Hell Yeah, Gamemasters!

Tim Rodriguez writes…

Ten years ago, I played in my friend Kym’s Legend of the Five Rings game that blew my mind. It was the first long-form RPG I’ve ever experienced and the first time I grasped what character depth might look like. It was also the first and only game I’ve been asked to leave — simply for not giving my all to the game. I can look back and trace all my roots as a game master to that game. Which is still going on, with my characters still kicking as NPCs. I wish like hell I could go back.

We’re nearing the climax of an awesome game of Night’s Black Agents run by Kevin Kulp. Our spies have chased an arms dealer suspected of stealing suitcase nukes across the crowded streets of Krakow, sneaked our way into a secret meeting of drug lords in Colombia, and found the guy we’re pretty sure is behind at all. He’s able to do some kind of weird mental stuff to one member of our party, but we all think that guy is insane anyway. After all, he’s only three days from retirement.

So, we corner the big bad on the helipad as he’s getting ready to leave town with a nuke chained to his wrist, and he starts to grow wings. And his skin changes. And he’s really tough. And with a HUGE shit-eating grin, Kevin says “Oh, did I mention that Night’s Black Agents is a game of super-spies versus vampires?”  

Dave Chalker is running the second playtest of his 4e hack for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (it’s delicious!) late Saturday night at PAX East 2012. Everything is off-the-cuff, tongue-in-cheek, but still mostly sincere fantasy adventure. Dave runs a tight improv ship, despite his protestations countering it. 

Our party is in the heart of the dungeon.  A beholder emerges.  He’s going to enslave us all and make us work for the BBEG.  Because cowards live longer, I guess, my halfling cleric pipes up:

“You know, we could just work for you.  But we are going to need proper healthcare benefits first!”

So, there are a couple of ways to deal with this. We can get our chuckles on and then fight or we could fight over enslavement vs employment.

Or, we could turn the conflict into a parallel fight/healthcare battle. Eyebeam intimidation and laissez faire politics opposing a divine power and a desire for positive social change.

The dice were not on my side.  Not only did we not get healthcare benefits, the beholder took the notion of work-for-hire completely off the table and went with the enslavement plan altogether.

But I appreciate that Dave not only let my silliness take form, he engaged it and made the scene even funnier.

Hell yeah.

David Rogers writes…

Love the idea for the tumblr, I’ve got one to share:

I played in a game of Andre Kruppa’s called “Incident of Owl Lake” at OGC, a con in Nashua, NH. It was a horror game, based on FUDGE that began with a strange vehicle crash-landing on the island where we were camping, and ended with us in a fight for our lives against the dark forces that had been controlling our lives since childhood. This was my first gaming con and I’d had some cool times and met some nice people, but generally had not been blown away by the experience. The gaming floor was loud and chaotic, the games were great but tended to move slowly and get side-tracked by table talk or outside distractions. I was really excited for Andre’s game, my last of the night and the con, because of the billed “theatrical elements.”

My friend Melissa was also slated to play. We couldn’t find the game at first — it wasn’t anywhere on the floor. Instead we got steered upstairs, to a part of the hotel we hadn’t been aware was part of the con. Inkjet-printed signs pointed toward a pair of double-doors. We went in and were greeted by a dark room, with a few mounted theatrical lights casting circles of illumination on a conference table in the center. The room was secluded, and quiet, and moreover, Andre had rigged it with a pretty extensive lighting and sound set-up.

The room was kept dark during the entire game, with lighting cues adjusting to the scene: a low red as we gathered around the camp fire, a sudden flash when a gun fired, glowing green or a sudden bright white as our situation proceeded to get stranger and stranger. Flashlights were provided for us to read our character sheets by when the lights were low or went out, and Andre wasn’t afraid to leave us in the dark. Then there was the music: Andre had a soundboard, some nice speakers, and a full range of musical cues. The sense of atmosphere — in sharp contrast to the other games I’d been playing — was incredible.

The theatricality went beyond the tech: we had props too, in the form of our flashlights but also in the neatly organized play aids Andre provided, from character sheets to rules references to setting materials, all neatly laid out and laminated. I’d never played FUDGE before, and neither had Melissa, but we were very seldom uncertain about a rule.

Andre also made use of long blocks of prepared text that were triggered at several points through out the game — specifically, when characters suddenly flashed back to certain suppressed memories. Several of these were repeated time and again as different characters hit upon the same triggers, but they didn’t get old: Andre’s spirited delivery (and accompanying music and light cues) kept them fresh each time, and the repetition underscored the eerie sameness of our experiences. By chance, my character was the last one to trigger a particular memory, but even though I’d heard the associated text three times before at that point I was still psyched. Andre still treated the material as fresh, too, throwing in an ad lib tailoring the speech to my character.

The game itself went great and we did pretty well. There were some really fun moments of pure dramatic role-playing, and a lot of exploration and problem-solving. Andre did a good job giving everyone a chance to have fun while still keeping the tension ratcheted up. Melissa and I were a little more into exploring interpersonal drama than the other characters at the table, and we had a few minutes to do that, but things generally kept moving at a good clip.

