New Gamemaster Month

By EricMesa

- 2 minutes read - 396 words

Whenever I get the chance, I like to watch the Kobold Press YT series Kobold Chats. Kendo, the community manager for Kobold Press, goes over various tabletop RPG topics - usually revolving around Kobold press releases or blog posts from that week. Occasionally they do interviews with Kobold Press employees or with others in the TTRPG space (like someone from Roll20). Kendo has a very fun personality on the chats and it’s hard not to find myself grinning at his antics. This last week’s video (linked earlier) mentioned something I wish I’d known about last year - New Gamemaster Month, an annual event to increase the number of game masters (also sometimes called dungeon masters) by providing a month-long tutorial on the process. Last January I would have been about 6 months into my GM journey and could definitely have made use of the month. However, that doesn’t mean all is lost for me. Whenever I teach myself a new skill - programming, photography, TTRPGs, etc - I will usually eventually seek out a class if it interests me enough. I’m not sure how unique I am, but I find that whenever I’m self-taught I end up with gaps in my knowledge compared to learning in a class. ALSO, I’ve always found that if I’m learning any skill that isn’t TOO basic, I learn it much better the second time through. (Obviously, if it’s too basic, it would just be boring the second time through) So I’ll be participating in New Gamemaster Month this month. If I’ve piqued your interest, follow the prior link. There are a bunch of game companies participating and you can use one of their games to learn how to GM. As is often the case, most of the companies are small-to-midsize (ie Wizards of the Coast is not represented). The games represented are:

  • Numenera
  • Unkown Armies
  • Trail of Cthulhu
  • RuneQuest
  • Monster of the Week (I will definitely be checking this game out in the future, it sounds right up my alley)
  • Delta Green
  • Tales of the Valiant (This is the one I’ll be doing this month as preparation for a ToV game I’ll be running for my kids later this year)
  • Savage Worlds

Another great reason to check this out if you’re not 100% new to being a GM - most of the companies are offering discounts on their core rulebooks!