New Gamemaster Month 2019

This the RuneQuest Quickstart version for New Gamemaster Month in 2019, written by Jason Durall

---

Step 1 – Welcome, and Let’s Get Started!

Gamemastering. To some gamers, it seems to come naturally, but to others—longtime veterans of gaming, as well as newbies just entering the hobby—it’s a bit intimidating. But running a roleplaying game can be an incredible joy, and gamemasters keep our hobby thriving and growing. That’s why we created New Gamemaster Month. If you’ve ever thought about running a roleplaying game, but haven’t taken the plunge, we have good news: Stick with us for a month and come this time in February you’ll be a real, honest-to-goodness gamemaster. It’ll be easy, and it’ll be fun. We promise.

Why Run A Game?

Before we get started, though, a question: Why should you run a roleplaying game? Well, if there is one factor that limits the spread of roleplaying games, it’s the number of gamemasters. For most types of games you don’t really need any specialized “equipment,” just the game itself (usually), a handful of players (usually), a place to play, and in some cases a gaming platform of some sort. Tabletop roleplaying games are a bit different—they can’t happen unless at least one person in the group steps up to take on a special role. A role that requires a bit more preparation, effort, organization, and tolerance for the spotlight. Without gamemasters, roleplaying games can’t happen. As a gamemaster, you’ll be helping the roleplaying game world in general.

But the fact that you’re reading this tells me you probably already know a more important reason: It’s an activity we gamemasters really take joy in. Heck, there’s more to it than joy—it’s practically a need. A creative drive. For a lot of gamemasters, crafting a compelling world, peopling it with interesting characters, laying out engaging conflicts and mysteries, and then revealing these to the players as they work their way through their story (and often being surprised by their contributions along the way) is incredibly fulfilling. Nothing scratches the creative itch in quite the unique way that gamemastering does.

You’ve seen that, and you feel its pull—that’s why you’re interested in New Gamemaster Month. That’s why you want to run a game.

So What Are You Getting Into?

Putting yourself behind the proverbial gamemaster screen seems daunting. There must be some trick to it that’s not obvious, right? And so many pitfalls: What if the other players know the rules better than you? Or the setting? Or would do such a better job that they see right through your pathetic attempts to make the adventure or campaign work?

Here’s the secret to gamemastering: It’s easy.

Really, it’s easy. Once you’re sitting in the gamemaster’s chair, and you’ve run a session or three, you’ll agree. But from where you’re sitting now, it’s no surprise that it seems a bit intimidating. That’s just jitters.

You’ll need to understand how your rules work, sure, but you don’t have to be the biggest expert, regardless of whether your players are all newbies or are veterans who’ve played the game for years. You don’t have to have every nook and cranny of the setting committed to memory, either—in fact, the setting is yours to craft, and elements you interpret differently than what’s in print (on purpose or by accident) make the setting your own. That’s a feature, not a bug.

More important than any of those factors, though, is confidence. You need to feel that you can do it. That’s the secret sauce. It’s the only secret sauce.

So that’s what we’re going to give you over the next four weeks: skills and confidence. We’ll guide you through the process of understanding the rules, the setting, and your first adventure, so you’ll have the skills to run your first game. And along the way, we’ll give you the confidence that you have everything you need. To top it off, we’ll give you a little kick in the pants at the end, to turn that skill and confidence into an actual, live game session that you’ll run and enjoy.

That’s right: In four weeks, you’ll be a real, live, gamemaster.

How Will This Happen?

Here’s the New Gamemaster Month plan of action: You’ll find a new post, right here on newgamemastermonth.com, every Tuesday and Thursday between now and February 1. With each post, we’ll discuss the next step in your journey and give you a small activity that builds to your first gamemastering session. (Don’t worry, it’s not homework. This is fun stuff.)

As mentioned above, we’ll cover rules, setting, and the adventure itself. But we’ll also talk about the other elements of running a game: Stuff like wrangling players, lining up a time and place, and even laying in snacks. Everything you need to think about to get your game going and ensure it’s a success.

You choose the game you want to run. Three companies are partnering in New Gamemaster Month this year, giving you the opportunity to run your choice of games:

• Numenera
• Unknown Armies
• Trail of Cthulhu
• RuneQuest

Which game should you choose? That’s up to you. Experience with the game will help, but isn’t necessary—the most important thing is that the game, its setting, and the adventure are all things you’ll enjoy.

Regardless of your choice, we’ll work from a published adventure that’s friendly to newbie gamemasters, so we’ll be able to focus this month on the act of gamemastering rather than the process of designing an adventure. The fundamentals are transferable, though: Once you’ve run your New Gamemaster Month adventure, you’ll be a full-fledged gamemaster capable of taking on other systems, building your own worlds, and crafting your own adventures, if you desire, from scratch.

All you need to do is join us twice a week, read these posts, and follow through with the activities we recommend for the game you’ve chosen. You’ll commit a little time to the process—a few hours a week, tops—but by the end you’ll be ready to run!

Chaosium Content for Step One

Your activity for this segment of New Gamemaster Month is to get yourself a copy of the Ennie-award winning RuneQuest Quickstart Rules and Adventure (Best Free Product, 2018). It’s available for free at Chaosium’s website:

• RuneQuest Glorantha Quickstart

This 48-page book presents the rules in a summarized fashion, with a ready-to-play adventure and pregenerated adventurer characters. Even if you’re not going to run that adventure, it’s a good starting point for understanding the tone of the setting and getting a handle on the rules.

