Martin at Treasure Tables asked:
A simple question to which the answer will, I suspect, vary pretty widely: how did you learn to GM?
Like so many others, I learned from original D&D materials. In fifth grade, two of the teachers ran an adventure for 8 or so of us who were interested. It was a strange wandering; lots of death and strange effects [pools of growth and the like just lying around]. They did a good job with elementary school kids (almost all 4-6th grade/ that’s about 9-12 years old or so).
From that, I started running games for friends– following the red box rules strictly. We got AD&D soon after and of course we migrated. Lots of exploring a dungeon cause it was there; simple fun, not a whole bunch of plotting.
In high school, we played a lot of systems. A lot. Finally, late sophomore year, I started a popular campaign that lasted until the beginning of senior year. It fell apart due to real life conflicts that were expressed in game– it got too stressful for me to keep things going, so I killed it gracelessly.
College was more about play, though I tried my hand at running a PBeM and failed miserably. I got a chance to play in a rotating GM campaign, which broadened many horizons. I also played Amber and Mage, which thoroughly crushed “mission based play”– in Amber by negative example, mostly.
Since then, I went through a dry spell, then returned to gaming more frequently. I’ve played a number of different styles of games and learned a lot by example; Chris’s Mage game was a bit frustrating at times but totally underscored the idea that a new setting could change everything. Wil’s games taught me the joys of unplotted play… and the drawbacks that loom. Kev and I ran very successful games in alternating weeks, where I really learned how to balance plot and character driven play. Unfortunately, I also learned that social level problems and group politics trump all else.
Later that year, after another drought, I played with some game shop people. I learned that I was willing to play a pickup with strangers, continuity over character style game … but that I’d drop that first. A glut soon followed; Dad was pressed into D&D 3E, which he took to pretty quickly, and Wil started up a series of rambling campaigns. In the middle, I got to play My Life with Master, which didn’t do well (I learned the value of getting agreement on premise), and later Dogs in the Vineyard, which taught me that I had a lot to learn about trusting the dice and playing NPCs hard. Somewhere in there another Mage game I was running fell through due to several player level conflicts… sometimes the message has to be pounded through, I guess.
So, I happily say that I learned to GM back in grade school. Learning to GM well has been a long process, and I still have a ways to go.