Latest / Story Games / So You Wanna Be a Game Master Ep 1: Andi Licht
Transcript
- Maggie Studio: Hi everyone and welcome back to Story Games, a podcast all about your favorite narrative-driven games. My name is Momo and I will be your host. Today is super, super exciting because we are actually starting a brand new series here on the podcast. It's called So You Wanna Be a Game Master. And our first guest on this series is the amazing Andy Licht, who you have met before. Without further ado, here is the first episode of So You Wanna Be a GM. I really hope you enjoy it. Hi friends and welcome back to Heart of the Dear Nacorn. My name is Momo, and today we're starting a new series that I'm really excited about. So, a question that we get often is: how do you become a GM? How do you run games? How do you facilitate games? Where do you begin? It's very overwhelming, and a lot of people are intimidated by it. Hello, it's me. I'm people. I'm one of you. I feel you, I see you, I hear you. So, what we wanted to do is we wanted to start a new series that I am calling So You Wanna Be a GM. And I'm going to be interviewing different people who I admire as GMs, who are either game designers themselves or just really skilled at running and facilitating games. And I'm gonna pick their brain about how they do it so that we can learn together how to do it ourselves. Does that sound good? Awesome. I'm very excited. My first guest that I have today is the amazing Andy Licht. And d I I've played her games before. She's an amazing GM. She ran her game beautifully. We had so much fun. And I want to pick her brain about being a GM. Yippee Yippy ⁓ thank you for having me, Momo. I'm so glad to be here. And I'm actually even more thrilled to talk about ⁓ being a game master than I am about my own games. I'm I'm really opinionated on this topic. So give me all your hot takes. At least I I think I am. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see. We're gonna find out. But I feel like I have opinions. Okay. I'm so excited. Thank you. ⁓ I'm so excited that you're our first guest. So I feel honored. Let's just get into it. Please. First, okay, so I know that we just asked this question, but can you introduce yourselves just in case someone doesn't know who you are? Of course. Yeah. ⁓ my name is Andy Licht. I use she they pronouns. I'm a game designer. And Illustrator, I created Between Clouds, which is a game that you can buy on the Heart of the Dear Nicorn website. I created another game called Soulbound Dark Industrial Fantasy, which came out before this. And I just love tabletop role-playing games so much. I like I like making them. I like drawing things for ⁓ and I like making little worlds. So that's it. I love it. Perfect. Awesome. Well let's jump into it. This is a big question, but it is the question I would like to start with. Please. How do you approach GMing a game? Right. Well, and this might not be helpful, but it depend first and foremost. That's fair. It depends on the game. That's fair. and I think that story games, that is games that have the authority. kind of distributed equally among the players are much easier to can be much easier to facilitate because it takes a lot of pressure off of one individual for being a game master. So I'll I'll open by saying that maybe the easiest way to get into tabletop role-playing games as a whole is to try and find games like that. To try and find story games where the authority over the story Is d distributed more evenly among people. Okay. However, we live in a world where Dungeons and Dragons is the ruling, dominant, hegemonic force in the TTRPG landscape and has planted this idea in everyone's head that ⁓ table ought to be run with a singular facilitator, a game master, if you will, what we're here to talk about. Yep. And ⁓ so there are so many games that do do require that. Yeah. To answer your question, how do I prepare to GM? Well, I don't do much prep. And I rely a lot on my improv, truth be told. But the first thing the first thing I would absolutely do is read the book cover to cover. ⁓ if there's a portion and every good book should have this, if there's a portion that says, Here's what you need, you know, read that and honor that. What's really going to derail your session and be more upsetting than you like ignoring any rule or you know, failing to do a funny character voice. ⁓ what's gonna be more upsetting than any of that is just not having your things in place. Okay. Your your Me Some Plus, if you will. Okay. ⁓ if you are struggling to connect your printer to Wi Fi for the first forty five minutes of your session, okay. You're not gonna have a good time. Right. Okay. And then it's very valid. And I'm not speaking from experience here, I swear. ⁓ so even if you don't do session prep like, ⁓ I'm gonna like write this huge homebrew campaign and make all these NPCs, even if you don't do that, you should do the session prep of getting everything in place. Okay. And that takes me to you know, maybe my second idea about how I ⁓ operate as a game master, and really how I think people