So I've Never GMed before...

[simply Nathan]

And I might want to try it.

Reworking a post that was going to go into the Why I've Stepped Away from GURPS thread before it closed for straying off topic (so here this kind of stuff will actually be on-topic).

There's the stereotypical fantasy setting we've all heard of, and apparently some people have played it a great deal. I haven't; I want more exposure to it than I have.

Whenever I consider leaving GURPS for D20 Micro-Lite or somesuch I keep wanting to houserule in point-buy, templates instead of classes, active defenses, and DR rather than armor class. Only things I ever really want to change about Hawthorne magic is removing the ability to cast spells for free and some features I never use (like ceremonial casting and softening if not ignoring the prerequisite chains in the Magic book); I'm not nearly as much of a tinkerer as seems to be the norm for GURPS fans.

I've played probably fewer than a hundred sessions of a D20-lite (we ignored all feats other than the Fighter's Cleave, spell preparation/memorization, and the skill system, as well as the existence of druids) and three or four of sessions GURPS (100-point adventurers in a land full of dinosaurs with a GM used to 3e and only one player who really knew what he was doing at character generation; I wanted a fighter-mage and didn't have a feel for how small 100 CP was, winding up with 30 spells at skill 12 and 1 or 2 points each in almost every sword skill, but DX 10).

I view being a Game Master rather than playing a player character, or even playing the leader of the party if I do get to be one of the heroes, to be more of a chore than anything else. But if it's the only way to get moar like this, I'll do it. The more I complain about how difficult it is for me, the easier it winds up sounding from the replies I get. Maybe if I squeak enough I'll eventually build up the courage to try finding a group.

My only personal GURPS products are Lite, a copy of Caravan to Ein Arris, and DF: Loadouts(a Christmas gift; in hindsight I should probably have asked for Henchmen, but hey, stats for boomerangs!). I have a friend with GURPS 4e Basic Set, Magic, Thaumatology, several 3e books, and a bunch of D&D (boxed set through 3.5), as well as miscellaneous other system core books, like Rollmaster and Space 1889. Lack of overall materials isn't exactly a problem here.

I do not personally have a means of purchasing more PDFs for myself, so I can't always get specific things from DF to smooth things over play. I have another friend whom I rarely see who seems to have every PDF imaginable, and I sometimes take a look at the DF series from him. I plan to obtain DF 2, DF 3, Henchmen, and possibly Allies and/or Treasure Tables. Any other recommendations, should I suddenly go from Wealth(Poor) to Wealth(Struggling) and find a means of electronic purchasing?

I don't have people for in-person gaming. I do however have a number of friends on Skype and IRC channels, some of which seem to be interested in playing at least a little bit when I discuss these things. I need to be confident in what I can and will do and able to set a scheduled time to play before I try bringing a group together.

Hex maps are a little bit of a sticking point for me, so maybe I'll use LEGO Heroica board game pieces and miscellaneous bricks for the miniatures and architecture, ignoring the GURPS RAW's preference for hex grids. Seems a lot easier than trying to find a dry erase board with a hex grid on it, or meticulously putting one on myself.

Dungeons and buildings tend to be rather rectangular anyway, so it's hard to get grid maps to play nicely with them (or at least it looks that way to me), though they do work very nicely for caves and mountain trails. It's not like I can trivially overlay a hex grid over an existing gridless dungeon design, not with MSPaint at least.

I can give an inventory of the miniatures I have available. I don't think I have what it takes to wing the stats for monsters on the fly, though the goblins are easy enough for me and there's a tiger in Basic I can copy into my notes and give attack stats to. Last time I listed them asking for help with stats, the thread got buried without a response...I don't know how much of that was lack of interest, or if I just named or tagged it badly. Anyone want to take a stab at helping me? SMs based on relative size to my hero figures, ST appropriate to the monster's size, and venom stats for snakes and spiders at least (the humanoids are easy to stat as monsters).

There are a few things about my personal fantasy setting that stand out at least a little bit from what I hear to be the norm. First, I like to put a big focus on the culture not having "racist dickweed" as the default attitude for anyone(not elves, not humans, not even dragons), cities being racially diverse and mixed breeds being at least as common as typical single-race characters. Second is that I'm currently waffling about how blatantly my Christianity-with-the-numbers-filed-off religion is exactly that, and whether or not there are lesser beings than the Dragon Himself that would be classified as gods in typical gaming parlance. I'm also not sure if my first attempt at GMing should be set in such a weird world or if I should try to stick to something more familiar.

I have my race templates and interbreeding rules written up on Google Docs...in my GURPS-inspired Fantasy Heartbreaker, not GURPS proper. Perhaps I should try converting them. Perhaps I should make a separate thread for discussing my half-breed rules, simple as they are, because I like the way they look on paper. Anyone interested in that?

