Be a GAME-MASTER, not a DIRECTOR 

I tell my players, "I'm a Conflict Designer and you lot are Resolution Specialists."

Thank you so much for the advice. I used to stress heavily about my games. Now I'm pretty lax and love to just roll with whatever happens. This video helps put it into perspective so well. 😃

I understand the freedom of creativity as a DM as you said, but why using Matthew Mercer for the thumbnail? Is he an example of 'director' DM?, if he is then maybe i should take notes of what not and do from his play in Critical role.

Inventing and knowing who are my NPCs is fun and achievable, unlike predicting what players will do. Isn't it the same as identity-driven life vs life of people who's trying to script it as if they control external world events and can account for any future? I'd rather delegate my god complex to the ambitious and probably evil NPC than overcommit to prep and burnout ever again ) are Lynch clips from behind the scenes of shooting Twin Peaks se3 taken from Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series or some other bts?

A lot of players treat RPG Campaigns like it is a consumer product. Which is why its important to pick the right players

This guy fucking gets it. Every time I try to get someone else in my group to gm, they think of it like a job where they have to spend days preparing or they try to run some linear story and then they fall apart when things don't go as planned. Even worse is that they forget to have fun as gm, you have to give up control, let shit happen but still obey the rules (and laws of how the world works). Seriously this is advice that even all those osr guys need to hear, it's so simple.. nice to know a channel with 10k subs actually knows what they're saying, so often the big channels give the most backwards regarded advice.

"Shut up and sell our corporate modules for us, peon."

The approach I take to GM'ing is actually inspired by Minecraft. In Minecraft, wherever you go is the right place to be but you can venture out and discover other... right places to be. I have to admit in the system I'm developing I was calling the GM a Director because I was inspired the Director AI from Left From Dead BUT after watching and agreeing with this vid, I'm going to change it. The words we use and the meanings they convey matter.

100% Not knowing what is going to happen next, playing to discover along side the players and letting things unfold organically is the joy of DMing!

The forever dm is always said as a bad thing. I'm thrilled to dm and set up a game for my friends to play. I get energetic and reinvigorated at the table as I witness the events play out because of the players choices and die rolls. I do a lot of prep. It's not narrative, I'm not writing a novel. I read my notes and bullet points things that I might do and should do for the next game. I'll check my notes and be reminded that the players slighted a npc and they're back by the npc's shop, he'll definitely want to remind them of it. Stuff like that. I'll read up on spells and monsters, look at the area the gang is & bullet point some locations and people of interest. I'll look at their character sheets and see what their inventory is and give them reminders of items they've forgot about or see that one of them is just overly burdened with stuff and some "polite" people are definitely going to notice that pc and want to help relieve him of his burdens. It's never been work to me.

this video is entirely correct, if you disagree with it you need to reconsider what you are doing at the table.

As someone who's coming from a D&D background, I'm having a hard time shaking off all of the prepping. Sure, I can wing NPCs and situations, but creating an interesting puzzle or dungeon does take me some time. There may be some GMs out there that can improvise all that, but I'm not that good. That's why I'm looking forward to Vampires 5ed. I'm still prepping (creating the NPCs & relationships) but it just feels so easier than D&D. No grand finish, no main villain, no plot. Just create a city and let your players experience it. It's like you said in the video - I'm actually looking forward to our first session, bringing all of my creations to life and seeing how they do with the players.

This desire to be more like film is the bane of interactives hobbies like role-playing games and video games. This pursuit of being more cinematic is such a misguided mindset that just turns the hobby into an inferior version of movies. The main strength of tabletop and video games is interactivity, but a lot of hacks miss that. Emergent gameplay is the best thing about TTRPGs and video games.

I'm glad I've never watched critical roll. I usually treat my npcs and villains as if they were my own characters rather than props from a movie.

I've been itching to run a game putting the ideas you put forth to use, they are incredibly intuitive once you free yourself of all of these artifical notions that all the "advice" online tries to convince you is the "correct" way to play and just let the medium do what is most natural. I'm glad someone is actually verbalizing all of this because otherwise the only thing people have to go on is the same regurgitated ideas promoted by influencers and midwits.

