How to be the Game Master for the first time : RPG Basics

Описание: This is your first time being the game master? We have some tips to help you through your first adventure. Be that for Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Shadowrun or Numenera.

The first thing you need to do is set expectations for the players. let them know that you are running the adventure for the first time and you will be making mistakes because you have yet to know all the rules.

Make all the characters. The reason for this it gives you a better understanding of how to create characters and will allow you to control what characters are in your game. Nothing worse that to have to deal with another gamemasters characters. (someone else has a 15th level Paladin when the rest of the party is only second level)

Having the players create characters the very first night is not a good idea because making characters can be a very long process and use up the entire night. I have spent many a session just making characters or to be honest waiting for the other guys to be done making their character and wondering why I showed up in the first place.

Make sure to make a few variations of every character type. This why the players will have a choice. They will most likely want to keep their characters or will ask to roll up new ones the next time you play.

Run combat simulations to make sure that you have a good understanding of the rules and to be sure that you are not sending something too scary vs the players the first time out. It is very tempting to have a great dragon show up and eat the street samurai the first time around.

Enroll the person who knows the rules the most to help out. If you don't they may spend a lot of time challenging your rules.

Make cheat sheets of the rules that you will be using the most. this will keep you from having to look things up in the book while the players are getting bored.

Have fun... Really forget the rules if you need to. It does not matter if the Nano in Numenera is making it rain purple Dinosaurs. As long as everyone is having fun that is all that matters.

Just a disclaimer. I'm not running an ad for Numenera or Shadowrun they just happen to be my two favorite games. I do not have any connection with the creators of either system. I do however think that you should go and buy those games.