In the end, we all survived and escaped from a real nightmare into relative safety — thanks almost entirely to the good decisions of one of our savvier players. The game was both frightening and enthralling, and ended with a great moment of catharsis of closure followed by a great twist. Afterwards we were all visibly jazzed, wired even though it was well after midnight, and Andre stayed to talk to us about the setting he’d designed and the choices we’d made. He even solicited feedback about specific game elements and design choices.

All in all it was undoubtedly the best game I’ve ever played in. Andre has a website (http://www.gamesoapbox.com/) talking a little about the different scenarios he’s made and the different events where he GMs — I’d recommend checking it out, and if you ever have a chance to play with this really superlative GM, go for it.

Josh Zingg is a good friend, inventive writer, and absolutely, ridiculously dedicated DM. When running a 4e D&D Iron Kingdoms game via Skype for a group of now-graduated college buddies, he constantly wrestled cantankerous tech into submission to keep things running smoothly. Between router port forwarding, shaky Skype connections and an unstable MapTools server, everything that could go wrong did. But Zingg soldiered on, dedicating what I suspect was more hours to game prep and server testing than to the sessions themselves. While we eventually moved on to another game and another platform, Zingg’s valor in the face of the gremlin horde won’t soon be forgotten. He may have been bested in the end, but he fell as a true son of Khador.

It’s been a year. You must have built up some new game and game-master-related wonderment by now, right? Submissions slowed to nothing, but let’s take another stab at it. Tell us about a GM you dig right now or dug long ago. What did you play? Show us the GM in action in, using a conversational tone. Don’t worry about wit or wonderment—just tell us a quick tale or give us an example of what makes your GM rad.

We’ll start posting again if we can get as many as five submissions to this address (note that it’s new!): hellyeahgm (at) gmail (dot) com

Alternately, click the Submission button here on the Tumblr and submit that way.

Ready? Go!

Matthew wrote:

I’m blessed with a wealth of great gamemasters but I’d like to give a special shout out to Christian Griffen.  Christian is a fine game designer (Beast Hunters, Anima Prime)  but he is also a damn good GM and player.

I play in a group with him that’s been together for over three years now and my admiration for him and what he brings to the gaming table is a comment not just on his capabilities but also those of the other members of the group who sometimes run the games, David H and Colin C.  Over the last three years we’ve all gotten better at learning those things that make the game fun for each of us.  As trust and familiarity have increased we’ve all gotten better at communicating those things. But Christian is especially intuitive, both as a player and GM, at moving play and narration towards those things that a particular player enjoys. He exels at “making others awesome.”  Given our gaming preferences, sometimes that takes the form of a “face-stab,” a gut-wrenching outcome delivered as a GM response to a failed roll or as a “bon mot” that highlights a particular character’s Achilles’ heel.

Each of the wonderful players in my primary gaming group usually create characters with flags that wave, “hurt me here,” and Christian is especially adept at delivering those blows.  Similarly, if a character is kick-ass at words, weapons, or Wyrd, Christian is careful to provide spotlights/opportuniites for those capabilities.

Whatever the game, as a GM he rolls like someone who sold their soul to the gods of the polyhedron.  In some groups this might be a problem, but our group enjoys the challenge and it works out great.  Hell yeah!

Lillian Cohen-Moore writes…

My darling other half, Matt Heller, is one of the GMs I fear the most. Some people fear bad GMs. I fear the ones who set things up so you and your fellow players get down in the moment—the heist, the rescue mission, the investigation—and are suddenly hit with the terrible realization that you are all simultaneously beyond the realm of merely fucked. For a perfect, sterling example, I point to a recent Shadowrun game he started for six players, yours truly included. By the end of the first session, the ‘Face’ was under criminal investigation, the rigger’s sister had been kidnapped, and my poor, sweet hacker was on the run for her life. By the end of the second session, the rest of the players were joining us in our very uncomfortable spot between hell and a hard place. I have never cheered so hard inside and cried so hysterically in character than when our Runner’s lives were greatly imperiled by that simple, 5K per person run go so horribly fucking wrong. Across genre and chronicle, Matt has done it to us all again and again—our lives, with the Devils we know, are traded out for Devils we don’t, and the knowledge that one wrong move will get earn us all a fate worse than any death we can think of.

Zack Walters writes:

Sara Johnson and Zach North are good friends, Zach is a great game master and both are unbelievable hosts. I played in a 4e D&D game Zach ran for over a year. He and Sara welcomed the group into their house and cooked dinner for us for over a year before Zach burned out and asked me to take over running a game. I was happy to take up the hosting and game running responsibilities, but I only got the latter. Sara and Zach have continued to host our group every week, welcoming us into their home with hot meals and cold beer for nearly another year. I may be statting up monsters and running sessions every week, but it’s Zach and Sara who still do the most important work.

Graham Walmsley writes:

If you live outside the United Kingdom, you probably won’t have heard of Scott Dorward. But, in many ways, he’s the heart and soul of the British convention circuit.

Scott often runs games in every convention slot. (I wish he wouldn’t, because he’s a great player, too, but it’s hard to complain). He sticks to a few games he knows well: Dead of Night, Prime Time Adventures, Cold City and few others. For some, he writes twisted and horrific scenarios. For others, he improvises.