should operate as a game master even if I don't do this, which is that ⁓ first and foremost. before thinking about running the game, think about being a good host. ⁓ okay. Cause if you're if you're a good host, you can kind of like, you know, myth it on the game a little. And maybe you're missing a few rules, but people will still have a good time. Okay. They'll have a good day and a good evening. So like, you know, think about where food's gonna come from. Is somebody cooking? Are you doing a pot luck? Are you ordering pizza? Are there snacks? Is there good ambiance? Are you being bothered? And ⁓ yeah, if you're if you're a good host and you have the right space, ⁓ then the other pieces the other pieces fall into place so much more easily. That I didn't even consider that, if I'm being honest. Yeah. ⁓ but being a good host, yeah, should be step number one. Make sure your people are comfortable and having a good time before they even start playing the game. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I want to shout out Avery Alder's Dream Iskew, Dream Apart, which is a collection of two games. and ⁓ each game has a recipe associated with it. So the game is telling you that you can like cook and prepare this recipe for your players as you play the game and they are fitting for the universe of whatever you're ⁓ playing in, which is really cool. But so yeah, be being a host is definitely the first step. Wonderful. Yep. Okay, very cool. I have a question and this is something that I struggle with, so I'm I'm sure other people struggle with it too. When you're reading like a game book cover to cover. Yes. There's so much information a lot of the times. Yeah. How do you kind of organize that information in your brain and like remember all these mechanics and things to do? Like 'cause I feel like that's something that trips me up is I want to do everything correctly and remember all these mechanics and you know, make sure I'm playing the game how the game designer intended to play it. Yeah. I forget. And there's a lot of information out there. Totally, yeah. Well, I mean, I think this comes down to the way that game books are structured, right? A lot of people are intimidated to even play a tabletop role-playing game because it's played out of a book. Sure. And you show them that and it's scary. It looks like a science textbook, you know? Like it it requires that many pages just to play, are you kidding me? Sure. However, that is not really the reality of most games. I would argue that for most tabletop role-playing games, the actual mechanical ⁓ the the rules, right? The the mechanical portion of the game is like just a few pages. Most games you can really simplify into just a couple pages, even like a cheat sheet. ⁓ and that would maybe be one of my first tips if you're trying to ⁓ sort all of the information in a book and figure out like wow how do I even keep track of everything is look and see if the game that you're playing has a cheat sheet accessible somewhere. ⁓ a lot of games will make them and that is a great thing to review yourself and also have accessible to your players. because in a game book, you know, the information, as you've learned, can be scattered between different chapters, between different areas. You know, I have sitting here in front of me this map for between clouds. Okay, yay. But on the other side, I have prepared a cheat sheet. ⁓ it says it says how to play. And that's only on this like letter sized piece of paper. That is a lot more approachable than like the book as a whole. Yeah, and the book is there to help guide you through it ⁓ as well. But I would, yeah, I would look for a cheat sheet and then I would also just like acknowledge that most of the content in a tabletop role playing game rule book really is ⁓ Is really additional material. Okay. But is not necessary. Okay. I'm telling you in most of these books, maybe five or ten pages are the necessary stuff. But if I think about this and I look through ⁓ my game here, Between Clouds as an example, most of the pages are occupied by different playbooks, but you're not gonna use every playbook. Or they might be occupied by different like locations or weather types. Okay. But you're not gonna visit all these locations and you're not going to experience all of this weather. And so really these are pages that you can reference when you need them. Okay. if you think about like DD, for example, the back third of the rule book is spells. True. Very true. Which I cannot memorize, and nobody should. No. There's too much. There's too much room with There's too much. Yeah. And if the cheat sheet fails you and you're like, I still feel like I'm forgetting things, you know, just be a good student and take good notes and maybe write down one or two things of like, don't forget about this mechanic. Sure. ⁓ make a little sticky note to yourself. Okay. I love that. That's good advice. yeah, most games I've looked through do have some kind of cheat sheet or some kind of like summary of the rules. Mm-hmm. ⁓ so that is very, very helpful. