On Tabletop RPG's and Writing - GM'ng and Writing

 So, you've decided to take a look at being a GM, eh?
 Ok, you can take off the cilice from your thigh. Don't worry, I'll wait. We're all quite masochistic in here. You'll learn why in a bit.
 But it's actually one of the best experiences you can have!

In picture: typical instrument found in possession of religious body punishers, hard BDSM dungeons, and Game Masters.
"It's a relief after dealing with the party's dungeon delve, really." - typical RPG GM.

What do I need to be a GM? What do I do when I become one?

 First, take a moment to question your life choices. When did it all go so wrong?

 Then, when you finally come to terms with it, we can proceed.

 As the Game Master, you have admittedly the most important part in the roleplaying game of your choosing. This means having a clear understanding of the general rules and having the materials you need to find the specific ones and deal with every aspect of the game itself, which you obviously bought completely legally because no one here endorses piracy, do we?

 You'll be the one your players will turn to when they need to ask information, be it in character creation, in game, or in general questions between sessions to plan things ahead.

 If this doesen't feel already like a lot of responsibility, not only you have to be the repository of the rules - from the start to the end of each session you will be all five (and sometimes more) senses of your characters, you will be the world they move in, the people they talk to, the creatures that try to kill them and everything that happens behind the scenes. You will be the one mainly setting the tone and the style of the campaign. And especially, you will be the story they will be entwined into.

 Luckily, this gives you power: your rolls will usually be hidden, and since you're the one portraying the world and its rules, while you can't change them on a whim without it being discussed with the rest of the party, you can bend them from time to time for narrative purposes. Basically every single system manual will have at page 2 or 3 a variation of  "Story and fun first, nitty gritty rules second".

 This power, though, comes with a very important responsibility: you can't be antagonistic to your players. You will be tempted to, trust me, so very tempted to, but don't. The moment you start thinking it's you against them, the whole thing will blow up in your face and suddenly you won't have a group to play with. And you should always remember that you're playing with other people, each with their own ideas and their own characters. You can't just ignore their decisions for the sake of your story. But this is another important lesson that you, as a writer, need to learn.

 So, yeah, being a GM is basically like herding cats. Cats that talk. And that are your friends. But still cats.

Basically this. Every week. Only with more talking, snaks, and beer and trying to make a coherent story out of it. Also called "Recipe for disaster"

 After all this, you have two main options. Every system has usually some introduction adventures ready for you - these are called 'modules' in the business, and they're basically pre-written plots with well indicated intended characters levels, encounters, places...it basically does most of the work for you. The best of them have even the flavour text to read to your players to set the scene around the table. Of course, knowing your party, you're free to tinker with it as much as you want.

 Then, there's the second option, which is to me the most fun and most challenging, but absolutely invaluable for a writer: you can make your own story. You have everything you need to do so - you have the setting, you have the rules, you have the general functioning of the world. From there, you can create basically whatever you want. With some work, even readapt the system to your own settings!

 A gorgeous example of this, even if flawed, is the d20 system. What is meant by d20 system is a system that will use the roll of a 20-sided dice to resolve most situations.

 Built initially for Dungeons and Dragons, Wizards of the Coast (the game company owning the system) had a period where they made the d20 system open source - thanks to that, and to the streamlined nature of the character creation system, we have plenty of d20 settings: want to roam a galaxy far far away with a lightsaber? there's d20 Star Wars. A horrific foray into cosmic horror granted to render your player characters insane and/or dead in horrible fashion? There's a Call of Chthulluh d20 system. All you need to do is explore and find what universe you wanna play in!

An example of a player-game master interaction

 Before we continue, I'll give you a little played out, made up 'scene' in a generic fantasy d20 setting. We'll have a group made of me (gm), and three players. Keep in mind, in most of these games players have different roles to cover, with different abilities each, that will help them progress the story. We'll have Liam, playing Lord Vaas, the cleric, Steven, playing Ta'shal, the wizard, and Ann, playing Irene,  the rogue.

 Me (GM): "After a long travel through the deserted roads slithering between the hills of Adrimor, you see the what used to be a small town. It's deserted, and you can clearly see that the inhabitants seem to have just...up and left the place. Passing by, you can notice easily on the floor normal items, like a basket of freshly picked fruit, a cart left in the middle of the main road, and a pie left to cool on the window of the local bakery. Oddly enough, there is no blood or sign of violence - not on the streets or on the buildings of the village. Vaas, roll Perception for me, please.

 Liam (Lord Vaas): "Righty-oh." *a d20 roll later* "It's a 7, plus my perception score of 5...12."

 Me (GM): "Mh. Strangely, while usually this sort of events tend to be tied to some horribly evil event, you feel an intense sense of holiness coming from the place. Almost...too much."

 Ann (Irene): "I want to check the outskirts of the village. I prepare my shortbow and I try to sneak around the houses. You know, peek into the windows, have a looksie without being noticed."

 Me (GM) "Roll stealth. And perception."

 Ann: "...Fuck sake. 2's not enough for stealth, innit? 17 on perception, tho."

 Me: "You start moving around and initially everything seems to be fine. But as you try to peak around, your foot trips onto some robes. Something inside them breaks with a very loud 'crack'. With your experience, you know that if someone is around you just gave away your position to it. Nothing seems to happen, though. And as you listen to see if there's anything coming to check on your position, you can hear distinctly some muttered prayers coming from an open window a couple houses ahead. The voice is one of a woman, seemingly very distressed and chanting loudly."

