If there is one universal truth about being a GM is that with each new campaign, with each new writing effort we are always looking for ways to improve, trying to create that truly great RPG experience that encapsulates all of our hopes and dreams for a game.

We watch shows like Critical Role and wonder, how the hell do they pull it off? Well the short answer is that they are professional actors and do create a professionally produced show for a living, which of course gives them a major advantage that most of us simply don’t have, but there is more to it than that. Even a professional show like Critical Role could fail, there are plenty of great methods for creating that perfect game and while there is plenty of advice on the subject from wonderful storytellers like Colville, Mercer and the like, since I’m currently on a high of success, I thought I would write my own article on the subject of how I finally achieved that truly great RPG experience.

First a bit of history on my RPG experiences in recent years. Now I have been running games for nearly 30 years and though I would like to claim that my success as a GM is attributed to all of the experience I gained of what to and not to do to create a great game that ultimately yielded the great results I have today, I don’t think that would be the complete truth.

Of course experience is a contributing factor to success but I don’t think you need to have 30 years under you belt to pull off an amazing game. In fact, in many ways, my long experience often works against me as you become kind of stubborn and set in your ways from running games a certain way for a long time. You begin to think that you have it all figured out and can become rather defensive about taking advice, about listening to player complaints and adapting to the many great evolution’s that take place in the RPG hobby. In essence you can become an old Gronard who thinks they have it all figured out and stop developing as a GM which is something that not only does happen, but happens far more frequently then it doesn’t. In fact it has happened to me many times and entire decades of potential progress as a GM was lost and many games ruined because I refused to change and accept certain fundamental truths.

Point here is that experience (being a veteran) is often presumed to be the key to being a good GM, and while this has some truth to it, their is a whole lot more to it then that and today we are going to crack open the knowledge basket and see what falls out as we explore some of the methods you can use that go beyond experience to create that perfect game.

The Group Dynamic is Key

All the writing, effort and experience in the world will not help you create that great RPG experience without a good group, a lesson I have learned the hard-way more times then I can count.

Now when I say good group, I don’t mean good people, good role-players or good anything else. A good group is a placeholder for a type of group that fits into the mold (your version) of what a perfect RPG experience is. They fit into your style of running and create a dynamic with each other that works at the table.

You might be tempted for example to bring together “the best role-players you know” and think that, this is the route to creating the perfect game. The reality is however that sometimes two amazing role-players when put into the same game can result in a disastrously bad game.

A good group, aka, a good group dynamic that works is something that just happens and there is no sure fire way to artificially create it, it takes experimentation. You put people in games together and it either happens or it doesn’t. When it does work its magic, when it doesn’t it may not become immediately apparent, but eventually it will slowly sink the game and derail the experience. The game might still be ok, fun even, but you will never achieve that high level of play you wish to have, that magic that comes only from great group dynamics.

So the advice here is to understand that when you form up a new group this is a testing period of the group, not an opportunity to run a campaign. If you want to achieve a great game sometime in the future you have to be ready to do some intermediate stuff to find out how the group dynamic works and be ready to make changes. Don’t create your masterpiece campaign for a new group and expect amazing results because you think your campaign is that good. A poor group dynamic can destroy any game, no matter how much work you put into it.

The goal anytime new players get together is to find out what the dynamic of that group is, what kind of fit they are for each other and for you. What are the complaints, is the focus of the game where you want it to be, do people get along, is there jealously or hostility in the group, is everyone in agreement about what is and isn’t important and good in the game or in RPG’s in general.

All of these things need to be tested and its best to run short campaigns, trying out different games, different approaches and testing the groups reaction to find out what works and more importantly who fits and doesn’t fit into the dynamics of that group.

Eventually you may realize that most of the group except for one or two people function and this is a hard realization to make. At some point you will know who in the group has to get politely asked to leave and that can be difficult, ney impossible in some cases because they might be friends, co-workers or family.

Its here where the first real pain to perfection comes in as its critical to ensure that you have a very strong, positive group dynamic that works for everyone without doubt or conflict. This is key to creating that awesome RPG experience and it actually is physically impossible to have even a marginally passable game that you will be satisfied with if the group dynamics just don’t work.

Its painful and uncomfortable to ask a player to leave a group, but often the first necessary step to take when trying to create a great troupe that will be able to achieve the heights of a truly great role-playing experience.

Don’t Skim over Character Creation

I can’t stress enough how important character creation is to the process of creating a great RPG experience. This isn’t just about vanity as a GM, aka, its not about saying “hey if you want to play in my game you need a deep robust backstory”. It’s not about control, or trying to be some sort of artist. This is a practical matter.

The reality of RPG’s is that it’s a game that focuses on the players, on their roles in the game and as such, its less important for you to know who the characters are and more important for the players to know what character they are running. Creating backstories, writing backgrounds and personalities is not something players do for you as the GM, but rather something they must do for themselves.

This is largely for their benefit and of course to a degree, for the benefit of the game as a whole. They need to understand who their characters are, how do they behave, how will they react to different circumstances, how does their world view ties into the setting. This cannot be understated, great games come from great characters and great characters are born from in depth understanding of them which needs to happen before the game starts.

Its important to understand however that in depth understanding and fleshing out of characters is not necessarily the product of great writing. In fact, some players can produce very real, very believable characters and never put a word down on paper. Its enough that they spend time thinking and planning in their head exactly who this alter ego they are creating is. So don’t be hung up on the printed word in this regard, most people are not great writers, in fact, its far more common that people don’t write at all.

