Quote from: tenbones on July 31, 2023, 11:51:34 AM
Do you just play? Do you GM? Do you want to GM? Are you a GM that is always looking for new tools for you toolbox? Would you consume content concerning structured and expansive guides to GMing from top to bottom? Do you think the hobby at large does this sufficiently well?

Off and on. Probably 50% (number pulled out of my ass) of my gaming is me being the GM. I really like it. I like interpreting player actions and the results. I like to come up with interesting scenarios and encounters. I like to tinker with the game and how the players interact with it. I do consume a fair bit of GM advice and tips. Especially advice that's practical and makes the "job" both more efficient and more effective.
The Hobby generally doesn't do GM advice well. I think the most bang I've gotten for my buck is out of The Alexandrian website, The Angry GM's blogs and videos, and Pondsmith's Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads! book. Sly Flourish's Lazy GM book and video blog is pretty good as well.

I like stuff on structure, pacing, nuts and bolts advice on encounter building and distributing rewards.

Most offical books do a really half-assed job. Especially, especially published adventures, which to my mind, should be setting up the GM with the framework they need to run a good adventure, often need tweaking and sometimes to be completely torn down and rebuilt. Railroads with "guidance" on how to beat the party into going along with the proscribed "story".

At least once a week for my main campaign (currently Planescape), and quite often twice a week for short campaigns, one-shots, play-tests, etc.

Content-wise, I read blogs, sometimes watch a relevant video on the topic, and so on. The most useful material in that regard, IMHO, is ready to play modules, and tools that streamline their creation.

Quote from: tenbones on July 31, 2023, 11:51:34 AM
I'm curious to know how many of you here *actively* GM, or haven't and want to?

My thoughts around many of the arguments/debates that have gone on and on and on over the decades has to do with the lack of recognition in what GM's actually do, and the skillset required to be "good" at it. There are many discussions about the trees of the GMing forest but there is very little discussion, at least to me - honest discussion, about GMing in a holistic manner. There *are* levels to it. There *are* best practices.

GM's are the heart of the hobby. And frankly with the implosion of the D&D brand when they go mostly digital, I predict having GM outreach is a massive opportunity for non-D&D gaming in our hobby. And no, I'm not advocating for "The TTRPG Culture" - I don't believe in that *at all*. But I do believe that we need to be bringing up GM's into the hobby, and creating and refining GM's currently in the hobby. GM's are the center and primary consumers of product. I feel GM's are the invisible demographic that has been sorely ignored and taken for granted. And I see very little modern attempts in the D&D brand to nurture new GM's... which means of course it's on us.

Do you just play? Do you GM? Do you want to GM? Are you a GM that is always looking for new tools for you toolbox? Would you consume content concerning structured and expansive guides to GMing from top to bottom? Do you think the hobby at large does this sufficiently well?

I GM (usually 1-2 times a week), and I run games for people who also GM

EDIT: To answer the questions. Yes I want to GM, I am often looking for tools to add to the toolbox. I don't really buy GM guides these days (once in a while maybe), but either try to focus on what is working at the table and read or watch shorter things like blog entries on GMing ideas (I think it is rare to have a whole book GMing that is gold the whole way through, but occasionally bloggers, YouTubers, posters on forums occasionally strike gold).

     I'm GM'ing every other week (not my choice but player's).  I don't mind running games but it has to be of interest to me.  If it's just an analog version of WoW then I'm not doing it.  I'm running the game b/c the other GM was doing 5E and it was just murder hobo time and I was checking out of it as were some others (the kill-loot cycle was boring them).  We're using Mythras now (started with BRP but some minor reasons I made the change) and Aihrde for the setting.  I've checked out some of the GM material on youtube and read some blogs and story telling books but I feel it's one of those things you have to just do to get a base from which to mold your style.  Many of the guides start to repeat each other or hit on specific topics that may not apply, now I only look at 2 people on youtube for information.  It's like painting minis: you can watch all the videos you want but until you start painting you'll never get it done or improve. 

I actively GM. I am in a long-term stable weekly roleplaying group of five of us. Four of us happily GM and want to. One is a player only.   So ~25% of the time. [Also GM for another group of old University friends but we only meet a few times a year and play for a whole day. Been GMing that for ~years in my latest stretch.]

In general, I agree that this is an interesting issue.  I've seen posts on FaceBook [Dungeons and Dragons UK] of players looking for a DM.  One time it was with a list of demands for the sought-for DM. (Develop game based on backstories, run to level 20, blance roleplay and combat, ...). Another time, it came with a declaration that all the players had tried DMing and didn't like it so were seeeking a DM.  I tried pointing out it wasn't a very sustainable view of how the hobby can work.

