The 9 GM Styles: The Ok, The Terrible & the Meh - Part 2 - Game Masters Guide

[Music] hello and welcome to this episode of how to be a great GM my name is guy and we're continuing to look at the nine GM styles that I have come across in my many years of role playing now there might be more so have a look at last week's video to see if anyone's added to the list in the comment section underneath the video and if you find more that are in this or not in this video either let's add them so we can expand and we can unpack them now to start off with the caveat here is a this does not necessarily apply to everyone B you might fit into more than one of these categories and not hard-and-fast categories as generalizations and see this is my opinion so you might find that you kind of going well I've got a bit of that a little bit of that but it's not really both of them it's kind of a bit of absolutely totally understandable this is just an idea that allows you to then sit back and say well I actually I'm a bit of an author I'm a bit of a villain I'm a bit of a player I'm a bit of a this I'm a bit of that how can I improve my game because ultimately that's what we're looking for is we're looking for the ability to step back look at how our games run ask ourselves these difficult questions saying well what am I missing what am i lacking sometimes we don't know so that's what these kinds of videos are for so let's get right into it so we looked at last week the Galactic force the rules interpreter the narrator and the author now we move on to the villain hopefully so the villain is a GM who is quite literally a an absolute bastard there's just no other way to to phrase it this is a GM who is against the players they have to win as the GM they like to outsmart the players and make the players feel as if they're stupid they like to manipulate the rules to their own ends and of course they're a complete meta gamer they don't separate what they know from what the NPC's or the monsters or the environment that the characters are traveling through do now it's a bit of a tricky one that meta gamer is there something to be said as a benefit for a villain type GM well yes there is but we're gonna discover that's a very small space so let's unpack so against the players the villain sees that the villain GM sees the players as being in direct opposition to the NPC's and the monsters with they game they see them as something that they have to try and beat now the reasons for that I'm not going to go into I have no idea why that's seen as that but I remember when I first started jamming I would get so frustrated and so disappointed that my characters my NPCs my monsters we're just constantly getting defeated and destroyed and I'd plan and write out stat blocks and do all of the basic kind of work which everyone assumes Jim should be doing and early GM's it's important I do all of that and then it's still to feed them so easily so quickly it just felt completely empty like well why am I doing this it doesn't make sense so I would get so personally down because I was losing all the time role playing is not about winning or losing there is no victory condition there's no loss condition and the most important thing is as the game master you're not there to beat the players you're there to facilitate role playing in a game environment that's one of your biggest roles so being against the players is difficult on the other hand there is a certain amount of gratification that really hardcore players who really like to push the system get from managing to overcome the GM that's if the villain geom allows them to do it within the confines of the rules now when we get to the must-win part that's a problem if the GM must win it's really easy the GM has all the power they have all the knowledge so for them to win to beat the players it is really really simple and I'm gonna confess I had a moment I had a player who was particularly obnoxious out of game as well as in game and they were a trap finder and they would they would just circumnavigate everything that I had done I got frustrated and I went right I'm making a trap this trap is a and it was crazy it is a that it's a large room filled with vinegar and the characters walked up to the edge of the ledge and I knew that the player didn't have this knowledge so I was metagaming back King on his metagaming failing him and they saw that it was a pool of vinegar and they tested it to see if it was acid and a check that it wasn't poisoned and of course it wasn't they then jumped in to swim across now what I know for a fact is that vinegar is less dense than water it's physically impossible to swim in vinegar you cannot do it so what happened this heavily armored individual sank to the bottom like a rock and it didn't matter what rule he tried to invoke to allow him to survive he had to walk across and I think I made it 300 yards long he had to walk under this vinegar inhaling vinegar of course which burnt his lungs and ultimately killed him I was a villain GM I was not playing the game I was beating the player and to this day it haunts me as being a a brilliant trap if someone would come up with it but be a horrific moment in my career where I really failed my players subsequent to that the player left the group not that particular trap but they kind of started to get the hint that they just weren't meshing they weren't gelling within