How do I learn to become a good GM?

Question

I have played and tried to GM games since I was in elementary school, beginning with games like Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and Champions. Recently, I've gotten dack into gaming with a variety of other games (newer Shadowrun and Earthdawn, plus TOON! and Outbreak:Undead).

I've found examples of actual play and advice on how to actually GM a game in games to be lacking. I can only help but feel I am not alone as someone who isn't already a LITERAL dungeon MASTER.

I fully realize that there are an unlimited number of GM styles, personalities, etc. I do not think I am a very good GM though. No one else wants to be the GM, and few care enough to learn the complex rules that I often have to assist with and explain AS WE PLAY. Being left with the responsibility is quite overwhelming unless I create dynamic encounters or make it all up on the spot. I'm often left having no idea what to do.

Examples of Why I Think I Need Help

This question isn't about these examples so please don't dig into them in the answers - they're here to explain the basic things that leave me feeling like I don't know how to proceed as a GM.

I've read preparation is important, but last time I tried to make a story, the players immediately killed the primary character (a friendly person.) within about 2 minutes of starting the game. While I realize now that I let the dice take control over the story, it was rather difficult to continue a story that relied on this friendly character, with the players making enemies with the character's faction. It is still discouraging when my only other attempt at a prepared story ended with the players wanting to go in a complete opposite direction of where I planned. Both times, the hours of work I put into it were completely wasted, leaving me as ignorant as I always was before.

My group often wants to play Shadowrun, Earthdawn, or L5R- but I feel as though I am a horrible GM. The last time we played Shadowrun, I was bored out of my mind as we rolled hundreds of dice to do an obvious straight-forward "kick down the door" mission. If I make security as I believe it should or as the forum threads describe their security or a few example missions I can scrounge up (examples of stories, not actual gameplay), my players literally feel completely hopeless as to how to achieve their mission without total failure.

One time when I was a teenager, I had players blow up at me saying "We have no idea what would work. You're telling us that our character's experience or the ally operative says that would get us killed, but what else can we do?" Since there are no examples of what players can do - I am left with the same feeling as the players. As an adult, I've had a similar occurrence where a player said to me, "I don't know what to do. I don't think we can even begin this mission." I had to make something up and just go with it, creating an NPC group (that fit in with the story) that goes in before the players to do something stupid so they don't have to. Mainly because I ALSO didn't know how to accomplish the mission, so I acted as the players would using my NPC group. Extremely boring and IMO a failed dungeon run.

I've had successful stories, but I've had more boring encounters than successful ones. Seeing as how roleplaying takes endless hours to complete a story, I do not see benefit in an activity that wastes more time than is enjoyable.

How Do You Learn To GM?

Where are the resources? Books, blogs, gameplay examples? Am I missing them? How did YOU learn to be a good GM? Or do you feel as bad at this as I do, even when it's a successful, fun encounter?

Answer 1

How To Learn To GM

There are a variety of resources nowadays that can help you accomplish this. There are also many existing questions on this site about GMing that will point you to more content than you can ever consume.

Actual Play Resources

In your question, you mention wanting to see more examples of real play. There's a number of ways to do so.

• Podcasts capture the entire play session. There's video podcasts too. See Where can I find actual play podcasts for RPGs?
• Session Summaries (aka Actual Plays, Story Hours, Campaign Journals) usually are severely abridged, but leave out a lot of the cruft. See Where can I find transcripts of actual game sessions? and Where to find game session reports?
• Blogs. There's a million blogs about how to GM. Start with the RPG Bloggers Network. Go to the blogrolls of blogs you like to find more like them. Focus in on blogs about your chosen game(s) and play style(s).
• Play by post forums. If you want to watch people actually play in text, there's a million of these too. Many dedicated sites, specific forums on RPG.net, ENWorld, Paizo, etc. In fact, RP-by-post is very popular even when not affiliated with a proper RPG/ruleset.

Some games also have better advice sections than others - see What role-playing games have good gamemaster advice sections?

Play

In the end though this seems like possibly not the most effective approach. Watching games is less of useful learning experience than actually being in one. Have you considered playing in those games before running them to learn from other GMs? It's reasonably easy to find other gaming groups, you don't have to abandon yours to play in another. Where can I find other RPG players?

Go to RPG conventions, play on forums or G+ (see also Sites for finding online RPG players for a play-by-chat RPG Campaign?) - just get more experience. Being a GM is often called a "judge" for good reason - you need to spend a lot of time being a lawyer before you make a good judge. You need to spend some time playing to become a good GM. If you can't think how the players will proceed in a given situation, you need more play time.

Read

There are many books on GMing - see What is the single most influential book every GM should read?

Also try watching/reading relevant genre media. "I don't get how to put together a story" should get its first-order correction by consuming some of that genre and looking at the stories.

Learn

A lot of the problem you seem to be experiencing is pure storytelling. Try How do I get better at narrating/storytelling as a GM? and As a GM, how can I create and role-play diverse NPCs better? Read up on the specific aspects of GMing you feel you're not good at, there's plenty here. Try questions tagged with the gm-techniques tag. Feel free and ask questions here as well about specific aspects of GMing.

There are also a large, large number of RPG forums out there in the world, for every game and type of gaming. If you don't understand something someone posts, you can easily reply and ask.

