Up until now, I’ve probably been a nightmare to have as your GM.
Reading Creighton Broadhurst’s GM Advice article on “5 Characteristics of Terrible GMs“, I’m the guy who complains about lack of resources; I’m also the guy who sees TPKs quite a bit, even when it’s not always the player’s fault.
For a while, I’ve been focused on becoming a better GM. Step 1, it turns out, has been to stop GMing my regular group. This article is about Steps 2 and 3 too.
Step 1: Stopping
Running the regular gaming slot is a big deal. It’s the once-a-fortnight meeting of friends and it needs to let us all blow off steam. As GM, I have been driving my own agenda far too much – and it killed campaign after campaign.
There are lots of ways to role-play. I come from a background of playing when Old School was new; over the years I’ve drifted from camp to camp, tasting the wares and exploring new ideas. Yet – and this is important – I keep coming back to some familiar territory.
Stopping even for just a month has given me perspective.
The regular group is moving under the wing of a new GM for the foreseeable. He’s just as pushed for time as me (maybe more so), but he doesn’t complain half as much. He’s got our character creation session done and then he told us he’d need a month to prep. Suddenly I’m a player: impatient to play, but understanding that for a good game we need to give him time.
Step 2: Focusing
I’ve spent a month in the waiting zone of a player. I’ve also spent a month in the self-absorbed wallow of a bored GM… and I’ve been all over the place: writing variant rules; drafting new rules; reading settings; reading game rules of other games; digging through my piles of old tomes; reading blogs; whatever.
I’ve also been playing some Basic Fantasy with four school kids as part of a fledgling school role-play club. That has been a joy because it’s been really… basic. Simple.
I realise that my gaming friends and the lads at school all like D&D-type gaming. It’s the old familiar territory I keep circling back to. And, in my heart, I really love dungeons.
I’m making a choice to focus: one game system; one setting; one good thing done well.
Step 3: One Good Thing Done Well
I’d like to do one good thing well:
- I’d like to put together a game of D&D Basic (5e) for the guys at school.
- I’d like to make that game rich enough to one day appeal to the other guys too.
- I’d like to focus on learning D&D (5e).
- I’d like to focus on a mega-dungeon setting.
- I’d like to re-design my original fantasy world.
That looks like five things, but it’s five elements of the one good thing I’d like to do well. It’s time to bring all the experience and learning of 30+ years of role-playing to one really cool campaign idea. It’s the dream I had 30 years ago: the post-apocalyptic land of Mykovnia and the dread depths of a vast underworld.
I’d like to do one good thing well in other ways too:
- Recapture the Old School feel, even using the new D&D.
- Provide a sandbox, not a scripted adventure.
- Make sure the players get to add to the setting too.
Here is a land of ice and snow, filled with bestial fell dangers; here is a land needing heroes.
Let’s begin.
