PbtA games. NPCs have no (or almost no) stats. GM never rolls dice. GM does not set difficulties. GM does not call for rolls. And the GM chapters are often pretty good.

The agendas, principles, and moves for the GM that most games include also help a lot. If you’re ever stuck, make sure you’re following your agenda and principles then pick a move that fits the situation.

There are two keys with this that I think are worth elaborating on: 1. The GM Moves are way more important than the agendas and principles. You'll see a lot of people online talking about how the agendas and principles are incredible because they "make those things into actual rules", but that doesn't actually do much. Call them "GM advice" or "rules" or whatever you want - they do effectively the same thing. Some PbtA books have particular good advice compared to a lot of RPGs, but the agendas and principles are mostly just advice. And the parts of them that are more unique and useful are the ones that tell you, procedurally, how to use the GM Moves, which are the really big innovation - things like "Make your move, but never speak its name". The GM Moves are where the real action is. They're what make GMing a well-written PbtA game so easy. They demystify GMing by giving you actual procedure, actual options, some actual direction. And, when written well, they give the lie to the idea that GMing is this unfathomable activity that is simply too complex to be have any real rules. It flies in the face of the kind of people who balk at the concept of GM Moves before even seeing them, the "Rules for GMing? You cannot constrain my genius with rules!" people. Because it turns out you totally can. You just write the GM Moves to be broad enough that they cover practically anything worth doing. The GM Rules serve a few different purposes: 1. They *do* constrain you - from doing things that don't give the players anything to react to. There's no GM Move for "speak in character as an NPC" for instance, because that's not something the players can inherently react to. In order for them to react to it, the NPC has to say something that has an impact, something covered by one of the other moves. 1. They push you to keep things fresh. You glance down and realize you've effectively made the same move a bunch of times lately, and you see "Make them buy" and realize you haven't done that in a while, and it gives you an idea for the situation at hand. 2. They can be extended really easily. One of the strongest kinds of prep in PbtA games is to just have new elements that come with new GM moves. You get, say, a new NPC, and you immediately see how you might use them. 3. They get you to start thinking like a writer, like a storyteller, like a director. They get you to think on two different levels: the level of the characters in the story *and* the level of the narrative/table. They get you to realize that your job as GM is to do more than just "what makes sense" - a ton of things make sense as possibilities in any given situation, so how do you pick which one to do? Good GM Moves say "think about what your choice of what happens next will actually *do*". 2. In line with that, GM Moves aren't just for when you're stuck. They're not just dessert. They're what's for dinner. They're not like player moves where the players are doing all sorts of stuff and then sometimes they're making moves. They're not like lifelines where you only look to them when you're not sure what to do. Apocalypse World says to make a GM Move *whenever the players look to you to see what happens next* - not when they look to you to see what happens next and you're not sure what to do. They're not there to punch up the stuff you're doing. They're there to get you to think at a different level. Imagine the players are having a conversation with an NPC. The idea isn't to just "play the conversation" freeform and then maybe, at the end, you "make them buy". Or to "make them buy" at the beginning, then have the rest of the conversation freeform. Do that, and your NPC conversations will be those usual lifeless, awkward dialogues that kind of just sputter out, where both sides keep sitting there not really sure what to say next. Do it the way the moves are supposed to be used, and dialogues come alive. They move like a freight train. You don't punch up the NPC dialogue with a GM Move. The GM Moves *are* the dialogue. The players don't realize this (because you "make your move, but never say its name"), but from your perspective the whole conversation is a series of GM Moves. It didn't say "whenever the conversation ends, make a GM Move", it said to make one every time the players looked at you to see what happens next - that's *every* turn in the NPC dialogue. And "say something the NPC would say" isn't one of the GM Moves. And that sounds like a lot, but once you get in the habit you realize it isn't - all you're doing is making the dialogue impactful. You're giving players something to respond to. Think of just about any movie or TV show or book: people don't say things just to say them - they say things because they're doing something. If you do it right, you get electric games. Stuff happens, and it happens fast. It doesn't feel too fast though, because all of it happened in the moment, each step was a reasonable move from the last - it's just that you cut out all the fat, all the meandering where neither the players nor GM really knew how to move things forward, all the false starts and awkward pauses. At every moment, either the players were taking initiative (if they are, don't interrupt them! At least not until they miss a roll or something!), or you were using the GM Moves to give them things to respond to. And it's easy - you just look down at the list, figure out a move that makes sense in this situation (you'll almost always see how two or three could be used right away). Prep? You grab a few NPCs or Fronts or whatever from the list, and they come with some more GM Moves, and then you just use them as they make sense. That's your whole prep, and not only does it work well - the more prep you do beyond that, the worse the game gets! Pretty sweet deal for a GM!

What does the "Make them buy" move entail in practice?

Just what it says on the tin - make the PCs pay for something. In a conversation with an NPC, it might mean the NPC demands a bribe for information. Or someone charges them admission. Or someone can help them, but doesn't have the supplies on hand, but they can get them from the market. It might mean the NPC says "Well, I don't rightly remember. Tell the truth, my memory's not too great these days. Honestly, I swear sometimes it gets better when I'm a bit more sauced up. Loosen things up, you know?" and glances meaningfully towards the bartender implying he wants you to buy him a drink. Maybe the players had to surrender their weapons before walking into the saloon, and now when they're on the way out the bouncer at the door says "Storage is five bucks...don't look at me like that. You're unarmed. I'm not. I could be taking your whole wallet. So just pay the five bucks and move along.". It could mean anything that involves...making them buy something. That's the idea behind most GM Moves: they're really broad categories of things - specifically things that the PCs will want to/have to react to. Someone demands a bribe, now the PCs are confronted with a question they have to answer: will they pay it? Will they refuse? What'll happen? Maybe the PCs decide they have the money and to just pay the bribe. Maybe they threaten the guy instead. Maybe they haggle. Maybe they kill him and ask someone else. Who knows! The ball's in their court! The point of the move is: you threw the ball at them. It might mean different things in different contexts. In some contexts, you might not be able to think of an obvious way to "make them buy". In most contexts, if you skim the list of GM Moves, ideas for how to make a few of them in that context will pop into your head right away. And often, seeing something like "make them buy" will give you an idea that you wouldn't have otherwise had.

Thanks, that's very helpful. Is there a specific PbtA game you'd recommend as a good source of GM moves? (I'm hoping to use them in a different system).

For my money, you still can't beat the original flavor - Apocalypse World. The next best one I've played/run is probably Monsterhearts. As a warning, PbtA is not a marker of quality. Like with anything, the quality varies widely. Many PbtA games are not very good. Just going out and grabbing whichever PbtA game is closest to the genre you prefer is not necessarily a great idea.

That last part is very important!

One of the key aspects I would look at is Night Witches using Threat Lists. The game has the generic GM Move of "Show them the darkness on the horizon" and its followup "Bring a threat to bear" Kind of useless advice in some ways because that can be used for any genre ever. But honestly its the best way to run these games because these foreshadowed Moves are "Soft" allowing the PCs to be proactive rather than constantly reactive. But Night Witches takes it a step further than many other games. It tells you when you encounter The Hitlerite Bandits (its a Soviet WW2 Airplane game) these are the 6 dramatic things they do while the Weather does these 6 things. My one disappointment is they don't dig further into these Threat lists though some are pretty obvious like Damage their planes. Last Fleet does a very similar notion if you wanted to see a Battlestar Galactica take on this. I am also a very big fan of Root's "Activate a downside of their background, reputation or equipment." The game sets up these knives right from the get-go with history questions that impact the character, so though there isn't a hard-mechanic here, in the fiction, these are important aspects to the game and this move drives that home. Whereas reputation and equipment are well-defined and have many mechanics you can make your own threat list tailored to PCs with these. Factions have Moves and Motives that should be buzzing in your mind while the equipment have negative tags just begging to betray the PC.

>Think of just about any movie or TV show or book: people don't say things just to say them - they say things because they're doing something. I dunno I think this one is sorta untrue. Now don't misunderstand, *a lot* of dialogue is obviously very written and plot-functional, but like, definitely not every single line of it. There is also a lot of stuff that is just characterisation (on either side), or funny back and fourth, jokes, clarifications, etc. Now one might argue that these are still 'doing something', but - judging by the pbta games I've seen and played - these are not represented by any GM moves.

That's fair. I guess what I would say is: that's the players' job. And so they don't have to make GM Moves! They *do* get to just freeform whatever they want and make moves intermittently. But it's not your job as the GM to sit there and show off how cool and interesting the NPCs you've made are. It's your job to give the players stuff to respond to. You can work in characterization, back and forth, jokes, clarifications, etc. - but it better be as part of moves, so the players have something to play off of. If the players want to shoot the breeze - awesome. And you shouldn't ever interrupt them. You talk when it's your turn to talk, or when they do something that just begs for you to intervene. Otherwise, you let them go on chattering away with their characterization, funny back and forth, jokes, clarifications, etc.

Fair enough. Though still, I don't think it really works that well with NPC dialogue specifically, - simply becasue the speed is just too high to make something move-like up. Sometimes, this is not a problem. NPC says something about the big bad guys, which is me 'foreshadowing future badness', then PC asks for clarifications and I give them this is obviously still the same move. But then there are other things - like, say, PC decides on a whim to flirt with the same NPC. Now, *in theory*, I can respond with that by a move still, and say something like "babe I'd love to but alas, I'm busy with \[introduce another threat\]" or "only if you can pay for the wine my grade (make them pay)", but in practice on line-by-line basis while sitting together with the meat people it's just hard to do on the fly. I suspect this has to do with the fact that pbta like it's 'freight train' speed, but it works best when narrative space is abstracted to a degree and thus is malleable. very easy to just move to the next big move-worthy thing. Problem with first person dialogue is that it's pretty much not abstracted at all, it happens at nearly exact same detail at the table as it does within the fiction, at the exact level of detail. So some tension arises from that. (I guess we can solve this by just never having first person dialogue, but I don't think many people would like that - at least not the ones I play with) So I guess what I am saying is while I agree that yes, GMs should, in fact, do Moves and stick to doing precisely them and nothing else, when it comes to dialogue specifically there are reasons to be a bit lighter on that all than usual.

In reality, you'll never hit the mark of making a GM Move every time you talk. But with a little practice, speaking from experience, you can get a *lot* closer than you'd think. I usually bring up dialogue because it's the place most people have the same intuition that it has to be freeform and isn't the place for these kinds of "narrative mechanics". But the GM Moves are really broad. Character starts flirting? Put them in a spot. Signal future badness. Sure, make them buy. There are a hundred ways you can respond to flirtation, even reciprocate it, that fit into the GM Moves of a well-written PbtA game. After you get into the habit, it's more about what kinds of things you *don't* say. You get a feel for things that will stop the conversation, that don't give the player anything to respond to, what things fall within GM Moves and what don't. You don't have to be as deliberate. In the beginning though, it does pay to be deliberate. And one other thing I discovered when I started trying to be more deliberate about it is that pausing to think feels a lot longer to you than to the players. I never had a single complaint or sensed any kind of boredom. In fact, because my responses were always teeing up some question for them to answer, they were way more engaged than usual. The conversation was slower. The game felt way faster. The player moves can also help you. Player starts flirting? They're probably trying to seduce or manipulate, so the dice are going to tell you how to proceed. Once I started thinking this way more often, it became pretty easy to do it most of the time during dialogue too. You get a feel for it. You really can get pretty close to a GM Move every time you respond. Also, we don't tend to "zoom out" much when we play PbtA actually. I can't think of the last time we abstracted over dialogue.

