Building Foundations 1: why game master?
A house starts with a foundation, and any discussion of a process as complicated as being a game master must start with what I have been calling Bella Swan Universal Recursive Planning Method (BSURPM? Doesn't make for a great acronym, admittedly).
As usual, if you are confused about any terms, make sure to check out the glossary, and if you are looking for other posts, check out the blog map.
Aforementioned method is very easy to describe, as it consists of three simple questions.
What do I want?
What do I have?
How can I best utilize the latter to achieve the former?
You can also put the method in the form of an algorithm, if questions do not suit your fancy:
Determine your end goal, as exactly as possible.
Determine what resources you have at your disposal - all of them, ideally.
Find a way to achieve your goal by using your resources.
If step 3 is too difficult, recursively split the problem into sub problems as follows:
Find some minimal set of circumstances (resources you must have, people you must know, states in which you must be, et cetera) which, if achieved, will make achieving your end goal easy.
Split this set up into logically independent components.
For each of those components, utilize BSURPM with an end goal set to "achieve this component".
If some component doesn't seem feasible to achieve no matter how hard you think, try to pick a different set of circumstances that can let you achieve your end goal.
Let me give an example. Let's say that your goal (question 1) is to build a rocket that can go to the moon. Let's say that your resources (question 2) are everything that is available to America in the middle of the 20th century. The only question that remains is question 3: how to put the two together.
Say that you can't imagine how to build a rocket in a single step, so you decide to split the problem up. A sufficient set of circumstances that will let you build a rocket looks as follows:
you have made and tested engine for the rocket
you have made and tested the fuel tanks
you have made and tested the crew module
you have a plan for how to fit them together and test the resulting assembly afterwards
This still seems too difficult, so we must split this further. Looking at the engine, a sufficient set of circumstances that will let you build an engine may be something like this:
You have picked a fuel mixture that will be used in the engine
You have designed a fuel pump
You have designed an engine nozzle
You have designed the reaction chamber
Still too difficult! Let's break this up further: what would be a sufficient set of circumstances for picking a fuel mixture?
You have a giant table of every physical property you can think of for every kind of chemical that may be considered to be a rocket fuel if you squint
Now this is just a bunch of data gathering and experimentation that can largely be offloaded to starving undergrads. You can start on it today if you wanted!
Obviously as you work through your plan circumstances may change. Your goals may change, or you may realize that you have specified the wrong goal. You may suddenly acquire or lose access to some critical resources. Any step in the plan that could fail could end up failing: this is all perfectly normal, and adapting to such changes is perfectly natural. But the principle of the thing remains the same: first, we specify the goal as exactly as feasible. Then we determine what resources we have access to right this moment. And finally, we set out to achieve the former with the latter.
This may seem obvious when stated like this, but in fact cases of trying to perform this algorithm in reverse happen all over the place, to disastrous effects. Limiting ourselves to PNP RPGs, thousands of spears were broken in internet arguments about what is and isn't “balanced”, with no consideration given to what goal “balance” is meant to achieve. Dozens of groups were destroyed because either GM or the players decided on what they had to do first, before thinking about how (if at all!) that leads to achieving any of their goals, leading to conflict and strife. Immeasurable amount of hours were wasted by GMs on preparing and collecting detailed information about niche aspects of the setting, in ways that will not and could not help them in the slightest.
I strive not to repeat mistakes I consider foolish, and as such we will start from the top of the list, not the bottom. We must first answer the question - what are we, as game masters, trying to achieve with this whole game mastering thing? What the hells do we want?
(You may consider it weird that I am spending so much time on this before even describing what game mastering is, but I really do think this is essential.)
Well, if I were to outline my priorities, as a GM, they would form a list like this one:
I, personally, must have fun
My players should have fun as well
I should tell a good story, have a consistent world, etc.
This doesn't mean that 1) always trumps 2) - e.g. a very large increase in the fun for the players can outweigh a drop in fun for myself - but the priorities generally still fall in this order.
Sadly, this priority list is far too vague to be useful. Still, we have sketched out a first draft of our goals, and that's enough for this time. We'll talk about what "fun" means next time.