MATT: Hi. My name is Matthew Mercer. I'm a voice actor and the Dungeon Master for Critical Role
here on Geek & Sundry, and today's episode of GM Tips involves seeing what's behind the GM screen
and some tips and tricks on how to prepare yourself and your station for being a game master.
[intro music plays]
MATT: As a game master, your realm is a blend of preparation and unexpected chaos and adapting
somewhere between the two of those and, as such, your area directly behind your GM screen is your
saving grace. It's a wonderful plane of notes, information, and various tools to help you in
crafting your story, which will inevitably be flying directly out of your ass. Let's take a
look at some of my prepared GM area, then I'll give some recommendations and the kind of things
you might want to consider having available behind yours. Come on, let's have a look.
Welcome to my domain. Here is my basic set up, beginning with this. This is the official dungeon
master screen for Fifth Edition D&D. Like a lot of systems, especially the more popular ones,
make this available with pre-set rules and tables and breakdowns to remind you as a GM and have
quick access to these various aspects as they come into your game. Now, even with these official
rules that are given to you, maybe not all of them are useful to your specific campaign or there
might be aspects of the rule system that come up more often than others that you want to make sure
are front and center, so you can actually print these out and tape them individually to the screen
over things that are maybe aren't as useful. Like here I have lists about improvising damage, trap
save DCs, and attack bonuses against PCs. I have damage severity by level, potion of healing
breakdowns so I know what different levels of healing potions heal what amount. Reminders of
things I forget often, like concentration checks, highlighted in bright yellow to remind me to
actually remember that (bleep). Actually, right over here on the far side you can see I have
a collection of my players' passive perception. Very useful. That's the GM screen right there.
You also need some dice. That might come in handy. Some systems don't need it, but for the most part
you need some dice. That's helpful. Of course, your preparation notes. Over here I have my
campaign notes, which contains a basic player sheet, a cheat sheet of all the rules and things
that I can come to for quick reference so I don't have to have the books nearby, which by the way,
it helps to have the books nearby, just in case. I have the breakdown in my binder, my little setup
here of the current session as well as maybe a few previous sessions in case I have to reference them
in the past. I have sheets for custom NPCs and various monsters they may encounter or have
encountered. I have breakdowns of various locations in my world with notes on NPCs
and factions and different things that I can refer to if it comes up during the campaign. That way
I'm not going through my old computer or having to leave the table to go find it. Just keeping basic
notes at your disposal in your binder is extremely helpful. I have lists of names for NPCs in case
you have to create something on the spot you can go ahead and refer to this page. Say one of the
names on the list and then just cross it off and make a note of where they actually encountered
that NPC for later. This binder becomes a very helpful tool to make sure that you're on top
of your game during your actual session.
Next to that you want a notepad. Empty sheets for scratch notes. You're going to be taking notes the
whole time, whether it be just marking which players had cool moments that you want to award
bonus experience or items to down the road, or those NPCs you just made up. You can go ahead and
write down that basic information that way you can go back to it later without forgetting that even
happened in the campaign. Scratch pad, really useful. Also, over to the side here I have
miniatures for monsters they may encounter. That way they're readily at my disposal if I go ahead
and throw down a battle map. I have a nice little timer here. You can do a digital
timer as well. I prefer things a little more presenter-y like this, but this helps you throw
down a little bit of tension in a time-based encounter and the players will freak out as soon
as this or a digital timer hits the table and lets them know you only have five minutes to complete
this challenge. It's a pretty fun little tool.
Over here I have wet-erase markers. These are very useful for one, writing notes on your GM screen or
any plastic sheets you have on your screen. These are also great for battle maps, if all of a sudden
something you prepared goes haywire or the player pushes in a direction you weren't expecting, you
can go ahead and sketch down some elements of that map with some of these wet erase markers.
Very helpful. I have various markers for statuses and conditions in the game, where a creature or
monster gets poisoned or stunned, I can go ahead and throw that on to there as well. They have
official ones you can purchase for certain gaming sets. These are actually just soda tabs that I found multi-colored.
That way it's cheaper. Also, if you have a party member who happens to transform a lot, like a druid or
someone with polymorph, it helps to have a collection of various miniatures that show what
creature they may be able to transform into, once again preventing you from having to run off to
wherever your collection is in the other room. You can have these at the ready to pull out at a
moment's notice. Very helpful.
I have my iPad or whatever you want to use for music. Soundtrack is a very good way to keep
everyone in your immersive atmosphere. Build up some of your favorite movie fantasy soundtracks or
even just video game soundtracks that you have at your disposal. If you're doing this on Twitch or
anywhere public or live, make sure that you have permission to use it first, but at your home game
you can play whatever the heck you want. Having that right behind the screen and readily available
to press or change is a huge boon to building the atmosphere of the game. I also
have some templates to help me guide the size and area of certain spells and effects in the game. I
made these, but you can find templates like this online that you can just download and print out
and laminate, and it costs you practically nothing and you have equally awesome and functional
templates at your disposal.
There are many, many other cool options you can prepare and have at the ready and many online
GMing forums like EN World and official RPG websites that provide an endless source of these
types of recommendations. You can pick and choose and customize your own GM setup however befits
your own form of storytelling. I just hope this little glance helped give you any ideas on how to
better prepare your own GM set up. Thank you so much for watching. My name is Matthew Mercer.
You can go ahead and check out other episodes of GM Tips here at geekandsundry.com.
I'll see you next time.
[music]