GM Academy

One of the most effective tools I have in my repertoire is a fun activity, or themed group even, called GM Academy. 

While most of the groups I run are focused around simply playing a TTRPG, GM academy puts that all aside and focuses on something else- Running games. Participants of these groups are usually students from my various TTRPG groups I run at the clinic, who have expressed interest in learning how to GM themselves, and thus each GM Academy is tied to their interests and skill levels. 

The focus of GM Academy isn’t to teach everything there is to know about the art of becoming a GM, instead, it’s to focus on one specific skill or aspect that highlights the joy of GMing, while using that as an avenue to have larger discussions around things like table management, building player engagement, and narrative and environmental design. To this date, I’ve run a large number of GM Academies, and they have run the gamut from building individual encounters to designing a full campaign. Here are some of my most effective GM Academies:

The Campaign: For this one, I tell the students we will be designing an entire campaign in two hours. I have big paper all over the room, and we begin with the world, and brainstorming plot hooks. Writing down ideas, I encourage the kids to synthesize them into a compelling world. Then, once they have that, I encourage them to think up some NPCs, and a main villain who will propel the plot forward. After that, they build the starting village and the dungeon, and from there it all goes into tying it together.

The Campaign is a lot of fun to run, because by the end of it, the students will often way to take the artifacts home with them, or beg me to run that campaign with them- to which I tell them to run it themselves. It’s a good way for students to learn the basics of designing a TTRPG campaign, and have fun playing off each other’s ideas, and resolving conflict equitably.

The Worldbuilding Session: For this one, I start with a big map, and toss a bunch of dice down on it. Using the general shape of where the dice fall, I create continents, then add various structures based on where certain dice fall- For example, d20s are always metropolises, d10s are usually some type of castle, d100s are some anomalous area or interesting encounter, and d4s are caves or farms. The students then go around adding one of the following: Locations, NPCs, or Rumors. You can spice things up by adding factions as well. This way, they learn collaborative play, and how to compromise when someone is adding something they may not have in their creative vision. 

The alternate version of this is a city building session, where you create  a basic city map, and split it into sections. From there, the students will assign roles to each district of the city (i/e port district, magical wasteland, shrine district, etc.) From there, they can add locations, NPCs, factions, and rumors. What’s fun with the faction system is you can assign which factions control which districts, setting up a really, really fun mechanic for turf wars and power struggles if you end up playing with that map. Seeing a particularly nasty faction start to slowly take over more and more of the city has a very compelling effect on students to work together to stop it.

Another GM Academy activity I enjoy running is the Monster/Encounter design. This activity ranges from building a single monster to an encounter that might include that monster. This one is really cool because, while not necessarily a collaborative activity, the show and tell aspect afterwards is really rewarding, and I think there’s a lot of benefit to creative expression and experimentation, as well as being able to supportively encourage self expression.

The final GM Academy activity I’ll talk about is the Dungeon Build, where the students all take a role in designing a dungeon. I will often set up a basic layout and theme, and the students will all work together to make it all work. For example, one might be in charge of designing the environments and traps, one might be building the bosses, one might be designing the combat encounters, and one might be coming up with treasure. It’s really, really fun to see them discussing how to make particularly nasty and lethal encounters, their faces lighting up as they discover great new potential to annihilate unsuspecting adventurers.

For GM that embraces Pacifism, I do enjoy a nasty deathtrap every now and then. As a treat.

If any of you are trying out GM Academy, I’d love to hear your stories! You can find me at rollforkindness on X and Bluesky. 

Thanks for reading!