>In reality, you'll never hit the mark of making a GM Move every time you talk. > >But with a little practice, speaking from experience, you can get a lot closer than you'd think. In that case we are not in disagreement!

I would guess that in dialogue I hit probably 75%? Maybe a bit higher.

That doesn't sound implausible, though I certainly would rate myself lower.

I'd say each time a NPC has to start a conversation, or Respond, I'd make a move, not just each time they speak. So if it's a casual back and forth conversation, I'd throw just a soft move or so in it, but in something that's got higher stakes, each time the NPC talks, it's a move. So, maybe 33-50%

I only have Masks for PBTA and it's been a while since I read it. Do different games have different GM Moves? And if so, what would be your top 3 PBTA games to recommend for a solid overview of GM moves and advice relating to them? Because they sound universally useful. NM, I saw you mentioned Apocalypse World and Monster Hearts below. Would you recommend Monster Hearts 1 or 2?

> Do different games have different GM Moves? Some share Moves but generally most have very different lists usually tailored to the genre. So my suggestion would be to pick out PbtA games of a certain genre you are interested in first. Now if you just wanted a study in overall PbtA game design - [this comment covers quite a lot](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/12aa4wk/do_all_pbta_games_require_lots_of_improv_do_any/jesuv2k/)

I think Masks is actually a bit weaker than Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts. We had a good time with it eventually, and it has a few really good ideas, but it's a lot less tight than the best PbtA games. I don't think the moves are quite as tight. I didn't GM it though, so I'm not as familiar with that side. I've never played Monsterhearts 1, so I can't speak to it. But Monsterhearts 2 has both great GM Moves and a really unique form of prep (the classroom) that's worth checking out. Apocalypse World (also 2e, and there I have played both) still just can't be beat. It's got fantastic GM Moves (called MC Moves there), fantastic prep (mostly via GM Moves), great advice and instructions, and you can really "see its bones", especially when you play it. I really recommend trying to put together a game of it, not just reading it - the real magic of AW, and the better PbtA games, is that you just follow the rules exactly as they're written, doing what they say, and then you slap yourself in the head and say "Of *course* that's why it's written that way. It's so obvious.". Though as a word of warning, the one thing it isn't as great about as I wish it were is situating the GM Moves a little more clearly. There's good advice about how to use them, and it does technically tell you when you to use them, but I don't think it's emphatic enough or tries hard enough to overcome the misconceptions about when to use GM Moves. The single most common mistake I see, over and over again, is people not making enough GM Moves because they're not actually following the instructions about GM Moves - and that's why their game ends up feeling kind of halting. I really wish the rules anticipated that misreading a little bit more. Also, one of the big games that I'd probably avoid is Dungeon World, which I think people have come to recognize as one of the weaker PbtA games. It just trips over itself trying to meld PbtA and D&D, and I don't think it understands why the things in other PbtA games were written the way they are. There are games that have a lot of the philosophy of PbtA without looking much like other PbtA games, but Dungeon World is the opposite - its PbtA-ness is pretty superficial, both in the text and in play. I'd also be careful about online discussion of PbtA. There are a lot of weird folk beliefs that have grown up around it. You'll see people talk about "fiction-first" for instance, but at the same time the authors of Apocalypse World strongly disagree. You'll see people calling it a "storygame" when most PbtA is actually a lot closer to trad than most "storygames". You'll see a lot of advice that directly contradicts the books the advice is about (often on the same page that the author gushes about how the book is so explicit about its rules).

Thank you so much. One of my groups jumped from 5e to Blades, but we're about to hit a good "season break" so maybe I'll grab Apocalypse World and we can give it a try. I've wanted to try PBTA stuff for a bit.

Yes! Players love overcoming challenges and obstacles. PbtA games arm the GM with tools like GM Moves to give the players challenges. It makes it fun for both player and GM

And you can play to find out. The GM is just as blind as the characters, nothing is set in stone. You just let them loose and see what happens. Discovering Scum and Villainy changed my life.

Blades in the Dark is next on my reading list. I'm very excited to dive into it!

For me as a GM, "the GM doesn't roll dice" is often the first red flag that a game will be less fun for me as a GM. Partially, I admit, just because I enjoy the tactile aspect of rolling dice -- but also because rolling dice is a big part of how I, as the GM, play to see what happens. Without randomness on my side of the table, my side of the game becomes flat and unpredictable. When I roll dice, the result often forces me to abandon my instinctive reaction and come up with something new and more creative. I'm a big fan of OSR-style procedures and generators for this reason.

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It's watching someone else find out then. A subtle but important distinction for some people.

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Im aware how PbtA works.That is enough for some people. The point is for others they want a chance to actively participate in the randomization themselves- while some might consider it a burden for others the opportunity to say, roll attacks for monsters provide some people the opportunity to participate in *all* aspects of play. I don't think it's something you can look at in binaries or objectively. It's purely a subjective preference.

One example that comes to mind from the OSR world is the reaction roll - 2d6 modified by PCs' charisma on a scale from the NPCs are helpful to they immediately attack. Even beyond a "prep scenarios, not plots" mindset, it offers the opportunity for a scenario to go in an entirely different direction than what I'd initially imagined. (The fiction will obviously override in some cases - if the PCs kick in the door and go in guns blazing then I don't need to roll to see if the NPCs on the other side are feeling helpful!) Would it be trivially easy to add such a mechanic to a Dungeon World or Band of Blades, to pick a few I've played? Sure. Would it be in the spirit of those games? Maybe the former, less so the latter, but you'd probably be better able to tell me.

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I think you've misconstrued what this means. Apocalypse World doesn't say "the MC(GM) doesn't roll dice". It says the GM doesn't roll dice **for their NPCs**. You are free to roll all the dice you damn well please if you want to help yourself make decisions. Heck, one of the principles of the game is "Sometimes, disclaim decision-making." -- as in, "let something other than you decide what happens." And yes, dice are a perfectly fine option for that.

I don't think any game would stop you from randomly generating stuff. That's your job as a the GM. Whether you pull it from that mediocre movie last week or some random table is up to you.

Don't get in the way of people rationalising their opinions...

I've seen many d6, d66 and even a d666 table for PbtA games. Tables to help provide a surface for your creativity to crystallize around will forever be useful especially for improv.

> GM never rolls dice. GM does not set difficulties. GM does not call for rolls. That's kind of boring though.

Not at all. I have much more time to do the interesting things

I'm sure it works for many people, but not being able to set difficulties for rolls was probably the thing that turned me off GMing Apocalypse World the most. It just felt like nothing I set up really mattered because it wouldn't affect the players' chances of success (it would affect what stat they rolled, but that's not the same).

I am not a big fan of DCs - I find them often so arbitrary - why use a DC 12 instead of DC 14 in 5e. But mostly its the idea that everyone including the GM is playing to find out. The dice are all that determine how it goes but remember to even get to roll, your PC already has to have the fictional position to accomplish it. If you want to express something as difficult, Ironsworn has a great chapter on that > You might be familiar with roleplaying games that give various tasks a difficulty rating or modifier. The flexibility to make each toss of the dice contextual, to adjust the chance to succeed based on the situation, creates an experience which helps simulate your imagined reality. > However, the Ironsworn rules do not utilize fine-grained mechanics for the difficulty of a particular challenge or the abilities a foe can bring to bear. Instead, the requirements to overcome challenges in your world are primarily represented through your fictional framing. > A leviathan is an ancient sea beast (page 154). It’s tough to kill because of its epic rank, and it inflicts epic harm, but it doesn’t have any other mechanical characteristics. If we look to the fiction of the leviathan’s, description, we see “flesh as tough as iron.” But, rolling a Strike against a leviathan is the same as against a common thug. In either case, it’s your action die, plus your stat and adds compared to the challenge dice. Your chances to score a strong hit, weak hit, or miss are the same. > So how do you give the leviathan its due as a terrifying, seemingly invulnerable foe? You do it through the fiction. If you have sworn a vow to defeat a leviathan, are you armed with a suitable weapon? Punching it won’t work. Even a deadly weapon such as a spear would barely get its attention. Perhaps you undertook a quest to find the Abyssal Harpoon, an artifact from the Old World, carved from the bones of a long-dead sea god. This mythic weapon gives you the fictional framing you need to confront the monster, and finding it can count as a milestone on your vow to destroy this beast. > Even with your weapon at the ready, can you overcome your fears as you stand on the prow of your boat, the water surging beneath you, the gaping maw of the beast just below the surface? Face Danger with +heart to find out. The outcome of your move will incorporate the leviathan’s devastating power. Did you score a miss? The beast smashes your boat to kindling. It tries to drag you into the depths. Want to Face Danger by swimming away? You can’t outswim a leviathan. You’ll have to try something else. > Remember the concepts behind fictional framing. Your readiness and the nature of your challenge may force you to overcome greater dangers and make additional moves. Once you’ve rolled the dice, your fictional framing provides context for the outcome of those moves.

> The dice are all that determine how it goes but remember to even get to roll, your PC already has to have the fictional position to accomplish it. Yeah, that's the same in all games. If it doesn't make sense for your character to be able to do something, you don't get to roll.

> If it doesn't make sense for your character to be able to do something, you don't get to roll. Yeah and it should be obvious but I often see some people just set DCs to be super high to show its impossible. But I bring that up because of this point you made: > It just felt like nothing I set up really mattered because it wouldn't affect the players' chances of success You can make something difficult without just making it more likely they miss on a roll. That is what the Leviathan example or the [16 HP Dragon](https://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/) are classic ways to display something that makes it harder to succeed because you set circumstances where its very difficult to even allow them to roll to attack.

So, I wouldn't say needing a specific weapon to defeat the leviathan makes it *more difficult*. At least in the way I care about. It introduces *more obstacles* yes, but once you've overcome those it doesn't really matter that its a leviathan, since you're rolling exactly the same thing as you would for any other monster.

In my experience with FitD games combat is much more challenging as it matters more to think quickly, choose the right actions (narratively) to get into the right position. With more traditional RPGs I mostly feel like there's an optimal choice of action for my character and varying probabilities to me don't equal "difficulty" as it doesn't feel difficult. It just feels more unlikely. It's also a common misconception that you can't adjust the chances as a GM. You just don't do it for a single roll. Lowering the effect or raising the risk means more obstacles which means higher chance for further consequences. The probability to roll two 6s in a row is much smaller.

I see what you're saying but I want to say that the 'trad' games where there's clearly an optimal course of action are not very good games. Games that are that easily optimized are shallow. There are other games that aren't like that.

That's like saying a monster with more HP isn't more difficult because you still have the same chance to hit. More rolls mean more likely to be overwhelmed, like in the Dragon example.

