anchors around the neck of the hobby keeping it in the domain of jobless ubernerds.

So are you one of these elite DMs yourself?

Quote from: Haffrung;777729The best DM I ever had didn't even refer to books anymore. He had played so much D&D that he pretty much internalized the game, and improvised everything with a system he kept in his head that was stripped-down to bare bones. Which I loved. The system got out of the way, and we instead engaged with the absolutely incredible and intense settings and adventures that he conjured up from scribbled notes on a page or two of lined paper.

Frankly, the notion that DM needs comprehensive preparation and an encyclopedic knowledge of the game is one of the anchors around the neck of the hobby keeping it in the domain of jobless ubernerds.

So are you one of these elite DMs yourself?

That's just it, it's not about the system, it's about the GM making sure they know how things "are supposed to be" and playing through. The problem with new GMs is that they hold onto the rules tightly, and it takes years to realize what happens where there are no rules is where you grow as a GM.

Something I observed starting with 3e (though this existed in other games like GURPs) is this notion that the rules themselves are the game. The rise of "builds" free of context of the campaigns players are actually playing in, and in many cases there is no game at all. People just "make builds" for fun.

4e only cemented this stupid idea.

What's really funny? Go to the WotC forums and look at all noobs trying to make "builds" with 5e...

I'm not sure easy even applies in my case because I'm the type that always came up with some whack scenario and then finally my friends said cool....you run it. And the rest is history or disaster depending on who you ask. Basically I ran Palladium before I played Dnd other then running somebody else's character.

It was all women and man was it viscous! Also the only reason I got to play Mage was because I had to run the first campaign with no clue about the rules. I was just trying to kick my player's asses.:)

Heh, charopping 5e is quite amusing to watch.

Quote from: Bren;777060Very, very, very easy. Like skim through the OD&D rules and draw a dungeon up that same night easy.

+1.  That was how I did it myself.  I had the forethought to grab City State of the Invincible Overlord while I was at it, so the PCs had a home base -- and because from Day One, I liked urban adventures -- but there it was.

I must have been head-and-shoulders about the other GMs in my somewhat large gaming circle, because I had two groups almost overnight (and have run two groups for most of my GMing career) and a large waiting list, but it took years before I became what I'd consider good, and I cringe to recall some of the boners I pulled in those first couple of years.

It took me a while to figure it out. The first game I ran, I prepped a lot. Like a bucket load, and it went very well. My follow-up session was nowhere near as good. I was running two campaigns out of the gate, because I somehow I had two different groups interested in the setting I was using. Eventually I figured out how to do it. I remember observing other GMs, reading GM advice and just kind of finding out what worked and what bombed over time. Every so often I would shift my play style a bit and undergo the same process again.

I was 11 the first time I tried GMing a game of Drakar och Demoner for my father and younger brother. I had no idea what to do, and broke down in tears. Then my dad read the rulebook and ran a game for us. After that it didn't seem hard - I started making maps and introducing the game to my friends.

Quote from: Haffrung;777729The best DM I ever had didn't even refer to books anymore. He had played so much D&D that he pretty much internalized the game, and improvised everything with a system he kept in his head that was stripped-down to bare bones. Which I loved. The system got out of the way, and we instead engaged with the absolutely incredible and intense settings and adventures that he conjured up from scribbled notes on a page or two of lined paper.

Frankly, the notion that DM needs comprehensive preparation and an encyclopedic knowledge of the game is one of the anchors around the neck of the hobby keeping it in the domain of jobless ubernerds.

So are you one of these elite DMs yourself?

+1 Though I am thinking now the previous poster might have been talking about people making up the rules, rather than internalizing them (maybe?).

Quote from: Haffrung;777729Frankly, the notion that DM needs comprehensive preparation and an encyclopedic knowledge of the game is one of the anchors around the neck of the hobby keeping it in the domain of jobless ubernerds.

You can say that, but try handing a newbie the rulebook for an RPG and encouraging them to "just GM a game and don't sweat the details". I suspect 9 times out of 10 it won't work out very well. A certain type of personality is required to perceive even casual GMing as anything but a chore. Those 1 in 10 who embrace GMing will run the game exactly as they want to in terms of prep level.

Hard. I am still working on it, I guess. I was never very good at it. I am a better player than GM. I didn't help I played Warhammer Fantasy in the late nineties and then started again in 2008/2009 with the new WoD. With all it's pretention (about it's themes) and it's lack of lore (aka toolkit) it wasn't the easiest choice. So I handed it over to a friend of mine and now I am starting again. The sandboxing advice really helps and is very practical. I think you could run any game (sf, fantasy, pirates) using the same method.

Quote from: Opaopajr;777115WotC's killing off its 'zines (and outsourcing their subscription list first) might actually be the stupidest thing they have ever done.

Yeah, because the print industry is clearly experiencing such a major boom right now... :P

Quote from: RPGPundit;779128Yeah, because the print industry is clearly experiencing such a major boom right now... :P

They fed a subscription list to their current competitor. Even the staff of Pathfinder said it was solid gold to their transitioning into a major RPG publisher. Come now, do keep up with connecting the dots.

I played one game, then I decided I would much rather be GMing. It is so much easier for me! It was like being let out of a straitjacket!

-clash

Anyways, for me it was ridiculously easy; technically, I GMed before I got to play.

Quote from: RPGPundit;780654Anyways, for me it was ridiculously easy; technically, I GMed before I got to play.

Now that's unusual to me, as I take you to be younger and thus closer to the next generation of players, and would have expected you learned from someone else who played. Most of the people under 50 I've talked to learned from another as a player first. Were you in Uruguay then and had no immediate community reference?

