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GameMastery Guide / Running a Game / How to Run a Game

The Art of GMing

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 28
As a Game Master, you already know what’s expected. You have some players, you’ve designed an adventure full of cunning threats, wild terrain, and a big clever twist, and you’re ready to entertain. That should do it, right? Yet the best-laid plans of every storyteller sometimes go awry. There’s a range of reasons, but while the Pathfinder RPG is a form of group entertainment, it still depends on you as the GM in order to succeed. You are the scriptwriter and director for this production, but you’re also the chief performer. How you choose to approach the role makes a huge difference.

It’s not that players aren’t important; on the contrary, they’re both your audience and your fellow performers, and in many ways everything you do is for them. But they also have less control over the world, and play more limited parts. You lead the band. If you bring gusto to the adventure, your players will respond in kind. If you show up unprepared and harried, they may not invest much effort either. Delivering the best possible performance as a GM depends on how you see yourself when you game, how well you prepare, and what tricks and techniques you use to keep your campaign moving smoothly.

Making it Happen

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 28
With great power sometimes comes a sense that maybe your players don’t appreciate your efforts enough.

You spend time drawing world maps, imagining plots and places, setting up ambushes, and devising schemes for villains. As GM, you have a certain responsibility for everyone’s good time. You strive to challenge the party, but never to break it. You offer a sandbox of a million choices, but guide the party to the juiciest elements.

And yet things don’t always go smoothly. Sometimes, all you want is for the players to embark on the quest you’ve spent all week on, but instead the party accidentally goes off in another direction—or worse, sees the hook for your quest and deliberately decides not to bite because it doesn’t interest them enough, or doesn’t offer enough of a reward. When such things happen, you have several options.

Forcing Things

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 28
In many cases, it’s entirely reasonable to say, “Hey folks, this is the adventure I’ve prepared—work with me.” Many groups of players respond positively if asked for help— after all, they want the game to go smoothly, too. Perhaps they just need a stronger hook for their characters, the promise of a bigger reward, or a change of pace from something too similar to what they did last time.

Canny GMs, though, won’t force it more than absolutely necessary. It’s often worth it to ask your players after the game (or one-on-one later, if that’s easier) to tell you why they didn’t buy into your original adventure premise, and what sort of adventure they’d prefer. If they want more gold and glory, or to find out what’s beyond the western mountains, find a way to make that an option. Player feedback allows you to craft a game that’s more satisfying for everyone.

Follow the PCs' Lead

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 28
If you enjoy improvisational play, the best move may be to temporarily drop the planned plotline (or at least the planned plot hook) and follow your players’ lead. Are they more interested in the dark, brooding mage with a zombie-filled bag of holding than the murder the prince of the city has asked them to investigate? Very well, then: the necromancer is the new patron of the adventuring party, and boy does he know about some dark doings—the prince of the city has sent his best troops out on a suicide mission, and the mage would like the PCs to bring back some heads for a quick speak with dead.

This approach requires you to think on your feet and make up NPCs and encounters on the spot, but it also means that the players are fully engaged; they’re guaranteed to be doing the things they want, rather than following a plot dictated by you. And you get the additional fun of improvising and reacting to the players’ ideas, plus the chance to be pleasantly surprised by yourself as ideas flow fast and furiously.

If you’re especially fortunate, you can probably turn some of your existing encounters, NPCs, or plot elements into elements of the adventure that the party wants to pursue—or use their new direction to steer them subtly onto the adventure you had planned—but it’s not always possible. When forced to think on your feet, one helpful trick is to listen to player speculation and then elaborate on their fears or suspicions to make the plots feel even more complex. If the players say “I’ll bet the duke’s involved!”, a simple option is to take the cue and have the duke actually be behind the nefarious plot they’ve uncovered, thus making players feel satisfied for having figured it out. On the other hand, if it turns out that the duke is actually an unfortunate innocent, with his daughter held as a pawn of the true villains—then the players get both the satisfaction of being partially correct and the thrill of uncovering something new, and your adventure feels meatier and more intricate with almost no additional effort.

The Illusion of Free Choice

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 28
This is the finest of techniques when it works, though it can be overplayed. The illusion of free choice is really a matter of the GM convincing the PCs to do exactly what he wants while making them think it’s their idea. The simplest method in theory is often the hardest in practice: giving the players several choices, all of which lead to the same adventure. This might be as easy as simply changing a hook—the PCs didn’t know that the old man they ignored in the bar was about to tell them the same thing as the ancient treasure map they discover in the town graveyard. The ancient dungeon can be uncovered by order of the king, as the party is marching off into the wilds, or as the only hope for a town surrounded by enemies—once they go there, the adventure is the same, regardless of how they got there.

