Advice for transitioning from GM to player?

[Sam]

Sure! We’ve played two sessions now, so I can tell you the general trends of how it’s going. Maybe I’ll come back in another 6 weeks and let you know more.

Background: 5 players (old friends), playing online using Roll20/Discord, game is Blades in the Dark. We’re a very collaborative group - players have consistently pitched each other on ideas for things their character might do, and while I was GMing, more Devil’s Bargains were given out by PCs than by me.

The big thing I noticed in the first session was that I was that I was hogging the spotlight. I wasn’t stepping on the GM’s toes much, but I was very much putting myself front and center in every scene. I made a character who’s a forceful, strong personality leader, and we picked a score that was reliant on my social skills more than some of the other players’ skills, but all the same. Not a great habit.

I was also very much getting distracted by drawing when I wasn’t in the spotlight (very excited about doing character portraits). I made a conscious choice to close all the programs I wasn’t using for RPG playing for the second time around, and to make sure I was actively listening to other players’ scenes.

Between sessions, the GM asked me for feedback and advice, and we had a great conversation about GMing practices. He’s clearly got a different set of GMing skills than I do, but it was still great to talk about what we agree on and what we don’t when it comes to GMing. Good stuff. He’s definitely interested in getting my feedback on his GMing, but I think he’s doing great already. GMing is hard and intimidating, and I think just hearing “yeah, you’re doing it right, keep it up” is what anyone needs to hear when they get started. Anyway, we’re keeping this to post-session conversations, and this is going well.

I also spent some time specifically thinking about “how can I make the lives of the other PCs more interesting?” I wanted to make sure in the second session that I (1) gave other people spotlight time and (2) used my time to develop relationships with others (serving the double purpose of highlighting relationships more and sharing my spotlight with others). This was very much coming out of the advice about continuing to be a fan of the other characters even as a player,

In the second session, I mostly succeeded at doing this. Everyone had good scenes, though I again felt like I was taking up too much time with my own scenes. But at least this time, other people were included in those scenes! I developed compelling relationships with all three of the other PCs, we had a great almost-date, a lot of foreshadowing of inter-party conflict, good stuff.

Another thing I noticed was that I would often fall into my pattern of essentially grilling another player about a thing their character was doing: “what is it you want? Why do you want that now? Are you people watching people from in the middle of the crowd, or up on the roof across the street?” On the one hand, this feels similar to the backseat driving thing: I’m literally doing the thing I do for 80% of the time I’m GMing. On the other, I’m not convinced it’s a bad thing to do. I love it as a GM when my players get excited about anything, and if I’m asking questions like this, I’m engaging another player, and I’m excited about a thing. This kind of digging into the details of a scene or an action or a moment is my favorite part of RPGs, so I’m disinclined to stop doing this, but I’m also wary about it meaning I step on the GM’s toes / take up even more talking time, so I’m keeping an eye on this habit.

Going forward, I’m gonna try and double down on my session 2 plan: try harder to take a step back and give others space, and actively think about ways (both ahead of time and in the moment) to bring others forward when I have the chance to. I’m really excited about a player philosophy built on “what can I do that’s going to make [character]'s life complicated?”

But overall, game seems to be going great so far!

[myrthe]

Sounds good Sam. One thing you might consider in the GMing discussions, as well as saying where the new GM is doing well, is to highlight and discuss things you had trouble with. – when you’re practiced at presentation it can be really easy for it to look like you’ve got everything handled. Hearing about your own uncertainties and judgement calls might be very useful as they find their feet.

[Toby]

So much good advice here. “Be the player you wish you had” is the best summing-up.

I haven’t done the GM to player transition yet, though I hope to soon, as I miss playing! But I’ve had what’s (I imagine) an analogous experience, because I also direct choirs and have recently started singing in a choir with a less experienced leader. It certainly gives lots to think about, and is much harder than I first imagined.

Honestly I think it’s a very good discipline all round. I learn lots, both directly from the other leader (they might be less experienced but they still do some stuff better than or differently from me), and indirectly from experiencing what it’s like to be on the receiving end of someone else’s leadership, which makes me reflect on my own practice too. Plus sometimes it can be good training in keeping my mouth shut!

