Do you have players in your group who have never GMed? Based on my experience, the answer to that question will nearly always be “yes” — I’ve never gamed with a group entirely composed of GMs.
If that’s the case for you as well, give this a whirl: Ask those players to run at least one gaming session — and help them do it well.
I’ve always found that players who are also GMs share the following traits (among others):
- More open to new ideas.
- A better understanding of what goes into each session.
- Likely to give feedback.
- Create challenging characters.
This isn’t to say that players who’ve never GMed can’t be all of these things and more — but someone who has GMed at least once is more likely to possess these traits. It’s kind of like the flipside of Martin’s Maxims for GMs: You can become a better player by giving GMing a shot.
And they’re great traits: Running a game for players who like to try new things, appreciate the work that goes into making the game fun (on both sides of the screen), want to provide feedack and like to challenge themselves is an absolute blast.
Some players — again, based on my experience — aren’t going to go for this idea. For one reason or another, they have no interest in GMing. And that’s okay.
But other players might be interested in giving it a shot, but also worried that they’ll screw it up. And if that’s what’s kept them from GMing so far, you can help them make their first session a good experience — whether it turns out to be their first and only session, or the start of their GMing career.
In asking how TT readers learned to GM, I learned about the impact that mentorship can have on budding GMs — which was echoed in the responses to How Should GMs Learn to GM?
Two threads from the GMing Q&A Forum might also be helpful in prepping a first-time GM for their first session: GMing from scratch and Tips on learning a new RPG.
What do you think of this idea? If you’ve ever tried this with your group, what did your players think of it?
I had a friend of mine named Jon do this once. Jon’s not exactly the brightest bulb in the box, and really wasn’t comfortable with the rules even as a player, so I had to assure him that I’d help him with everything as it came up.
Oh, and he only had about an hour to prepare it. 🙂
It was actually a fun game, and very different from anything I would have done. We woke up in a room in a dungeon, kicked the door open and went from there. Good old-fashioned dungeon crawl, complete with Door-That-Cannot-Be-Opened-Without-Key-No-Matter-What ™ and a gem from a water elemental that we figured out wuld kill a fire elemental later.
I think it was probably in large part influenced by his background in video game RPGs.
I’ve played in a two troupe-style games where everyone GMed. One was strictly turn-based — each session the next one in line GMed. The other just had people take turns when they felt like.
More commonly, I’ve usually had two or more GMs among players, but also one or more exclusive players. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a game with all exclusive players.
Interestingly enough, my wife just directed/game-mastered her first game last night. It was one of Shifting Forest Storywork’s Parlor Larp series. So it was mostly complete out of the box, but she wrote in two new PCs since we had ten people rather than eight. They’re a good option for a first event, I think, since they’re complete out of the box and very player-driven.
As I have played for nearly 18 years, I’ve probably GM’ed all-exclusive players campaigns, mixed campaigns, and all-GM campaigns.
The only all-GM campaign I’ve been in was a really cool concept. We got together for a weekend of gaming, and the concept was round-robin.
Nothing was prepared except the characters, and we each played a character created by another player, chosen randomly. Next, we decided who was the first GM by playing Rock-Paper-Scissors. After that was done, the GM’s character is run as an NPC while the rest of us participate in an adventure the GM makes up as he goes along using a pre-determined map. After one hour, a timer sounds and the person to the GM’s right takes over the game, no matter the current situation of the PCs, relegating his character to status of NPC and then the previous GM comes in and their character becomes a PC. It continues around like this for as long as we want it to, but everybody had to GM at least twice.
There was a mixture of experienced and novice GMs, and the best part of all was creating a situation that the next GM had to play off of.
It’s interesting that all three of you have had such different experiences with this — thanks for sharing your stories. 🙂
My recent groups have all been heavy on the GMs– in fact, one of the problems that cropped up in one group was having two competing GMs wanting the same slot.
I’m not sure I agree as to the four traits you propose (though “A better understanding of what goes into each session” is pretty near universal). In a lot of ways, the way a player runs his characters (over time) may be an excellent guide as to how they’ll GM.
(Scott) I’m not sure I agree as to the four traits you propose (though “A better understanding of what goes into each session” is pretty near universal).
What I was getting is that by GMing, a player will see the other side of the equation: What the GM does to make the session happen, keep it going, contribute, etc.
That, in turn, will inform how they play from then on — they’ll have a better understand of the meta-level stuff that makes the game fun, and be better equipped to provide it as a player.
Does that make more sense?