Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing sent me an advanced copy of his new manifesto, Naked Marketing, which is a smart take on getting new customers. A major premise of his naked marketing model is your business must attract like-minded customers.

Make a perfect match between you and your ideal customers so your business relationships are healthy, fulfilling and profitable.

Attract Like-Minded Players for Great Gaming

So too it is with game mastering and forming a group. Roleplaying games at their core are social activities. And they are prone to the same relationship problems that businesses face when working with the wrong types of customers.

For example, if the game master is at odds with a player, that conflict will come out during gameplay. And everyone’s game experience will suffer for it. Likewise, conflict between two players will ruin everyone’s fun from all the negative emotions of the table.

The secret is to attract people who believe what you believe makes for great gaming.

I once had a GM who was very controlling and who made his homebrew game world the star of the show. He would manipulate gameplay to protect his game world and ideas from us meddling players.

At first I thought this was just a temporary phase while everyone in the new group got to know each other.

However, third game in and it was getting even worse. And regrettably, my behavior worsened, which everyone picked up on. At the halfway point of the third session I realized I could not continue on like this. I was being disrespectful to the game master, my fellow players and myself.

After the game, I mentioned to the game master that could not continue to play due to a difference in styles. We had a bit of a conversation but there was animosity. I always remember how uncomfortable I felt during these games. And I’m not proud at how things ended, with me reaching a frustration point so high I had to quit.

Danny’s advice in Naked Marketing last week created an Aha! moment for me.

You need to gather like-minded gamers around your table for the best gaming.

How do you do this? Danny has the solution. Read on.

Who Would You Game Naked With?

In Naked Marketing, Danny asks “Who do you want to see naked?” The clever metaphor makes sense when you think about it. Who wants ugly customers, where ‘ugly’ means the wrong type or people who do not want what you’re offering?

“Everyone has a ‘type’ they find attractive – a combination of hundreds of different traits and features,” Danny says. “Just as we each have our unique personal tastes in romantic partners, we also each have a specific type of customer that is an especially good fit for our business.”

I believe we also have personal tastes in the kind of people we enjoy gaming most with. When everybody is having fun because they are kindred gaming spirits, conflict and “problem player” issues fly 300 feet per round out the window.

Who is your perfect kind of player? Who is their perfect kind of game master?

Become an Attraction Magnet

The solution for all GMs who have trouble with their gaming groups:

Become an attraction magnet for your perfect player.

If you attract the kind of players who thrive under your GMing style, and if you attract the kind of players that you enjoy GMing for, you have a recipe for a tight knit group of friends who game exceptionally well together and create memorable game sessions.

Think about it for a moment. If you are doing things to attract the wrong kind of player to your group, then you are sabotaging your efforts before you even get a chance to GM!

Likewise, if you just settle for the first d6 players who show up to game, you are taking a big chance there will be no clash in gaming preferences, which is not likely.

Instead, if you take care to present yourself and your gaming tastes honestly and openly, then you’re going to increase your chances of attracting the type of player who will become best friends and best gaming buddies.

This goes beyond game system and genre preference. Conflict bubbles up from issues deeper than that, such as why you game.

For example, if you GM to showcase your cool homebrew game world, I guarantee there are people out there who have love to explore and roleplay and interact with such creations. They love the mystery of the unknown and the thrill of discovery. They love to be surprised and entertained by filling in the next hex on the map. Imagine if these people got together to game. Oh the great games that would emerge!

Know Thyself

In Naked Marketing, Danny advises you first get to know yourself. By knowing who you are and what you want, you have a better chance of figuring out who your ideal customer is.

As the game master, you need to do this for yourself. You need to figure out what your GMing strengths are, what your weaknesses are. You need to understand in full your GM traits, tastes and style.

Know thyself is ancient wisdom.

And it’s the first step in the recipe to awesome gaming.

Once you are clear and comfortable about who you are as a game master – naked to yourself with no secrets — you can use this information to figure out what your best player type this.

The key here is authenticity. If you represent your true GMing self to others, then you will attract like-minded individuals for great gaming. It’s that simple.

If you put out false signals, then you will attract the wrong type of people.

For example, you have a player vacancy and let’s say you are the type who likes to be in control.

Coincidentally, this is who I am. I love to design and to construct fun situations on-the-fly based on character actions. Though contradictory, I make these two styles work together well most game nights. But it means I like to have control of various things to blender stuff together successfully according to my design visions.

Back to our example. You like control, so you want to attract the kind of players who are okay with an authoritative GM. But if you tell others you are a relaxed and laid-back sandbox game master who gives control to his players, do you see how that will attract a certain type of player who will ultimately conflict with your needs?

And if a player who learns his potential GM likes to be more of a Hollywood director, whereas his gaming ideals are freedom, randomness and choice…well, you can see where this is headed, right?

You need to be clear on who you are so you can broadcast that and attract players who thrive under your GMing style.

Get naked. Get out your Gem of Seeing. Look at your GMing self.

Differences Create Rich Gaming

Finding your perfect match does not mean all your players must have the same personality type or playing style. The cliché that opposites attract really is true in gaming, and any GM can work with players who present a variety of playing styles and personal traits.

So please do not mistake this as a recipe for tracking down just a limited range of players who have exact specifications.

For example, on the surface you might think you never want a rules lawyer in your group. You worry about rules conflicts, being contradicted in your rulings, and perhaps a bit of munchkin gameplay where they over-optimize their characters.

However, a rules lawyer is a valuable addition to your group. Their expertise makes play so much smoother because you can reach out to them and ask for fast help with rules adjudication.

Forget the term rules lawyer for a second. How do you prefer to play with players who have excellent knowledge of the game rules?

You would likely want to tap into that knowledge. And you have preferences for how that would be done during play. (My preference is to be interrupted and corrected on the spot to help me learn the rules better. Your preference might be for the player to take notes and brief you after each session.)

In this example, what you’re really after is a rules expert who’s willing to work with you and your preferences for handling rules during games. How great would that be? They can rules lawyer their faces off for all you care as long as they stick to the agreement you have about how this happens during games.

Be Transparent

Get clear on who you are as a game master and be transparent about that in your quest for new players. This helps others self select as potential candidates for your group. This not only increases your chances of attracting the perfect type of player for you, but it can save a whole lot of uncomfortable gaming before the typical problem player situation arises.

For example, if I put a classified ad in one of the many player finder sites out there, I want to be clear and honest on the kind of games I run so that players can decide if they’re the right GM for them.

I might say I prefer linear style adventures because it makes preparation and planning faster for me so I can put more time into fleshing out cool game elements because of the certainty this type of GMing provides.

This declaration will weed out players who prefer sandbox type of campaigns, where characters can do anything in the game world you present and which often results in PCs doing the exact opposite of what you have planned for.

Again, this does not mean you only have a narrow range of player types you can work with. It just means you attract players who align with the spirit of the type of games you prefer to run.

So when you talk about your game, you would not say, “Rules lawyers need not apply.” That’s not the case at all.

You might say something like, “I work well with players who have mastered the game rules and who would enjoy helping me run a smooth game session.” Such a player and I would work out how to handle rulings before the campaign so we could team up to make sure our game is a well oiled machine.

If you went around and told everyone you hate players who contradict your rulings during games, you risk attracting players who don’t know the rules. Or you risk attracting players who lack the confidence to speak up about rulings during the games.

In this way, your naked marketing of yourself and your player opportunity will be sabotaged. And then you repeat the cycle of attracting a player who conflicts with you and your group. And before long, you are looking for to fill an empty chair again.

Be honest about your game mastering and put that out there. It will save you a lot of work and bad gaming.

Just be yourself (and be honest with yourself) when questing for new players or groups to join. This will help you attract – and be attracted to – gamers with similar styles and preferences. This will save you from many false starts and problem player experiences.

I wish you great gaming, my friend. It’s such a wonderful hobby rich with great people, imagination and fun times.

This week we interview Chris, a free flowing GM who enjoys using  a variety of game mechanics, from dice to jenga blocks, to bring his adventures to life.

Please introduce yourself

Your name:

Christopher Burdett – Not the same one that does art for WotC, however.

Do you have a blog, website or campaign wiki?

I don’t leave my campaigns out in the open at the moment, but I have considered it. If I found there was significant enough interest in my work, I wouldn’t hesitate to put one up.

How long have you been a GM?

I have been a GM since 1991, now for over 2/3 of my life. My first roleplaying experiences were in early AD&D 2nd edition games run by my older siblings and their college friends.

I approached them as the annoying kid brother and in a moment they might regret now, didn’t anticipate my tenacity and said I first had to have my Player’s Handbook, have read it cover to cover, and have a set of my own dice.

It’s a good way to know if a young newbie really wants to play, and play I did. It would only be a year before I began running my own games with peers from grade school.

What are your favourite games to run?

I spend a good amount of time running Pathfinder, Shadowrun, Mage: The Ascension, and these days a lot of indie titles.

I occasionally pit my core player group against 24 Hour RPG products that are released on 1km1kt.net; I highly recommend looking through them for freebies.

How did you first get into GMing?

When I started playing, I was not yet a teenager, and it took up at least one day a week. Friends my own age got curious about it. They asked what I was doing with my brothers on those days that had me so busy, and they begged me to run a game for them.

It was only a few weeks before a group of misfits came together: the poor kid, the class clown, the morbid art girl, the curious wealthy kid, and the quiet nerd.

I was the poor kid, so it was quite the rush to have them all focusing on me. It would be a few years before I DM’d anything other than AD&D, but it was like my world exploded in all directions as an older friend handed me Mage: The Ascension and said, “I don’t know anyone who could run this, but you might be interested in reading it.”

I devoured the book, which is daunting in retrospect, and contacted him the next day to say I’d give running it a shot. I’ve DM’d thousands of sessions in dozens of games since then.

How has GMing affected your life over the years?

GMing gave me a creative outlet that both school and other hobbies could not—it allowed me to hone my skills as an oral storyteller.

Oral storytelling was the primary way our species passed on its history for thousands of years, happens around the campfire when you tell a ghost story, in a class presentation when you give a speech, and in the business board room when all eyes are on you, expecting an answer.

It made me quick at responding, adlibbing reasons for events occurring, and gave a significant boost to my ability to see the world through another person’s shoes.

Although I doubt science will give GMing much of a look, in my experience it also has a heavy effect over a person’s empathy. It does bring out moments where it’s too natural to be an egotistical monster that uses GM power against players, but at other times, gives us opportunities to help other people develop their precious creative ideas.

I find great joy in every time I can inspire a narrow-minded Drizzt Do’Urden wannabe to make an original concept character. As a GM, you get to help people make that transition from playing stereotypes to playing new masks of themselves.

Your GMing Stat Block

What is your usual gaming schedule?

1-3 game sessions a week. Usually there is at least one out-of-town GM who comes in for a once a month game, while I run an evening game each week, and another GM takes up a rotation on every second Friday.

There are weeks where we play Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Because of this rotation those weeks are tiring but awesome.

