Gamemastering Secrets Second Edition is the kind of book that I wish had been around when I was a young ‘un with just a boxed
D&D set and a group of friends, eager to kill monsters and loot dungeons. Twenty odd years and dozens of campaigns later, I have much less need for it, but it’s still an entertaining read and I’m sure that I gleaned at least a few nuggets of wisdom from within its covers.
Gamemastering Secrets is a 176-page hardbound book with color cover and black and white interior. The cover illustration is some sort of weird computer generated sort of thing and the interior art consists mainly of forty-odd Dork Tower comic strips. These strips have previously appeared elsewhere, but they are just as entertaining here and they are pretty cleverly worked into the text. The cover sports both the Fudge and D20 logos, but 99% of the book’s content could be applied to the system of your choice.
The first two-thirds of the book was written by Aaron Rosenberg. I haven’t seen the first edition of Gamemastering Secrets and so I don’t know how much of the text has been changed or revised for this edition. However, this edition is divided into four sections; Before the Game, Starting the Game, Running the Game and Closing the Game.
Before the Game covers basics like gaming terminology, an overview of the most popular gaming genres, advice for choosing a system and setting, how to design a simple adventure and even some advice for bringing in new gamers. This section is probably the least useful to a veteran gamer, but the advice is well-written and thoughtful. I especially like Aaron’s advice to gather your players together before you design your first adventure. This one little tidbit could save countless campaigns from crashing and burning in the early stages.
Starting the Game is a short section that covers how to get characters together, set the tone for the game and even how to foster party unity. A plausible reason for getting a diverse group of PCs together was always a bugaboo for me (As an old AD&D player, even I admit that the “You are all sitting in a tavern when…” line is getting a bit tired) and the ‘clusters’ idea in this section is both clever and sensible. The clusters idea revolves around pairing characters up so that every character knows at least one other character in the party. You then link the clusters together with common threads with the goal of creating an actual reason why the party might form in the first place.
Running the Game is the largest section and it covers a wide variety of topics, including narrative styles, awarding experience, power levels, killing characters and even dealing with problem players. There is a ton of good stuff here. Even if you are on your fiftieth campaign, it would be worthwhile to at least browse these sections and compare the advice to what you are doing in your own games. You may be surprised at some of the alternatives you never explored or some of the aspects of your game that you could improve.
Closing the Game is a very short section that deals with ending the campaign and the subject of player and GM satisfaction. It also has some advice for keeping an open-ended campaign going. While this section is only about three pages long, it has some good ideas for ending your campaign on a high note and transitioning from one major plot line to another if you are going for the open-ended approach.
The last third of the book is devoted to a series of articles by gaming industry notables. You will read essays, by a total of seventeen authors, including well-known figures like Kenneth Hite and Matt Forbeck, and living legends like James Ward and Frank Mentzer. I especially liked Kenneth Hite’s “The Joys of Research” and Jean Rabe’s “Winging It”, but I was very pleased at the overall quality of writing. The articles are fun because they explore useful topics like character creation, running con games and world building, and contain interesting (and sometimes hilarious) anecdotes from the authors’ own experience as gamemasters. The book closes with short biographies of all the contributors and an index.
Gamemastering Secrets will undoubtedly be more useful to you if you are a novice gamemaster, but even if you started with 1st Edition AD&D, you should still give it a look. I don’t have any major quibbles with Gamemastering Secrets. I didn’t like the cover art, but that’s a matter of personal taste. I also think it is a little pricey for a book that I assume will appeal mostly to novice players or at least novice gamemasters. Maybe Grey Ghost can re-release it in paperback and shave ten bucks off the cover price.
You can check out the book’s table of contents and the authors’ bios at www.gmsecrets.com. The site also has some gamemastering articles and a very good selection of resources for you to explore.
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