So yes -bottom line -  if you want an average gaming group of N players (whatever N is) then it needs 1 in N fulltime GMs or an equivalent input from several people.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 01, 2023, 01:54:27 AM

The Hobby generally doesn't do GM advice well. I think the most bang I've gotten for my buck is out of The Alexandrian website, The Angry GM's blogs and videos, and Pondsmith's Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads! book. Sly Flourish's Lazy GM book and video blog is pretty good as well.

The Alexandrian blog is great for GM help!

Yes, I GM bout 95% of the time (about twice a month). I think I should be a player more often, but TBH I do not like the play-style of most GMs I know.

I participated in some awesome adventures, however, and I'm unsure if I am a good GM in comparison (for example, I admire GMs that do good "voices", even though I do not think this is what the game is about).

I have a feeling - also when GMing but especially when playing - that many people want to play a "story". Which I dislike.

Some of my campaigns fizzle out when a PC dies. I didn't find a good solution for this.

One "bucket list" goal is running a campaign for dozens of characters. Not sure I can find enough players to try it, and it is probably a lot of work...

I've read some good and bad GM advice... even tried to write some of my own.

Here is a fun discussion from the G+ days:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/03/12-things-i-wish-i-would-had-known.html

* Your PC is only cool if he is cool during play, not because he has an amazing backstory. Likewise, your NPCs are only cool if they do cool stuff during play. Your adventure is only good if it provides good times to people playing it.

* The story does not have to be cool or make sense to anyone other than the people playing the game. Like in real life, you go on adventures to have experiences, not to tell stories after the fact.

* Different people like different things, including mechanics. Some people will never spend inspiration or that last potion of healing, no matter what you do. Some people want to pick fights, some people want interaction, some people want to play ninjas. If it suits them, that is okay.

* Find the best system for you and your players. Eventually, this will be the system you have created yourself.

* That puzzle (or conspiracy) you built for your players is not as obvious as you think. The players are not in your head.

* Everybody will forget most of the details after a couple of days. If you want long arches and complicated plots with various adventures, that is fine, but don't expect you player to remember every NPC they meet, unless they are recurring. Also, if something happens to the PCs - specially if they are wronged - they are more likely to remember.

* Every important person, thing or location should have ONE obvious distinction. Not grey hair, but a mohawk. Not a scar, but a distinct lack of nose. Not grey houses, but impossibly tall spires. Think "caricatures".

* Do not plan the story in advance and do not keep safeguards against derailing. No fudging dice, no saving the players from bad luck or bad choices. You're robbing them of some amazing experiences. Failing is part of the game.

* Few fights should be to the death. People are more likely to surrender than to fight to the bitter end, and few animals will take a beating if they can escape.

* Common sense trumps the rules. But if the rules defy common sense all the time, you should be looking for a different set of rules. This is about rules as physics, not story - people defy common sense all the time!



* Let the dice push you out of your comfort zone. Your PCs all failed their saving throws - now what? Your important NPC was killed before he could start his plan - what happens now? If you always rely on common sense to decide probabilities without using the dice, everything will become predictable.

* Everyone said that already, but expect the unexpected from your players. Do not assume they will be nice to a baby in the crib when they are invading a castle.

There is a story to the last one, of course, but I'll leave that to another post.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 01, 2023, 01:54:27 AM

The Hobby generally doesn't do GM advice well. I think the most bang I've gotten for my buck is out of The Alexandrian website, The Angry GM's blogs and videos, and Pondsmith's Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads! book. Sly Flourish's Lazy GM book and video blog is pretty good as well.

It's funny I *love* Pondsmith. Definitely had a big impact on my own GMing experience. Great guy. Justin Alexander has great GMing advice... but for some reason he really seems to hate me. At least he builds up an intense vitriol to my posts, even though I think we agree on an awful lot of stuff, I've never understood if he is mistaking me for someone else, or he projects some caricature of what he thinks I mean about stuff. /shrug. I think his website is pretty solid. But my experience with him here and other places have been, LOL nasty? to say the least. I never knew why... but maybe he just posts when he's angry. Dunno.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 01, 2023, 01:54:27 AMI like stuff on structure, pacing, nuts and bolts advice on encounter building and distributing rewards.

Most offical books do a really half-assed job. Especially, especially published adventures, which to my mind, should be setting up the GM with the framework they need to run a good adventure, often need tweaking and sometimes to be completely torn down and rebuilt. Railroads with "guidance" on how to beat the party into going along with the proscribed "story".

Totally agree with you here.

