Advice/Help GM How to.

[Soviet Panda]

I'm not good at being a gm, which kind of sucks with some of the things I want to do. I got rp of the month once, true, but I have no clue how that happened. Any and all advice on how to be a good gm would be appreciated. Personal experiences, or observations you made on someone else gming, all are welcomed.

 

[rae2nerdy]

First things first. Prepare to be organized and dedicate some time to ensuring your roleplay remains active.

Then I find the following things to be helpful purely from an organizational standpoint

1. Come up with an idea ( a setting , a plot, etc. )
2. Decide how structured you want the story to be ( a plot that moves along, a slice of life roleplay, a mix of both )
3. Decide how many people you are comfortable supervising
4. Decide what kind of post requirements you'll need ( how often players post, how much )
5. Decide what kind of characters you'll be accepting ( are their any limitations that need to be placed on this, like no young children, no xx species, etc. )
5b. If your players are making characters with powers decide the limitations you want to place on those
6. Set up a system of discplinary actions.
( ex. you break a rule you get a warning, you break it again you get kicked out )
7. Talk to your players see what kind of suggestions they have for your roleplay.


That's about all I can think of off the top of my head for general GM rules. There might be more specific advice depending on the kind of roleplay you want to do.

 

[Shog]

I agree with everything rae2nerdy said, but in my experience it goes a bit deeper than that. I always list some rules at the top of the CS page. This helps to create the atmosphere and lay out some limitations. There is a balance between being strict and lenient that needs to be found, so if you do list out some rules be sure to make some form of "counterbalance." For me, I generally try to make it expressly clear that while if I say no it's final, most anything can be debated. If player X thinks a certain power, mechanic, etc. would work well in the RP, I let them argue their point. In my experience this tends to make people feel more welcome to throw out ideas, and people are more willing to fight for a world people feel they helped build. I generally find it beneficial to come up with a plot idea, but be willing to change. Obviously this depends on how detailed you have things set up before it even starts, but nudging players in the right direction and letting them go seems to work fairly well for me. The big catch here is knowing when to continue nudging them. I have a bad habit of not realizing when players are running out of direction and are in need of a good nudge. Anyway, I hope this helped. Continue being awesome!

 

[Idea]

First and foremost, I don't think you really need advise. Getting RP of the month once is already a great accomplisment and you should be proud of yourself for it

That said, I'll still give out the advise I gave others today:

Spoiler

Before I say anything else, we need to get a hard truth out of the way. Even if you execute perfectly, that's still only 30% of what's neededed, in other words, not enough. A king can't rule without subjects and a roleplay can't live without players. What you can help your odds, but ultimately , your success or failure will be mostly luck if the draw. You need the right melting pot of players to form an active, lively and functional community around your roleplay, and to get them sufficiently close and cooperative to enjoy the particular style you chose for your roleplay. So 99/100 times, roleplays are just gonna die. It's a fact that one needs to accept before they start GMing, or there will many more hardships they will experience. Even getting a roleplay off the ground at all isn't easy at all.

That said, what experience I have I would like to try and share. Do of course take everything I say here with a grain of salt, but I hope it can be useful for you.

One thing I will always advise is planning. The more you can get solid and ready beforehand the more smoothly and intelligently you can introduce it to people, and the faster you can get things ready. While garnering interested, attempt to lay out a plan for every section your RP will need, and what will be in it. If possible, start writing those sections as soon as you get any interest. While this may seem like a potential waste of time, it can also potentially save you from having lost the players from the sheer wait. I also advise having a ready plot in mind, with openings, but already having some things set at least. Namely, in your interest checks you're gonna want to communicate what kind of characters the players will be playing (take a medieval war, the players ought to know if they're gonna be playing the ground troops, the generals, a special unit or whatever else), what the goal of the roleplay is (as in what the characters are ultimately supposed to be heading towards or trying to achieve), the general tone (more cheerful and slice of life-ey, more comedic, dark and gritty, that kind of thing) and of course, the technical details (post requirements, rules and barriers for entry like writing samples or limited number of players)



So by my recent experience, making a good roleplay first and foremost starts with asking yourself "what RP do I want to make?". I don't mean just the plot and setting, albeit those are important parts of the RP as well, but also the things of ultimate importance to the RP. Is there a message to communicate? Do you simply want to explore the concept of a particular world or form of magic? That kind of thing.
While many would answer they want an RP that lasts and everyone can have fun in, having that as your goal means you are ultimately willing to sacrifice every other aspect of the roleplay for that to happen. But anything needed for that goal, you won't budge on.

