If you've been playing RPGs for any length of time at all, you've already read some advice on game mastering. Just about every role-playing core book has a section on it. Maybe it's just how to GM that particular game and work its quirks, maybe it's a whole treatise on game mastering in general. There's no shortage of material out there on how to be a game master. Some of it's okay, some of it is excellent. So why write another book on the subject?
I'm not. Game mastering is a well tread ground and it's a rare text these days that says something other than the same old tired, worn out common wisdom. The gaming community doesn't need more of that.
What I'm writing about is game management. This project isn't going to include anything about typing your players, creating decision trees or illusions of choice, how to make memorable NPCs or any of that. That's game mastering.
So what's game management? The basic premise is that if you treat the hobby a little more like work, you ramp up the fun quotient dramatically by sidestepping a host of common issues that routinely crop up because of the miscommunication and ambiguity that a traditional "let's just game" approach causes. From dealing with characters that don't fit your game to managing conflict at the table, game management shows how if you treat your campaign like a project and put yourself in the role of project manager, you can run a game much more likely to end because you want it to, not because a handful of players decide they can't deal with each other anymore and quit in a huff after swearing they won't talk to each other anymore.
More later. Though in the meantime, I welcome you to leave your gaming horror stories/sticking points in the comments section of this and subsequent posts.
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