Right on the fucking money. I talked about this myself, the director/storyteller/player fluffer mindset is so corrosive to the hobby. Lynch clips are perfect. Great video as always!

FREEDOM! Learn it now...we know the way. Well said Matt.

I made this same argument in a response to a RPG Storyteller tuber's video and he replied that it was just semantics, lol.

0:41 Damned good question. Am I not also playing the game when I'm running the enemies in an encounter and throwing dice? 6:18 Yeah, just like I thought. 11:58 'Why won't the players follow up on my plot hook I gave them REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!' Yeah. Big true.

When I shifted for low prep GM'ing like this I had a lot more fun and was just as surprised by what happened in the game as the players were, now I come up with a general table setting for the scenario, flesh out the most important NPC's in my head, and then lean on random tables and my players ideas for the rest because even when I was over prepping, I liked the ideas that I had at the table more than any I had during prep.

Don't set up quests, don't plan out scenes. Create factions and NPC's. give them goals and tools. If you give them some complexity, not even you can guess how the NPC will react to your players and you get to slip into their shoes. Reactive players wait for something exciting to happen. Proactive players make something exciting happen.

The GingerPocalypse is Upon Us! 😉🎉

Great stuff guys! What I mainly struggle with now is just trying to figure out what the goals of all these npcs the players are interacting with actually are long-term and whether or not they can succeed or fail. Just because there are so many now!

Gents, this just might be one of your magnum opuses. This video perfectly distills EVERYTHING I’ve felt about the hobby for the past year. Such good stuff. I’m gonna send this to my friends and plead with them to watch it.

Alright, all well and good. How do I create an adventure using this style. Do I just make the main forces of the world and act like them along with locations that have a quest of their own ?

You guys have been instrumental in my own framing of my creative process as a setting designer and game master.

As a Forever DM(and liking it). This is spot on! The less prep I am making, the more fun I am having. Let your players surprise you. Give them interesting situations, and let the characters decide what path they're taking. This removes the risk of burnout and the feeling of ''burden''. Prepping for hours encounters, maps and plot points is absolutely useless. You only need concepts, cool NPCs and situations.

Milestone leveling was one of the most odious results of the GM-as-storyteller mentality.

Critical roll and it’s consequences have been a disaster for RPGs.

Great take gentlemen, great video as always. I'm guilty of being that Over-prepping GM who had to map out every little detail to feel comfortable at the table. I'm the GM that got burned out and let campaigns die because I wasn't excited about it anymore. I've been changing my way of GM'ing over the years towards something like this and I'm happy to see videos talking about this kind of stuff. It helps to hear others talking about something I've just been mulling over in my head. Keep up the great work, and congratulations on the kickstarter, I am your 601st backer. Cannot wait to see the finished product!

Thank you so much for this video. I really appreciate your advise and your calrifications.

to be honest, I don't know how to run game with pre-written dialogues or other stuff you mentioned. But reallu preping bad guys actions is the main thing? Becasue for me if I'm running fucking dungeon, I need to prepare fucking dungeon. This is the problem for me, bacasue I want it to be fresh, interesting and fun. Not another sewers with 2d6 cr1s and 1d4 cr2s. And yes, I can take some egsisting map or even whole thing - still need to make it my own. So, still preping is not the same as the players.

Excellent video! Good game masters are fundamentally counterpunchers!

To be honest, that is an easy mistake to make because a large corpus of the most popular rpg systems in the past decades implies that the role of GM must be approached as a storyteller or director, there are systems where the GM is called one of these, and the game uses story beats and scenes and chapters in its language and rules. I am just simply too lazy to prepare that much amd I realized some time ago that I only need to do is to build up a setting, characters, motivations, and a relationship network between these, and things will fall into places. But that also made me really frustrated when I am asked to gamemaster a prewritten campaign, because I always felt that advrnture modules and campaign books focus on the wtong things. A bunch of battle maps, statblocks, and descriptions make it look like content, but I would be more interested in deep character details, motivations, drives, personality traits and such. Instead these are usually the most neglected parts of the prewritten modules. I understand that the BBEG wants power, or destroy the world, but why? I am not saying they must be nuanced, but they need some base level character to work as a character in a classic sense.

