TSR line editor Mike Carr asks in the 1979 introduction to the Dungeon Master’s Guide: “Is dungeon mastering an art or a science? An interesting question!” It’s also an eternal question. How do you run a game? How do you do it well? How do you keep your players from flipping the table in abject frustration at your crippling ineptitude? YouTube, evidently, has all the answers. All of them. So many, in fact, that after a while, it all becomes white-hot noise and that’s not helpful to anyone. You can watch five videos on the subject of GMing, and they will all have different takes, different advice, and sometimes contradictory advice.
I’ve been running games for most of my life. I started back when the only advice we got for running the game was the various house organ magazines that came out monthly. And we scoured them, from cover to cover, reading the letters, the ads…anything could be useful, we thought. Someone’s question asked in the letter column might be the very question we hadn’t articulated. Who knew?
Conversely, modern players have a vast array of helpful advice, tips and tricks, playthrough videos, starter sets, blog posts (the OSR blogs are a treasure trove of insightful thinking) and conventions that are driving distance from one’s hometown. If you want to get into D&D, you’ve got no excuse. Target is selling the D&D boxed starter set, for crying out loud. And dice! It’s a brand-new world, I tell you what.
But the problem is an evergreen one; how do you run a game? Start a campaign? Manage difficult players? I’m not sure my personal take on this is useful to you, and here’s why: my game is my game, and your game is your game, and ne’er the twain shall meet. Two points I want to make before you dive back into YouTube and start dutifully smashing “likes” and “subscribes.”
Game Mastery is Alchemy
This is my metaphor for how people learn to run games. Advice is no good if you don’t like it and refuse to follow it. You’ll pick out things you like and things you don’t like, and it may be based on how your DM ran the first game you ever played in, or something you saw in a video or read on a blog.
You’re going to mix and match, combine and weave together, and homebrew the shit out of whatever ruleset you’re playing—and this goes for running any role-playing game, not just D&D. And here’s what’s worse: I can’t advise you on this! You’re on your own, but it’s not as daunting as it sounds. Your gamemastering style will likely be related to your playing style. Do you like crunchy combat rules? Are you stoked when you get to describe your critical hit that kills the monster? Would you rather explore the capital city and talk to NPCS instead of pillaging every abandoned castle you come across?
Those answers and many others will imprint on how you run a game, and you don’t even have to consciously do it; it’ll happen all by itself, whether you want it to or not. You may have a GM style that is based on what NOT to do in a game, such as maybe the first one you ever played where the DM was fixated on some part of the session that you really dislike. “I’m never doing that when I run a game,” you might say. Good! Now we’re getting somewhere.
Your Utility Belt
Most signs are created because there’s a need for them. When people cut across the courthouse lawn, they put a sign up that says “Keep off the grass.” You wouldn’t hang that on your garage door, but you might put “Beware of Dog” up, instead. Much like the sign over the urinal that reads, “Please do not eat the big, white mint,” you’ll encounter some very specific tools and tips and tricks for dealing with all kinds of situations—but here’s the thing: that advice about railroading? It doesn’t transfer to other problems. It’s specific to railroading.
And yet, YouTube would have you follow any given channel’s advice to the letter and call it a day. Well, not quite. Many YouTubers will also throw out caveats and conditions on their hard-won wisdom, and they’ll say, “you may not need to do this every time,” or whatever the deal is. But the people watching these vids and subsequently interacting with one another on forums and hangouts tend to have an either/or approach. In other words, you should NEVER do anything ever that smells of “railroading” or you’re a terrible person and lightning will probably rain down on your pointy little head for trying such an underhanded trick.
As someone who’s been running games since 1980, that person is doing it wrong. Of course you can railroad your players! You can do anything! You’re the goddamn dungeon master! With that great power, though, comes great responsibility. I’ve railroaded my group before, and I will railroad them again. I just won’t always railroad them, because they don’t always need railroading.
It depends on the group, of course. Your players may have no trouble making a decision and following through on a plan. You have never had to scramble because the players suddenly wanted to go North rather than East, and you’ve got nothing planned for the mountains, but you do have this ruined temple they were supposed to find on the Eastern Trade Route. Whoops!
I’ve helped my groups make decisions by putting the bad guys who are chasing them on the same road. I’ve moved my ruined eastern temple to the Silverback Mountain Road at the foothills in the north. I’ve helped limit some of their infinite choices by placing sudden obstacles on some or most of their paths. As a GM, that’s my prerogative. Also, most of the time, the players don’t know they are being “railroaded,” because you can be very subtle about it (and should).
Keep all of your useful tools in your utility belt, and always play your cards close to your vest. This is good advice but it’s not helpful for new GMs. Most of us are reluctant to discuss HOW we actually run the games, because it’s akin to learning how a magic trick works. Also, it’s alchemy, and my formula for running a game is different from yours. I have never in all my years encountered another single person who runs games the way I do.
The real answer as to how to develop your GM style is to not rely on any one style. Your tools and techniques will come as a reaction to what your players are doing. This “style of no style” is what Bruce Lee was working on when he died. Jeet Kune Do uses what it needs for the situation at hand. If someone is throwing a waist high kick at you, your training may want you to step into it and catch it on your hip bone, or it may want you to move back, or who knows what else? I’m not a Karate-Man. Figure it out yourself.
Lee wanted practitioners of Jeet Kune Do to do the most efficient counter to the kick, regardless of whether or not it’s a block from your particular discipline. Jeet Kune Do eschews formal style, allowing for innovation in the moment, which keeps your opponent off balance and gives you an advantage when attacking because they can’t anticipate your next move.
Do this with your game mastering. Watch and listen to your players during the game and after, to better anticipate what they want out of the game session. The majority of actual game mastering that goes on during a session is a reaction to what the players say or do. You can keep your own council on what tools you’ll use to keep the game moving. You have to show up to play with an array of tools rather than just a hammer.
Rip the Band-Aid Off
Just start your game, already. Your players, presumably your three or four running buddies, know you’re just figuring this out as you go. Ask them to help you. Start the game, play it out, and at the end of the session, ask them for feedback. What worked and what didn’t? Use their notes to hone your skills. Add to your repertoire anything that seems like it would be helpful, and try it out. Did it work? Cool, keep it. Or chuck it if it didn’t. Rigidity of thought will not serve you well in this instance.
You know that old axiom that says it takes 10,000 bad drawing before you can make a good drawing? That’s a bit of a misnomer, but the gist of it is accurate: the best way to get better at something is to do it a lot. Run your game, and be prepared for it not to be a transcendent experience. Let the players know up front that you’re trying to figure it out, and to keep the game moving, if you get stuck, you’re going to make a ruling and keep going, and you’ll talk about it after the session is over.
My only real advice, other than “just do it,” is this: start thinking about how you run the game, and be ready to mix and match on the fly. If you don’t want to call it alchemy then pick another metaphor and guard your process jealously. You’ll get better with every session, I promise.