If you want to know even more about Glorantha and RuneQuest, it’s advisable to get the RuneQuest corebook. If you don’t have it already, you can find it in print at your friendly local game store, in PDF format at DriveThruRPG, or in either format at the Chaosium web store:

(Note: The Quickstart was developed a year before the RuneQuest corebook and some minor rules have changed, but it can be played on its own just fine.)  

If you got an older print copy of the Quickstart, there is some minor errata that has been integrated into the digital file already:

• Errata (included in digital download)

Spend a little time leafing through the Quickstart, getting a handle on the concepts and the world of Glorantha. You don’t have to read anything in particular just yet, this is just a “look and feel” review. In fact, it’s probably best to avoid reading too much, because some new gamemasters find all that info a bit overwhelming. (Don’t fret: We’ll walk you through the most important stuff over the next few segments.)

You’ll also help the New Gamemaster Month program, and the community of roleplaying gamers generally, if you’ll spread the word a bit. Mention New Gamemaster Month on social media and down at your game store. We’re going to make it easy for late-comers to join the program, so it’s never too late—but many new gamemasters will appreciate knowing they’re part of a concerted program, so getting the word out now is better than, say, June. If you’d like to show your participation, feel free to grab this icon for use as a social media avatar.

Share New Gamemaster Month with people you know! If you’re participating as a new gamemaster, it never hurts to get a few friends involved, so you can compare notes as you go. If you’re an old hand at gamemastering, help someone else in your group who wants to gamemaster by sharing this and maybe mentoring them a bit through the process.

Enjoy, and we’ll talk again on Thursday!

---

Step 2 – Initial Planning for Your Game Session

In New Gamemaster Month we’re helping players who feel the urge to run a roleplaying game—to become a gamemaster for the first time—take the plunge. If you’re just joining us, start with the first installment. Then join us every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January, and by the end of the month you’ll be a gamemaster too!

In our last post, we introduced the idea behind New Gamemaster Month and asked you to get your hands on the corebook for your game of choice. If you’re just joining the program, go back and read that post. Then click your way back here and read on!

Today we’re going to delve into some of the specifics of preparing for your first session. Before we do, though, I want to touch on one topic:

Is It Always This Much Work?

We’re going to spend a month getting you ready for your first adventure. Eight posts, and eight activities, each of which might take you an hour or so—and that’s just for your first game session. Perhaps you’re feeling a little panic when you think that your first adventure might span two or three whole evening-length sessions. And it’s just the start of what might be a lengthy campaign! Is this really such a good idea???

Relax: It’s not always like this. We’re covering a lot of ground that you won’t have to cover again, and a lot of what we’re doing this month will soon become second nature to you. Being a gamemaster does require some prep work, but it’s not too daunting, and how much you put into it is entirely up to you.

Every gamemaster has a different experience, and every game system has different characteristics, but many gamemasters experience a long-term average of one hour or so of prep time per evening-length game session. That’s often front-loaded, so the launch of a new campaign might involve a great deal more time, while individual sessions later in the campaign require little or no prep. If you’re creating your own adventures, or building your own setting, you’ll probably spend more time getting ready than if you run published adventures—but that’s OK, because many gamemasters find creating and running new adventures to be especially rewarding.

Regardless, the short answer is no, it isn’t always this much work!

Chaosium Content for Step Two

Here’s what you do need to do now:

Choose a Time and Place

First, decide when and where you’re going to hold your first game session. The weekend of February 2nd ties in nicely with the New Gamemaster Month syllabus. But if that doesn’t work out, choose a later date. And be prepared to be flexible, because obviously you won’t be the only one involved—you’ll need a time and place that work for your players as well as for you. Speaking of which:

Wrangle Your Players

Reach out to some potential players. Perhaps you’ve already been talking about this with some of your friends or family. Or maybe this will be a complete surprise to them. Either way, identify some people for whom you’d like to run the game. Four or five players is an ideal group size, but three to six is fine. The Quickstart has five pregenerated adventurer characters, with another optional sixth downloadable adventurer. You can run a game successfully with only two players, or even just one, but it’s a bit more difficult. And with more than six it can be very challenging to keep everyone engaged. (And sometimes just to fit them around the gaming table!)

How you go about it is up to you, but it might be best to contact about half a dozen people initially. That way, if everyone says Yes your group won’t be too big, but if a couple of people can’t make it, you’ll still have enough players. If you don’t get enough “Yes” responses from that group, maybe reach out to one or two more.

Tell the players you plan to run RuneQuest (you can tell them it’s the Quickstart adventure if you like) and suggest your preferred time and place. A website like whenisgood.net can be helpful if scheduling is difficult.

Who should you invite? That’s easy: People you think you’ll have fun with. If you already have an existing gaming group, that’s a good place to start. If not, just gather some folk who you’ll enjoy spending several hours with (and who will enjoy spending a few hours with each other!). They don’t need to be experienced gamers or experienced with RuneQuest or Glorantha in particular.

Do A Little Initial Reading

Finally, read the first few pages of the RuneQuest Quickstart, particularly pages 2, 3, and 6. Pages 4 and 5 are about characters, and can be skipped for now. This section, “The Game System”, is the most useful to read thoroughly. Everything else will depend on this basic system. These basic rules provide a foundation regarding the entire game’s mechanics. You may even want to re-read it once you’ve gone through it. Take some notes if something’s unclear.

