Focus

The amount of attention you pay to the game directly relates to how much fun everyone has. If you are chatting with your friends during the game, the players will quickly become annoyed. You owe the players your full attention, and they owe you their full attention. If they aren’t giving it, tell them! Chances are, if the game were engaging them, they wouldn’t want to talk to people outside the game.

You need to set the precedent. If you aren’t focused, the players won’t be either.

Before The Game

1. Adequate Preparation Time: Commit yourself adequate time to prepare to run.

2. Show Up On Time: This is the most important thing you can do as a GM.

3. Have a Food Plan: Figure out how you are going to feed yourself, so you don’t have to take long breaks during the game, or beg someone else to get food for you.

During The Game

1. Don’t Chat: Limit conversation with people not playing at your table to 2-3 exchanges, unless it is with the coordinator regarding the event you are currently running.

a. Make Time Between Games: Make sure that you leave plenty of time between games so that you and your players can chat with each other, and with everyone else.

2. Don’t Read: If you know the scenario, and have annotated it well, you should not have to sit there and read it for more than 30 seconds at a time.

a. Call A Break: If you do get stuck, and have to spend some time refreshing your memory, call a break, and spend it catching yourself up, so that you won’t have to do it again.

3. Don’t Reminisce: The worst possible thing you can do during a game is start reminiscing about other games, your college years, your love life, etc. Save it for between games or the bar.

4. Don’t Anachronize: Movie quotes belong in the bar. Keep them there. You are here playing this game, right here right now. Keep everyone’s mind in it by keeping out of game commentary to a minimum.

5. Keep Your Mind On The Game: Even when the PCs are talking amongst each other, you should be thinking about what’s coming up next, and how to tweak the ending to fit in the time slot, not about your taxes.

6. Stay Engaged: The players should feel like you are playing the same game that you are. If their actions have no effect, or you ignore them, they will quickly lose interest.

7. Keep Track of Names: If you have to make up a name for an NPC, or some other factoid on the fly, write it down somewhere, so it doesn’t distract from the game when you scramble for what you have forgotten.

8. Don’t Get Sidetracked: If a few of the PCs are interested in pursuing some encounter to death, and the rest of the players are rolling their eyes, wrap it up smoothly. Pleasing a few PCs to the exclusion of the others isn’t fair.

a. Seems Fun at the Time: Sometimes it will seem like the PCs are having a good time pursuing some side track, and then they are grumpy later when they realize that they didn’t get to the end, or were on the wrong track the whole time. Don’t fall into this trap, because they will remember how they felt at the end of the game, not the middle!