The Three Golden Skills of Convention Game Mastering: Part Two

Part Two

Find Part One here

In the first part of this post, we started looking at three skills we can work on today to help us be better game masters at conventions.

The first skill was social skills and focuses on helping make players at ease at the table and helping them be excited to roleplay. This article looks at the next two skills: organization skills to free up the mental capacity of the GM and presentation skills that will take your game session to the next level.

Organizational skills allow the GM to focus on the players and the experience. 

Those who have a game mastered in the number of conventions emphasize the importance of preparation. It is, perhaps, the number one mentioned item on blog posts and YouTube videos when it comes to running games or conventions. If you do not come prepared then you will leave your players with a poor experience.

The skill I am talking about here is not adventure preparation, although you will need organizational skills there too. Instead, I am referring to preparing yourself and your gear, so that you are ready to run a game as soon as you arrive at your table. Whereas the last topic was about making your players feel comfortable, this second skill represents getting yourself comfortable to run the game (I will mention more about this in Skill 3). .

The first role you will assume as a game master is the game master. As soon as you show up at the table, the curtain has risen. The players are watching you and gauging your ability. If you present yourself as well-put-together and organized, then you have already made a good impression.

At the last convention I attended, I sat down with my children to try out a simple, beginning game of Dungeons and Dragons. The game master was kind but he seemed a little frazzled. As we sat at the table (having arrived before him), we were looking at our character sheets and preparing ourselves for the game. This session was touted as a teaching game that would introduce new players to D&D and I thought it might be a helpful start for my family. 

As I mentioned before, our game master arrived in a little bit of disarray. However, he quickly sat down and began to arrange his gaming equipment. So far, so good. The next thing he did was pull out the adventure and begin to read through it. He mentioned he just needed to do a quick review of what the adventure was about. While I understand that convention GMs often run multiple games in one day, this GM needed to work on his first impression. 

Once again, it’s easy to look at the situation from the outside and I am not judging the GM as a person. Instead, I simply asked myself what I might have done differently. Here are a couple of thoughts that I had: 

1. Try to get to the game table early. From some GMs this might be 10 to 15 minutes early. While with others, they may need to be there as early as 30 minutes. This will give them time to do some of that initial refreshing of the material so that they’re ready to present the adventure.

More than likely, your gaming conventions will not always allow you access to your table quite so early. In fact, most gaming conventions will have someone using your table right up to the moment that you need to be able to sit down and begin your game. To make it worse, there might even be some inconsiderate players, who have gone over their time, and now you were waiting for them to vacate the table before you can use it. If this is the case, then you might want to find a quiet corner where you can stop and pull out your notes. These vital seconds can help you prepare yourself mentally for what you will be doing for the next few hours.

2. Players love handouts and, more importantly, handouts help to increase player understanding. As an organized GM, you may decide to create a folder for yourself in which you placed all of your physical handouts. This might include maps, notes or letters from NPCs, pictures of NPCs, or other artifacts that will help the players to understand the adventure. If you have placed these documents in your folder in sequential order, you will be able to access them easily. Presenting in this organized way will help you come off as a well-polished GM, who respects the time of their players. Moreover, you’ll help yourself out because you will not have to be searching through your bag or different binders trying to find the correct handout.

This means that GMs who use handouts will need to be ready with those handouts as soon as they get to the table. In fact, you can hand out these papers before you unpack your other gear. This will keep the players’ minds busy as you physically get your area prepared for play. 

3. Before you even leave for the con, you may want to create a game master kit. There are a number of ways to put this together, but the most simple of kits will include your Dice and your simple maps. Even if you are using theater of the mind you will still want Visual objects and pictures that you can use to bring the adventure to life. So throw it all together in your kit and double-check it before you leave the house.

4. As you are putting together your adventure, you likely noticed a number of physical items or computer files that you will need to play well. Do yourself a favor and start a checklist and keep it near your preparation area.  As you think of something that you are going to need, you can add it to the list. Likely, you will put more things on the list than you will actually really need. However, this list will be an incredible aid when you start to pack.

Several days before you need to leave for the convention, pull your list out again (Johnn Four suggest starting a week early). Quickly go through it and pare your list down to a reasonable size. Starting a few days early will allow you time to organize everything and you run into less danger of not being able to print your handouts. This is a good time to put together your documents and the kit that you planned on earlier.

