The resolution - Learning to GM part 5

So after all the prep and the panic I finally finished the second part of the two part session of Cthulhu Dark which was my first GMing experience. Warning – some body horror.

So, firstly, I was lucky enough to be a player in a Cthulhu Dark game run by an excellent GM the night before. This was pure coincidence, it happened to be running at London Indiemeet but I didn't know that it would be. I learnt so much from playing it about how to push your players in certain directions while still giving them agency. (I still died horribly at the end of course.)

I planned this game to death and about halfway through I threw away the majority of my plans other than the general idea. It made the game 100% better and 100% more fun for me.

Someone on here suggested when I complained that I didn't look or sound scary enough that the thing to do is talk to your players like they are your best friends and they are in danger. He also suggested looking behind them occasionally while you're talking to create a sense of paranoia. Do this – it works!

I altered the character sheets so that they asked some questions of the players, including why they were there and asked them to invent an NPC they were close to. As a result my characters were:

Junji Ito – Former corrupt police detective in his 60s who used to do favours for the mob. Now working at the museum on Christmas Eve so he didn't see he son who he believed was being hurt by his influence. His NPC was Robin, a quiet cheerful man (who it transpired knew more than he than he appeared to).

Stephen Murphy – Working Christmas Eve because he had no where else to be. Former TFL worker. Once hit his ex wife during a particularly nasty argument and hates himself for it. His NPC was Reggie – a former bus driver, now a cleaner with a drinking problem who steals from the museum.

We also had a curator, Erik Kristiansen – I asked him slightly different questions on the character sheet and this, in addition to where the plot went kept him close to his NPC, Katrine Hansen throughout the game. On his character sheet he described beautifully one of the scariest moments of his life; walking across a frozen lake with Katrine and hearing it crack under his feet. Katrine was Erik's friend but became one of the cult's victims, albeit one who survived. I think, in hindsight, it would have been good to have asked him the question I asked the other PCs about the worst thing he ever did.

It was really helpful to have character secrets and fears that I could play on in the game – this made it so much easier to improvise. (At one point I had Eric having a vision of being trapped under ice in a lake. His roll to escape was OK but not great so when he came back his fingernails were bloody and falling off.)

Some things I did that weren't so great:

• One of the character's didn't care about any of the psychological stuff, although the body horror worked. I don't think there was much that I could have done about that – it was in the character to behave like that, but a few times he left me not knowing how to respond (or have the NPC respond).
• There are only so many times that you can say 'you see a corpse' before it loses it's value.

It was fun though – in a different way from playing. I enjoyed it a lot more once I got rid of my notes and made it up as I went along. I'm not going to GM full time but I will definitely do it again. (I've got a copy of Monsterhearts on order and I'm going to try it out at London Indiemeet.

There were some bits that seemed to work really well (I am going to put in a trigger warning here for self harm – due to the cult's influence there was a lot of it).

• One of the psychological horror things which worked really well, the radios that the characters were carrying got increasingly staticky and the PCs started hearing loved ones talking to them.
• The cult taking over Katrine and making her carve an Ankh in herself was effective, but mainly because of the reaction of Erik who loved her. If he had been indifferent it wouldn't have been as interesting.
• When the characters tried to set fire to the museum the sprinklers turned on (I think it was one of the characters rather than me who first mentioned sprinklers, and I just ran with it!).
• To open the room to where the relic was that held the power a character had to cut themselves quite badly. I expected that one of the characters would do it themselves but Stephen jumped on Junji and cut him.
• I expected the destroying of the relic would be the end but Junji insisted on looking for the cult and ended up going insane while the building collapsed around him.
• Eric had another vision where he had to choose between his life and Katrine's. He choose hers and they both lived and escaped the museum.
• Stephen and Reggie lived and went off to the pub despite Reggie trying to stab Stephen moments before.

So now that's over my next GM project will be Monsterhearts. In the meantime please let me know if you have any topics that you'd like me to blog about.

The trials of GMing - Part 4

The end is near

So I'm writing the final session of my game. I have a really good idea of how it will start and I'm really excited about the way it will wrap up, it's the in between parts that I'm struggling with. 

I was given the suggestion that you give the PCs 3 clues and that should lead them where you want them to go – which I am trying to do. I definitely don't want to  railroad them as much this time as I did last time where I was practically telling them “You have to go this way” by the end (especially as I have one PC who is a loose cannon who just wants to survive - entirely reasonable of course but sometimes you need the player to go down the secret passage!). Unfortunately, so far what I've written amounts to an information dump from NPCs and I want to do it better than that.

