What do you want to do better as a GM?

[dragoner]

Always wanting to read the players better, and making engaging scenes that energize both them and I to play.

 

[Eric V]

Always wanting to read the players better, and making engaging scenes that energize both them and I to play.

Same. I play on VTT and find that makes this particular skill harder to improve.

 

[dragoner]

Same. I play on VTT and find that makes this particular skill harder to improve.

Yes, I run or play in a face to face game, and a pbp; both can get to a stumbling block where a scenario that sounds good, starts great, suddenly falls down and we are all left scratching our heads, wondering what to do next. Or it just drags out too long.

 

[pemerton]

Generally, I think knowing the beginning and the end of a session is enough

I think that you can only know the end of a session if you're running a railroad. If the players are able to shape the fiction, then you can't know in advance how it will end up.

As for the question, I'd like to be able to make weather figure more interestingly in establishing in-game situations.

 

[Stalker0]

Remember NPC names. I can describe the NPCs I have created well, but I swear 10 minutes after the name comes out I've forgotten it!

 

[Larnievc]

GMing is a skill, you get better with practice, time, and advice/observation of others. Personally, I love GMing. I love writing a story where I don't control the main characters and collaboratively making a world with friends.

But like every skill, you'll hit a plateau. And that's where I think I've been the last few years. I'm sure a few of us have. So -

What do you want to improve in your GMing, and maybe we can all share some advice and tips. What do you think you're doing well, and what can you experiment with?

My metric is: how many laughs do I get. My games are Sir Pratchet via Rick and Morty so for me it’s all about how much fun my players have.

So I go all in with accents, tropes and the effectiveness of being genre savvy

 

[delphonso]

I think that you can only know the end of a session if you're running a railroad. [Snip]

To each, their own. I think you're partly right - I've never run a good /true/ sandbox. I'd love to hear how you plan and how it goes.

I recommend getting your players on a ship - there weather is king.

Remember NPC names. [snip]

Such a nightmare - I generally name characters on stupid themes (Kraba Rangoon, Corona Slim, Cookiee) to combat this. But there's plenty of NPCs that I've renamed just minutes later after forgetting.

 

[pemerton]

I've never run a good /true/ sandbox. I'd love to hear how you plan and how it goes.

I don't run a sandbox game. I use an approach that, in terms of published RPGs, is probably mostly associated with PbtA systems, though that's not what I run.

The basic idea is that (i) the players' characters have motivations/reasons for action, and (ii) the GM establishes a situation that will engage those, and therefore (iii) the players declare actions for their PCs and then (iv) we use the rules of the game to find out what happens. The upshot of (iv) feeds back into (i) and the next instance of (ii).

At the moment my group is mostly playing Prince Valiant, but I've used much the same approach for Classic Traveller, Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP, Burning Wheel, The Dying Earth, Cthulhu Dark and D&D.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Remember NPC names. I can describe the NPCs I have created well, but I swear 10 minutes after the name comes out I've forgotten it!

I used to have the same issue. Nowadays I take brief notes as the session is going. So if they talk to John Smith, I jot down "Met John Smith", whether that's a reoccurring character I could never forget or someone I made up on the spot. The notes also come in handy for planning the next session.

I started taking notes because I was running the same campaign for three different groups, and without those notes I would have been lost as to what happened to which group, since it was a sandbox. It was tricky at first, but after working at it for a year I can write down a short sentence or two without breaking stride in narration (I'm a very poor multitasker). That said, I usually prefer to take my notes while the players are deliberating their course of action, as I can afford to be more detailed.

 

[shawnhcorey]

To each, their own. I think you're partly right - I've never run a good /true/ sandbox. I'd love to hear how you plan and how it goes.

I run road trips. A road trip has a destination but how they get there is up to the players. Usually I have 4 parts.

Part 1 is mostly a sandbox where the PCs get clues on the adventure. Part 2 is the approach and fight with the mini-boss. It is here they get the MacGuffin. Part 3 is a chase followed by preparing for the boss. This is more sandboxing. Part 4 is the approach and fight with the boss.