Sometimes, of course, the party has a reasonable idea what the adventure is and still decides to avoid it. In these cases, it’s sometimes best to subtly make the adventure more and more compelling until of course the players decide to go after the big treasure hoard guarded by their arch-nemesis—they’ve finally learned his weakness, and they only have a few days to exploit it!

That’s a bit of a hard sell, but notice three things about the example. First, it involves a pre-established nemesis; by tying the adventure into the PCs’ goals as characters, you’ve made the same basic adventure seem far more appealing. Second, it provides a lure in the form of cash— because in this case, you’ve watched your players enough to know that this particular party loves loot more than glory or doing the right thing. Third, the hook relies on a change in circumstances that is time-dependent. If the party doesn’t act now, ready or not, this opportunity will not come again. Limited-time offers have a way of selling things, whether it’s adventures or refrigerators.

Above all, put yourself in the player’s shoes. Don’t think about how cool the villain is, how clever the traps are, or how smart the backstory is—think about what’s in it for your players, and why an adventure would appeal to them personally, and you’ll never go wrong.

GM as Actor

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 29
As both performer and director, a good GM needs some of the skills of the stage, from use of accents to scene management.

Volume and Style

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 29
Stage presence is as important to GMing as dice. Though many GMs hide behind their screens and only venture out to move minis, others are animated, gesturing and using strange accents to demand attention.

While it’s certainly possible to overdo it, the latter style is far more exciting and memorable. The GM doing those things is performing; he’s fully engaged and driving the game with his desire to entertain. Yet not everyone is a natural performer, and many of the most bombastic GMs are shy and quiet in everyday life. Just like the rules and adventure design, the performance aspect of GMing is a skill that can be learned. Below are a few tips.

Stand up: Standing tends to make you more forceful and keeps you looking at your players, not fiddling with your dice. It also has the added benefit of letting you glance at players’ character sheets or move miniatures faster and more easily. Try standing up during the most action-oriented sequences, when you have combat or other sources of immediate tension in play.

Gesture: Point at a player to get his attention. Put him on the spot, and make it clear that the NPC you’re roleplaying expects an immediate response. This tends to push players into responding in character as well.

Make Eye Contact: Look at your players. If you’re roleplaying the major villain, don’t blink—literally stare them down.

Dialogue: Maybe you prefer to say “He speaks with the voice of the grave” rather than attempting to do so yourself. But even if you aren’t comfortable showing off, that doesn’t mean you can’t put a little spin on things, modulating your pitch or whispering instead of speaking. Hiss a little. Ham it up. Push your limits, and see what works.

Even without accents, a character’s word choices say a lot about his personality. Is he a noble dandy who refers to himself in the third person and sometimes uses big words improperly? Or is he an arcane scholar who knows exactly what those big words mean, and uses them to the exclusion of all others? Is his language dirty and lowbrow, much like the character himself, or prissy and precise, refusing to debase itself with contractions? The words you choose are every bit as important as the manner in which you say them.

Of course, if you’re interested in working up accents to make your NPCs more memorable, there are numerous ways to improve your skills. First and foremost, take risks—even if your accent falls flat after the first few lines, it’ll still be more interesting to players than if you used your normal speaking voice. Next, try thinking of familiar actors, cartoon characters, or (if you’re feeling daring) friends and family with speech patterns different than your own. Speak your lines as if you were that person— the odds of you mimicking them perfectly are low, at least at first, which means what comes out will be attributed solely to your NPC in the players’ minds, and having a person whose voice you’re already familiar with in mind allows you to maintain consistency. For further creativity, try borrowing from real-world regional accents, slang terms uncommon to your area, or a wide array of speech impediments like lisps and stutters.

While all of these options can be combined at random, it can often be easiest and most effective to identify a single speech trait that characterizes each character. Spend some time thinking about what most represents each NPC. A voice that cracks frequently makes people think of someone young, inexperienced, and comical. Someone who speaks in a rapid-fire chatter often sounds anxious or like they’re trying to sell something, and characters who speak slower than normal often sound dull and unintelligent. Everyone has certain ingrained associations and prejudices tied to specific patterns of speech—identify yours and your players’, and use them to your advantage. Not only can you paint a clearer picture, but you can also create interesting roleplaying encounters by occasionally playing against type.

If the Party Talks, Sit Down: Last but not least, when the players talk among themselves, withdraw. Let them plan— while they do, you can check your notes, update the map, and think about the next encounter. It’s good to perform, but not all the time. The players deserve some stage time as well.

