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    101 Tips for Game Masters
    101 Tips for Game Masters
    101 Tips for Game Masters
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    101 Tips for Game Masters

    By Chris Navarre

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    About this ebook

    Roleplaying Games AKA RPGs are some of most creative and open ended a bunch of friends or enthusiasts can get together to play around a table. Playing as the game master, sometimes called the Dungeon Master, is the most difficult role and often the most fulfilling as well. You are the one who gets to develop the plot which your players will run through, the one who takes on many faces in the form of non-player characters, and monsters, and the one who manages the game. If that's the kind of role you enjoy taking on, then regardless of what system you are playing this book is made for you. All 101 tips contained in this book are intentionally cross-game system for how to be a good game master rather specific mechanics of individual systems. It's not easy playing as the game master but all players respect a good one. Become that person and enjoy playing better games with your group!

    In this book are 101 fully elaborated tips for every step of the game mastering process. These come from myself who has been a pen and paper RPG enthusiast and frequent game master since being introduced to it as a child. Here are the main topics of the book which apply across all role-playing games equally.

    -Chapter 1 – Setting Up The Party
    -Chapter 2 – Developing Your Plot
    -Chapter 3 – Running the Game
    -Chapter 4 – Session to Session
    -Chapter 5 – Session Management

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChris Navarre
    Release dateJun 16, 2015
    ISBN9781310828546
    101 Tips for Game Masters
    Author

    Chris Navarre

    I mostly make informative content and tutorials.

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    Book preview

    101 Tips for Game Masters - Chris Navarre

    101 Tips for Game Masters

    For Running Roleplaying Games

    By Chris Navarre

    Copyright © 2015 Chris Navarre

    Table of Contents

    Introduction

    Chapter 1 – Setting Up the Party

    Forming a Compatible Group

    Making Characters

    Chapter 2 – Developing Your Plot

    Fundamentals

    Non-Player Characters

    Bad Guys

    Making it Compelling

    Easing Your Work Load

    Chapter 3 – Running the Game

    Expectations You Should Have

    Encouraging Your Players

    Running NPCs and Monsters

    Having a Fair and Enjoyable Game

    Handling Treasure

    Serving the Game Master Role

    Chapter 4 – Session to Session

    Working With Your Group

    The World Over Time

    Chapter 5 – Session Management

    Session Timing

    Physical Game Materials

    Conclusion

    Final Tips

    Introduction

    Running a roleplaying game as the one in control of a story or game mastering is a challenging but rewarding role you can take on when you get into these types of games like Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, and Vampire: The Masquerade. Although the game settings and systems themselves are quite different, the game master role, as the one in charge of progressing the story, largely remains the same. This book is dedicated to providing an ample 101 tips to help you in the processing of becoming a good game master from the moment you consider running a game until the wrap-up sessions of your campaign and future campaigns. The tips included are particularly helpful for beginning and intermediate game masters, but even if you are an expert you should be able to find some useful advice to pull into your own games inside this book. I truly hope that you have a wonderful time playing roleplaying games and performing the role of game master as these games as some of my favorite past times which I know more people out there would enjoy if they ever tried. Good luck and good gaming.

    Chapter 1 – Setting Up the Party

    Before you start writing your story and definitely before you start playing, you need to put together a group and help them make their characters for the game you want to play. In this chapter, we will talk making a group which meshes together properly to ensure a good gaming experience and advice for how you, as the game master, can influence and assist them in making their characters. At the end of creating characters, your group should be comfortable sitting in a room together and excited about each of the characters. Even better is if you can get the whole group excited about each other’s characters as well. If you get that then you know you’re off to a golden start.

    Forming a Compatible Group

    There are many different types of gamers out there who do or may take interest in playing roleplaying games or more specifically your roleplaying game. In a perfect world, everyone could get along and have desires that match up in the context of playing games but that is rarely the case. From your pool of prospective candidates may be players who are heavily intro roleplaying or heavily into power gaming, a sweet angelic angel or a nightmarish douchebag, the type who likes to play early and the type who likes to play late. It’s up to you to decide who you will bring into your group before you send out invites. Before you get started making characters, make sure you are confident that the group will mesh.

    #1 Be Selective About Who You Play With

    You could actually take this and apply it to most games you can play at all. The point, or at least the intended point of Roleplaying games is to have a good time while exploring the characters your players have created meshed with the story that everyone contributes to. However, it is not unlikely to run into players who, intentionally or not, may not mesh well with your game. It could just simply be that they have a very different style of gaming such as power gaming when you’re heavily into role-play or it could be that their attitude is just overall negative and drains everyone else at the gaming table. If you want to keep a game fun, then you should only play with people who want to be there and will be able to work well with the group. Your players will have a lot more fun and so will you.

    #2 Think Carefully About How Many People You Want in a Game

    Pen and paper roleplaying games by their very nature tend to take a long time to play. Many actions will break down into a lot of thinking, group consulting, and possibly a little bit of looking rules and mechanics up especially when playing with a newer group (Although we do try to minimize this). Each player needs a turn to act at the table including the Dungeon master in the form of delivering your story but people want to have an interactive game where they get to do something awesome. It’s very hard to keep each player and their characters feeling awesome when you have too many people at the table. Imagine a scenario where you have 6 players and the group is split. Four of them decide to get into combat while the other two aren’t even at the scene. Now you have to resolve a combat involving four players and the monsters before they get a turn to act (unless you go between the out of combat players and the in

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