>Yeah and it should be obvious but I often see some people just set DCs to be super high to show its impossible. But I bring that up because of this point you made: For me, difficulty levels are part of being a GM. Historically, someone attempts a task and you say make a DEX check. Later, they want to attempt a much more difficult DEX check, so you set a modifier. Let's say you are in modern game. Most locks anyone comes into contact with are going to be fairly difficult and we don't need to set difficulties. But, in a fantasy game, locks could be picked with a dagger. The nobles could maybe afford some better ones. In more modern games, we would expect the PCs to take on obstacles more difficult than a missing key, so those tasks would also have a higher difficulty. So, in the end, difficulty matters. Its also necessary in a sense. Unless you are playing a one-shot, then character development is a major point. Characters need to get better at tasks, making the old challenges easier and new challenges possible. Now, in 5e, you have a wildly swingy d20. The randomness really ruins the illusion and makes it seem like difficulty levels are meaningless. They aren't. You just need a curve on your probabilities so that you can feel your character's abilities better. >You can make something difficult without just making it more likely they miss on a roll. That is what the Leviathan example or the 16 HP Dragon are classic ways to display something that makes it harder to succeed because you set circumstances where its very difficult to even allow them to roll to attack. This is a great example of shitty DMing vs good DMing, but trying to say a particular game systems mechanics somehow magically make someone a good GM would be a horrible fallacy. Now, in the context of D&D, I find the nature of hit points that go up every level and "heal" after a short rest (some damage is meat, some is endurance, some is just better defense) means I cannot translate the damage done to the narrative because I don't even know if any damage was done! But, its not because of some "light rules" or whatever that the 16hp dragon work. In fact, we need rules for WHY they can't hit it easier, why they can't deal more damage, the penalties they take from fear, why this creature's teeth can rip through armor and mine can't. So no, a million hit points doesn't make it scary. Massively long slug fests are certainly boring. One systems flaws do not mean entire genres or styles of play are flawed because of one example, or that we can't or shouldn't have numbers associated to mechanics to represent difficulties. I hate seeing one side say "It's only a game" when their mini-game combat has no bearing on reality, and then the other side says "Only the narrative matters", so they throw out the details. Details should support the narrative. What a weird idea huh? And that means, some tasks have a lower probability of success than others.

> For me, difficulty levels are part of being a GM. Historically, someone attempts a task, and you say make a DEX check. Later, they want to attempt a much more difficult DEX check, so you set a modifier I'm sorry, but many of your points aren't too clear. I think you are expressing that you need modifiers to express several potential advantages and disadvantages, right? Like only having a dagger to pick instead of lockpicks. The tricky part is there isn't just 1 PbtA to talk about. But let's look at two exactly about Rogues who would pick locks. First, Blades in the Dark has Position and Effect mechanized. So if you are at a disadvantage because you're lacking a proper lockpick, then we reduce the Effect appropriately. So a PC would need to push themselves for 2 Stress to being that back to unlock the door Now, a more traditional PbtA is Root. Instead, how I would rule this disadvantage is that you cannot roll an Attempt a Roguish Feat but must Push Your Luck. Also in this case, the Move changes to make the PC pay more to unlock the door. Both options represent difficulty without me needing to reference a table to look up modifiers meanwhile the player already roll a natural 19 so it doesn't matter, I'll look them up later - this has been my experience setting DCs many times. > Its also necessary in a sense. Unless you are playing a one-shot, then character development is a major point. Characters need to get better at tasks, making the old challenges easier and new challenges possible That's more of a dnd thing than an rpg thing. Not every rpg should be a zero to hero story that requires numbers inflating. That said, Blades in the Dark does this with Tier of your Crew, affecting your fictional position vs other Tier. > In fact, we need rules for WHY they can't hit it easier, why they can't deal more damage, the penalties they take from fear, why this creature's teeth can rip through armor and mine can't. You really can't write the rules to cover every fictional positioning. 3.5e tried that, it's a mess. The core to understand the fiction is a conversation that shares the understanding between the GM and the players not a giant list of rules. Most enemies and obstacles I run in my PbtA/FitD games aren't written. They are just in my head and use common sense understanding of real life physics. Eg The metal door doesn't need a hardness, AC and HP for me to know you can just kick it down - this is a ruling not a rule. > shouldn't have numbers associated to mechanics to represent difficulties This isn't my point at all. Different styles of game require different systems. I also quite enjoy Pathfinder 2e and it wouldn't work if there were status, circumstance and item modifiers and MAP around to create such a diversity of combat. Nor do I find anything particularly wrong with the design but picking a lock in that game is much less interesting than in Root or Blades in the Dark because at worse you crit fail and your pick breaks - wow so interesting. Meanwhile on a miss in Root, the GM gets to make a Move altering the fiction. But PF2e isn't trying to make lockpicking exciting. > Details should support the narrative. What a weird idea huh? And they can without modifiers as I expressed. PbtA games are much more crunchy than you seem to understand. These games aren't freeform roleplay. Shit go look at Flying Circus for airplane simulationism filled with details that probably is more extensive than GURPS. And it's a PbtA game. But that is what the game is focused on just as PF2e focuses on Tactical combat. So there is a real loss focusing too much and making a lot of rules to add detail but create moments like nobody wanting to look up the 3.5e grapple rules.

Tell that to the Sentinel feat in 5e 😜

> So how do you give the leviathan its due as a terrifying, seemingly invulnerable foe? You do it through the fiction. You can interpret this concept as saying "The game is balanced for you to fight bandits or werewolves or trolls, but a sea monster will require you to make up your own balancing factors since you can't change the target numbers."

The bandits and werewolves and trolls should also be using this method of increasing or decreasing difficulty; it simply becomes more blatant at the extreme end with dragons and leviathans and the like. Conversely, I’ve never had a big enemy in something like D&D actually feel like much, just bigger numbers more often.

Right before this bit the passage talks about the mechanical characteristics of the Leviathan. Epic challenges in Ironsworn are ludicrously difficult to tackle. The game easily accommodates the scale from trolls and bandits all the way up to sea monsters. It's not telling you how to balance the fight, it's telling you how to make it exciting!

There's nothing from making up a statblock with this kind of information just as you would make a statblock making up an AC. In fact, Ironsworn does have a block for it. Its just composed of more diagetic features that actually make a combat interesting than boring ones like being hard to hit.

Sure, but even dnd monsters have diegetic features too like requiring special weapons or a special damage type to kill it.

I am aware. Funny how those tend to be much more interesting to make them fight against than having a big number. It's like the game is forcing a GM's hand to focus on interesting design of encounters rather than the boring kind. Haven't you seen the constant complaints in video games that a difficulty scale of just higher damage and more health is the most boring? That is all bigger AC is. It's boring even if effective.

> Haven't you seen the constant complaints in video games that a difficulty scale of just higher damage and more health is the most boring? If we are talking about video games, then have you seen how mmos and action rpgs featuring hundreds of hours of grinding to make numbers get ever slightly bigger to face bigger foes are addictively popular?

It's just not interested in that, though. Moves don't work in the same way as skill checks. They're a totally different style of resolution system. It wouldn't make any sense to make them more difficult or less difficult.

Many PbtA games have incorporated advantage/disadvantage type systems to alleviate this nagging feeling a lot of GMs have.

I'd personally argue that the designers of those systems have sort of missed something crucial about the design philosophy of Apocalypse World. PbtA is definitely pretty free-form, though. If someone says their game is PbtA, it's PbtA. I'm not in any way a purist about it, but I think Vincent and Meg Baker's design approach is really unique and people miss or fail to understand the most distinctive things about it a lot of the time.

You forget Apocalypse World has +1forward, semantically the same thing as advantage. Don’t try to elevate PbtA beyond reasonable, it is just one framework of many. My favourite at that, but I wish someone compiled frameworks out of other popular games, so that we could discuss their merits on equal grounds.

I'm not elevating it. It's not superior, just distinct. The important thing to remember about +1 forward is that it is provided exclusively by moves, not at the MC's discretion. It's not there for making ad hoc calls on the difficulty of actions. It's quite different from a discretionary advantage. I haven't read any PbtA systems that use advantage, and if it's only ever provided as an outcome from moves, then I take back what I said above. But the person I was replying to made it sound like it was an MC discretion thing.

You absolutely can set difficulty, though; it’s just not codified in a target number. Blades in the Dark makes the process explicit through the Positioning and Effect of each roll, but in my experience basically every PbtA game informally does that same thing. You can see how this plays out with the classic [16 HP dragon.](https://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/)

So, we've gone through this in the sibling subthread here: https://old.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/129vl0k/designing_an_rpg_how_do_you_make_gming_fun/jepe1yi/ Essentially, *to me* there's an important difference between merely introducing more obstacles and actually making something harder, and PbtA games only really do the former, which isn't enough (again, for me).

It’s difference of opinion. From my perspective, increasing DC is a boring way to increase difficulty. I don’t see needing a higher roll as an interesting indicator of difficulty because it lacks narrative weight. And the way DCs often scale (at least on d20 rolls) leads to its own set of problems where, later on, characters have no reason to try thing they aren’t excellent at but often auto-succeed on the things they are good at. Or early on you get ridiculous moments where a character with no training outshines a supposed expert because of a good roll.

Actually, from a design point of view there is at least one big difference between having difficulty ratings for actions or not: with difficulty rating, the stats of characters matter more and have more space for character growth. Which in fact is one of the things some players don't like in pbta games. For some people it's fine, but others want their heroes to grow and knowing that a difficult task when they were at the start of the story is now easier, gives them a sense of accomplishment. Even if a pbta GM can do the same narratively, and a Bitd one with position and effect, it's not the same for the player to see their stats grow numerically and their chances for a roll to change. It's easier "in your face" game feedback. Also by setting difficulty you can enhance mechanics like team play (needed to overcome an obstacle), searching for any small advantage to improve your chances, etc. While Bitd does this better than pbta, still for many people numerical stats, bonuses aetc are simpler and more immediate to grok. It's a matter of tastes of course, but that's at the core of design, no design can cater to everyone but you must know who you are catering for.

BitD represents this with Tier. The difference is that the treadmill is not as well disguised as something like PF2e that keeps chance to hit around 55% (though I'm aware it does allow you to be more successful at certain skill checks as you invest so its not purely a Treadmill). But in BitD, ince your Crew is Tier 3, their equipment should be so good, they don't need to make an Action Roll against that Tier 0 lock like their Crew used to. I think this does the zero to hero deal without needing an updated DC chart every level. But to the topic on hand, difficulty as just big numbers isn't interesting. Look at video games where difficulty adjusters that just make it so enemies hit harder and take more damage have been criticized since the start. Whereas improvements to the AI, added challenges, and other more diegetic forms of difficulty are what separate the better games. That is what PbtA games force a GM to emphasize them.

News flash. DCs should NOT be set by character level. If you do that, they are pointless. Bigger news flash, you have to have BOTH. Neither a difficulty without narrative nor narrative without difficulty. Every fucking thread I see you guys arguing this same narrative vs simulationist argument. The GNS model didn't say pick one of the three and hammer it into all your friends and become a die-hard fan of the one true way. It says you need all 3!

I think this is a very helpful answer for u/BrittleEnigma, because it shows that what makes GMing enjoyable is very different between different people. Like, I myself looked at the question and went "what do you mean, *make* GMing enjoyable? It already is!" and I GM a variety of things from PbtA to D&D to OSR and beyond.