This is so exciting! You’re on your way—once you complete these activities, you’ll have committed yourself to your first game session. Don’t panic: It’s going to be great.

We’ll take our next steps on Tuesday!

Bottom Matter

---

Step 3 – It’s Week Two! Let’s Talk Setting and Rules.

In New Gamemaster Month we’re helping players who feel the urge to run a roleplaying game—to become a gamemaster for the first time—take the plunge. If you’re just joining us, start with the first installment. Then join us every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January, and by the end of the month you’ll be a gamemaster too!

This week we’re going to spend a little bit of time learning the rules and setting of your chosen game, and a little time digging into the adventure you’re going to run. Let’s do the rules and setting first, then look at the adventure in Thursday’s activity. But first, a note about how all this relates to other roleplaying games.

Just This Game?

When we go into the rules and setting in this program, we’re going to be talking about the game you’ve chosen: Numenera, Unknown Armies, Trail of Cthulhu, or RuneQuest. As you learn those things, you’re learning that game. But our goal is to make you into a competent gamemaster—no, let’s say a great gamemaster—in general. With the limited time and bandwidth we have this month, we can’t teach you the specifics of every game out there, but the process by which you’re learning applies pretty much to any game. In three weeks you’re going to run a great session of your chosen game. Take the general skills you’ve learned, spend a little time with the rulebook, and a few weeks later you could be running Star Wars or Savage Worlds or Pathfinder or Call of Cthulhu. In other words, the most critical skills you’re picking up are easily transferred to any and all of your favorite games.

What If I Already Know This Game?

If you’re already a pretty experienced gamer—and particularly if you’ve already played your chosen game—some of what we go into today will be old hat. That’s fine, but it’s worth it to at least skim your way through today’s activity. It may fill in a few gaps in your knowledge base, and it will definitely help build your confidence. And as we’ll discuss, confidence is one of a great gamemaster’s biggest assets.

Back to the Rules and Setting

Rules and setting are critical to gamemastering, right? Well, sort of. Here’s what’s really critical: Creativity, nimble response, and an engaging pace of play. You know what kills those three things faster than a prize cow surrounded by rock lizards? Stopping too much to look things up in the rulebook and worrying too much about minor details of the rules and setting that don’t actually affect the quality of the game experience. To avoid that problem, you need to have:

• A strong enough foundation in your rules and setting so that you don’t slow down the game recalling or looking up key information.
• And confidence in that foundation.

Here’s what you don’t need:

• An encyclopedic knowledge of every facet of the rules or game universe. With Glorantha, this is especially hard, because the setting has been around for four decades, and you can easily get lost in the weeds of background info!

In a way, these two sets of bullet points don’t seem to fit. Sometimes the minor details of the rules matter—sometimes they matter a lot. If you want to avoid looking things up in the book, you have to commit them to memory, right? No, not really, because there’s yet another important bullet point. You also need:

• Good judgment about when it’s better to slow things down to work out a specific detail or look something up, and when it’s better to keep the pace up even if it risks getting a minor detail “wrong.”

Developing that judgment comes from the strong foundation mentioned in that first bullet point. And don’t worry: As you gamemaster more and more, those rules details and minor facets of the setting will build up in your brain, and your knowledge will become increasingly encyclopedic. That’s good, but it’s not critical to running a fun, entertaining, and memorable game. And, for now, we’re focused on what’s critical.

We’ll come back to some of that other stuff in a later post. For now, let’s start laying in that foundation.

Chaosium Content for Step Three

This is also a good time to review that adventurer sheet layout on pages 4 and 5. This is what your players will be looking at, and it’s best to know exactly what they can do, how to find information on their adventurer sheets, and what options adventurers have when they’re presented with a challenge, a conflict, or opportunities to explore.

The most important thing to take away from the rules reading is how to roll and read dice, the different levels of success, and the concept of augments using skills, Passions, or Runes. Once you’ve got an understanding of how those mechanics work, most of the rest of the rules fall into place.

We’ll talk again on Thursday!

Bottom Matter

---

Step 4 – Let’s Have a Look at the Adventure!

In New Gamemaster Month we’re helping players who feel the urge to run a roleplaying game—to become a gamemaster for the first time—take the plunge. If you’re just joining us, start with the first installment. Then join us every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January, and by the end of the month you’ll be a gamemaster too!

On Tuesday, we started digging into the rules and setting of our games. Developing a basic fluency in these topics—without sweating the details too much—gives you a foundation for keeping your game sessions flowing at a brisk and enjoyable pace, and allows you to form and run with your creative ideas and those of your players without the distraction of wrestling with unfamiliar rules.

So if that’s the foundation, what do we build upon it? The adventure, of course!

What Is an Adventure, Really?

A roleplaying game adventure is a planned series of events that give a backbone to the story you, and especially your players, will unfold around the gaming table. As you develop your skill and experience as a gamemaster, you might take great pleasure in crafting your own adventures. Or you might prefer to save yourself the effort and use the many fun and imaginative adventures already created for your convenience. Many gamemasters do both—they run published adventures when they have little prep time or are particularly inspired by the adventures’ ideas, and they make their own when they have the time and inspiration to do so.

