Throw the Dice! Let's GM - Reimagining Yourself

how can you improve your own mind to better prepare yourself to run a game of dungeons and dragons or pathfinder or star finder or bounty hunter or whatever role playing system you want to play how can you make your little gray cells work just a little bit harder and faster for you so your game runs more smoothly the next time you gm well this is what i do hello and welcome to this week's episode of how to be a great chair my name is guy and today we are looking at how to improve your mental space how to improve yourself so that you can game in a better way as a gm in an easier way in a more dynamic kind of way how can you free your mind i know this sounds very esoteric and if you haven't watched last week's video um a very brief recap is well it's all about bringing everything into alignment and the most important thing is that you can practice it and put it into play this doesn't require you to have some kind of amazing matthew mercer gene that allows you to tell these complicated stories with accents and all that kind of stuff this is good old-fashioned practical stuff which you can put into play and where does this come from well i have a kickstarter running at the moment and that's for this book here a practical guide to becoming a great gm and this book is the embodiment of all of my videos over the last four or five years and looks at it in lots of depth with examples with tasks for you to do all of that is built into the book kickstarter is currently running now why do we want to put effort into becoming a better gm why do we want to improve our mental faculties well a lot of times a lot of things i hear from people is oh it's such a burden being a gym i panic i freeze i get mental block i i'm worried that my players there's all of this anxiety that starts to present itself to us as we start playing the game then there's all the burden and all of the pressure of having the players ask you for rules decisions asking you to interact with things that you didn't plan for all of that just applies more and more and more pressure to you and after a while at least this is what i've been hearing people get tired of doing it or they never start doing it because it's just too much so we need to prepare ourselves mentally to know that we are in a good place that we are in a strong place to be able to resist all of that kind of pressure how do we do that well to begin with we make sure that we have a nice set of dice and this video is sponsored by easy roller dice they do make beautiful beautiful dice this is their bra set which you can find links for down below big thanks to easy roller dice they've sponsored this channel for years because we love their dice um so start with a clean slate step back from everything that you have known about role playing about gmming step away if you are a novice gm put that book down that's the dungeon master's guide or the rule book of whatever role playing system you're playing i'm referring to not the practical guide which you should have in hand you don't have to have that i'm being facetious step back and look at what it is that you need to develop about yourself to be prepared to be a great shim you might not know what those are so very briefly what those are is it is imagination you need to build up your imagination and i know this sounds trite it's like well everyone has an imagination yes but do you know how your imagination works do you know how to activate your imagination when you need it as opposed to just going blank i've done a whole bunch of videos on how to do this but i will give you some more advice later on in the video on a surface level on how to do this we need to activate our imaginations we need to give ourselves permission to have fun and i cannot i cannot stress this enough folks i get so upset so upset when i hear people saying oh i was afraid to do this because my friends might laugh at me or my friends might think that's stupid well then to be perfectly honest with you your friends they're not your friends if they're not supporting you okay they need to support you but i'm getting ahead of myself okay so you need to give yourself permission to have fun you are the gm you are not this service provider no one has paid you money to run this game unless you're a professional gm in which case stop your whining and dance monkey the other idea is that you need to enjoy playing the game and if you're not then you're not playing it right or you're not playing with the right people so it's about setting up your mindset that you are the most important person at the table not any of your friends not any of your players not anyone watching you it is you who is the most important person at that table if you are not there the players can do nothing but sit there and exchange dice that's all they can do they can't actually play so you are the one who has all of the power to determine how you should run your game don't let others do that for you again i digress okay you also need to understand what you are like as a gm we all have different approaches to gmming there are dozens of them i think i have identified sort of nine main ones that we we tend to fall into you need to identify what type of gm you are and understand what are the strengths what are the weaknesses what are the the things that allow you to really shine versus the things that cause you stress that cause you to fall apart if you are not a good gem at running very serious dark games where everything is morbid and horrific i can't do that as a gm i physically cannot do that i love slightly comedic games there is nothing more dramatic than a tragic death followed by a piece of comedy that's me i cannot change i i can't do noise unless it's noir comedy i i like having fun and i like telling jokes and making stupid puns and tropes and dad jokes and all that kind of stuff that's what i like and if you don't like that don't sit at my table yes some of my friends go oh i don't like your games good bye that's their choice they should be happy playing a game but you should be happy too do you see what i'm driving at here so we need to we need to understand that and then we also need to understand the type of game that we like to play so what do we like as a gm what do we like what do we like what are we like what all of that about the game and then we need to set up our actual game space what ideas what themes what notions are interesting to you and that make you gonna go oh i really want to do that maybe you want to do a giant heroic game where everyone's riding dragons and fighting in the sky that sounds amazing that sounds awesome but if your players don't want to do