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I got a sincere question today.
"Any advice for a new GM?"
The answer to this depends on how much time you've got. An answer could take seconds, or years.
I'm just going to start typing thoughts, in no particular order.
Players are dumber than you think, but also smarter than you think. Constructing clever puzzles for them is going to be frustrating for you, for them, or both. If you think of a thing and a way to solve it, odds are good that they won't think of it. And if they come up with something else and you don't allow that to work, they're going to be mad.
So come up with problems, and for at least problem it's probably a good idea to come up with at least one solution, just so that if they all die you don't look like the jerk when they say "how were we supposed to survive that?" and you answer "no clue. Figured you'd come up with something. Sucks to be you."
Don't be afraid to steal things from movies and books. Your players are likely not to recognize them, and if they do, so what? And if they just start replaying however the hero of the book or movie solved it, well, you can either let that work, or you can change the script. You thought this was _Big Trouble In Little China_? Well forget it, Jake, it's _Chinatown_.
Your role is to enable fun. It's not to show off how clever you are. It's not to beat the players. Nor is it to give them everything they demand. The point of a game is that you take risks in order to win rewards. Both the risks and the rewards have to be real (in the fictive universe of the game) for it to be fun. And part of the fun is the knowledge that it could have gone horribly wrong.
Don't be afraid to kill characters. Killing them without warning is kind of a dick move, unless you've pre-given that warning by, for instance, saying, "OK, kids, tonight we're playing _Tomb of Horrors_ so pull up your big boy pants and get ready to meet a horrible fate." Basically you're in the memory-creation business, and people remember their characters' demises, particularly if they were the result of epic failure or epic stupidity. No one is gonna remember being whittled to death by a pack of 10 orcs twenty years later, but they sure as hell will remember clamping a stick of dynamite between their jaws, lighting the fuse, and then diving into Father Dagon's mouth.
No one cares about your worldbuilding. No one cares about your NPCs. No matter how cool either one is, none of your players are going to pay enough attention to see how hard you worked. Sure, if doing the work, so that there *are* all the hidden connections that make it all make sense, is something you enjoy, knock yourself out. But your players will never know whether you invented an entire culture with its own internally-consistent constructed language, or just plopped down three elves that you named after prescription medications. You're almost certainly not J.R.R. Tolkien or M.A.R. Barker, and it's exhausting to try. Just name your Dark Lord Of Evil "Chad" and be done with it.
Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't sweat rules mastery. If your players try something and you don't know the rules around it for goodness sake don't bring everything to a halt for 25 minutes while you try to make sense of the grappling rules. Is it something that's a 50/50 shot? Great, flip a coin. Probably won't work, but not a bad idea _per se_? Works on 1-2 on d6. Long shot? 1-in-6. Sure, try it if you really want? 1 in 20. And do get a set of place value dice so you can actually roll a one-in-a-million shot. You'll almost certainly never see it happen, but if it does you and your players will be talking about it until your dying day.
Likewise, don't sweat nickels and dimes. If it's pretty reasonable a character could find a thing and afford it, then let 'em have it. If it's ridiculous, make them go on a perilous quest to get it. No one is going to care how exquisitely balanced the game was in ten years, either.
Rolling dice is inherently risky. If you're rolling, something bad could happen. The better way is to present a plan so the GM nods and says, "sure, that'd work." The best way is to make the GM laugh.
Failure is often more fun, and cooler, than success. A nice thing about fantasy RPGs is that there are plenty of fates worse than death. But even so, capturing the players and then putting them in a situation they must escape from is probably more fun than shaving their hit points away until they finally keel over. And if some of the party dies, it's always fun to stage a raid on Hell to get the dead characters back.
Your NPCs and your monsters don't want to die either. There's no reason they have to fight to the death. They probably don't even want to fight. If the party doesn't seem like chumps, then the anatgonists are probably going to want to run away rather than risk trying to kill you and maybe failing. NPCs and monsters can surrender too. Or have changes of heart and decide to come work for the party. Or surrender and keep looking for their chance to escape or betray. All of these are more interesting than just subtracting hit points until someone runs out.
That's probably enough for a brief answer. Maybe I'll write more of this if I think of good stuff. Maybe I won't.
