So have we figured out anything beyond everyone has their own way of doing it?

Quote from: Serious Paul;497039So have we figured out anything beyond everyone has their own way of doing it?

I for one am always happy to see fellow gamers opening up their personal bags of tricks for my perusal. Who knows, I might end picking up a thing or two...

GMing a good session isn't easy. Most GMs run a mediocre game, regardless of system or number of years of experience.

Unless I am running the RPG or know the skill of the GM, I generally prefer to play a boardgame than suffer through a boring RPG session.  

The only reason I stay in the hobby is that I love GMing and really enjoy putting in the effort to making a session kick ass.

I believe learning good practice in GMing is relatively easy with an open mind and sufficient imagination. It is not hard to become a decent GM. Unfortunately, bad practice is also easy to pick up, and bad practice is heavily pushed on a lot of game forums and by a lot of game supplements, often by posters/designers who don't really play anymore. So that's a threat.

On the other hand, if you are a "naive" GM - someone who is not exposed to external ideas - you may also miss out on a lot of great ideas that would improve your game and let you expand your potential. I am playing in a group like this now, and it is both a good and a frustrating experience - I see the skills and imagination, but I also see a lot of easily corrigible mistakes.

I think it is harder to GM some games than others.  For example, most people think I'm a pretty good GM for the TSR-era D&D games I run.

However, I'd probably suck as a GM of 3.x games with players into charop and/or the RAW as I have no interest in wasting my time coming up with encounters truly optimized characters would consider challenging or in learning and fighting over the thousands of (just WOTC) pages of RAW. I'd likely be even worse at running 4e because it seems to revolve around set piece tactical combat encounters. Not only to I have little interest in long combats (10-15 minutes is long enough for me) but I have always been horrible at tactical level combat -- even in wargames, I do great at operational and strategic level wargames but suck at tactical level wargames. As "challenging tactical combat encounters" seems to be most of the 4e experience, I'd suck at as a 4e GM.

Quote from: RPGPundit;495957Do you think that there is a lack of GMs (or good GMs) out there; or is that rubbish?

RPGPundit

I think there is a preponderance of pussies out there who are too scared to step into a leadership role.

I don't think GMs are all that special.  Great GMs are... but I've only seen about two of those in my whole 30+ yr gaming career.

Good GMs are a dime a dozen if they are able to have a few sessions to figure out their shit.

Quote from: Ian Noble;497146I don't think GMs are all that special.  Great GMs are... but I've only seen about two of those in my whole 30+ yr gaming career.

Most of the time I'm optimistic and say shit like, "Anybody can be a great GM." Then, every so often, somebody shows up and kicks my optimism in my teeth.

Just got done having an e-mail exchange with a guy who was really enthused by the idea of hexcrawls and node-based design and megadungeons and open tables, but how could he use all that and still keep his linear plot? I tried to explain that the whole point was that you ditch the linear plot and embrace what RPGs are capable of. Went back and forth a few times. He seemed to get it. And then signed off with, "Well, I think I'll just keep the campaign short so that my players don't wander away from the plot."

You can lead a horse to water. But you can't make them drink.

Quote from: RandallS;497140However, I'd probably suck as a GM of 3.x games with players into charop and/or the RAW as I have no interest in wasting my time coming up with encounters truly optimized characters would consider challenging

It's actually a lot easier to handle those players using TSR-era techniques than it is to handle them with the fetishized nonsense that's grown cancerous in the fan community over the past decade (and then got hard-coded into 4E). Last encounter didn't challenge them? Well, I guess we make the next encounter a little tougher, then.

(Or if it's a hexcrawl, megadungeon, or other campaign structure in which the players are free to seek out the level of danger they're comfortable with, it becomes a complete non-issue for you.)

It's really only GMs who (a) think they need to be responsible for challenging their players and (b) believe there's some strict guideline they're "supposed" to follow in order to achieve that who have a problem.

I think that this thread has clearly shown that the idea that "there aren't enough GMs out there" is pretty much hogwash.

As for the rest, I think its quite easy to be a mediocre GM, but it takes years of practice to become a great one. Just about anyone who isn't utterly fucked to begin with can get there, though, its not a special-snowflake thing, all it takes is a lot of hard work and practice.

RPGPundit

I think that the really vital thing is - you just need to actually like being a GM, to be a good GM. If you like spinning the stories and worlds and watching how the players handle, interact and change them  - you will enjoy Gming, GM more, ergo - becoming a better GM.

If you want to just run a story, better devote yourself to actual writing.

Quote from: Rincewind1;497396I think that the really vital thing is - you just need to actually like being a GM, to be a good GM. If you like spinning the stories and worlds and watching how the players handle, interact and change them  - you will enjoy Gming, GM more, ergo - becoming a better GM.

If you want to just run a story, better devote yourself to actual writing.

I'll second that -- you need to be deeply invested in the game. The whole thing. Your creative role, certainly, but also the play at the table, the interaction between people, the pace, the objective of play (which changes from table to table). That human interaction is the core of the hobby, I think, and not the rules or the setting or the plot.

I find GM-ing very scary and I have been doing it for 30 years. Yup, 30 years. People tell me I am a good GM..

In fact, despite having fairly outgoing and people involved jobs for most of that time, my natural introversion means I can get very very fretful about GM-ing a session, so much so that at cons I sometimes just have to bug out and not run a game.

What makes a good game for me as a GM?

1: prepare, prepare, prepare
2: give the players somthing to play with, and then sit back and let them enjoy
3: players never tire of easy victories, pitch it all a bit simpler than you might think
4: write down notes and feedback your ideas and the players ideas into the game, either next week or later in the same session
5: prepare prepare prepare
6: and for me.. don't let too much time go between gaming..

It's not hard to GM.

Take a step back for five seconds. Think about the first games you ran when you were 10-or-so. OK? OK. How many "mistakes" by your own GMing standards did you do then? Lots I'm sure. Did that stop you from having a blast? Did that stop you from learning as you went through all these years to be where you are now? Nope.

So. Conclusion? It's not hard to GM. Just play the game. The rest will come afterwards, as you play it. Relax, and have fun.

Quote from: Benoist;497434It's not hard to GM.

Take a step back for five seconds. Think about the first games you ran when you were 10-or-so. OK? OK. How many "mistakes" by your own GMing standards did you do then? Lots I'm sure. Did that stop you from having a blast? Did that stop you from learning as you went through all these years to be where you are now? Nope.

So. Conclusion? It's not hard to GM. Just play the game. The rest will come afterwards, as you play it. Relax, and have fun.

Isn't that sort of assuming that the things that entertained you when you were ten are still entertaining to you now? I'm sure that's not true for me. My ten-year-old self GM would bore the hell out of me today.

Quote from: Brad J. Murray;497435Isn't that sort of assuming that the things that entertained you when you were ten are still entertaining to you now? I'm sure that's not true for me. My ten-year-old self GM would bore the hell out of me today.

No, because I'm not ten anymore.

My point is that all these things are relative. You can be a good GM from your own perspective at ten, in the sense that you love the game and have fun playing it and keep playing it afterwards. It's all in the head.

My point is that people should relax and not try to be Monte Cook when they run their first game. Just play the game. Have fun. The rest comes as a matter of fact as you enjoy yourself and want to keep enjoying yourself in the future.