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, and you can you can also and this is true of many games, you can also fudge them a little bit. If you're ⁓ you know, this is me giving you permission to fudge rules. I actually think I probably fudged a few Between Clouds rules ⁓ when we played last night, because I hadn't played the game in however long, however many months, right? and ⁓ that's okay, you know? Okay player player enjoyment and the story at hand, those things are paramount. It's also good to have like player trust. Like you don't want to like lie to your players or deceive them or like intentionally bend rules without their permission or consent. But ⁓ failing to do something or forgetting to do something is is not a crime. You will still have fun. Okay. Yeah. I love that. Thank you for that. No, of course, yes. It is a little takes a little pressure off. It's like it's okay if it's not perfect. Like you can still have fun. Absolutely, yeah. Well, and also, if if I may, I mean, I like to think of a game. In ⁓ three parts. Okay. And I even I have a document called like the making of between clouds. It's digital only, but I kind of talk about this more in there. But a game is more than one thing. ⁓ It is in part the physical artifact, so that might be like the book or the box and the components, but it's however the game appears in physical space. Yeah. That's thing number one. And thing number two. Two is it is the ⁓ the the context, the like world and lore. So that's like the idea of like, ⁓ we're these mutants and we're on a big flying creature. Okay, cool. ⁓ that's like the fantasy that we're playing in. And then the third thing, and this is what I'm referring to when we're talking about game mastering, the third thing is the ritual of the game. Okay. And when I say ritual, I mean It's the weird shared fiction that happens when we sit down and engage with the game. Okay. And when we play it. Yeah. And I think what's good to know is that the the the rules or the physical artifact and the ritual, which is what actually happens when we play, those are two different things. Okay. And they're never gonna perfectly align. Totally. Yeah, they're always gonna be a little off. Okay. And even to peel back the game designer curtain, yeah. A lot of designers will play their games, ⁓ just really focused on the ritual of it. They'll like iterate and homebrew and play test, and then they'll write the rules at the very tail end to try and capture the idea of the ritual that they had made. So they're not even like playing out of a rule book. They're just like focused on this the the process of the shared fiction that they're creating, and then this is like This is the cookbook. Mm-hmm. The ritual at the table is the dish. Okay. That actually really helps. Yeah. Yeah, that helps kind of contextualize it a bit in my brain. And even with a cookbook, you're you're never gonna cook the same dish twice, you know? It's a little different every time. So a little different every time, and that's okay. And that's okay. And that's okay. And it's still gonna be tasty. Yeah, I hope that helps. It does. It does. Because it's like, yes, we're chasing this like theater of the mind kind of shared hallucination. That is so great about role playing games. and yeah, I guess it's easy to get in your head about like doing that correctly or doing that right or doing it the right way. But like as long as everyone's having a good time, like Yeah. That's okay. Yeah. And you you like you know it when you feel it, you know. ⁓ totally. At at the table when somebody's laughing about this or that or they're like, We're taking Blurbo with our party, are you kidding me? And then ⁓ y y yeah, if that's happening, like that's the magic and that's what's important. And the rules really facilitate that kind of thing happening, but yeah. Awesome. Well thank you for that. That is helpful. Yeah. ⁓ bop bop bop bop bop bop. So how do you okay, so how do you prepare to GM like a new game? Like how do you approach like I have this game I'm gonna run? What are the steps you take in order to do that? Totally. You did say like you read it front to back first, but do you have like other things that you like do to prepare. Yeah, to prepare a new game. That's a good question. Well, I'll I'll even go one step further back than that, which is that I actually usually run my game sessions ⁓ just around the idea of playing tabletop games with people rather than a specific game. Okay. So I'll say, hey, do y'all wanna get together and like you know, be nerds and make some stuff up on Thursday night? And ⁓ then I pitch a few games, ⁓ which might be even more intimidating than learning just one. Sure. But I do feel like there's some, you know, I'm always very pro agency, pro choice. And so I like inviting people to a place and then saying, do you want to play option A, B, or C? Totally. so yeah, that that's almost like my first step for preparation is just even curating a palette of games. Okay. That could be intimidating if you're learning to play just one. If you're learning to play just one, that's