The Digital Media track at Dragon Con opened its Friday sessions at 10AM in Hilton Galleria 7 with a panel examining ways a Game Master (GM) can make their sessions more engaging and interesting. Moderated by Dennis Robinson, the panelists included Nicole Conway, Philip Keating, Mark Meer, and Elisa Teague. From author and game designer to podcaster, the panel brought decades worth of game mastering experience to the workshop.
The panel was unanimous in emphasizing that character backstory, knowing it and using it, is key to a GM’s ability to create energy and engagement at the table. GMs should take as much advantage of this material as possible. Meer argued that a character backstory can provide narrative threads that a GM can use, but that means you must be willing to adapt/change the story you’ve already written. Even more, weaving multiple back stories together, and inserting them into your adventure can really maximize engagement. When those threads converge within your larger narrative, you have what Teague described as the best of all possible scenarios; one in which a GM gets to sit back and “watch the puppets dance.”
The key to this is open communication between a GM and the players. It’s important to talk about the characters with the players outside of the campaign. Teague wants to know what the players expectations are in advance. Here she’s referring not just to the character, but the player herself. She wants to understand where the player is at, what she wants to achieve, and how her game design can help players have meaningful, enjoyable, and fulfilling experiences. Hers is a very collaborative process. This drives home the importance of session zero, the meeting with everyone together to lay out not just the rules but the lines, framing, and structure of what’s about to ensue.
On the issue of design and preparation, the panel was very idiosyncratic. Robinson discussed how his planning had changed over the years. As a young GM, he developed very detailed, copious notes. As the years passed, and he grew more comfortable adapting in the moment to choices players make, his notes became “skeleton” outlines. He found that no matter how carefully he planned out campaign components, players always took things in a different direction. As Robinson put it: sometimes a GM must “roll with the punches and be adaptable.” Here again, Teague emphasized the degree to which a GM wants to allow players to pursue their “shenanigans.” With the wisdom of a veteran game master Conway concluded: “the more you want it to happen, the less likely it is.”
When running a single session or short campaign for novice players, there’s a real value in reducing the complexity of the system. Pull away all the extraneous material that new players simply cannot handle and focus on putting them as close to the action as possible. An experienced GM can then teach the mechanics of the game and build the players’ competence and confidence. In the end, what’s key to any game master’s success is flexibility and a willingness to do what’s necessary to make the game fun.
The near capacity room, loaded with game masters of varying degrees of experience, clearly engaged with this panel. The hour flew by, and at the end, the members’ applause was both robust and genuine.