the group the GM the villain GM also tries to outsmart the players it's not difficult to outsmart players players although they are incredibly intelligent people collectively they are a committee and we all know that committees have very little effective power because they talk themselves into corners and into circles and then they forget what they were talking about in the first place so that's point number one point number two however is where is the gratification in outsmarting your players and preventing them from going on your own adventure surely you should be focused on working with the players helping the players outsmart your NPCs so the story can continue having said that if you are a player and you really like to be challenged you don't like anything to be given to you you want to really work for it then a villain GM might be the right kind of opponent any problem of course is that they still hold all the power so a villain GM is also someone who's going to manipulate to the rules they don't like the rules that prevent the players from taking damage from the geums creatures they don't like those kinds of things they're gonna use creatures very specifically to defeat the players they're gonna go well my players got immunity to lightning so I'm gonna give them a very specific fire-breathing creature even though it doesn't necessarily make sense well there would be no reason for it it's just that I know that that's the case I'm gonna make it challenging that's often an excuse that a villain GM takes when they're being a sadistic bastard and they're trying to control the game and beat the players they go oh no I'm making it challenging you should do your research you should do this you should do that yes everything that the players do the villain GM is gonna be trying to counteract so that they can win they're a big meta gamer as I said so generally speaking if you're a villain if you find yourself constantly fighting constantly attacking your players and and making them suffer it's time to reassess unless you have players who like to be the beat down broken type of individuals that ultimately relay result from this type of GM now the player GM this is someone who runs an unfortunate person who has enough guts to say all right well we don't have a GM in our group so I'm going to run the game but ultimately I prefer playing to jamming and it's an interesting question when you speak to other GM's well do you prefer playing or do you prefer GM e I for a very long time we're talking 15 years have always preferred to GM rather than to play and the reason why is as a player I don't know everything that's going on I get frustrated I feel like I'm not sure of where to go or what to do so it becomes for me a lot more nervous a lot more tense a lot more emotional than it is as a GM where I'm in control and command of everything and I can react to everything without the restrictions of rules or of the limitations of my actual character sheet so that's something you often get GM's would like to be both your GM's who would prefer to be a player and when you have a Jim who prefers to be a player when they want to be a PC but they can't be they will generally create a game master PC now there's a challenge with this of course that game master PC because the game master wants to be a player but they have all of the knowledge of being a game master that GM PC can run the risk of just dominating and taking over and just knowing what to do because it's being run by the person who kind of knows what to do it's kind of like the Bible story right the person knows what's coming up because they are the person it's a very tricky story they can be scattered because their focuses on being the PC or the GM PC rather than being the storyteller so they're busy thinking well what would my PC do here what my GM PC do here a GM PC if it's not clear as a there's a character who's played by the GM but is who's part of the PC party so they basically act like an additional character within that group thinking and reacting under the control of the game master much more so than an NPC would do it is a bit tricky if you have too much investment in your GM PC of course because you start to then override so the GM's can be scattered they can kind of really focus on their GM PC rather than on the story that's happening on the other hand they can have lots of cool moments because they are thinking like a player because they want to be a player they're going to add in a lot more PC at PC action they're gonna add in a lot more interaction a lot more dialogue a lot more options for the PCs to grow and expand a bad player GM of course is going to have their GM PC having most of that limelight falling upon them but a player GM is someone who understands the trials and tribulations of being a player a lot better perhaps than the more distant geum's who don't play very often so those games are gonna be a lot more focused around the PCs around their stories around their motivations and things then it would be anywhere else but it will be a little bit scattered because the GM doesn't want to be a GM so they're not going to put in time necessarily to invest in basic GM stuff it's not their headspace but it can be a really cool space to play in now the oh I'm not a GM I'm just doing this because while it's fun and we needed someone to tell a story these kinds of GM's unfortunately I'm not a