The Science of GMing
GameMastery Guide, page 33
Mastering the arts of narrative and group storytelling is crucial to running a good game. Yet game mastering has a practical side as well. The following pages address certain fundamental mechanics and tools that all GMs should familiarize themselves with.
In this section
- Basics While the heart of a roleplaying game is the story cooperatively created by the Game Master and the players, the physical tools used to play the game have an effect on the experience.
- Creating Adventures It’s the GM’s job to plan and predict the course of an adventure. Depending on you and your players’ play style, this may be an easy endeavor or require a lot of work.
- Running Smooth Combats Combat is the slowest and most complex part of the game, with issues of timing, multiple creatures acting at once, and many, many dice rolls.
- Building Encounters One of the ironies of being a GM is that it’s not your job to create a fair fight between the PCs and monsters—if it were a fair fight, the PCs would lose half the time, and that makes for a very short adventuring…
- Unusual Campaigns Most GMs eventually toy with the idea of running a theme campaign, such as an all-dwarf or all-elf campaign.
- Variant Play Experiences Not every game session involves half a dozen people sitting around a table, with dice and character sheets in hand. Other popular play experiences include solo campaigns, convention play, and online games.
- Fixing a “Broken” Game Roleplaying games require flexibility and must be open to interpretation.