Let’s start with a list and see how many you recognise:
DM, Facilitator, GM, Judge, Keeper, Moderator, Referee and Storyteller
Though there are plenty more, I’m familiar with these. Guess what? They’re all the same thing, fancy names for the person who takes up the mantle of running a role-playing game. It’s a daunting prospect, don’t let anyone kid you and overwhelming at first, with so much advice out there (including yours truly) including live streams with amazing production values, countless hours of online blogs and vlogs telling you how to run a game and rules interpretations. This is meant to be fun right, so how come there’s so much work involved? I don’t pretend to know everything and have all the answers, what I can do is give you the benefit of my forty years of experience and some helpful hints and tips. Oh, and don’t worry running a role-playing game is one of the most rewarding experiences you can ever have. So, let’s dive on in!
When I started out in the early 1980s there was no online tutorials, Virtual Table Tops or live streams, there wasn’t even an internet! It’s almost impossible to image a world without it but there you are, and I ran some of my best games in those years and look back now with fond memories. I had a handful of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books (1st Edition of course), an A4 pad of lined paper, pencils, erasers and low-quality dice (from the 1983 D&D basic set, where you had to fill in the numbers with a blue crayon!). I picked up a copy of “Dungeon Module I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City” by David Cook from my local game store and ran it. Well, I tried too! Back in those days the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s guide might as well have been written in Swahili, crammed full of random tables, and attack matrixes. I didn’t have a clue, so what did I do? The best I could, and my friends and I had a ball. Granted my best friend and perennial DM helped me along but we all had fun, and I had an ephiphany: running the game was like directing a movie with an unlimited budget, great actors and a story that wrote itself. I never looked back.
Did I fret over my mistakes? Of course, but I went back the next week and carried on and I learned, and my gaming group didn’t abandon me I knew I had been doing something right!
So, my first piece of advice, don’t be disheartened if it’s not perfected the first time out, the second or even the third. As Captain Kirk once said, “We learn by doing” and never was a truer phrase spoken.
OK, enough with my ramblings and the trip down memory lane, you came here for advice so let’s get to it! First off if you already have a group of friends who want to try out role-playing, great, your half-way there. If not, finding fellow gamers has never been easier. Open a Discord account and join a channel where games are advertised. Facebook is also a great place to look. I’d also recommend looking at Startplaying.com and sign up to become a GM. In short, with some small effort finding people is easy. I’ve run games on people from the UK, US, Germany, Israel, New Zealand and Finland to name a few. There’s never been a better time to start and make friends, some of whom will be lifelong. I still play with my friends from forty years ago.
The next step is deciding which game to run, my there are a lot out there aren’t there? My advice? Go for D&D. The rules are straightforward, there’s plenty of free starter adventures online and everyone knows it. I know you might want to run something else, but D&D is the most popular PG for a reason. You don’t need to read pages of background material or wrestle with the games “feel”. Start outside a dungeon with a group of first level characters. Four players is the ideal number, it’ll keep down the bookkeeping while allowing each player to have a moment in the spotlight. Keeping things manageable is a solid foundation for more advanced play later. Have one or two NPCs (Non-Player Character’s) for the party to interact with. Again, keep it simple, one NPC is a noble, merchant or mayor who wants you to clear out the nearby dungeon in the wilderness and you get to keep what’s inside. Have the other NPC be the friendly barkeep in the nearby tavern where the players can rest between adventures and resupply. Perhaps the barkeep knows a rumour or two about the dungeon.
A simple one-level dungeon is great and there are thousands of free online maps to download. Populate the rooms with some simple low challenge rating creature from the Monster Manual (Goblins and Skeletons work great) with some treasure and that’s it! I guarantee your players will have a blast and you’ll have plenty of ideas for the next gaming session. Afterwards ask your group how it went, what did they enjoy the most and what could have been better. Don’t be embarrassed to ask as most people love to share their thoughts on how things went. Remember to write their comments down then use their ideas for future adventures. Perhaps a monster got away and there you go; you have part two – chase down the monster. Maybe it escaped to the mayor’s house for revenge or is terrorising another village across the way, gathering more monsters to it’s cause. Keep things simple and the game practically runs itself.
So, you’ve bought the Players’ Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual (my favourite) and you’ve sat down to read them, wow that’s over 1000 pages of material! Guess what you don’t need to read everything, and you certainly won’t remember everything. Read chapters one, two and three in the Players Handbook to familiarise yourself with character generation, then chapter seven on using ability scores. Read chapter nine on combat a couple of times as this is the one you’ll be referencing the most, followed by chapter ten on spellcasting. That’s it, a total of 130 pages and you can ignore the material on class abilities beyond first level. You’ve just saved yourself an awful lot of time. Have a flick through the Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual to get a feel on how things are presented and laid out. Then go to Appendix C: Maps in the Dungeon Mater’s Guide and chose one as your first dungeon. You’re ready to go!
If you want all the heavy lifting done for you then invest in one of the D&D Starter sets which include an abbreviated rules set, adventure, pre-generated characters and dice. There is enough material to keep your group going for quite some time.
As a Game Master your players will look to you to help them create their first. Take it slow step-by-step. Encourage them to play heroes they admire from the cinema, TV, books and comics, stereotypes are a fantastic way to get into characters that everyone can identify with. Don’t worry about a backstory for the characters yet, there’s plenty of time for that up later and besides it makes for great adventure ideas! Have your players familiarise themselves with their character sheet, what the number mean and where to find important stuff like hit points, armour class, weapons and spells. Assume they have all the gear they need for their first dungeon and forget encumbrance, let them carry as much as they want! Have them start at the entrance to the dungeon and describe what they see, but also does it smell like, can they hear anything behind that door? Do they touch it and if so, what does it feel like? I doubt they’ll taste it, but you never know! Use all five senses whenever you can. Describing such sensations is evocative and helps create a great atmosphere for the forthcoming adventure. Well, that’s the end of part one. Next time I’ll cover other Role-playing games you can try out once you have some experience running adventures under your belt. Ciao.