"Any advice for a new GM?"
The answer to this depends on how much time you've got. An answer could take seconds, or years.
I'm just going to start typing thoughts, in no particular order.
Players are dumber than you think, but also smarter than you think. Constructing clever puzzles for them is going to be frustrating for you, for them, or both. If you think of a thing and a way to solve it, odds are good that they won't think of it. And if they come up with something else and you don't allow that to work, they're going to be mad.
So come up with problems, and for at least problem it's probably a good idea to come up with at least one solution, just so that if they all die you don't look like the jerk when they say "how were we supposed to survive that?" and you answer "no clue. Figured you'd come up with something. Sucks to be you."
Don't be afraid to steal things from movies and books. Your players are likely not to recognize them, and if they do, so what? And if they just start replaying however the hero of the book or movie solved it, well, you can either let that work, or you can change the script. You thought this was _Big Trouble In Little China_? Well forget it, Jake, it's _Chinatown_.
Your role is to enable fun. It's not to show off how clever you are. It's not to beat the players. Nor is it to give them everything they demand. The point of a game is that you take risks in order to win rewards. Both the risks and the rewards have to be real (in the fictive universe of the game) for it to be fun. And part of the fun is the knowledge that it could have gone horribly wrong.
Don't be afraid to kill characters. Killing them without warning is kind of a dick move, unless you've pre-given that warning by, for instance, saying, "OK, kids, tonight we're playing _Tomb of Horrors_ so pull up your big boy pants and get ready to meet a horrible fate." Basically you're in the memory-creation business, and people remember their characters' demises, particularly if they were the result of epic failure or epic stupidity. No one is gonna remember being whittled to death by a pack of 10 orcs twenty years later, but they sure as hell will remember clamping a stick of dynamite between their jaws, lighting the fuse, and then diving into Father Dagon's mouth.
No one cares about your worldbuilding. No one cares about your NPCs. No matter how cool either one is, none of your players are going to pay enough attention to see how hard you worked. Sure, if doing the work, so that there *are* all the hidden connections that make it all make sense, is something you enjoy, knock yourself out. But your players will never know whether you invented an entire culture with its own internally-consistent constructed language, or just plopped down three elves that you named after prescription medications. You're almost certainly not J.R.R. Tolkien or M.A.R. Barker, and it's exhausting to try. Just name your Dark Lord Of Evil "Chad" and be done with it.
Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't sweat rules mastery. If your players try something and you don't know the rules around it for goodness sake don't bring everything to a halt for 25 minutes while you try to make sense of the grappling rules. Is it something that's a 50/50 shot? Great, flip a coin. Probably won't work, but not a bad idea _per se_? Works on 1-2 on d6. Long shot? 1-in-6. Sure, try it if you really want? 1 in 20. And do get a set of place value dice so you can actually roll a one-in-a-million shot. You'll almost certainly never see it happen, but if it does you and your players will be talking about it until your dying day.
Likewise, don't sweat nickels and dimes. If it's pretty reasonable a character could find a thing and afford it, then let 'em have it. If it's ridiculous, make them go on a perilous quest to get it. No one is going to care how exquisitely balanced the game was in ten years, either.
Rolling dice is inherently risky. If you're rolling, something bad could happen. The better way is to present a plan so the GM nods and says, "sure, that'd work." The best way is to make the GM laugh.
Failure is often more fun, and cooler, than success. A nice thing about fantasy RPGs is that there are plenty of fates worse than death. But even so, capturing the players and then putting them in a situation they must escape from is probably more fun than shaving their hit points away until they finally keel over. And if some of the party dies, it's always fun to stage a raid on Hell to get the dead characters back.
Your NPCs and your monsters don't want to die either. There's no reason they have to fight to the death. They probably don't even want to fight. If the party doesn't seem like chumps, then the anatgonists are probably going to want to run away rather than risk trying to kill you and maybe failing. NPCs and monsters can surrender too. Or have changes of heart and decide to come work for the party. Or surrender and keep looking for their chance to escape or betray. All of these are more interesting than just subtracting hit points until someone runs out.
That's probably enough for a brief answer. Maybe I'll write more of this if I think of good stuff. Maybe I won't.
