Saturday was Day One, the day upon which I decided – for better or worse – that what I have been doing hasn’t been working. As I wrote about the other day, the Curse of the Flaky GM needs to be broken. The way forward, it seems to me, is to become a beginner again. An apprentice.
I made a simple set of decisions:
- I decided to run a one-shot fantasy dungeon game powered by GURPS.
- I decided to put out a message on the RPR Discord calling for players.
- I decided I would, at most, create a 3-hex starter game.
- I decided to be open to listening to what the players wanted.
- I decided to make it an Open Table.
The request sent, I was surprised by the response: several players interested, a date set for Monday night at 7pm, and three signed up to that date and time.
As discussion began, I found myself deciding to try out the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (powered by GURPS) again, and agreeing to a player request to use 125-points “Delvers To Grow” characters. Going with my gut, I also suggested using Doug Cole’s Viking-esque materials – something I’d fancied trying for ages.
And so here we are: Monday night with about 30 minutes until game time. Today has been a whirlwind of activity as I created two characters for players, tried to come up with a simple dungeon adventure, and dove into trying to explore the basic rules of the game. There now might be five players coming.
On one level, I am an experienced GM who knows how to run a basic dungeon game. On another level, I am a total nube with the DFRPG and super-nervous about running a game for people who know way more about GMing than I do.
But I know that’s the fundamental challenge of deciding to become the GM: you are putting yourself out there to run an entertaining session for your friends. Everyone wants to have a good time and the chances are that your friends (because they ARE your friends) and your acquaintances will help.
The fear is real. It is a hard thing to run a game for your friends. But, and this is the important thing that I have for too-long forgotten, the secret to play is to do something that Justin Alexander suggested to me in a conversation just the other day: “Give them some toys to play with.”
When we sit down together and share our toys we find the space and the energy to play. It doesn’t have to be perfect and it doesn’t have to be complicated. For all the pretensions of wanting to be some kind of paragon GM, the secret feels like it lies in providing a nice selection of toys.
I guess now is the time to find out if I’m right.
Game on!
Roleplay Rescue’s Blog 
Good luck. I’d suggest you make a table rule that all the characters stick together and play as a unit.
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In the Fear of Mastery podcast episode you spoke of playing one system to the exclusion of others in order to “master” it.
Can we assume that GURPS will be that system?
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Yup. GURPS is my go-to at the moment and a game I want to master. That said, to make running an Open Table slightly easier to begin I chose DFRPG as the powered by GURPS starting point. (Kicking myself that I didn’t make that explicit in the episode).
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Doh! 😆
I don’t play GURPS but I have found your discussions and experimentations with it on the podcast to be interesting fare.
the Fear Of Mastery is actually quite timely for me.
I’m approaching three years into a Castles & Crusades campaign,
a game I picked up on your recommendation back when we all thought COVID would be over by Christmas,
and in running such a long campaign i recently came to the realisation that one really needs to “marry” one’s preferred game system to avoid the distraction of other games
and to this end I have taken it apon myself to read the rulebook properly, to sit down and take notes and collate them in a fashion that suits me as an active game master (I started with index cards but moved onto A5 spiral notebooks instead)
And let me tell you, once I got past the shame of realising that I wasn’t actually following or even understanding some rules properly, this has paid great dividends to me and my game
there’s less rule checking at the table, the sessions run smoother, prep is easier
No word of a lie, from my own experience I would advise every referee just choose one game, forget what they know or think they know and really take the time to learn how it works as a rules system before they go back to the table with it.
No exaggeration but it is like playing an entirely new game!
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Thank you for sharing this, Liam! Whichever rules system we choose, I believe we play better games when we master them. Your message helps validate my trajectory and also reminds me that what I am doing when I talk about it is (in fact) useful to others too. Game On! Oh, and C&C is a great game!
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Started off with a BANG! Good plan to throw the characters in the deep end right off the bat. And see the fun we got up to trying to not drown.
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[…] and deeply appreciated the experience. They played with great gusto and positivity that echoed what I wrote yesterday about player willingness to have a good time. Thank you, […]
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