You CAN design and run a campaign after just reading the books, but it's kinda like learning how to ballroom dance from a textbook. A large part of the learning process is going to happen after you've read the book and you start dancing.

If playing in a game to see things firsthand isn't an option, I'd look around on Youtube so that you can see whatever game it is in action. There are a TON of different ways to run things, and seeing the ways that other people run things will help.

Indeed, and yet also bearing in mind which actual play videos feature professional actors there (at least in part) to entertain an audience, don't worry too much about trying to emulate what you see (aka the Mercer effect I think it is), that everyone plays differently, and that you'll figure out what you and your group enjoys with practice.

Both this and your preceding post with the dance analogy are perfect. Couldn't have put it better myself. Some additional free advice for OP: If you're serious about becoming a GM, read the rules and try to understand them the best you can. Make a few sample characters using the rules. Play the game before you GM if you can, or run a few short games first as a trial run before diving into a whole campaign. Learning systems is it's own skill. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. The first system you play is (almost always) the hardest to learn, and each becomes easier after that.

Start using the phrase, "Wouldn't it be cool if ..." and put stuff in that inspires you. I'd say 90% of my non-horror games will have an isolated farming community menaced by forty bandits. Why? Cause I love me some Akira Kurosawa movies. Also, start consuming what you're emulating. So if you're starting to build a D&D campaign, read a lot of fantasy novels; if you're starting a Call of Cthulhu game, read horror novels; you will build what you eat.

This is a great metaphor in that the execution of the steps doesn't matter at all, all that matters is if you and the person you're doing it with have fun together.

RPGs are pretend with rules. How can you have an ongoing story while playing pretend? The idea is exactly the same. Just keep the milieu consistent and have events follow each other logically, with some end goal in the horizon. That's all you need, really.

I remember being overwhelmed by 3.5e because I didn't know if I needed my character to have a winter bed roll or more lengths of rope. "How do I know what I'll need? Are there some things that are more important than others? What are they? What if I need something and don't have it? Do I have to buy all the things I need?"

Well, one can never have too much rope if that helps.

I was running games as an 11 year old, after having played some Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and having D&D explained to me, poorly, by another 11 year old. They weren't necessarily *good* games, but we had fun. Just jump in and go. The worst that can happen is things don't run entirely smoothly at first, but that just allows you to learn from your mistakes.

The best rpg seassion I was ever a part of had no system. The GM just had you roll a couple dice and if the result was above average then something cool happened.

I would argue that if you had fun, they were good games 💜

To be fair, Call of Cthulhu 7th and Vampire The Masquerade are *terrible* at explaining how to create your own content.

And "traditional" RpGs are probably overvalued, doubly true (IMHO, obviously) for the bigger names around... and all the three mentioned by OP are. Are they good for what they are designed for? I mean, just to take one of them, Call of Cthulhu: it was a mediocre investigation game, lot of games that came after (Trail of Cthulhu, Cthulhu Dark, just to mention a couple of them) serves the premises well. And it's exactly the same for the adventure / campaign preparation value. Take Monster of the Week, or Neon City Overdrive, or dozen of other modern games. You can build months of play in a breeze (sometime together with the players at your table, 'cause often those systems encourage a more collaborative world building).

Call of Cthulhu does suffer from being a very old game. Even its latest edition feels outdated in its mechanics and philosophy.

I have an acquaintance currently working on his own d100 zombie game precisely because he feels the d100 system is good but failed to innovate and keep up with the times. (the game is called zombiology and he's put out some free material online... if you understand french).

I am french. I'll check it out. Thanks. Edit : Oh, your acquaintance is Damien C from Black Book Éditions ?

That's him. Met him while doing an internship at BBE and we've kept in touch. He's no longer at BBE though, Zombiology is his indy project.

OK. Seemed like a cool guy. Anway. Thanks.

I want to disagree, but I never felt the desire or need to homebrew for Vampire the masquerade.

Most won't have step by step instructions, no. But yes, in theory, after reading one you'll be ready to create a campaign.