totally fine. the things you can do. If you just have one game, you're with your friends, we're like, ⁓ we want to run this, but who's going to be our game master? How would that work? What you can do. You should read the book. You don't need to read it front to back because like I said, a lot of it is kind of more ⁓ content material fluff, like spells and abilities, this and that. Just really read the how to play section in the rules. That's great. If you can read it front to back, also good. You can, in addition to that, see if there's any extra materials online. ⁓ you can print those off. There are a lot of dedicated fans for a lot of games. People ⁓ may have made their own tools to help run the game. Yeah, totally. my first game, Soulbound Dark Industrial Fantasy, ⁓ has ⁓ you know, bit of a like cult following, which is really fun and an active community. And I've had people make their own cheat sheets for the game to like break stuff down. Okay. And they're far more useful than anything I ever made. That's wonderful. Right. That's really cool. ⁓ and the third thing you can do, and this one is mmm helpful in some ways, maybe hurtful in others, but if you can find a podcast or a video of people playing the game. Sure. That's a great way to start. Okay. The thing I would take from that podcast, if you find it, is just a general sense of what the flow of the game might be like. ⁓ whereas it would be more difficult to learn the mechanics from a podcast alone. Totally. But it can be really useful if you have no idea how it's even going to look. Yeah. At all. It can be really useful to see people play in it and say, okay, this is kind of like the back and forth that we're doing, or here's the tone of the game or the world we're in. Yeah. so those are three things that I would ⁓ do if I were picking up a game for the first time is I would, you know, read read the book or read the game first and foremost, find materials that can help you online, either official ones or fan made, and then I would watch some videos. Okay. yeah, and in essence, educate yourself about the game. And then of course last but not least, just know that like I'm not gonna run this wrong. I'm just I'm just gonna run it how it is. Okay. And we'll have a good time. I like that. I'm not gonna run it wrong. I'm gonna run it how I'm gonna run it. I'm gonna run it yeah, I might run it different. Sure. But I'm not gonna run it wrong. Not gonna run it wrong. And that's even true in all of like story games, tabletop role-playing games, you know. We always tell people, I think I've heard you say it before, there's no wrong answers. You know, if you have an idea about what you wanna do, shoot it. Send it. Yeah, so swing big. Swing big, yes, exactly. Awesome. And I like looking for content other people have made. ⁓ I think that for me personally is really helpful, even if I'm not like taking everything that they're doing and writing it down, but just like being able to see other people play through it. Yes. And seeing kind of how they approach it can be helpful for me kind of to mimic almost in a way and kind of like take some things that they do and be like, ⁓ that okay, that's how that's supposed to be done. Got it, got it, gotta Yeah, we learn we learn by watching for sure. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like a disconnect there where You know, people might watch Critical Role or Dimension Twenty and think their D game needs to look that way. Absolutely not. That's not true. Yeah. But you could, you know, watch either of those and get the general idea that we are these, you know, ⁓ fantastical empowered heroes in ⁓ fantasy world and we're gonna go slay big bad evil things. Yeah. You don't need to be Brennan Lee Mulligan. No. But you can take some things that he does and incorporate them into how you do things. Yes. If you were Brennan Lee Mulligan, That'd be strange because then there'd be two of them. Then that's too much. Right. No, ⁓ we won't be ready. We won't be ready. They're not ready for two Britanolics. No, be too powerful. ⁓ that is super helpful. Thank you very much. Of course. Yeah. do you have any advice for people who are new to GMing and may be intimidated by it? Mmm. Yeah, well, like we were just talking about, you c you can't you can't do it wrong. You can only do it different. ⁓ that's thing number one. Thing number two is that I would ⁓ really for new GMs, and for myself included, thinking about, you know, between clouds, ⁓ and the way I like to run it and story games as a whole, is that you as a game master are not existing in opposition to your players. Yes. You are aligned with your players. Okay. You might be facing them at the table, and maybe you have a screen that you're hiding behind, and maybe even some sort of scheme that you're concocting. If you so choose. But you should be, this is what I've heard said before, as a game master, you should be your player's number one fan. I've heard that as well. Yes. You should be their best advocate. You are Not trying to take them down, you're trying to put them up to a