Taking a break from Promptober/Monstober to talk about this because of D&D.

I wish to preface this article with the notion that I have nothing against Dungeons & Dragons the game. The parent company of the game, Wizards of the Coast and their Reptilian Overlords at Hasbro are a whole different story. If you hear any negativity, it is because the caretakers of the most-identified-with roleplaying game have gone completely off the rails.

I also have no personal beef with any D&DTubers or DungeonTubers, whatever they wish to be called. I may slip and call them shills occasionally because they do act as WotC’s representatives in the #TTRPGCommunity. Really I have nothing but respect for these various YouTubers. I may take some of their opinions with the same grain of salt that they take mine with. But hey- there’s always room for dialogue if you want one.

Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.

Sorry for the diversion. I do legitimately love running TTRPGs.

I’ve been a Game/Dungeon Master, Referee, Judge, Narrator, Storyteller, etc for about 40 years. I wouldn’t still be so willing to do it as often as possible if I didn’t love it. Trust me, most days it’s a lot of what I think about, even if it’s solo gaming.

I love being a GM. I love games. I love the hobby, and some days I even love the industry. I love writing adventures. I love creating campaigns and campaign settings. I spend or have spent a lot of time reading about being a better GM, world builder, campaign creator, and writer/game designer.

This blog and my YouTube channel will be heavily focused on Game Mastering. “Game Mastery?” Being a GM/DM/Whatever. I tend to lump anyone in the “game runner person” category into the GM. If you’re the person at the head of the table in charge of the game, you’re the GM. I’m addressing you regardless of what the books call you.

It’s not all ego or vanity.

I legitimately love setting up scenarios and situations for my friends and family to put their characters through. More recently I’ve backed off of creating whole stories for the game and just kinda let the players decide where they want to wander off to. I present a lot of options and clues. Once upon a time I believed in rigid plot structure and what is called “railroading.” That type of story structure has a time and a place, but not in regular home campaigns.

Yes, there is a certain amount of ego invested in my creations of the game world, campaign setting, monsters, scenarios, Non Player Characters, etc. I even create a lot of my own magic items for fantasy games or starships and gadgets for sci-fi games. I have entire universes for superhero characters. It’s just what I do.

I try my best not to make it all about me, though. I want the players to have the illusion of free will or actual free will in the game. There’s a fine line, but I love it when the “story” can write itself. You usually don’t see that sort of thing with published campaigns, prewritten adventures, or one-shots. Not all players are super invested in that kind of gaming, either. Some players just want to bash the monster and grab the loot, and that’s cool, too.

It used to be a lot easier to sit behind the GM screen.

In my youth, I could just pop out a villain  for DC Superheroes or old T$R Marvel and that’s what we were doing for that session. I could throw together a more-or-less random dungeon an hour before D&D and we were good to go. Star Wars was easy mode back in the day because we were pre-Clone Wars. (No Jedi, evil Empire, yay Stormtroopers.) I didn’t start getting serious about planning until we got into Ninjas & Superspies and RIFTS.

Sure, I scripted out a lot of adventures once I started running convention games. We only had 4-6 hours back in those days, so there had to be a clear beginning, middle, and end. I took a lot of cues from some of the RPGA games of the day. (It used to be a lot more than just D&D back then.) There were also a metric ton of books and magazine articles on “How to be a Dungeon Master” back then.

We didn’t have the Internet until later on. In some ways, having access to more information and social networks was a big help. It was also a big source of, “You’re doing it all wrong” rhetoric that we would have all been better off without.

Nowadays, it seems you can be as invested as you want to be in the game.

The essentials of running any given game remain mostly the same. Roleplaying NPCs or monsters, setting up the environment, adjudicating various rules, and just generally keeping the game on course hasn’t changed much in 40+ years. Some people enjoy putting in lots of prep time on their game. I do.

As I frequently say, what works at my table may not be the same at yours. Do what works best for you and your group in your campaign. There are countless resources out there for people who want to put in less prep time. Otherwise, you can spend hours and days in campaign prep or adventure writing.

Why do I do it? Because it’s FUN!

That’s really what it all boils down to in the end. Someone had to take on the mantle of Game Master, so it may as well be me because I love it so much. Other people nope out at the very notion of being anything other than a Player. Most games require at least one player to step into the Game Master mantle. Personally, I think it’s better because I get to play dozens of characters and roll tons of dice.

There may be no such thing as a Dungeon Master shortage, but I’ve rarely seen a situation where there were too many GMs, either. There are legitimately plenty of kind, gentle, loving people out there who want nothing to do with the toil and perceived stress that the GM is under. I always kinda chuckle about that because it’s not stressful. Like a lot of other things in life, doing the thing you love the most rarely is stressful.

We’ll get into what makes a “good” Game Master as well as what a Professional Game Master does in future articles. I’ll also be welcoming all of the brand new Dungeon Masters to the gaming world and the hobby in an upcoming article. Finally, regardless of which side of the screen you find yourself on, I hope you have fun, because that’s really why we’re here.

Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.