that get new players find a different group because if you are being forced to run games in a space that you are not engaged with it is going to be a long hard slog i have been there i have been the spotty teenager who was trying to please his friends because they were my only friends and i lived in a little town and we didn't have the internet we used to walk 15 miles a day just to get to the telephone all that rubbish i've been there and i know what it's like because i also had friends who wanted to play very specific type of games in a very specific type of way and sometimes that clashed with me and i just let them abuse me because i said okay i want my friends to be happy i want to play d and d but i have to do another dungeon crawler which i find personally mentally very very dull but they loved it so i had to do it again and again and again and again and it killed my soul it really did so when we then take all of this and we say okay so we need to prepare ourselves we need to understand ourselves we need to understand what we like we need to understand what we want and then we need to understand in what space can we give that to ourselves those are the spaces that we need to work in three of those are easy what do you like write it down i like these kinds of games go as in depth as you possibly can what type of gm are you figure out what is your style i know it can be tricky to go well what's my style and i look at it and i go i know what my style is my style is very much a case of it's going to be dramatic it's going to be comedic it's going to be tragic it's going to be grim it's going to be dark it's going to be light mine is an emotional roller coaster i love those where it's big wins big losses tragic i like all of those emotions to be thrown into my game i don't like sedate normal games i know my games are chaotic i like to have my players win a victory and then an entire city gets destroyed in a battle because i want the players to move slightly further north my games are chaotic i know that that's the kind of gm i am but my games are also very much about the players story i want to see where the players go i want to see how the players interact so my npc villains are big and bold or conniving and subtle but i also want them to lose to the players so i make them as devious and as twisted and as as horrific as i can so my players fight against them but i know in the back of my mind i'm rooting for my player characters to win and i am dedicated to trying to find ways to ensure that that happens so that is what i am those are the kind of games i like you understand how you like to run your game and how and what type of game you like and what world space you like you will be in such a strong space i know it sounds like i know all that but do you really know that so your task jot down those things what do you like as a gm what kinds of games do you like playing and what kind of world spaces what kind of environments do you like playing in once you've got all of those things then step back and say okay i need to develop myself mentally to exploring those different areas to looking at aspects of those different areas doing some research watching videos on this channel i've done videos on all of this stuff already understanding how that affects you and looking at those parameters and then saying okay my imagination i have four aspects of my imagination this is very quickly folks i have research i have experience i have uh inspiration and then i have free form association research if you like to run gritty games set in a medieval environment go and read books or watch documentaries on the medieval time period it will help you tremendously if you are someone who likes to have games that are really kind of real and stuff go for a walk in the woods go for a hike in the mountains get out there do something about it experience life ask people questions if you have relatives who fought in wars ask them questions just build your experience up in terms of what it was really like and of course freeform association is where you are linking different things together just watch people walking by in the traffic and look at their shoes look at their belt look at their watch if they're wearing one what does this say about me right now it's a fitbit so it says oh he's trying to take his health seriously is he going to actually do it or not well let's watch for six months and see if this thing is still on there or if after a week it's gone into the draw along with all of the other gadgets that supposedly help with life those are two possibilities the other one is that i'm wearing this because it's not actually a fitbit but it's an international communicator beam me up scotty no okay well there goes that theory the idea is that you link all of these different things together and you tell a story about that character about that person you don't have to know the real story about it it just helps to develop your imagination then you use that you apply it to those different spheres that you've been looking at and you go aha these are my games this is my style this is what i want to play in and then you stick to it for a while master it learn about it practice it again and again and again until your players go okay we get it you really like victorian romance novels set in cairo we're kind of done having these the mummy chase sequences happening although it wasn't victorian technically uh we're kind of over that can we move on please yes yes we can now actually move on so that's my advice to you today in terms of getting your mind prepped and ready take charge of the game because that's your job but take charge of yourself in that game first until next week a massive thank you to my patrons who support and make this channel possible a big shout out to easy roller dice for giving me these amazing dice thank you so very much and all the links down below a final reminder just because you're still here and i love you have a look at the kickstarter a practical the practical guide to becoming a great gm link down below and that's me done and you have happy gaming

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 15,121

Keywords: creating the campaign, campaign creator, how to be a great game master, how to gm, great gm, campaign creation, dnd campaign, dnd campaign design, dnd campaign ideas, rpg campaign design, rpg campaign ideas, rpg campaign, role playing campaign, campaign design, fantasy campaign, running the game, game master guide, dungeon master guide, gm tips, dm tips, epic guide to creating campaigns, game master tips, dungeon master tips, imagination

Id: chvbCHogKFk

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021