10 things I wish I knew as a starting game master with ADHD

As a starting RPG player with a diagnosis of severe ADHD, I wanted to give GMing a shot. But once I invited my friends to play, I struggled with a lot of guilt whenever I wasn't fully prepared. I remember wanting to stop GMing completely. But it turned out that there are lots of tools to find a GM-style that suits your needs. Here are the 10 things I wish I knew as a starting game master with ADHD.

Illustration by Emiel Boven (CC BY 4.0)

1. Remember that the GM is a player too

As a GM we want to make sure players have a good time. Sometimes we are willing to go so far to make sure of this, that we lose sight of what makes the game fun for us. This is when we need to remind ourselves that we are a player too. Having fun while engaging with the game is non-negotiable. If the game starts feeling like work, that's a red flag. Just take a step back, and look for a way to go back to a place where the game can be enjoyed again or take a break. If unsure, ask a friend or one of the many RPG communities.

2. Be picky about who you play with

The easiest table to run is one filled with players who would enjoy each other's company with or without the game. So look at a prospective group through that lens. Are these people who would happily just have a drink together? Or are they here just for the game? If players don't gel socially, you'll be managing that throughout the campaign, which can take more mental bandwidth than anything else a GM does. So be picky about who you play with.

3. Play in real life

There is nothing above being physically present together with the tactile components of the game in front of us to keep you engaged with the game. It's like a campfire we share, and a lot of that is lost when moving to digital. Of course digital play can be a nice alternative, but it is no replacement. So if you can, invite your friends to play a game even if they never played a TTRPG before. Or ask your local brick-and-mortar game store if there are RPG communities looking for GMs.

4. Keep sessions short-and-sweet

Short-and-sweet sessions have become my golden standard. In the past I have had games where we played all day, slept, and continued the next day. But for regular sessions it is very challenging to stay engaged for this long, and the game starts losing some of its shine. In contrast, a 2 to 3 hour session with one or two breaks is much more manageable. Players can comfortably engage with much more energy, knowing that they won't burn themselves out. And you can still fit a full narrative arc into a short D&D session. 

5. Break campaigns up into seasons

Many people are drawn to long-form campaigns, myself included. But open ended campaigns can become aimless, lose their energy and become difficult to stay engaged with. The solution is campaign seasons. You choose at most a dozen sessions to mark off in your calendars and agree on an adventure goal or theme for that season.With a limited number of sessions, each one counts. 

This should lead to a natural and satisfying climax, although the GM might have to zoom in or out of the action at some points to keep the pacing on track. After the season, any players who want to continue playing can then choose to extend the campaign with another season or start a new campaign altogether. Campaign seasons are much easier to commit to than open ended campaigns, and give more focus to your sessions.

6. Embrace no-prep play

I cannot rely on myself to consistently prep for each session. Before I accepted this, I was gradually building up a wall of guilt which became so tall that I started failing to prep anything at all more and more often. 

That's when I found games like Blades in the Dark, which assume little to no prep so that you can improvise based on player input during the session. Since I started learning this style of GMing, I now run 2 weekly games and don't need to prepare on a weekly basis for either of them. This way, preparing for the next session can feel like icing on an already tasty cake.

For light- to no-prep play, check out Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games, amongst many others. And for effective prep in sword-and-sorcery games, check out Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master.

7. Choose a light game

Ever felt like the big popular RPGs have too much faff? That's because you can achieve the same adventuring experience with rules that fit on a couple of pages. If bulky rules are taking up too much headspace, try rules-light games like Knave or Into the Odd, or many of the wonderful indie games out there. There are even one-shot RPGs like Lasers and Feelings that fit on a single page. 

8. Delegate roles amongst players

There are many hats for the GM to wear. Too many to list here. And we think we need to wear them all, but we don't. Here's a few which I've all delegated in the past.

• The host. When you don't feel like hosting, and another player does, great. Make use of it! Especially if they're better at making the house nice and welcoming for everyone than you are.
• The rules-lawyer. If you have a player who likes diving into rules, use it. They can help other players when they're confused about something, freeing you up to do other things.
• The worldbuilder. If worldbuilding isn't part of the fun for you, you can use a published setting, or invite your players for some collaborative worldbuilding. Many games assume you do some worldbuilding together during a session 0, like Fate. Other games are purely about worldbuilding together, like Microscope.
• The quest-giver. Modern sword-and-sorcery games tend to have the GM actively give quests to the players, which they can react to. But you can totally turn the tables. Have the players come up with a shared goal during set-up, then point out what might be relevant to them in the current setting (which you could create collaboratively). Players will then come up with their own quests and you can just react to them.

9. Make everything visible on the table

With ADHD it can be difficult to maintain an active representation of the fiction in our conscious awareness, or 'theatre of the mind'. There are rules-light games with all the important player mechanics on a single reference sheet, all player abilities fully detailed on their character sheet, and all GM rules on a single sheet or GM screen. There are plenty of adventure modules that show everything you need during a session on a single spread, sheet or tri-fold. And with a stack of index cards you can easily show players the important bits of a scene. Having everything visible makes it so much easier to not get lost.

My go-to example for this is Mausritter. The rules are simple enough to easily have the important ones out on the table. The box set adds a lot of tactile tools, and The Estate is an adventure collection with adventures that each fit on a tri-fold pamphlet. If you get the and the digital copy features player-facing maps you can just drop on the table so that everyone knows what's going on.

10. Take physical notes

Taking notes is not just for reference. It's been proven that the act of writing stimulates knowledge retention. I write a lot of notes that I never use. That's not even the point. The point is that simply writing notes down helps you focus on, and retain the information. 

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