Tips for the beginner GM (Game Master)

I thought I would share a few small tips I learned when we first started playing. These just make running the game more manageable for the Game Master (GM). Most of them I either figured out by doing it wrong or by watching good GM's run games online.

1. If you don't like the "fold up the bottom" method of creating the minis for the characters (which we found to be frustrating), use binder clips. I glue both halves of the mini together including the base. Then I use a mini binder clip at the bottom and take off the arms afterwards. I'll post pictures at some point.

2. Organize your character cards. They have to keep track of one character each. The GM has to keep track of all the players' characters as well as all of the monsters. We've gotten to the point that I'm keeping track of a character and pet for each of four players and as many as 8-10 monsters per combat. There may be as many as 6 different monster types in combat as well. If you don't have the character cards organized to be able to reference them quickly, combat slows to a halt. I use binder clips to hang small character cards (printed at %65 size) from my GM Screen.

3. Use a GM screen. This may seem silly, but they love being surprised by stuff that you reveal from behind the screen. I don't roll combat rolls behind the screen, but I do hide what kind of monsters they might face, notes, character cards, and anything else I need to run that adventure that they don't need to see. I just used the sides and bottom of an Amazon box and glued it so that it stood up on its own.

4. Make it up, make it up, make it up. We usually start with the adventure fairly in tact, but before long they've decided to talk to 6 different characters that I had to make up on the fly, visited 3 rooms or places that didn't exist before, come up with more ridiculous ways to solve the problems they face than I could have anticipated, and generally caused mass chaos in whatever I had originally planned. Go with it. They love it. They have literally been jumping up and down hugging each other with joy and excitement over their creative solutions.

5. Write your creative inventions down. I've had to go back and try to remember prophecies, spell ingredients, instructions, character names, etc. that I didn't write down. And if you get it wrong, they'll be sure to let you know ... because they will remember everything you forget.

Whether you are running a simple game following the adventure closely as written or creating a bigger game with a large persistent world, hopefully these tips help ease the newer GM (like me) into a completely awesome experience with the kids.