Aetrimonde

I’ve recently gotten the Game Master’s Handbook to the point that I can start sharing excerpts of it on a more regular basis. I’ve still got a lot of material to write–but then, that’s part of what this blog is for, to help me organize and trial material going into the GMH.

Today, I’m going to open with an excerpt from the introduction to the GMH, explaining the roles that a GM has to play and how the GMH will support them in those roles.

What It Means to Be the GM

The GM in an Aetrimonde campaign is, as with most role-playing games, the linchpin to the campaign. While you might be able to have a game session where one or two other players are absent, it’s nigh-impossible to play without the GM.

Being the GM comes with responsibilities that the other players in your group don’t have. You’ll be juggling several roles at the same time throughout your campaign:

Storyteller

The GM is responsible for telling the campaign’s story, by narrating the situations that the players get into. This means providing exposition about the world they are in, describing the scenery around them, and voicing and describing the actions of allies and enemies they encounter. Parts of this handbook will give you tools to help convey information in an evocative way that draws the players into the story, and to quickly devise an answer when the players want to know something you hadn’t planned out ahead of time.

Referee

The GM also needs to be able to apply the rules of the Aetrimonde game system, which are mostly in the Core Rulebook. You don’t need to know the rules inside and out, but you should be broadly familiar with how things work and know where to look up details should they become important. This handbook also contains guidelines for handling situations where there is no pre-defined rule or system to cover something that your players want to do, letting you keep the story moving when the players get inventive.

Opponent

As the mind behind the monsters and other enemies that your players will face, you’ll often be the opponent that the players are working to defeat. The goal here is to challenge the players, not beat them: ideally, you’ll set challenges that are beatable, but not trivial, so that the players can still muddle through by brute force if necessary, but coming up with a clever plan and choosing good moves makes things meaningfully easier. This handbook provides guidelines as to what constitutes appropriate challenges, and how to adjust on the fly to make your challenges enjoyably difficult.

Author

If you’ve never GMed before, it’s probably best if you begin by running a published adventure, like the one in Aetrimonde’s free starter kit. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll probably start having ideas for your own stories to tell, featuring new locations or even entirely new settings, fun NPCs and dastardly villains, interestingly dangerous monsters, and strange new magics. This handbook provides examples of settings, enemies (and allies), and encounters that you can use as a framework for your own story—and even some advice on how to write your own content from scratch.

Organizer

As the GM, it may wind up being your job to organize your campaign by finding players, choosing when to play, holding on to character sheets and notes, and so on. You might also be delegating certain roles, like notetaking and bringing snacks and drinks, to your players. While it’s a little bit beyond the scope of the rules for a role-playing game, this handbook does provide a little bit of advice on how to work with players to create a game that’s fun for everyone.

This excerpt is just from the introduction: up next in this column, I’ll be moving on to the first chapter of the GMH, which gives an overview of what it takes to run an Aetrimonde session.