The first time I ever GMed a tabletop roleplaying game session was the day after I played Dungeons & Dragons for the first time.
I ran my mom through a simple dungeon.
Rules? I didn’t really know the rules other than what I had just learned (and distorted) the night before.
I was nine years old. (I still have my childhood characters.)
Needless to say, role-playing games stirred something within me and I took to them as if they had always been a part of me.
TTPRGs I’ve played.
From the beginning, I began branching out and played many RPGs.
I continue to play Dungeons & Dragons, but I have played Pathfinder, Marvel Superheroes, Star Frontiers, FASA Star Trek, West End Games Star Wars, Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars, Stars Without Number, most of the Palladium games and more.
Becoming a gamemaster.
When I was young I quickly found if I wanted my friends to role-play, I needed to be the gamemaster.
I desired to play more than they did, I had the books, so I was elected the gamemaster. Also, if someone has never heard of an RPG it’s hard to expect them to be the gamemaster.
I think my initial naivety helped my in one way and hurt me in another.
Jumping into running a game right after I played the first time taught me that GMing doesn’t have to be a big deal. Also, I thought anyone could be a GM.
It hurt me because I assumed GMing wasn’t big deal and that anyone could run a game.
I would run a game for a few of my friends. They would love it and ask when we were playing next.
I would ask does anyone else want to run a game. They would say they didn’t know how and I would say that I didn’t either. They could try it and learn how.
Then I would run the next game.
The Bitterness of a GM’s Soul
My first forays into GMing were certainly disastrous. However, I wouldn’t change them for anything because they were creative learning experiences.
In that sense they were were not failures.
All aboard!
When I first started gamemastering, I had the tendency to a railroad
I would wait, sometimes for hours, for my players to discover it.
If they didn’t, then I would intervene in some way to save them, usually through a GMPC that I would have rather been playing.
I have a clear memory of one time planning out of a dungeon and thinking, “Okay, at this fork in the passage my players will go right first,” so I planned for something to happen specifically if they went right first and then left.
However, as soon as my players came in contact with that dungeon they went left first and I nearly lost my mind.
After some disasters railroading my players, I decided I would only run sandbox campaigns.
You can do anything!
With these sandbox campaigns I attempted to create everything in the entire world.
Continents, planets, town, cities, rivers, oceans, villages everything the players could interact with and have a wonderful experience.
These sessions proved to be very popular, however, they were draining on me.
Not only was I creating many things that no one would ever see or touch. Players can only do so much after all.
But I was also working myself so hard that if a session was canceled or if nobody showed up I would become angry and bitter.
Honestly, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do and I thought the gamemaster was supposed to have amazingly huge campaigns and great adventures waiting for the players.
Truth be told, at this time in my life, I had only played 10 or so times without being the GM. I really didn’t know what I was doing.
Something had to change.
As I got older and there were more demands on my time I realized that there was no way that I could keep preparing gigantic campaigns.
Preparing tons of this material just to have no one show up or to have every session canceled is soul crushing.
Something had to change so I started evaluating what it means to be a game master.
Coming up.
Next week I’ll discuss the true role of the gamemaster. Don’t miss a post and get free dungeons maps.
Great article! I’m fairly new to GMing myself and have gone through these exact things and have also been let down and frustrated when my group cancels and we don’t play and I feel I have wasted a ton of time. I still haven’t found a great way to plan enough while being prepared enough so I’m looking forward to the next article to see what you have done.
I started back in 1978 and was forced to GM without having ever PLAYED. Luckily, I wrote (no texting or email back then) to TSR, and the wonderful Jean Rabe sent me 3 cassette tapes of her group playing (Eat your heart out Critical Role – she was way ahead of your timeline), so that was all I had to go on. Playing in college, none of my friends had books or interest in GM’ing, so I did – almost daily (after classes). The *lack* of prep time showed. So did my fledgling improv abilities. In many ways, only time and experience improved my GM’ing. I did also branch out. Tried Boot Hill, Top Secret, Gamma World, etc. Same story on who GM’ed after doing little more than reading the material. Today’s abundance of other players is a godsend!