challenge. Yeah. ⁓ to see to see what they're made of, to see how they react, you know, to like bring the best and worst out of their character. Totally. and I think having that mindset of like, ⁓ actually I'm on my players' team and I'm aligned with them, ⁓ and I'm just kind of like the conduit for exploring this world. Yeah. But I don't need to be ⁓ you know, like trading blows with them, ⁓ with my players. Having that having that mindset is really useful. And to me, it takes a lot of the pressure off. Yeah. For me. and you know, if you have that mindset, you can also, depending on your GMing style, you can do things like letting players in behind the curtain. Okay, yeah. And that's ⁓ really, really useful, you know? And when I what I mean when I say letting players in behind the curtain, I mean you don't need to like make your schemes in private or make your roles in private, you know? You can you can go to your players and it's I think it's really a good thing to be transparent and be and and say like, I don't know if there's an owlbear I guess I'm a D and D guy now. I don't know. I don't know if there's an owlbear hiding in this cave, right? But maybe there is. So I'm gonna roll a six sided die and if it's a one or a two, then there's something in there, right? Okay, yeah, yeah. And if it's a six, there's treasure. And you can tell them that. and ⁓ But sustaining the fantasy that you ⁓ as the game master know everything about your world and are this omnipotent force is ⁓ or omniscient force is exhausting, you know? Like it's okay for you to not know everything and to be making stuff up on the fly. It's also okay for your players to know that, you know? Yeah. And it's actually kind of fun when you get to work on that together. That is super helpful actually. Because yeah, I feel like especially with like the whole critical role, Dimension 20, I feel like these DMs are just like so knowledgeable and they have this huge master plan and they're gonna take everyone on a wild story, and it's like it's hard to live up to that. So there's like a freedom in like, yeah, I don't know, we're gonna figure out together. And that is also really fun. That's why I love story games so much, is because there's so much of that collaborative aspect of I'm not sure, let's find out as a group and kind of see where that goes. Mm-hmm. So to kind of incorporate that into like a GM'd game, I think can be really useful. Yeah. Even though even though it's a different role and you are the facilitator, it can still be this idea of let's find out let's find out as a group. We're all here together, you know. The game master is also a player at the table. ⁓ they're just a player with a different like set of ⁓ Abilities and mechanics at their disposal, you know? They're taking on a different role, but they're still a player. I like that. That that's helpful too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And on the note of like, you know, Dimension 20 and critical role as well, going back to the cookbook metaphor, it would be like not cooking dinner for yourself because you are not Gordon Ramsay. Totally. You're like, no, I should never cook, I shouldn't eat, I couldn't live up to the expectation. No, you should you should you're gonna cook a wonderful dinner for yourself even though you're not Gordon Ramsay. Yeah. And you're gonna play a wonderful game even if you don't, you know, have a a budget and a writing team and a film studio and all that. Totally. You don't need it's still worth eating even if it's not a Michelin star. No. Right. Because it's gonna be a Michelin star to you. Yes, and to your friends. And to your friends, yeah. It's gonna be the most delicious meal they've ever had. The joy because yeah I cut you off, but yeah, the joy of the joy of sharing food with friends, incredible. The joy of The joy of sharing game with friends, my favorite thing. Best thing ever. Yes. Love it. And also, and I'm telling this to myself as well. This is me talking to myself. The way that you get better at something like this, and the way that you make better meals, and the way that you create better games is by doing it. Yeah. Is by doing it more and doing it often. And actually taking all of this information that we're learning here today. And playing some damn games with it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, put it into practice. Put it into practice. Which is daunting and scary, but And if you want really to like if you want everybody at the table to be to be better at what they're doing, take turns ⁓ facilitating as well, or being the game master, you know? It'll make you a better player if you're running the show, and it will also make you a better game master if you play your game. And it might take pressure off you to homebrew like a five part campaign if you say, Hey, y'all, I just wanna like I wanna run the session this week, ⁓ but I need somebody else to run it next week. That's a really good idea. Yeah. That's a really, really good idea. Totally. I like that. I will be planning on doing that with my friends. Yeah, yeah, you