Posted by Brett Evill at
02:36am on
06 November 2017
Comrades!
You asked (1) "how do you become a good gamemaster?", and (2) "how do you know when you are?". I answer:
(1) There may be qualifications, such that if you don't have them you won't become a good gamemaster. But if you do have it in you to be a good gamemaster, the way you realise that potential is by practice. I started DMing in 1981, swithced to GMing in 1982, and stuck at it though I was bad. In 1987 I got to be good. I suppose that I had 750 hours of bad GMing in me, and just had to get them out.
In this as in most such things 500 hours repeating bad technique won't suffice. Practice only works if it involves working at an appropriate level of challenge, always striving to get something right that you never got quite right before, to do something a little bit harder or a little bit better, trying things you haven't tried before, noting your mistakes and doing it right next time, analysing your successes and refining what worked, rehearsing your art until its best practice is your second nature. Do, do again, do more, do better.
Besides that, the secret ingredient of good gamemastering is to have good players. My heyday was 1987—1994; its special excellence was due to four of my regular players.
(2) You can tell that you are good by three indications: (a) that when your adventure is working, you understand why; (b) that when your adventure is going wrong you can tell that it is and recognise why at the time it's happening (rather than working out why you had a trainwreck by analysing the wreckage afterwards); and (c) that you routinely try ambitious plans and things that you have not done before, and they work.