Apathy Games

Identifying Weakness in Your GM Style

I am terrible at roleplaying NPCs.  I get too much of a kick out of watching my player’s roleplaying their characters. It’s like a play that is unfolding in front of me and I get to be the audience.  I get so absorbed watching the story unfold that I forget to participate myself!  My players have never mentioned the weakness of my NPCs to me, and they do praise the voices that I do for the characters (when I remember to have them speak).  The weakness was identified by me through a constant state of refinement of my style.

Observe other GMs

I have had the opportunity to play under many different GMs.   Paul, Jeff, and Hillary are amongst the countless GMs that I have played under.  Each has their own strengths and weaknesses as a Game Master.  One may be excellent in a specific type of story, the other may be better adept at presenting their NPCs in believable way, and yet the other has the setting so deeply ingrained in their brain that they can recite all the major points from memory. Through watching them I was able to discover things about my own style and how I run my games, for example great at getting my players to do terribly evil things without prompting them.  I then take bits of how other GMs run their games and try to add it to my repertoire.  Observing other GMs is cornerstone to being able to improve your own game.

Try new things

Breaking and entering adventures have never been one of my strong points.  They do however present a great exercise in adventure building.  Through it I can dissect how to thread an adventure, and foreshadow events that they players may encounter.  Later after the game I can apply what I learned to the adventures I am more adept at building.

Review, review, and review some more

Changes take time; last week was the first time I tried playing my NPCs as more real characters instead of flat spaced puppets and it was quite gratifying.  The NPCs did not overshadow the players and they influenced events in a more interesting way then if I had stayed out of them.  While I’ll still try to stay out of the spotlight, a GM’s voice that’s present could lead to some more interesting roleplaying opportunities.  Besides, it’s not every day that I get the chance to press the cold steel of gun barrel to the back of a PCs head.

How could you improve as a GM? What’s your weakness in your running style?