What To Do When you Referee - Session (-1)

Here are the things you should do when you referee a campaign. These are the same things you will do if you are a first time Ref or a long time Ref. I am sure that in the comments people will give us more things we could or should do. These are mine.

Session Minus 1

That is, these are the things you have to think about before you even think about being the Ref!  These are things that all happen before the players get involved at all.

1. Relationship with people at the table. 

The most important thing to remember is that we do this to have fun. We are going to be with friends and we are going to have fun. 

Don’t be a jerk. Listen and communicate clearly. Be nice. Try to engage with each person at the right times both in and out of character. While this sounds like something that happens AT the table, it's really something you should keep in mind all the time, even before you start. Ask yourself, "Is this campaign for me or is it for us?" And "How can I make it comfortable and fun for everyone?"

Keep this in mind first and foremost.

2. Physical situation. 

Make it comfortable. Have enough room to play. Have enough time to play. Have enough quiet, or enough room to make some noise and not bother other people around. 

Have snacks. 

Don’t be too loud or stinky or too anything. 

3. Setting of the game. 

This is the first time you think about touching an actual set of dice or picking out a game book. When you have a campaign idea then you can communicate this to your players.

But don't just communicate the basics. 

Make sure people are able to understand what kinds of characters will work. (eg a barbarian in a game of courtly intrigue or a bookworm in a bloody zombie game, these are interesting characters that would probably fail.)

4. The rules. 

Let people know the genre, the game and roughly the edition. Help each other with the rules. Do your best to know the rules which impact your character. Work to quickly learn the rules of common actions such as combat in a combat game or social interaction in a political game. 

5. Player expectations. 

People all have different assumptions about what Vampire is or what Champions is or what D&D (especially) is. People assume their assumptions are the shared assumptions. But within every game system and even every kind of campaign, the assumptions of what "fun" is varies from person to person.

Let them know whether this is a story path game, a story game, a tactical sim or wargame, a sandbox, how much self-direction they will need, etc.

Let them know the specific genre. Is it tinker gnomes and Holy Avengers and going to the Nine Hells at 3rd level, or are you going to experience a TPK fighting rats every 1.3 game sessions? Or maybe there's no fighting at all?!

Here is an example of what I mean when I say different assumptions. 

I play in a new school style railroading game but I didn’t know it for a few months. I was trying to play my old school self-directed way and getting frustrated that the DM kept misunderstanding me and bumping my character “back on track.” Only once I realized what degrees of freedom I actually had (more or less, the how but not the what) could I then enjoy the game! 

And I really do. 

But it took me a while to realize that the kind of fun I was used to and the kind of fun the DM there presented were 180 degrees off from each other.

So What

These are all kind of philosophy of gaming points. All kinds of people do it differently. This is just how I like to do it. 

Let me give you a specific piece of advice though: Use common technology to buy you some more game time. None of it requires any special programs or apps or an iPad either.

1. Use your phone at the table. Secret messages or odd languages sent as text messages, name generators, calculator. All that stuff.

2. Email and text each other - Ref and players - in between sessions. A lot of stuff can be accomplished away from the table. It's almost like having a whole extra one on one session in between at  times. 

Especially when it comes to making secret plans the other players can't know about, running a subplot of diplomacy, adventure, romance, lineage or searching, doing spell research or making a magic item, building or improving property, or domain or war stuff... doing it via texts and email is tremendously helpful and considerate of the other players' time.