Hi there,

I'm fairly new to the world of pen and paper RPG's. About a year ago, I wanted to pick up a new hobby, so I started with D&D. That was fun (played both 3rd and 4th ed) but I was really curious about RPG's in general. I have branched out a bit, playing various games such as World of Darkness(the new version) Vampire the Masquerade (old WOD) space Gurps and a few others. I've debeloped an interest in GMing, and at the suggestion of a few friends decided to start with WFRP.

I was wondering if anyone here had any advice for a very green GM.

Hey King!

Welcome to the world of GMs. Here's some general pointers. There's a great book (and very cheap) called Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering. It's about a 25 page book costing about 5 bucks written by Robin Laws. It's THE best general read you can get for a new game master. Most of the book teaches you about "types" of gamers , why they game, and what they want out of a game. The book also can be used to find your own interests as a game master and find a game that caters to that interest. You may have noticed that white wolf is a completely different beast than DnD. DnD is mechanical, the players are interested in making powerful characters that crush enemy minis on the map while they level, where as white wolf has alot of artistic or as Robin Laws would say "story ellers" and "method actors". The goal of any good game master is giving players what they crave in an RPG while getting what you want out of it as well.

Now, specifically to Warhammer. This game is very middle of the road on the crunch scale, something between the mechanics heavy DnD and the sometimes frustrating light mechanics, heavy storytelling of White Wolf. It's very adventure oriented, more about story and the world, but good solid mechanics to build upon. You should really buy the Game Master toolkit for this game. It's aimed not only at the first time Game Masters of Warhammer, but the first time Game Master of any game. It has many tidbits of good information such as how to go about crafting a story.

If you have any more questions, just ask!

Hey, thanks for the tips, and the welcome!

I looked the book up on Amazon, it's selling there for 28.00 at the low end, which seems a little high to me for 25 pages, though it could be that good I guess. Is there somewhere else I might find it cheaper? I very much like the story telling options I see in the game. It seems in this game, more then in something like D&D, the GM has the option of interpreting abstract results. This is something I noticed in WOD, that I liked as a player and think I will like even more as a GM. I am really optomistic about WFRP being middle of the road, as there were many different competing elements I liked in both D&D and WOD.

I'll have to look into the GM toolkit. I was deciding between that and the adventurer's toolkit, but went with Adventurer's kit, as the initial set seemed as though working in more then 3 players would be difficult, and the kit would take care of that. So, I guess I'll have to wait for my next pay check!

Are there any traps that a new GM might find him/herself in quite easily, anything I should keep my eyes open to avoid?

King Tycho said:

e23.sjgames.com/item.html

Book is out of print now I guess, pdf for 7.99 on that link.

As for traps you might fall into, you really can't go wrong with this system. Like any system your players can munchkin or powergame it, but it's much more difficult than most systems. You'll see that there's a couple of cards like arrowstorm, rapid fire, and some classes like swordmaster that are very very good, some GM's (on these forums) might argue too good but overall the system is very balanced. I run the game with 6 people, it's much better for around 4 players, I wouldn't ever add more players, as I feel 6 is the max the game can really hold.

Just want to second the nomination of Robin's Laws as the best GMing advice every printed. Well worth the $8 for the PDF.

It probably would be worth the $28 if the pdf didn't exist, but luckily it does. I've got my money's worth (I paid $10 for it a few years back) several times over.