I feel a lot of the posts here are pointing to a specific place that I figured was true - we've all reinvented the wheel for the most part, without really discussing a methodology for GMing as a "craft" that like other crafts have developmental stages which require different needs and sub-skills to master. At least that's my take on it...

Keep it rolling guys!

Yet another place where style/advice are hard to separate:

Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 01, 2023, 11:23:01 AM
Some of my campaigns fizzle out when a PC dies. I didn't find a good solution for this.

I've got some techniques to work around this.  They aren't special to me, as I learned them from applying some pretty common stuff in certain combinations.  However, they do imply a style.  To wit, if you don't want a campaign to fizzle because of character death, then make the campaign about the party instead of a player.  Or make it about something even larger than the party, if you don't want a TPK to derail it.  This necessarily means that certain "story" options are off the table, which will conflict with some styles.

Another example, how do you run a good mystery?  I know how to run a good mystery in the terms of what makes "good mystery" to me (players finding clues, deducing, mixed with some action, chances of failure all around, including not solving the mystery or even realizing that a mystery is there).  What other people often mean by running a "good mystery" is that they hit all the tropes of a whatever mystery sub genre they have in mind.  It's Picard on the Holodeck playing at a mystery, not players solving a mystery.  Which personally I find pointless in a game, but hey, whatever people want to do.  Point being, my techniques work for my style, while being mostly useless or counter-productive for that other style.  And vice versa.  The "3-clue rule" is essential to the play acting; actively harmful and stupid to player mystery solving.

That's one of the reasons we go around and around, and why as several have stated, the only way to really become a good GM is to do it.  You can't develop a style without practice, and you can't really even know exactly what your style is without experimenting.  Even assuming a perfect GM manual for every possible style (ha!), the beginning GM would still need to flounder around a while to decide which manual to follow. 

Quote from: tenbones on July 31, 2023, 11:51:34 AM
I'm curious to know how many of you here *actively* GM, or haven't and want to?

<snip>

Do you just play? Do you GM? Do you want to GM? Are you a GM that is always looking for new tools for you toolbox? Would you consume content concerning structured and expansive guides to GMing from top to bottom? Do you think the hobby at large does this sufficiently well?

I'm playing my first game in decades where I'm a player. We're 20 sessions (one year) into it. It was weird and took a lot of getting used to.

My wife is getting ready to GM her first game with a one-shot. For the rules lite games we looked at, the problem was the adventures/modules weren't complete enough for a first time GM. (She wants/needs fully stat'd NPCs/Monsters and maps of the town. Descriptions of rooms. Etc.) We are going with DwD Studios BareBones Fantasy. She's played it and the modules are incredibly well written. Lots of "setup the situation, let the party figure out the solution."

For some games, this is a problem. They're basically limiting themselves to experienced GMs.

Too much of the time to me, the hobby (people in generally really) insist there is only one way to do things. I'm sure though someone will come along to disagree with my examples below.

As GM, I do not generally intimately wrap the story around the PC's backstories.
Our current GM is incredibly good at it, to the point where for some pivotal sessions, if someone can't make the session, we have to run a one-shot instead, because it requires that PC's skills (along with everyone else's).
Neither of us is wrong. It's just different styles.

As a GM, I don't require a player to talk to the NPC as if they were talking to a person. Some people just aren't good at that. I let them explain to me what they are attempting and how. And then I determine if they get a bonus or not.
Other people want you to talk to the NPC as if you were talking to another person.
And apply a bonus or not depending on how good your acting was or how eloquent you were.
This doesn't work well when the character is really, really good with people and the player is not eloquent and is not good with people.
A lot of people think the only way to do it is using the second method. Which really sucks for those of who just aren't that way.
Neither approach is wrong. Just different styles. But insisting that people must follow only one of the two styles, is wrong.

Similar to the above is mini-puzzles. Some players love mini-puzzles as part of their session.
I don't. Neither do my regular players.
But for those who like them, they are great. I know of several people here that really like them.
Not right. Not wrong. Just different styles for different groups.

I hate "sandboxes". That does not mean I'm in favor of railroads. But, I want to be presented with a problem to solve.
How it gets solved is up to the party. (It's usually way more entertaining that whatever railroad was scripted.)
The other way is too much like life for me. I want to willfully jump into the planned adventure.
Other groups love sandboxes and want to come up with their own adventures based on really light-weight hooks.
Anything more they think is railroading.
Neither is wrong. Just different styles.

GMing a face-to-face game once every couple of weeks. And run and play in one online game.

I'm generally happy to GM.