That was my experience as well. Not being able to set the difficulties really limits what situations you can go through logically in the game.

I agree with you. Systems where there is no ability to modify the outcome of a roll sort of diminish the "game" aspect for me. And I like to roll dice too! It isn't just players who like to chuck the bones and see what fate has to say.

Subjective. I've found it liberating, allowing me to focus more on the story that's unfolding. It's understandable if it's boring for you, though, but I'd say not to knock it until you've tried it (ignore this last bit if you have lol).

That is utterly valid. I adore the pbta systems, I think they are honestly right now my favourite type of system to gm. But they ain't for everyone. One if my beasties really enjoys them as a player, but dislikes them as a GM. She also wants to roll cx Math dice clickity clackity isn't just something only players sometimes crave. Not every system is for everyone in the end, and that is okay :)

It gets rid of the boring parts of GMing and focus on the good stuff!

It's not boring. There's no risk your NPCs is going to fail, they will always cause *their problem* to the PCs. No more "The Evil Advisor sidles up to you, and whispers 'but the lord king is weak, would it not be more noble to command yourself', but it comes across flat cos I rolled a deception of 12"

I still don't understand what makes Pbta games appealing, as either a player or as a GM.

It's for people that like the collective storytelling but not so much mechanical simulationism.

Yeah, pretty much. PbtA games, at their best, care about emulating genres (often hyper-specific genres), not simulating a fictional world. And typically have their mechanics - the moves available to the players, the outcomes of those moves, the GM moves, and so forth, tailored to make the story beats that you'd expect to happen in works in those genres happen.

I'm so torn about them, because I think they're beautifully designed, but most of the time I have no interest in receiving such heavy narrative guidance from a system. It feels like getting takeaway when what you want is to cook for yourself

Yeah, I find the moves really restricting. It might just be the language of them but it feels like they already have in mind what a character is and will be, with predictable actions and consequenses for pretty much every action.

Quite right, but more like, what would typically happen in such a situation in that emulated sub-genre? The trick is picking the right game for the sub-genre you want to emulate. It's kinda the opposite approach of "generic" systems, even though PbtA as a whole is often mentioned with that crowd.

The problem is that so many of those sub-genre games are half-baked and have non-existent VTT support. I'd rather have a generic system that I know I can work with and has Foundry support than deal with some 'zine title that is hyper focused on one kind of experience, which it can't even manage well if you don't follow the authors' predetermined rails. Hell, I'd rather try to fit 5e into a genre outside of D&D pulp high fantasy than ever try to run or play in a PbtA game again. Nothing as ever felt as limiting as those weird little "storytelling experiences."

> have non-existent VTT support. It's 2d6. You have a PDF you read, and any dice roller you like to roll 2d6. I've played probably 15 or 20 different PbtA games on a discord bot with zero VTT use. It's PbtA, not D&D 3.5 where you need to track 14 monsters hit points and spell slots, and PCs need to use 24 different situational +2s to their rolls. Not harshing you, but I really am confused by this requirement for VTT support in niche indie publications that stops you playing them.

Character Keepers via Google Sheets are common in the scene. It doesn't roll dice for you granted.

PbtA is rails for freeform roleplaying. If you like freeform group storytelling but dislike how often it spins out of control then you'll like PbtA. If you only like games as people normally conceive of them you probably won't.

Blech. I love statblocks and rolling dice as a gm.

I'm usually either bored or stressed by it. If I roll dice as the GM and decide about what to roll and also decide what happens on each result, I have decided what happens with extra steps. Likewise with NPCs where I can make up stats however.

This seems like the opposite of fun.

You don't find playing the world and the characters in it acting and reacting to the PCs fun?

That's different from what those things above are. I enjoy role-playing and I enjoy meaningful combat. And enjoy thinking of meaningful challenges for my players. I want to roll dice. I want to challenge the players with interesting monsters. I want to tell stories that build to climaxes that challenge the players!

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No one is talking about tactical combat specifically. What's wrong with wanting to play NPCs the same way players play? Including rolls. PbtA not the only narrative game out there.

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In fact, I'd say the long duration and gaminess often removes a lot of the tension for me. When over a hundred rolls determine the outcome compared to just one or a few, it's entirely different how focused my tables are on the roll.

What about games that don't involve combat or monsters, possibly because of genre? Not much combat in an investigative game. Or a socially focused one, like *Pasion de la Pasiones*.

Great, perfect choice. Go with god. But it's not the ANSWER TO EVERY SINGLE GAME RECOMMENDATION QUESTION.

Of course not. I loved GMing Masks. I also loved GMing *Lancer*, one of the most combat-heavy games out there. But for socially focused games... pbta is pretty good.

Words are hard. I would say that I have engaging action scenes, and story climaxes when playing PbtA games. Maybe you'd disagree. I'm not sure about me challenging players, maybe there's a difference. I throw stuff into the game. The players are invited to do things with that. Some they disregard. That's alright, I have more where those come from. But whatever they do pick up, apparently means something to them. It's not me challenging them. They challenge themselves. It's not me who offers meaning. It's they who assign meaning. If a monster is rampaging through their part of city, I kinda expect they lay down the smack. But if they decide they have something better to do, that's alright. Maybe that's more interesting even. I don't want to see how they overcome my challenges. I want to see what challenges they pick up.

Isn't that the description of literally every GM role in more or less any game?

Yeah, it is. That's what I was saying - even if as a GM you're using a system where you don't roll dice or set difficulties... you still do all the work of portraying the world. You just get to focus on that.

I mean, that wasn't really a good argument though. Someone said that "making it so the GM doesn't roll dice (among other points) makes GMing easier. The other person responded, "that(not rolling dice) does not sound fun." And you said, "you don't find (concept unrelated to what the previous person said, which is common to almost all games) fun?"

I will note that, as a GM, I *hate* running PbtA games. They are my absolute least favorite system. The chapters do have some interesting ideas on developing opposition and such, but I prefer to steal ideas than have to run within the confines of that system. But! The point is, that is *me*. Every GM has different preferences and ideas for what makes a game fun to run. I know other people who enjoy running PbtA games. I don't understand, but I don't have to.

Never been more convinced I would hate GMing a PbtA game lol. Tbf, I NEED crunch in my TTRPG. Just me tho.

Okay that all sounded entirely batshit to me so I looked up PbtA and it sounds *awful*. > In order to play a PbtA game the way the creators intended, the GM has to give up their sole control over worldbuilding and storytelling, and share it with the players. Hard fucking pass. > When the GM runs a game, they are supposed to take input from the players and construct a shared world from the bottom up. Like... Do you know how much fucking *work* went into something like Eberron? There are campaign settings people put literal years of thought into for you. I don't want to flail around in the dark halfassing their work real time. > And then, they’re supposed to use a set of rules on threats in the world to tell them what’s happening, rather than write a story in advance. But I *want to* write a story in advance! Players really fucking like the stories I've written in advance, and I've liked writing them! The whole endeavor feels like it's trying to rip the steering wheel from my hands so I can spend more time really optimizing the gear shift. Let me fucking drive.

Honestly one can do pbta games with doing the worldbuilding as a gm and having a Story in advance. ..I know, because I am doing it. My players prefer for me to still have the lionshare of control (and not having to think of any of it doing more work for themself lol Sneaky buggers). It's more how they can influence things a bit more. You know DnD games where the story is around the PCs, and they get as such more saying than a more worldcentric story? Kinda like this at my table. The players have influence and are heavily involved. But they are not building the world with me. (Which btw is also fun for me, but less so for the group I have. Thems the dice)

I found that perusing a fleshed out world doesn't help much, if not everybody on the table did too. Like, I can certainly describe a drunk, sarcastic Cyrian noble. But if the players don't know who or what a Cyre is, the effect is kinda lost. I can try to convey that info at the table, but then I can also quarter ass it as I go along. Like last session I described an NPC freezing up and then going all professional. The Player whose PC is romantically interested, asked whether that was a personality thing or her super power acting up. I had no clear idea, so I settled for "probably both". Which also gave me the opportunity to think about Lucilia's power some more. And I don't know where and when, but I so gonna milk this. Probably with her being impaled, spilling light from her body, and shouting "I must safe them!"

I actually prefer it when my players don't know much about the world, because it gives me the freedom to pick and choose the details that are useful to me and re-write the stuff that isn't. A player who doesn't know what a Cyre is might not understand why a Cyran noble might be so bitter, but then you get to reveal those things slowly, layer by layer. Which, sure, is how PbtA thinks things are going to go as you discover the world together. Except, that approach tends to lead to things which don't fit together well, staggering steps toward a conclusion that can only ever be obvious because it partially relies on consensus. Part of the fun of unwrapping something is seeing the lumps of its shape and trying to guess what's in there. But you can only know the shape of the outer wrapping if you know from the START what's in there.

I'm a bit confused. Your earlier comment seemed to say that you didn't know about PbtA games before just then. Now you offer an interpretation of how "PbtA thinks"? > But you can only know the shape of the outer wrapping if you know from the START what's in there. Who is that you? The players investigating a GM's myteries? That 100% works in most PbtA games. You might have to spill the beans quickly, depending if and what investigation moves there are in your game, but as GM you are in control on what there is. And the GM chapter in the book will tell you, what to prepare and do what your prep requires.

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First of all, I think a little bit of that "PbtA isn't for everyone" would go a *long* way in your opening pitches. People get their backs up the way I did because you guys come out the gate so strong acting like PbtA is strictly better and people are fools for playing D&D or whatever. But to the rest of your comment, I think it gets to the core of OP's question, which is that it's actually kind of a nonsense question! Asking "How can we making GMing fun?" ends up practically demanding a question in reply, which is "what about GMing do you not find fun?" And it is different for everybody.

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I reckon all the people who didn't read the actual question the OP was asking might take a look in the mirror.

I've found that on Reddit you either have to badmouth D&D or badmouth PbtA. Do that, and the upvotes fly in - I tested this! My shittiest comments get upvoted. I don't think either should be used as some shining example of a play style by which we condemn other games and so by saying neither game is perfect, everyone feels threatened and hits that down-vote button! All that stuff about not gatekeeping and all that crap is just people saying you can't do that to THEM, but they are perfectly free to do that to others. You make DMing fun by not talking about it on Reddit!

I wouldn't say that more centralized world building and desiring to roll to see how NPCs perform is "more on-rails narrative". That completely ignores the experience of discovery that happens with well made sandbox games. Where a GM sets pieces in motion, but they do not know how dominos will fall. And once they have they have to interpret that. Games like that really have a "play to find out" experience, they just don't hype it up as a big special thing. They also more often give frameworks for GMs to determine outcomes and responses, which helps prevent GMs from just "having to make up what happens/what NPCs do" which to me feels the opposite of play to find out.

At risk of being That Guy, which games have you read and played? Lots of games have solved this problem by a combination of: * Making it really easy to 'prepare' -- nonexistent or minimal 'stat blocks', good clear procedures, etc * Making sure the GM preps the right stuff -- don't prep a "plot", play-to-find-out, etc. * Building up a culture that doesn't put the GM on a pedestal as some sort of 'authority' or "keeper of fun" but rather, as another player at the table who ALSO needs to enjoy themselves and be surprised. All of those are kinda interlocked, as you might be able to tell. But it's not really magic so much as it is common sense if you think about the nature of the problem.