How Did I Learn To GM?

We didn't have these newfangled Interwebs when I was a kid. I almost GMed before I played. I did play in a very informal game of D&D in a car on the way to Scout camp, no dice, PvP, everyone had artifact weapons. But other than that, I started out as a GM. I bought a sci-fi RPG (Star Frontiers) without knowing anything about it (I had bought and played a little TSR chit game, Star Force, and was looking for other fun stuff from the same company). None of my friends were interested in GMing and I was in a small Texas town that didn't have conventions or whatnot - life was less mobile and connected back then. So I just ran games. And kept running them, and learned from my mistakes and corrected. I read comics and science fiction avidly, so characters and plots weren't that hard to devise. Beyond that, I just learned the way you learn to do anything through practice, whether it's a sport, writing, a musical instrument... How-to's and YouTube videos are cute jumpstarters nowadays, but "Do, and learn from doing" has yet to be eclipsed in being the primary way to actually become good at something.

Answer 2

Step 1: Forget "Writing Stories"

If you come at GMing with an Author's mindset, you've just rendered your players little more than passengers on the railroad of your story.

Write encounters. Have them be related, but not tightly interdependent.

Write NPC's. Drop them into the right place when you need them. If the PC's kill them, erase the name, the injuries, and change some description (or not), and put them back in the file for reuse.

Let the story grow from play, not play arise from a prepared story. OSR types call that "winging it"... new schoolers call it emergent story. I call it good GMing.

Step 2: Be a player in others' games

You'll learn a lot about GMing by figuring out what is and isn't working in others games.

Step 3: Find the right game

Shadowrun and Earthdawn are detailed settings with complex trope sets, tied to fairly complex rulesets. If you know them well, then they're not bad choices.

Simpler mechanics and constrained settings (like dungeons or active duty military games) make for easier GMing; you have an inherent carrot and stick, and can often use military games to simply point them at the end point, and ask them to find a way there. Dungeons limit their ability to go beyond your planning.

Step 4: Just Do It!

To be blunt: my first few years of GMing were hellishly bad. Better than some of my buddies, tho', so I got to keep trying. I kept getting better.

Play different games. Try a variety of styles. And play some of the newer stuff... A Moldvay D&D clone, Cosmic Patrol, Fiasco, Mouse Guard, Houses of the Blooded... games that do things very differently. You'll find ut after about 5 sessions of Mouse Guard or Houses what you do or do not like about them. Fiasco and CosPat will take less than that.

Resources

The best resource out there is your players. Ask them what worked and didn't!

The Book of Proverbs, The Sayings of the Buddha, The Tao te Ching and the I Ching, The Book of 5 Rings, the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, and several other such quoteable texts filled with sayings are excellent tools for improvisation. Pick a random bit. Then use it as the basis for an encounter or NPC.

Any book on programming adventure games. You get far better GMing advice from the guides to writing inform games than from advice on writing novels. In a Novel, the goal is for a person with total control to give the illusion that the characters have acted of their own accord. In writing adventure game programs, the illusion is that there was a single controlling voice, while the reality is that the story should arise from the interactions of environment and the player's choices. In roleplaying, the story emerges from the choices of several players and the prepared encounters (and unprepared but winged encounters).

The card games Aye, Dark Overlord and Once Upon A Time. They are excellent for developing the narrative skills. I can't say OUAT is "great fun" but it's definitely "good practice." And both provide nifty card sets that can be used for prompting when in need of elements for an off the cuff adventure.

A stack of index cards and some index card cases. It's one of the best tools out there for tracking stuff. Learning to make suitable notes and keep them filed is a life skill, but it's one that helps once you start winging it.

Answer 3

While you've asked us not to dig into the specific examples, I'd argue that if you took each of these examples and turned them into a question here, then you'd gain some insight, because one of the best ways to learn to be a better DM is to ask other DMs. I'm lucky enough to have three to six dms at hand to discuss my specific problems with and it's an endless help. So I'm not going to dig into the examples becuase you've asked me not to but if you DID choose to post them, I'd love to help you by showing you it's not all on you and by a few changes in the way you appear to be thinking you can change the bits you are.

Answer 4

There are a couple of really good answers already. I'd like to heavily stress one in particular: learn from other GMs.

Play in other games. See what their PCs do and how the GMs handle it. I won't dig into your examples but I will address them: The fact that you recognized that they were issues is a mark in your favor. Plenty of folks I know believe they don't need to learn anything new and have no need to refine their DMing skills. You have just proven yourself to be a greater GM than them. Even if you do see yourself making some mistakes, at least you don't make the most important mistake of turning a blind eye to them.

The best resource IMO is other DMs. Not only do you get to see what they do "right" but also do "wrong" (in your opinion, of course). Hit a play-by-post or a friendly local gaming store. Even if you're not a player just be a wallflower. Not only is it fun but also informative.

I've learned primarily through observing others. Sure it means I picked up a bad habit here and there, but the more I varied my network the fewer and farther between those got. I like articles and the like but for me nothing does it like witnessing another GM. Rattling off about what does and doesn't work in a game is all good and fine in a blog. At a game table with immediately visible results the effect is a lot more powerful (and generally credible). As much as I also kick myself in the rear for making similar mistakes as you do, I also make sure to give myself props for acknowledging where I can improve. You should too.