But dammit these are things that the PCs absolutely need to know.

I've tried getting the NPCs to give half the information and leave clues for the other half. I will just have to stay calm and keep my mouth shut if they go the wrong way and hope that they turn round eventually. I just don't want them to get bored.

This is really difficult!

Learning to GM - Part 3

The game is on

So with much trepidation (just ask anyone who's known me for the last week.) I GMed my first game on Wednesday.

It was a Cthulhu Dark game set in the Conway Museum, a dilapidated mansion that was once grand but fell into disrepair. There were few visitors to the museum as Charles Conway tended to open the museum erratically (including in the middle of the night) and chased people away if he didn't like the sense of them. There have been even fewer visitors a week ago since Charles sold a lot of the items of value, scraped the rest and filled the museum with new and strange artefacts.

The game began at 8pm as the night security guards were beginning work. Snow was settling around the Museum. And maybe the lights are flickering a bit. But it was just for one night.

The first thing I realised was how supportive the roleplaying community is. I posted on Facebook that I was a bit nervous and got lots of replies telling me that it would be fine.

I think, for a first attempt it went OK (I'm defining OK as I didn't get flustered and give up in the first 5 minutes). About half way through I started to enjoy it.

The issue I have, which I should've realised was that 'no plan survives contact with your players.' There were three bits I regret I missed out, two because the players didn't do anything to trigger it and one because I completely forgot. (I think juggling 3 maps, 3 character sheets and a notebook didn't help.)

I also had the idea that the players would sweep the museum and not find anything too creepy the first time and then it would gradually get scarier, but they looked a bit bored so I quickly moved onto the scary bits which made for a shorter game (actually that was lucky because one of my players had to leave quite early).

I forgot to have a lines and veils talk at the start and then during a particularly gruesome scene had to say 'ugh, you guys are OK with this, right?'

I had to write a text on the train home so I could remember which NPCs were dead, which were alive but horribly injured and how and which were OK. I nearly sent it to my sister.

I don't think I used enough tension – at one point I was describing “this horrible thing, and then this horrible thing and then this horrible thing”

I didn't play up the NPCs enough. The one that featured in the game most, featured because the character she was most attached to was concerned about her. I need to sort that out for the next game.

At the end I was railroading the players a bit because I was worried that no one was going to find the one important thing that they needed to find. There was a book in a secret passage and I was trying every tactic I could to get at least one of my players to pick it up and read it! (“It's drawing you towards it” “You hear your adult son calling your name and it seems to be coming from that direction”)

The players wanted to play the second session and final of the game next week which I will take as a positive (although the guy who actually said it is far too nice to have requested I don't put him through another 3 hours of boredom!)

One of the players, the one who was helping me with this in the first place, said he would give me some feedback which will be really useful.

No one went completely insane which is good because it wasn't time to go insane. Later maybe.

I think the take away is (and I know how hypocritical I sound) if you want to try out GMing find some friends you trust not to laugh at you and just do it. If I know you IRL I'm very happy to play in your first game and I promise I will make it as easy for you as possible because I know how stressful the whole thing is.

Learning how to GM - part 1

I have a confession to make. I have never GMed before. This, of course is because I am far too indie and prefer the type of games where everyone builds a story together.

Actually, it's because I'm far too terrified. See the thing about GMing is that everyone is looking at you. As much as people have told me that it's equally the player's fault if a game doesn't work, I can't quite make myself believe that.

I have a tendency to catastrophise – that I am going to be terrible and / or lose all my words at a crucial moment.

It doesn't help, of course, that I have played with some amazing GMs who know exactly what they are doing and can effortlessly make the players feel whatever they want them to feel (usually terrified.)

It's strange that this feels different. I have played countless games of Fiasco and other games where you take your turn to act as the storyteller for a scene and in theory that should be harder because you can't really prepare for your turn.

Anyway, I've been playing for over a year and I want to be able to run games so it really is time. I have a friend who has very very patiently helped me choose a genre, advised me on how to find a system and suggested ways that my adventure might work so that the players are engaged. To be honest I probably would've taken another 5 years to get to this point otherwise. (I'm going for Cthulhu dark by the way – potentially scary but no complicated rules to remember). I have some idea of the players I want who are probably not going to laugh at my GMing attempts (even though I don't think they scare particularly easily. I really want 3 clones of myself as players "you hear a sound behind you". "What? Where? Help!").

So step 1: The first session is currently being written and when it's finished and people have time we will play. I will keep you updated. Unless it goes terribly. Then I won't tell you anything.

And this has been your fortnightly insecurity post.