For example, at IndieCon, we played one of his Prime Time Adventures sessions. These are remarkable for the amount of stuff that gets done in a single session: there’s a pitching session, then a full episode, and none of it feels rushed. We created a TV show about a Women’s Institute run like the Mafia. Within two hours, we were shooting shotguns, exploding churches and selling chutney.

Perhaps his greatest strength is that he improvises well, in that old-school style, letting players drive the adventure. We played a deeply satisfying Unknown Armies game, based around a suburban cocktail party. It ended in a ritual that made one player character disappear. Later, I found out about another group, playing the same game, who ended by confronting a sorcerer. The scenario was the same, but Scott had tailored it to the players.

Best of all, I like his technique for handling horror. When something appalling happens, he’ll smile excitedly as he tells you. Hence, his gory description (and it usually is deeply unpleasant) is accompanied by bright enthusiasm. It is disturbing.

The title of this post is taken from one of Scott’s T-shirts. It describes his games rather well. He’ll probably be rather embarrassed when he reads this and squirm a bit. And, quite frankly, that’s the only reward I need for writing it.

Scott Anderson writes:

I want to thank Mike Olsen and Morgan Ellis for spoiling me on the FATE system. Their specialty is the version of FATE featured in Spirit of the Century. They have hacked it into submission and brought my undeserving soul the glorious time I spent with Spirit of the Fist and Spirit of the American Hero. I tried running lesser versions of FATE and found them sadly lacking. I have played the FATE games of other GMs and, again, they were not even close to the standard I was used to. You can experience this magic by attending one of the three annual Strategicon conventions at an LAX airport hotel. Mike and Morgan have inspired me to be a better GM and I hope to rise to meet their standards someday. Hell Yeah!!!

lfr2010 writes:

Screw linear storytelling. Here’s what Rob MacDougall did in our Unknown Armies game: he had us play historical versions of ourselves. He had us play alternate world versions of ourselves. He had us play NPCs we’d only encountered tangentially, through the shadowed glass. He embraced the concept of rewriting history, in a game that was about history. When a player had to leave the game, he took it as an opportunity to reinforce the theme of historical flexibility: did Danny Greer ever exist? Who knows? Each shadow session reflected the “real world,” and sometimes they were the real world, in a Grant Morrisonian parfait of mystery. I’ve never since been afraid to mess around with chronology.

He also taught me how to make a conspiracy game without mapping it all out in advance. I was shocked when I found out how much of the conspiracy was generated from our own musings and backgrounds. Rob makes it look easier than it is, of course: his deep understanding of United States history meant that he could find a match in reality for anything we came up with. But that just means I have a good example to reach towards.

He came to us from the mysterious North, living in the proverbial Cambridge green pastures for far too short a time. I miss gaming with him. Perhaps again someday.

Lillian Cohen-Moore writes:

The first time I met Ryan Macklin I was about an hour out of an ER. Long story. Despite recent medical advice to take it easy, I sallied forth to my friend Jennifer Brozek’s house because she’d set up a one shot game I’d never played before for my fiance, a roommate and one of our friends, ran by Ryan. It was Don’t Rest Your Head.

That was months ago, and it still gets as much beloved air time as shining moments from games that took months, if not years, to run. Ryan is the master of short, intense games, one-shots included. Just like a movie or a book, there’s a clear arc, and like the end of any good horror story, hopes were raised, endangered, dashed, played with, and a whole host of conclusions were left to us players to think about later. It was my first one-shot. Ryan was not gentle, but he was sure as hell amazing. Ryan’s name is a killing word, which suits, because he is a killer GM.

Emily Care Boss writes:

I’m having the pleasure of being GM’d currently by Evan Torner who is hosting three of us through the storms and duels ofSwashbucklers of the Seven Skies. This is the first time I’ve played a whole campaign with Evan, but I’ve been in games he’s run before and it’s no surprise to me that he’s a great GM.

As a regular GM at our local gaming con, I’ve played Inspectres, Misspent Youth and a variety of other games with him at the helm. He always brings something extra to the table. At one con, he ran a game of 1001 Nights and won the Best Dressed GM prize, for his long robe and turban, which along with the brass bowls and glowing jewel tone dice he used, had everyone envious of his players. He was truly running the game in the spirit that the author, Meguey Baker, intended.

What Evan brings to the game is a lot of thought. He has a serious amount of experience running games for folks at conventions, which takes a different set of skills than long term play. I’ve heard him talk about what goes in to choosing a game for a one-shot: good solid prep, hooky characters that players can jump right in on, or games that flow right out of the characters choices so that what the GM isn’t left scratching their head trying to figure out how to shepherd players they may never have met into following a strongly scripted story that might not tickle their fancy.  

And in our long term game, he’s brought that same dynamic. With Seven Skies working beautifully to feed information back and forth between players and GM about what we’re interested in. In game setup, the GM asks what kind of story the players want, Action? Intrigue? So it’s we been a pleasure to see the ideas came up with for our characters become embodied in other people, places and things that we encounter, like the drunken courtier willing and ready to join the revolution to put Eppy’s character back on the throne. It’s a simple thing, but one of the best things in a GM is simply listening to their players, and Evan has that in spades.