Creating your own adventures isn’t hard. The amount of work required varies from game system to game system, but generally isn’t insurmountable. It’s a slightly different skill set than gamemastering in general, though, so it’s outside the scope of the New Gamemaster Month program. We’re going to go with a published adventure, to focus on the actual gamemastering process rather than the design process.

Before you flip open your adventure, let’s talk a bit about what an adventure consists of. Adventures can be highly detailed, or amount to little more than a few notes, but they all have a few things in common:

• An initial set of circumstances (an isolated village in the wilderness; a caravan encountered on the road; a treasure map that suggests a trip into the mountains). Often, a published adventure will offer a variety of “hooks” for involving player characters (suggestions for why they might come across that isolated village in the wilderness, for example).
• A conflict that compels the players to become involved (villagers have recently been disappearing; the caravan driver offers a big reward to help fend off local marauders; the treasure map hints at great riches).
• An outline of how the adventure’s story is likely to unfold. Sometimes the outline is very linear (event A leads to event B, which leads to event C). Sometimes the outline is “squishier,” with few or no assumptions about the order of events. And sometimes the outline takes the form of a map: The classic D&D dungeon is basically an adventure outline, with the passages and tunnels indicating how the events might connect to each other. The outline might be drawn out like a flow chart (or, again, take the form of a map), or it might just be a list of encounter descriptions. That takes us to:
• A set of encounters, or scenes. An encounter is a point at which something happens, and, typically, where the characters learn or gain something that moves their story forward. Encounters might involve combat, or a trap, or social interaction, a period of exploration, or some sort of environmental challenge.
• Finally, an adventure contains details on creatures, characters, and items the player characters will interact with during their encounters. This might include sets of stats for creatures, descriptions about personality, appearance, and motivation for non-player characters, maps of adventure areas, lists of “loot” and other interesting in-game items the characters interact with, and illustrations of places, characters, or events.

Those are the components of any complete adventure. They might take the form of a 96-page book with thousands of words of detail, along with dozens of maps and images. Or they might amount to a few scribbled notes on a sheet of paper. Either way can suit the purpose just fine.

So if those are the basic ingredients, what does it take to make a really tasty meal out of them? A great adventure:

• Often has an element of mystery, or even a plot twist somewhere in the middle. That initial conflict was compelling, but it turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg!
• Has some element of story—often a very strong narrative—but doesn’t rely on or expect a specific course of action from the players.
• Usually has a variety of activities in it: Fighting, negotiating, exploring, working out puzzles or mysteries.
• But also plays to the interests of the players and the strengths of the characters. Players who love fast-paced action may become bored by an adventure that’s heavily focused on intrigue and social interaction. And a character that’s great at climbing, crawling, and sneaking around won’t get a chance to shine in an adventure that’s a series of straight-up combat scenes.

Chaosium Content for Step Four

“The Broken Tower”, the adventure itself, was written to be a relatively light-but-flavorful introduction to the world of Glorantha. Created by Greg Stafford in the mid-1970s, the setting has been expanded and detailed over the course of 40 years, and as such, there’s a daunting amount of information out there about the setting, including the encyclopedic two-volume Guide to Glorantha.

Its purpose is to appeal to newcomers and veterans, with a relatively isolated area and new threats, yet connected to existing Gloranthan content. There are no tests requiring extensive knowledge of the background, but players and gamemasters familiar with the setting will instantly grasp the cultures and conflicts being presented.

A Little Reading

Read through “The Broken Tower”. It’s on pages 25 through 41 of the Quickstart. The “What’s Going On?” sidebar on page 26 spells out the whole situation, so you’ll grasp the who’s who and what everyone wants. 

A Little Thinking

As you read it, think about the elements discussed above—both the fundamental building blocks, and the factors that make an adventure fun and successful. See if you recognize those elements in the adventure. Maybe you’d like to hop into the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group and talk about them with experienced gamemasters and other folk, like you, who are exploring gamemastering for the first time.

And a Little Talking

But that’s not your only activity. As mentioned above, an adventure works best if it plays to the interests and expectations of the players. So have a chat with them. Ask them what they expect and want out of the game. Some players will be happy to go on at length. Others might not really know what they want, or be able to articulate it. In some cases, you may have gamed with the player before, and perhaps already have a good sense of his or her play style. That’s all fine. The goal here is to put yourself in a position in which you can best prepare for a game that everyone will find memorable.

Don’t press your players on this—many gamers don’t really care to think about a game too much before they sit down at the table with a character sheet in front of them. But if you have players who are eager to think ahead about the game to come, you might tell them about Glorantha, described in “Introducing Glorantha” on pages 1 and 25 of the Quickstart. And of course they aren’t limited to talking to you—they’re welcome to discuss their goals with one another beforehand, too.

Let us know how it goes in the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group. And talk to you again on Tuesday!

Bottom Matter

---

Step 5 – Encounters—The Meat of the Adventure

In New Gamemaster Month we’re helping players who feel the urge to run a roleplaying game—to become a gamemaster for the first time—take the plunge. If you’re just joining us, start with the first installment. Then join us every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January, and by the end of the month you’ll be a gamemaster too!

This week we continue to explore the rules and setting, and develop our thinking about the adventure.

Encounters!