huge fan of and it's because they set a very bad tone for the gaming hobby rather than allowing people to experience it in truth imagine if we were say a rugby club and the coach was that not really a cage every time I you keep the ball yeah go for a kick it yeah oh good you keep well done you kicked it yeah well good all right so shall we go have beers I mean rugby's rugby yes let's do soccer now no you touch the ball Wow you don't really like to touch but that was cool touch the ball again you know that's to me what a not a GM GM is is someone who's completely unprepared because well they just having a laugh they can be a lot of fun they can run adventures where you're stuck inside a giant ice cream cone and you've got to eat your way through it before the ice monsters attack you know they can they really can think outside of the box they're not constrained by the idea of a story of a narrative of plots they're NPCs are just there to well they're there to die or to not die it doesn't really matter they're nonsensical plots often because there's no planning it's like well as funny yeah you kill the thing you jumper the plane you fly somewhere else these are the kinds of gems who often sit back after the game and say always so much fun the characters did this and they did that and they did the next thing and it's just crazy the not a GM is oftentimes also just a GM who hasn't prepared they might have an inkling of how to run games but with no preparation they're just ad-libbing on the fly they're kind of going along as it happens and they don't have a plan so there's an uncertainty to the outcomes so the outcomes become irrelevant we don't need the outcomes yeah you win you win yeah yeah I mean it doesn't really matter it's all fun it's all laid up anyway it does it's not new they're great for a one-shot campaign when you're running something like goblins running around or skitter Manders running around it really doesn't matter you've got these nonsensical nonsense type of creatures generally speaking not all goblins are nonsensical you to get some Accountant goblins but generally speaking one shots that are run by these kinds of GM's are okay because no one can kind of pick up on the long term collapse in narrative because there isn't one the PCs are for fun so oh you want to build a cobbled paladin that's great that's fantastic you want to ride a warhorse cool you ride on its head you don't ride on his back because you could build your whole house on its back oh that's wonderful it's one of those lovely so not a GM GM's are okay and one shot so good when they're coming up with really really crazy ideas the stories are there the rules are not interested in being involved because it takes too long to look for them and it's just fun anyway it's just fun in it it's just fun anyway long term however if you're a not a GM GM you're gonna find that your groups lose interest it can become overwhelming after a while it's like wow what are we really doing here we're just we're having fun yes but after a while there's just no substance to it there's no continuity there's no congruence i congruence either it's just this or a nail now the actor the actor is someone that we come across from time to time and I certainly will will raise my hand and say yes I I recognize that I have actor like tendencies when it comes to being an actor GM and I'm aware of this so I try to limit myself every time I impersonate an NPC every time I try and do a narrative I try and hold back I'm consciously aware that I do like the sound of my own voice and as a result of that I have to learn to be as succinct as possible when playing my characters my NPCs so that my PCs are the ones that are actually the ones that take focus because we look at it the actor is very good at improvisation they great at coming up with voices and NPCs with interesting backstories and they really can make the world come alive regardless of where the players go they're not will builders in terms of them worked out the names of every NPC in the village but they're happy to come up with it and you won't notice it necessarily because they have just come up with it on the fly and they've done so seamlessly so these games can feel like they heavily planned even while they actually aren't challengers come on of course when you go back to the village and you try and find the same people the improvising very seldom writes down the names of things that they have improvise because they're busy improvising them they love to grandstand they'll talk for hours giving you this description of this valley behold the valley opens up before you like the swathe of silk a blue ribbon washes down as the river makes its way towards as your oceans beyond birds Twitter in the end half an hour later they've just finished describing the fact that the road is like the back of an old troll can be very engaging can be very very very absorbing from a story perspective from a performance perspective that's where we get to so the actor uses grandstanding and performance to to make the games feel really alive but they can overdo it they can go too far where eventually the players are just the audience they're there just to watch an actor GM perform and at the end clap oh I like your NPC voices that was great now for someone like me who likes doing that I have to be very aware that not everyone appreciates that kind of thing and the PCs