[namada]

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[JP42]

And to piggyback on what FarTrader has to say - it's absolutely okay to not ever be the GM. Some folks just don't have the desire, and that's a preference that folks should honor and accept.

There are a handful of play by post GURPS games going on at any given time over on myth-weavers.com, if you'd like to keep an eye out for them there. It's not the same as being at the table together, but it's not terrible either. Roll20 hosts GURPS games that take place in real-time, but online, as well. You might find someone there to join.

[simply Nathan]

Sounds like I'm talked out of it.

Maybe some day I really will feel like it. I love worldbuilding, I just don't feel like I have the what it takes for something as social and improvizational as game mastering. With luck I can get into a DF game with a custom race and/or religion :3

[doulos05]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Sounds like I'm talked out of it.

Maybe some day I really will feel like it. I love worldbuilding, I just don't feel like I have the what it takes for something as social and improvizational as game mastering. With luck I can get into a DF game with a custom race and/or religion :3

Well, I'll just say this. Not to try to talk you back into it, but to paint a different picture. Some GMs love adventure design. They love to build challenges for their players. I've played with some and the experience in an adventure is stunning. But they don't enjoy the world building aspect so their adventures seem really isolated. But they know their strengths and they play to them. If you like world building, you could GM and play towards that strength.

Build the big-picture layout of the world. Fill it with giants, dragons, or whatever cool big picture threats you can envision, and then have the players make characters who deal at that level. Movers and shakers who shape the world and challenge evil realms instead of evil orchestra tribes. Who explore evil lands in search of Intel for the upcoming battle instead of dungeons in search of MacGuffins and loot. Who wield armies in battle with dark lords instead of swords in battle with orchestra chieftains. Then, you're playing to your strength because you've built something you're interested in.

[zorg]

Originally Posted by doulos05

Build the big-picture layout of the world. Fill it with giants, dragons, or whatever cool big picture threats you can envision, and then have the players make characters who deal at that level. Movers and shakers who shape the world and challenge evil realms instead of evil orchestra tribes. Who explore evil lands in search of Intel for the upcoming battle instead of dungeons in search of MacGuffins and loot. Who wield armies in battle with dark lords instead of swords in battle with orchestra chieftains. Then, you're playing to your strength because you've built something you're interested in.

I think this approach would actually require even more improvisational skills ob the part of the GM. Designing high-powered opponents takes much more time, and higher powered PCs are much more able to throw the GM a curveball. Just saying.

[namada]

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[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Maybe some day I really will feel like it. I love worldbuilding, I just don't feel like I have the what it takes for something as social and improvizational as game mastering. With luck I can get into a DF game with a custom race and/or religion :3

My most successful campaign with my current group was run in a world that one of them built. You could potentially find yourself a me to actually run the thing and be the other guy who wrote the setting if that's what you really want.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

It's not like I can trivially overlay a hex grid over an existing gridless dungeon design, not with MSPaint at least.

You can do this without too much work using GIMP, a very powerful freeware image manipulation tool. You'll need to download that and find a script (like this one) to create the grid.

[Voyager]

Well, I GM'ed my first game over the Christmas break. It's a very different experience sitting on the other side of the table.

One thing I really wish I had done before hand was acted out the various major NPCs by myself. When I'm a PC, I generally have an easy time playing the characters I've created, largely because I spend a lot of time in their heads, so to speak, but I didn't think to do that with the NPC's to they were a bit flat.

For the rules management, several of the other players were experienced Gurps gamers, and a couple of them had been GMs before, and they helped immensely with resolving rules questions. Also, when you are the GM, you can pull numbers out of your bum, when you need a solution, and nobody knows which rule covers the situation.

The last thing I ran into was player management. One of the players was playing a very dishonest character in an adventure that was fairly oriented around the party being honest. Near the end of the adventure his character got caught in a way that the only reasonable response for the NPC's was to remove him from the party. Overall, that part was not so much fun. I should have started dropping warnings earlier that the character was treading on dangerous ground. On the other hand, we were able to salvage it by having his character ally with the villains for the climactic end battle, which the party managed to successfully evade...

We didn't actually use hex maps; we just did the fight sequences by calling out what was there, and each player called out who they were fighting when it was their turn. We did not go into the detailed tactical game.

I'm working up for a larger campaign, and one things I'm doing to get ready for it is, I'm setting up little scenes I can play out with some of the other players, so we can get a good handle on the rules and what they mean in practice.

I'd say just run something like Caravan to Ein Arris with a bunch of disposable characters, and see what you think, before tackling something bigger.