Game mastering advice for all levels from someone with 40 years of experience. Plus a second book filled with muse-like inspiration.
Game Geeks News is proud to bring you another great gaming project currently running on Kickstarter. This crowdfunding project was funded in 20 minutes and already has over 100 backers in just two hours. Jim pinto of Postworldgames is a nearly 30-year veteran of the gaming industry, having written roleplaying games, board games, card games and more. His latest project, A Good Book for Bad GMs is a comprehensive guide to game mastering.
This is exactly what it sounds like: a comprehensive guide to game mastering advice. The book walks the reader, step-by-step through all the roles the Gamemaster takes on, all the players will encounter, and all the pitfalls that can trip up even the best game masters. Each section details advice on how to deal with disruptive players, shy people, slow adventures, boring plots, and bad habits that follow you from game to game. The book compiles over 40 years of game mastering after attending over 100 game conventions with hundreds of strangers with some of the worst behaviour you’ve ever seen, including other game masters who forced Jim to walk away from their tables. The book even talks about how to avoid those situations in the first place, and how to correct those behaviours if you yourself are one of those types of game masters.
This book is chock-full of advice, exploration of the game master’s role at the table, and an almost encyclopedic level of the taxonomy. Every facet of game mastering is covered. From dealing with difficult players to respecting people’s contributions to reducing some of your workload as GM. The book also details all the different types of game masters, the various terms that are often misused in gaming, why certain kinds of gaming do not mix well, and why the game system you’re choosing can’t just be hacked without a lot of work.
This project will operate differently from other kickstarters. Three times per week, after the project ends, a new update will reveal another page in the book. Every backer will be able to provide feedback and advice to improve that page. In addition, those who pledge will be able to add their own personal anecdotes to the book of games that went so very wrong and how to avoid those pitfalls in the future.
You will not be expected to write anything. Your advice and insight will be used to expand on the ideas and improve the project when necessary. But you’re under no obligation to help in any way. You can just sit back and enjoy the book as it unveils itself to you.
The second book is a book of game master inspiration to get the creative juices working when preparing adventures. Chock full of charts, questions, prompts, and even advice on how to pull ideas from the everyday world so your adventures don’t all feel like tavern-map-clue-monster-treasure-repeat.
How do I get my players to get along? How do I direct their goals? How do I make interesting NPCs, while spotlighting the character’s actions? It’s all here.
Along with a lot of random charts, questions to mull over between sessions, and just about every other random idea that plops in my head. This book is a breeding farm for gaming inspiration.
Expect more than 100 pages of material. Expect this book to focus on fantasy games, though advice is advice. Expect Jim to miss updates. Expect him to not respond well to trolling. Expect the best, most comprehensive book of game mastering advice ever.
Unlike Jim’s more adult-oriented games, this book is written for ages 14 and up and includes only one naughty phrase (holy s***), which has a specific definition inside the first book. So, if you have a young gamer who needs help, we hope they find this book useful.
Rewards for backing this Kickstarter include both books in PDF format, softcover versions of both advice and inspirations, and more. For a full breakdown of the rewards available, check out their crowdfunding page on Kickstarter.
