Confessions of a Noob GM 1-23-2009

Written as a guest Column for Uncle Bear.com published there 1-30-09

I was nervous.  I’ll admit it.  I’ve gamed with people my own age.   As a high school student I gamed with the local college group.  I’ve gamed with my kids.  I’ve GMed for family sessions, but I had never before GMed for anyone else.

The local youth center has wanted to have an open game night for some time.  I volunteered to be THE adult in charge and supervise the activities.  I figured most of the kids would play pool, ping pong, or foosball.  PIT #1 suggested that Daddy run an RPG game for the teens that night.  Sure, why not? My kids seemed to enjoy it when I ran Pirates of the Spanish Main at home.  I agreed to be the GM for this new game group.  Now I just needed to decide what game and system to run.

I personally have the core rules for PotSM, Stargate, Serenity, GURPS and Car Wars (I know CW isn’t technically an RPG but it’s close).  I decided on Stargate as I had already done a lot of work “Savaging” that universe.  I prefer the Savage system as it is easy to use and very versatile.  The PITs were ecstatic; I knew I had three players for sure.

I had my sparse notes, my 5×7 dry erase board, my bag of bennies and I thought I was ready to go.  The inaugural night was canceled due to weather.  The next Sunday at church I had 2 other teens express disappointment that game night had been canceled.  I was informed that at least five other teens were anticipating the game.  Five additional teens, my three kids, eight people? I began to panic.

The next week I developed out my sparse notes as I wanted this to be something special as some of these kids were experienced gamers and some were complete newbies.  I took advice from many of my online buddies about what I needed to do and really got as prepared as I could.

I developed my own GM screen so I wouldn’t have to thumb through the Savage Explorer’s Edition for combat rules.  I bought a larger dry erase board.  I photocopied off character development rules so we wouldn’t have to pass around the rulebook.  Friday night came and I set up the table for eight people and my GM seat.

6:30 came and went and no one other than my kids had shown up yet.  My nervousness increased.  7:00 arrived and teens started streaming in through the door.  They kept coming.  I had to set up another table.  Eventually I had eleven young people ages 10-17 all looking to me for answers.  We started character generation at 7:15.

I learned three things from my first non-family GM event:
Character generation takes more time when there’s more people, even with a simple system like Savage
Even with all the work, I still wasn’t as prepared as should have been
Teenagers have crazy imaginations (I thought I was strange)

Yet even after an hour and half of character generation, we got started and played the introductions.  The kids had a blast.  I had fun as well.  I’m looking forward to getting to the actual game.