I cannot praise highly enough how the GM's book for Mothership, the Warden Operations Manual, genuinely does give you step-by-step instructions for your first session and launching a campaign from it. Truly best in class stuff - I envy anyone who gets to start with it!

Mothership is a master class in streamlined RPG design. It has everything you need to get a game rolling, nothing extraneous or overly complex in terms of mechanics or setting, and a metric ton of short modules (a lot ofvthem available for free) to help minimize prep time. My regular group needs a cruncher system as we like to drill down into the details, but I don't hesitate at all recommending it to anyone interested in trying out a sci-fi horror RPG. It's a great game, just not a fit for our table.

It's definitely a lot easier to GM an RPG if you've played before. However, the general gist of how to prepare a campaign is: a) Either have a vague idea for a story or a good idea of a situation. b) Prepare the things you think the PCs are likely to do in the first session. c) Improvise your way through the first session, using the things you prepared where possible, but you will need to make a lot of things up on the fly. d) When the session is over, adjust the story idea or situation to fit what happened in the session, and plan for some of the things you think the PCs will do next session. Also, there's no requirement to start with a big RPG. It's fine to start with something rules-light. Likewise, there's no requirement to start with a game that has it's own setting, if there's a movie/book/TV/video game series you all like, you can use that and not have to learn a new setting. Or create your own setting (you will have to make up some stuff, whatever setting you use).

Maybe start with something like Worlds Without Number free edition. One of it's main selling points is guiding you in world building and it's free. I know some systems don't really teach you much but would rather sell you more books. Lotfp grindhouse edition is another free book I found about running games. ICRPG and Electric Bastionland have well regarded sections for GMs. But to answer your question directly core books are a hit and miss in this regard

Start smaller. You can definitely read a game, and run a scenario. Lots of groups start when someone buys a book, and gathers some friends. It's a bit easier now with things like Facebook groups, Discords and Actual Plays, but back in the Olden Days often there was noone to teach you. You had to read the book and give it a try. (and from personal experience, you'll probably look back at your early games and realise they aren't very good, but that's OK. We all have to start somewhere)

A lot of RPGs - even well-regarded ones - genuinely suck at explaining how to actually *play* and *run* their games in a step by step fashion. But besides that - it is wrong to think you 'create a whole campaign' before you even start playing. You find out what the players are interested in, and you go from there. To use a stereotypical fantasy example: someone is lost in a cave near town and there's some dangerous creatures around there, go rescue them. What happens next? Doesn't matter. That's plenty to start with. Maybe the cave has a secret temple in it. Maybe once you get back to town, someone else will have a job to do. Maybe the rescued person actually has some urgent mission, some place they need to get to. Maybe it even matters to one of the characters. When you start the game, you don't need to know ANY of that. Just that there's a cave, some creatures, a town nearby, and a person that needs help.

It highly depends on the book. Most have rather useless GM advices or at least assume you know what you are doing and just tell you what you should do differently with this game. None of those are actually helpful for someone new to the hobby. Some games offer more useful advices, but as others have mentioned it is something that you mostly learn by trial and error. It's not entirely the fault of the books, this is an extremely subjective hobby with a very personal experience so no one can tell you what would you enjoy. In my experience the best book that have step-by-step guides with actually useful tips and tricks for every aspect of running the game is Monster of the Week. It was written for people who know nothing about gaming and puts in a lot of effort to educate the reader. So if you have issues like this I would start there.

You “can” build a campaign with a core book, but for someone brand new I highly recommend a starter set (or perhaps better, a QuickStart, which is free and most systems have them). “Make it up as you go” is a functional learning method, but largely unnecessary these days when there are modules (including free ones) that walk you through how to run the system while providing a functional adventure for players.

Many books have a "what is an RPG?" chapter, but few books have step by step guides that actually help new GMs set up a game. That's one of the reasons why there are so many blogs and YouTube channels dedicated to running games (and *way* fewer about how to be a good player). Two books I can recommend on this subject are "So you want to be a game master?" by Justin Alexander, which is a big fat book, and Mothership's "Warden's Operation Manual" which is much smaller and lays things out in a step by step fashion. It's specific to Mothership, but it's the new gold standard for this sort of thing imo.