Ryan Macklin writes:

As a GM, I love playing with other GMs. I learn so much from seeing the tricks they use, from the way Carl Rigney riffs off of playing input around misery to how Sean Nittner elevates the use of props to a new level. But it’s playing in convention games run by Brian Isikoff (the Iron GM of Oakland!) that has had the biggest impact on my GMing.

He has this thing called Backstory, which he’s talked about some on his podcast, 2d6 Feet In A Random Direction. He passes out characters, pitches the initial situation, and makes it clear that it’s not his scenario but *ours*. The last time I was in a game with him, some months ago, he ran a military space opera game using Heroquest. I grabbed the ship’s captain, and others grabbed the XO, engineer, etc.

Then he turned to one of the other players and asked “So, who’s the new guy on the ship?” That player replied with “The captain.”

He responded with some excitement. “Oh! I wonder what happened to the last captain?” he asked with a sly grin to another player. “Killed in the last encounter we had. That’s why we’re in dock — repairs.”

More enthusiasm. Brian just exuded joy and awesome. We were all getting pumped. He asked some more questions from each of us. One I remember keenly: “What’s this new captain’s reputation?”

That was open to the table rather than asking a single person. One of my friends answered “he’s a hardass, by-the-book kinda guy.” Brian checked with me to make sure that’s cool, “You good with that? Remember, it could just be an unjustified reputation.” He weaves the characters together, but doesn’t want to pigeonhole them into something they don’t want.

(I naturally replied with “You mean, ‘It could be an unjustified reputation, *sir*.’” It was on.)

What Brian did for that short bit of time turned six people at the table, some who knew each other and some who didn’t, into folks who trusted him and each other to play something fun. We didn’t have to shy away from PC-PC arguments. By using targeted questions, he gets us to throw ideas out on the table—no question so big that we have decision paralysis. And by bringing enthusiasm to each answer, he makes us excited about the game and trust that it’s totally cool to throw out ideas. Not only does he build a neat relationship web and short history of badness we as characters have to deal with, but he makes us as players *love* it…because it’s ours as much as it is his.

Recently, he defeated me in Endgame Oakland’s first Iron GM competition. We’ve talked about it a bit on his podcast, and some of his players talked about it on another show. I cannot think of a better person to be crowned our first Iron GM; we’re all made a better at gaming because of him.

Catdragon writes:

Steve Miller is a great gamemaster — he takes the time to make sure the players understand the setting, the adventure, and the scenario.  He also works at making props, making sure everyone enjoys the game.  He is one of the best (if not the best) gamemasters I’ve had.

Graham Walmsley writes:

The first time I met Simon Rogers, he ran a Dungeons and Dragons game. He’d recently played Dogs In The Vineyard and wanted to try it with D&D rules. It was fun, but afterwards, I didn’t see him for a year.

After that year, I joined his gaming group. There, I saw the silver-tongued cleverness and quick-witted invention that defines Simon Rogers’ GM style.

His adventures are meticulously planned: indeed, he inspires our group’s other GMs to dedicate equal effort to preparation. Not only that, but his acting is superb.

I remember Simon GMing Ashen Stars. When he played an alien, he became strangely alien himself, frowning and speaking in a stilted manner. When he played a starship commander, he was commanding himself.

Not only that, but his master of accents is legendary. His Northern accent is instantly recognisable to anyone who has ventured north of Milton Keynes. His American accent is a joy to hear.

Finally, he cooks. While we play, there is the delicious smell of meat roasting. Often, he will switch between GMing and cooking, doing both with equal skill.

As you may know, English people are not allowed to give effusive compliments. Hence, I’m content to call Simon the Second Best GM In Britain.

Thomas writes:

If you know anything about Jason Corley, it’s that he’s the self-proclaimed Best GM in Tucson. In the years I’ve known Jason, I have not seen a thing to dispute that. I could talk about his gaming style, how he brings greatness to the gaming table (or living room in his home game), but I’m not. I’m going to talk about his contributions to the local gaming community. Sure, one can talk about how great that guy at the head of the table is, but here is a guy that’s bringing the awesome to people he doesn’t even play games with.

I first met Jason about four years ago at a local science-fiction convention’s gaming hall. After the con, he, I, and a friend of ours talked about continuing the gaming goodness; from these talks came the Southern Arizona Gamers Association. This little thing that we started runs multiple weekly and monthly RPG events, the largest gaming convention in Arizona, and reaches more than 600 gamers in the local area. This thing that he helped to found brought more gamers together to play new games, make new friends, and get into gaming groups.

Jason introduces and runs new games to gamers at our monthly events. He organized and maintained a shared game universe setting, Tucson By Night, for local and regional WoD gamers. Jason has spearheaded the Gamemaster’s Conferences that we’ve been holding here in Tucson—quite possibly the first ever convention of its kind. (In his words, “Really, the fact that this was the very first Gamemaster’s Conference in the history of the hobby is a disgrace to the hobby. Training, mentoring, developing partnerships, this is how you get better at everything else in the world, why not GMing?”) After running games in almost every slot at RinCon last year, this year he’s organizing the RPG track at RinCon 10.

The Best GM in Tucson isn’t just a guy that brings a cool adventure to the table each week. He’s the guy that continues to make our little hamlet in the desert a gaming mecca.

