So last week, I talked about the Hard and Soft Skills of being a GM. This week, I am going to look at my own path of GM Mastery and see how my recent understanding of hard and soft skills has given me insight into what things I should do next. Along the way, I hope to inspire you to perform some self-evaluation and start to understand your own path to GM Mastery.

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Another week…another cancled game. This time it was Spenser with a chest cold, that took down Sargon’s Cyberpunk game. It was not a big surprise, as Spenser was kind enough to give us warning as early as Wednesday of last week.

So with no game to play, Sargon and I hung out and chatted outside, while my Son ran around and played in the back yard. As we talked we both came to understand that we had been seeing some of the same trends in our gaming group, an erosion of our Social Contract. We had a lot of cancled games, though many of them were unavoidable real-life problems, we have had a decrease in intensity at the table, and we are having some issues on email ettiquette, and the role of the GM in organizing their game.

We came to the conclusion that the best thing to do, was to have all the players, from our three overlapping (by player) games come in and talk about the issues that have been cropping up, and what do we want to do about them going forward. So this morning I sent out a message to our group inviting everyone over next weekend to discuss the above issues as well as any issues they may have.

In the evening, after my Son was in bed, Sargon indulged me in a little rules construction, and helped me work on my current pet project: an RPG version of the Global Frequency comic book. We both agreed that the Conspiracy X 1.0 rules would be perfect for the core of the game. We then came up with a set of rules for invoking the Global Frequency to assist with figuring out problems, pulling strings, and coming up with equipment. In about two hours and five different colored dry-erase markers, the Global Frequency rules are scratched onto the dry erase board in my game room.

Tomorrow, Sargon, Spenser and I will get together. The two of them will start to create some Global Frequency characters, and I will start to type the rules into our game wiki. Next Tuesday, The Global Frequency will go live, and we will start testing our new rules.

That is about it on the gaming front. Wish my luck this weekend, at the gamer meeting, and hopefully this will inject some energy into our group and get our momentum going again.

For the past few weeks, I have been in a kind of low-energy state in regards to gaming. Usually during these times, is when I do some soul searching and explore what gaming means to me, my philosophy on GMing, etc. This time was no different. I took myself out for a quiet lunch armed with my favorite new pen, and my leather covered Moleskine journal and got to thinking about where I am as a GM and what things I can do to improve myself.

As I started some mind mapping over some General Tso’s chicken, it became clear to me that GMing is the combination of Soft and Hard skills, a Ying and Yang of sorts. As my mind map expanded, it became clear to me that my GMing Chi has been out of balance fore years, and that for me to make my next step in my growth as a GM that I would have to restore some balance to my Gaming Chi.

So let me take you through what I came up with during that lunch…

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Well, if you have seen the past few posts, you know that the cornerstone of the weekend was GenCon Registration. It was not a pretty experience, but then again it has never been a pretty experience. In the end, I got tickets to all the events I wanted to get into, but was unable to secure extra tickets for other events to attend with friends.

Overall I think the Green Shirts did well. Pawz, had a pretty easy run on the registration system and was able to get out with a bunch of tickets for his events. Spenser was able to get some tickets for some events as well. So overall, while the experience was pretty unsatisfying overall, we did ok.

On Sunday, we had a Dresden game scheduled, but a player cancellation killed it, an hour before game time. Lucky for us, Spenser, had his demo 4e material on hand, and we were able to play some more 4e. This time our party of 8, 1st level adventurers (Ranger, Cleric, Wizard, Warlock, Fighter, Paladin) faced off against a young black dragon. It looked pretty ugly for a while. I personally was rolling terrible, and the Ranger, who in previous encounter had rolled two natural 20’s and dealt the killing shot to several creatures, was totally ineffective. But in the end, we managed to leverage all the 4e crunch and kill the dragon.

This has been the 4th time I have played the 4e demo material, and while we do not have all the rules of the game, I have to say that 4e combat, is IMHO, a lot more fun and exciting compared to 3e combat. There are so many combat options, per character, and great ways to combine them to really encourage teamwork. Also the At Will abilities make every member of the party useful at all times.

As for this week, I am working on an article on the different skills of GMing, and how this process lead to how I can improve as a GM. I am also going to do my first mini-adventure for Qin, on Tuesday Night, so I will post some notes on how that went as well.

Enjoy your week, and stop on by to check out the new material.

ndToday is the dreaded Event Registration for GenCon. Somewhere out in cyberspace, a poor event server is about to get flooded by Gamer Geeks around the country, and to a smaller extent, around the world. How will it go today? No one knows. But I will be blogging live at 4pm Eastern, when I attempt to run the gauntlet and try to register for me and my friends.

So stick with me and lets see how this goes…

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