Having a goal will let you have a sense of direction for your own decisions as a GM, as not having one will make you inconsistent. Both ends of that particular spectrum, the tyrant GM and the GM that just goes along with everything, tend to be horrible experiences for players.


The second thing to note is there is a distinction between you as a GM and you as a player. Don't make your characters the center of the plot, don't be the exception to your own rules. Both of these can be infuriating and confusing, not to mention practically asking to become too self-centered to properly care for your player's needs. In short, while as a player you want to enjoy yourself, as a GM your goal should be the good of the RP you set out to make. You don't have the responsibilities of GMing as a player, so you shouldn't enjoy the power of a GM either. Keeping that in mind will help you balance out what needs to be done better, and get closer to the point of view your players experience with the limitations you set.



Now going more into the meat of your questions, what you want to keep a roleplay interesting boils down to three factors: competitive advantage, pacing and diversity. You want to give your players what they came for fresh and fast.
Competitive advantage is the answer to the question of why the players chose your roleplay among the hundreds available. What makes it interesting to begin with, what's your hook? Figuring hat out isn't easy but if the players aren't given a frequent supply of it, they will simply start abandoning the roleplay. While extremely important though, this factor can be replaced sometimes, but again, luck of the draw there.
You also want to pace the roleplay right, and by that, I mean plot and posts need to at one advance fast enough that people aren't eternally kept waiting for every little avance , but also not so fast that the players are overwhelmed as soon as they join. Be sure to advance the plot in steady intervals and keep in mind players will usually have very busy lives.
Lastly there is diversity. Even if you have the perfect activity that is exactly what our players wanted, you're gonna be running on fumes very quickly if you are unable to evolve and bring change. If your RP only has one side to it, then you're going to be very boring very quickly.

f player X thinks a certain power, mechanic, etc. would work well in the RP, I let them argue their point. In my experience this tends to make people feel more welcome to throw out ideas, and people are more willing to fight for a world people feel they helped build.

I want to chip in my own experience as well. While it is true that this can be quite helpful, it should also be taken with caution, as many players have a hard time telling the difference between having the right to defend their cause and having the right to nag you until they have what they want.

 

[Shog]

First and foremost, I don't think you really need advise. Getting RP of the month once is already a great accomplisment and you should be proud of yourself for it

That said, I'll still give out the advise I gave others today:



I want to chip in my own experience as well. While it is true that this can be quite helpful, it should also be taken with caution, as many players have a hard time telling the difference between having the right to defend their cause and having the right to nag you until they have what they want.

That's why I make sure that people understand that when I say no, it means no. And great points, by the way.

 

[Idea]

That's why I make sure that people understand that when I say no, it means no. And great points, by the way.

How do you that, I may ask? While I do state it, it seems not to be effective when I do so

 

[Shog]

How do you that, I may ask? While I do state it, it seems not to be effective when I do so

I don't usually have a problem when I say no, but if they continue pestering the subject then I reinforce my decision. I explain why I say no and make it blatantly clear that no matter the argument made I will not change my stance. Only once or twice has this not gotten the point across. Sometimes I point out that the longer they fight for something that I will not allow, the further the RP moves along without them. This usually convinces them to cave or just leave all together. Regardless of the situation, I try and help them out. I suggest ways that allow something fairly close to what they want, which often helps make a smoother transition to a more suitable character.

 

[Idea]

I don't usually have a problem when I say no, but if they continue pestering the subject then I reinforce my decision. I explain why I say no and make it blatantly clear that no matter the argument made I will not change my stance. Only once or twice has this not gotten the point across. Sometimes I point out that the longer they fight for something that I will not allow, the further the RP moves along without them. This usually convinces them to cave or just leave all together. Regardless of the situation, I try and help them out. I suggest ways that allow something fairly close to what they want, which often helps make a smoother transition to a more suitable character.

Huh... Well, I guess it's a matter of the people we've encountered then