First, let’s talk about encounters. Encounters, sometimes referred to as scenes, are the meat of your adventure. As mentioned last week, an encounter is a point in your adventure where something happens, and usually where the characters (and players) take action, make decisions, learn something, or otherwise move the story forward. Encounters can take many forms:

• The characters kick down the dungeon door, find a monster within, and fight it to get its treasure.
• The characters are in a busy market when a beggar attempts to pickpocket them.
• The duke summons the characters to carry a message of peace to his rival.
• The characters have come to a rocky ravine in their travels—is it just a difficult climb, or are there enemies waiting to ambush them while they’re vulnerable?
• The characters break into the office of an erstwhile employer, searching for papers or other evidence of the employer’s true motives.
• And so on.

An encounter has some of the same elements as an adventure: An initial situation, a compelling hook or reason for the players to care, maybe a bit of mystery, and sometimes a turning point in the middle, where suddenly things are not what they at first seemed. Good encounters leave the outcome—and the means by which the characters resolve the encounter—open-ended.

The bulk of your gamemastering time will be spent running encounters; you’ll generally gloss over the in-between times, because that’s not where important things are happening. The characters spend a week in town, resting up and gathering supplies for the next leg of their journey? You spend five minutes telling them what makes the town unique, and maybe some of the interesting people there, and the results of their foraging efforts. Maybe you’ll go into more detail if something important begins to unfold—that’s basically an encounter evolving spontaneously—but mostly it’s quick exposition. Then the characters set out, and again you cover several days of activity in three or four minutes. But when the wolves attack their campsite at night, you shift back into encounter mode. Now the players act and react, and you resolve their actions on a moment-by-moment basis.

Encounters aren’t the only place your players make decisions. As the party travels through the wilderness, they might come to a fork in the road. Go east, or turn north? It’s a decision—and maybe an important one—but it doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be an encounter.

Generally speaking, the higher the proportion of encounter time to non-encounter time in your game, the better the pacing is likely to feel. But that doesn’t mean you should rush your players when they need time to consider their options or just take in the atmosphere of the game.

We’ll talk more about encounters in our next post, but for now we’re going to shift gears and go back to looking at the rules and setting.

Chaosium Content for Step Five

Review these bits of rules content:

• Ability Use, including Augmenting Abilities (page 2)
• Results and Opposed Resolution (pages 3 and 6)
• Runic Inspiration and Inspiration (pages 8 and 10)

And then read this setting content; it’ll put your mind into the region in which “The Broken Tower” is set:

• The Badlands of the Starfire Ridge (pages 26-27)
• The map and the Places sidebar (page 27)

One last thing: Check in to the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group, if you haven’t already. We’d really love to hear how things are going for you, and in particular, we’d love to hear back from you when New Gamemaster Month is over and you’ve run your first game. That’s where you’ll report it, and win a fabulous prize (well, a modest prize) as an expression of our congratulations.

Catching Up?

If you heard about New Gamemaster Month a bit on the late side, it’s fine to jump in now. You’ll need to catch up with us, but that’s still quite doable. Start with the first post and read through them all. Each one gives you an activity, but for the most part they don’t take too long, so with a little effort you’ll be back with the class by our next blog post on Thursday—and on the road to running your first game in just a couple of weeks!

To simplify your activity list, here’s everything we’ve done so far, gathered into one easy checklist. Please note that this is just a cheat sheet, to make it a bit easier to keep track of what you’re doing—read the blog posts for the context you need to get the most out of these activities.

• Get your hands on a copy of the RuneQuest Quickstart (and possibly the RuneQuest corebook, if desired).
• Decide when and where you will run your first game session.
• Reach out to half a dozen players and confirm the time and place with them.
• Read the intro sections about Glorantha and the system basics (pages 1–3 and 6).
• Read the rest of the game system half of the book (pages 4–5 and 7–21).
• Read “The Broken Tower” adventure (pages 25–41).
• Chat briefly with your players about what they like and expect out of a roleplaying game, and maybe share some of the hooks or info about the world of Glorantha with them.

Bottom Matter

---

Step 6 – Dressing Things Up a Bit

In New Gamemaster Month we’re helping players who feel the urge to run a roleplaying game—to become a gamemaster for the first time—take the plunge. If you’re just joining us, start with the first installment. Then join us every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January, and by the end of the month you’ll be a gamemaster too!

We talked on Tuesday about encounters and their importance to the unfolding narrative of your game and the pace of play. Today we’re going to dress things up just a bit, by talking about the details that bring an encounter to life.

Details, Details

Details really amount to two things: informational details, tangible details, and descriptive details. OK, that’s three things. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Informational details include stats for creatures, maps of locations, details about the difficulty of a challenge, and names, descriptions, and personalities of nonplayer characters.

How much effort you put into these details is up to you. Not enough, and you’ll slow yourself down “winging it” as the encounter unfolds. And just like a missed retort, you may find yourself thinking an hour or a day later of what you wished you’d said at the time. On the other hand, too much detail wastes your time and energy, and often presupposes a particular manner in which the scene is intended to unfold—a manner that may not be the route your players take.

A well-designed encounter should at least have the following informational details:

• A map, if the lay of the land matters (this is most often the case in encounters likely to involve combat, and then usually when there’s something unusual or tactically interesting about the situation).
• The names of the important nonplayer characters involved, and maybe some notes on their appearance, personality, attitude, and/or likely reaction to the characters.
• Game stats for any creatures or nonplayer characters the characters are likely to go up against (in a fight or in any other form of contest).
• The mechanisms and difficulties of any traps or environmental challenges present.

