Read on Twitter
Being a GM is a craft. Practice it. Watch it at work. Ask the people at the table for feedback afterwards, one on one, discreetly. Read about it. What is there to read?
Oh, I know no one asked, but I've literally prepared for this question for years. Let me show you the shelf...
Oh, I know no one asked, but I've literally prepared for this question for years. Let me show you the shelf...
What's on that shelf, you still didn't ask?
Let me hit the high notes
Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering -- all the talk about the 4e dmg lately? This did it first in 2002, from SJG in 32 pages. The PDF is cheap the paper is expensive now
He would go on to do two more 1/
Let me hit the high notes
Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering -- all the talk about the 4e dmg lately? This did it first in 2002, from SJG in 32 pages. The PDF is cheap the paper is expensive now
He would go on to do two more 1/
Who? Robin Laws.
He then wrote Hamlet's Hit Points &, more recently, Beating The Story. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Robin's Laws is literally the text about gamer types & handling them & running the game & all the bits you want to get w/out the system getting in the way 2/
He then wrote Hamlet's Hit Points &, more recently, Beating The Story. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Robin's Laws is literally the text about gamer types & handling them & running the game & all the bits you want to get w/out the system getting in the way 2/
And there's Play Dirty and Play Dirty 2 from John Wick, (no not guns and puppies, but L5R) which can get a lot of mixed and heated emotions, But it has some good thoughts about taking what your players are telling you from there character design and translating it into game 4/
The whole suite from Engine Publishing, Focal Point, Unframed, Eureka, Masks, Odyssey, Never Unprepared. These are all solid. System-less, they're a trove of GM philosophy to internalize. 5/
There is the whole set of Kobold Guides, although you probably don't need the game design ones for being a GM, the Worldbuilding, Gamemastering, Plots and Campaigns, Magic, and Combat are all really useful.
Full disclosure: I appear in Plots & Campaigns 6/
Full disclosure: I appear in Plots & Campaigns 6/
There are two old school ones from Gary gygax which have a few useful notes but they are definitely old & of limited use in a changed world. They're useful in seeing where the craft has come from. They are master of the game, and role-playing mastery. I like the first better 7/
Other system books include Hero Games: Strike Force and Rolemaster's Gamemaster Law.
Strike Force is a master class in creating the adventure path, and Gamemaster Law, while not law that's just the schtick for their series, has good advice on the gamut 8/
Strike Force is a master class in creating the adventure path, and Gamemaster Law, while not law that's just the schtick for their series, has good advice on the gamut 8/
Things we think about games by Wil Hindmark and Jeff Tidball is like a book of zen koans about role-playing games and is worth it just for the price of admission. They're also both excellent game designers and well worth supporting 9/
The tome of adventure design and how to write modules that don't suck from Frog God Games & Goodman games respectively, are decent books about writing OSR adjacent adventures, but that's limited utility for the GM who uses mostly commercial adventures 10/
Hamlet's Hit Points and Beating the Story, are both similarly good for creating adventures, and less for being a GM, unless you are doing a lot of improvisational GMing... But there Robin Laws, and he has a lot of great insights