Giving Direction

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 30
As GM, you want the most out of your players, and you know them as well as anyone. Some deal well with setbacks. Some love to hog attention. Some only shine when things are clear; others are leaders when things are thoroughly muddled.

One way to handle these differences is to acknowledge them. Sometimes simply saying, “Hey, you’re hogging the spotlight” is a better solution than trying to passively-aggressively give more attention to everyone else. As long as you confront the behavior rather than the person, it’s often possible for a given player to learn to play in sync with the group’s style.

Presentation

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 30
Presentation, as they say, is everything, and some GMs go that extra mile to make their game immersive with a cool handout, perfect soundtrack, or premade maps of every dungeon room. Below are a few quick and easy ideas for adding more goodies to your game.

Handouts and Props

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 30
Handouts are extremely valuable for two reasons: they give players information about the adventure, and they are tangible, focusing attention on that information in a way that just saying it doesn’t. Whatever information you put on that handout is information that the party is more likely to pay attention to or act on, simply because it’s sitting in front of them. So write or sketch that diary entry, cargo manifest, treasure map, ambassador’s report, or shopping list for the golem artificer. If the players can’t figure out the story hook hidden in it, give them some Knowledge rolls to help them along, but know that every handout you spend time on will almost always pay dividends at the game table.

Fun, authentic-looking handouts are quite easy to make. For an old treasure map, for instance, try dipping white, unruled paper in coffee to make it resemble parchment, then drawing on it when it dries. You can also crumple it up a few times, tear and tatter the edges, and even smear a little dirt or ash on it. Other options include the following:

Rolling up paper to make a scroll (and decorating a cardboard paper towel roll as a scroll case)
Writing “TRAPPED WITH GLYPHS” on the scroll presented above, to punish incautious players
Tearing a handout in half, so the PCs have to find both pieces
Writing in a foreign language or unusual font to represent the need for read magic
Using an image or replica of a real medieval manuscript page (with your text in English on a separate page)
Using real parchment or shell gold to make a fancy proclamation

Props are much the same sort of thing, but taken to broader ideas. Old pennies or just metal slugs can be put into a dice bag and thrown on the table for a solid thud when the party is offered 200 gp for the job. You can show a wand, crystal ball, staff, or dagger when you play the part of certain NPCs; likewise with hats. And best of all are the “real treasure” props. Throw down an old necklace to represent the Medallion of Rozxanatan the God-Smiter; if you have some costume jewelry with glass or paste gemstones, that usually does the trick.

In general, props are worth digging out for artifacts, for special NPC audiences that you know are coming up, and for particular impact with players who might be a bit jaded or easily distracted. One or two props per game sessions is plenty; you don’t need to turn into an amateur magician just to make a point.

Music

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 31
Watch a movie sometime with subtitles instead of sound, and you’ll quickly realize just how much emotional weight the music carries. The acting, images, and words are important, but the music pulls at your heartstrings, and gives you cues about how the filmmaker wants you to feel during a certain sequence.

Sometimes you want that extra emotional impact for a game. And for those special occasions, it’s worth digging around your music collection to build a playlist. It may seem a little trite, but most fantasy movie soundtracks work well as background music for a fantasy game, so long as you stay away from overly recognizable themes that will jar your players out of the moment. Most of the time, it’s best to use fairly subtle soundtracks (though there’s nothing wrong with some heavy metal beats to keep the momentum, if that’s what you group loves, so long as there aren’t a lot of words to distract people). But if you really want to knock a game out of the park (say, when doing a special “send-off ” game for a player leaving town), then it might be worth it to ascribe themes to particular characters or, better yet, choose songs to go with specific encounters, such as heavy industrial noises for a fight in the dwarven smithy, soft mandolins and violins for the visit to the elven queen, a dirge for a dead NPC, or a bombastic, brassy symphonic charge for the final battle against the villain. The important thing to remember is that the music should support the scene subtly, without taking center stage— for this reason it’s often best to avoid popular music or things with comprehensible lyrics, and it’s important to have the songs cued up and ready so you don’t waste valuable game time and dramatic tension by searching for the proper track.

Lighting

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 31
Lighting is like music; it’s easy to overdo it. But a single candle or dimmer switch can get people to focus, or at least get their attention off their phone or laptop and onto the gaming table. The main thing lighting can do is help minimize distractions. A single spotlight on the center of the GM screen and battlemat usually does very well, if you can set up a table lamp to do so while still allowing enough light for people to see their character sheets.

