This may come across as dry and academic for some and for that I apologize, but I hope people can look past that and help contribute. I know there are similar posts that have been done over the years, but nothing I have seen recently, so I didn't want to do any thread necromancy. Also, I am trying to go system neutral, and stay away from systems as much as possible in a lot of this. For example, Quests: Design, Theory and History in Games and Narrative is a good book if you're looking to design quests in tabletop or video game settings, and it studies video game quests like Ultima 4, Zelda and Planescape: Torment along with fictional quests like Gawain and the Green Knight.
I've tried to have this discussion with a few of the people I know who game, and well, they all looked at me like I had six heads or something, and so I am opening this to the internet to try and get some feedback on an idea I had. System unspecific, what are the sort of things that a Gamemaster should know?
I have started with pouring over a ton of various forum posts, blogs and the like, for example Questinggm's blog has an entry on Rpg as academic subjects and Bonethrowerstheater talks about it in Why I'll flunk out of gaming university and Stackexchange's RPG entries has all sorts of 'Are there GM courses' and 'What books would people find useful for GMing' that have all sorts of answers and opinions, and a lot of this sort of came to the point that people are thinking of the topic, but they're looking for the simple answer, the basic solution to say 'Go here, read this and boom, you're now a GM', sort of like in Knights of the Dinner Table's Hackmaster where you would have certified Gamemasters (and also the RPGA's certifications they were based on, which from what I hear weren't all that much).
Granted, in the comics, as seen in 2012 issue #187, certification was all about rules knowledge and adventure design and such, including areas such as "Encumbrance Assessment" and "Risk versus Reward Ratios", with the former being able to tell if a player is over-encumbered or not as Hackmaster was to be run as a Player versus GM game with the PCs taking advantages to get away with things, and the GM could call them on it, while the latter being how well you challenge your players to get treasure and the like. The former, I don't know if I'd really care if a GM was able to spot that because it doesn't really bother the story mostly, but the latter is actually quite a good skill to have.
So, what I began to wonder is exactly what sort of knowledge should a GM have, so that it would be possible to find materials to help train up those skills. These are some of the examples that I've come up with of what I figure GMs should know, and I am interested in what other people seem to think.
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Topics of study for a gamemaster:
Literature and Film: Understanding different styles of plots, genres, imagery, etc. How to use Jump cuts, use of foreshadowing, flashbacks/flashforwards, cut scenes, symbolism, and so forth. Some focus on character design; both creation and extended design; motivation, staying internally consistant. Some work on expanding vocabulary options on descriptors. Mythology, questing, etc for unique design. Storyboarding and other story layout options are a good idea, as is the idea of 'LArge Set Design Pieces' for large encounters and in-game moments.
Acting/Drama: Improv, accents, portraying a character through large and small gestures. Perhaps some costuming and props and things for character design. Cold/Warm/Hot reading.
Mathematics: Odds and Probability, tricks to calculate on the fly. Alegebra, area, weight, etc. Monty Haul problem, Balance and design options in game systems, Possibly some examples of math as seen in shows like Numb3rs as applied to games like Cake Cutting as seen in Gnomestew's advice to Add a touch of original game theory to spice up your rpg. Game theory. Economics (look at the Hackmaster GMG 4e as an example discussing ways to deal with treasure beginning with expenses, money-changing, banking, loans, merchants buying and selling (supply and demand affects on markets), investing, various taxation types).
Art: Description for pictures and statues and such in game design of images especially things like maps and even just general setting. Cartography. This could be great for giving different ways to see the world by looking at different movements and different styles.
Psychology/Ethics: Understanding players, understanding your NPCs and even monsters. Morality, risk taking. This would be a great place to have a big focus on social oriented interactions, which seem to be given a reduced focus in most RPGs, being nothing more than Bluff/Sense Motive type interactions. Alignment discussions from D&D could go here too.
History: This has so many options; war studies can help design better tactics, time periods can give you better development for a historical game as well as understanding motivational actions. political science would motivate the prime movers of a setting where the players are currently playing in.
Social Studies/Sciences: World religions to understand the differences in them with perhaps some actual study into how they differ, city design and interaction. Geology for dungeon or underground adventures. Astronomy for the cosmology, theology for the gods and anthropology for creating cultures. Could even deal with some metalurgy or similar, depending on exactly how detailed you want to go in your games. For examples of this knowledge, look at Mole from Atlantis with such statements as the Natural Phosorenous for the light in the tunnel and then talking about how when they landed in sulfurous ash they were in the base of a dormant volcano where the magma has solidified in the bowels of the volcano, blocking the exit..
Phys Ed: Wrestling/Grappling, mock combat, etc, things that would help give a more exciting feel to combats or general activity, plus can shake up a lot of this drab academic stuff somewhat. Could also be intro to LARP/Boff to a degree.
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To help teach the skills, I have been collecting some books on Game Design (tabletop, video game and board game), Gamemaster Assistance Books (like Play Dirty, Play Unsafe and XDM), and so forth, as well as free online materials like free college courses, youtube videos, podcasts, college essays no some topics like literature and the like and even various system books and things to help.