Jamie Fristrom writes:

I hadn’t played with Mark Nau in ages — and it was always Universalis, or something I’d run, or something we ran together.  But just recently we started playing over Skype and he wanted to run it.  ”Let’s play a Big Heist game,” I said.  He said, “Okay.”  Turned out he happened to have a Big Heist-ready hack of Vincent Baker’s Chalk Outlines pretty much ready to go.

And here’s the thing:  he didn’t have us make characters.  We just started playing, inventing and revealing them as we went.  And it worked.  It worked great. 

No, wait, here’s the thing:  he had us play the NPC’s, too.  If there was an NPC he thought one of us could handle, who wasn’t in the scene, he tapped us to play them.  Female russian mobster?  Gave it to Terra.  Irish cop?  Gave it to Chuck. 

No - here’s the thing - almost the whole game was fishing.  He gave us a plot structure, and then he had us frame the scenes and create complications for each other.  Every now and then he’d drop something in himself…some Russian mobsters here, some suspicious cops there…but seemed like we made almost all the rest of the content.

I’m like, can a GM do all of that? And have it still work?  Apparently.

And, afterwards, I was like, that game was awesome, I better check out this Chalk Outlines thing, and once I manage to dig it up (with the Internet Wayback Machine…)

Mark’s game was almost completely different.  It was his game, his homebrew, and you’ll probably never get to play it, because they’re just some notes partly written up somewhere and partly in his head.  

Sorry.

Let’s talk for a moment about what goes into a submission for “Hell Yeah, Gamemasters.” Great submissions tell a little story about the GM in question. Great submissions cite specific examples of a GM in action—of her heady descriptive power or his clever deployment of a game’s mechanics—and let that story carry the weight. Great submissions contain a nugget of wisdom or experience that can be captured and used in our own games at home, like a trick we can learn and perform ourselves, to wow the home audience.

For our purposes, though, a gamemaster doesn’t have to be a traditional roleplaying-game GM. Players can master games and be exemplary, too, right? Great roleplayers and storytellers can change the way you play Lord of the Rings Online or World of Warcraft, too.

Tell us about your RP guild’s shining narrative knights. Tell us about the player whose character portrayal changed your campaign. Tell us about the player at your table who takes on the task of recording everything for reference and posterity, creating an archive of your fun. 

This site can be a lot of things. Show us a gamer that makes you excited to play.

Thanks for your time.

Scott Moore writes:

Kirin Robinson is one of those guys who just lives too damn far away.  He’s out on the west coast, 3000 miles and 3 hours behind me.  But I’ve been lucky enough to get to game with him once or twice a year on average for the last few years.  Most recently was at Gen Con 2010.

He asked some of us if we’d like to play this game he’s been building called Old School Hack.  It’s a retooled version of a free indie game called Red Box Hack.  Now my overall impression of homebrew systems based on almost 30 years of RPGs is pretty damned low.  But Kirin is a friend and an all around fun guy.  So if it turns out that the gameplay is clunky and full of holes, well we’ll probably still have some laughs.

I was way off.  This game turned out to be the highlight of my Gen Con (and that is a HIGH bar.  I had a fantastic Gen Con!).  The mechanics were solid and fun seemed to pour out of every corner of this game.

But no corner surpassed the gushing fire hose of fun that was Kirin’s enthusiastic GMing style.  His huge grin and breezy, California charm are absolutely infectious.  I’m no stranger to the GM’s ability to set the tone of a game by virtue of his attitude.  But Kirin’s whole demeanor seemed to draw out the absolute best in his players.

The game was so successful that we browbeat (ok it wasn’t really that hard) him into running another game for us starting at 12:30 AM on Sunday.  There his true brilliance as a GM was on full display as he juggled a band of punch drunk con goers who were running on a wicked mix of adrenalin, caffeine, and booze.  Somehow he managed to turn a tale about a backstabbing group of cockblockers, hell bent on stabbing someone with something, into one of the most memorable games I’ve ever been in.  Like a lot of gaming anecdotes, you really had to be there to appreciate it fully.  Let’s just say that the phrases “I’m wielding a flaming, barbed-wire whip” and “two chicks… at the same time” featured heavily.

The guy is ten pounds of fun in a five pound bag and if you happen to live in the LA area then take advantage of one California’s best natural resources.  Find him and get him to run you a game.  You won’t regret it.

Giullina writes:

A lot of people play a game with its author.

Less often, they play the game over Skype.

But how often does one author run the game on Skype for a group of people on the other side of the ocean which he’s never met?

And not once: twice.

For two weeks, Robert Bohl answered the questions and followed the discussions over Skype of two playing groups out of us at Janus Design. His game, Misspent Youth, features a group of young rebels facing the stomping boot of the Authority, role that Rob took up for two separate evenings.

I played the second group, and let me tell ya: in this game, when everyone feels things are “disgusting… but in a good way!”, you’re having a blast.

In one scene Rob portrayed a weasely, patronizing priest, who forced our girls’ hands into taking part of the hideous show-business based system we had designed together by tricking us into poisoning him.

He then went on to choose as his own objective in a conflict something that he knew we wanted — thus pushing us to choose other routes and trying desperately to avoid doing what the Authority wanted, filling us with righteous rage at this betrayal: this is, hands down, the core of what the Authority does in the game, delivered smoothly and swiftly.

