Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

I GM for the power trip. Dance, my puppets, dance! Never even suspecting where your strings are... :P

Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

I tried GIMP out a year or two ago. It takes around half an hour to boot up on my "good" computer and the tools are really difficult to use, and it had a tendency of saving the wrong layers when I tried saving layered images.

Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

I strongly suggest that you GM at least three times.

I speak from experience. I was extremely shy. Without my experience at GMing, I doubt my college job interviews would have gone so well.

The reason I recommend at least three times is that you will probably think you did poorly. It takes a few times to get that out of your head. One of my favorite playing experiences is once when a friend of mine GMed. Unfortunately he thought he'd failed and he never tried again, no matter what I said.

My biggest mistakes as a GM:

1. Do not have powerful NPCs go along with the PCs.
2. Do not have a "GMPC"
3. When one or more of the players proposes doing something that short-circuits or avoids your planned adventue, don't force them back on track. Ask yourself "why not?"
4. Practice playing the NPCs.
5. Create a few NPCs that are designed around the power level you want the PCs to be. Use this to determine the starting CPs. Be generous.
6. Don't screw over the PCs. It's their story.

Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

So Kenneth, are you in the 313 proper, or are you out in the suburbs like me (in my case, Dexter)? GURPS is really great for doing the sort of old-school fantasy that you're looking for, but if you haven't experienced it before you're going to have a hard time GMing that setting. My regular group is having a hard time getting together on a regular basis, and I'd love a chance to run a more beer and pretzels game.

If you can get to Ann Arbor, there are a couple of public places we could meet and run a beer and pretzels sort of fantasy game.

Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

Actually Detroy is the name of a city in one of the settings I've made and Kenneth Latrans is the name of a character that lives there (in Infinite Worlds I classed it as a Q4 Weird Parallel; Ken himself is a cryokinetic police officer). I named my account after the character rather than the other way around. I sometimes consider asking for a name change or altering my profile to suit reality better.

In reality I live in Wyoming, near Grand Rapids. Same state, different side.

Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

Dear lord, this. I have a habit of building settings I probably lack the ability to GM simply because I'd really, really like to play in them.

Excellent pieces of advice, particularly speaking as a player. A few comments...

1. The primary GM I've played with had an absolutely horrible habit of having large numbers of super-powerful NPC's populating his worlds, and occasionally had them join the characters... which resulted in said NPC's being the only ones capable of doing anything, resulting in the actual PC's being stuck watching them be awesome.
2. I had one of these myself during my brief foray into GM'ing, intending to eventually have the GMPC be separated from the rest of the group and later (much, much later) come back as an antagonist/anti-villain (fulfilling a similar narrative role to Magus from Chrono Trigger, although optionally serving as a Patron, not Ally), but the campaign fizzled out. The character was sneakingly stealing the spotlight as it was, however, which was rather problematic.
   Of course, in the longest-running campaign I was in the GM I referenced above actually combined the first two options. I ended up munchkinizing my own character to a ridiculous degree just to keep up, which ended up somewhat-alienating the other players (as they could accomplish essentially nothing) while silmultaneously making the game rather boring for me... so I left (leaving 1 player and the GM; not certain what became of that campaign).
3. This can require a bit of improvisation, but if you're not very good at that a cheesy solution is to still run the same adventure, just "reskin" it to match what your players are trying for. If their idea was particularly good, give them a tactical advantage. Say they're investigating a missing caravan, and you have an adventure planned where they find the caravan (plus corpses, minus goods) then get ambushed by the brigands. Your plan is for them to defeat the brigands, then track them back to their base. If the players instead opt to head to a cartographer and try to determine where the robbers might be holed up (rather than heading to the caravan itself), and they succeed, have the ambushers instead be sneaking about near the base, and let the characters get the jump on them instead.
4. I'd imagine things would have gone better if I'd done this, and the only session I played in where the GM appeared to have done so was excellent. Contrariwise, I've had GM's who apparently don't realize their "helpful ally" NPC isn't supposed to come off as "rude, ungrateful prick," and are shocked when the party gets wiped out by an enemy said NPC was meant to help with, due to the party not bothering to get the NPC to help them out.
5. Additionally, be certain you're clear to your players what you're expecting. There was a thread not long ago with a player trying to create a knight on a mere 80 points (with [20] eaten up in Status). If the GM opted to do what DangerousThing suggests, he would know a knight really isn't doable on 80 points - and if he knew this, he certainly should have made it clear that a knight really wasn't an option in this campaign.
   Of course, if you're running DF, your work is already done for you.
6. Agreed. There's little worse than an adversarial GM. If your players get their characters into serious trouble, by all means let the chips fall where they may - but don't go out of your way to screw them over, and never put them in an unavoidable situation where they can't win (the GM from [1] did this a few times, and it was always rather annoying; the time we killed off his "unbeatable" opponent was kind of fun, though).

Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

In short, "GM unto others as you would have them GM unto you."

:3

Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

And the key is: preparation. Luckily, you like worldbuilding, so you will enjoy that. Make sure that when you do start up a campaign, the players know what is going on.

I'm planning to start a new campaign soon, and I have the world view ready to go. It's a 1930s dieselpunk game, and the world-view is about 12 pages of the history of the world since the end of my previous 1880s steampunk game. Some people will tell you that is too much, but I enjoyed writing it, the process helped me clarify some details of the world, and the players don't have to read it if they don't want to. It won't be killing any trees or waste any face-to-face time as I'll be distributing it electronically, along with a four-page campaign outline telling the players the campaign background, patron, what kind of characters they can play, new houserules for this campaign, etc.

Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

I like the suggestion of GURPS Lite with Caravan to Ein Arris as a good starting adventure to try.

I would try to keep the number of player small 1 to 3, to give you less to try to keep track of.

Keeping the number of disadvantages down would be good too. Rather than 3 to 6 125+62+5 (max 192), I would go with:
3 to 6: 170+25+5 (max 200);
2 players: 195+25+5 (max 225); or
1 player: 220+25+5 (max 250).
For 1 or 2 players, suggest Allies.

Making practice characters, as either test NPCs or Pregrens is a good idea.

Make sure you read through everything a couple of times. Take notes, use a highlighter, make a cheat sheet, or do what ever works best for you.

Run the test NPCs/Pregens through the major combats is a good idea too.

If you have a few bucks, get Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering (available at e23); or if you can find it on the web, get/read Uncle Figgy's Guide to Good Game Mastering.

Best advice is to ask specific questions here on the sjg forum.

-Dan

Re: So I've Never GMed before...
 

In my experiance the keys to a good campaign have ben mostly stated above but I will hit a few for emphasis.
1. Prepare but do not overprepare. The players often want to do things you did not think of or expected them not to. This is where a broad outline and brush can help you quickly fill in the new area or NPCs without seeming to have improvised it. Pretend like you had it planned all along. Its ok to tell them later but during the game provide the illusion it is all going according to plan. Smile evilly at appropriate times.

2. Keep notes. Write down key details and random ideas during the game. Just quick notes no book or nothing that slows down play. A LOT of my best ideas came from my players.

3. Your the world builder and designer but its a group authoring effort. Let the players steer the campaign. Call for pizza breaks or stall sometimes if your really stuck but try to have material you can use on hand for any situation.

4. Dont overprepare. really you can easily do this. The trouble with overpreparing is you can waste a lot of time on unexplored options and you may feel like pushing the players towards things you made just so the effort was not wasted. Do not be afraid to recycle! Change a name or personality trait of an NPC and you have a fresh one ready to go. Make some generic NPCs to cover various roles but most NPC can be made on the fly in seconds.
Remember youd ont need to worry about points, just skill levels in key skills and maybe combat ability. Prepare generics for the latter and the time consuming work is done. recycle as needed.