I pull from stuff from all over for my blog at drraagh.wordpress.com, so I understand this isn't going to be something everyone is interested in, but I figure if I can get enough ideas as to what sort of things would be.
I've tried to have this discussion with a few of the people I know who game, and well, they all looked at me like I had six heads or something, and so I am opening this to the internet to try and get some feedback on an idea I had. System unspecific, what are the sort of things that a Gamemaster should know?
I have started with pouring over a ton of various forum posts, blogs and the like, for example Questinggm's blog has an entry on Rpg as academic subjects and Bonethrowerstheater talks about it in Why I'll flunk out of gaming university and Stackexchange's RPG entries has all sorts of 'Are there GM courses' and 'What books would people find useful for GMing' that have all sorts of answers and opinions, and a lot of this sort of came to the point that people are thinking of the topic, but they're looking for the simple answer, the basic solution to say 'Go here, read this and boom, you're now a GM', sort of like in Knights of the Dinner Table's Hackmaster where you would have certified Gamemasters (and also the RPGA's certifications they were based on, which from what I hear weren't all that much).
Granted, in the comics, as seen in 2012 issue #187, certification was all about rules knowledge and adventure design and such, including areas such as "Encumbrance Assessment" and "Risk versus Reward Ratios", with the former being able to tell if a player is over-encumbered or not as Hackmaster was to be run as a Player versus GM game with the PCs taking advantages to get away with things, and the GM could call them on it, while the latter being how well you challenge your players to get treasure and the like. The former, I don't know if I'd really care if a GM was able to spot that because it doesn't really bother the story mostly, but the latter is actually quite a good skill to have.
So, what I began to wonder is exactly what sort of knowledge should a GM have, so that it would be possible to find materials to help train up those skills. These are some of the examples that I've come up with of what I figure GMs should know, and I am interested in what other people seem to think.
------
Topics of study for a gamemaster:
Literature and Film: Understanding different styles of plots, genres, imagery, etc. How to use Jump cuts, use of foreshadowing, flashbacks/flashforwards, cut scenes, symbolism, and so forth. Some focus on character design; both creation and extended design; motivation, staying internally consistant. Some work on expanding vocabulary options on descriptors. Mythology, questing, etc for unique design. Storyboarding and other story layout options are a good idea, as is the idea of 'LArge Set Design Pieces' for large encounters and in-game moments.
Acting/Drama: Improv, accents, portraying a character through large and small gestures. Perhaps some costuming and props and things for character design. Cold/Warm/Hot reading.
Mathematics: Odds and Probability, tricks to calculate on the fly. Alegebra, area, weight, etc. Monty Haul problem, Balance and design options in game systems, Possibly some examples of math as seen in shows like Numb3rs as applied to games like Cake Cutting as seen in Gnomestew's advice to Add a touch of original game theory to spice up your rpg. Game theory. Economics (look at the Hackmaster GMG 4e as an example discussing ways to deal with treasure beginning with expenses, money-changing, banking, loans, merchants buying and selling (supply and demand affects on markets), investing, various taxation types).
Art: Description for pictures and statues and such in game design of images especially things like maps and even just general setting. Cartography. This could be great for giving different ways to see the world by looking at different movements and different styles.
Psychology/Ethics: Understanding players, understanding your NPCs and even monsters. Morality, risk taking. This would be a great place to have a big focus on social oriented interactions, which seem to be given a reduced focus in most RPGs, being nothing more than Bluff/Sense Motive type interactions. Alignment discussions from D&D could go here too.
History: This has so many options; war studies can help design better tactics, time periods can give you better development for a historical game as well as understanding motivational actions. political science would motivate the prime movers of a setting where the players are currently playing in.
Social Studies/Sciences: World religions to understand the differences in them with perhaps some actual study into how they differ, city design and interaction. Geology for dungeon or underground adventures. Astronomy for the cosmology, theology for the gods and anthropology for creating cultures. Could even deal with some metalurgy or similar, depending on exactly how detailed you want to go in your games. For examples of this knowledge, look at Mole from Atlantis with such statements as the Natural Phosorenous for the light in the tunnel and then talking about how when they landed in sulfurous ash they were in the base of a dormant volcano where the magma has solidified in the bowels of the volcano, blocking the exit..
Phys Ed: Wrestling/Grappling, mock combat, etc, things that would help give a more exciting feel to combats or general activity, plus can shake up a lot of this drab academic stuff somewhat. Could also be intro to LARP/Boff to a degree.
------
To help teach the skills, I have been collecting some books on Game Design (tabletop, video game and board game), Gamemaster Assistance Books (like Play Dirty, Play Unsafe and XDM), and so forth, as well as free online materials like free college courses, youtube videos, podcasts, college essays no some topics like literature and the like and even various system books and things to help.
I pull from stuff from all over for my blog at drraagh.wordpress.com, so I understand this isn't going to be something everyone is interested in, but I figure if I can get enough ideas as to what sort of things would be.