should. Yeah. I mean, again, distributing the workload, you know. Yeah. Unless you're like ⁓ a power tripping Mastermind who just needs to be the game master. And if you are, you're probably already doing it and you don't need this video is my thought. And also don't power trip. That's my other Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Share a little bit. Share. Yeah. Sharing is carrying. Yeah. ⁓ there is something you talked about a little bit ago that I kinda wanna circle back on. Please. ⁓ you said you improv a lot in your GM style. Yeah. How important is improv and caveat, how do you get better at improv? ⁓ my gosh. Well, I'm speaking from privileged position here. I once upon a time had a person say I had a quote unquote unnaturally high charisma. So ⁓ I'm and I don't know if that's true, but I'm ⁓ I'll take the compliment and that I hope I hope that informs my experience of game mastering. But Your question was how to get better at improv and how how How important is that skill in DMing? yes. How important is good improving in GMing? ⁓ I'm gonna say not very. No, I'm I'm gonna say not really. Okay. Yeah, and I really mean that. thinking about players, this can go for game masters, but you know, players especially, you don't need to do a character voice. You don't even need to speak in character. It is perfectly acceptable to show up to a table and speak in ⁓ first or third person, and you can say, you know, banjo the jester. Goes over to the door and opens it. They do this, they do that. You can take this very like dispersonal approach ⁓ to ⁓ running a game or playing as a character, and that's per that's like totally serviceable. Yeah. And I think for a lot of people makes the gaming more approachable. You know? So if you're if you are thinking to yourself, I wanna be a game master, but I don't have an arsenal of goofy character voices. That's okay. You know, you can take on a more writer's room approach and say, ⁓ you you approach the town guard and it's, you know, ⁓ this burly individual with a ginger mustache and a suspicious look about them. ⁓ you can use descriptive words, and you d that does not require improv. Yeah. the other thing too, and I think this is like good writing advice, but also good ⁓ Game advice is sometimes you can just tell it how it is. And when I say that I mean you don't need to be funny. You don't need to be ⁓ clever with the way that you're structuring your things. You ⁓ structuring your your game, I mean. You can just be d be direct and ⁓ sincere and buy the book, and that's actually going to be great for for a session, you know. So if you let's say you're running a module. And the module says that there are these characters and these characters do these things and here's what's gonna happen. You you don't need to do any flourishes or embellish on that. You can you know, somebody says, Well, how does this character react to me ⁓ stealing their family heirroom? And you would look at the you would look at your adventure module and say, Yeah, they're they're gonna react really poorly. ⁓ and here's what they're gonna do, is they'll sick their Guard dogs on you, you know. Sure. As it says here in the adventure module. so you can ⁓ play it straight, rely on rely on the book, rely on your resources. ⁓ yeah, you don't need to be funny, you don't need to be clever. if those things are fun to you, you should do them. But I I really don't think improving is as as important as people think it is. Okay. I think improving can fill gaps if you don't have materials for you. Totally. ⁓ I like improving because I don't like doing prep. Right. And so I use it as a crutch where I'm like, ⁓ well I'll just, you know, I'll just wing it. Right. But ⁓ that's where materials are really useful. That's why I put a bunch of tables into between clouds, is because I kind of like having materials to pull on and to improvise from there. and how to get better at improving if you wanted to do it. ⁓ I would you could literally go to an improv class. I've never done this before. But I know people who have and I think it would really help. ⁓ so that would that'd be one ad one piece of advice is you could literally go sign up at your local improv class if you wanted to. I've been considering it high key. Yeah, really have. You should let me know. You should try and I do. I think ⁓ Olympia Family Theatre has some improv classes that I've been thinking of taking. I think that'd be wonderful. I've actually heard from a lot of folks that it is a skill that is universally applicable, you know? Yeah, that's what I've heard. Can help in a lot of different things. And I like being a clown, so I feel like it can help me with clownery. I haven't taken an improv class, but I have taken a clown class. ⁓ that's fun. That's fun. Which yeah. I'll pick your brain about that at a different point. Okay. We can clown around. We can clown around. We can clown. ⁓ wonderful. is there anything that we haven't covered that you think is like imperative information for someone getting into GMing? Like they need to know. Yeah. well, I think to answer