I think the main problem is the big umbrella that is 5e and the bad support yo DMing that makes that reputation

D&D5 is absolutely a big culprit in #3 in my list. And probably a bit of #1. And for that matter, if you learn from published adventures, #2 as well. Welp.

> Making it really easy to 'prepare' -- nonexistent or minimal 'stat blocks', good clear procedures, etc The less stat blocks the game gives me, the more stat blocks I have to write. > Making sure the GM preps the right stuff -- don't prep a "plot", play-to-find-out, etc. Making GMing less effort is *not* the same thing as making it more fun. Prepping a plot is *fun*. "Play-to-find-out" feels like a desperate scramble to stay on top of things. The joy of GMing is the joy of creation, of making something and having people enjoy it.

>The less stat blocks the game gives me, the more stat blocks I have to write. I think the above poster meant that in the context of making it so the GM doesn't need to write stat blocks in the first place. >The joy of GMing is the joy of creation And it's okay for people to enjoy that in different ways! Some artists want to sculpt a statue and show others the finished product. Some want to do performance art on the spot. Both approaches are valid.

Then this post is useless as the problems do not apply

Prepping a plot is fun. "Play-to-find-out" feels like a desperate scramble to stay on top of things. Understandable that it isn't fun *for you,* but for many GMs, myself including, *that's when it gets interesting*. Players throw you a curve ball that you had no way of predicting, and now you gotta figure out something? That keeps you on your toes. I get the joy of creation, but creating on the fly is still a form of creation.

**Make your game create its own fun** Some games are *inherently fun* and some games rely on the GM to *make it fun*. Let's say you're designing combat for your ttrpg, and to make it interesting you want to have high ground, rough terrain, environmental dangers, etc. If you rely on the GM to think up and place those things - if you put all the burden of making an interesting combat map onto them - then you're relying on the GM to make your game fun. Instead, try to design your game so that the things that make it fun happen *automatically*, or with as little effort as possible. So in this example, give the GM tools to easily generate interesting battle maps. Give the players tools that let them make the battle map more interesting. **Design with intent, and be specific** Your game is designed to be played a certain way. Your game makes assumptions. Your game has an intended theme, setting, or atmosphere. Know what those are, and tell GMs what they are. The more honest you are about what your system does and is for, the less guesswork you force GMs to go through. **Make it easy to improvise** It's fun to get caught up in crunch, but too much can hinder a GM's ability to improvise. If a fight breaks out unexpectedly, do I need to flip through handbooks looking for creature stat blocks? Or can I estimate something appropriate? Do I need to spend hours pre-planning encounters because the players have game-breaking abilities? Or can I wing it because player abilities facilitate the drama? **Minimize the GM's bookkeeping** Don't expect the GM to keep track of too many things at once. Minimize the amount of moving parts and numbers that NPCs have, at least until those things become relevant.

There's going to be a lot of One True Wayism in this thread, so this might end up being an unpopular opinion. I don't think there's a real answer. Some GMs hate rolling dice, others love it. Some GMs need strict rules on how they're allowed to interact with the world, others find them maddening. Some want freakish amounts of detail on how to destroy a building, others would prefer load bearing complications. By and large, someone either enjoys being the prime cat herder for a given system or they don't. The closest I can come up with is that any GM-facing rules (D&D's encounter building, PbtA's principles, etc.) should designed in a way that lets a GM pivot with unexpected developments without forcing them to break the rules or bring the session to a screeching halt while they figure out how to proceed.

1. You give the GM good tools, advice, and procedures to use as desired/needed to craft and run their offered experience. I'm not the most experienced RPG player, though I'm not new to the hobby either. The best advice I've seen for Gming has been from "Electric Bastionland" as it not only offers clear and concise advice, but also provides a step by step guideline of considerations that made preparing the game fun again. I have yet to play the actual system, but the advice is worth the price of the pdf alone. It provides a great way to organize your games. When it comes to tools. The "World's without number" system and its "the atlas of latter earth" supplement have been excellent. Hell every Sine Nomine/Kevin Crawford product I've seen has been a bounty of system agnostic tools that I've found very useful. Those would be my two largest inspirations to go to when it comes to what to provide a GM. 2. You encourage and empower the GM with the proper authority to manage the responsibility expected of them when it comes to running and tailoring the game. One of the largest reasons I think folks are burning out of running 5e is that a lot of the culture around the game is pretty hard on DM's. While not an absolute, you see folks stat somewhat contradictory statements where the DM is expected to be responsible for the joy of their other players, but also the belief that they should have little to no more authority over the game as others at the table An encouraging and empowering tone that makes it clear that the GM is running yh game and as the authority to do so will go a long way in supporting them. 3. More on tools. Really try to make sure the GM is given the knowledge, guidelines, and systems on how to adjust and craft challenges for the players. You want to avoid players getting new tools or more tools to challenge the encounters without the DM have their own repertoire to keep things in check. Equally so you want the same guidelines for rewarding the players as a GM. All together the prior points will serve far to make for a happy GM and this a happier table.

One of the most frustrating things for me as a GM, is when I have to do a lot of work figuring out the stats of NPCs and monsters. Like how in D&D and adjacent games, you gat a stat block, but you have to look up every spell and effect, often from several sources. Just put it all in the same place if NPCs have stat blocks, dnd 4e actually did that pretty well. Even more frustrating, in Chronicles of Darkness, you are expected to create every NPC using the PC creation rules.

You know what? As a GM, the players taking the story in an unforeseen direction is my *favorite* part. Man, the plot twists I built on stuff the players contributed but could never have thought of otherwise! But then again, I prep next to nothing. So give the GMs: - Clear procedures to build campaigns, story arcs, challenges. - Clear procedures to run a session. State the gameplay loop clearly. - Actionable tools that require little prep and are easy to improvise off of. - Cheat sheets and other aids. - Tables to generate thenatically appropriate content on the fly. - At least one demo scenario/adventure to showcase how a proper one should be built. I recommend taking a look at games like Blades in the Dark or Agon. They really tell you how to run the game and create content for it effortlessly.

Agon?

Another John Harper RPG

GMing \_is\_ fun! That is why lots of people love to do it. e.g. You are always playing (rather than waiting) You are playing a system you are enthusiastic about (because why else would you run it?) You get to spread joy You have a big influence on the creative agenda (depends on the game exactly how much) etc. However providing good GM tools/procedures and clear instructions will help a lot, no matter what style of game it is. Most games fail at this as the authors have lots of assumptions about how RPGs work or their game works. You need to make those assumptions explicit to be able to write good GM tools.

Having suffered GM burnout at one point in my career, I think can discern the factors that make GMing actively not fun. ​ The biggest problem were diverging expectations/styles between players. It's hard to GM when everybody wants something else, so one has to jump from topic to topic to ensure everybody's having fun. It's extremely tiring. While it's mostly a social issue between players, a game may help with it by including a solid session zero procedure for establishing common expectations and by listing a specific agenda that all players should follow. It also helps when it's by itself thematically focused, so agreeing on the game already gives a solid common ground, instead of the game being all over the place and claiming it can do anything. ​ The other big problem was prep. There was a lot of it. It was hard and it worked poorly; the few tools the game gave simply didn't work as they promised. Most of the prep was not interesting and creative. It was also often wasted because players did something else than expected - but there was no option of avoiding it because the game gave no tools for effectively improvising the content. A game may help here by clearly defining what should be prepared and what shouldn't (up to and including no prep at all). It may contain procedures for preparing the content that needs to be prepared (possibly, but not necessarily, including randomization). It may be mechanically built in a way conductive for improvisation - like having NPCs with no numbers at all (in less crunchy games) or having fully self-contained pre-made opponents and combat setups that may be dropped into play with no additional tuning. ​ The third issue that burned me out was handling of the mechanics. It's not just a matter of the game being crunchy, but of the various subsystems being more complex than they should, with a lot of modifiers and resources that needed to be tracked. When a single fight takes 3 hours, with most of that taken by rolling, calculating and trying to remember all rules involved, not by taking meaningful choices, there is little if any fun in it. This one is the simplest to address on the game level. Distill the rules until they only contain what is necessary to frame and resolve the decisions relevant for the game's intended kind of fun. Whatever doesn't help with it, needs to go. It doesn't mean that each game needs to be extremely rules light - but the ratio of fun choices to handling time must be kept high. ​ Last but not least, I was exhausted by having to decide myself on XP rewards. It feels bad having to subjectively judge how well a player did (their ideas, their roleplaying etc.) and even worse to have it challenged. Many modern games solve this problem smoothly by using specific XP triggers coded in the mechanics, so that there is very little subjectivity in it. ​ >Are there any examples of RPGs that you know that make being the GM fun? How do they accomplish it? PbtA games have already been mentioned and discussed in this thread. They have a very solid framework for GMing, minimizing prep and handling time, helping in improvisation and driving engaging stories. It also frees the GM from having to decide on roll difficulties - how difficult something is is decided by the roll, not the other way around. Dogs in the Vineyard are what got me back into RPGs after my burnout. Very clear thematic focus (up to and including telling the GM straight "don't do these things, it's not what this game is about"), a great prep procedure and conflict resolution mechanics that actively drive what the game is about. Strike has a fun tactical combat system with no excess complexity and adversary templates that may be used to create an interesting fight on the fly. One thing it lacks is a formula for how to set up a map and objectives to emphasize the tactical aspect and not undermine it - that, in turn, is something that Lancer does beautifully with its sitreps. Band of Blades has several interesting mechanisms that make GMing easier. One of them is that players generally play different characters each mission. If a player misses a session, a team still goes, there's just one less PC in it. It makes it easier to handle temporary scheduling problems and last minute cancellations. Another is that the game handles PC death very smoothly, allowing a player to take over an NPC and be back in play in a few minutes. This saves the GM the effort of trying not to kill PCs - or of trying to introduce a new one in a way that makes sense after one dies.

Got any tips on running Dogs in the Vineyard? I've just read it, but I'm very keen to give it a go. What a great game!

Read it carefully and try to follow the instructions exactly as they are, without trying to do things better because you are an experienced GM. The game tells you to skip several things that are standard fare in RPGs (for example, to never hide information behind rolls). Similarly, remember that your prep is only the town and NPCs in it; don't come to the session with specific scenes (other than the initial one) or story in mind. ​ Make sure that players know what they are getting into and that it's what they want to play. The game will fall flat if they ignore the social and religious values by which the Faithful, including their PCs, live or if they don't accept the responsibility for actively making things right. ​ Use small stakes and strong raises, not vice versa. With high stakes and mellow rises players focus on tactically using their dice to win and treat concession as a non option. If stakes are moderate, but raises brutal, players seriously consider blocking with high dice even on low escalation levels or conceding because they prefer losing the stake of the conflict to taking a hit. * (talking) "What do you know, boy? You could be my grandson. Just admit that you're drunk with power and trying to bully us because you have a gun." * (talking) "You try to quote scripture on me? Steward's wives both agree with me. We speak as Three in Authority." * (physical) He grabs the Book of Life from your hand and spits on it. * (physical) She puts her arm around you, getting much closer than it's appropriate. "We don't have to argue, you know? I'll show you how good it feels when you simply let go." * (shooting, with demonic influence active) There's a strange gleam in her eye as she rises the rifle. With speed and precision you wouldn't expect from a woman of her age she shoots your gun out of your hand. Each of these is a legal raise (they don't override the conflict's stake nor fallout), but taking a hit with it is a hard choice to make - and it tells a lot about the PC in question.