Sessions are everywhere from 4 hours to 12 hours, depending on the frequency of the game. Games that happen less often tend to be a lot longer, while frequent games are more like vignettes.

As a teenager, I GMed every available day off and for whole weeks of free time during summers. But with the pressures of work, school and life needs, it becomes a lot harder to get together.

It has to be a priority to make it work, or groups drift apart. But it’s natural when they do—life must go on, and it’s important you respect your players and their needs to get out in the world and experience it.

Where do you play?

We have played in apartments, in houses, on university campuses and in available low-traffic public places. It depends on what you can get your hands on, how old you are and what the rules are.

Most of our games are either in my apartment or on campus in unused public spaces these days. But when I was younger, we spent a lot of time in peoples’ basements or anywhere with enough sitting space to keep us comfortable.

Do you use published material or create your own?

Both. From my writing desk, I can see a fringe of the collection I’ve bought; all of D&D 3.5, Iron Kingdoms, Spycraft, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, the new World of Darkness (the base game in blue covers is far better than the expansions), Exalted, and so on.

But hidden around the space are copies of indie games like Dread, which uses a Jenga tower as its mechanic. It sounds weird at first, but it is incredible at building apprehension during a horror game. Very little system, a whole lot of play, and very simple solutions to complicated problems.

Over time, I began to discover that most of the things I want to do in a game, I can come up with on my own. The biggest hurdle was knowing how to construct systems, and spending a little time reading high-theory blogs like lumpley.com and wandering the Forge over at indie-rpgs.com made me realize that system is there to settle conflicts rather than create them.

Every since then, it’s a matter of finding an agreement with my players on how conflict is settled—anything from a coin-flip or Jenga pull to a traditional die roll—and then telling each other a story.

System is important when someone starts out. It gives them the rules they need to feel comfortable in the game world they are imagining, but as players become more experienced, there are times where the system just holds you down.

My personal game system, which I’ll find time to release for free online at some point, is based entirely on flat comparisons of stats, so that a hectic combat can happen in hectic near-real time to keep people from sitting around twiddling their thumbs while the wizard tries to decide which spell is best that round.

My advice for that? Don’t give them time to worry. The world doesn’t. And don’t punish them with terrible outcomes if they don’t do what you expect they’ll do. The game has to stay organic and roll with the action.

What non-digital and electronic GM aides do you use (other than books)?

These days I make extensive use of Google Docs. I keep my entire campaign in living, growing documents, where every note I add will be kept for all of time. It lets me create a third-party space for my players to go in and out of, leave me messages between games, explore character development, and track expenditures and leveling where necessary.

In addition, since Google’s data centers will probably be around until the end of time, it keeps a campaign from going missing into the piles of textbooks and notebooks that fill my adult life, so I can pick up a campaign after a hiatus, or use the materials in a later game.

If I could still find all of the materials I had written in the past, I could be a published game designer ten times over by now. But life gets crazy, you need to keep track of that stuff, and if you don’t, it’s like losing a piece of your life.

Minis or no? What do you use for minis, and how do you use them?

Minis are sometimes food. Namely in complicated, large-scale conflicts where players have a good bit of mobility or ranged combat to worry about. It speeds those moments up incredibly, but miniatures can become a crutch for the GM and players if they’re not careful.

After a while, players begin to associate their characters with the miniatures and have difficulty playing them without a mat on the table. This limits the kind of spaces you can play in, and keeps you from being able to enjoy spontaneous games, because everyone (or just the GM) have to remember to bring everything with them every time.

In most of my games, I like to let my players get crazy with the scenery and utilize their creativity to solve problems, rather than relying on squares moved and blast templates. If they had something concrete to work with, I would never get to see their first reaction be to collapse the ceiling on the dragon rather than fight it, because with the room all drawn out and the miniatures all in place, they wouldn’t be thinking in 3 dimensions.

When we are having fun, we tend to be pretty lazy if all of the rules are right in front of us. It makes it too easy not to think hard about a problem.

Minis really are a to-each-their-own kind of thing. Some GMs are way more comfortable describing a scene laid out in front of them. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but I prefer my games to take up all of the space of a dice bag and laptop in my courier bag, rather than a full backpack, a mat tube, and a bag or box full of carefully packed miniatures that I have to keep buying so I can change up my stories.

Our games are limited to our imaginations only, especially when you homebrew your settings, and it adds a lot of legwork when you need miniatures for everything.

Section Two: Opportunities

What is your biggest GMing stumbling block right now? What could you do to fix that?

As a GM, I have a terrible problem with flagging enthusiasm. I can keep some games going for 1-2 years, but others only last 4-6 sessions. It’s like the difference between a story, a vignette, a novella, a novel and a novel series.

When I start a game, I have to sit down and work out how many original ideas I have and figure out if it will be a novella or a novel, and stick to my guns on that.

It’s too easy for everyone to have a lot of fun in a short story and have them beg for it to be a campaign, then give in, even though I have no idea where I would want to take it, and no enthusiasm toward the idea myself.

Creativity makes us a little crazy when it has us in its claws, so we have to know our limits. Too many players or too many plotlines can destroy the memory of a good campaign.

When was the last time you were a player? What insight about GMing did you pick up?

I still play at least as much as I GM, and with very good reason: so I can remember what it is like to be a player. It keeps me in their mindspace and listening to what they want, so I can help make the game match what everyone wants rather than just what I want.

It is like learning—just because you are the teacher all of a sudden, doesn’t mean you aren’t still a student of the game. I have learned so many wonderful things from other GMs that have run games for me from among my friends and at conventions.

The biggest insight I gained from it was the need to encourage mastery of the games for the players. When someone joins our group and plays for a while, I encourage them to try running something in the empty scheduling gaps.

At first it was hard, because you get used to the attention and rules calls being yours. But if you fight it, you discover which of your players are good at GMing, and often these people will be your biggest allies when you GM a game.

They understand what it is like to be in your shoes, to juggle life, papers, family problems, etc. with running games. Players are more forgiving when they know how much work it is to run a quality game.

Describe your perfect gaming session with you as GM.

The perfect gaming session for me happens on a day off, which for most gamers seems to be a Saturday or Sunday. It starts around 2-3pm in the afternoon with everyone (3-8 players) coming together in a large space free of outside distractions, bringing snacks and enthusiasm with them.

Then the chatting begins—every group has to get its tangents out because often we game with our friends, and when we don’t, often who we game with become our friends. Friends need to chat, compare life notes, et cetera, or else they will distract the heck out of your game with every sudden realization of “Oh, I forgot to tell you guys about….”

When that happens, it means you need to spend more time just hanging out beforehand or on other days.

After the chattering we start play. Everyone comes together in a reasonably close circle with good personal space. This could be chairs scattered around a tiny apartment, or chairs around a boardroom table, but everyone should have a pretty equal distance between them. It makes it easier to hold peoples’ attention while you talk with them, and gives everyone a good line of sight while you describe concepts.

I begin the recap of the last game, or by going over the world concept of a new session, describing recent events, timestamping important moments of recent history, pointing out important community figures, looming enemy forces, etc.

Then I ask, “So, what are you each doing at this very moment?” and encourage them to explain some mundane details of their characters’ lives. One is eating at their favorite restaurant, another is visiting a brothel, another is crafting something at home or minding a shop, another is bored and sitting in a public place panhandling.

These tiny details tie them to the characters’ day to day lives. And that is where the conflict begins. All games are about some kind of conflict between two forces, with the players involved directly or caught within the conflict.

At that moment I drag them into it, either all at once, or one at a time, highlighting each character for a few minutes to get a feel for them.

Once the game is in full steam and people are bantering in-character, I run the plot line I had in mind. Sometimes it comes from notes, other times from a collection of incredibly detailed images, snapshots of major scenes, that I have gathered since last session.

Some from snippets of songs I heard or bits of news I’ve read, subtly incorporating what is happening in the world right now with the events in the game, no matter the time period. It helps keep everyone attached to the reality we’re building in the game world and gets stress out.

The game lasts 5-7 hours minus a few short breaks, until minds are tired and everyone is ready to break up, find dinner, get some sleep, and so on. My ultimate goal is that everyone leaves feeling as if they just read book they took part in writing, wondering what will happen next.

I want them to wonder where all that time went, and feel more relaxed when they go back to dealing with their normal life. We game to have fun, and to get all of the crap out of our systems; in my perfect game, it always does.

Section Three: GMing Style

What are the top qualities you look for or need in a player?

A clear understanding of each person at the table’s roles, an ability to separate what makes a good story from a well-ruled game, and the flexibility to listen to what the GM says and think, “Ok, so that happens.” without fighting over every tiny rule they can remember from the book.

Describe in a few words each of your players and their playing style.

The ecologically serious male ranger trapped in a woman’s body who makes decisive and unalterable calls, willing to burn the world to save it.

The modern artistocrat who plays the bad man social deviant with the strong moral code and thinks homicide is justified to save a kitten. 100% pure antihero but always out to save the world.

The mad scientist with the IT day job, who spends his nights dreaming of Victorian life. He deconstructs the scenes he takes part in from behind an old man’s eyes, while looking for loopholes the party can use to game the GM.

The three-term three-service soldier/sailor/airman who walks hard, leaving no doubt he’s in charge, but plays the socially shy misfit teenage kids that always have something goofball to say.

The self-tortured starving artist with a mind full of incoherent images that bring an unconventional approach to anything she touches. The lady gunslinger and ambush assassin who always goes first if the system allows.

The zen psychologist with his eyes on the ivory ring, who vacations inside the emotions of his sneaky rogues while pulling wool over the eyes of others; as misunderstood by other players as by NPCs.

The quiet overachiever who doesn’t speak up much but pre-empts the game session with a 10 page character history that forces a GM to do their homework on the setting. Plays in advance, already aware of a hundred options for every situation.

The shut-in creative genius who lives a life of video games and vivid dreams, but shows up at the game on time, in character, and always ready to be the sly snake or the brave barbarian—living out through games the childhood fantasies we all wish we could hold onto.

Describe in a few words your group’s playing style.

Inverted, deconstructive, unexpected, lateral and hair-pullingly challenging. Every solution is reasonable, intelligent and frighteningly articulate, and keeps the GM jumping from one foot to the other to stay ahead of the blast wave.

Describe in a few words your GMing style.

I am an ad-hoc GM. My style is to construct the world in my head, describe it, motivate it, give voice to the NPCs (often with accents) and completely ham it up. I’m an actor speaking tongues in four voices at once before a small audience, begging them to act back at me.

What is your best GMing skill or ability? What advice would you give to a GM wanting to improve in that area?

My best GMing skill is in lying to my players about how prepared I am. Some of the best games anyone can remember came from a session in which I entered, confident, looking like I had the whole thing planned. In reality, I was well-rested, underplanned and in a playful mood.

But your players are your most creative force for building the story. You’re there to guide them. So sometimes, they will try to describe a scene back at you in a way that is far superior to what you had in mind, changing who the killer is, what the enemy wants, and so on, to the benefit of the story.

