WORK IN PROGRESS
Scenarios and Adventures
From the simple hack and slash dungeon crawl to the Machiavellian intrigues of a royal court every good roleplaying game session needs a scenario to drive it.
Campaigns
A campaign is a series of more-or-less linked scenarios, often with the aim of taking the characters from relative obscurity all the way to saving the world.
Settings
Whether your making it up as you go along or using a published game world a good setting is vital to any decent roleplaying game.
The Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons is an excellent example of a diverse and complex world that successfully combines fantasy cliches with original ideas.
What You Will Need
- A copy of all necessary rulebooks.
- At least two of any dice necessary for playing the game.
- A neat and easy-to-follow copy of the scenario you are running1.
- A notepad.
- A pencil.
- A pencil sharpener.
- A rubber2.
These represent the bare minimum any good GM should have at every session they run. Even if you're planning on bringing a laptop with everything needed for the game on it, you should still bring most of the things on that list because you never know when you might need to pass a note to a player, or if someone might have forgotten their copy of the rules3.
Describing The Action
This is a lot more important than many give it credit for. The simple fact is that just reeling off a list of dice roll results is boring, it's much better to describe things in exciting terms that give a real sense of action.
Compare:
Your roll of 18 was enough to hit the orc and [pause] 4 points of damage was enough to finish it off.
With:
You swing your battleaxe into a gap in the orc's armour and with a crunch of bone you swiftly send the creature to whatever hell awaits it.
Dos and Don'ts
