GMs and Ion Hazzikostas

A few weeks ago we enjoyed watching a talk from Ion Hazzikostas during the Nordic Game Conference and thought that there were several points of his that were thought provoking from a Game Master’s perspective.

1 . The world is your vision, but it also belongs to the players.

As a GM, we should be the caretakers of the world that we build, but we should also let the players build out that world with the decisions of their characters.

If you wanted to create a story completely on your own, you would write a book or maybe build a video game, but at the gaming table you are inviting others to partake of the unfolding of the story. You need to take into consideration he players’ contributions and the actions of their characters.

Choices matter! Great GMs will not only passively allow the players to make decisions, but will actively build in opportunities for those decisions and prepare different outcomes for them. You should be taking cues from the players as they progress through the story rather than dragging them through your story and forcing decisions on them.

2. Understand your players’ desired path.

If you are participating in role-playing then it wouldn’t be very beneficial to fight against your players or act at cross purposes. Think about the negative emotions that such disagreements would cause in the players and how that would impact them as you move forward in the game. Players can and will deviate from your desired path for them. No matter how well you plan out events and try to think through options, you’re bound to be surprised by them at some point.

For example, there was a game where the players ran into a badly injured dwarf in the woods, and I anticipated them either offering a mercy kill or maybe even looting him, but to my shock the players used their spells and precious resources to heal him and helped get him to a place of safety before moving on with their mission. There’s nothing wrong with the players taking a different path, but you should prepare yourself to be flexible enough to go with the new direction.

Something that can really help the GM minimize the amount of unexpected decisions and derailing is making sure that everyone is in alignment. The GM should understand what the players are wanting during the campaign (their goals and such), and the players should understand how the GM is planning on running the game and sessions.

3. Make leveling up feel meaningful.

Most D20 systems already have a sense of progression and improvement build into them, but you might want to consider the milestone method as well. This is rewarding the players after they achieve certain goals or events rather than after they’ve built up a certain amount of experience points (XP). If your campaign is more RP and story heavy, this can lead to very slow leveling and can actually be a discouragement to the players. In this case, you’d be served by looking into alternative methods of reward to keep up the sense of progression. You could give skill points or knowledge for history and research. Or you could offer titles, followers, or any other number of non- traditional rewards.

Lastly, it is wise to consider the balance of short-term goals and the long-term goals. There should be rewards for both in order to keep up the motivation of the players. This may not seem a big deal, but it is a detail that can make the difference in the flow of game play.

4. Be cautious of restrictions.

Restrictions can be a tricky thing. They might make sense in the moment, but there is also the consideration of if you need to remove those restrictions later. Removing restrictions isn’t always straightforward, and there’s always the issue of even more problems if you want to add that restriction back.

Regardless, communication is key!

In my experience, the issue with restrictions doesn’t seem to be as prevalent in TTRPGs as it is in RP Guilds and Communities. A few years ago I had the opportunity to help a community redesign certain skills that their players used in RP scenarios. It was an experience full of

issues and hightened emotions. Much care had to be taken because if we took away spells or skills it could ruin characters that had been built around those specific ones and would leave a lot of hurt feelings. Revamping the progression was even more difficult and made some people even angrier.

That particular situation involved a lot of hurt feelings as is often the case when changing systems, but you can definitely minimize hurt by being open and honest with the goals of the revamping, as well as preparing ahead of time by considering the feelings and perspectives of the players BEFORE you decide on actually making the changes. Humans are chaotic systems. There are no static, perfect solutions to problems, but as long as you are moving towards improvement and adjusting as needed, that can make a big difference.

At the end of the day, we gather together for RPG to have fun. As a GM, we need to be mindful of our players and make sure that the changes we are making and the stories that we are building keeps that fun going today and in the future. We hope that you enjoyed the blog post and would love to hear about your thoughts!

Did you watch the Nordic Games Convention too? Have you ever had to deal with undoing restrictions or restructuring systems in an RP Guild? What are your favorite alternative methods of rewards?

Leave a comment below or join the conversation on our YouTube video or our Discord channel.

Until next time!

Credit: Written by Meraki Forest