This came up in the comments here, and it’s one of those things that comes up a lot in any co-operative exercise, I think. What does a person do with someone who won’t co-operate, or won’t co-operate in a way that’s useful for the group? It’s not an easy question to answer, and I don’t think it’s possible to do it in one post, but I want to outline some of the best ways I’ve found to deal with the issues that crop up. Read more
So over the last three weeks I’ve looked at three different styles of GMing, Linear, Semi-linear, and Sandbox. I thought it’d be good to do an overview and directly compare them. The real question, of course, is which one is best? And that’s a complicated one to answer, because they’re good for different things. I also want to try and illustrate what they’re like a bit better by using example of video games which execute these styles particularly well. If you haven’t played these games, I highly recommend them. So let’s get right to it. Read more
The time has come for the third and last of my GMing style posts, and this one’s a doozy. the first thing that I have to admit is that I’m a sandbox cheerleader. I like it, I like what it tries to do, and I think it does a pretty good job. However, I’m not going to let that distract me from the challenges that it presents to a GM who wants to pursue that style. I designed a sandbox setting about a year ago, and run two separate games in it at the moment, and have been for about eight months now. I’ve had to adjust some of the ways I think about the game and the players, and it’s been an interesting experience to do so. That said, this is definitely the style I have the least experience with. This isn’t a post about how to design a sandbox setting, just an analysis of the the strengths and weaknesses of the style. So, sandbox! Read more
Last week I took on linear GMing, which is a bit of a touchy topic for me, but this week I want to explore semi-linear GMing, which is a style I have a lot of experience with. I’ve run a number of semi-linear games over the past decade, though I’m finally making a try at turning that setting into a sandbox (and at developing a wiki, the results of which can be seen here). In general, I find that semi-linear is usually a good starting point, because it accords people more freedom than a linear style while maintaining a balanced workload for the GM. Read more
Something I’ve wanted to do for a while is explore the benefits and challenges of the three essential styles of GMing. Linear, semi-linear, and sandbox. To make my biases clear, I think sandbox is definitely the best, but each style certainly has its strengths and weaknesses. So here we go with linear GMing. Read more
At my table, we vote on the house rules (which can be found here, on our as yet sparse wiki)
It’s a bit of a loaded term, but one of the qualities of the ideal GM is complete knowledge of the rules of whatever game she happens to be running. Obviously, the best we, as mere mortals can hope for is an extensive knowledge of the rules, but it’s still worthwhile for a number of reasons. Knowledge of the rules helps us design adventures and settings which are consistent with the ruleset, and the more we know the faster and more efficiently we can do it. This consistency can be one of the cornerstones of our credibility, which allows us to act in secret without the worry that we’re not playing the same game as everyone else in the group. However, what’s interesting about the ideal GM on this subject is that she goes above and beyond this, using her system mastery in other ways in order to make the game more fun.
After some delay, I decided to make my first real post about GMing goals. It’s a lot of work, but what’s it for, when you really get down to it? I want to explore the overarching goal, some smaller goals which contribute to it, and how to attain them.
I thought it would be best for a first post to define some of the terms I’ll be using a lot, so that my meaning is precise. I’ve left out more generic role-playing terms, like PC or NPC, because if you’ve made it this far, you probably already know that much.