Winging It! Running a Roleplaying Game on the Fly

November 13, 2014

Nerdarchist Ted here and today I would like to talk about Game Master tips. There are many styles to running a game and each Game Master discovers the style that works best for them. Your GM style might be to over plan a roleplaying game, plotting out the adventure and anything you think the players might do. This is quite exhaustive and time consuming on the GM. Your GM style could be to plan your adventure bare bones and either force your players to work with the material prepared or deal with situations as they come about. The merit of this style is you have some material planned and only if the players go off track do you have to think quickly and come up with something. Then there is a GM style of totally allowing the players to do as they choose and come up with encounters and material completely on the fly. The advantage to this is it’s totally an improv situation and has zero time taken to write material.

Game Master tips — Winging it

As GM your conversations with players are rarely scripted and you never know exactly what the players will say so there is always a call for you to think on your feet. You might be surprised by their reaction and your own abilities. Running a session like this only asks you to take this GM style a little bit further.

I once ran an entire campaign in this fashion. I had a general scope of the game but the individual sessions were left open to the players and allowed them complete freedom in their actions. I gave them a world to explore; a path to walk and placed no restrictions on their exploration.

It was one of my most successful campaigns.

There are going to be downsides to this GM style as well. Unless you are a walking encyclopedia of the gaming material you are using you will need to reference the Monster Manual or appropriate reference for your game to have adversaries for characters to face. Some GMs might have some of these stats memorized but sadly that is not me. Looking up encounters as needed versus having them already planned can definitely detract from the game and it certainly slows down the action. Having a few such encounters marked with a bookmark or sheet of paper can minimize this time.

If you have watched our game play videos from my 5E D&D campaign, my second session the players totally wandered away from my prepared material. So I was required to either force the players down my path or run on the fly.

I could have had the players spend a few days out searching for clues and come back empty handed allowing them to do what they wanted, but only be sidetracked from my material for a few minutes. I could have inserted an NPC to guide them back to my prepared material, but I chose not to.

I like offering to my players the freedom and sometimes really great sessions come entirely from the GM’s imagination and players engagement. Some times not. I say offer out to your players a sample from each list and see how you do. Ask the players which style of game they prefer based on how you ran them.

With that, I am Nerdarchist Ted and until next time, stay nerdy my friend!