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"Create situations not plots"
"Don't make combat just about combat"
"Dont say just "yes" and "no", say "no and", "no but", "yes but" and "yes and""

Im sure you've heard GM advice like this around the rpg space. While none of these are wrong, they often feel incomplete when people come to the internet for advice and are given very general statements without examples. For experienced players, I'm sure its easy to understand how to apply this advice but for new gms, its often hard for them to understand how to put it into practice. I get why a lot of GM advice lacks examples as GMing is very personal to different styles but I do think it could be good to try and demonstrate what you mean with an example to start to get GMs on the right track. This can also apply to advice to players as well. I understand not everyone can come up with examples on the fly for a short comment but I think its good to try and keep in mind the perspective of a new GM who doesnt have the context in which to understand that advice. It also doesnt mean that there arent great channels with DM advice (I find youtube videos are better about this). Idk, this was just something on my mind and thought I'd post about it

Edit: I should clarify, I dont have a problem looking up these things or asking follow up questions but a lot of new gms won’t and feel like it’s inaccessible. I like to either give practical examples or point them to articles that elaborate on it

D&D 4e and D&D 5e are exempt from this, mostly because they're the easy choices (and bc I actually really like 4e as it is, so).

Edit: Man, rip shadowrun

Thought people might find this interesting:

https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/4erfaq/

Hi!

I started tabletop roleplaying a bit by chance a little over three years ago, with a beginner box a friend had given me.

So I began RPGs as a GM, with friends who had never even heard of roleplaying before. That’s where it all started: sessions kept piling up, and we completely lost track of time.

Between each session, I kept digging deeper. I watched YouTube videos, read a lot, and tried to find a way to keep that initial “energy” — the one that had kept all of us hooked. One thing I noticed was that many of the videos I watched had music added in post-production, and I felt it changed everything.

So we decided to try it at the table: a few playlists, some music and ambient sounds that seemed to fit… and it worked. I don’t know if that’s your experience too, but for us it was really incredible.

At the same time, since I’m also a passionate developer, I decided to build an app to prepare my music and sound effects, layer them, and have a simple way to trigger and chain them during a session. At the time, I hadn’t found any app that did exactly what I wanted (and now I think I probably didn’t search hard enough… or maybe the urge to build my own made me a bit blind, haha).

The app kept evolving along with me. At first it was mostly about music and ambience management, and now it does many other things as well. If anyone’s interested, I could share the link.

I introduced this passion to even more friends. We played around my kitchen table, on my couch, in a basement, then in an attic that became our HQ, with a second-hand table bought specifically for our sessions.

And over time, I grew as a GM: I started writing my own one-shots, then full campaigns, improved my improvisation, learned about the eras and settings we were playing in, and gradually understood better how to reach my players’ emotions.

My conclusion is that today, roleplaying has genuinely helped me develop personally. I’m naturally quite reserved, but I feel much more confident now. I used to hide behind the excuse of having a “math-oriented” mind to say I wasn’t creative, and I discovered that creativity can be trained (even if we don’t all start from the same place). I also learned a lot about friendship: sharing the same “theater of the mind” brings people closer… or sometimes pushes them apart. But even when we’re “playing a role,” we learn a lot about each other.

I know some people even use roleplaying in a therapeutic way, and I can understand why.

And you — what impact has roleplaying had on you, or on people you know?

I know we all have more games than we could ever possibly run, and really I'm just curious what's on everybody's shelf that they're NOT playing, but love. (Running only rarely is also fine.) For me it was actually hard waddling it down to five.

MechWarrior: Destiny

Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of Myst and Beyond

Wildsea

Numenera

Warbirds

I mean there are a lot more games I'd like to add to this, but some I've had the chance to run before, have a better opportunity to run them, or just had to wittle it down to five. How about you folks. What's singing it's siren song from your shelf asking you to read through it again?

Did it involve how combat worked, how social encounters were run, or was it the way skills checks were done?

So, Andre Novoa just launched this thing called FLAIL rpg and it is pretty cool. I`m not affiliated with them, just read the book and it is fantastic.

As someone said, a mix of Mausritter+DCC.

Check it out, it deserves much love.

Get Ready for FLAIL: an old-school fantasy brawler

After playing Blades in the Dark, i got in love with some of its mechanics, particularly:

- Players can narrate their own scenes (flasbacks in bitd case)

- Players choose their adventures, not the gm

- GM does not have to prep

- GM only outlines a situation, after that is the players job to advance the narrative of the mission

- Its clear when the characters "win or lose" (in bitd this is done through mission and obstacle clocks)

- Consequences are easy to improvise (in bitd it would be taking harm, filling a clock, increasing wanted level, between others)

- It can be replayed forever without the need of adventure books

I found that making maps for the dungeon in the one shot i planned took an awful long time and the thought of making 3-4 maps per session just killed me. Not to mention dialogues and notable NPCs.

How do you do this?

So, basically, the game only has a base rulebook. No premade adventures, no character sheets, no nothing. And it’s too new for anything fancy-made to exist.

I’ve been making my own resources wherever possible, and I think I have all of the hard stuff down (the actual rules of combat and such), but I can’t help but feel like I’m going to absolutely fail at the soft skills (you know, creating an immersive world and leading an engaging story)

Does anyone have any general advice for first-time DMing a game when resources on it are scarce?

(Before anyone tells me to start with a simpler and/or more well known system, the thing is that I’m not really a TTRPG fan. I’m a fan of this TTRPG.)

Edit: the game is Mortasheen

I was thinking of creating a medieval RPG where the PCs would have a goal and would have to travel to complete it, similar to what happens in Souso No Frieren. I'd like to know how you would approach this? How would you develop the story, emotional bonds, and the sense of time in sessions of such an RPG?