Full list of questions is, of course, here — there are still slots open if you have something you desperately want to know! :)

Day 6: What's it like being a GM/DM for ttrpg?

Okay, so.

Do you remember when you were a little kid, and you would play pretend? Maybe you were lucky enough to live in a neighborhood with a lot of kids, maybe you had a sibling, or maybe you were on your own. Whatever the case, you probably engaged in imaginative play, right? "Make-believe" or "pretend" or whatever you call it, maybe with props/costumes or maybe just with your imagination.

Right, so!

When I was a Wee Thing (back in the Mists of Time, aka the 1990s, this is fine), I was always the one that was going, "HEY! We're playing Pretend! Let's all get together, and..."

I would tell everyone the rules (usually just the premise/"don't be a jerk about this"), and then we'd just...play. Memorable games include:

-PIONEERS! (I had just read Little House in the Big Woods and, well, I was 6, what do you want)
-MURDER DETECTIVES (someone was murdering dolls in the dollhouse and we had to figure out who it was)
-Knights of the Round Table (I was Merlin; my friend's older brother, who was "too cool" for this kind of stuff but still painfully interested played King Arthur and told the littler kids what quests to go on)
-PRINCESS IN DISGUISE (my favorite, probably, where we were all royalty of some convoluted line or another who had to ??? to get our kingdom back — those question marks are because it usually varied a great deal)
-WITCHES (we made potions in the yard from various plants. I feel like most kids do this)

Right, um.

Running tabletop is a lot like playing those games again, but as an adult and with a better budget.

I feel like I could simply end it here, but no, really, ah — it's collaborative storytelling, where you are all agreeing to some conceits about the fiction (e.g. "this is high fantasy and takes place in this setting"), and then the dice and whatnot are for randomness. As the GM/DM, it's not really my job to "tell" the story so much as it is to gather all the disparate threads together and come out with a pleasing narrative.

It's literally what I used to do when I was playing Make Believe with my friends thirty-odd years ago, which makes sense given that ttrpg at its best is imaginative play for adults.

So. Yeah.

That's what it's like.

Good to know I haven't matured past the grand old age of eight, I guess? :P