If you are trying to learn to run a great story, try to figure out which of those player ideas will work better in your story, and when they bring them up, wink at them as if to suggest they are right. Or coyly smile but not say anything, making a note to change something in the base plot to match.

It makes them feel like they genuinely figured out a mystery of the plot themselves and greatly increases their enjoyment.

Over time, it’s become an open secret in my play group, and honestly, they wouldn’t enjoy the horror games half as much if they weren’t constantly stabbing themselves in the foot by opening their mouths with something terrifying.

What is your typical session planning process?

I am planning every minute between sessions by keeping what happened in mind, and taking in the world. There is inspiration everywhere: music, advertisements, movies, conversations, research studies, household objects, strange videos on the Internet and whatever else I trip across.

I once ran an entire Iron Kingdom’s arc from one line in a Marilyn Manson song I heard by accident.

Other games are an image that fills a daydream when I’m trying to distract myself from another mundane task, and I just reverse engineer the plot to get the characters there, and figure out where it will go after.

It doesn’t work for every GM, but after enough years, you get a feel for what a group can and cannot handle in an encounter, so I can adlib a decent amount of it, but I like to keep in mind their capabilities.

To a young GM, it is important to know what the players can do, but not to count on what the characters can do. Never plan a scene where one specific spell off a single spell list will solve it, or create a fight only one character who secretly has special weapon can defeat in a blink if only they knew to use it.

Why? Because they might not think of the same solution, they may not even pull out that special weapon, and heck, that one person may not even show up for that one session.

What are your favourite online resources for GMing?

GoogleDocs, which I mentioned earlier.

Blogs and websites—these are sporadic, but there is gold in their RSS feed histories. I use Google Reader to look back at them. Many I have printed into PDF ebooks for myself because they are so fascinating.

http://www.20by20room.com/

http://www.1km1kt.net/

http://www.lumpley.com/

http://www.fairgame-rpgs.com/ (see the links for ritual, rpg theory, and freeform over on the right side)

http://games.spaceanddeath.com/sin_aesthetics/

Specific Articles:

A Universal Gaming Theory (I don’t agree with all of it, but good food for thought.)

The Basics of RPG Design

       A background in Principled Freeform (think of it as the extreme version of a rules-light system, or improv theater)

What tools or aides do you wish would be created or invented to help you GM easier?

I often wish someone would come up with a product like Github or Sourceforge, but for developed games, so that people could host a gamewiki or similar from it, get feedback and “bug issues” from players, then incorporate it into new versions of the game for either free distribution or updates to production runs of published games.

It would mean that game worlds could easily cross-reference with each other and create interactive cross-dimensional gameplay, not unlike playing Stargate, but with a thousand systems.

After working through these question and getting a 10,000 foot view of your GMing, what is the number #1 thing you’d like to learn about and work on next to become a better GM?

I would like to spend some time working on ways to take my materials and structure them to give away.

Since I do a lot of ad-hoc game design, rules restructuring, and world building, it gets jumbled up despite a pretty decent system for sorting all of it.

I however have trouble sometimes pulling a project together and creating a product (free or otherwise) from it.

GMing for so many years means I get a lot of my thrill from watching a game in play, less from watching someone’s joy at holding a copy of my work. I’m getting better at it all the time, but I need to spend a lot more time developing it.

Part One: The Birth Of A Club And Some Bumps Along The Way

I’m a Middle School teacher who is a long-time gamer. So when some of my 7th grade students discovered my hobby “Hey – is that an R.A. Salvatore book on her desk? She plays D&D! No way! Cool!” it was a natural step to set up a game for those boys as an after-school activity.

I didn’t realize what I was starting the day I sat down behind my desk to GM those four 7th grade students. Today, five years later, our RPG Club has three faculty advisors, and both Middle and High School students playing. Students carrying dice bags and Player’s Handbooks have become a normal sight in the hallways. We average between 30-40 members each year, have our own website, mini-library of gaming materials, and a page in the yearbook. One parent GM gleefully put it this way: “We’re bigger than the basketball team!”

Along the way I’ve learned a few lessons about setting up not just one gaming group, but an entire club, with 4 or more different campaigns going on at once. Johnn has also helped me out with some of the club’s start-up problems with some sage advice. I’m going to try to cram all this information into a set of tips for anyone out there interested in setting up a gaming club. My tips will focus on advice for setting up a group for younger players, since our members’ age range is 12-18. But I’m sure some of these ideas can be tweaked for working with adults as well.

Before you begin: Get permission. This might sound stupid, but it helps to ensure that your group lasts longer than just one year. Make sure anyone whose facilities you might be using knows that you’re planning the group and that they support you. When I started the RPG club, I went to my principal with the Core Rulebooks and a set of dice, explained the game and got her permission to set up the club.

Before they begin: Get permission. Have your players sign permission slips. In some families, role-playing, especially Dungeons and Dragons, has a very bad name. (Ah, the joys of urban legends.) Having signed permission slips from each player helps protect the club – and you.

Yes, charge them! We ask for a small amount of dues for a yearly membership. It’s about $10. But if we had to rent our own space, that amount would be much higher. That money goes for club supplies (dice, books, pencils, munchies for all-day conventions, prizes when necessary). Also, it helps cut down on absenteeism…if someone’s a paid member, they’re more likely to take it seriously and keep showing up.

Location, location, location. Finding a good place to play is important. We started out in classrooms, but as the club grew, we needed more room. The RPG club now meets in the cafeteria. Everyone is in one space, we wheel the books and supplies in on a cart (saved from the AV discard pile) and snacks and drinks are close at hand from the nearby vending machines.

Everyone playing in the same location is crucial. It helps the students feel like they are part of the larger club, not just their own gaming group. Kids often eavesdrop on other campaigns when they have a few minutes. A powerful, intense battle in one group can draw spectators from around the room. And nothing raises the hairs on the back of your neck (and makes you breathe a sigh of relief) like hearing “Doooooooom!” ring out fromsomebody else’s GM.

A side benefit of playing in a very public space is that the club has become well-known and accepted at school. Parents, teachers and students often pass through the cafeteria and see the group at work. Sometimes people drop in and watch for a while. That’s great advertising – and it helps keep the club’s reputation positive.

Club expectations are important! Make sure everyone involved knows what the rules of the club are. This can be simple stuff like showing up on time, or letting your GM know if you are going to miss a session. But it also involves those more nebulous rules like not hogging the spotlight or willfully messing up your GM’s plans. Our group actually uses the 5 Do’s and Don’ts from Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies (Bill Slavicsek & Richard W. Baker, 2005) as a guideline. And we have the students sign a contract before they get started. That way nobody can use the excuse “But I didn’t know I couldn’t do that!”

Players helping players. Once your group gains a little size, you can start using experienced players as question answerer, character builders, and eventually Game Masters for other groups. We use a tiered system. Only High School students with more than 1 year of experience are allowed to GM. The GMs help with training up new players and have access to their own, private, section of the website where they can ask each other questions and share tips and ideas. We would like to set up a system in which the GMs receive more rewards for the hard work they do, but we aren’t there yet.

By the way, a great way to encourage players to take a leadership role in the group is to link up with anyone at your organization who sets up community service programs. Some of our GMs are fulfilling high school community service graduation requirements by Game Mastering a group each week!

What about newbies? Our biggest problem was the massive influx of newbies at the beginning of each school year. The GMs were so frustrated with the typical newbie stunts – attacking NPC’s, trying to hoard all the loot for themselves, and rules lawyering (or not learning the rules at all, then arguing about the GM’s decisions.) Worst of all, by the time the GMs had gotten their players in line, the school year was nearly over – and a new school year brought in a whole new set of newbies, starting the process all over again.

I emailed Johnn with this problem and asked for his advice. He suggested that we start out the year with a mini-convention in which the new players were mixed in with different GMs and experienced players. This was a great suggestion, and the convention plan we developed has helped us teach good role-playing — fast. (I’ll explain more about setting up a “Learn-to-Play” convention in the second half of this article.)

Other things that have helped with newbies: handing out prizes for great role-playing, strategy and teamwork; giving them pre-made characters until they are able to create their own; putting them in groups with two or more experienced players who can model good role-playing; and having a club library where players can borrow gaming books like the Hero Builder’s Guidebook, Dungeon Master for Dummies, and other great books that help new players get a grip on good role-playing habits.

How do you set up the groups? I wrestled with this one for a long time. After all, the point of the club is to give kids a chance to hang out with their friends and role-play, right? But allowing the kids complete freedom in choosing their own groups kept leading to problems. Sometimes friends aren’t the best match as players. Also, groups kept breaking up and re-forming…which frustrated the GMs as well.

Now we (the “über-GMs”, as we have become known) choose the groups. We ask each player to fill in a survey form at the end of the Learn-to-Play convention and on the basis of these forms (plus the input of the GMs), we set up the groups. We try to put friends together but also keep a good balance of different ages, experienced players + new players, and matching players’ styles with GMs campaign styles. We allow massive switching once during the year, just after the winter holiday break. Often the holiday break comes, and no one wants to switch groups! Now our games are much more consistent and both the GMs and players are having more fun.

XP as more than just an in-game benefit. As the club grew, it became more and more difficult for me to keep close tabs on the adventures of all the groups. With adults, that’s not such a big deal…but because students need to be kept on a bit of a shorter leash, it was more important. One of our new faculty advisors set up a website for the club usinghttp://www.euromoodle.org which only club members have access to. Then, we started using bribes. No, really! Any player who posts a recap of the session’s events can earn a small amount of XP. We also award small XP bonuses for any players who post their character’s history. The result = regular reports of group activity, plus lots of fun for all club members, as they get to read about their friends’ successes and show off their own amazing moments.

Get help! Once the club really took off, it was soon clear that I couldn’t do everything myself. I was lucky enough to find two fellow teachers who are also gamers. Now the three of us share responsibilities for the group pretty equally, GMing, keeping the website up and running, keeping tabs on finances, membership lists and paperwork, and the library. We also keep our classrooms open at lunch for kids to come in, hang out, work on characters or brag about last week’s session. It’s great for me to have that kind of support for the club…and great for the students too, to see that different teachers have role-playing as a hobby.

The bottom line. What started out 5 years ago as a favor for a few students has turned into a full-fledged after-school activity for dozens of kids! Even though it takes a lot of energy and organization, it’s definitely worth it. It’s been amazing to see how much the kids enjoy the club and fun for me to watch the next generation of role-players develop. It’s also cool that there is a place at our school now for those fantasy-loving kids who don’t always fit into the traditional after-school activities like sports or drama.

My advice: if you’re in the position to set up a similar club, don’t be afraid and take the plunge. It’s great fun!

Part II: Setting Up A Learn-To-Play Convention

Here are some tips for setting up a learn-to-play convention.

Advertising. Get the word out. We use posters, ads in the school newspapers and website, as well as just telling people who we feel are interested. Make sure prospective players know they can come with no experience and still have a good time!