I thought this was about game Dev's cause that's true for making video games

A great encapsulation of the topics of so many streams. Cheers!

Thats right BLG! I feel your on the money , full discretion i've only gm around 25 sessions, all of them in Past few years, but played in around 70+ sessions over the past 4 years, but yeah anyway in my few years of experience THATS RIGHT BLG!!!

No shade on the two new guys, but what happened to the dude from the old videos?

For my second ever session as a GM, I've created a google doc with "Chapters" and a compact bullet point list of key things like the players home being attacked, a particular heist I'm going to try and get them into, etc. I'm not expecting everything to go exactly as I had planned, I just wanted to mark down what I believed was key to the story I want to tell, and then let the players approach it in whatever way they feel, even if that means fucking off to do something else. I really want to work off the philosophy of less is more in terms of prep work though, and even this doc is full of info despite trying to keep it to just a sentence per bullet point. Should I just ditch the doc and wing it?

8:35 "Let go of the future..." Such good advice here Matt. I completely agree. No more scripts, just roleplay.

That looks right, Feels like what i'm doing right now.

I really wish the Shucked Oyster wasn't a brothel (or even a casino) because my players have zero interest in that sort of thing. I hope next time you guys do a town or something.

GMing is like Rick Sanchez running the store where he removes curses from the Devil's items that people get at the "Needful Things" store: half an hour in I just want to start pouring gasoline all over everything and saying, "Okay everybody out, I just got bored."

Over the past weekend I'm taking a different approach to my game. I have my bullet points, however I just leave my players tell the story and I fit my bullet points around them as it unfolds. I like the mind set of a director looking through a lens and describing the PCs world l. I'm looking at it as Improv Directing. Just recently read the Mothership gm guide and that got me going approaching the planning with a simplistic nature.

Agree on your points and this is what I teach new GMs or players who aspire to run their own games as GMs. Don't plot but make scenarios is what I say to them. Also, a good meme example of how a ttrpg session goes is the drawing of the horse wherein only the first part where the GM has full control of the narrative can be meticulous and well drawn but when you say "What do you want to do" is when the stick figure of the horse drawing happens

While I do still enjoy the directing style of DMing to a degree, I will say I had one DM who did exactly what you talked about where he just created a world and threw us in there to do whatever we want and discover a story with us. It felt like a completely different game and was vastly more enjoyable

Cameo by my queen Ginny thank you kings

Every project comes with different objectives. They are multiple ways someone can game-master in order to fulfill certain functions adapted to specific projects. Take nothing someone says for granted, never be dogmatic about anything, just be aware of what you are doing, how you are doing it and why. Wanna be a tyrant, then own it. Wanna be a randomizing rule-addict dungeon master, then own it. Wanna be an art director, then own it. Wanna be an open world everything open ended improviser, then own it. As long as you are aware of your project and your players are in on it then there is a million ways to play. But to orient oneself one needs to understand what is PURE roleplay, what is unique to roleplay, what hinders it, what fosters it. Don't be idealistic and think that there is only this or that that matters. That stuff is maleable. You can hybridize to your fancy. You can purify to your fancy. Just know what's the PROJECT about.

As a GM of 30+ years of experience, this is hands down the most useful and important video I have ever seen.

I'm playing with my friends, only one of them has played D&D and tabletop at all. The rest of us, have not. Always wanted to do it, ended up being a GM for a Cyberpunk campaign. An original one I made up, I am no writer, neither of us are. Simple objectives they are working to, but because of the nature of the setting, I am able to fill it with lots of criminal and seedy stuff for them to do in between jobs the fixer has for them. Sort of making it up as we go along. I have rough outlines that I am filling in, but because the players can make choices, choices I didn't account for.....I have to keep it loose, it's fun, as things happen that nobody necessarily knows what to expect.

Great vid. Question about one-shots: in your experience is it better to still let the players create their own PC goals, or because of the limited time is it better to give them a simple goal (e.g. via pre-gens) so they can get going? Thanks.