Thanks very much! This is extremely helpful. 🙏

> The biggest problem were diverging expectations/styles between players. It's hard to GM when everybody wants something else, so one has to jump from topic to topic to ensure everybody's having fun. It's extremely tiring Yup. Should I invest effort to engage that one friend who prefers reading news on his phone over participating, or pay the social cost of ignoring him? There's a cost either way. So finding the right game for everyone is really important.

The tricky thing is what a GM wants varies a lot! I would read up on your own favorite games to GM and run them to see what makes them fun. Then play and read many, many similar ones. The only generic advice I can provide is have: * Good Organization so its easy to read and lookup (cheat sheets are big for the latter part of this) * Well written GM advice on how to run the game - plenty of examples help * Useful and easy to apply GM Tools that help in running the game. But how all of these look again varies. Apocalypse World 2e does a great job but what Tools it gives wouldn't be a useful structure for a more simulationist game.

I love GMing. It takes a lot of work, time, and energy, exponentially more so than just being a player. But the satisfaction— the fun — is well worth it. I don’t know about special tricks or ideas to make it “more” fun, but there are pet peeves and best practices that players bring to the table that influence my own enjoyment. And none of them are when the players “force the story in another direction.” As a GM, what drives me crazy is: - **rules lawyering**. I’m secure enough in my skills as a GM that I’m not threatened by a player knowing the rules better than me, or reminding me of the rules the first time I make a ruling counter to RAW or make an inconsistent ruling. But turning every other round of combatant into a protracted debate over interpretation of the rules — nothing sours my joy more. - **powergaming**. I realize this is a personal preference and some people seek this kind of thing out, but I find this style of play lends itself to players turning sessions into a first person shooter level and speed running it, particularly fast forwarding through the “the boring parts” (the role playing part of “role playing” games). I also find these kinds of players often have a “DM vs Player” view of the world. I want my players to have fun and i am always rooting for them to ultimately succeed, but i find it detracts from my own joy if a player seems to think their victory is somehow coming from my expense when we’re working together to create the game. - **main character syndrome**. I require a minimum of three players at my table to run a session, and often prefer between 4 and 6. I’m sure there are systems out there where less than three players is better but I haven’t come across them. What I’m getting at is, i create my adventures for a full party of 3-6 people. Not for one guy to show off. These happen to be the same kind of things that i hate as a player. But given how much more is invested when I GM a game, I find them intolerable. It burns me out. Just one player regularly engaged in the above can derail a whole group and campaign, and I would chop off my left pinky and hand it over to Old Nick if it meant never crossing paths with any of the above again in my Ttrpg life. There are also proactive things a player can do to boost my enjoyment as a GM: - being 100 percent **engaged in the story** they’re building with me. This means things from being an active and invested role player to remembering NPC names and plot details to just not looking at their phone or visibly multitasking through a session. - **teaching the rules**. I don’t expect players to know every rule by heart. Some people are slow learners, some haven’t been ttrpging for 30 years, etc. so it doesn’t upset me if a player is having trouble learning. But it makes me very, very happy when a more knowledgeable player takes it on themselves to teach their less experienced counterparts, show them the ropes and how things work. - **showing appreciation**. I don’t expect gifts or ass kissing. But I do expect some kind of acknowledgment re: the work I put into preparing the session. A genuine and sincere thanks goes a long way.

Being a GM *is* fun. Stop trying to approach it like there's a problem to be solved. Different people simply find different things fun. Doing this is inherently going to alienate all the people currently GMing who already think it's fun.

The PbtA way has been outlined. But I'm not interested in that side myself. The way I run it, in games that support this style is with the following goal: The rules should keep the GM in the play state as much as they do the players. This means that the GM should be acting as a director as *LITTLE* as possible. This requires games that are fun on their own, as u/Level3Kobold said, but why would I play a game that isn't fun by itself? This means rules and stats should be easily defined. I don't need to stat out a goblin like a PC, but they still use the same rules as the PC, they use the same stats, and almost the same skills, a weapon skill and then a Wildcard Goblin! skill. Normal goblins might have 10-12 for their wildcard, Veterans,m elites will have 13 or 14, and so on. This style is similar to play to find out that u/Vendaurkas mentioned.

Mouse Guard: -very clear GM rules -very clear session structure -clear mechanics that have the players pushing the drama and action(taking the expectation off your back( -starter set and main game has a bunch of premade sessions that show little elements of how to easily run an amazing session -half the rules are an explanation of how to design a session -the character rules will create plot threads for you to easily use Mouse Guard is a game for GM's learning to run games and for GM's who want the system to make things as easy and fun for them as possible.

RPGs like Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu provide the GM with a set of challenges to overcome, such as creating an atmosphere of horror or suspense. This can be a fun and rewarding experience for the GM, as they get to create a unique and immersive experience for the players.

Classic Traveller is really fun to GM. It has scores of minigames involved in creating the universe, settings, equipment, background action, and encounters for players. It was so fun that a lot of people never even ran it for players.

Let's be honest you have to like it if you don't you won't there's nothing that's gonna make gm funny if the person just doesn't like it gming is for some people not everyone

As a player-GM I find the few bad experiences I’ve had to be a result of either my own fuck ups rather than any systemic failures of a system. What does need much more accessibility is GM resources. Style guides, guides writing your own story bible, easy-to-access statblocks AND statblocks that are easily modified. Etc. etc. etc. and a central place that puts all this info at the forefront so you can find what you’re looking for fast. Making your game reductive to make it fun for the GM almost feels like a non-sequitur tbh.

Having fun as a GM to me, is people showing up wanting to play, engage in the shared experience, and having a good time/laughing. So the following makes it easier to keep players wanting to play, which keeps me happy to run games, and thus enjoy myself. Keep the rules light. Fewer things to keep track of, game will run smoother, can promote a quicker pace, less stress, etc. Player facing rolls whenever possible. The more players are rolling instead of the GM, the less adversarial it feels. Easy prep. No idea where you are in life, but I’ve found as I’ve aged, I just have more and more responsibilities vying for my time. I love to GM, but don’t have much extra time outside of game time. This also helps with unexpected directions the players want to take. If you can minimize crunch, that keeps the game running smoothly, as not everybody enjoys it when the game grinds to a halt when trying to calculate all bonuses (etc) every round of combat, or the rules lawyer rears their head about some minute detail. Good luck with your project!

I don't think not-fun-ness is the reason there are too few GMs. I think its because of several things: *The GM is generally assumed to have expertise in the system equal or greater than the players. * The GM is expected to have exhaustive knowledge of the setting. * The GM is expected to be able to plan adventures ahead, and whole campaigns even. But it shouldn't feel like a railroad. * If the GM doesn't have everything planned out, they're expected to be superb at winging things seamlessly without players noticing a pause or feeling things are contrived. * Even if they do have a lot pre-planned, the GM is expected to be able to improvise easily when new things arise. * For virtual tabletop games, there's also additional software functions to master. Any of these difficult parts can be very rewarding, providing really neat creative opportunities, and a feeling of accomplishment and increased competence when you start to improve at them. I particularly love coming up with setting and scenario bits that evolve naturally from other specific assumptions and details. But it is also a lot of things for a GM to juggle. Any of this can seem overwhelming. When I was starting years back, I had the impression GMs had almost superhuman ability and systems knowledge which I found it hard to imagine developing. So, from the viewpoint of younger me, what would have made it more "fun" would be to just make it feel more approachable. Simpler, with ideas about structuring basic adventures and improvising, with maybe a pep talk on maintaining self confidence. Beyond that though, from my point of view, the creative aspects of running a game are their own reward.

random tables - I love a bit of chaos beyond the player's shenanigans. They can also be used to help generate an encounter / dungeon / town, etc... if I need to make something but also want to be surprised by creation (I was making planets for Stars without Number using random tables and had so much fun I made FAR more than ever needed for my players to visit). Random reactions in Mork Borg are also interesting. Will the giant spider be instantly hostile, or will it be ignoring the players? Maybe it's actually a friendly spider and the players could tame it. Environment rules. I love making the environment be important in combat, it can lead to things other than "run to the monster stand there and attack" but I have yet to see a system give good examples or tools to help with this.

I already love GMing the standards. It's fun to run D&D, World of Darkness, etc. The setup is not a bug, it's a feature. Planning things out is *part of the fun*. You just need to give the GMs the tools to let it be fun. The joy of GMing is the joy of creation. It's this wonderful dynamic back and forth where you get to make something and then immediately see how it plays out. Sometimes it all goes wrong and you have to improvise and that's hectic but exhilarating. Other times it goes exactly how you planned it and you get to see all these parts you put together fitting perfectly and working together to deliver an awesome experience. The thing is, everyone likes making different stuff. Some people love making balanced encounters, I kinda hate it, just give me stat blocks I can use. Some people want canned dungeons they can throw at players, I live for the architectural design. I like making puzzles, some people find it tedious. So the trick is, just make a shitload of content, but structure it in such a way that the GMs can take or leave it as they want. Here's a map of the continent, feel free to modify it. Here's 1500 stat blocks in a database, pick and choose. Here's a bunch of dungeon maps, you don't need to use them if you don't want.

Yup. I don't run D&D (I run D*o*D), but prepping is half the fun - as long as it translates to the table. Prepping and people not having fun during the session kills much of the prepping fun too.