If you’ve been asked to give feedback, that adds an extra dimension which I’d find tricky. I don’t have much advice to offer here except to make sure you draw the line very clearly between participation (during play) and feedback (out of play, ideally in a very different environment).

[darren]

This is just slightly off topic, but I have to say it: like taking notes, doodling (or drawing, sketching, etc.) can be a way to hold your attention at the table rather than take away from it! I think this was pretty well publicized in early ‘00s regarding students and doodling in class, so you might know this already.

Also I just really love that people draw character portraits, scene, etc., while in-game. I find it very enchanting and want you to keep doing it! lol

[RenoGM]

Something I do is ask the GM a lot of questions to help them flesh-out the scene and environment. However, I tend to avoid open-ended questions that might put my GM on the spot or burden them with coming up with something on the fly. Instead I ask questions in a more binary format, “Is the ground just wet and muddy, or is there a few inches of water covering it?” That way my GM doesn’t have to pull something out of thin air (of course they still can) but instead can pick. It’s my way of helping the GM take advantage of my 30+ years running games but in a more player-focused manner. Anyway, my GM really appreciates it!

[Sam]

Hey! This thread’s been getting some traction again lately, so I thought I’d update everyone on how the game went that originally prompted me to post.

We ended up playing a ~16 session season of Blades in the Dark, and it went incredibly well. We were coming off a previous season with roughly the same group of people, so we all gelled already. The number one thing I took away from the campaign (regarding transitioning from GM to player and vice versa) is how much I love a table where the divide between GM and Player is pretty thin. I know this is a pretty popular opinion in story gaming circles, but I’m here to underline it. We had several NPCs that a “player” created, the “GM” took over, and then later were taken back by the players that created them to play as PCs as our standard PCs died / retired / were kidnapped. That kind of interaction took place on every level, from “what is this faction up to?” down to devil’s bargains and one particularly memorable cold cup of tea.

Another manifestation of that idea is that part of the “GM”'s job is to enjoy watching the PCs get into trouble. Bringing that same mindset to being a player was really, really important. Our game was a ton more compelling because everyone was so willing to watch their PCs end up in really rough situations; no one was over-protective of their person.

As a player, the thing I started doing early on that was most helpful was to spend a little time between each session thinking about what trouble I wanted to see visited upon the other PCs in the game: “what happens if Jem’s girlfriend finds out she’s also a wanted criminal? How would Luc react if someone started digging into his past?” etc etc. Then I’d find a way to justify my character making those things happen, and the other players would never react the way I expected, I could play off of that, and we were off to the races. I’m now back in the GM seat, and I’m currently trying to do a better job of bringing that same mindset to the GM role instead of my usual “here’s the world, do what you want” sandboxy approach.

On top of that, I learned to try and make sure to come into every session with a couple things I knew my PC wanted to pursue. The Blades equivalent of “oh crap, is it my turn in combat again? I guess I… uh… let me read my spells…” has proven itself to be “oh, it’s downtime? What are the downtime actions again?”, so at the very least I tried to know what my downtime actions were likely to be, and preferably I had 2-3 overarching goals for my char and concrete ways to work on them.

On my relationship with the first-time GM: we fell into a nice rhythm with the GM where I just let him do his thing during play, and then I’d occasionally have short advice for him after a session, or he’d ask me about something that went down. It also turned out that he wasn’t great at or interested in being really on top of the rules of the game, so I was able to carry that mental load for him by being the designated “person who knows the answer to that rules question”. Also also turned out that I’m the person in my group who’s best at keeping people on track and setting the pace of play – I’m very good as a GM at saying “alright, but back to the subject at hand…”, and I figured out how to do that as a player without undercutting the GM’s plan or scenes I wasn’t involved in. I learned how helpful it is as a GM to find work you can offload to other players, whether that’s beginning of session recaps, resource tracking, rules knowledge, or whatever.

I want to thank everyone who gave me advice in this thread. It was great advice and conversation, and I can’t wait to keep bringing the lessons I learned to future games.