The best modules also follow this, giving you as a GM a bunch of NPCs and locations, and then a hook to pull your players in. I think a lot of modern GMs just don't read quality modules, or they would already know to do this.

My prep is like 15 minutes lmao if i had to spend hours prepping I'd go play an MMO

100% agree - I stopped creating 'story arcs' a long time ago. My creative process is very, very different now: I essentially just make a sandbox of a world, drop my players in and react to what they do. Love the way you detailed how to play immersive villains - I have played my current major villain exactly as you describe, and I don't believe I've ever presented a character in a game that my players hate more. Every action they take is fuck over over my villain, they are so absolutely emotionally invested in the narrative that I don't have to write anything, their actions are more than enough material to play off of.

THANK YOU! I am not a Storyteller, The players are.

Nailed it.

Excellent

As much as you might want to blame Matthew Mercer or Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis, the blame lays with you and me. We are the ones that bought into this and enabled this bad idea for years.

I would love a follow-up on how to create and understand a world to be able to run a game like this.

Great video differentiating the essence between a hobby and entertainment. If you're getting burnout from your RPG sessions, you're doing it wrong. I LOVE going into a session knowing there are multiple possible paths my players could go down and no idea which one (or ones) they'll choose.

This is great content.

I actually like prepping. BUT I only prep week to week BASED ON WHAT MY PCs want to do - which changes from week to week.

Pacing is actually an important factor. If a game drags on, players can end up fatigued as well, especially when in stressful situations in-game. It's a form of catharsis going through another's conflict, but recently a player of mine was method acting a rather normal man picking up traumas, paranoia, and hatred in a war, and it ate away at him for far too long. If I'd paced the game faster, not dragged on with long roleplay and living life in the situation, he wouldn't have burned out so hard on the character, his own words. After 9 years in the hobby, I've only been in a full-send multi year dnd game a single time, and that was a snail's pace game where singular dungeons lasted longer out of character than in-character, counting long rests. Burnout can easily easily hit both sides of the aisle, especially in serious roleplay heavy games. As for writing and direction, the hobby's nothing if not infested by people running multiple modules a week for 30-40 dollars a player each session. As I try to get people further into the hobby or explore other game systems, it's mostly or ONLY paid GMs running modules. That's the ttrpg space nowadays lmao

Great stuff, gents.

Unsurprisingly for those who know, I was like number 666. Very clear presentation of the ideas, gents~

Great!

This is the wheey

0:39 _"Why does being a GM feel like a job now?"_ Because Dungeon & Dragons 5th edition is a lazy and half-finished product. The worst edition on DMs, no wonder some dubbed it the "ANTI-DM edition". No matter what you do, no matter what other advise you get, no matter what "smart techniques" you use. Whatever insightful and wise advice the video says to you, none of it will change the fact you are working with an inherently lackluster product.

Love it! Boiled down a lot of the problems with "prepping" by simply saying it is the wrong mentality and tools. I"m a big fan of "emergent story from gameplay" (play to find out) and immersion into the character, the setting, the experience. As a GM I've got that reactive style, being referee and person who puts up the appropriate conflict/content for the situation. One of my favorite lines regarding players and their characters is from Fate Core: "competent, capable people leading dramatic lives". The party are the stars of the show, and everything they do while interacting with the game world is where the story comes from. When the party is reactive, instead of proactive, is when they lose their power over the narrative and become interchangeable with any other random PC. - @Runeslinger has been doing an interesting series about immersion. It is very much related and well worth a look/listen!

I rarely prep anything, if at all. I have ideas and points of interest, then we just go. I build the GM stuff along the way. The players create and insert. The rules decide how it all shakes out. The most “directing” I perform is clarifying moments as a GM to players, in the case I may not have portrayed a tense moment clearly. For example, if the PCs are talking to a lord and they’re edging towards catastrophic trouble, I will ensure they know that if they continue, it will go badly, because the character knows this. If they push things towards catastrophe, it’s not a “game over”. They get to do what they want, but after the smoke clears, the narrative’s changed, hopefully with the PCs surviving. I love when the players bite on something that’s not a thread. I’ll often lean into it, improvising something for them. I love being challenged, painted into a corner, then seeing what results.