I Started DMing from the get go but I always rotated with at least one other DM. I started in my early teens and don't recall having any difficulty. Growing up with the game is the easiest way to learn because you learn as the players learn and it doesn't take much to have fun.

Nowadays there are 5 of us in the group and we all take turns DMing with each rotation lasting 9 to 18 months. It's not rocket science and everyone brings something unique to the table.

Quote from: Bren;777060Very, very, very easy. Like skim through the OD&D rules and draw a dungeon up that same night easy.

Yeah, change that to the Holmes blue box rule book, and my experience is the same.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;777282For me it was the opposite, as I had to unlearn a slew of "the players are always right" style GM literature.

Remember, friends don't let friends play storygames!


;)

Quote from: tenbones;777745. . . [W]hat happens where there are no rules is where you grow as a GM.

That is one of the best and truest statements I think I've ever read about roleplaying games.

I found it very easy.

Before I'd ever heard of rpgs, my friends and I used to draw a lot, and - being kids - we'd draw space ships and explosions and stuff. One subject that was very popular was to draw lairs suitable for a Bond villain, full of death-traps and the like to stop any secret agents.

As time went by, simply drawing the lairs and showing them to each other evolved into a game which we called "The Spy Game".

One of us would draw a villain's lair full of death traps, but the rule was that there had to be at least one possible route to get to the villain's control room. The rest of us would take it in turns to send a secret agent in. We wouldn't be allowed to see the map, so the drawer would describe where our agents were and we'd say what they were doing. Then they'd tell us the result. If (when!) the agent got killed by some diabolical trap or ambush, it was the next person's turn to send in an agent - learning from the mistakes of the previous one.

It wasn't proper roleplaying of course, but it did have the basic elements of a dungeon bash with us taking on a role; exploring a hidden map; a referee that would act "impartially" and relay the results of our investigation; and so on.

In 1981, when I was 11, I'd just entered secondary school. One break time I saw one of my new classmates drawing a dungeon on squared paper. This looked very much like "The Spy Game", so I asked him what he was doing and he explained that he was drawing it for a game of D&D - something I'd never heard of.

He invited me to come and play the game after school, and I did. I knew nothing of the rules, but I still remember the game distinctly. We played outside in his garden, and there were three PCs (I played a pregenerated fighter because I didn't know the rules and that was the simplest) and about half a dozen henchmen. We explored a dungeon and had fun killing goblins - with me simply rolling whatever dice I was told to roll - until we came across a dragon which breathed on the henchmen killing them all. We fled, and managed to escape with our lives but without the dragon's treasure!

After that single session I didn't get chance to play again, but I was hooked anyway. I told my parents about the game and asked if they could get me the basic set for my birthday.

They got me the newly released Moldvay Basic boxed set (at the time I thought that was what I'd played - but I much later realised that the version my classmate had was Holmes Basic, not Moldvay Basic).

So on the basis of having played only a single session of the game, I then read the Moldvay Basic set and started DMing it to my friends - none of whom had any experience whatsoever. Since we were all 11, we probably got most of it wrong; but we were enthusiastic and that counted for a lot.

But I think that the fact that we were all so young helped tremendously. One of the players in my current 'kids' group tried to DM for us recently and he had a much harder time of it. He was 12 at the time, and of course his game wasn't very good. But that's because half of his players were adults who have been gaming for decades. He was trying (and failing) to run a game in the same way that we do, rather than running the sort of loose and silly game that his peers would play. We were supportive, of course, but he could tell that his DMing wasn't as good as ours, and he lost confidence and gave up after a while, preferring to play while one of us DMs.

I think that makes a big difference. If you've joined an experienced group then DMing for the first time can be daunting because you feel you've a lot to live up to; but if you're all new to the game and there are no expectations you can be a lot less self-conscious about things and it's much easier.

The second time I ever played (summer 1998) I was forced to GM (rotating GM system in a group of three who had never played RPGs before).

The system was the third edition of The Dark Eye, as it was for approximately 93.78% of all RPG beginners in 90s Germany. There are a lot of good reasons I don't play that game anymore, but lack of accessability fortunately wasn't on the list back in the day. The system was easy enough to grasp and master for a beginning GM to get it right from the get-go.

I essentially drew a dungeon map, populated it with monsters and treasures and came up with a lackluster reasoning why our ill-met troupe of ill-motivated adventurers should go there (related by some stock peasant NPC in a nearby tavern).
(Looking back, my method for writing up and running fantasy adventures hasn't changed essentially since ;) )

I have lost my notes a long time ago. What I do remember is that the adventure was set in the ruins of a keep, and that I had placed a buried magic sword in the overgrown courtyard (regognizable by a t-shaped patch of stunted weed grow). I also recall that the players had figured out how to find and uncover it. Those innocent days when a simple +1 longsword was something to be awed at, rather than something to be put on the wheelbarrow along with the other "junk" treasure...

The 1991 D&D black box had a solo adventure that you'd play by yourself, using the big, beautiful, game-board-like dungeon map that came with the box, with an installment after each chapter of the rules for easy learning.

After you read the rules you were expected to gather your friends and run the same adventure, which I dutifully did. I didn't use the map that came with the set, though; I thought it'd be silly to let everyone at the game see the entire frickin' map. So I drew my own.

So I suppose it was very, very easy.

Thought I should stress I wasn't a 13 year old when I started, unlike most of the rest of you. I was 21, and that was 36 years ago.

Quote from: flyingmice;780714Thought I should stress I wasn't a 13 year old when I started, unlike most of the rest of you. I was 21, and that was 36 years ago.

So you were a late bloomer? ;)