Parts of a Toolbox, w/o Being a Tool

As a GM, I learned a long time ago that writing twenty plus pages of notes for every type of game of that I run before I ever sat down to compose a scenario is not only helpful it’s kind of a thrill just for me alone. I have the vanity that someday each project will be published and readers around the globe will see how deep and clever a mythpoet I really am. Now when I sit down at the table, it took me a little longer to learn that using my voice to only fill in gaps around the players’ story is pretty essential. This is for anything from a party of tomb-robbing medieval “adventures” dealing with the swamps of doom or a task force of FBI agents dealing with a group of Chinese-funded hackers that happen to be vampires. Whatever the deal is, let the promo for the adventure set the premise and then let the Players set the tone and depths. I should just be ready for them.

Now I am not advocating that a GM always tend towards a sandbox approach to things. Pacing tends to be the most important tool in my toolbox when it comes times for the event. With a new group, or an impromptu one such as at a convention, the GM should be building the paradigm at the start and by the end of the session, they should mostly interpreting player-driven situations and explaining their rule usage. Established gaming gangs often spend the beginning of a session exploring their Characters and then around the ¾ mark of time, I have to provide a quick dilemma to be overcome or not to set the basis for the next sit down. Most GMs with established campaigns, time frames for adventures may not be specified so reading the Players and their own energy levels is gauge of when the ¾ mark is, so don’t be a clock watcher unless necessary.

Races and Racism

Get over it. When it comes to fantasy role-playing, as in dealing with the fantastical not just variants of Tolkien tropes but entering the unreal into any sort of setting, there is the expectation of the Players being able to come across the alien. By alien, I mean that which is foreign or different from their own point of view. Hopefully this brings goosebumps to the joy center of their imagination first. And then whether they fall into a discourse of anthropological style study of the world created by the GM or they decide to hit it with their war hammer is the point of the game. The point of the game not the problem with it.

If a GM cannot separate their elves from Appalachian hillbillies or Mongolian plateau residents in their head, they need to spend some researching those cultures. This sort of activity has always help me design human cultures, which is what they are, for whatever world I am playing with then get me onto designing something possibly creative about the species that I am calling elves. Even if these elves are 99% human-like, so are chimpanzees in our real world and they are very exotic to anybody encountering them. There should be something different about them, if the GM is doing this for fun.

Now the Player having expectations of what fantasy folk should be like should be expected. They aren’t sitting down at a table to be a part of band of dwarven warriors lead by a gnome magician to reclaim a lost wonder works forge from a tangle of trolls and a fire giant overlord because they haven’t read Terry Brooks books. Now if the players are all about, “my dwarf has a Scottish accent.” I as a GM like shake things ups. For fun I might give everything Korean names, and flat out use Confucianism and Buddhism as the dominant forms of spiritualism among the dwarves and gnome separate yet similar communities after the game starts. Since I do my own research, I just happen to have a pocket-sized notebook of notes from working with a K-Pop fan for years, I don’t need an “oriental adventures” source book and come up with pointlessly complicated Classes and some nonexistent standin culture instead focusing on the universal of dynamics of the quest. The archetypes of the Warrior, Wizard, or Rogue all work just fine regardless of rules system that one is playing with. If the player can’t get over it, oh well. I one time had a batch of dudes have a real problem with playing a campaign essentially set in northern Africa circa 570 AD. I heard their “Nordic-Celtic” campaign died on the vine after an introduction game when D&D 4^th Edition came out-- they play collectible card games now at the coffee shop we used to hang out at. Good for them. Most of the players will become immersed or play the fish-out-of-water trope.

Getting the Chance to Talk

As role-playing is a social interaction, Gming can be a reclusive pursuit getting the party together. It does make things move along nicely without forcing the point though. The outsider role works for players great in role-playing, even when as a GM I am not mixing things up. It gives me a chance to do expository based off of my grocery bag full of details I have in my head without doing the railroad-y thing. Scenery not stealing the scene is a great tool towards helping a narrative come together. Heck, I am the scenario author. Even DM GMs should have some narrative as part of their game session, it helps put their personal mark to their scenario despite of how free-form or patterned it is. Once again being prepared is important.