Organizational needs differ between people. You may find initially that you organize to much, and that you have over-prepared. For those of us who are running our first convention games, this over-preparation might be a better way to go than being under-prepared. At our home games, we might feel a level of confidence in improvisation and our ability to just wing it. However, when it comes to being organized for a convention game, you might find it more helpful to prepare well before you go. This will help you as a GM be able to focus on the most important part of the game: the players.

Presentation skills create a game that people want to return to. 

This final skill—presentation—is truly gold. When we perform well, our session changes from mere delivery of information to entertainment for us and our players. Keep in mind, though that there are many different levels of presentation, but what we’re talking about in this article is performance at its most simple level. You do not have to be a trained actor to make your world come alive but a few basic skills do help. 

As mentioned, the game master is the first role that you play at the table. I don’t want to belabor the topic, but pay attention to your personal hygiene. It can be easy to get distracted by all of the things going on at a convention and put this off. Please do not. Get a shower. Wear clean clothes. Make getting enough sleep a priority. The players at your table will appreciate your efforts.

Having got that out of the way, you may also want to think about your style of dress for the game. I am not suggesting that you have to dress up, but you want to come dressed neatly and, perhaps, in a way that reflects the mood that you’re trying to create at the table. Remember that you are part of the style of your adventure. Do you have a T-shirt that reflects the style of game that you want to play? Then that would be perfect. What are you trying to run a super serious game, but are wearing a silly T-shirt.? You might want to choose something else.

Next, you might choose to bring your physical object or two to help decorate your table. What you’re trying to do is make your table stand out. The object doesn’t need to be large. It only has to be large enough to make your table stand out. Putting some sort of decoration on the table will help you in two ways. First, it will assist your players in identifying your table. To assist in that, you might also post the title of your game and game system on a piece of cardstock and then place that next to your decoration. For example, if I was running a game of Vaesen RPG, I might try and find some objects at a thrift store that would reflect the game. You might place out an old book of Hans Christian Andersen tales. Alternatively, you could lay out a nice map of Scandinavia. This simple presentation is a way to make your game stand out.

Confidence shows that you are ready to lead an adventure.

Now, I have mentioned several times that game master is your first role as you run a session and you don’t have to be a trained actor to do it.  I’m not an actor, I’m a high school teacher. So I’m not suggesting that you need to take acting lessons in order to be a good game master (although I imagine they could be very helpful). Instead, focus on portraying confidence as you run the game. The two tips that follow can assist in these efforts. 

First, pay attention to how you present yourself at the table. As the game master, you make decisions that influence the entire table, so be confident. This might go against everything that you’re used to. You might not feel like a very confident person but we are playing a roleplaying game. It’s time to role-play that confident GM. Referring back to my last example of the game master who came to the table and had to re-check his notes, he already dropped the image that he was prepared. I am not suggesting that he could not get ready and play. Instead, I am suggesting that coming prepared already gives you an air of competence. Had this game master been two minutes later because he had stopped just outside the game hall and looked over the exact same notes, then we would have never known that he was anything but completely prepared. So get your act together before you get to the table.

Another way to show confidence as a GM is in your voice. Convention halls, where they run role-playing games quite noisy. There are a number of tables put as close together as possible so that as many people can play as possible. As that is the case, your players might have a hard time hearing you even though they are sitting only a couple of feet away. As that is the case you need to practice being able to speak with a louder voice. As it can, GM, it is your responsibility to be a good communicator. If your players can’t hear you, it is your fault. Be loud enough that they can understand what you’re trying to say. So you might have to practice speaking in a big voice at home. If your player still can’t hear you, then you might ask them to move their chairs, so they are closer to you. If your players can’t hear you because the GMs next to you are too loud, then you need to communicate with those louder GMs. You both may need to reorganize your tables so that you are GM-ing back to back so that you were not speaking over the top of each other.

Conclusion

Gamemastering can encompass so many skills, these three skills can help every game master to improve their performance at a convention. By focusing on the player and improving social skills, a game master can help their players feel more at ease, and prepare to immerse themselves in the game. By organizing themselves before the game, a game master is also preparing themselves to feel at ease. This will allow them to dive into the game and give their players a great experience. And finally, by recognizing the magic of presentation and practicing these skills, a game master can make their game different from the other games being played around them. This will give their players a unique experience and hopefully encourage them to play with you again.

 All text copyright @ www.consaves.com

Picture: Midjourney