{"id":31510,"date":"2016-04-09T04:23:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-09T09:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=31510"},"modified":"2016-04-09T04:23:29","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T09:23:29","slug":"rutskarns-gminars-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=31510","title":{"rendered":"Rutskarn’s GMinars: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I got the chance to design and run my first Dungeons and Dragons <\/em>adventure, I spent more time on it than I did any twenty of my grade-school assignments that year. The document I eventually completed was a rambling ill-stapled mess, an exhaustively plotted town and desert fort and disjointed prophecy cobbled from equal parts book materials and doodles and random numbers. I’m not sure which I understood less about going in–my own setting, the principles of storytelling, or absolutely any of the game’s rules.<\/p>\n

Things didn’t get any smoother when I ran it. As my uncle obligingly delved the dungeon I’d made, I stammered through area descriptions, second-guessed the bizarre layout, and struggled to figure out who hit (and how hard) every single time we touched the dice. Eventually the game rattled and rambled to its abrupt conclusion and boss battle–a skeleton giant (probably based on King Leoric<\/a>) inexplicably standing guard outside the goblin fort. Waiting, apparently, for my uncle to come out and duel it.<\/p>\n

Well, my uncle didn’t. He saw the massive skeleton, shut the door, and barred it. Which puzzled me–what the hell was I supposed to do about him not engaging <\/em>the boss battle? That didn’t happen in Diablo. <\/em>Why hadn’t I planned for this?<\/p>\n

I wish I could say that was my genius moment of inspiration. Nope. My narration was that by the time he did open the door, much later, a sandstorm had blown the skeleton boss apart and scattered his bones. And so concluded my first-ever session.<\/p>\n

You can do better than that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’ve said, and will keep saying, that more people ought to try tabletop roleplaying games. It’s something gamers especially can enjoy. Not only are they amusing, they provide a fresh perspective on game design and they’re one of the best ways imaginable to scratch creative and social itches at the same time. And when I tell people all this, they believe me…they just don’t believe me when I say you can play them too. <\/em>For some reason there exists a persistent myth that you can’t play or run or understand D&D<\/em> unless you’re part of a secret club that had tryouts, years ago, which you missed forever<\/em>. I understand programmers have a similar problem. You write code and make little games? <\/em>Oh, that’s cool! That’s really interesting. But of course, I couldn’t do that.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

And that’s a more or less asocial activity; part of the trouble with RPGs is that somebody has to step up and run <\/em>games. Somebody has to design adventurers, administrate rules, and generally perform a task not many people have ever even seen performed. And if you’re the one trying to get your friends to play roleplaying games, guess what? That person’s probably going to end up being you. Which theoretically hinges a lot on your ability to do a good job, which, understandably, is scary to a lot of people.<\/p>\n

It’s perfectly well for me to say you’ll figure it out pretty quickly and have a great time doing it, even if that’s true. My default approach to new things is to go off half-cocked at eighty miles an hour and figure out what I did wrong from the emergency room, but it’s not hard for me to grasp that not everyone’s comfortable doing that. Some would prefer to have some idea of what they’re doing before trying something as social and technical as running a tabletop game can be.<\/p>\n

That’s where this series will come in. As we go along I’ll break down the theory, practice, and effect of running your very own bespoke tabletop campaign. I’ll talk about understanding and applying rules, designing adventures, and dealing with your players so that if and when you do run your own game you’ll have concrete models to draw from. What’s more, I’ll provide plenty of homework questions and example problems to be answered in the comments, meaning you’ll get a peek at other GMing styles and perspectives along the way.<\/p>\n

Let me just say this clearly: reading this series, or another like it, is by no means a mandatory perquisite for running a game. Let’s say you’re not<\/em> anxious about going out and grabbing a free tabletop system (like the D&D5 basic rules set<\/a>), then puzzling it out from the instructions and some on-the-fly experience. Maybe you’re asking yourself if you should wait for more of these posts to come out before trying to run a game from scratch. My answer, without hesitation, is absolutely not. <\/i>This series is not about qualifying you to run a game; GMing isn’t like driving a truck or administering vaccines, it’s a strictly general-purpose civilian activity that actual children can and do perform. No, this series is about overqualification<\/em>. It’s about building confidence through understanding underlying principles. It’s about going in mentally prepared and knowing that you’re pretty much guaranteed to have an above-average first session.<\/p>\n

One quick note: I’m folding my previous series on which tabletop games should new players try? <\/em>into this one–so if you’re waiting for my take on the FATE system, for example, stick around. For everybody else, I leave you with this question:<\/p>\n

What would you do with a locked-out skeleton giant in the middle of the desert?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I got the chance to design and run my first Dungeons and Dragons adventure, I spent more time on it than I did any twenty of my grade-school assignments that year. The document I eventually completed was a rambling ill-stapled mess, an exhaustively plotted town and desert fort and disjointed prophecy cobbled from equal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabletop-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}