RPGaDay 2020 Day 31 – “Experience” #RPGADAY2020

Today’s prompt is “Experience”.

This challenge as certainly been an experience… but I think that Experience is the single best tool for a GM.  No one starts as a great GM.  The best storytellers out there made plenty of mistakes along the way as a GameMaster and will make errors yet in the future.  The day a GM stops learning is the day their story stagnates.  Do not fear failure at the table.  When I started, I didn’t have a GM screen, the steeped fingers and the practice “All right” when the players have stepped right where I wanted them to.  Instead, I had a sea of books open, reams of loose papers, detailing my plot and a fevered scrambling to find the note I wrote for this situation.  We all start somewhere.

If you’re a new GM, looking to gain that experience, know that you will make mistakes and that it’s perfectly fine to do so.  If you’re good at winging it, you’ve already got a big chunk of what it takes to run a game down.  Can’t remember a rule?  Make it up so the game keeps moving and look it up after.  Players disputing a call?  Declare GM fiat and talk about it after the game.  The main trick is to keep the game from getting bogged down in a dissection of the rules.

So, as the RPGaDay month comes to a close, get out there… take up the mantle, make those mistakes and play the game of your choice.  Get those XP and you can become the GM your group has always dreamed of.

~ by 1nsomniac on August 31, 2020.