 Steven (Ta'shal): "Right, I'm gonna cast detect magic. And I look towards the noise that Ann made." 

 Me: "You attune your arcane sense to the magical energies around the place. You can feel that a very, very intense magical activity just happened around here, and you can still perceive some of the faint magical items around. With Irene still in your sight, you can definitely tell that she's close to a growing source of magical energy, right beneath her feet."

 Steven: "Well, damn. Ok, my character will jump up, robes flowing and all, and start waving frantically at Irene. 'Yo! Hey! Ye lass! Ye wanna get the fock 'way from there, sum'thin's gettin' weird!"

 Ann: "Go figure. Aight. I try to jump back from whatever I stepped on and get closer to the group."

 Me: "Make me a reflex saving throw? 10 plus...6, right? Good. You manage to jump away just as the grass around your feet seems to grow and try to squeeze around your ankle. As you make your way to the rest of the group, the grass keeps growing, forming a humanoid figure with bright, white eyes, staring directly at you. It rises an arm, and starts speaking with a multitonal, eerie voice. 'You shall leave this place at once. You aren't pure of faith enough to step on these hollowed grounds. Begone.'"

 Liam: "The hell? 'I don't know on what ground you level this accusation, creature, but I'll have you know you stand in the presence of Lord Vaas von Elefheim, Administrator secretorum of second class of the order of Heleisos. While I can hardly speak for the despicable lot I find myself traveling with, I find quite offensive that a creature born of arcane magic, of all things, has the gall of calling me impure. State your business.'"

 Yeah, I know. I went a bit lengthy on this, but we're all writers, you can understand my trouble when I start writing a scene, don't you?

 Now, though, notice something very important in this whole interaction: I don't decide what the players do. The only thing I do is describing what's around them and reacting to their actions and their rolls. I clearly know what's going on, but the other players don't - and they shouldn't. They should explore the scene at their leisure, find what's going on, discuss, find a course of action. I'm there to make their stories happen in my setting.

 A good example is what happened to Irene and Ta'Shal reaction to it. Irene tripped on something, Ta'Shal saw that it was having an effect. He's the one that warned Irene, not me. If he didn't warn her, she'd end up tangled in the vines and wrapped around by the grass creature to be kept as its 'voice'.

 For all I knew, the characters could have just as easily said to themselves "know what? Fuck that place, we ain't gonna mess with it" and continued on their road.

Actually appropriate reaction. But hey, are you here to play or not?

So, what's the moral of the story?

 Despite my jokes early on, I think most of you can already see how the position of Game Master in a roleplaying game can be extremely beneficial to your writing, and, while definitely not easy and requiring some training, can be a lot of fun seeing your friends react in real time to a story you are creating.

 Being 'forced' to play around the fact you don't move the main characters of your own story can give you some exciting challenges in terms of worldbuilding and improvisation skills.

 You will see your best plans laid out fail. You will see your players find some amazingly creative solutions to problems you've put on their path, or a series of botched rolls can make them miss completely the hints to proceed you've put right under their noses. And what's even better, you'll have to go with them.

 You might prepare a hard, gruelsome encounter with a lot of gnolls to happen this day at this place, and your characters might be able to find a reasonable diplomatic solution to it. What then? Well, you're the Game Master! You'll have to come up with something else! Perhaps the adventurers will be tied into some of the tribes political shifts to make sure the gnolls leave this area alone?

 And what then?

 You will learn to make the plot happen despite characters fucking up, and this will be absolutely incredible for your writing. Because it'll make sure that when you write yourself in a corner, you'll have another tool to figure out that no, this is not a dead end, this corner brings to a completely new intersection I can take every road in.

 You will learn that failed plans and unforeseen events can be fun and a lot more interesting. Sure, as a GM sometimes you'll end up railroading the plot - after all you do need to get the overarching story going - but you'll figure out how to do it in a subtle manner. Get back the reins of your story when the story seems to go out of control.

 Aside from this, you'll have to make a lot of characters the players will interact with. And those players may ask the most absurd questions you ever heard to them, and you'll have to find an answer - or a reaction to it. Which definitely includes laughing in the character face or looking at them like they just went batshit insane.

 And I mean, if it's not the absolute basis of worldbuilding...

 Another great pro of this is that you'll have to tell a story to other people. In real time. With all the aforementioned accidents happening.

 In all this, you'll have to find a balance to keep your players progressing in the plot, but still in the dark enough to make sure they don't figure the buttler did it way ahead of time. You'll practice pacing, details in the scenes, basically every single aspect regarding world, antagonists and side characters that you can definitely use in your works.

 And you'll do all this ideally in a safe, friendly environment, where, as long as everyone knows it's all in good fun and no one takes it too seriously, you can all have an amazing time and some very, very interesting stories to tell.

 Trust me. Few things are funnier than some of the stories I can tell you in my days of running Vampires: the Masquerade, where a simple Non-Player Character (NPC) man went from being a ticket checker on a train to one of the most feared and revered vampire hunters of the land.

 And this story has a dancing gipsy vampire in it, too.

 It's a joy to try and to have these moments.

 So, this is it for what regards herding cats and plot bunnies at the same time. Next time, we'll talk about what it's like to be one of these aforementioned cats.

 Check in tomorrow for the next part!