Every project comes with different objectives. They are multiple ways someone can game-master in order to fulfill certain functions adapted to specific projects. Take nothing someone says for granted, never be dogmatic about anything, just be aware of what you are doing, how you are doing it and why. Wanna be a tyrant, then own it. Wanna be a randomizing rule-addict dungeon master, then own it. Wanna be an art director, then own it. Wanna be an open world everything open ended improviser, then own it. As long as you are aware of your project and your players are in on it then there is a million ways to play. But to orient oneself one needs to understand what is PURE roleplay, what is unique to roleplay, what hinders it, what fosters it. Don't be idealistic and think that there is only this or that that matters. That stuff is maleable. You can hybridize to your fancy. You can purify to your fancy. Just know what's the PROJECT about.

I have been a GM for almost 40 years. Millions of apps that create better maps, better scenes, better Journaling, etc. That is the problem. RPGs are becoming a videogame with animated tokens, special effects and absolutely no room for imagination. Modern rules are also more streamlined and many of them now focused on narrative and not rules themselves. Quicker pace. It is a nightmare.

I just improvise. Whenever i make something i think is clever, they dismantle it. So i stopped preparing. I just roll down the hill like avalanche. I try to sweep them and bury them under the rocks named fun and dirt named immersion with power called creative bullshitting.

Funny, I was just reminded about Kubrick his obsessive attention to detail. In the documentary A life in pictures, the actor Sydney Pollack, you showed at the beginning, and Tom Cruise tell how long it took to film one scene. It took Kubrick more than three weeks just to shoot a scene of just a few minutes.

its been nice seeing this channel grow. I think the tabletop space is having their Neo moment where so many on the farm are waking up to pull the throbbing proboscis of cooperate mainstream entertainment from their gullet. Its okay to disagree with super popular channels and mouthpieces. I am someone who learned a lot from Mercer, but appreciate that some channels are courageous enough to poke fun at the overly produced and artificially emotional session his group performs. Because healthy disagreement is actually VERY good for this space. Every great system came out of a disagreement. Thank you Ginger and Steve.

My DMing got so much better once I realized this about a year ago. Before, I really did try to run each session like a movie and plan out 3 act arcs and stuff. It was impossible and grueling. Now I actually have fun and run way more games and my players have way more fun too.

My favorite part of GMing is when the player surprise me with something i didn't think about. I'm like a bad parent, I almost let them have what they want because the ride of following that thread delights me.

I refer to running a game as 'Interactive Pretend.' As the DM, I set the scene and run the NPCs and the players play their characters. I have an over-arching plotline but I have only the merest clue how the players will get there. I set a Point A and a probable endpoint, but the rest is more like guidelines. I have hard and fast rules (Level 2 Wizards can't cast Fireballs), but I also play fast and loose with a lot of things. I love good movies and I'd like my games to look like fun films. Your video hit this point very well...better than I think I've ever seen. Well done!

I like that you reference David Lynch so much. He's my favorite director. I like his explanation of Happy Accidents, that sometimes something just happens that no one was expecting and that takes the story in a whole new direction. RPGs allow for a lot more Happy Accidents than movies.

Preach!

My approach to GMing is the same. However, I'd hesitate to declare that it's the "right way" to GM and that other ways are "wrong".

These videos of yours on the topic of being a gamemaster are so illuminating to me. I feel so stupid for all the time Ive wasted in that “director” mindset and never really going anywhere.

and go get a copy of Sly Flourish’s Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master