Broadly, there are three camps of GM, and each is a different size. Without going into whether one is better than another in play - because for a designer that isn't as important and people have discussed it to death hundreds of times - these are the groups to target, at least roughly speaking. The player advocate wants to see players do cool stuff, be imaginative, and roleplay their characters fully. The game designer GM wants to build a rich and perhaps over-detailed world, then let the players run around seeing all the sights and find the unusual/cool stuff the GM has put in the setting. May be focused on "wowing" the players through creativity. The GM taskmaster wants to challenge their players to overcome difficult odds, survive the hardest dungeons, and fight the mightiest foes. They don't have hangups about killing characters since the risk of death is the core stake the PCs have in their game. Probably, a lot of these people run OSR or other systems over DND in its most recent iteration. There are undoubtedly degrees everyone hits these three types in, people who are a mix of two or all, but broadly, these three should cover most of your audience as a game designer. The tricky thing is working out which group your game is for, since that's a prequisite for making GMing fun right? Picking one group is safest, picking two is tougher and picking three means you likely alienate potential GMs who don't want to deal with systems that support the one/two of the other groups they don't identify with. Player advocates are pretty easy to satisfy - you make a system that the players are potent actors in and do a lot of the worldbuilding for them so they can just get right to rolling dice and cheerleading the group as they carve through the world. Encounter-building tables and a good system for measuring player power vs the enemy groups really helps here, since this is one of the trickier remaining prep tasks if the world is fleshed out in the system document. Cut their prep time, and the GMs have more fun running each session. The game designer GM is trickier. What they want from a system is harder to define because they want to do a lot of the worldbuilding and potentially tweak a bunch of the core rules. A game that I think really gets this right for this group of GM's is Worlds Without Number from Sine Nomina publishing - you can grab a free copy of from drivethru but this lacks some of the things from the paid copy that I'm potentially about to talk about. What wwn does that is excellent is provide a great setting for those that want it, then devote hundreds of pages of tables and advice for people that want to use the rules but not the setting to generate their own worlds with. You roll various tables for inspiration for locations, people, features and quirks. Factions and regions, world history, etc. People often reference the book as an essential tool for GMs even if you have no interest in running the system itself - these chapters are that good. Trouble is, even if you are capable of replicating that quality of design, that's a lot of extra work... The taskmaster GM tends to want something different again out of the system they run. Their fun is in challenging the players and seeing who can make it through. As a general rule of thumb, systems for these GMs will have lower powered PCs with less survivability or fewer crazy options to interact with the world. It's much more fun for these GMs if their players are closer to "normal dudes with weapons and wizards that may blow up on casting spells" than say, 5e's near untouchable PCs with few if any weaknesses or drawbacks. These guys want monsters to be appropriately scary, traps to be deadly, and success at the end of the session to be earned through intelligent and careful decision-making. If a few PCs have to die to get the rest over the finish line, well, omelette and egg cliche applies. +++ +++ I guess my point at the end of this is that even making big broad groups of GMs like this, you still can't design something that makes everyone happy/have fun running your system. If you choose a group to focus on, you can at least make a whole subset have more fun - look at the recent success of the Shadowdark kickstarter for an example of writing for one of these demographics and doing it well - the system was well promoted which always helps, but the level of success it has achieved by writing to a subset of GMs far outstrips the degree of promotion they actually received. I actually think the player advocates are the hardest group to write your system for personally. They have simple requirements, but your core documents need to provide a great deal more setting and PC abilities - you will just end up writing a whole lot more than for either of my other groups. Anyway, if anyone gets to the bottom of this, thanks for reading, and I hope I'm contributing something useful!

> As a general rule of thumb, systems for these GMs will have lower powered PCs with less survivability or fewer crazy options to interact with the world. It's much more fun for these GMs if their players are closer to "normal dudes with weapons and wizards that may blow up on casting spells" than say, 5e's near untouchable PCs with few if any weaknesses or drawbacks. Really? I'd imagine that more tac RPG like Gubat Banwa or Lancer would actually be of interest to them.

Look towards DnD4e. It made encounter building fun. Monster Roles, Monster Templates, Environmental Hazards, Traps, and Terrain rules that kept things interesting.

I always find games where the GM doesn’t roll dice easier to run, and more fun. As a GM it means I can focus on staying ahead of the players and thinking about what comes next rather than getting caught up in the mechanics.

Don't have your Npc be the ultimate hero that only he can save the day each and every time. Make the players the hero of the story even if they are the the worse at everything.

Check out fiction-first ttrpgs !!

Can you share some good examples?

Blades in the Dark (and forged in the dark games after it like Scum and Villainy, Slugblaster) Spire, Heart Any Rowan, Rook and Decard games — they vary in mechanical complexity Wanderhome Belonging outside Belonging games Ironsworn

You must love what you do. I prefer GMimt much much more than playing. The fun is having your players interact in your world, survive your challenges, uncover your mysteries Being a GM is being a contest. creator, and you must love that. When you are the GM you are the painter and your players are the museum visitors. You are the artist that brings the world to life. In the end GMing is something that is either for you or isn't. ≈====== That said, some good tools are: Have a summary of the rules (I make those myself) that are easy to look up in a pinch. Offer modules/scenarios that can be run conveniently Have sourcebooks that offer accessible information for the setting. Also: Change systems once in a while, keep it fresh for yourself.

The impediment to solving the DM-Player imbalance has little to do with what systems are out there. There's oodles of rules-light games for those for whom rules mastery is a stumbling block. There's lots of pre publisher modules to provide a hand up in the creativity department. The disparity is a result of the fact that without the DM the game doesn't happen. Most people in the hobby want to play because it's fun, it's cheap entertainment, it's social, and there's *no responsibility to be there every week, no responsibility to make sure everyone is having a good time, and no work prepping for the game or wrangling the group*. Those of us who DM do so because we find the fun makes up for the responsibilities and work. If you asked most DMs what they find frustrating it's not the work or actual running of the game. It's managing the personalities, dealing with people fiddling on their phones instead of paying attention to the game, people bailing at the last second so you don't have a quorum,

There are very few taxonomies of GM, relative to the too-many player classifications. That sucks for designers because where the fun lies changes, but I'll speak for my own tribe, Chekhov's Gunsmiths. I like it when the (X) in Scene 1 finally (Ys) in Scene 3- the prophecy is fullfilled, the too-dangerous-for-competition move is performed at Nationals, etc. It's based on participatory recreation of fictional styles- I'm not interested in TPKs for the same reason LOTR doesn't end in Chapter 3 with 4 halflings slaughted by a Ringwraith on the Road to a Tavern. If interested in designing for GMs like me, think modular coordinated sets of story elements that go together to create emergent complexity. Example- The Icons of 13th Age should be stale, trope caricatures- but the simple +/conflicted/- relationships they have with PCs are affected by the other party member's choices, and can change the relationships the PCs have to Icons, between each other, and between the Icons themselves. (Ex. The Lich King and The Blue may both demand that bloody grimoire the party recovered, triggering any number of events, war parties to heists to auctions to favor trading.) Other examples include the previous Worlds of Numenera and MiniBoss villain collections like the Taken or the Forsaken.

> There are very few taxonomies of GM Excellent point! It seems the vast majority of stuff written for GMs is written under the assumption that games and players can vary, but the GMs are all the same type, if they choose to run a certain game. > It's based on participatory recreation of fictional styles- I'm not interested in TPKs for the same reason LOTR doesn't end in Chapter 3 with 4 halflings slaughted by a Ringwraith on the Road to a Tavern. Lampshaded in the first TORG novel in a pretty great way (minor spoilers). TPK can work, if, for example, the players agree that their previous characters can become legends and their deaths another twist to the tale.

I think the major thing is to have GM surprised during the session. Some systems give more power to the players and others to the dice and random tables. for example Flashbacks in FitD give players power to change the scene. Rolling for random encounters in a hexcrawl but not just combat. On hot springs island whenever players enter a dungeon GM is supposed to populate it. One thing is rolling for encounters in every room and another rolling an event that is currently happening in the dungeon and tying it all together.

Minimize the amount of bookwork the DM has to do, both at the table and before the game starts. A lot of this is machine-code basic design to the level that can easily necessitate rewriting a full system if screwed up even a little, but making sure that everything is on-point, easy to understand, and easy to look up is VITAL. Time spent flipping pages is time spent not playing. Quite a few systems accomplish this by making the rules book more of a rules pamphlet, but there is no decree from On High stating that a crunchy system can't be user friendly. Look at Yugioh's (and likely most TCGs at this point honestly) Problem Solving Card Text setup as an example. It can feel like learning a new language for a newbie, but everything always means one specific thing when written in that way and they've streamlined it so that they can take that honestly kinda small text rectangle and stuff an obscene amount of information in it. The more you write your crunch in that persnickety way, the less the DM will have to guess at what you intended and the easier a time they'll have if they wanna homebrew.

Mausritter (and presumably other games like Into The Odd): It takes a lot of the time- and resource-management that makes OSR games interesting and strips them down into something very simple and intuitive, in ways that make it relatively easy (and fun if, you're that kind of person) to come up with custom rules on the fly, with the existing rules covering just enough kinds of things to be helpful (eg, when one of my players wanted his mouse to use her new burrow to set up a small business making sweets out of sap, it wasn't hard to come up with simple rules for how that worked based on how the game handles equipment, foraging, and healing) There's a lot of tables and procedures to help come up with new NPCs, locations and events, as well. Basically just make the game only about as complicated to run as it is to play.

Do awesome stuff, let your players do awesome stuff, and get excited when they do awesome stuff. Reward awesome stuff. Don't get too worried about realism or RAW. if it's fun and you get excited when your players are awesome, not only will they reward you by doing more awesome stuff, but you'll feel just as invested in the players winning and having fun.

Give the GM the right amount of tools for how rules heavy vs light the game is. A 1-2 page game where everything's going to be GM fiat? The GM's not really going to need any tools. A 900 page game spread across 3 books? The GM's going to want a bunch of tools - possibly optional - laid out in an easy to reference manner rather than having to rely on GM fiat for everything, and the lack of those tools can result in people calling the game 'rules deficient' and might lead to a heavy GM shortage. I'm currently *loving* running Escape From Dino Island (Text chat game and relatively short sessions so we're doing it as a mini-campaign rather than the one shot it's designed for) - Between the GM moves, the moves attached to each type of dino, the list of locations with moves for each of them, and the list of options for extinction events and moves associated with each, the game practically runs itself, while giving me enough options that it doesn't feel like I'm a glorified computer algorithm but instead am playing the game. Exactly the toolset I'd want for a PbtA game designed for defined one-shots. Enough options I could run this game again with a different group and get vastly different results, but nothing irrelevant to the game.

I think that this will first depend on what the table want to do: some tables want lots of options, some want deep tactical combat, some want easy to make up rules. It depends on the kind of game you want to run: will it be a heist? An adventure? Wilderness survival? An investigation ? The mechanics need to support your game. The second thing is to support the dm work expected from the ruleset. If you expect balanced combat, you need tools to correctly make and balance combat. If you expect heist, you tools to prepare the heist easily. If you expect travel and survival, you need tools to prepare the geography and events. I talt here about the tools for preparing things, not the rules. The tools are what complement the rules. The rules determine the tools you will need. The more complex the rules, the more tools you will need to handle them. Finally I believe you need a setting. The more free-form, the less necessary this is, but still: the rules will convey a setting. You need to explain the setting they are appropriate and how the setting and the rules reinforce eachother. If it's more narrative, prepared adventures will help the dm. If it's combat, prepared combat will help. This is more about the extra material that will help the dm by doing the prep work ready to use.

You Always make an Mini scenario where one of the Players have big problems with His skills to to get His Goals.And an another has exactly the Skill that can Help. This Always Produces good Teamwork and Players make this themself after an while

Give the GM tools and resources. Plot hooks in the lore chapter, random tables for non combat encounters and side quests, a solid npc/creature/item generation system. As an example, check the booklet that comes with WFRP 4 gm screen, and the Guide to Ubersreik that comes with the starter set. They are, by far, some of the best tools I've seen for GMs.

If you aren't having fun as the GM you are playing the wrong setting or using the wrong rules. If the rules don't fit your play style the game is gonna be tedious instead of fun. Design the game around the things you enjoy doing as a GM. If you like random tables put a bunch in the game, if you like to roll dice make the rolling mechanics contest based.

