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+++ date = '2026-05-24T16:00:00-06:00' draft = false title = "So you wanna GM?" tags = ['ttrpg', 'tutorial'] +++
One of the biggest problems I face when playing TTRPG, is the disparity of people that want to play TTRPGs and the lack of people who sign up to be GMs. When I ask people if they want to be a GM, they often express fears of screwing up at running or not being able to run a game due to all the things a GM has to track.
I firmly believe that anyone can be a GM due to endless resources and tools available, allowing anyone to GM regardless of experience or physical resources. In this post I'm going to go over my revelations as a GM over the past few years and hopefully share some tips and tricks that came in handy for me.
What a GM need?
What does a GM need to start running a TTRPG? All the books? A table to play on? What I usually find the main thing you need is players. I own a lot of books and they are a costly investment. A new player might be tempted to run and grab the Dungeon Master's Handbook from Wizards of the Coast, or any similar reading material for the game you are looking to play.
While this is a usefull source of information, it is still plagued by some rather annoying issues, mainly that it is a book. You will also find that a lot of the information necessary to run a game is already available to you for free in the form of Wiki pages and self published information by the corresponding company. For instance, if you need the stat block of a monster from DnD you can simply google it, such as: "DnD Lich" which gave me this Roll20 page
"Don't I need a bunch of maps, minis and such?"
My usual toolkit is quite simple. When I am running games I usually bring a blank dry-erase map, a bag full of flat marbles and a couple map books. In many ways this kit itself is also overkill, I have played games where all the GM had was a standard school journal, a pencil and some pieces from a board game. This leads me to my first main point.
What really matters most is people; can't have a cooperative RPG without players (usually).
When I first started running games I started with a pair of friends which gave us a dinner table with 3 folks to play games. You will find that when you start to run DnD, some clearly distinct types of players will show up. There are those that love to role-play and are super invested in story, there are those that love the crunchy number heavy aspects of games.
My biggest failing as a GM is trying to please everyone, some playstyles dont jive well. If you are interested in running a full campaign, I recommend first starting with a couple one-shots to acclimate and in some ways "interview" players for a role. One-shots work well because they are zero stake adventures that can take anywhere from an hour to three. Ultimately, the goal of a TTRPG is to tell a story, in many ways games like DnD, Pathfinder, etc are cooperative storytelling games. This is why it is important to find players that play well together.
How do I tell a story?
Storytelling may not come easily to some, in many aspects getting good at TTRPG games will require some learning regarding improv. My recommendation for someone who has never run a TTRPG game before is to first try a guided one-shot. A classic one-shot that I have run in the past is The Wolves of Welton, which is a short low level one-shot about magic talking wolves. My personal strategy to telling a compelling story is to allow the act of cooperative storytelling and improv to guide me to a conclusion.
An example of my process for telling a story is I first come up with an interesting hook. It is important to start campaigns and one-shots with hooks, some reason for the party to do what they are doing. If it is a one-shot it is a lot more flexible since you can easily say for example: "You are a traveling group, and you are desperate for food, thankfully there is a kindly monk up ahead in the road selling food.". This sets the stage for your group of players to first, act like a group. We also set the expectations of the group, their immediate problem is their players are starving, this quickly gives their character motivation.
You then start to create a bread crumb trail, we offer this in the form of a friendly monk who has food for sale. This is an essential start to any game, you need to give players the who, the what, and the why, exactly as you would in a story. This is ever more important when running a campaign as you need to provide a hook that sets up the entire campaign, for this reason, I heavily recommend if you want to get started running TTRPG campaigns, use a prebuilt one as it will handle the story telling aspects of the who, what and why.