Attention and Distractions

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 31
Just as effective (and less dramatic) is removing distractions directly. You’re the GM—it’s okay to tell players at the start of the game to put away the game system or music, cell phone or laptop. And it’s also okay to tell them right at the start of the session that if they’re not paying attention when it’s their character’s turn, you’ll skip them that round. That usually does the trick, but if the carrot works better than the stick, you could also give additional XP to the players who are most engaged and prepared when it’s their turn. You can also help them out by writing the initiative order down on the battlemat so the players know who’s acting next, or using a GameMastery Combat Pad or initiative tracker that everyone can see.

Narrative Techniques

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 31
As the GM, you are the one and only conduit for the players to learn about their situation in the game. If you forget to describe something, the players quite rightly feel cheated. If you focus your description on an object, they sense that it might be important. As a result, your choices on how you convey information are crucial to your game’s success.

Description

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 31
The first thing to know is that there are such things as being too loud and too quiet as the GM. If you spend the whole game talking, with players barely squeezing in hit and damage information, you’re likely overbearing and boring your players. But just as dangerous is the GM that’s too quiet; if you’re intimidated or underprepared, you won’t have enough description to really give the players a sense of place, and one room of the castle or dungeon will feel pretty much like another.

There are ways to get across evocative information without writing out reams of text ahead of time. For instance, you might write down three or five words to describe each room, and then riff on those when the time comes to describe it. The words “purple tapestry, enormous fireplace, owlbear pelt on floor” set up a very different room than “bloodspattered walls, black candles, rusty manacles.” In each case, you’ve got enough to fix an image in the players’ minds, without going overboard on description.

Once you have that, you’ll probably also want to add any pertinent notes on treasure, unusual terrain or interactive elements (such as a well or a dangerously weak support stanchion), or hidden terrain elements like traps or secret doors.

This same approach works well for NPCs, though in most cases you need more than just physical description. If you boil it down, most NPCs need a name, a speaking style, a general appearance, weapons and armor, and a motivation or goal. If you have all those, it’s often possible to play a roleplaying scene without generating further stats for the NPC.

Spotlight

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
There are many in-game tricks that a GM can use to convey information or rework elements of his game, including those mentioned above. The most powerful technique, though, is simply describing a monster, person, or item in detail. Anything that a GM devotes playtime to rises in the awareness of the players.

In most cases, that just means mentioning an item more than once. Players pick up on GM references very quickly. If you want a particular character to draw the party’s attention, mention them as someone they see when they return to a particular location. Anyone they see more than once, or anyone they “notice” because the GM tells them they notice them, is bound to get extra scrutiny from experienced players. Of course, less experienced players might not pick up on it, and it’s certainly okay to go from mentioning something to the more direct, “This guard seems to want something from you,” or even “That painting seems bigger than the others, and the frame makes it look more important.”

The point of using the GM spotlight is to get the action moving again. Be brutally obvious only if you must, but don’t let the adventure derail just because someone failed a Perception roll.

Backstory

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
In-world continuity and stories from a setting’s history are usually a GM’s darling—and sheer boredom for the players. No one wants to hear the GM drone on about events from centuries ago, or the complex relationships of NPCs, or elements of the setting’s culture that have nothing to do with the adventure at hand. This historical material is justified only in two particular cases:

When the players ask about it or show interest
When it’s relevant to the adventure

In the second case, relevant doesn’t mean “the GM thought it was interesting.” The lore actually needs to matter in the present day, and help a player make a decision at some point in the adventure. If the backstory never matters to the adventure outcome, then it’s best ignored.

Cliffhangers

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
Leaving the outcome of any suspenseful moment in doubt is a time-honored technique from the early days of movies and literature, and the same trick works just as well for RPGs. When time’s running out, and the party is ready to wrap up for the week’s game, it’s always nice to leave them wanting more. The idea is to present just enough of a hint to make the party curious how events turn out, without requiring them to immediately roll initiative. Some ideas include:

An injured NPC claws his way out of a nearby passage
A messenger arrives with bad news just as the party thinks all is well
A monster bursts in on the party
The party is falsely accused
A villain arrives to gloat
A defeated foe shows up prepared to settle old scores

The point is that a new plot thread starts as soon as the old ones drop, and if you’re still in the middle of a story, freezing the frame on the cusp of a battle or huge revelation keeps player excitement high all the way until the next session.

Cut Scenes

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
When you flash from the main party scene to a secondary view (a lone PC scouting, or events happening somewhere else entirely) you can create tension by flipping back and forth between the two. This works especially well if one scene is fraught with danger and mayhem, or if there’s a race against the clock.

