February 2011
2 posts
6 tags
Miss Master Griffen
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...
4 tags
You Will Never See It Coming
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....
January 2011
1 post
4 tags
Hell Yeah Logistics
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...
December 2010
1 post
5 tags
Sorry about what happens next
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...
November 2010
4 posts
4 tags
The Gods of FATE
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...
4 tags
Mystic Secrets of the Canadian Masters
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...
5 tags
Don't Rest Your Head, Kids: This Man Will Give You...
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...
4 tags
The Man in the Black Hat
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...
October 2010
5 posts
5 tags
The Iron GM of Oakland
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...
3 tags
Steve Miller
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.
5 tags
The Second Best GM in Britain
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...
2 tags
“The DelRosso Principle: “Kick this setting in the teeth.”
Invoking...”
– Judd Karlman
5 tags
The Best GM in Tucson
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...
September 2010
6 posts
4 tags
Can a GM *do* that?
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...
1 tag
About Your Submission
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...
5 tags
Old School Hack Attack!
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...
5 tags
Two weeks, four thousand miles, and six timezones
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...
5 tags
Speech In A Time of Dice
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;...
3 tags
“The missing ingredient was persistence—the idea that the single character you...”
– Robin D. Laws, Hamlet’s Hit Points
August 2010
9 posts
5 tags
The Biggest Fan
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...
5 tags
Hell Yeah, Rob Donoghue
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...
6 tags
"You are rolling the dice."
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,...
6 tags
Hell yeah, indeed
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”...
4 tags
Todd Furler
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.
3 tags
4 tags
Trust Me, I'm a GM
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...
4 tags
By Timely Narration
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...
4 tags
The Dark Powers Are Always Willing To Help
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...
July 2010
10 posts
3 tags
The Lovely Dynamo
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...
2 tags
Submit!
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...
4 tags
Adorable Trogs
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...
3 tags
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...
3 tags
2 tags
2 tags
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...
3 tags
“A good GM is not afraid to look like an idiot.”
– Thing #38, Things We Think About Games
4 tags
Got a GM You Love?
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.