The important thing here is that players do more than produce a character sheet and personality quirks. You always know your in trouble when as a GM you ask a player to tell us who their character is and they use 3rd person generalities to describe them “He’s a savage Half-Orc Barbarian that doesn’t take shit from anyone” is not a character, its a caricature.

Push for depth, push for background, make sure your players really know their characters and have done the diligence required during the character development process. In most cases this means you have to give the players time, don’t let the excitement of playing an RPG push you to the table before the characters are really ready.

Great games are not about great story writing

One of the hardest lessons and most difficult thing to do for GM’s is to realize the very humbling fact that great games don’t come from great writing, but from great storytelling. Its not what the story is, but how you portray it.

What this simply means is that the plot doesn’t need to be a complicated, multi-layer onion for the players to peel involving lots of characters and in depth mysteries. In fact, an approach like that will most likely derail your game rather then make it great.

Great RPG experiences come from the moment and the moment doesn’t have to be part of a complex plot, but rather a simple situation made to feel real and authentic. As a GM you play the cast of characters with whom the players interact and these characters are what make the story and the world feel real, authentic and believable. How you define the scenes and portray the characters is far more important then the complexity and depth of the plot and it is the secret to great GMing and a great RPG experience for your players.

Its important to note however I’m not talking about wacky voices or the use of adjectives. Imagery can be simple, while remaining authentic, choosing your words carefully knowing when to define something or when to let the players imaginations take over is a subtle but important skill to learn, though notably its much easier then trying to become a master writer.

The game lives in your players minds and its your job to paint the first strokes and let them fill in the rest. If you make the world a believable place, that picture in their head will be clearer. You can mess that up by making things too complex and too involved as easily as you can by being too vague. So find that middle ground and understand that as a GM its your job to give players space to exist, its their story not yours.

Session Pacing is Vital

Most people when they watch a movie don’t realize how critical pacing of the story is as its such a very subtle art form, however the editing of a movie, the pace at which the story progresses and the time each character in a story is given is without a doubt one of the most technical and difficult things to get right and it is no different in an RPG session with one exception. The editors of a movie can do trial and error, they can edit a movie over and over again until they get it just right where as a GM you only get one shot at it in a live session where all decisions about pacing have to be made in the moment.

This vital and often difficult skill is unfortunately one of the things that really comes from experience of running games. However so many GM’s never truly learn how to do this correctly, not because they are incapable or because its so difficult, but because they aren’t consiously aware of it.

The pressure of running a session, managing the rules, thinking about the plots, portraying the characters, defining the world… there is already so much going on that it can feel like an impossibly daunting task to also be self aware of the pacing of the game and so it is largely something GMs tend to ignore. The result is a game where pacing can bounce around in a session from going way too fast where important details and emotion are lost, or too slow where the game bogs down and comes to a crawl.

It becomes even more complicated when you realize that different settings and worlds require an adjustment, require a different pace. There is a big difference between running a horror game and running a fantasy adventure and each requires its pace.

Fortunately if you are aware of pacing in your game and make a conscious effort to control and manage it, you will very quickly find the right pacing and become proficient in maintaing and controlling it.

Its very subtle but very important component of creating a great RPG experience for your players.

Find the Right Players, or Adapt to The Players You Have

If there is one hard lesson I have learned from years of GMing that probably didn’t need to be as painful as it was, its understanding that you cannot change what you players like and don’t like. While this goes to group dynamic to a degree, this is really more about choosing the right game for the group you have and there are two approaches to this.

The first approach is adapting to your players. What this means is that when you are choosing your game, when you are deciding on the style of the game and the method in which you will present it, you must understand the preferences of the players. Its vital, that the game you are running for your group is something everyone is overwhelmingly excited to play. If for example you are running a science-fiction game because you love science-fiction, but your players want to play a fantasy adventure, that mismatch (though it should be obvious) will never work.

Preference of settings, or style or game type are irreconcilable, meaning you will not be able to convince players to like something that they have already decided they don’t and there is no sense in trying. Run the game they want to play.

Now alternatively you can find another group that matches your preferences and while it may seem mean spirited or selfish the opposite is also true here. A GM running a game that they are not into, that they aren’t excited and overwhelming eager to run will be just as big a failure as running a game the players don’t want to play. You will never successfully achieve a great RPG experience running a game you don’t like.

It has to be a perfect match and your options in this matter should be clear, run the game your players want to play and make sure you love it as well, ensure that game is like its your first born child.

Conclusion

The truth is that running RPG’s is a challenging labor of love and while it’s by no stretch of the imagination an easy thing to create a truly great RPG experience, I do believe that if you are really aware of some of the subtleties that go into creating such a game you are far more likely to achieve that far earlier in your GMing career then if you ignore them.

It’s important I believe to not get hung up on the technicalities of the game, sure knowing the rules is important, being prepared is important, but these things are the standard stuff of running a game. The more subtle things like group dynamic, focus on character creation, understanding the important distinction between story writing and storytelling, the strategy of pacing and the sort of equilibrium of picking the right game are far more subtle yet far more critical components of creating a great RPG experience.

Often these things aren’t talked about and addressed by GM’s who are eager to simply play a game and while this can be fine for some GM’s who are a little less eager to perfect, those of us who are striving for that Critical Role level experience, these subtle things become paramount. Knowing and understanding them is the key to success.

My advice is of course just one point of view, but I do attribute all of my success as a GM to the subtle changes I have made in my style and approach to running games, as they say, the devil is in the details and its clear to me that really is the case when it comes to chasing that perfect role-playing experience.

Good Luck Out There!