Fees. You may want to charge a minimal fee to cover the cost of prizes. We ask for about 5 bucks. That takes care of prizes and lunch. If you need to rent a space, you’ll have to ask more.

Displays. Give the players something to look at when they’re not playing. We laid out a table full of different gaming books, character sheets, dice, and other gaming supplies.

Encounters & PCs. These are the backbone of the day. Each GM is responsible for creating a 1-hour encounter. We set ours up so that each encounter showcased a different kind of game style or hazard: dungeon crawl, tactics, hack-and-slash, negotiation, magic use…etc. Each GM creates 6 PCs for their adventure. We advise them to use a simplified character sheet and/or to highlight important numbers (like HP, AC and Attack Bonuses.)

Figure 4 players to a GM when you calculate the amount of encounters you need. Even if you have more encounters than game sessions, that’s okay. Not every player needs to experience every encounter.

Plants. Match experienced players with GMs. We “planted” experienced players with the GMs to model good role-playing and help newbies along if they got stuck. You can also allow experienced players to rotate too…then you work without the “plants”.

Schedule. Start with an introduction explaining the day and get right down to playing. Each new player rotates to a different group every session. Between sessions, the GMs fill in their cards. Remember to schedule something for lunch! The afternoon is two more sessions, and then a few minutes break (or club explanation) while the winners are being calculated. View sample schedule (Word doc).

Materials. This might be a no-brainer, but make sure there are enough dice, pencils and scrap paper at each table.

GM Cards. The GMs fill out quick cards at the end of each encounter, grading each player on teamwork, strategy and role-playing. View example GM card (Word doc).

Prizes. We handed out dice sets for best teamwork, best role-playing and best strategy. The highest scorer in all three areas got a Player’s Handbook. The highest scorer for the returning players gets a free club membership!

Survey. It’s a good idea to have the new players fill out a survey of the day, with preferences for their ideal group and GM. We use these surveys to review the conference and set up the club’s groups for the year. View sample survey (Word doc).

Future Sessions. Make sure the players leave with all the information they need to join the club or otherwise continue gaming. We handed out permission slips and club information letters.

These mini-conventions have been a raging success. The students love them, the GMs love getting a glimpse of their players to come, and best of all, by the end of the day, most of the new players have a good idea of what RPGs are about, and what good role-playing is – and isn’t!

by  Jeff Pawlowsk

I’m always amazed by the way some games last years when no one in the game is having any fun. There is something mystical about having a regular game that is comforting and the hassles of finding and integrating into a new gaming group is a daunting task.

It is very similar to couples that date one another simply because it is familiar and the alternative is too scary.  I can personally say that I’ve been guilty of staying with a gaming group too long.

The alternative is not scary.  Just like you need to dump a relationship that is not working out for you so that you can find true happiness, one must dump the old gaming group if things are not what they used to be.

The Game master is NOT always right

One of the trusty sayings about the rights of game masters, “the GM is always right” has been perverted to the extreme. Instead of a rule that is supposed to expedite the game, keep things moving, and/or settle disputes among players, power-hungry individuals wanting to exert control over his fellows often use this rule.  Poor treatment of others cannot be excused by a simple rule.

A GM must be Fair, Equal, and Even.

Fair – Hand out rewards and penalties in moderate amounts.  Rewards and penalties that are too large or too little will result in an unbalanced party with some players jumping ahead at points, or gain the resentment of a player for getting too little.

Equal – Rewards and penalties should be set to a schedule and all rewards and penalties should be recorded by the GM for future reference.  This will insure that the same rewards and/or penalties will be handed out for the same actions.

Even – This might be the most important and difficult for GMs.  A

GM must make it very clear when the rules are being enforced and exact the rewards and penalties immediately for the prescribed behaviors.  Letting something slide one time and not the next is not fair or equal treatment for the players.

GMs not following these three simple rules should be on notice.  You’re about to

Horses, Men, then Officers

One of the old cavalry stories from the old west was how a cavalry unit would break for camp.  The first thing that you did was to tend to the horses.  No horses, no cavalry.  The next thing that happened was to tend to the men.  No men, no cavalry.  The last thing you did was to tend to the officers.  In spite of their positions, you could lose all your officers and you’d still have a cavalry.

The same thing goes for gaming groups.  Players are the most important part of the equation.  I cannot tell you how many times I would have loved to run a game but lacked sufficient players for .  In spite of their position, GMs are not as important as everyone grants them to be. GMs are wise to deal with this fact and know what is going on with their players.

Are the players happy?  Do they like the campaign?  What could you do to make it more fun for the players?  Ask questions.  Listen to the answers and take them to make your game stronger.  When you get the answers, don’t be defensive.  Be clinical and take notes.

GMs not asking these questions will have no idea if their players will be coming back for the next session.

Personal Enlightenment

Some GMs view their position as adversarial to the players.  Many players, in turn, view the GM as their adversary.  A game night should never end with one side of the GM’s screen feeling like they’ve lost the match.

GMs need to understand that their role is a personal challenge, struggled with within.  The goal is not to create a body count of player characters, but to create the fullest and richest imaginary world you can devise.  Like a chess player, you must anticipate and map out the actions of the players with branches upon branches of events.

When this fails, you are challenged to expand upon your world on-the-fly, keeping ahead of the players as they interact with your creations.

The GM’s ultimate reward is seeing the characters grow and be challenged, with the players coming back session after session.

After running through a scenario, if your GM says, “Darn, I should have had you,” versus, “Well done, I didn’t think of that,” be wary.

Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em

Players need to recognize the signs of good and bad GMs.  They must make their minds up whether a game is worth their time and/or their frustration or to move on.  If the game is worth sticking to, having a quiet personal talk with your GM with your concerns should be in order.  The GM’s response should let you know if you’re wasting your time or not.

When it is time to leave, try to leave quietly, with your contact information available to the other players.  They’ll want to know why you stopped coming to games.

Try this: “I was no longer having fun with the game.  I discussed my concerns with the

GM and felt it was time to leave.” One should feel free to share this article with your fellow players.  Who knows, you might be able to find a new GM and move all your players to a new game.

Looking for love in all the wrong places

Joining a new gaming group is very hard.  The best thing to do is be flexible.  There is no right way to role-play.  Some groups might be really intense about the in-character portrayals with character voices and costumes.  Some groups may be very relaxed.

The next part is to know what type of player you are yourself.  Are you a rules-lawyer?

Do you have “all the books” or just a basic player?  Are you a social gamer or one that is there just for the game?

The only way to know if a group is for you is to make contact and sit in on a session or two.  Never build a character right away and jump in or you might be entering into another group you’re not going to have fun with.

1. How is the world run by the GM?  Does he run in a published campaign setting?  Does he run published adventures?  Is it a home-brew setting?  What books is he using to support his campaign?

2. Is the game too heavy in role-playing or tactical combat for your tastes?  Can you take seriously the “hard-core” players in the group?

3. Are the group members personable?  Would you go to the movies with the group?

Would you share a pizza?  Would you invite them to your house?

4. Can you work with the GM’s style?

Ask questions and make sure the group is interviewing you as well as you interview the group and GM.  A group not discriminating can pull in new members later on that you may disapprove of.

You’re planning on spending hours upon hours with these people.  Don’t be afraid to walk away.

There are many game groups out there

If you build it, they will come. If you simply cannot find a gaming group to join, you should seriously consider forming a group on your own.  In many cases, there are a pool of gamers and GMs in your area also looking for a group.

In most cases, the Internet will be your best starting point.  Many online sources list local groups and/or players by location.  Start an online community/club/group to organize and advertise your group.

Post a flyer at your local game shop.  It is in their best interest to keep gamers gaming, so they should not have a problem with that.

Once you have a selection of gaming group candidates, everyone should meet somewhere neutral and have drinks, dinner, or have some non-gaming event to have everyone in one room to make sure there are not any clashing personalities.

Again, you’re going to be spending a great deal of time with these people.  Select one or two candidates to join your group and then get them involved in assisting you to build the group.  You will have a great group in no time as the work in building the group compounds with new members.

Gaming is supposed to be an enjoyable experience.  If it isn’t, it is time for some changes.

This week we interview Rebecca, a fan of D&D 4th edition from Ireland, a lover of Forgotten Realms and enjoy’s creating her own story arcs.

Please introduce yourself:

Hey, I’m Rebecca Maguire. From Ireland, studying to be an English teacher.

Do you have a blog, website or campaign wiki? http://www.sites.google.com/site/forgottenrealmsdnd

It is currently under construction. I’m not sure when it’ll be ready.

How long have you been a GM?

About nine months now.

What are your favourite games to run?

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. I tried to run a 3.5 game, but I found it really difficult as I don’t have any of the books and I don’t like using PDFs much.

How did you first get into GMing?

I wanted to get back into role-playing – I did a lot of it when I was younger. I didn’t know of any games in the area, so I set one up with my friends. No-one else was going to GM, so I stepped up to the plate.

How has GMing affected your life over the years?

GMing has vastly changed my way of life. Every time I read a book, watch a movie or walk down the street I’m mentally collecting NPCs, plot hooks and quests. I spend hours each day trying to flesh out the campaign and create back-up NPCs.

Section One: Your GMing Stat Block

What is your usual gaming schedule?

We game every Saturday, from about 1pm to anything up to 3am. It all depends on how much energy we all have.

Where do you play?

We usually use the granite table out in my conservatory because it’s out of my mom’s way. The table just about fits the eight of us.

Do you use published material or create your own?

I use about half-and-half. I am in college so I don’t have the time to do everything by myself, so I use the Forgotten Realms as a setting, and mostly the quests and stories are all out of my head.

What non-digital and electronic GM aides do you use (other than books)?

So far, it’s just been me and the books or PDFs, pen and paper. We do use Facebook for organising sessions, though.

Minis or no?

We use mostly Lord of the Rings minis on gridded whiteboards covered with a sheet of acetate. Largely we use them for trawling through dungeons and during combat.

Section Two: Opportunities

What is your biggest GMing stumbling block right now?

Right now I’m grappling with a number of issues. My biggest issue is probably keeping everyone absorbed. I’ve banned laptops, etc. from the table, and I’m working on having something interesting happening all the time.

When was the last time you were a player? What insight about GMing did you pick up?

I have only been a player for one session, when one of my players took over for a couple of weeks while I did my exams. It hammered the realisation home that describing everything in detail doesn’t distract the players from role-playing, but enhances the experience. It seems really obvious now….

Describe your perfect gaming session with you as GM.

Everybody gets into character and stays there. The dungeon is eerie and creepy and everyone is tense and full of anticipation. The battle with the Big Bad is long and dangerous, with everyone honestly wondering if their character will die. In the end the relief of success (or the sorrow of failure) is palpable, and everyone is buzzing and excited for the next game.

Section Three: GMing Style

What are the top qualities you look for or need in a player?

