What would you think if I gamed out of tune…

We have all heard it at one time or another. Game Masters, Dungeon Masters, Storytellers, and Moderators are gods and goddesses in their own rights. For all intents and purposes inside the game world, it’s probably true. Heck, I have to admit to reveling in that very image. Who wouldn’t? After all, it’s power in the purest sense of the word…well, at least for those few hours where the only thing real is between the pizza and beer — the game.

However, each and every one of us gods and goddesses are only human really. We’re flawed. We’re gifted. We are all suffering from a healthy dose of reality. We have school, midterms, jobs we hate, jobs we love to hate, the daily stress, the daily grind, parents, husbands, wives, kids, boyfriends, girlfriends, social lives, and a plethora of other real life obstacles (whether we like them or not) that can and do get in the way of our gaming lives.

We just don’t always have the time to sit down and plan out every detail, draw out every map, write up every NPC. Oh, we’d like to be able to do all of that — well most of us would like to have the time. Sometimes I’m a day from a game session and I have had no clue what I was going to do during that session. A friend and I once agreed that gaming is 10% preparation and 90% winging it. That might be true, but wouldn’t it be nice if that 10% was the best assistance to that 90% as possible?

The truth is we aren’t omniscient or omnipotent. As masters of the games, we just don’t have the kind of time to put the kind of effort a real deity can. A real deity doesn’t have a jerk of a boss that wants you to work late doing nothing in particular when you’re supposed to be picking up your youngest from baseball practice before your anniversary dinner with a wife that’s already mad at you. A real deity has all the time in the world.

So, what do we do when things get overwhelming? How do we keep things fresh in a game without feeling like gaming is becoming a chore or an obligation?

We share.

Yes, that’s what I said. The Beatles had it right (even though Joe Cocker sang it better): “I get by with a little help from my friends.”

Sometimes we just can’t do everything we want to do in the limited amount of time we have what with being limited to the 24 hours a day thing and sometimes the responsibility is just more than one person can or should bare. There’s nothing wrong with that except that unless you ask for help, you’ll grow more and more unhappy and a cranky Storyteller is a bad thing. Certainly, it’ll reflect on the game and then not only will the Storyteller not want to play but neither will the players.

That’s why when things start getting tough, it’s always a good idea to find another player in the game who you think is trustworthy and responsible and ask him or her to join you in your evil plot to take over the game world – erm – I mean, to join you in running the game.

Picking a cohort in crime should be done carefully and it really should be up to you what criteria you use. I have two cohorts in crime for one of my games and each was chosen for different reasons at different times. One just sort of picked himself. The game had practically stalled and I was starting to feel that it was just too much work to get things going again. I told him that I was thinking of ending the game and he begged me to let him help co-run it. I must say that he revived the game quite well and we work well together (now we co-GM two different games). Then real life hit both of us hard and we knew we were going to both be absent for a while about the same time so we lured in another. She was chosen for her enthusiasm for the game and her daily interest. We’d both had several conversations with her and we all seemed to feel that we could work well together. I’m quite thankful for them both as they have kept my game running another year. Without them, I’d be short one great campaign.

To be honest, three of the four PbeMs I’m in, I co-moderate. It’s a lot of responsibility but at least it’s shared.

In table-top and live action games with more than 4 or 5 players, there should be a co-Game Master, if not just one on standby. It’s hard to keep things focused when not everyone is in the same scene and most people have short attention spans. I can’t tell you how many games I’ve been to that deteriorated quickly because two or three people were outside of a scene and started an out-of-character conversation. An assistant Game Master can help with that by entertaining the ones feeling left out with an NPC or a side plot.

We have one particular player in our gaming circle who can’t just sit quietly while other people game. If she’s not in the scene, she keeps interrupting the Game Master to tell him what her character is doing “now” and to ask him if something is happening to her character “now”. An assistant Game Master would be of great help so that she wouldn’t cause a distraction to the Game Master and the other players who are trying to get through the scene so they can continue with the game.

I used to help a friend with her Game Mastering. I was in the game myself and rather than co-Game Master during the game which had a small number of players, my role was actually to help her plot out the gaming session prior to it and then she would run the plot. It worked out well for both of us and kept things fresh for everyone.

I heard of a pair of Game Masters where one ran all the villains, thugs, and general not-so-nice guys and the other ran everything else.

I even heard of a case once where two people ran a game together so that one week person A would run the game and the next week person B would. This eases the pressure from just one person’s shoulders. The only important thing you have to understand with this method is that there must be joint-planning and communication between the two Dungeon Masters. It does no one any good if you spend each week undoing what the Dungeon Master did last week.

As you can see, there are many different ways to co-run a game that can be beneficial to everyone involved. You just have to work out a method that is good for you and your cohort in crime – that is after you find that cohort that fits your own personal criteria.

Sometimes we need a little help. Don’t be afraid to ask for it. It can make all the difference between a game ending a painful, slow, horrible death and a game thriving with new life and new creativity.

And remember, if it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth it.