Great advice, thank you 🥰

Magnificent

I ran a FitD game, no prep, and still got burnt out. Not prepping is not a cure all for burn out and the responsibilities you have as a GM. Do many GMs need to loosen their hold on the narrative? Yes. Can a lot of prep be wasted time? Yes. But, depending on your game and choice of system, a certain amount of prep is neccesary. IS GMing a job? ... Yeah, it kinda is. It requires more effort than being a player, and you have willingly taken on a responsibility to the players of your game. (This IS a two-way street, and your players also have some responsibility to you, but with greater power comes greater responsibility. Even if all else were equal [it's not], if any player decided they didn't want to show up for a week, it would just mean a missing player. The game is dependant on the GM being there to continue). And if you are not getting the same amount of energy back from running the game than you are putting into running it, it doesn't matter what you are or are not doing, you are going to burn out. And that's nothing to be ashamed about. That's why it's ironic to me that you started with that Matt Mercer clip, because that's fundamentally what it's about, and respecting that. Basically, all this video seems to amount to is "Stop wasting effort prepping GMing, you and won't burn out." Which is false. Which I think is a shame, because you make some good points about leaning into the strengths of the medium, but it's lost in the grandstanding against a strawman "Director" (Which, there are plenty of people who want exactly what you are railing against. There's a reason Adventure modules sell). Not to mention, yeah, you are sort of a director. Sure, you aren't a movie director. But you are 100% the primary (a good RPG game is to much of a collaborative effort to say only) director of the game. You have the primary control over the tone of the world. How light or dark it is, how comedic, etc. It is typically the GM who decides when to move on from a scene, and establishes what the next scene is. It is the often GM, not the rules, who decides what those outcomes of those random dice mean (particularly outside combat). And many players WANT a more curated experience. TL;DR This video's got some good in it, but to me it feels lost in shaming GMs who aren't GMing the "right" way.

Once again, you lads knock it out of the park.

Mcdm will take this title personally.

Paused at 0:55, but this video better make mention of the western male T-level droppage that's been occurring for decades. 😈

6:42 i am in this picture and i dont like it.

#PrepAddiction is a terrible thing.

This is literally the only rpg channel worth following.

Valuable advice.

In the previous podcast video about this topic there was a callout about a false dichotomy between making a story and having a pointless sandbox game. I think this video makes the exact same mistake in the opposite direction - assuming that because a game has an outlined plot means there is no player agency. In reality there is no pull between these - you can focus your prep on trying to drive a narrative while still giving the full narrative control to the players. The results might mean that you can’t hard prep for more than 1 week or 2 weeks ahead of time. It means that you will constantly reconsider your NPC and villains intentions, actions, and how the party might interact with them in the next session to still deliver a satisfying narrative flow. It’s not for everyone though, so I’ll avoid the same mistake that both sides of this argument always make, and not present it as some kind of golden mean.

It boggles my mind that there is such an emphasis in this video on the negatives of the creative process. People should avoid creative works because you risk burnout? To many who do this, the preparative creative work is just as fun as the surprising twists and turns that can happen at the table. Why disparage it as such?

I think I finally get this channel. It mostly deals with the misconceptions created by shitty actual plays like Critical Role? Is that right?

I never prepare my campaigns beyond the tokens, monster stat blocks and the maps. The rest is all improv. I have a beginning and a vague idea of what the end would be but what's between the two is all up to the players. I make up quests, npcs (most besides some key ones) and items on the spot. And honestly, me and my players are having so much fun

I think viewing yourself as a director for a movie is fine, you just have to accept that 1) you cannot direct mid shot, 2) the first shot is what goes into the movie, and 3) it's an improv movie

GMs are writers and storytellers. Every week I write up descriptions. During play, I collaboratively tell a story with the players. But I do agree that GMs are not directors ordering the players what to do and how to do it, but they do provide everything in the world outside the players choices (set the scenes). Burnout does not only come from trying to 'movie' your game. It comes from running a game and not being able to come up with good content for your players (and you) to enjoy. The characters get tiresome and cliché. Higher level characters make challenging them very difficult. But mostly it comes from feeling unappreciated. Players argue and get frustrated, talk back, seem uninterested, but then say thanks for running the game when they leave. Things rarely go as planned. One thing I have noticed that when I DM, is that I am always engaged. No matter what is going on, I need to pay attention. All these add up and can really wear on you.

My DM-ing style is certainly more “cinematic” in my descriptions and such; I’ll even say “the camera pans” but that’s just bc I am a film minded person. Letting my players have fun is more important than my ideas to come to fruition just bc I think it’d be cool. My best dming moments were when I just kept “yes and-ing” my players bc they were using their knowledge and passion for the game and pushing the rules just the right amount to ass-pull the best outcome than I could’ve come up with.