GM training

[luckykaa]

The Netherlands role play guild is nice group. They organise occasional GM training sessions. I'd like to GM a game.

Here's what I learned:

• Aim for a couple of turn based rounds and a few more flee flow rounds.
• Easiest to start with a pre-written plan and re-skin and adapt to suit.
• Communicate with players. Say if you're inexperienced, make sure people are aware of the scope what themes are out of bounds,
• Prepare! Learn the rules understand who's who.
• If things go off track and you need to improvise, then steal! Pinch from books, TV shows, films...
• Take a break if things are going completely off track. Gives a few minutes to think about things.
• Different types of problem players.
• Try to spot if someone seems distracted and needs to be pulled in.

All useful stuff. More useful - they had us run a 20 minute session of a game. 4 in a group, play for 20 minutes then switch GM. The players had problem-player cards giving different player types. I got to run the turn based combat section. This is the sort of area I'm particularly bad at. Having a bunch of players deliberately trying to make life hard for me didn't help (They were playing power gamer, rules lawyer and out-of-character knowledge guy). Got a bit flustered at the start but managed to get on top of things. The players were absolutely lovely once they broke character.

Still not totally convinced that "No, but" is a good idea except in rare circumstances. Maybe it's because I'm used to playing with a bunch of crazy thespians who instinctively say "yes, yes, yes!" but I think it's a lot more fun if you give players a lot of freedom and go easy on the rules.

Really need to put all this into practice at some point.

Comments

[blue-sun-scribe.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear the GM Training went well, looking forward to the gaming session at some future date.