By tangible details, I mean things you can give or show the players. Sometimes an adventure will include illustrations specifically intended to show the players (a technique pioneered by the famous Tomb of Horrors adventure for D&D back in the day). There may be maps the players can keep, or props such as letters or other handouts. Even an illustration of a creature to be confronted can be handy. Your game doesn’t require this stuff by any means, but they can be useful and entertaining, and can sometimes save time (having a map they can refer to helps players understand the area with less confusion and without questioning you over and over, for example).

Finally, there’s descriptive details, and this is where the art of gamemastering really shines. The informational and tangible details are largely a function of the adventure itself—in most published adventures, you get all the names and stats and NPC attitudes you need. And you’ll get some description, too, but what you do with it is what can make you a good—or even a great—gamemaster. And that brings us to our activity for this session. . .

Chaosium Content for Step Six

As you read, think about how you’ll portray locations and Carthalo and Lannike, the nonplayer characters. Imagine them in your head; give them voices. Picture the scene in your head and imagine how you’ll describe it, appealing to as many senses as possible. If in doubt, skew for the dramatic. The adventure presents time of day and describes the setting, but you should feel free to extrapolate or change details as needed. It supposes that the adventures arrive on a cold, damp morning, but it could also be late at night, with torches flickering and wind whipping about them as they meet the strange old former shaman.

Furthermore, if Vishi Dunn is among the player adventurers, think of how the encounter with the spirit will play out differently. It’s generally a good idea to give the adventurers things to do instead of the nonplayer characters, so in the case of contacting the spirit, Carthalo might take a backseat to Vishi.

Similarly, when thinking of the encounter with the rock lizards and the stray bull, imagine how to make this exciting and tense. The rock lizards are fast, big, and deadly—basically giant gila monsters or dinosaurs—and they should arrive in numbers enough to make the adventurers nervous. Keeping the battle on their terms, with them surrounding and lunging at a braying animal, gives a focus and urgency to the fight.

Spend three or four minutes per encounter just imagining what it might be like. It’s okay to take some notes if you’re struck with a particular inspiration, but don’t overdo it, and here’s why: It’s very likely the encounter won’t play out exactly as you’re imagining, and you don’t want to overly commit yourself to a specific vision. But having something in your head—something with details and atmosphere—gives you the means to bring these encounters to life.

While we’re at it, read and bookmark these entries:

• Carthalo (page 29)
• Rock lizards (page 32)

This time the purpose is two-fold: It’s good to have a look at the stats, to prep yourself with what the creatures’ capabilities and likely tactics are. But this reading also serves the purpose just mentioned. Think about the rock lizards—how will you describe them? Are they entirely focused on their prey, reluctant to give it up, or do they or rush aggressively at the adventurers when their prey is threatened? Are there any sounds or smells or visual details that come to mind? Imagine them, so that when you unveil them to your players, you do so with color and excitement.

The rock lizard encounter is relatively low-stakes and can resolved without much risk, but you can increase the threat the predators present by increasing their number or having them gang up on individual adventurers, rather than spreading them out. If the encounter becomes boring or drags on too long, have the rock lizards run away. Pay attention to when the players are having fun, or when they’re tuning out. The rock lizards have nothing to gain once the cow is out of their reach, so they might just flee. Or they might follow the adventurers and the bull, striking later!   

Feel free to share your imaginings at the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group—you might find some inspiration there, too!

That’s it for this activity. Come back on Tuesday for the final week of New Gamemaster Month. You’re going to be running your first game soon—and it’s gonna be great!

Bottom Matter

---

Step 7 – Gathering Your Gear

In New Gamemaster Month we’re helping players who feel the urge to run a roleplaying game—to become a gamemaster for the first time—take the plunge. If you’re just joining us, start with the first installment. Then join us every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January, and by the end of the month you’ll be a gamemaster too!

You’re almost a full-fledged gamemaster. Basic training is about over, so this time we’re going to focus on honing the skills we’ve already discussed. Before we do, though:

What Do You Need?

Let’s talk about what you’ll need on the fateful evening (or afternoon, or even, perhaps, morning) of your game. So far we’ve been talking mostly about skills and confidence, but this is about the actual physical stuff.

The short answer is: You don’t need much. You’ll want the corebook for your chosen game, of course, and you need a copy of your adventure if it’s not in the book. If you’ve jotted down any notes over the course of this program and you’d like to have them along, well, bring those. Here are a few other things you’ll need around the table:

• Dice (a D4, some D6s, D8, D10, D12, and D20). A D00 “tens” die is also useful.
• Some paper and a pencil, so you can jot down notes or maybe whip up a quick map to lay the scene out for the players.
• Blank character sheets for the players (generally only necessary for your first session, when the players are making their characters).
• Drinks and snacks. Not strictly necessary for play, but almost always welcome.

Additional copies of the rules are handy, so you don’t have to keep passing your only copy back and forth. Hopefully one or more of your players will bring these.