Quote from: tenbones on July 31, 2023, 04:48:43 PM
<snip>
I do believe there are stages of development that all GM's go through and there are nested capacities required for each stage to pull off. It's like playing a kazoo vs. being in a band, vs. being a composer and conductor for an orchestra. They're all making music, but the difficulties and understanding of the music required to each thing is vastly different  and increases in complexity. MOST players never get a GM capable of pulling off big multi-year campaigns that take them from 1st level to the pinnacles of power - and do it with fidelity.

So I'm thinking of trying to frame a method of GMing at each stage for people to use and they can rest where they feel most comfortable. But the idea is to give them tools and a direction to work towards, regardless of their experience level. Of course young folks new to the hobby will get the most benefit. The real issue is finding those people that *want* to do it. Not just "I'm a GM because no one else will do it" (but that counts too), but those people that catch the bug and want to really run with it.
<snip>

My fear is that this ends up with a right/wrong way to GM. (Because the top level is obviously "most right". Right?)

I think it is more of a toolkit. And the more options you are familiar with, the more experienced you are. Even if you generally don't use certain tools, either through GM or Player preference.

I like being a player because it is more relaxing. I just have to show up and play -- keep track of one character's personality, etc. The biggest issue is letting go of interpreting the rules - I'm still working on that one to a degree.

As a GM, I spend a lot more time prepping, even for low prep sessions, since you need/want maps etc. This is particularly an issue for online games, where if you want fog-of-war, the map needs to be prepped or purchased beforehand. As a GM I have to track different NPCs personalities and preferences. (I had one NPC mid-sentence change to a different accent, that fitted him perfectly. But it just kind of happened accidentally. I can't/don't really do accents.)

50% GM, 50% player.  I split the work between myself and another GM.  There's a 3rd 'holiday' GM which runs Call of Cthulu on New Years Eve once a year.  We also allow other players to GM when they say they'd like to give it a shot.  We contain that side mission a bit to areas of the campaign that are untouched or won't matter for the actions happened therein.   

All in all it's a ton of work to GM, to plan things out, and to run the herd all the cats with a firehose to get people to show up.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 01, 2023, 11:23:01 AM
Some of my campaigns fizzle out when a PC dies. I didn't find a good solution for this.

Any idea about why?

Did the player lose interest in the story that was no longer about them?
Or, assuming what a lot of people do, not wanting to restart a character from zero?
Or just being invested in the character and not wanting to start a new one?

I'm 50-50% GM-player, usually in long stretches of either (my home group has one other GM, so he'll run for 6 months until he burns out, then I'll run for 6 months, rinse, repeat).

I think you are correct about stages of GMing.  Personally, I liken it to teaching.  At a fundamental level, everyone can teach someone else any particular subject.  But there are definite stages (or levels) of teaching, and even master teachers can find that circumstances have them back in stages they had left long before.

For example, an early teacher might be focused on making sure they are barely more conversant with the material than the students are expected to be (this is a serious problem with career-switchers who go into teaching.  Sure, you were working with laser interferometers at NASA before you became a teacher, but do you remember all of the subject matter that the students will need?  Nothing kills a beginning teacher in the eyes of students faster than assigning a problem that can't be solved, because the teacher forgot some detail because he didn't remember how to do it from all those years ago).  Then, once they get comfortable with the material, they have to work to break down the process of getting from knowing nothing to knowing what is needed, step by step.  It's one thing to know how to calculate conservation of momentum; it's another to be able to structure the lessons so that students will internalize what steps they need to take and what questions they need to be asking.  Then, once a teacher knows the material well, knows how to "chunk" it into learnable pieces, they can start developing clever or engaging ways to present these lessons to students.  Modern teacher education is most worthless, because it focuses on that step (student engagement) before most beginning teachers even know what they should be teaching, or how.  Then you get assigned a new course after 15 years of teaching, and it's back to stage one!

I think it would be useful to try and delineate the stages of GMing similar to what I've described above.  The elephant in the room, however, is that, while anyone can become a competent teacher. many years of experience has convinced me that great teachers are born, not made.  I'm not convinced that the same isn't true about GMs...

Since I encouraged it, I'll take a stab at delineating stages:

• Rules and events:  Beginning GMs tend to focus on rules (and when to ruling) and events (like set pieces).  They spend most of their time on "cool" moments that they are trying to get to and what rules govern what actions the players or NPCs take
• Flow: Once comfortable, the GMs move to concentrating on how to get players from one "event" to the next.  They start developing "worlds", "side-quests", "homebrew", and other extensions of the setting and rules
• Immersion: GMs discard most of the things they developed in the previous stage (or de-emphasize it).
  They begin to focus on the setting as a "place", with it's own logic, life, events, and presence beyond just the actions of the players.

Have at it...