Players have to be willing to role-play. For me, the story is the most important thing in the game, so my players need to think so too. Beyond that, I look for enthusiasm.

Describe in a few words each of your players and their playing style.

1. A – plays a paladin, and is the leader of the group. Talks to every NPC that walks past. Great role-player.
2. J – plays a ranger. Is pretty quiet, but still role-plays well. Really hates the undead.
3. B – plays a barbarian. He’s generally really funny, but he takes the game seriously, which I like.
4. K – plays a rogue. He’s a womanising drunkard, and generally doesn’t take anything seriously.
5. JP – plays a sorcerer. His solution to every problem is “blow it up.”
6. L – plays a warlock. He takes everything very seriously and is probably the best, or at least one of the best, role-players there.
7. S – keeps changing character. He’s a bit of a problem player, prone to meta-gaming and is more interested in doing loads of damage than the story.

Describe in a few words your group’s playing style.

Largely, the group is after a good story and tries to consider everything from their characters’ views. They try to look after every NPC, even if they’re really annoying and they don’t like them.

Describe in a few words your GMing style.

I’m a story-teller and an actor. I try to make the world as realistic as possible, even if it means putting on silly voices or doing sound-effects.

What is your best GMing skill or ability? What advice would you give to a GM wanting to improve in that area?

I pride myself on being able to come up with stuff off-the-cuff, as my players never ever do what I expect.

I would say have a good knowledge of the surrounding area, and have a list of random ideas of things that could be there.

Above all: practice. Your players will forgive a quick break while you wrack your brains.

What is your typical session planning process?

After each session I take detailed notes on what happened, and any conclusions the players have jumped to.

From there I decide on what could happen to further the campaign story, and then detail a few side quests to bulk it out a bit.

There is always a bit of pre-session planning, and even mid-session alterations to what I’ve already got.

What tools or aides (digital and non-digital) do you wish would be created or invented to help you GM easier?

I would like a programme for recording and filing NPCs and their opinions of the characters. Maybe somewhere you can get appropriate riddles and puzzles in one place – it takes ages to find good ones.

After working through these question and getting a 10,000 foot view of your GMing, what is the number #1 thing you’d like to learn about and work on next to become a better GM?

I’d like to learn how to describe what’s happening in combat while we fight. So far I’m finding it really hard to do.

Today we interview Adrian, a GM who plays mostly one-on-one games and is a master of improvisation, enjoying a cinematic approach to gaming.

Please introduce yourself:

Your name:
AD

Do you have a blog, website or campaign wiki?

Nope

How long have you been a GM?

Damnation, its been 10 years.

What are your favourite game(s) to run?

My own universe, White Wolf, D&D, Shadowrun

How did you first get into GMing? Why?

It was at Heroes and Fantasies on Bitters Rd.in San Antonio, Texas. I do remember it. I was going to play Magic the Gathering, but Lo’ was this table, with people stocking it, playing with little figures. Among them was a tall, curly-haired man who would become one of my longest running friends. Their game was interesting, so much that I stayed the whole time. I returned to my home, found that funny book that came with a special edition Pool of Radiance Game my mom got me called the Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook. It told me, essentially, that role-playing was that thing I did all the time in my younger life, and showed me how to do it with others. When I came back, I started playing in that group, and when the game fell to pieces, I picked it back up… and broke it some more. But from there I started GMing, nearly exclusively from then on.

How has GMing affected your life over the years?

I consider it to be the second most important thing that saved my writing career. I had written a bit when I was young, even got 50-60 pages into a novel when is was 13, but it fell aside with hormones, school, and good-old obligation confronting me. All the greats that put word to page say “Write everyday, no matter what s7!t it be”. When I solo-play with my wife (she is the number one reason I write, in fact) every day, I am creating stories all the same. When I make game notes, I’m writing a skeleton that can be made flesh later.

Section One: Your GMing Stat Block

What is your usual gaming schedule? (Session frequency, time and length.)

Everyday solo-sessions, usually 6 hours or all day.

Where do you play? Describe your usual game environment (table, room, etc.).

Any and every room in the house. When I group play, it’s usually in the living room or large bedroom.

Do you use published material or create your own? Why?

No published material hardly ever. I have never read any book enough to really remember all the details and rationales it contains. However, I do sniff the books, if you will; I get the themes and structure of the world out of the book, and build my own plot from there.

What non-digital and electronic GM aides do you use (other than books)?

Books! Books from other RPGs, folktale books and any fiction or nonfiction. Google, Elfwood, DeviantArt, and Wiki are fountains of ideas, especially when my own mind is dry and empty.

Minis or no? What do you use for minis, and how do you use them?

No minis. I run on the cheap.

Section Two: Opportunities

What is your biggest GMing stumbling block right now? What could you do to fix that?

Always having ideas to start a new game with (a game’s destiny is dries to concrete in the first few sessions, usually). I can make a stockpile of new ideas.

When was the last time you were a player? What insight about GMing did you pick up?
I have never been a player exclusively for more than a few sessions. In my solo sessions, there is so much idea exchange that those lines between player and storyteller dissolve, anyway.

That being said, I have learned that being a player is like being a writer or a rock star: its time for your idea to get out there and experience the world. The GM, from a player’s view, becomes more like the real world, full of critics, publishers, labels, and audiences. I have learned that a GM has got allow the player to move. So many great characters have been slain by GM’s that were too tight.

Describe your perfect gaming session with you as GM:

Oh it’s so beautiful when it happens.

The game starts, with a player character that’s not complete, but not missing anything important either. She (it’s usually female) is flogged by the universe, but struggles against it, biting back. She learns, she loves, she digs and finds things, she lives a life. Her enemies crumble in her wake, or become friends, or disappear, surrendering in either love or hate. The game never slows, no gaps, no loose ends. It closes like a music box, slowly, playing music as though there’s no end. Then End, roll credits.

Section Three: GMing Style

What are the top qualities you look for or need in a player?

Energy is what I look for. I need a role-player, honest with themselves, unafraid, and untrammelled by rules or role-playing paraphernalia. My wife and my best brother are players just like that.

Describe in a few words each of your players and their playing style.

1. My Wife – Fiery persona, loving, moral, a woman who craves peace but is forced to fight, and never relaxes the jaws. Fighter for freedom, hated by all who think they are superior, who breaks the rules to save the children.
2.  My Brother – “Loose cannon” by his own admission, honour and legerdemain in union. A swashbuckling, thieving, paladining warrior; pariah walking to the great beyond, clutching the thorned rose.

Describe in a few words your group’s playing style.

Usually they follow the plot. That’s what I have observed.

Describe in a few words your GMing style.

Intrigue, combat, enemies who turn leaves and allies who are rotten on the inside. Plots usually revolve around a political aspect and look at social issues within the world. Players come up with a lot of things to add to the game. I like originality, from both my players and myself.

What is your best GMing skill or ability? What advice would you give to a GM wanting to improve in that area?

The ability to adapt and embrace what player throw. A player’s decision hasn’t killed one of my games in 10 years. My advice: See that your players are all adding to the story. Don’t let gamer-types be burdens: use their characters actions to further the plot, even if the players are just acting like themselves in real-life (we ALL do…).

What is your typical session planning process? (i.e. adventures and encounters.)

Planning? Ha! No time for it! However, I do like to think about the next step in the plot about 30 minutes before the session. After that, its by the seat!

What are your favourite online resources for GMing? (Articles, tools, inspiration. Check your bookmarks.

This Blog, Elfwood, Deviant Art, Fantasy-Magazine.com, wiki, Google image search, Goth.net

What tools or aides (digital and non-digital) do you wish would be created or invented to help you GM easier?

A website where Dm’s could post their story ideas, even they don’t pan out, anonymously, with the best ones selected by mods (like mod picks on Elfwood).

After working through these question and getting a 10,000 foot view of your GMing, what is the number #1 thing you’d like to learn about and work on next to become a better GM?

Good GMs are always ready. I need to work on always being ready for the next game. I want to learn how to run fantasy with more originality. I think I will develop my world further, see where it goes.

This week we interview Trevor, a GM who enjoys AD&D, WEG Star Wars, and has a love for creating his own worlds and adventures.

Please introduce yourself:

Your name:

Trevor Wiley

Do you have a blog, website or campaign wiki?

http://worldcrafters.blogspot.com , the home for my D&D campaign as well as some of my other hobbies.

How long have you been a GM?

About two and a half years now.

What are your favourite game(s) to run?

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, as well as the old WEG Star Wars game.

How did you first get into GMing? Why?

I started playing D&D at my high school, and really enjoyed getting into the character, but I realized that the most fun part for me was actually leading a game and creating a world. I started a campaign with me as DM, and loved it so much I’ve been doing it ever since.

How has GMing affected your life over the years?

It’s made me a better writer and has given me a deep appreciation for well-written fiction stories. It has also given me quite a few good friends and good stories.

Section One: Your GMing Stat Block

What is your usual gaming schedule? (Session frequency, time and length.)

Myself and my group usually get together about every two weeks, though the schedule varies. We play for two to four hours in the late afternoon, when people are ready for a game after school.

Where do you play? Describe your usual game environment (table, room, etc.).

We play in the dining room, on a nice large rectangular table that fits all the players as well as food, miniatures, and character sheets quite comfortably.

Do you use published material or create your own? Why?

I actually have never used a published product in my game. I prefer my own home-made material because it allows me to create better stories that all link together to form the backbone of my campaign.

What non-digital and electronic GM aides do you use (other than books)?

We don’t use many electronics at the gaming table, but off of the table I use the computer and Microsoft Excel to keep track of NPCs and my campaign world.

Minis or no? What do you use for minis, and how do you use them?

My group started our game without any miniatures, but it was only a month before we started using cardboard tokens, and then moved on to the WotC miniatures and a battlemat. We use minis for combats or for situations where position of the players really matters (intricate traps, for example).

Section Two: Opportunities

What is your biggest GMing stumbling block right now? What could you do to fix that?

I really start to lose my inspiration after about three hours of gaming, leading to my players sounding disappointed as I explain that I’m tired of DMing and we should take a break. I admit I should probably come to the table a bit more inspired for the game.

When was the last time you were a player? What insight about GMing did you pick up?

I actually play in a Star Wars game GM’d by one of my players. From the perspective of the player, I learned that some players really appreciate the detail and story you put into your game, because it helps them make their characters more real.

Describe your perfect gaming session with you as GM:

I think my perfect gaming session would be one where I had enough material and inspiration to keep my players inspired and happily gaming for a good four hours.

Section Three: GMing Style

What are the top qualities you look for or need in a player?

My most fun games have been with players who really love the story behind their characters, who aren’t worried about what game system we use (it’s all the same story), and who want to work together with the rest of the party.

Describe in a few words each of your players and their playing style.

1.  C- Really loves the storyline of the game, gets heavily into role-playing his character. Loves really powerful equipment.
2.  J- Interested in the mechanics aspect of the game. Quietly amasses money to achieve his personal goals, which often actually work to help the story along.
3.  E- Really enjoys killing things and has the unhealthy addiction of taking the skulls of everything she kills.

