Customer Reviews

Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been GMing for 20+ years and I still found this book to be very useful. It starts by first analyzing the different types of players and what they want out of a game. I was able to easily fit my players into the different categories and change the focus of my adventures to try to please them. He also talks about various structures for adventures and what to do when the players get stuck. There's also some advise about improvising that's pretty useful.

Robin Laws (the author) also writes a column on playing for Dragon Magazine that's frequently helpful. He also designed The Dying Earth roleplaying game, which is pretty cool, and a bunch of other games I haven't played and so can't comment on.

This book is a collection of related 'articles' on how to be a good GM that could be a chapter in the GMs guide for any RPG. It is completely system agnostic but the author demonstrates an understanding of most popular systems. It contains a lot of good common sense about being a GM all compressed into 32 pages - really good tips on assessing your players and training yourself to improvise in particular. I also liked that the author doesn't take sides between role-playing and roll-playing but rather advises the GM to focus on what makes the players happy. I cautiously recommend this book as follows:

If you are new to GMing or are thinking about being a GM this book both contains useful information and will build your confidence. You just need to decide if you are willing to pay this much for a 32 page 'pamphlet'. You could probably find all of this information somewhere on the web but it would take a lot of looking and it probably wouldn't be as well written. It certainly wouldn't be as well organized. For the new GM I would say that you probably are better off spending your money on this book than on another game supplement or adventure because you will use what you learn here in every game session.

If you are an experienced GM intent on 'mastering your craft' then you have to buy this book just to know that there hasn't been anything written about GMing that you haven't read.

If you are a competent GM (as indicated by the fact that you have a group of satisfied players) then take the author's own advice and spend your money on something else. We'll actually he says that if your players are happy then ignore everything that he has to say but he would probably want you to buy his book anyway ;-).

Robin Laws states early on in the book that roleplaying games are supposed to be as fun and entertaining as possible for all participants. He continues by expanding on two main themes: (1)knowing the players and what they define as "fun" and (2)knowing the adventure and what its objectives are. This sounds deceptively simple, but Robin points out that different players want different types of adventures, so consider the group of players and suitablity of the adventure to their desires. He has many humorous examples of do's and dont's. I could see many of the examples have happened during adventures that I gamemastered over the years.

The book is mainly geared towards gamemasters, but does have an interesting section on different player types. I discovered as a player I am a "Method Actor." What type are you?

I strongly recommend this smallish, simple-looking book. It made me think of things about a gaming session that I had only given a passing glance to prior to reading this book.

Robin lays down the law, and I like the rules.

I really didn't think that I would give this 5 stars when I initially learned about it. I figured it would be another really simple little book from someone else in the industry saying "Here's how I do things and I'm great"...

I love being wrong.

I've never read any of Robin's other works. I've been GMing RPGs for a long time (it doesn't really matter how long), but I've been out of the "main-stream" games for years. I found his analysis very accurate, his experiences coincided with my own, and his thoughts and suggestions made a lot of sense.

The fundamental premise of Robin's Laws is that players can be categorized into a specific group, making it easier to understand what they enjoy in a game, what game you should play with that group, what the campaign and adventure should be like, how they should be structured, etc. He goes into a great deal of detail on how to accomplish this, while avoiding being preaching or arrogant in the process. He has even come up with a way to quantify some of these determinations, which really impressed me.

To be honest, I think that it is very difficult to make the determination of a player's type, in many situations. Possible, yes, but very difficult. His observations of what you can do with this information are very intriguing and inciteful, however, and well worth a look.

I highly recommend this to anyone who ever has or ever will GM an RPG. It has a great deal of useful information and ideas.

...

I was ashamed of myself for not being a better Dungeon Master after reading this book. The helpfull hints in this book really spell out the reasons for running and playing RPG's. Basically this book says these games are supposed to be FUN! Furthermore it is the responsibility of the GM first and foremost to make his games fun for players.
Buy this book, read it and put it to practice. Afterward your games WILL improve. As a talented GM, I here people saying positive things about my games all the time. The advice in this book helped me to understand how to keep that sort of thing happening more often. Basically what I thought of as luck or the right timing turned out to be just a matter of listening to players and trying to anticpate what they would respond to based on how they were playing the game. This book helps to recognise and catagorize player of different type and to use theirt skills to tell a better story.
In all, the price of the book is too low for what you get.

This book shows you how to look at your game through the eyes of different types of players. Yeah, that's a valuable thing in and of itself, but problem is, that's all the book ever does; there's nothing else in it. No how-to's, no tips, no examples, no real "tricks" of any kind.

In the beginning the author lays out a few types of players, like the powerplayer, the storyteller, etc. For the most part it pretty obvious (Power gamer likes to have a lot of power and story teller likes a good story... no, really?) After that, everything in this book pretty much boils down to "it depends".

Making a campaign? Oh, it depends: A player who's a power gamer will like a campaign with lots of opportunities to get a lot of power, but a storyteller will like a campaign with lots of story and plot. And that's pretty much as far as the author takes the subject.

Making an adventure? Well, it depends: A player who's a power gamer will like an adventure with lots of monsters and items of power, but a storyteller will like an adventure with characters and story and plot. And that's about it.

Pacing? Well, Power gamers like to take it slower and think about combat, story tellers like the story to move forward... Next...

And so on, and so forth, and so on. Add a few "If it aint broken dont fix it", "Roll with the punches", "Ask your players what they want", "Relax", and a few other nebulous platitudes that dont really mean much, and you've got this book. Hey, the part about the player types was good, but with a subject as deep and wide as GMing, the whole thing really really could have been a LOT better.