The Best Rifts Guide for GM's!

Rifts is a world created by the GM or game master. The first thing to know about GMing is who the characters are. This means you need to know all their skills, M.D.C., S.D.C., attributes, equipment, etc. A good way to keep track of these is to have your player(PC's) make their characters and when they are done, copy the info onto another sheet for you.

Second, the GM is the God of the game. Without a GM a game cannot exist. It is alright to have more than one gm, but some rules of that are:
1. Never use another GM's NPC's(non-player characters) because you probally are never going to use them correctly.

2. Don't take over a campaign that someone else started unless you are just following a detailed plan approved by the campaign creator.

3. Do not purposely try to muck up another GM's campaign. This can lead to loss of trust, respect, friends, and compassion in the future because some campaigns take weeks, months, or sometimes years to do. If you screw it up by taking it over, kill several vital characters, or change the plot, there's one thing you can do: Run. A campaign can take a long time to think up and figure out what's going to happen in it. If you ruin that you expect never to be allowed to GM again.

I will now go into the tips for GM's to have good, clean, wholesome(yeah, right) games.

Tips to put players back inline-

Going back to the phrase, 'the GM is the God of the game'. This is true. Remember as a god you are to be kind and benevolent, not bloodthirsty and deceitful. Your players should respect your abilities as GM. NEVER EVER LET THEM PUSH YOU AROUND!! If you let them they will feel they can have anything in game from a super rare item they shouldn't have, to near ultimate power. If they get out of line with requests, there are a couple of things you can do:
1. Don't let them look at the books. This works for me because I hold domination over all of the Rifts books we use except for one.

2. Make bad things happen to their characters. Curses, diseases, dismemberment, what ever works best to get them back in line.

3. Kill their character(this is a last resort because outright slaughter of a character is bad because it may drive away the person playing it).

4. A truly last attempt thing to do, is say, "forget you guys" and walk off and find a new group to start anew with.

The Megalomaniac player-

It's almost for certain at least once in your GMing career you will find a megalomaniac player. These are the people that wish to start their brand new characters off with claws that can cut through anything, Godlike powers, certain items that make them all powerful, and so on. I was fortunate. There was only one. He moved away. If in your case they don't move away, and continue to pester you about role-playing: Refer to tips to put players back inline. Use all the attempts from most reasonable to harshest. These people take too long to change, and they always make the game less enjoyable. Ditch them as soon as possible or make a game dedicated to the other players trying to kill his(or her) character.

Making a campaign-

This is one of the hardest steps in GMing next to getting players. This is also not to be taken lightly. Many people are creative and can run a good game based on a last minute innovation and imaginative thinking during the game. Unfortunately these people are few and far between and for the average joe to have a good game, there must be planning.
First write down ideas for NPC's. Don't go too indepth on these or you'll be disappointed, most likely they'll die pretty quickly. This leaves a good amount of space for you to have NPC's killed off by characters and not drastically change the campaign.

Never forget that the players are the ones that are technically "writing the story," so if you write a story that has to be followed to the last detail by the characters it will fail. The players can't read your mind (please no arguments) and they don't think exactly like you. If you write a story and expect the players to follow it, you will be extremely disappointed.

Tips for a cool game-

1. Try making maps of the area the characters will be traveling in, as to not create confusion about their location.

2. Making replicas of items you have the characters find can sometimes be fun if it's hard to describe or it's a weapon and you need a quick live action mock battle to make clear what the characters are doing.

3. If you do have a mock battle, never have body contact. At some point, someone will accidently do something too hard, and it may seriously hurt or piss off who ever it was accidently done to.

4. Always write out details about the adventure the characters are on. Don't be so detailed as to say if the characters don't do this, they will mess up everything, because it's no fun. Be detailed enough so your not thinking to yourself for too long about what's inside a storage locker, or on how much MDC a guard has.

5. Breaks during a game are essential to keep your sanity. Many games can go from about three hours to a week, so take frequent breaks otherwise some of the people in your group will suddenly think they are their character, and run off into the forest looking for treasure. Not that I've done anything like that...

6. The location of where everyone is going to game at is important. If you make the game forty miles from everybody and tell them to be there in ten minutes, you aren't being fair. Try and make it the same distance from everybody (smack in the middle) and make sure you tell everyone where it's at so they don't go looking for everyone in the wrong spot.

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