CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
My DM style is a lot like a whole boxcar full of sand. It's a big enough of a "sandbox" for all the kids to play in, and they never notice that the whole thing is attached to a "railroad."
D&D General What is YOUR GM style?
Jacob Lewis
Ye Olde GM
"To paint the minis, drive the plot for you, and hear the lamentations of grognards."
Yora
Legend
My approach to running games is to be a facilitator. I am not there to entertain the players. I am there to enable them to entertain themselves.
I am fundamentally opposed to either the GM or the adventure telling a story. RPGs are not a narrative medium, they are a performative medium. The whole point of RPGs is that the players control the protagonists and make all of their choices, and that the presence of a GM enables every conceivable choice to be translated into game terms, and the game world being able to react to any possible form of input by the players. To make the players act out a written play for which they don't even know the script is a complete waste of the medium. It is possible to tell a story to the audience that way, but any kind of narrative medium is better suited for that purpose, and it keeps the special possibilities that are unique to RPGs and are their whole selling point unutilized.
As a facilitator of the players' adventure, you need to be disinterested in the outcome of any action or scene. Don't interfere with the players' choices and the rolls of the dice to create outcomes that you prefer. The players are supposed to succeed against the game world, not succeed into convincing the GM to give them what they want.
If in any way practical, rolls should be done in the open. Also, the target number for the roll should be announced to the players before the roll. This makes it clear to the players that the fate of the characters lies entirely within their own hands and the random chance of the dice, but you don't give them either success or failure.
Leaving events entirely open ended and up to the players means there will be a great need for improvisation. And the key to improvising is to be prepared. Improvising is not making something up from nothing on the spot. It's to apply ready tools and techniques that can create results for a wide range of situations very quickly. Random tables are a fantastic tool for that. Many random tables simply list a bunch of stuff you could just come up with yourself on the spot. But when you're under pressure to make something up fast, you usually pick whatever comes to mind first because it's the obvious or typical thing that happens or appears in a given situation. That's the path to content that is generic, stereotypical, and ultimately cliched. Random tables allow you to think of many options in advance while you have all the time you need, and then establish a system to make the selection for you in a given situation. And being disinterested in the outcomes of events, making a random roll, rather than picking from a list, avoids the temptation to just alwsys go with what would be the easiest and least disruptivel But disruptions are where life, action, and chaos enter the game.
A super imortant part about being a GM is that the players have no perception of the game world other than what you tell them. The GM is the eyes and ears of all the PCs. The players have no way to tell if they misunderstood what has been described to them, and they end up with a quite different impression of the situation. They have no ability to notice if there's any error in the communication of their characters' perception. But as GM, it's actually not that hard to notice if a player might not be on the same page with you. Almost every time a player describes an action that is nonsensical, pointless, or suicidal, it's a an action that makes perfect sense in the situation that the player is imagining. Any time that happens, you have to make sure there is no mismatch between the situation in your mind and the situation in the player's mind before determining the outcome of the action. The player has no way to tell that the action seems weird or nonsensical, but the GM does, so it's the GM's duty to spot and resolve the problem. The best method I discovered is to simply ask what a player is hoping to accomplish with a described action. That usually sorts out any misunderstandings on either side very quickly
I am fundamentally opposed to either the GM or the adventure telling a story. RPGs are not a narrative medium, they are a performative medium. The whole point of RPGs is that the players control the protagonists and make all of their choices, and that the presence of a GM enables every conceivable choice to be translated into game terms, and the game world being able to react to any possible form of input by the players. To make the players act out a written play for which they don't even know the script is a complete waste of the medium. It is possible to tell a story to the audience that way, but any kind of narrative medium is better suited for that purpose, and it keeps the special possibilities that are unique to RPGs and are their whole selling point unutilized.
As a facilitator of the players' adventure, you need to be disinterested in the outcome of any action or scene. Don't interfere with the players' choices and the rolls of the dice to create outcomes that you prefer. The players are supposed to succeed against the game world, not succeed into convincing the GM to give them what they want.
If in any way practical, rolls should be done in the open. Also, the target number for the roll should be announced to the players before the roll. This makes it clear to the players that the fate of the characters lies entirely within their own hands and the random chance of the dice, but you don't give them either success or failure.
Leaving events entirely open ended and up to the players means there will be a great need for improvisation. And the key to improvising is to be prepared. Improvising is not making something up from nothing on the spot. It's to apply ready tools and techniques that can create results for a wide range of situations very quickly. Random tables are a fantastic tool for that. Many random tables simply list a bunch of stuff you could just come up with yourself on the spot. But when you're under pressure to make something up fast, you usually pick whatever comes to mind first because it's the obvious or typical thing that happens or appears in a given situation. That's the path to content that is generic, stereotypical, and ultimately cliched. Random tables allow you to think of many options in advance while you have all the time you need, and then establish a system to make the selection for you in a given situation. And being disinterested in the outcomes of events, making a random roll, rather than picking from a list, avoids the temptation to just alwsys go with what would be the easiest and least disruptivel But disruptions are where life, action, and chaos enter the game.
A super imortant part about being a GM is that the players have no perception of the game world other than what you tell them. The GM is the eyes and ears of all the PCs. The players have no way to tell if they misunderstood what has been described to them, and they end up with a quite different impression of the situation. They have no ability to notice if there's any error in the communication of their characters' perception. But as GM, it's actually not that hard to notice if a player might not be on the same page with you. Almost every time a player describes an action that is nonsensical, pointless, or suicidal, it's a an action that makes perfect sense in the situation that the player is imagining. Any time that happens, you have to make sure there is no mismatch between the situation in your mind and the situation in the player's mind before determining the outcome of the action. The player has no way to tell that the action seems weird or nonsensical, but the GM does, so it's the GM's duty to spot and resolve the problem. The best method I discovered is to simply ask what a player is hoping to accomplish with a described action. That usually sorts out any misunderstandings on either side very quickly
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