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GameMastery Guide / Running a Game / How to Run a Game / The Art of GMing / GM as Actor

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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.

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