Playing the game at its fullest, having everybody at the table buy into its concept, supporting each other’s vision while opposing the characters in the nastiest way possible — that’s what Rob Bohl did, over Skype and 6 timezones.

So that’s why I want to shout out Hell Yeah, Rob Bohl!

Bryant Durrell writes:

I’m here to talk about Carl Rigney. A lot of people know Carl, these days, as an enthusiastic and highly skilled indie game proponent. Which he is. He also has a not-so-secret past as an awesome traditional GM; back when I lived in California, he ran everything from Shadowrun to Legend of the Five Rings to Dungeons & Dragons for us. He was superb with all of them; his mastery of NPCs, tension, and plot design brought all the players to the yard.

This story is about one of the two Champions campaigns he set in his World of the 400. I played in the UN PEACE campaign — four or five idealistic teenagers battling corruption and crime under the banner of the United Nations. We not so slowly found out that the world was not as it had been painted. I believe by the end of the campaign we had a list of fifty or so pending questions and mysteries.

The campaign was definitely a Champions game. I still have my detailed log of 50+ sessions and 50+ experience point expenditures. We did a lot of fights. We also did one session with no fights at all: the four of us, persona non grata in the US by that point, were nonetheless invited to the supervillain prison Fort Cheer. The government was going to furlough some of the prisoners to start a new superhero team, so we figured we could at least help them pick the least dangerous. Ignoring the request would have been worse for the world.

We played for, oh, six hours or so? Just the four of us interviewing dozens of NPCs, and Carl embodying each and every one of them with life and personality and secrets. I think a dozen of those unanswered questions arose from those interviews. Emotionally grueling; and dangerous, too, in the fictional context, because these were people who could snap our fragile low-powered teenage superheros like twigs. Quite literally. Carl made us feel the physical danger too.

Ten years later, I can still point at that session as one of the best six hours I’ve ever spent gaming. Carl Rigney, hell yeah!

Elizabeth writes:

Vincent Baker gets a ton of love for the games he designs, as well he should. The thing to remember, though, is that the same philosophies and core ideas that make him one of the best game designers I know are what makes him an amazing GM. Even when he is screwing the characters, giving them untenable choices and filling their lives with nervousness and adventure, he is actively advocating for them.

Vincent trusts his players to do great things, and he goes hard on the characters because he’s their biggest fan—he wants to see what they do, how they get out of this one.

Life isn’t easy when Vincent’s GMing, but it is a hell of a lot more interesting.

Fred Hicks writes:

Rob Donoghue is my business partner, but he’s also my brother GM. If you look over the sweep of play I’ve enjoyed in the last decade-plus, the vast majority of times I haven’t taken the helm, Rob has. When I think of what a Gamemaster is, I think of him.

Rob sets a high bar. His appetite for games is voracious — if I’d read a twentieth of the games Rob has, I could call myself well-read on the topic. And while he can’t possibly run every game he’s encountered, he still makes use of all of them.

Where the rest of us are just walking around with an small, portable toolbox, Rob’s the guy who drives up with a van full of hardware. Rob uses his vast mental library to tweak, modify, or outright replace parts of whatever system he is running to make it better — he’s the master of finding the right tool for the job, and always has it right on hand.

Rob has been hacking bits and pieces of systems together for as long as he has played.  So when our D&D 3.0 game got to a big battle that he couldn’t easily run with that system, he broke out a modified set of Button Men rules and special-action cards and used our polyhedra as miniatures on a vast field. (There, I got to triumphantly capture the opponents’ massive d30 beast and then bend it to my will long enough to ride it to a victorious assault on their main line of defense.) When we didn’t have the language of “aspect” yet for our Fudge Amber game, he reached into his toolbox and pulled out an element from 7th Sea that got the juices flowing. When his Shadowrun game was grinding down in the face of too much system for the final session, he blended it together with Wilderness of Mirrors for maximum fun.

If your game is broken, if the fun is leaking out the bottom with a slow drip drip drip and you can’t find the hole, Rob can. He’ll do better than plug it up. He’ll refit it with the valve you didn’t know you needed.

With Rob GMing a game, there are no problems, only solutions.

Bret Gillan writes:

It was one of the earliest games I played with Judd Karlman. It was a session of The Mountain Witch at a small mini-convention. I played a disgraced samurai who became a ronin after following his master’s order to kill all the children of a village for failure to pay taxes or something like that. He followed the order, then left.

So we’re playing this cool game, fighting raven spirits and ogres and things, and as my character climbs the mountain he’s haunted by the ghosts of the children he killed. He feels their hands touching them when he sleeps, he sees them staring out of shadows, etc. Finally, the samurai come to a clearing of dead trees and I narrate that the children all come out from the trees and they’re closing in on the samurai.

I say, “That’s it, he lays down his sword and he lets them kill him.” It was a fitting end and one I’d pretty much planned on.

Judd says, “No. Fuck no. You are rolling the dice. If you succeed they forgive you.”

I was pretty much stunned by the idea. I rolled. I succeeded. The children approached the samurai, who was ready to die, and laid their hands on him and whispered forgiveness to him and he broke down and cried.