and the players should never be just an audience or extras if they are going hire a stage make that leap from GM where your poor players are an unsuspecting audience to a stage where you can have a paying audience who can stand up and applaud you at the end of your of your show so players are an audience they're there to be played to as far as the actor Jim is concerned and the PCs are just extras oh yes you're there but a noble old Baron walks up to and he's got a big moustache and he speaks an old voice and then the actor GM goes on and on and on and on for a while as the they do this complete character impersonation and everyone is completely absorbed and the PCs forget the questions that they were going to ask because they're busy watching this King Lear like performance from an actor GM plotz focus on the NPC's because that gives the actor more opportunity to perform doesn't it it gives them that grand stand upon which they could stand and say look at me I'm great actor and I happen to be a GM as well so actor GM's can create incredibly immersive spaces they can create a lot of fun NPCs to engage with but they can dominate the stage and make the players feel as if they really are just arriving there should have popcorn and a can of coke or whatever it is that they drink when they go to the movies because that's what they're in for really and if the characters of the players start to be a little bit more performance orientated the actor GM will either play up to that or they're gonna start getting cagey towards that better performer and kind of yeah have some conflicts and kill their character off quickly so that the actor the NPC GM can take over now I have missed the modular GM I don't know how that happened I'm sorry about that so the modular GM that's the risk of doing these things live the modular GM is the GM of course who runs modules they don't do anything else the modular GM is someone who goes through that module they make sure that everything that's in that module is hit and done and that's a really good thing that can be a really powerful thing as a player to be able to step in going oh we're running this module I heard this I saw that spoiler I read about this I'm so looking forward to it and they're gonna get exactly what's in that module the modular doesn't the modular GM does not deviate from the module the risk of course is that when the players characters try to deviate from the module the modular DM has no recourse but to say you just can't go there the module doesn't cover it or you go but it comes in a cord goes in a u-shape and it comes back again what the planet is a u-shape so I can't leave this space yeah because that's where the adventure is set the module says it's here so you have to stay here you can't break away from that the modular GM is also someone who will be very thorough in going through that module and won't change very much in it they might make one or two changes but generally speaking they're going to stick to that module because they're there to use it this creates a very very very firm base in which players can operate it also gives us a complete control of our expectations we know what the modules like often time players may have read it or have heard about it so so it caters to that expectation occasions debt space it removes of course autonomy in terms be able to decide exactly where one can go because you can only go within the confines of that module I am very bad at running modules because often I'll read the module I go well yeah that's cool but I think it could be this could be more interesting or this could be done in a slightly different way or I forget because I'm not looking at the module I'm not used to reading and following kind of those things unless I'm doing a fabled Lanzer video in which case it's very different but generally speaking I'm looking at my players and I'm trying to see what my players are doing and occasionally checking my notes and if I forget something I'll just sort of patch it up later on the modular GM can't do that they have to follow through the module but that's a strength that means that you're gonna get a complete experience and that I think is how modules should be run anyway if you are running a module as written then that's how it should be done it should be done as it's written and should include everything that's in there if of course you're using modules for inspiration well then you're a different type of GM you fall somewhere else here so generally speaking the GM types that I would say if you are very strongly leaning towards if you are leaning towards villain if you're leaning towards player if you're leaning towards not a GM or if you're leaning towards an actor type of GM those GM's can be they have some strengths they definitely do some have more strength than others generally speaking however they also have more negatives more difficulties more barriers to play than some of the other options and you're going to struggle to keep players at your table for very long because they're going to get frustrated they're not going to know necessarily what to do or they're just not going to gel with your particular style this of course is applicable to all things if I have a rules interpreter playing in my game that rules interpreter generally leaves because I shut them down when they constantly oh well what about this rule yes we'll talk about that later