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Welcome to the Game Master's Laboratory!
Welcome to the Game Master Laboratory! This is a place for people who are running (or planning) TTRPG games to brainstorm ideas with other GMs, share ideas and resources, and test their creations with each other. I recorded a short video to get you started, which you can view in this post. It's all about what we do here, but it's also about how to use Skool, so if you're new to Skool, make sure to check that out! If we haven't met you yet, we would like to. Please make a post in the "General Discussion" channel to introduce yourself and tell us... 1. Which systems you like to play/run 2. A bit about the games you're running right now Glad you're here. DM us if you have any questions.
Welcome to the Game Master's Laboratory!
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Community Guidelines
Please take a glance at these before posting anything---pretty straightforward stuff. Moderators are the final arbiters on how guidelines are applied. Be Respectful: Show due respect to other people. This covers anything from being overly rude to hate speech. Do Not Post Personal Info: Even if you’re comfortable with others knowing your email or other contact info, please don’t post anything of the sort in the discussion channels. Be Supportive: Constructive criticism is welcome. Insulting other people is not. Don’t Pick Fights: If there are issues, bring them to the moderators. Don’t try to battle and hash it out yourself. No Ads: No advertising, including self promotion. Feel free to discuss and talk about things you think are cool or interesting (discussing an upcoming TTRPG, for example, isn’t “advertising” it) but don’t attempt to sell things. Family Friendly: Try to limit foul language to a reasonable amount, and don’t post anything explicit. Legal: Don’t post or share pirated content. Credit Creators and Sources: When you post art, games, or other forms of content, give credit where it’s due.
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New Interview: Corkboards and Curiosities
Hey everyone, we’ve got a new interview to check out! https://youtu.be/Oc0LsOhj5fE?si=1DDsEVjlE3JAHHdS This week, we chat with Val from Corkboards and Curiosities about all things GMing, particularly styles of play and preferences when running the game. If you haven’t checked out her channel, I HIGHLY recommend it, she’s got some of the best production value for TRPG videos out there right now and some amazing advice.
Book Recommendations
So I recently finished reading through Jonah and Tristan’s role playing book as well as Return of the Lazy DM. Both excellent reads by the way and you should check them out as a game master, but does anyone suggest other books on running games?
How Prep Changes
I took a trip down memory lane and looked over my old game prep notebooks. Some of them were more than fifteen years old, and the prep in those was pretty atrocious haha, lots of huge blocks of text and way way more information than I could ever use. What really surprised me is how different my prep was even just a year or two ago—the way I prepare my sessions has really changed a lot over the years, and I tend to mess around with it a lot still. These days, I tend to improvise a lot more, and most of my notes are about player goals, bullet point lists of potential challenges and complications, and a few quick notes on NPC names, goals, and traits, alongside any mechanical stuff that’s too hard to come up with in the moment (puzzles, stats, etc) How has your prep changed? What changed it? I think the biggest influences that changed my prep drastically were proactive Roleplaying, Blades in the Dark, and the videos of Matt Colville (especially his downtime video and his sandbox versus railroad video)
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Game Master's Laboratory
skool.com/game-masters-laboratory
For TTRPG Game Masters to learn & practice running excellent games. Hosted by Jonah & Tristan Fishel, authors of "The Game Master's Handbook" series.
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