It was this amazing, beautiful, hopeful transformative moment which is something that I experienced a lot when gaming with Judd. I always felt like there was someone else at the table who was a fan of my character, who understood my vision of the character, and helped to take me there even when the way was muddy to me.

Doug Hagler writes:

I’ve often been the GM/DM/Storyteller/Narrator/etc. in my 20 or so years gaming, and I feel like I do pretty well, but a friend of mine, Aric Clark, is better, hands down.

The story that comes to mind as an example is the opening session for a game of Heroes of Karia Vitalus, which we are currently working on completing and publishing.  This was the “intro” session with all the problems that come with introducing the characters to each other, getting used to a new setting, and so on.

We all sit down, and Aric has three sheets of paper and a totem from Jungle Speed laying out.  On the pieces of paper in huge dark letters are one word each: Distant Past, Recent Past, Present.  

He slams the totem onto the paper that reads “Present” and turns to one of the players: “Kyoshi - the force of the blast throws you backwards through the window.  Glass rains all around you, and you are falling.”  He lets that sink in, then slams the totem onto “Distant Past” and turns to another player.  “Rei - because of your family’s position in the city, you’ve been invited to an unveiling of a new technology from Goshi Corporation’s R&D Department…” and so on.  Throughout the whole session, we jumped through time, each time coming to rest on a moment of peak tension with no unnecessary exposition, and at the end, it all came together and we were already in deep trouble and ready for the next session.

I remember thinking “Holy shit this is going to be good” — and for 42 sessions the game just got better.

Jared Sorensen writes:

The guy is a machine. A one-man army of storytelling. His game scenarios are cinematic, moody and well paced and he’s a pro at educating new players about the rules. He ran a game for me when I first met him (way back in 2000) and I still remember the human skull missing its front teeth. Oh, Todd. You sick monkey.

Scott Walker writes:

I’ve had the pleasure of gaming with four different GM’s on a regular basis over the past 25 years or so. All good in their own ways, and unique in their GM styles.

The GM that stands out for me in particular, is Tony Graham. Tony’s house rules emphasize simplified elegance, streamlined mechanics, and a focus on collaborative storytelling. The result is an evening of spontaneous narration and exciting combat.

The moment I knew he had a gift for GM’ing went something like this:

Tony: “You see three guards running towards you across the empty street. Their swords are out, and they’re looking right at you. The one in front screams, ‘Kill him!’ What do you do?”

Me: [staring at my character sheet, trying to figure out which skill makes the most sense to use, trapped in the mindset of having to navigate rules-heavy systems] “Uh….”

Tony: [seeing my paralysis] “Don’t worry about the skills. Just tell me what you do, and I’ll handle the stats.”

And it all suddenly made sense. Tony was less interested in enforcing rigid rules and more interested in letting the story unfold, one improvisational, collaborative moment at a time.

The creative space possible when players trust their GM - and don’t use the rules system as either a shield or a weapon against the GM - is truly amazing. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when the GM is also a master story teller!

Zack Walters writes:

I’d like to nominate Will Hindmarch as a Hell Yeah, GM! Here’s why:

Will Hindmarch is by far the best GM I have had the fortune to spend my evenings with, and I’ve learned a lot from him about how to run a great game. But the single greatest trick he passed on to me was this: musical cues. We’re all trained to respond to crescendos and tempo changes in background music, so that’s pretty easy to set up. Where Will really shines, though, is his uncanny ability to not only find great atmospheric music, but to also time moments of drama perfectly with sampled sound effects and musical shifts. It’s basically his superpower.

To illustrate, I once took up the role of a miner-turned-explorer in a Tolkienesque, all-dwarf one-shot Will ran. My fellow dwarves and I were making our way deep into an abandoned hold. We knew by the orc scavengers and foreboding music that something dire lay ahead of us, but it wasn’t until the tempo change that we started to get worried. We had just barely survived crossing a chain link bridge when Will began to interlace our action rolls with descriptions of the narrowing corridors and menacing darkness. We joked around about delving too deep and balrogs… until the dragon roared. And I don’t mean Will saying “You hear a dragon roar.” Motherfucker had included a song on the game’s soundtrack that incorporated a dragon roaring, but not until almost two minutes into the track. He managed to pace out the action just right so that sound effect came up mere moments before we moved on to the final (ultimately fatal) encounter of the evening. That one musical cue, timed just right, yanked us as players back into our characters’ skulls and got us geared up for what is still the most fun I’ve ever had killing a character.

To me, the atmosphere evoked by timely narration and musical cues serve to keep everyone invested in the game, regardless of story. And that’s the heart of a GM’s job.

Rob Donoghue writes:

Fred Hicks has commented that the reason he wrote Don’t Rest Your Head was to try to mechanically simulate all the things he tries to bring to the table as a GM: hard choices, escalating tension and, of course, intense, personal pain. I’ve got no shortage of stories of fantastic GMing that Fred has done, and a lot of them are full of those things he values so much, but for all that he can really bring the pain, that’s not the thing that really bring out the Fuck Yeah.

