Tips for the Gamemaster

So - you've taken the heavy burden of gamemastering upon yourself... okay, here are a few tips how to take care of the players and have a bit of fun on the side.

If, on the other hand, you find yourself sitting on the other side of the table, then retreat to 'How To Drive My Gamemaster Nuts'.
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• Only start a discussion with the players when you can be sure to win. Gamemastering is not a democratic process - once you start that, you might as well give up.
• Tell yourself over and over again that you are in perfect control of the situation - it't not true, but it helps. With rookie players, you can try reminding them that the rulebook states (somewhere) that the GM is always right (this does not work very often, though.)
• As a last resort, you can try "an eye for an eye": if the players go to far, just keep them so busy inside the game that they dont' have any time for anything else: "You didn't know there were runes on that portal? Well, you're trapped now..."

So you see, you hold the characters lives in your hand, and the players hold yours. However, since you probably want to live a relatively easy life, you might want to consider following the following:

• You should keep the characters low on cash, items and power (content characters are hard to motivate into going on adventures), but let the players think thay can achieve something (who said artifacts can be kept forever?).
• Keep an eye on the balance between role-playing, puzzles and combat - too much of one thing will bore your players - and bored players are bad for your health (see above, point 3).
• You should also try to minimize dice-rolling in favor of fluent game-play. don't call for a die roll every time the character is trying to find the way to the toilet! If an action seems very plausible (or very unplausible), decide the outcome yourself and tell the players the consequences - too much dice-rolling destroys the athmosphere.
• A tip for planning sessions: Try to keep the number of players down (about 2 to 3), or decide on a regular and fixed date for playing (4 to 6 players in this case): a big number of players without a regular date for playing tend to expire, since there's always someone who can't come and the game never gets played... this is a lot easier in small groups..