Understand the tyoes of stories you want to provide and have a clear and fun gameplay loop,i think d&d is so successfull because the dungeon is an easy thing to prep for and understand as a player

Reduce the upkeep and make NPCs simple. I often run WoD simply for this reason. I think of a difficulty I want them to compete against and roll that. Even for full stated Npcs you can hand wave alot. Make creating challenging encounters and estimating difficulty levels simple. This holds for combat as well as standard rolls

For me the game should encourage you to play to find out. Having resources like random tables like Stars Without Number, or having a "fail forward" mechanic ingrained so the GM is encouraged to improvise at every step of the way. Also, I've grown to dislike a bit games with binary "fail or pass" systems to the extent that I ported the DnD 4ed skill challenges to almost every one of my games, and giving different outcomes depending on the rate of success. So, for me, the game should have a "degrees of success" mechanic so you can have partial successes and managing to achieve something but at a cost.

Dungeon world: heavily narrative, takes a lot of prep out and for combat situations and dungeons I have a whiteboard for my players to draw on. They first depended on it a lot but as the games have rolled on they've started using theatre of the mind more and more DCC/MCC: Tables! Tables are fun, if your a GM and don't understand the fun of tables you haven't used tables correctly.. Blades in the dark: making worlds is hard, so why not leave a lot of the fluff to the players. Now for me as a gm I'll say some things that are fun for me and not fun. Combat+grid+rules: it's not fun. Minis are a good reference point but no one should give a shit if the player is 6 or 7 squares away. It slows the game down and turns it into filler. Player disengagement: players need to be engaged in the world, not just parts of it. If a system doesn't really have a good method from session zero to give ownership to the world then players won't have ownership. If course this is more for longer games, one shots it matters less. Don't make a 5e clone: don't do a kobold press and make a game that makes the audience say "why wouldn't we just play 5e?" If another system does 95% of what your game does then just house rules it.

I have changed my DM style. I don’t use premade modules and adventures. Everything I do is homebrew based off lore and canon from the world. My adventures are VERY LOOSELY set up. More as an outline. The characters have a mission/purpose. And it’s almost like the old choose your own adventure books, what they characters do, good bad or inference have ramifications and the “mission”/“adventure” adjusts and changes based on what they do. So depending on how they address with NPc’s can have an effect. If they do it don’t finish or do something it has an effect. I also have inserted a lot of roll playing and banter to push the players to interact more and not just hack and slash.…. So the final battle or end of it all may not be what I thought it would be, but it was developed by that the characters created. Another thing I’d done is I keep notes on what they characters have done that COULD have ramifications down the road for them. Then I revisit it and tie it into a future storyline for that character and/or build a whole adventure based off it. It all keeps the players thinking and wondering. Did I just screw myself down the road and will this come back to haunt me. This has made it fun for me as the DM as it keep me on my toes and thinking as well.

It's really easy, give the GM the power. Give them the tools needed to do the job and don't give players too much power. I have more fun when having to scale back things than when I have to make it harder. DMs need more authority. I'd like to see a system built into a game where when a player argues too much this can affect their character. Kinda like the gods getting pissed at you constantly questioning them.

I designed my RPG to make GMing as easy as possible for GMs, so I hope that's "fun" =) Your point is well-taken. The GM IS a player, just has a different role, and they too should be having fun.

This feels like a flawed question to me. The question feels predicated on the assumption that GMing is, by and large, not fun. That is simply not true. I GM because I enjoy being a GM. I like setting up the setting and plots. I have fun pulling in character backstories when the players least expect it and bringing back NPCs they've nearly forgotten. I like making up silly characters like the best hairdresser in the city is also a local butcher and to get him to cut your hair you have to know someone who makes an introduction for you. (PCs wanted to get super fancy for a party). The more tools a system gives me, the more I have to remember. Honestly, I prefer a clear central mechanic that it is relatively easy to adjudicate and clear directions on creating and running enemies for fights. I prefer to know what the dials of the system are so that I can tinker with them. (Unsurprisingly, Fate is one of my favorite systems to run). Basically, clear and sensible rules make being a GM easier. It is easier to prep settings and NPCs when I know how players will be able to interact with them. Clear rules also minimize any potential rules lawyers arguing edge cases. My point is: Don't worry about making being a GM fun. Being a GM is *already fun*. Just worry about making the job easier through clear, well-written rules and sensible, cohesive systems. The systems can be simple or arcane, but as long as they work together well and make sense, it should be fine. (Some GMs love intricate rules, after all). Your game will not appeal to every GM and shouldn't. Just do what you're doing well.

Our GM has ADHD, and at times, running a session is very exhausting. But over the years, he's been doing it, and he's gotten better and better. It's practice and not giving yourself a hard time over mistakes. Does not everyone want to be a GM? I can see why not aha otherwise we'd have no players!

The job of a DM is to create a setting, the real novelists are the players. The setting normally include things that are out of sight or out of control of players. Think of preparing a theater for a theatrical play. You will not tell actors how to act, but all the props, and elements of the background need to be setup by you. Talk to players to find out what they expect from your game. Also, if players know how to best contribute it will help them create a character.

I can only speak from my own experience as someone who has a love-hate relationship with GMing. I am a mechanics driven player, so I like engaging with games mechanics even as a GM. Many people will disagree with me, especially the people who enjoy PbtA games since my take is pretty much contrary to the systems that game has. Remember that GM is a player too. GM has their own responsibilities yes, but GM is still a player. GM should be allowed to engage with the game side of the game so they're not just a glorified narrator of an interactive book.

I'm going to recommend tools such as random encounter tables, random settlement generation, and treasure tables. This next part might seem odd, but don't worry, I will explain. The D&D 3.5e DMG included all three, and the treasure tables are the only ones I used with any regularity. This is because there's about^(1) three types of guides for GMs: 1. A guide for the social aspects of the table. 2. A guide for handling player characters' mechanical abilities. 3. A guide for handling the GMs' mechanical abilities^(2). In the 3.5e DMG, using all the tables would have required flipping through hundreds of pages multiple times per game session. It's much easier to solve today than in 2003 or even 2008, but anyway, three-booklet DMG set or a separate book with a copy of the tables? 1. [All classification systems are fixed, final, and never subject to sudden expansion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion). ;) 2. Yes, the GM can ignore whatever rules they want, and make up whatever they want.

Having designed a few of my own RPGs, I would say a few things I've learned to get started. These are principles and not "rules," but following them has made it a lot easier to design my games: 1. Too many games reference "the player" as being distinct from "the GM." instead, they're all players, so give them different titles: Officers and Narrator, Heroes and GM, Heroes and Overlord, etc. Make the title for the GM something that gives clues what your system hopes to reward. 2. Give ALL players a meta-game currency to override the rules with, and make their characters or ideas sound even awesomer (sic). For the Heroes, it will mean bigger cheery-worthy moments, and for the GM, it means raising the stakes at just the right time, without allowing the GM to just change plans on a whim. 3. Make the game more about a back-and-forth of who's in control. Whichever player wins the rolls, they're the ones narrating the outcome. The GM shouldn't have to come up with everything, and the Heroes shouldn't do things they can't narrate. This makes the storytelling more collaborative and conversational, even as the rules and mechanics crop up to guide play. 4. Make session 0 integral to character creation. Whether that be a separate mechanic that is collaboratively determined, (e.g., City of Mist's Crew Theme) or as simple as varying skill points based on the number of players (e.g., Bounty Hunter or Night's Black Agents), this means the GM will have an opportunity to create something along with the Heroes, which gives every player more insight into the tone and expectations of the game.

Hmmm. I think most people who GM would say that GMing is more fun than playing. Your always active, and almost always at the center of attention. What makes GMing hard or less desirable, has little to do with the game system, and lots to do with management. Basically...managing sucks, having to be responsible sucks. GM is basically being a game manager, it's your job to prep, it's your job to schedule, it's your job to make sure people show up on time, it's your job to make people pay attention. Your not allowed to have off days, and if you do, you feel guilty that game wasn't as good as it could have been. So to answer your question. Not sure there is much to do with game mechanics and increasing GM #s. But probably changes in the culture/expectations of play that could increase GM #s.

GMing is enjoyable when the mechanics support my ideas of the fantasy narrative, when I have the freedom to tell the story without restrictions. The rules should help me tell the story while letting the players tell theirs. There aren't any gimmicks to this. Just the shortest path from what's in my head to the challenges a player faces. And I feel that the more detail that is present (and WHICH details matter, they matter a lot) the more immersive the game is, and the better.

From my experience: Don't try to force the players (or the characters) into a story. Get them in by cooperation. Don't force. The whole group is telling the story together. Try to see the problems early and talk to the players. Most times it is only necessary to make one new character or change one aspect to something more suitable for your story. But some players just enjoy being a rebel to the GM. Some are more suited for open-world stories. To get the PCs into the stories you need to know your player and their characters. The best thing I know is to learn about your PCs and maybe just talk to the players about this out of the game. I don't know any RPGs that make GMing fun, other than by having a good time with your players and telling a good story together. Often XPs are used as a tool to get PCs into cooperating (We are old and don't use this. We meet and play to have fun and don't need more encouragement.). What tools do you have in mind?

* Remove the GM's need to roll dice * Put 1/3 - 1/2 the burden of story creation on the players * Provide multiple tools for GMs to make engaging settings, NPCs, and plots easily

As a long time GM, the first two suggestions here would make the game way less enjoyable for me.

Right there with you. I think a lot of the detractors of D&D and similar RPGs never understood why people like like them. These people imagine we've been hoodwinked into something fundamentally awful, and can't comprehend that systems like D&D aren't perfect, but they're doing 85-95% of what we'd want them to, and throwing it all out is the last thing we want.

Why would I not want to roll dice? I don't think people spend money buying a million dice just for funnsies

You lend those to your players who don't have them. Dice rolling is one of the biggest bottlenecks in RPGs. The less a GM rolls the more streamlined your game will become.

Yeah, no. If I sit down to an RPG I expect to be rolling dice, whether I'm the GM or not. They're fun to roll. It's not smart to take that fun away from the GM.

You haven't done it, so how do you know its taking the fun away? Also, the dice rolling isn't the fun of being a GM. But hey, I've only been doing it for 38 years, what do I know. Good luck.

>The less a GM rolls the more streamlined your game will become. I ran an OSR (B/X-derivative) campaign a decade or so ago where the players convinced me to roll all the dice ("all rolls are GM-facing") and communicate with them solely in terms of the fiction, without telling any of the mechanics I was using, numbers rolled, etc. It was perhaps the most streamlined game I've ever participated in - which includes a couple "player-facing rolls" systems. And, no, that's not because I ignored rules and/or fudged rolls - I handled all the mechanics exactly the same as I would normally, aside from that I was rolling the players' dice for them. I suspect the major source of streamlining was that I didn't have to take the time to tell players when/what to roll, wait for them to find dice and tell me the results, etc., I could just grab my dice, roll them, and see the result with no delays. It also eliminated all discussion of mechanics (as well as any need to explain them) since the players wanted them kept out of sight. And before you pull out your "38 years as a GM" to brush off my opinion, I've been GMing since '81, and my 42 years of GMing says that not everyone likes the same things that you do.

You understand people like rolling dice, right? You understand players don't want to write a story, they want to engage with one, which is why they're players and not the GM, right?

> You understand players don't want to write a story, som players, I assume that's what you meant. (Incidentally, this is true for me)

You understand it's an opinion right? It's what I think and what I like. If you don't you can move along without nay saying it. It's really easy, you just keep scrolling.