No, what’s amazing about Fred is that, as a GM, he’s willing to try anything. All those ideas for things you might someday like to try in a game, Fred grabs with both hands and incorporates into next week’s game. He showed me how to end a campaign with one grand wrap-up-session. He’s shown me how you turn an egg timer into the most powerful prop in an Amber game. He’s run entire sessions where no conversations is allowed between characters except in the flashback to the planning session, which occours only in flashback. He’s used mechanics to organically push players to have a conversation about being a demon that hit all the Buffy notes of coming out to a family member. He’s made sure systems can give players as much as they ask for and more, along with the full weight of price. He’s interrupted an entire campaign to have a courtroom session in one character’s head to decide if they live or die. He is a master of tools and toys.

As a player, this makes him engage your game with vigor. As a publisher, it means he goes out of his way to share the tools he’s had to claw and fight to gain. And as a GM, it means he will use every resource you can imagine, and many more you’ve never even conceived of, to make the game fun, compelling and awesome for everyone at the table. It’s a joy to behold, and has been my honor to learn from.

Tim Jensen writes:

“I have had the good fortune to play with many excellent GMs, but the best is Willow Palecek. She is a dynamo of creativity, laughter and rules mastery of any game she facillitates. Her ability to learn and master any game system is almost frightening. If I hand her a new game, within minutes or hours she’ll be ready to either run a roleplaying session or take on all board game opponents.

“Willow is more than a great game master to me. Besides being the most intelligent, beautiful and charming woman I have ever known, she is also the love of my life.”

Notice the “Submit” button now on this page. You can use it to submit your own posts to the site, spotlighting your favorite GM. We reserve the right to edit, format, approve, and/or reject posts for any reason, but it may be a better way to submit material than the email address is, so have at it.

We’re almost out of new submissions, by the way, so now is a great time to submit your favorite GM for the site! Spread the word? Word.

Epidiah Ravachol writes:

“Certain tools in the GM’s shed are oft maligned by more sophisticated gamers. Chief among these pariahs is the ability to make funny voices. The following ordeal, however, taught me never to scoff at any talent the GM is able to bring to the table. You never know just how many lives it could save.

“The game was D&D 3.5 and the GM was Jason Keeley, a man of not inconsiderable acting talents. We were part way into a campaign in which we had become prominent figures in a tropical island community. But it wasn’t all sunshine and coconuts. For one reason or another, we knew that our town would soon be assaulted by sea. So we were doing what we could to boost the defenses.

“This was a bit difficult, as nearby there was an underground enclave of troglodytes who had been menacing the town for a while. We couldn’t concentrate on one enemy by sea if a second one was clamoring at our backs. So we geared up and made our way to their dungeon. This was, after all, what we did best.

“I’m a little hazy on the details, but I think the approach the trogs’ caverns was marred by a botched stealth check or two. Whatever the case, we soon found ourselves communicating with their guards, rather than slitting their throats in the dark. We shouted into the cave, and they shouted back. Experience has taught me that this should have been a series of threats and demands. But the moment that first troglodyte guards opened his mouth, our cold, stony monster-murdering hearts melted. The voice was so fucking cute, so fucking cuddly, we couldn’t, we simply could not bring ourselves to roll a single intimidation check, let alone initiative.

“Very swiftly, and without us fully realizing it, what was ostensibly going to be a room-by-room dungeon genocide transformed into mutually beneficial negotiations in which the troglodytes offer to help in the defense of the town in exchange for the right to be the first to pick over our refuse. No one had to die. Win-win-win.

“And from that day forth, filthy, stinking, nauseating, troglodytes became synonymous with adorable.

“Fuck yeah, GM. Fuck yeah.”

Tom Cadorette writes:

“An awesome moment in an awesome game, run by an extraordinary GM and storyteller, Kevin Kulp (aka Piratecat on ENWorld / on the right with his back to the camera). At the Spring 2008 NC Gameday regional con, where this pic was taken, Kevin had been verbally poking Tony Law (aka reveal on ENWorld / at the Dread tower, looking at Kevin) throughout a incredibly long and intense Dread game. After one particularly funny poke along with a sound effect, Tony finally breaks, fixing Kevin with the ‘What the fuck, dude?!’ look on his face that you see here. One of the funniest moments in any game I’ve ever played. Without a doubt, if you get any chance to play in a Kevin Kulp game, no matter what he runs, you should take it.”

Jason Morningstar writes:

“I have the good fortune to be surrounded by great fucking GMs! Here are two — my friends Remi Treuer and Clinton R. Nixon. Remi is an insane blur of improvisational energy with a keen eye for spotting the weak point in any character’s relationship and pushing on it until everything explodes into madness and hilarity. Clinton is a GM’s GM who transforms a few hand-written pre-game notes into wonderful adventures that are invariably filled with believable people in real trouble, full of pathos and honesty and excitement. These guys are awesome and I love them!”

Email your anecdote or photo about an RPG Gamemaster or player that’s thrilled or delighted you and maybe we’ll post it here, once we figure out what the site is for. We’re looking for specific examples, actual play reports, and other very short doses of RPG geekery that you think deserve recognition. Send them along.

The address is fyeahgms at gmail dot com.

This is a placeholder post until I can decide whether or not to do something with this page. Suffice to say, great gamemasters are great. Hell yeah, etc.