Here are some other things that some folk like to have, but are not by any means necessary. In fact, you may want to wait until you’ve run a couple of sessions to decide which, if any of these things, fit your gamemastering style:

• Handouts, show ‘em illos, or other tangible details you’ve prepared, if you’re the sort of gamemaster who likes to prepare such things.
• A gamemaster screen, which compiles a lot of the game rules’ most useful data into one handy place while simultaneously keeping your notes away from prying eyes.
• A vinyl mat and some wet-erase markers. Many gamemasters like to use these to draw maps out for their players, particularly if they use miniatures. Which brings us to:
• Miniatures. Some games embrace them more than others, but even when they aren’t closely tied to game mechanics many gamemasters like to use them to visually illustrate where characters and creatures are in relation to one another.
• Tokens, if your game benefits from tokens to track certain resources (such as magic or Rune points for RuneQuest).
• Other game accessories and texts. Creature books, setting expansions, and play aids.

That may seem like a lot, but it’s a fairly exhaustive list, and nothing on that second part is at all necessary. (Really, nothing—do not sweat it if you don’t have that sort of stuff. It’s probably best not to even decide whether you want it until you’ve run a few sessions and have a good idea which of these will work for you.)

Chaosium Content for Step Seven

Second, it’s time to go through the rest of the adventure and see how you imagine it playing out. Pay close attention to the the description of the ruins, the initial encounter with Danakos and the final encounter with Varanik. Read up on Idrima and make sure you know what she’s capable of. She’s no slouch! Figure out how to get the most out of each encounter, asking yourself “What’s the most interesting and dramatic way to begin this encounter? What’s at stake?”

At the hilltop ruins, the mad Greydog Varanik might be used as an ambusher, striking rapidly and drawing the adventurers into conflict with the Stone Woman’s elemental servitors, the sprul-pa. He should use his spirit magic wisely, casting Bladesharp, Protection, and Strength on himself, and Heal if he’s wounded. Showing tactical use of spell use like this will demonstrate to players that they should do the same.

The sprul-pa can also be used in relatively large numbers. They’re weak and easily disabled, but the Stone Woman can command as many of them as the gamemaster wishes, without even needing to spend magic points. Rather than being a menace individually, they can be used to great effect as distractions, or even to herd the adventurers to (or away from) the Stone Woman herself!

Danakos is a smart and capable opponent. Before leaping into combat, he’ll cast spells such as Bladesharp, Fanaticism, and Protection on himself, and might lead with a Demoralize attack on one of his hated Colymar rivals. He’s also not above fleeing to Heal himself later, to attack on another day.

Idrima also has a wide range of abilities, and you might find it easier to write a script for her in combat, should it come to that (hopefully, not!). While the adventurers are dithering with Danakos (who becomes less useful to her every moment) she may be quietly summoning more sprul-pa and dream-wefts, reading an Enthrall or the Faceless Gaze, or and leading into combat with an Earthquake Stomp to throw her foes into disarray. Yanioth or Vishi’s summoned earth elemental may prove more a liability than a help, as Idrima is a chthonic earth goddess and may wrestle control over the elemental with a command in Earthtongue or even a POW vs. POW roll against the elemental.

Ultimately, the real enemy of the piece is Danakos, the hate-filled Greydog whose bloodthirsty act spiraled out of control and led to the current conflict. Remember that Danakos’ actions are not normal in this region and will come at a price. 

Idrima, the Stone Woman, is mostly a menace, but can also become a valuable ally. As with many situations in Glorantha, the quickest and most direct solution is not always the best, or the wisest! 

That’s it! Thursday is our last post, and then you’ll be ready to go!

Bottom Matter

---

Step 8 – It’s Game Time! (And a Bit About Characters)

In New Gamemaster Month we’re helping players who feel the urge to run a roleplaying game—to become a gamemaster for the first time—take the plunge. If you’re just joining us, start with the first installment. Then join us every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January, and by the end of the month you’ll be a gamemaster too!

In this, our last part of the 2018 New Gamemaster Month program, let’s talk not about gamemastering, but about characters. Why? Because your first act as gamemaster will be to shepherd your players through the process of creating their characters—a process that’s likely to take up a portion of your first session.

If your players are seasoned veterans of your game of choice, they’ll be familiar with both the process of making characters and the types of PCs that adventure in that setting. If some or all of your players are new to the game, though, they’ll have questions. And they’ll look to you for guidance. You don’t have to be an expert on the game’s characters, but you need to be sufficiently conversant to be helpful to your players and keep the process moving along.

Choosing Characters

What kind of characters should your players make? That’s up to them. But it’s a good idea to have a variety of character concepts in your group. This is true for a couple of reasons. First, having a variety of strengths helps players successfully face a variety of challenges (or gives them a options on how to approach challenges). This is practically codified in some roleplaying games—the classic dungeon-delving group includes a fighter, wizard, rogue, and cleric because you really need all those abilities to survive the dungeon. Many games are a bit looser, though, so it may be no crisis if your party is heavy on fighting types (for example) and light on talkers or magicians.

The other reason is you want to let each player have moments to shine. Imagine you’re playing a spy game, and the adventure involves stealthing into a high-security facility, a high-speed chase in a getaway car, and then a showdown with the thugs the opponents send after you. The character who’s great at defeating electronics gets a moment in the sun as you infiltrate the facility; the character who’s great with vehicles shines during the chase; and tough special-ops soldier type shines in the fight scene. Everyone has a moment in which his or her character feels crucial. If they were all sneaky types, nobody really gets the spotlight in that first scene (or any of them, frankly) and you might struggle just to make it through those other scenes.

