A friend recently loaned Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering to me. I suppose that I had high expectations for this work. On some levels those expectations were met, and others fell short of the mark. Before I discuss my likes and dislikes, let’s get the technical info about the book out of the way.
Robin’s Laws is a short (33 pages) soft cover pamphlet. The cover art by Peter Bergting is a passable rendition of a Raiders of The Ark-esque scenario involving two treasure hunters. The picture is so-so, and certainly doesn’t reflect the subject material. This is the only piece of artwork in the book. The book is split into nine short chapters covering various topics including: Robin’s Ironclad Law, Knowing your players, Picking your rules set, Campaign design, Adventure design, Spontaneity, Mood, Improvisation, and Solving player related problems. Various charts and graphs line the pages to illustrate the discussion at hand.
Chapter One, The Great, Immutable, Ironclad Law lays the ground rules for Laws’ advice, and also covers some obligatory disclaimers (ex. “Don’t ever feel like a bad or inadequate GM because you don’t follow the advice given in this, or any other, book. If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.”) Robin’s Ironclad law is that a GM makes all the difference in the success or failure of a game, and thus the GM should strive to be as entertaining as possible. If that requirement has been met, then don’t change a good thing.
Chapter Two, Knowing Your Players, attempts to classify the different types of gamers by breaking them down into seven categories. A simplistic definition is presented for each type, (the power gamer, the butt-kicker, the tactician, the specialist, the method actor, the storyteller, the casual gamer.) This chapter features a small table that Laws encourages GMs to use in the classification of their troupe. The chapter goes on to discuss uncovering the emotional current of your troupe and how to get to know more about the new players who have decided to join your game. This section suffered from a couple of serious issues (which I’ll go over shortly.)
Chapter Three, Picking Your Rules Set, is a basic primer on how a GM should go about choosing a game system that fits the needs of everyone in the troupe. You can tell that this is a topic that Laws enjoys talking about (it’s the second longest section of the book,) and he uses some humorous elements to get his point across. It’s this section that describes the different types of rules sets, from heavy narratives to rules laden strategy games. Also, this chapter features more charts and tables to classify the tastes of your gaming troupe by assigning point values based on what you as the GM think that the player would like to play. The point of one of the subsections (Power Balance) is to help you obtain a numerical average that you then reference to the chart which in turn tells you how system heavy of a game you should play. There’s also a short side bar on designing house rules.
Chapter Four, Campaign Design, focuses on genre, setting, and major plotline development. Here, Laws expounds on the pros and cons of using published settings (modules, sourcebooks etc…) versus creating a world from scratch. Laws advises GMs to mix and match genres. (ex. “Vampires in space, cyberpunk goes to war…” And so forth.) Laws also points out that GMs should have a ‘mission statement’ about the ultimate goals of the PCs.
Chapter Five, Adventure Design, gives pointers on creating plot hooks, plot lines, dungeon crawls, episodes, chapters, transitional material, enemies, and NPCs. There are several charts that lay out sequential storylines and one chart that illustrates how a GM should structure an adventure based on the information obtained from the player charts in chapters two and three.
Chapter Six, Preparing to be Spontaneous, talks about creating NPCs on the fly. Laws suggests having some material held in reserve to help out with such occasions, (ex. lists of names and personality types.)
Chapter Seven, Confidence, Mood, and Focus, explores problem areas of any game such as boredom, lack of focus, too much dialogue, not enough dialogue, debates and arguments over rules or GM decisions, and so on. Laws recommends some solid solutions to these dilemmas. We also are treated to yet another chart for use by GMs who wish to track how on task their sessions have been.
Chapter Eight, Improvising has a step-by-step process outlining how to improvise scenarios during a game session. Another chart illustrates how to create enjoyable ‘random’ subplots for each player.
Chapter Nine, A Final Word on the Ultimate Dilemma is a reiteration of chapter one with some pointers on how to disengage from difficult players.
What was good about this book?
Several things. First of all, it was written with the idea of helping GMs create a more entertaining gaming experience, and that’s a Good Thing ™. Laws took a huge topic and distilled it down into 32 * pages of text, no easy feat, I’m sure. For the space allotted, the chapters are decently split up and there’s some intelligent, frank discussion about how to solve certain in game problems. Chapter seven is probably the pinnacle of the book as far as providing solutions to challenges goes.
What needed work?
I couldn’t help but feel that I came away without learning a whole lot. Granted, Laws tells us in the beginning of the book that he doesn’t have a whole lot of space. However, it seemed that Laws missed opportunities to shine in the space that he did have. A perfect example of this misstep is in Chapter two. Laws discusses knowing your players and then proceeds to classify and categorize people into seven different groups, providing a chart that the GM can use to track their troupe’s personalities. He then provides the disclaimer, “The types will only get you so far. Many people defy categorization.” But one paragraph later Laws is firmly stereotyping players based on his seven gamer archetypes and continues to do so throughout the rest of the text. Some of these stereotypes are amusing (although I don’t think that was intentional) and some were almost insulting. Another part that didn’t settle quite right was the sub-section, ‘Getting to Know New Players’. Laws advises, “…by looking at a new player’s character sheet, you can make some educated guesses about his style.” Can you really? What if the player didn’t know the system and is playing an archetype out of the book to get the hang of things? What if the player had a busy week and threw together a character at the last minute? What if the player’s friend created her character? What if the player’s dog ate his character sheet and he doesn’t have one to show? By Laws’ advice, you wouldn’t know because you never bothered to talk to your players about *anything*. You would have made sweeping assumptions based on past experience (or maybe no experience at all in the case of new players), you would have assigned a point value to your player based on their ‘category’, you would have cross referenced that number with another chart, and voila! you would somehow know what your players wanted. Nowhere in the Know Your Players section does Laws discuss the importance of having a great grasp on what your players expect out of a game, or how to find out. A really simple technique that I like to employ is to ask the players what they expect/want/desire out of a session/adventure/chronicle and then I tailor my game to their wants. From my perspective, communication is the key to making a successful game, not charts, numbers and stereotypes about the players. Laws doesn’t address some of the key questions that GMs should be asking their players, like, “What do you want to do? Why? What kinds of directions would you like to see this campaign go?” etc… After all, Role Playing is about communicating a story or series of events in an entertaining fashion. It stands to reason that one of the more important skills a GM could possess is the ability to communicate. Laws leaves this topic out of the discussion, much to the detriment of the text. There were a few other inconsistencies in the text that bothered me as I read, but none were so glaring that they couldn’t be over looked.
Conclusion:
Robin’s Laws was a mixed bag. The good stuff was solid, logical, written with an eye towards clarity and reason. During those parts I found myself nodding in agreement. The stuff that needed work or more thought left me cringing, hoping that I would not have to play with a GM that would employ those methods. Overall, I think Robin’s Laws is a nice text for beginner GMs. For those that have been at it for a while, I don’t know that you’ll learn anything new or innovative, although you may pick up a tip here or there.
I give this book a 3 out of 5.
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