for now this is my rule and we run the game so rules interpreters struggle to play in my games galactic force people often go well yeah you've said he'd jumped off of this to do that but he really should be dead even though you've just given him three damage it was cool but he should be dead authors find my game sometimes lacking they go well what's the Insignia well it's some script that's been written no but what is what does it look like exactly is it two Griffin's entwined on the dexstar side of the shield and on the sinister side are three stars in a pyramid shape but you know what is it well alright if I have to come up with it I'll try and come up with it on the fly so authors can become frustrated with my style so I know the weaknesses of my particular gaming style of my particular role playing style and I'm trying to work on it I'm trying to include more rules in my game because that's where we're going and if we look at the rules systems they have lots of care lots of attention put into them for these kinds of reasons I'm trying to improve my rules kind of space I'm not gonna do Galactica it's just not me I'm trying to reduce the author in me I'm definitely trying to reduce the actor in me I personally like the narrator's side of my jamming style so that's what I'm gonna be sticking with so these are the kinds of things I'm not a modular and I can't do it I just I just doesn't work for me rarely so I'm not gonna try and push that also know your limits know your you can't move beyond here or there because it just doesn't work for you that's something that's very important and understand your players if they're looking for a villain type GM because they're a bunch of sadists absolutely if you're not a villain type GM it's going to be very difficult for you to do that I was having a conversation in the day with the player it was a game that we were playing and I was playing a particularly nasty type of person and that player was saying as a GM they struggled to get to that nasty space they're monsters they're villains are often not nasty oftentimes they are what's just too passive you've got to look at that and say okay well where do I fit in what system what type of style can I use to work for me as a person as well as for my players I hope that this video these two videos have helped give you a little bit of insight maybe there are things that I left off here I think this is a fairly complete list of different GM styles as in terms of these are used frequently and the pattern can be seen and look at what you are reassess maybe you are a good gem and you kind of cover most of these all the good ones anyway and so there is no need to two to two reflect reflect upon your players are they looking for the type of gym that you are and then tried to adjust or to suggest different gyms take take center roll for the player group that's there there's nothing wrong with that either anyway I hope it has been helpful I hope it's been inspirational leave your comments below leave your types of gem below leave your confessions below I've certainly confessed to too many of these negative ones as well that have been learning ever since on how to change that until next time if you haven't headed on over and I need to do this because it is a fantastic resource and we're talking about GM styles world and Volcom they're a partner with our channel we sort of send people to them they send people to us so that's the relationship that we have but they are an incredible resource for organizing your world authors can get lost in world anvil for decades and never come out again because it just questions so many things but for all of the rest of us who are not necessarily trying to dictate the letter on the coins that are used by an ancient empire what it does is it really helps bring your thoughts together and adds a little bit of detail that perhaps you would normally have glossed over I certainly have been and I'm going to say this honestly because I know that will Danville watches these I haven't used it as much as I should have simply because I'm reluctant to commit to paper my world I like to sort of evolve it as it goes along if it's committed to paper there's a certain feeling that I was like oh I'm running a module I I need to stick to this because my players are going to be expecting x y&z yes that's one risk the other side of course is that the players don't have a consistency they don't necessarily have something they can grip onto I've realized that a lot of people really like that so I need to work on that that's going to be my goal what's your goal to improve your GM style well leave that below two well that's a lot of conclusions I feel like Peter Jackson right now anyway until next time thanks for watching and happy gaming [Music]

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 107,440

Keywords: dnd 5e, dungeon masters guide, Dungeon master tips, Game master review, Dungeon building, World building, Dnd gm tips, Game master toolkit, dnd, d&d, dnd gm tips, game master tips, Great game master, Tabletop Roleplaying, GM, How to GM, Roleplaying demo, How to be a great game master, Game Master, Great Game Mastering, How to, How to be a great dungeon master, DM Tips, Dungeon Master, RPG, Game Master Tips, Dungeon Master Tips, GMing Tips, DMing Tips, dm styles, gm styles

Id: rhgT4g4LiGg

Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 19 2018