What makes a good game master for an RPG session? Well first of all if you don't know what an RPG session is, this probably isn't the article for you. There are a lot of things that will determine if a session, or even a campaign, goes well and I won't pretend to know every nuance or even be a master myself, but I'd like to share what I find to be a critical one.
More and more, people just don't want long exposition, even in the gaming community. Do something while you narrate. No, I don't mean to hire a monkey to dance in circles while you talk in a droning monotone, I mean make the players actually learn. Give a little background, but make the players learn the rest. At the same time, don't hide it too much either. If it's a strange world they're dropped into don't spend the first session talking about it, but let them see someone getting in trouble for something they might have done if they hadn't witnessed it. If they never saw the girl getting filleted into thin strips of beef because she dared to cover her mouth after she yawned, not during, then they wouldn't know to be extra careful with manners.
I'm learning every day that people want brief blurbs, bits of info in bite-sized chunks so they can digest and consider it, without feeling like they need to take notes. Give it a try, let them get their own information at a piece by piece pace and see how that works for ya!
And no, if you're the JRR Tolkien kinda player that loves 4.5 hours of exposition with 2 die rolls mixed in, your'e not wrong, just not in the majority… Though by modern rules of stigma, I guess that means you are wrong after all… sorry to break it to you, next time drink the kool aid sooner.
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