How to Run a Great Roleplaying Game

TL;DR: Play Games.

There is a conversation that happens regularly about how to run great games; it's actually “How do I become a good GM?” But I hear, how do I run great games? The answer, IME, is always play games. Tim and Rose...play more games. This post is for you. This is what works for me. This is what I tell my son.

If you are reading this and don't know much about me. I've been playing games since before I wrote Clockwinders for Evil Hat. Before being a contributing author on The Mwangi Expanse for Pathfinder, I was playing games. As I complete my current superhero project powered by Cortex Prime, I am playing games.

There are a set of skills for hosting and being a master of ceremonies that are separate from running games —and you need those. But those hosting skills aren't what I'm talking about now. Those won't save a bad game, but not having some measure of those skills can kill one. There's being a good host, and there's running a good game session. I feel like much of the advice on running good games falls into the being a host bucket.

A disclaimer. I love the game aspect of roleplaying games. I'm there to push my beliefs in a Burning Wheel game. I'm managing my resources for XP in OSE D&D games. In Cartel, I'm just desperately trying not to get F*kn shot! I'm there for the specific, unique experience a game has to offer. When we sit down, you already know we're playing the game. And I'll remind you I don't have a plot or a story to tell...we're gonna see where this game goes.

Start with a game you know and are excited to run. Learn that game’s core mechanics...just enough to get some friends to the table and play through a rough session. You need that ugly session to see how the mechanics of the game work IRL, on the table. To see where your thoughts and real-world play meet and fall down. Review the game rules and play some more.

And if I'm beating the hell out of a drum, it's this: You must play games. You will not read, podcast, cheat sheet, or YouTube your way into running great games. You must run games to get better at it. All the hosting skills in the world won't help you run your game.

Find a game that gets inside you. A game that lives rent-free in your mind. Learn that game, play that game. Teach it to your friends, and run it for strangers. Run it for a year for whoever will play it with you. Play around with the form of it; don’t hack it..like play with its form and limits. In Urban Shadows, to keep it fun and different for me, I would run con sessions featuring one faction for play, like we're all playing the Mortals playbooks or the Night playbooks. Learn how a session of that game flows. Make yourself a reference sheet or two. Make another one for your players.

As you're learning and playing that game think about how it resolve tasks, you'll use that for a good deal of what players come up with, especially social, talking, research, sneaking. If your game doesn't have rules for it, think about how to extrapolate the core mechanics to do it. You'll want to do this for group actions and PCs helping each other if your game doesn't have rules
—unless, of course, the game is explicitly not about that. Tenra Bansho Zero is an Ass-Kicking Fight game, there will be a Boss fight, and you will not talk the Boss down. What mechanics are the game's "killer app"? The thing that makes that game...that game? Own that. Pimp it out every time you play that game. Make some PCs; what is the character advancement cycle like, and what does the game reward?

What does the game reward? Do that.

Urban Shadows 1E, Mutant Year Zero, Burning Wheel, Champions Now, Twilight: 2000, Edge of the Empire... these are a few of the games I've run the wheels off of —because I felt excited about these games. I'm excited to teach and show other folks these games...and if I'm playing with veterans of a game, that is the absolute best because now we are playing the game with combined experience and nothing but open blue sky.

Play the game.