While this might seem like an ideal way to handle split parties and introduce historical events, it doesn’t work for all groups. Impatient players might want to “get back to the adventure” rather than learn about events happening 1,000 miles away.

Flashbacks

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 32
Like cut scenes, flashbacks pause the action to show the party pertinent information from another time. The best use of a flashback is usually one of the exact same location, but much earlier. The sight of blood on a throne room floor might trigger a flashback to a murder scene, or a magical phrase spoken by the vizier might kick off the memory of a fight to bind a genie.

Better still, the flashback could feature the PCs as earlier heroes whose failure led to the present calamity: the tomb raiders who set loose the Lich Lord, or even guards who failed as the prince was assassinated. Above all, keep it short—flashbacks have very specific uses, and a single scene in this style is usually plenty to get the point across.

Foreshadowing

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 33
The best payoff is sometimes the one that takes a long time to set up. The henchman hired at 4th level who betrays the party at 7th level is a long con, but it can have a huge impact if you’ve foreshadowed the betrayal in a way that seems obvious in hindsight (but which is tough to figure out ahead of time).

More practically, foreshadowing is often a clue that drops one or two sessions before the event you’re foreshadowing occurs. Some possible techniques:

Meeting a villain before anyone knows he’s a villain
Fortune-telling with a Harrow Deck
Telling the paladin that a certain town seems dangerous, even heretical
Having a madman complain about a certain locale or event in an over-the-top way
Having a sharp-eared PC hear something suspicious
Introducing omens and portents, such as dead birds or fiery comets

The idea is to make the foreshadowing creepy or unsettling, and vague enough that it doesn’t allow the party to prevent the foreshadowed event. The sense of horror when a PC realizes that he could have stopped something if he’d only put the pieces together sooner is a highly effective emotion, and one that roots the PC firmly in the game world.

When done right, foreshadowing ties in heavily with the idea of continuity. Instead of inventing a new villain every game, why not bring back an old one—appropriately leveled during his time away, of course—who already has reason to hate the PCs? Or you could throw a twist into the storyline by making the sweet maiden they saved in the first adventure turn out to be the major villain of the campaign. Such recurring figures make it feel like all the events in your campaign and even your world are somehow tied together, the story leading to some grand and inevitable conclusion.

Secrets

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 33
Sometimes a player may split off from the group, or you might want to give information secretly to a certain player because of a successful Perception check. Perhaps an NPC only trusts one character enough to impart her dangerous secret, or the players suspect a traitor in their midst. Similarly, sometimes a player may seek to give you information privately, especially if she’s working on her own secret agenda or a rogue attempting to steal from her companions. In instances where you need to box out most of your party, there are several options.

Simply taking the player aside and leaving the room, or passing a note, is perfectly adequate, but knowing another player is getting secret knowledge often eats at other players and can tempt even the most steadfast gamer into metagaming. Talking to the player in question between game sessions is a far safer option, but isn’t always possible. Though there are any number of sneaky ways to let a player know something important without alerting the rest of the party—for instance, covertly sending them a text message if you allow cell phones at the table—in general the best way to handle secrets is to either flat-out ask your players to respect the fact that they don’t know a given piece of information, or—better still—manipulate the game to avoid the need for intraparty secrets altogether. And remember that any time you spend with one player is time you aren’t spending with the rest.

Cheatings

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 33
Though it’s considered more polite to call it “fudging,” cheating happens—sometimes a GM will be tempted to alter a die roll to make the story go a certain way, or to save a player character from a blow that would kill them and knock a fun personality out of the game. Should the GM give in to the temptation to cheat? And if the GM is truly in control of the world, and making his or her rolls in secret—is it really cheating at all?

There are several schools of thought on the matter. One side says that the dice are there to assist the story, not determine it—if a GM needs to occasionally alter or totally fabricate some die rolls for the sake of making an encounter a perfect challenge for the players without killing them, then he’s just doing his job. Others say that it’s the randomness which creates the realism and sense of danger, and that PCs who believe the GM won’t let them die lose half the fun. And a third notes that GMs who clearly cheat or have too many coincidences—the party’s powerful new items always getting stolen by sticky-fingered halflings, or villains being saved by miracle rolls when a player comes up with an unexpectedly effective strategy—undermine the players’ enjoyment, and subtly encourage the players to cheat as well.

Where you fall on the spectrum is a personal call, but if you do decide to fudge rolls for the sake of the game, it’s best done in secret, and as infrequently as possible. And only—only—if it results in more fun for everyone.

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