Describe in a few words your group’s playing style.

My group likes to have fun, and generally makes allowances for everyone to do what they want, even when motivations are much different.

Describe in a few words your GMing style.

I prefer epic games, full of huge battles and sieges and long quests, but I have learned to make such adventures rare, in between more average adventures. With a succession of epic adventures, it is hard to keep topping your last exploit.

What is your best GMing skill or ability? What advice would you give to a GM wanting to improve in that area?

I really pride myself on my world-building ability. To me it is one of the best parts of being a DM. To anyone who wants to improve in their world building, I recommend that you start every world you build with a map. It doesn’t have to be well drawn, but a single map can give you loads of inspiration.

What is your typical session planning process? (i.e. adventures and encounters.)

Usually right after a session I write down a large amount of rough notes on what adventures should come next. Over the course of time between sessions I add to the notes and bring them down into a single storyline. Usually I end up doing a bit of last minute work right before the session starts.

What are your favourite online resources for GMing? (Articles, tools, inspiration. Check your bookmarks.

http://www.roleplayingtips.com/blog/

http://strolen.com

What tools or aides (digital and non-digital) do you wish would be created or invented to help you GM easier?

I would really enjoy it if someone created a set of forms for cities and NPCs that are in a program such as Excel that allows for easy printing out before a session.

After working through these question and getting a 10,000 foot view of your GMing, what is the number #1 thing you’d like to learn about and work on next to become a better GM?

I want to learn how to more firmly build my stories into a single campaign towards a single goal.

Thanks again for your time. Do you, by chance, have a pic you could send along with this interview? A pic of you or your group would be ideal.

I’m afraid not. My group are not fans of photos.

This week we interview Rory, a GM from Cape Town who’s a huge Greyhawk fan. If you have any questions about his campaign feel free to post them below.

Please introduce yourself

Hi, I am Rory from South Africa, Cape Town. I am 39 years old and I work as an IT Consultant. “Online,” I go by either Dark or Grey Herald.

Do you have a blog, website or campaign wiki?

Yes I do, http://www.greyhawk.co.za/ I am busy with a revamp of the site for my upcoming campaign for next year. (Coming soon 2012.)

How long have you been a GM?

Over 25 years. I started playing during our winter school holidays of 1984. I received my very own copy of the D&D Basic Rules (RED Box) as a Christmas present later that year. The January school holidays ended way too quickly for my liking … So started a life time of adventure.

I stayed with BECMI for many years and it was at the end of the 80’s that I finally made the change to AD&D and then to AD&D 2^nd Edition a couple of years later. I settled on playing a hybrid mixture of D&D, AD&D & AD&D 2^nd Edition.

When D&D 3^rd Edition was released I was appalled at what they had done to the rules, so the books ended up laying on my bookcase never to be used. (To this day they were never used once).

I only recently converted to the d20 system, up and till 2008 I was still an avid AD&D and AD&D 2^nd supporter. I always bought and kept up with the latest rules that were being released for D&D. It was only when I met Carl that he convinced me to play in his Freeport Campaign and got me to change to D&D 3.5.

Would I play the older versions of D&D? Without a doubt, in a blink of an eye.

What are your favourite games to run?

Dungeons & Dragons / Pathfinder. I love fantasy; it is that simple! I have played Werewolf, Vampire, Cyberpunk, Rifts, Dangerous Journeys, d20 Modern, Call of Cthulhu, ( to name a few) and I have played all the different versions of D&D, but D&D captured my heart from the beginning.

There is an exception to the rule – D&D 4^th Edition is a big NO. In my opinion it isn’t D&D, but rather a hybrid system that looks like D&D but plays like a console version of it. The game is aimed at a younger and different market.

Currently my system of choice is Pathfinder RPG, although I still actively play in a D&D 3.5 game. I will also be running D&D Rules Cyclopedia game for my family; it was where I started after all.

There has only ever been one campaign world for me, “The World of Greyhawk.” Thanks Gary! Quoting Barry White, “My first, my last, my everything!” There are a number of other campaign settings that I really like, but with limited time these days you need to focus on what you want to play. That hasn’t stopped me from borrowing a few ideas from these other settings to incorporate into my game.

How did you first get into GMing?

I wasn’t really given a choice on the matter. If I hadn’t taken the mantle of DM on then, we wouldn’t have played. The moment I sat with those books in front of me I knew that I was meant to be a DM; being a player would always be second best.

How has GMing affected your life over the years?

That’s a tough question to answer off the cuff! I think it has taught me a few things over the years – to think things through, to be prepared, to be flexible and to think on my feet. You know that no matter how prepared you are there will always be the unexpected.

Section One: Your GMing Stat Block

What is your usual gaming schedule?

I currently play twice a week. I usually run a game set in the World of Greyhawk on Tuesday evenings from around 19:00. On Thursdays I play in a Freeport game that starts from about 20:00.

Both of these weekly games end around midnight. Our Thursday game is DM’d by Carl and has been running for just over 2 years now. It has been a great 2 years so far and I have learnt a lot from his style of DM’ing.

I plan to start a family game soon as my son has been asking to play. This will more than likely have to take place on Sunday afternoons from about 15:00.

Generally we get about 4 hours of play at each session, but that is if everyone is focused on the game. Gone are the days where we used start playing on a Friday afternoon and finished up late on a Sunday.

I have plans to get a few friends together for an “old school” get away weekend once a year. This is an idea that Carl and I have been speaking about for some time now.

Where do you play?

Generally, we play at my place in my lounge, which has sliding doors that gives us privacy from the rest of the house.

I built a custom gaming table that gives us ample room for everyone. The table (1800mm x 1800mm) and has a (900mm x 600mm) magnetic white board in the middle that is covered by a sheet of clear plastic.

Sometimes I use my projector for mapping, other times I print them out. Our Thursday game is played at my friend Jacques’s house in his bar area, where he has a table set up.

Do you use published material or create your own?

I use a mixture of both to be honest. These days I don’t have as much free time as I used to. So you have to maximize your prep time with what you have.

I am currently busy prepping my LEGACY: The Path of Heroes Campaign set in the World of Greyhawk. This campaign will take players from level 0-20 over roughly a 4 year period and is made up of a mixture of published material and my own.

In this campaign arc the players will start with Temple of Elemental Evil, then Scourge of the Slave Lords and finally finish with Queen of the Spiders. In between each super module I have inserted my own material to bring everything together, as well as a large rewrite of the original super modules and updating them to the Pathfinder RPG system.

What non-digital and electronic GM aides do you use (other than books)?

I will be using 0onegames for a lot of my maps for my upcoming campaign.

Hero Lab is great tool for generating and keeping track of characters.

I also make use of MapTool when using the projector, as well as TokenTool for creating tokens.

HexoGrapher is a great mapping tool and again very easy to use.

Google Sites is fantastic as a resource for a campaign website, as it is easy to use.

We have used Facebook very successfully for sending out invites to our weekly sessions. These invites are great for adding some depth to the NPCs that the players encounter as well as setting the tone for the that particular session and to the campaign as a whole.

Minis or no? What do you use for minis, and how do you use them?

Yes indeed. I have another friend, Jacques “HEY Jacques!” that makes custom miniatures for me.

Once the players have created their characters, I get each player to send me an email detailing what their characters look like, what they are wearing etc. and then I send it along with a picture for Jacques to work with.

For everything else I use paper tokens with custom plastic stands. Back in the early days we used use whatever we could find to represent a monster or player. Could I do that today … doubtful?

Section Two: Opportunities

What is your biggest GMing stumbling block right now? What could you do to fix that?

I would have to say TIME. I don’t like doing things half-heartedly and maybe I spend too much time trying to get things just right, but that’s who I am.

When was the last time you were a player? What insight about GMing did you pick up?

Thursday night! Smaller groups are definitely the way to go. Less of a focus on the rules and more on the role-playing and story development.

The advantage of smaller groups is that you get more face time with each of your players during the course of the evening.

Describe your perfect gaming session with you as GM

The players have to be focused as it is the final scene, where the heroes are facing off against their arch enemy; it has been months of hard work getting to this point and ACTION! The session runs like a well-oiled machine, rules are referenced behind the scenes and not noticed.

Section Three: GMing Style

What are the top qualities you look for or need in a player?

I need players to buy completely into my campaign. Most importantly, I need my players to arrive each week and actively be involved in helping me bring the setting to life. I am not looking for “Rules Lawyers” or “Chair Warmers.”

Describe in a few words each of your players and their playing style.

We have two types of players in our groups: long and short term players.

Short term players don’t like to play the same type of game or rules for long periods of time.

Currently we have a mixture of both types of players in our groups. In my last campaign I had a female rogue called Siam played by Darrel and a paladin of St. Cuthbert played by Carl. They were played so well that you could see the love-hate relationship building as the game progressed.

Describe in a few words your group’s playing style.

The 2 groups that I play in are very different from each other. One group Role-Plays and the other Roll-Plays. I recently read a good article on this subject, a worthwhile read for player and DM alike. I enjoy both groups as I get to spend time with people that enjoy doing what I like doing best. (Editor’s note: Which article? Happen to have a link you can share? –Silveressa)

Describe in a few words your GMing style.

I am a movie director with a “blockbuster” movie script, but most of all I am a long term campaign DM at heart. The players are my actors and the props my stage. I like to have rules available as a guide, as I generally run a rules light style game. I am more focused telling a tale, secondly on world development and then finally character growth.

What is your best GMing skill or ability? What advice would you give to a GM wanting to improve in that area?

I am able to improvise and think on my feet. Practice.

What is your typical session planning process?

I look at what my players want to achieve and what my goals are and I plan around those. I try and design my session around each of my characters so that each player gets his or her time to “shine.” The character’s background gets taken into account and definitely will play a role at some point in the campaign.

What are your favourite online resources for GMing?

Johnn, your site is invaluable as a resource for both players and DM. I always look forward to receiving your weekly mail.

Canonfire! is a great resource if you are a Greyhawk fan. Which I am, that’s if you hadn’t picked it up by now.

0one games excellent resource for maps and very cost effective.

Dragonsfoot has lots of free material if you are an old school gamer like me.

What tools or aides (digital and non-digital) do you wish would be created or invented to help you GM easier?

Although the electronic age is great and has made many things easier for us, I do feel that maybe we should step away from all the gadgets and get back to how we did things in the past.

Notebooks, cellphones and television need to be switched off and moved away from the table. Good old pen, paper, minis and dice should be all that is needed.

After working through these question and getting a 10,000 foot view of your GMing, what is the number #1 thing you’d like to learn about and work on next to become a better GM?

I would like to take a creative writing course to help me improve my writing style.

This interview features our first GM who runs games over internet relay chat (IRC). If you have any questions about IRC, just leave Chris a comment below.

Please introduce yourself

Your name: Chris Rheinherren, online I use Bynw or Anlarye.

