Oldskolgmr's Blog

Ideas and Principles learned for GM/DMing a game.

Principles of GM/DMing a game.

  1. Keep It simple. The famous KIS Principle. Most players don't need to know all the optional rules, or even most of the Core Rules of a game if the GM/DM does. The phrase, 'What do you want to do?' goes a long way. A GM's/DM's job can just be to interpret that into game play.
  2. Make It Fun! I learned this principle from Guardian's Of Orders Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne game. They wrote and I learned. The quality rating of a session for me is how much fun did my players and I have. I've played in sessions where we (the player-characters) never left a bar in game, we had a blast. Our poor GM was bored to tears, and he never really intervened. I'm a GM that keeps a steady pressure of events flowing at my players. Goals are happening by damn, but they better be enjoyable!
  3. Off load the burdens of rules, systems, and duties. This is the flip side of Principle 1. be willing to offload as much of the duties/rules/system of a game onto either technology or distribute them among the Players. The players in my Griffin Mountain game wanted to take notes, and write up play reports. This was awesome! They were more engaged and I had a way to check my memory against theirs (my memory sucks so I really appreciated this. Thank you Hawkeyes and Oly for doing this!).
  4. Prepare for the next session. I have been guilty of not preparing at all for games with my players. Not reading the rules of game, not planning the next encounter(s), and not preparing encounters. The secret sauce I've learned is from a poster/acquaintance named ktrey(d4caltrops), have lists to roll on. I don't know where he got the idea, but it works. Even if the list are just creative spark tables for you (the GM/DM) try them. I'm currently running Griffin Mountain by Rudy Kraft and Jennell Jaquays and that has prepared lists, so before each session I roll up the encounters. In the first session I spiced things up with a random night time attack (I didn't prepare it) on the PC's. Griffin Mountains lists were there to catch me, and it's prepared encounters were there to draw from.
  5. Draw from the players actions. I'm always surprised by what my players are doing. I never know what leads they're going to pursue. Frankly their ideas/plans frequently spark ideas in me or flat out beat my own ideas/plans. A recent Griffin Mountain session saw a male PC sweet talking a local female tribe leader and that led to a fun, if silly sub-plot. As did some other player reactions to my GM question, "where do you want to sleep here?". Two other PC's decided to throw a keg party at the sleaziest inn they could find. I would certainly have never planned either of those things on my own, and my players had a ball doing them.
  6. Most sessions end in a cliffhanger. Sessions where we resolve all the plotlines happen rarely for me. I've seen too many action movies and as a result I like to have things happening. I'm not big on waiting for the next big thing. I like to have every session end in the middle of something (even with attendant catch up every session).