How do you go from “Running a game of D&D sounds fun” to “I have some idea of what to do”?

You could do what I did: play enough RPGs at an early enough age that you don’t remember  feeling daunted by or awkward about the transition from playing to running games. I figured running games was just what you were supposed to do. I paid attention to how my siblings ran games, and I tried to replicate that.

That obviously won’t work for most people. They could try the adult version, playing lots of games run by other people until they have some idea of what to do themselves, but what if they don’t have a good play group? What if they want more tools?

What other entry points can we (the RPG community) offer? What resources and pitfalls should we and new storytellers be aware of?

When I think about resources and pitfalls here, I think of ingredients and recipes. Roleplaying game materials are strong on ingredients; RPG books often include lots of “what” and “who” and even “where” to use in your stories. But these materials are often weak on recipes, and they certainly don’t teach you how to cook; they don’t offer much “why” or even “how”.

Without understanding the “why” and “how,” what is a would-be storyteller to do? How can we help new storytellers learn the why’s and how’s of the art of storytelling?

The traditional answer has been a trial-by-fire using premade scenarios. The expectation seems to be that premade scenarios, plus lots of ingredients (locations, monsters, premade NPCs, treasure), plus a new storyteller’s indomitable enthusiasm will give those new storytellers everything they need to run their own games. This isn’t wrong, it just doesn’t seem like a very good solution to me.

Yes, new storytellers can run games using premade scenarios. But premade scenarios are great right up until they aren’t; when you’re just starting out, how are you supposed to recognize what material you need to keep, and what material you can change without running into problems later? Trying to hold your players to a mostly linear track, or trying to memorize a branching scenario that someone else devised, is a lot to ask of a first time storyteller. That’s without counting the aggravation of using a badly organized or indexed scenario, or the lack of guidance on how to improvise new material when your players deviate from whatever the scenario covers.

Honestly, this is why I started Whimsy’s Throne to make World Seeds.

In many ways, RPG systems that include story-generation tools do better as a point of entry. Despite this, only a few systems that I’m aware of offer those story-generation tools and focus on their ease-of-use or applicability for a new storyteller. While more modern games do a better job of this, few game books explicitly address the narrative structure of a game’s story or the component elements that may best satisfy your players.

Dogs in the Vineyard (DitV) is a standout example of useful and actionable story-generation and preparation material. This may be because it has such a unique conceit and design; if it lacked those setting-generation and game-running guidelines, many storytellers would flounder when trying to run it (DitV is also out of print and full of objectionable content). Apocalypse World (AW), also from the Bakers, offers useful guidelines and structure as well, with material like Fronts and Threats that may help novice storytellers make sense of their story world’s moving parts. Unfortunately, these materials don’t offer a more generalized grounding in how to satisfy your players.

Monsterhearts, by Avery Alder, also offers excellent guidance, including some that touches on ‘how to cook’. I would actually recommend reading Monsterhearts as a storytelling resource over AW, if only because Avery Alder effectively and evocatively built upon what the Bakers put in AW. Better, Avery Alder did it in fewer words.

The D&D 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) offers a large quantity of useful material for novice storytellers. Much of this material is system-agnostic, useful beyond the context of D&D. In some cases, the 5e DMG directly draws from other works I’d recommend, but I suggest reading those other sources instead—they are more focused on their specific topics, while the 5e DMG pulls everything together into a grab bag without the same depth of thought. 

The other drawback of the 5e DMG? It has a huge quantity of material. Unlike in DitV or AW the material isn’t designed to streamline a new storyteller’s workload or thought process. Thus I would certainly recommend the 5e DMG to starting storytellers, but I would recommend it after they’d already picked up useful basics from more-condensed sources.

Speaking of which, GURPS (at least 3rd Edition Revised, I haven’t read 4th) actually provides a very good grounding in the basics of what being the storyteller involves, and how to fulfill that role. Better yet, it does this in a condensed format (with the typical useful GURPS sidebars).

Many people in my gaming circles give GURPS short shrift, no doubt because they dislike its reputation or have bounced off its systems before. That’s fair. However, I would happily recommend the GURPS 3rd Ed. Revised Basic Set’s section on GMing to anyone who wanted to learn how to run roleplaying games. It’s a fabulous starting point. Moreover, I would recommend it over the materials I’ve seen offered by most editions of D&D—the GURPS material is less tied to underlying assumptions about levels, and combat encounters, and dungeons, and is far more useful in a broader array of contexts (including when running D&D).

Finally, there are specific teaching materials like Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering. This book’s content is no longer as unique as it was upon first publication (the 5e DMG cribs from it on p6). Despite this, Robin’s Laws remains extremely useful as a way of understanding your players’ goals and desires, understanding how you can meet those goals and desires, and understanding simple branching plot structures that can ease your prep. This booklet will help you learn how to cook.

Other resources abound, especially online. I’m fond of Justin Alexander’s The Alexandrian, though I would only recommend some of his articles to novice storytellers. Reading more of them can wait for after you’ve picked up the basics elsewhere. He has a book titled So You Want To Be A Game Master that would likely be useful, but it’s still on my to-read list. Sly Flourish’s Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master might not teach you to cook per se, but like The Alexandrian it has some useful techniques that I’ve found very helpful.

Anyway, good advice on how to become a storyteller exists, even if it’s buried in a number of different locations under a mountain of other resources. Hopefully by mentioning it here others will have an easier time finding the pieces that I’ve found helpful in the past. I’ll be drawing on all of this for the mentoring I’ll be offering soon.