My campaign’s website is located at www.teara-adan.com

There is a link there to a forum we use to post online gaming logs.

How long have you been a GM?

20 some years.

What are your favourite games to run?

I run Fudge games. I switched my games over to Fudge about 5 years ago and haven’t looked back. Love it.

How did you first get into GMing? Why?

Our campaign is long running. I am the 4^th primary GM. We have long used a co-gm concept where we have multiple GMs running a game. Each does a different task and assists the primary GM who runs the overall theme and primary story arc. I am also one of what has been termed the “founding four” of our campaign world.

How has GMing affected your life over the years?

It’s been a part of it for so long I’m not sure how it’s shaped my life. That would be an interesting alternate reality to view though. Maybe I should RP it someday.

What is your usual gaming schedule?

Our current and main game meets once per week, Friday evenings, for 2-3 hours.

Describe your usual game environment.

Online on the OtherWorlders IRC Network (just point your IRC client to irc.otherworlders.org) and then join the channel #Teara-Adan

Do you use published material or create your own?

Nothing published. Even when I played and ran D&D (including Original, AD&D and 3e), I only owned three modules. I don’t use published material because of our homebrewed campaign world. Little, if anything, would fit without being reworked. So might as well just do the work myself.

What non-digital and electronic GM aides do you use?

We play online, so many of our aids are digital. If we need a map, it’s going to be uploaded via Dropbox or put up on the gaming website (forums section, usually in our image gallery).

Minis or no?

Never really cared for minis. Every now and again they can be useful for a visual representation of where things are when playing offline. But for the most part we hardly ever use them.

What is your biggest GMing stumbling block right now?

Time is the only thing that gets in the way.

When was the last time you were a player?

It’s been a long time since I was a player. I don’t actively play in any game. I now always GM or co-GM.

What are the top qualities you look for or need in a player?

I try out different players. The thing I look for is someone who actually shows up to the game sessions as a spectator every week. That shows a real interest in the game. And if they do that, they can end up playing an NPC or two from time to time before being asked to permanently join the game.

Describe in a few words each of your players and their playing style.

By far my best player goes by the handle of Kagi. A real character player, like a character actor. He can get into any role and play it well. He has been in my online game now for over 10 years. I want to see if there is a way we can get him into an offline game.

All of my players are really good. I think it’s the game world that attracts them, keeps them, and brings out the best.

Describe in a few words your group’s playing style.

We role play more than roll play. We can have several sessions go by without any dice rolling, and combat is limited.

Describe in a few words your GMing style.

I GM to tell a story, so I do encourage and run with role playing as opposed to combat. If you are looking for hack and slash, it’s not in my game.

What is your best GMing skill or ability? What advice would you give to a GM wanting to improve in that area?

Don’t over-plan. I did that originally. PCs and their players will always do the unexpected. Be ready for it.

What is your typical session planning process?

I have a broad outline of the session and overall story arc and goal for the players to accomplish. How they get there, and meander about while doing it, is up to them.

What are your favourite online resources for GMing?

Well I do like Roleplaying Tips J

I check out the various Fudge resources and the official Fudge chat on the OtherWorlders IRC Network as well.

What tools or aides do you wish would be created or invented to help you GM easier?

When folks make programs for gaming. They should make Linux versions.

After working through these question and getting a 10,000 foot view of your GMing, what is the number #1 thing you’d like to learn about and work on next to become a better GM?

Thanks again for your time. Do you, by chance, have a pic you could send along with this interview? A pic of you or your group would be ideal.

Dont have a group shot. But I do have some individual pictures. I would like to have a picture of everyone that has ever played or GMed in Teara Adan added someday.

http://www.teara-adan.com/forums/index.php?action=gallery;cat=1

by Doug Lochery

There are two breeds of RPG gamer – Players and Gamemasters. There are several subtypes of the Player breed that, when faced with our glorious hobby, try to ‘break it’ in some way or other. This is not always a conscious decision on the part of the poor player. Below is a short and rather irreverent look at the most typical of the destructive breeds of players commonly encountered by hassled GMs everywhere and, most importantly, some advice as to how to deal with them.

The EverRookie

Quote: “What dice is that, then?” or “Rules are for DMs”.

Description: The Everrookie is a clueless bod who can’t grasp the basic rules even after 10 years of playing.

Good points: Can’t rules-lawyer the GM as he has no idea of what the rules are or how they work.

Bad points: Constantly has to be told what to do whenever game mechanics are used. In other words, all the time.

GM’s strategy: To effectively deal with an Everrookie, buddy him up with an experienced player so that the responsibility of looking after him is diminished. This allows you to get on with the business of running the game. Patience is helpful when dealing with Everrookies, so make sure you pick a buddy that has plenty of it.

[Comment from Johnn: another good point about playing with Everrookies is that they often bring fresh perspectives to the game. They aren't mentally bound by the rules like other player types are, so they'll often come up with innovative solutions or try things outside the scope of standard game mechanics. Be sure to embrace this creative input! Though it might sometimes be tricky to adjudicate, the flow of new ideas is a boon to most campaigns.]

The Rules Lawyer

Quote: “But you can’t do that. Paragraph 4 of page 17 of Rulebook 2 clearly states that I can…” or “I don’t care if you’re the GM! The rules say this…”

Description: Every GM’s nightmare. The rules lawyer constantly picks at the GM’s rulings and ignores the GM’s judgement, making sure to protest loudly whenever it contradicts something in print. Probably has memorized every word of every rulebook or supplement in existence, even banned or GM-only resources, and a few more besides. Can’t suspend his disbelief and is probably better suited to tabletop wargaming.

Good points: If the GM can’t remember a rule, this guy probably can.

Bad points: The GM can’t use any artistic licence with the rules in front of him, or the game will degenerate into a rules debate for about an hour. He doesn’t recognize the GMs word as law.

GM’s strategy:

• Rules lawyers must be stopped quickly. The strategy with these people is simple – stamp your authority on your game.
• Don’t fall into the trap of automatically dismissing everything a rules lawyer says (after all, there will be instances where you are wrong) but don’t let them dictate the flow of the game.
• Make it clear that objections are allowed but arguments after you have made your decision are not. Remind the lawyer firmly that the GM’s word IS law!
• Disallowing access to rulebooks during a game is a good way to limit a rules lawyer’s power.

[Two cents from Johnn: Rules Lawyers can be valuable campaign assets, though it varies from lawyer to lawyer. If you have a Rules Lawyer in your campaign, consider these ideas for enabling them to improve your game:

• Rules Lawyer as early rules researcher, adopter, and campaign balancer. For some game systems it's hard to keep up with all the new books your players might show up with. Ask your Rules Lawyer to keep on top of these products and to assess their potential long-term campaign affects. If it suits your group, declare that all new player-introduced rules must be approved by the Rules Lawyer before being brought into play.
• Rules Lawyer as consultant. When considering new rules, house rules, and rules interpretations, ask your Rules Lawyer about their potential implications:
  • Will these rules work to PC or NPC advantage?
  • What other rules do the new ones impact and how?
  • How will the rules impact the game at higher levels?
  • How could foes use the new rules to their advantage?
• Rules Lawyer as teacher. Ask your rules lawyer to help the other players out. Advise them, if necessary, that the players will always respect their opinions as long as they are provided sincerely, without ego or attitude.

Also, consider increasing the amount of in-character (IC) time spent in your sessions. Perhaps ask that any out of character (OOC) discussion take place away from the game table, even so far as going to 100% IC at the table. This helps curbs Rules Lawyers' penchant for OOC discussions.]

The Powergamer

Quote: “This character is rubbish! I’ve only got three stats on maximum, the rest are only three quarters of that! How do you expect me to play with such a poor character?”

Description: Powergamers are those individuals who just have to have the best of everything in order to enjoy the game. They load their stats full of bonuses and min/max as much as they can, trying to squeeze extra character improvement points and skills out of every stage of the character creation process. They will even try to get extra attacks and bonuses during the game using flawed logic against the GM. Combat rounds mean nothing to these people, and they frequently try to fit twenty actions into a one minute combat round in order to play the advantages.

Good points: Powergamers tend to have a good grasp on the rules associated with combat and their own special abilities.

Bad points: They are constantly trying to get away with things in order to get advantages. Their sometimes criminally flawed logic cannot be reasoned with. What a normal player would consider to be a good character is dismissed as completely unplayable by a Powergamer.

GM’s strategy:

• Contrary to popular belief, Powergamers aren’t Munchkins (see 5. Munchkins below). Remind them that the GM’s word is law and stamp your authority on your game whenever they try to play the advantages too much.
• Be strict during character creation and try to encourage the Powergamer to think of a character concept BEFORE he rolls for his stats.
• Indulge the Powergamer. I know it may sound a little outlandish, but to ensure the Powergamer doesn’t feel like he’s unfairly being limited all of the time, make sure his character shines once in a while by letting him have a particularly successful plan, a stupidly flashy spell, or a particularly destructive attack. Letting the Powergamer ‘win’ in this way indulges his power fantasies in a fashion under your control, without disrupting the rest of the group.
• Remember that a Powergamer is simply a competitive person who doesn’t want to lose – each advantage gained is a way for the Powergamer to ‘win’. Teach them that ‘winning’ an RPG means simply having fun playing it.
• [Comment from big mouth Johnn: Powergamers can be wonderfully valuable gaming resources. Consider these ideas:
• • Powergamers like to get the most out of the rules. I've met a few who tried working outside of the rules as well, but most are quite happy to play fair. Use this motivation to improve your game in a Darwinian way. The survival of the fittest mantra would indicate that a Powergamer's ideas and creations are superior to others. Embrace this attitude and study this Khan of gamers to learn what you can:
    • Clever skill uses
    • Effective skill and ability combinations
    • Combat tactics
    • Spell tactics and uses
    • Equipment selection, mods, and uses
  • Harness the Powergamer. Ask your resident Powergamer to create NPCs, monsters, and other game elements for you. Add "secret" stuff afterwards to keep the player guessing. Even if you have no pressing need, keep requesting materials from the player and build a library of tweaked and buffed game content for on-going deployment.
  • Powergamer as consultant. Ask your player to review various creations of yours (firewalling secrets from him, of course) and ask for improvement suggestions.]

The Casual Player

Quote: “It’s a laugh, innit?” or “It don’t matter, it’s only a game.”

Description: The casual player is the type of player that never immerses himself in the game. He views the game as a boredom reliever, and frequently misses sessions when something else catches his fancy. He’ll frequently do things without thinking because “after all, it’s only a game” and is often a bigger danger to the party than he is to the monsters due to his permanently lackadaisical attitude.

Good points: Character death isn’t a problem; he’ll just shrug his shoulders and create a new one.

Bad points: He wrecks the tension in carefully planned plots due to the fact that he finds it just a game.