Introducing Characters

One particular issue you’ll have in your first session is bringing the characters together. Sometimes this process can seem contrived or stilted (the stereotype in fantasy games is that the players all happen to be at a tavern when someone with an adventure wanders in). Don’t sweat it. Your game will ultimately be about what the characters do once things get rolling, not about how they met.

Allowing Adjustments

One last thing on the subject of characters: Often, players don’t know exactly what they want when they sit down at the gaming table. Sometimes once the game starts, a player finds that he doesn’t really like the way his character works, or that it’s not really what he had in mind. And sometimes a group dynamic emerges for which the characters, as generated, aren’t a perfect fit.

You know what? That’s natural. It’s usually all right to let your players make adjustments to their characters after the first session. Just like a TV show that changes up a bunch of stuff after the pilot (ever watch the early episodes of the original Star Trek?), you’ll find that even if it seems odd at first, it makes little difference in the long run. And your game will be more successful if the players really love their characters.

Chaosium Content for Step Eight

Your players will need copies of these adventurer sheets. These are included in the RuneQuest Quickstart Rules and Adventure, and are available separately here:

• Adventurer: Harmast
• Adventurer: Sorala
• Adventurer: Vasana
• Adventurer: Vostor
• Adventurer: Yanioth

Take a look at their backgrounds, so you’ll know who they are and how they connect to one another. Vasana is a bison-riding heavy cavalry soldier, and her half-sister Yanioth is an assistant Earth priestess. Their cousin Harmast is a noble and a skilled swordsman. They are joined by two others, a scholar-adventurer named Sorala and a heavy infantry soldier named Vostor, formerly an enemy but now an ally.

If desired, there’s another adventurer character available, bringing the total up to six possible players. This Vishi Dunn, an apprentice shaman, a holy person versed in the Spirit World. Because the rules for spirits add a bit of complexity to the game, he is an optional addition to the Quickstart. If desired, you can download his adventurer sheet here and offer it for use, along with the rules relating to spirits:

• Adventurer: Vishi

Vishi is not alone! He comes with a sidekick, a companion intelligent baboon named Cousin Monkey. Usually Vishi’s player will handle his sidekick, but you can run him yourself, or even let another player run him.

It’s worth mentioning that the greatest resource you have are the players themselves. Pay close attention to what questions they ask and feed them enough info to keep them interested and engaged. Don’t be afraid to make changes to the adventure based on their investigation, and even let them suggest background elements if they’re not too outlandish. 

You’re Ready to Go!

Relax. It’s going to be a lot of fun. You’ve done a lot to get yourself up to speed, and you’re ready. Check it out:

• You have the rules and an adventure.
• You’ve read through the adventure, some parts of it more than once. You’ve given some thought to the encounters—enough to bring them to life, but not too much, because that tends to presuppose too much.
• You set up the time and place, and your players are ready to go. You have a sense of what they expect or will enjoy.
• You’re familiar with the general rules. It sometimes feels like you’re not familiar enough, but trust me, that’s natural. You and your players will do fine, and you’ll gain confidence as you go.
• You’re familiar with the adventurers and their abilities.
• You’ve gathered up all the stuff you need.
• And most of all, you’re confident. (Right?) You know that you don’t have to be the ultimate expert on the game’s rules or setting. You’re ready to be creative, to work your way through any pitfalls that arise in play, and to be spontaneous. You have what you need, and you have what it takes.

That’s it: That’s all the secret ingredients. You are ready. Go run your game!

[/su_note]

Aaaand Step Nine. And Ten.

What? More steps? Didn’t we just get to “Go run your game?”

Yep, but your first session isn’t the entirety of your gamemastering career. You’re going to have a great time, and chances are you’re going to run a lot more than “The Broken Tower” over the weeks, months, and years to come. And even if you don’t, that adventure alone may well run through more than one session.

So, here are some things to do after your first session:

• Talk to your players about the time and place for your second session. (You might want to do that before you part ways after the first session.)
• Spend a few minutes thinking about how things played out, and how this session’s events affect the rest of the adventure.
• Review upcoming encounters, just like you reviewed the adventure’s early encounters in Step Six.
• Think about what might happen after this adventure concludes. Will you keep playing? If so, what will the next adventure be? There are several more in the RuneQuest Gamemaster’s Screen Pack (available here: https://www.chaosium.com/runequest-gamemaster-screen-pack-pdf/) and many more adventures are planned. And, of course, you can always make your own!

And, finally:

• If you’ve run your first game session, tell us about it! You’ve “won” New Gamemaster Month, and we really, really want to hear how it went. Hit us on the New Gamemaster Month Facebook group.
• And check back here next week. We’ll do a follow-up post that sums up how things went for many of you and talks about how you can apply what you’ve learned to future games you run—not just RuneQuest, but other game systems as well.

And a hearty welcome to the fellowship of Glorantha and RuneQuest fans and players, an international group of passionate enthusiasts and newcomers that have kept the game and its setting (sometimes independently of one another) alive and thriving for decades.

There are Facebook groups for RuneQuest, Glorantha, and Chaosium, and the Basic Roleplaying site (www.basicroleplaying.com) is the official home for discussion of RuneQuest, Glorantha, and many other associated games.  

Bottom Matter

---