that I would almost throw it back to you and ask, is there any one thing about GMing that you have found particularly difficult that I could help with? So for me, it's intimidating. I'm I'm intimidated by the thought of GMing a game and being the person running a game. It's I've like made it up in my head as this big scary thing. And that's kind of hard to break down now. It's like, ⁓ I can't. I can't do that. That's that's that's someone else's job. I don't I don't I can't do that. It wouldn't be me. It could never be me. Yeah. Is it is it in part because like the attention is on you too? No, because I love attention. ⁓ It's less that and more the pressure of doing it right. Doing it right and making sure everyone else is having a fun time. Okay. Okay. Here's my tip. Here's my tip, and this is actually maybe my like golden rule of GMing that gets me through so much. it is two. Are you ready for it? Okay. My my golden rule of GMing is to ask questions of your players. Okay. Because your players are full of ideas, and if you give them a nugget of something, they will want to run with it. Okay. And ⁓ I think I think asking questions of your players is really powerful because there's this expectation of the game master to like Talk and tell and describe, you know? ⁓ to to be providing a lot of content and to be setting the scene. And so often I have ⁓ reduced that pressure by just being a good interviewer, being a good question ask of my players, right? And kind of asking questions that I might not even think are like im important per se, but Put players on the back foot, so rather than them listening to me, then they're sitting back and thinking, ⁓ and then they're kind of running their own story, and I get to sit there and listen to them. Okay. You can question ask your way through a whole session. I do it almost all the time. Okay. ⁓ I can give an example for between clouds of the session we played. So one like mechanical action you could take in between clouds is to chart course. Which is where your character is going to ⁓ somehow navigate the open skies and ⁓ find a path to figure out where you're going. Mm-hmm. You could run that by simply having players roll the die and saying, Okay, did you do a good job navigating? Or did you do a poor job navigating? And then I'd say, Okay, did a good job, yippee. Here's your like here's your reward. Okay. But what I do to get more mileage out of the game and ⁓ to like Build build out the world and engage my players and also take pressure off of me to give me a break. Is when somebody does that, I'll say, okay, how do you chart course? How how does this look for you, right? Okay. And maybe I pitch a few ideas like, I don't know, do you do you have a do you have a telescope that you use? Do you do you use your wings to fly up high and get a better view? Do you like use your nose to catch ⁓ scent on the on the wind? And Just by asking players how do they do something, right? ⁓ or you could even say, How does your character feel about that? You know? Okay, or what are you doing in this moment? ⁓ you're leaning against a wall. Okay, interesting. ⁓ just by asking these prompting questions, you can take the attention off of you and give your players ⁓ like more agency ⁓ within within their own story. So that in addition to improv, maybe even more so than improv. question asking would actually be the skill I'd really refine to be a great ⁓ game master. ⁓ that's that's maybe my own personal style is just interviewing my players all the time. Okay. I love that. No, that's super, super helpful. And I feel like yeah, it does take a lot of pressure off you because then your players are coming up with fun ideas. It's less Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And th and then if they come up with a fun or weird idea and you're playing off of that. Yeah. Right. Well then it's you know, it's not your fun or weird idea. I mean they brought it into the world. You know, you're just saying, okay, well if that's what you want to do. All right. Let's run with it. There we go. Right. Yeah. ⁓ so yeah, yep, I need to ask questions. That's what I do. Wonderful. Well that has been so helpful. Mm-hmm. ⁓ it really gives me a lot to think on about GMing as a whole. So thank you for that. Marvelous of course. ⁓ thank you for being my first guest on So You Wanna Be a GM. Yeah. I'm really excited. ⁓ I hope you have Many more ⁓ great interviews and everybody everybody has a different style, but totally yeah. Having crazy thought, having fun, most important thing. Not gonna do it wrong. Yeah. Wow. Hang out with your friends. Groundbreaking. Hang hang out with your friends. Hang out with your friends. Feed them. Yeah. And feed them. Feed them. Really, we touched on a lot of groundbreaking concepts. We really did. Yeah. Crazy stuff. Crazy stuff. Well, thank you, Andy. If you would like to go follow Andy, I will have all of her stuff down below. Please go send her love, play her games. She's amazing. ⁓ thank you guys for watching, and we'll see you in the next episode of So You Wanna Be a GM. Bye. Later. Bye. ⁓