GM’s strategy:

• Find out what makes the Casual tick – his wants, dreams, and desires. Play on them during the game and force him to make choices for his character that play on his REAL drives and morality.
• Don’t get ‘heavy’ with this sort of player, laugh and joke with him when the going’s slow, and apply the full consequences of his chosen actions – even if it means death for the party (see 6. Logic Death’s Apprentice below).
• Casuals are usually good players who are too scared of becoming ‘geeky’ to throw themselves properly into the role. As always, if a Casual is ruining the game repeatedly for everyone, talk to him about it. If he doesn’t respond, ask him to leave the game. Luckily, Casuals that are asked to leave rarely care as their philosophy on the game is that it’s a small diversion.
• [Comment from Johnn: Also consider changing a Casual Gamer's role in your campaign:
  • Plays a PC who has his own independent plot threads that occasionally tangle with the party's. The PC often comes and goes as per the player's attendance.
  • Running guest-star or short term in-party NPCs.
  • Plays the groups' henchmen, animal companions, and followers.
  • Co-GM, running NPCs and monsters.]

The Munchkin

Quote: “I’ll backstab the closest PC with my blade of infinite poison, use my globe of annihilation on the others, grab all the treasure for myself, and escape on my magic carpet!”

Description: Munchkins are greed ridden egomaniacs who play the game to win. They steal all the treasure, min/max like a Powergamer, view the other PCs as rivals, and seek the most powerful artifacts so they can rule EVERYTHING. Munchkins. Enough said.

Good points: When the party faces a powerful foe, the Munchkin usually has enough power, items, or magic to deal with it.

Bad points: The party is not safe while the Munchkin is around. Not from the danger posed by enemies, but from the danger posed by the Munchkin himself.

GM’s strategy: Don’t even hesitate – kill the Munchkin’s character in the most airtight, gruesome, and public way possible, rip up his character sheet, and eject him from your game. Munchkins cannot be reasoned with and are not worthy players.

[Comment from Johnn: I feel for Doug's frustration here. I've also gamed with players whose destructive style were campaign breakers. In addition to the option of ejection, consider these ideas:

• Ask the player to run the bad guys. Maintain tight rules control and fairness, but let the Munchkin plan and play the villains, minions, and flunkies.
• Switch to an evil campaign. It's every person for themselves, best Munchkin is the one left standing. Caution: suitable for friendly and mature groups where hard feelings won't be created. After everyone's blown some steam and all the evil PCs are dead, bored, or retired, resume your old campaign or start fresh.
• Allow in-character retribution. The PCs' gods, employers, allies, friends, and families will take exception to a Munchkin's detrimental effect on the band of heroes. Actions should have consequences. Again, if hard feelings will erupt amongst players avoid this option.]

Logic Death’s Apprentice

Quote: “So, I’ve got the orb of soul draining in my hands? I’ll use it on the closest person to see what it does.”

Description: The Apprentice is a chaotic individual whose only goal is to cause as much chaos within the game as possible. He will frequently do mad things “because he can” and “because it’s a laugh”, without a thought for the party, or even for his own safety. This person is as much a danger to himself and his friends as he is to the enemy.

Good points: The Apprentice’s antics ensure that there’s never a dull moment.

Bad points: It rapidly becomes impossible to run a serious game when the apprentice is involved.

GM’s strategy: Apprentices are truly destructive players. Radical steps are needed to deal with this sort of player.

• Let the chaos run its course and dish out the appropriate consequences for ALL the players. This may mean sacrificing a scenario to stupidity, but the other players, after the loss of something dear to them at the hands of said stupidity, will apply pressure on the Apprentice to ‘behave’ with a little more respect.
• Talk to the Apprentice about his behaviour if it continues and be prepared to fudge dice rolls and craft events to protect the other players from the Apprentice’s unfair stupidity.
• If after you have asked the Apprentice to stop being daft, he continues, you must protect the fun of the group and eject the player from the game. Remember: any person blocking the fun of his fellow players is not worth playing with.

The Hare

Quote: GM: “The king says to you…” Hare: “Yeah yeah, what’s he give us? Hurry up, we can clean out another dungeon tonight if we hurry up and buy supplies!”

Description: Hares are those players who are constantly chasing the next goal. These individuals rarely stop for breath as they plunge through adventures, fixated on completing scenarios. When hares meet, they argue about how best to complete missions and start comparing their conquests in a “mine’s better than yours” type mentality. Finishing difficult scenarios is what they live for, roleplaying is just window dressing around mission facts.

Good points: The hare’s enthusiasm usually prods the party into action.

Bad points: Hares don’t roleplay, they merely prompt the GM for information. Any role-intensive scenarios will be lost on the hare.

GM’s strategy:

• Hares are generally attentive players but have a tendency to look to the raw facts only. To accommodate a hare, you need to construct your scenarios with a little more care, ensuring that each session has a distinct goal that the players need to achieve. Campaigns will become a little more like a series of linked one-session games, but don’t let this worry you.
• Accentuate the human factor of each adventure and ensure that most goals can ONLY be accomplished through proper interaction with NPCs. Given a little time, hares will come to value the interaction with NPCs and will start to see the challenge in getting what they want out of other characters, suiting their general outlook. This will start them down the path to true roleplaying if the pace is managed properly.

The Tortoise

Quote: “My character does…errr….hang on…I do….ummmmmm.”

Description: Tortoises are normal players who suffer from chronic slowness of thought. They may be the best roleplayers in the world, but they always slow things down by deliberating over an action for half an hour. When they finally reach a decision, the game has moved on without them.

Good points: When they reach a conclusion it’s usually the right one…

Bad points: …but unfortunately it’s usually a couple of game sessions too late to save the party. It is impossible to get Tortoises to choose a combat action in less than 20 minutes.

GM’s strategy:

• Patience and structure are key when dealing with Tortoises.
• Put a distinct order of doing things in place for combat encounters and action taking. This will give the tortoise a recognizable prompt to help him start to think about what he has to say.
• To give him time to think, ensure that you ask the Tortoise for his actions or opinions only after you have asked all the other players. This approach will ensure the Tortoise’s participation without having to exclude him.

The Sherlock

Quote: “So, the Duke was a bit furtive when we asked about the village, eh? Well, he must be the one doing the murders. Therefore there must be a passage in this room allowing him to leave and do his dirty deeds… A-HA! I’m right!”

Description: The Sherlock is a master of deductive logic. After a couple of minutes of careful thought, he has usually cracked the mystery wide open.

Good points: Deep, thought-provoking scenarios really get him involved.

Bad points: That convoluted plot that you’re so proud of? It will be busted in the blink of an eye if you aren’t careful.

GM’s strategy: Sherlocks make very attentive players, and there are a few things you can do to limit the damage their keen intellect can cause to your lovingly crafted scenarios.

• Hide your notes at all times.
• Ensure that you craft multiple endings to your scenarios.
• Use intersecting sub-plots to keep things interesting, and to obscure the main goal’s clues.
• Do not use linear plots.
• Shy away from cliches whenever possible.

If all else fails and the Sherlock is still picking apart your game, you can do one of two things. Consider reversing the plot line so that everything is actually the opposite of what it seems; but beware – this needs a careful hand to pull off without the players noticing. Alternatively, split the Sherlock away from the main party for a while and send him on a wild goose chase or a sub-plot.

The Sheer-Luck

Quote: “You want me to roll a save versus death at -10 or I’m toast? Okay. Hey! I Made it!!”

Description: The sheer-luck is a completely air-headed player who stumbles through the game surviving everything that’s thrown at him. He opens secret panels by mistake, finds command words for artifacts by chance, and seems completely immune to death.

Good points: Finds secrets for the party.

Bad points: Finds secrets for the party – without effort!

GM’s strategy:

You can’t stop a sheer-luck, so use him to create the “Scooby-Doo effect”. The Scooby-Doo effect is a scene where the characters will stumble across some clue or secret purely by chance. This clue propels the plot forward, involving the party with a situation that perhaps they would never have gotten into in the first place. Sheer-lucks will find this generates a bit of a friendly ‘love-hate’ thing among the party for their luck ability, and all involved will get a buzz out of the sometimes amazing set of coincidences that leads them into danger. In this way sheer- lucks can be turned from being scenario wreckers into scenario drivers.

The Shakespearean

Quote: “Away, foul bandits. flee this place or I shall be forced to spill thy blood with thine own blade!

Description: Shakespeareans love the role. They act out EVERYTHING about their character, from the accent to the actions, and even dress up in-character. They take the roleplaying part of the game too far and absolutely abhor any “rules” or “game mechanics” that get in the way of the suspension of disbelief.

Good points: A fine example of how characters should be portrayed within the game.

Bad points: Takes the roleplaying thing too far. Slows simple combat encounters down with needless talk. “A-ha! A jelly of acidic property! I shall slay you now, you oozing fruit of an unholy union!”

GM’s strategy:

• Dealing with the destructive nature of a Shakespearian is difficult at best – you don’t want them to stop roleplaying but you DO want them to stop roleplaying! The most effective tactic here is communication; talk to the player and explain that you’re not angry or annoyed at their excessive acting, but you do sometimes need to hurry things up a bit.
• Agree upon a signal between yourselves (such as a code word or a gesture) that tells the Shakespearean to cut back the roleplaying when you need to move on, without the need to tell the player off in front of the group. This saves face for the Shakespearean and gives you back control, while still allowing the Shakespearean to act out his fantasy when appropriate.

The Geek

Quote: “Look, my ranger is wearing a jerkin just like his model!” or “Hang on, I have my level improvement scores on the back of my player’s screen!”

Description: Geeks. They get everywhere. They throw themselves bodily into the game, acting out the role where appropriate, knowing all the rules, involving themselves in games fully, never missing sessions, etc. The problem is that they go about it all in the way that allows them to lick as many windows as possible. They buy miniatures that resemble their characters, research characters for months before play, purchase player screens, buy all the supplements that have info on their chosen class (and bring them to the game), and download all related documents from the net. The game is everything to the Geek.

Good points: Model RPG gamer on the surface…

Bad points: …but takes every opportunity to display his knowledge on his character and tell everyone how great it is. Constantly says to players “You can’t do that! Your character wouldn’t!”

GM’s strategy:

• Geeks simply take the game far too seriously (yes folks, it can be done). There is no in-game way of dealing with a Geek, because a Geek lives and breathes the game. Tactics here are similar to those for dealing with a Shakespearean, but with the emphasis on understanding rather than communication.
• The best way to get a Geek to stop being one is from time to time to play other games and to do other pastimes with your gaming group instead of RPGs.
• Don’t exclude a Geek; involve him in the social circle that is your gaming group and you’ll find that he’ll probably lighten up a little.

Logic Death

Quote: “Don’t roll a 1!”

Description: Logic Death has many forms. Whichever he takes, you can be sure that the game he’s involved in will go to pot somehow. Very quickly. Multiple fatalities and plot failure all take place around him.

Good points: You get a laugh as your game degenerates into chaos.

Bad points: Your game degenerates into chaos, taking your plots and favourite PCs with it.

GM’s strategy: There is no strategy when faced with Logic Death. Logic Death will always find a way…