Well I finally took the PLUNGE
Last night I was a GM.
For those of you not "in the know" that is a "game master" for a role playing game some people refer to it as a DM (dungeon master) but as we were not playing D&D at the time. I prefer to use GM in this instance.
We were playing a game called "Pathfinder" which is the same sort of premise as D&D, but the rules and creators are different.
I'll give you a very simplistic and basic run down of what it is (for those who have never played before)
A group of people sit around and "speak" a story. They use rule books for structure or the world and continuity of the game and character creation and each person plays a main character in the story.
When playing we determine if actions, such as climbing, figthing, or spell casting are successful by the roll of a dice. Depending on how you build your character you will have bonuses to various rolls. (so if your character is a thief you will usually get extra points to be able to pick locks, or be sneaky and other thiefy skills)
There are groups who will dress up like their characters. Sometimes they even run around in the forest/park or a city (depending on what game they are playing). Those people are usually doing "live action role playing" (Larp'ing") That isn't what we do. We are just sitting in a living room or a kitchen.... kinda like playing a board game,but without a board.
Anyhow,
What the GM does is they are sort of the narrator for the adventure. They set up the story and they are the referee...because even though there are rule books the "interpretation" isn't always the same from reader to reader.
Each person playing has a character sheet. On that sheet they make themselves a character. They pick the race (elven, dwarven, human etc). They have what the character does, it called "class". This is like the speciality or can be looked at like their occupation. They also have "special feats" (abilities that you get to pick that makes your character special. On that sheet they have a list of their gear and spells (as applicable)
Well back to the original reason for this post. I have gamed since 1993 various different games, but I have never been the GM. Last night I was the GM I hadn't been nervous about it until just before the game starting. My start was kinda shaky, as I had spent all my time designing the dungeon....sadly I had forgotten to figure out how to get them TO that dungeon.
As the game progressed I feel I got better, especially at handling the random stuffs the players did. I few times I thought I had put my group up against too strong of a creature ..but they managed to squeak through each time.
I do have to figure out how to be able to get more descriptive when it comes to battles. So instead of saying "what did you roll I rolled BLAH" I need to say things like "your sword sliced through the giant fly traps vine like a knife through butter." or "your sword bounced off of the dragon , not even denting a scale"
I think they guys had a good time. I didn't get a whole lot of feed back at least not as much as I'd have liked.
I hope I do even better next game but I'll have to wait and see.
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