Book review: How to game master like a fucking boss

When I first saw How to Game Master like a Fucking Boss by Venger Satanis I was interested in the book but somewhat put off by the title. What kind of cocky bastard gives a book a name like that? The really enthusiastic kind as it turns out.

The authors enthusiasm for Game Mastery is contagious, I got about ten pages in and decided that I would run my game on a week that I was planning to skip.

The intent of the author with this book is to present the 'Draconic Method', a system agnostic style of game mastering that has been developed over a period of three decades.

This book runs to 122 pages and consists of what I perceive as three main sections, game mastery tips, the checklist and assorted appendices.

Game mastery tips occupy roughly the first fifty pages of the book and are presented as bite sized chunks of advice, most of which are about half a page in length.

The first ten or so tips generally deal with what role playing and game mastering are, why we do them and ways to psyche oneself up to the task of running your game. As I mentioned above these serve to infuse the reader with a portion of Venger's enthusiasm for game mastery and these alone would make the book worth purchasing.

The remainder of the tips are practical in nature and pretty easy to implement in order to incrementally improve your game. Every aspect of role playing seems to receive attention, highlights for me which I'll expand on, included the authors advice on building encounters, positive affirmations and meditation. 

I always go into an encounter with a pretty good mental model of what is going on. Deliberately giving each encounter three elements and each element three aspects plus, optionally, three characteristics to each aspect is an excellent way to bring your mental model of the encounter out into the real world where your players can share it. I'm honestly surprised that I've never come across anything like this before. Revolutionary.

In my work I'm always using positive affirmations to encourage and reassure those I'm working with, and in hindsight it's surprising I never though to bring these to the gaming table.  You're sure to come across a number of tips in this book that are blindingly obvious in hindsight.

Rather than actual meditation, the author recommends spending some quiet time thinking.  This really resonated with me as I'm sure it will with many of you.  I've had insights into lots of things, not just game mastering while gardening or walking to the train station.

I did find some tips to be, perhaps, slightly odd. Despite having a matching dice set myself, I found the  recommendation to have matching dice curiously judgmental. Also, what to do about unwanted flirting seemed a bit irrelevant, but perhaps for those better looking than I it could be useful.

The tips don't seem to be presented in any particular order, for example 'unwanted flirting' is sandwiched between 'focus on one thing at a time' and 'have a backup adventure ready to go'; this has positive and negative aspects but on the whole I liked the approach as there is almost certainly something interesting on any random page even if it does make it slightly difficult to find any particular tip.

The Checklist is a list of ideas for things to include in your campaign.  It occupies roughly twenty pages, and at four or five items per page is a goldmine of game master inspiration. Not everything will be suitable for your game but most of it will be. As I was idly grazing through the checklist I pieced together an approximate solution to a campaign planning problem I've been grappling with for some time.

The appendices as I'm calling them consist of a selection of tables, a glossary for Viridian and some dungeon maps.

The tables could equally serve as inspiration while preparing your game or to fill in a blank that has arisen during play.  Those that stand out the most to me are one hundred questions to ask characters to find out a little more about them, a series of tables for creating a cult and a table of twenty unique NPCs.

The Viridian glossary allows a game master to deliver text or speech in a sinister sounding language the author has devised.  I haven't completely read this section but after a quick skim there appears to be a good selection of words that should allow wide range of phrases to be constructed.

Finally, at the very back of the book are three very different, unlabeled dungeon maps for those times when you need a bit of help coming up with the layout of that temple or thieves den or whatever. An excellent addition that the author could probably have gotten away without had he been less rigorous.

I have a digital copy of this book and it is professionally laid out in an easy to read two column format, although it could have done with more thorough proofreading. If my previous experience with DrivethruRPG is anything to go on, a physical copy should have good print and construction quality.

The cover image is gorgeous and evocative and there is plenty of art scattered through the book that will appeal to the thirteen year old boy in all of us.

The contents page actually stretches to a page and a half and unless you can remember the exact name of the section you're looking for you may have to search for a while to find just what you want.

How to game master like a fucking boss is a solid title with much to recommend it. If you run a game, you will almost certainly find a lot in this book to help you improve your game and to make you more enthusiastic about running it. I'm going to be implementing the Draconic Method in my game, I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Venger Satanis takes game mastery seriously, maybe you should too.

How to Game Master Like a Fucking Boss is available from DrivethruRPG.com