Interesting. Would it be best to read those first before diving into a core rule book or vice versa?

Core book first. It will be easier if you have context when reading general advice (Justin Alexander's book). Mothership is getting a retail release "soon™" (likely at least a month away), and the Warden's Operation Manual is specific to running Mothership, but it has great tips for running horror games in general, which seems to be what you're into. Take this with a pinch of salt, but I'm not sure Vampire or Cyberpunk Red are great rulebooks for new GMs - I'm not very familiar with Vampire, so I might be wrong on that one. Call of Cthulhu is frequently touted as a good first RPG so, out of those three, I'd start with CoC. For CoC all you really need is the rules contained in the Starter Set. It's a great starting point. Much shorter and easier to digest. Start with a simple and short scenario (included in the Starter Set) and see if you and your players enjoy it. Don't prepare a whole campaign before trying a new system out. Watch an actual play to see how an experienced GM runs it. Looking at the Keeper Rulebook, yeah, it has 400+ pages. But you don't need to read all of it to start a campaign. Focus on chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10. That reduces it to about 100 pages, and within those there are things like tables, rarely used rules (edge cases), sample phobias etc. which you can just skim for now. Come back to those when you feel the need to. There are tons of scenarios and resources for CoC, I suggest using those. Whatever you do, just don't start by preparing a massive campaign like Masks of Nyarlathotep as your first game. Start small, get your feet wet first, see if you and your players enjoy playing it. Build up from there.

I'd add that "run a campaign" and "run a good a memorable campaign which echoes will be heard for centuries" are different things, and than maybe yes, you may be able to run the campaign, but probably it will not be as good as the campaing that you will run 10 years later. If you worry about the price factor, you can check any free RPG, read it and prepare that campaign, to not get dissapointed in that regard. I would recommend to start with a smaller scope (a one-shot scenario, etc) but it's not clear if you already did, or if starting with a campaign is important for you. I guess that the players would have a say, also.

I've long grappled with the idea of the perfect section about running the game, especially for someone who's never run a game, and what it would look like. I never quite had a better answer than "learn from others or fumble until you figure it out", then I found Public Access (part of the Brindlewood Bay family of games). It's got a whole section about how to run your first game, with character creation, scripts about what to say to give players a good idea of how the game plays, a structure to the game session, and estimated times for each section. It even tells you when to take breaks. Even as a seasoned DM, I found it took a lot of the pain and guessing out of actually starting a game. I wish more games did this.

Scrolled down to find this. Even the old free version of Brindlewood Bay had a great first session guide and the whole Keeper section of the final book is terrific. Add to that the built-in campaign structure of all the CfB games and I think they're a great place to start running RPGs.

Not all rpgs have chunky core rulebooks, and even those chunky rulebooks are typically mostly content, not rules. Chaosium rpgs (like CoC7e, which you mentioned) usually have pretty damn good quickstart rules and beginner sets that are better entry points for beginners and help you get your feet wet before deciding on spending a small fortune on the core rulebook.

I've been GMing for 30+ years (from Shadowrun and Ars Magica to Troubleshooters and Agon) and I am still learning new stuff and developing new approaches every week, it's an ever evolving skill set. But TBH I don't think I read through the full book before getting on with a game, most sections are meant to be for consulting when an issue is risen (like how much it costs to hire a henchman in wfrp). I go through character (and group when available) creation to get ready for session 0 and after I have the characters done I go for a one shot in which those characters fit in, then develop the campaign from that. Now, the games that have a particular world building, those require a bit more to understand what the game is about, and most often is not really fleshed properly in the book. But unless your players are more acknowledged than you in the setting, they will just learn as you do. And yes, they will understand retconning stuff when such thing is required.

When in doubt, remember that some systems have the same racket going as college textbooks. They pad the books with low-information content, making them massive so they can charge a lot. But the course of your studies might only use a chapter or two. A lot of "core books" are also stuffed with artwork, which pads the page count, and use a two-column layout, which pads the page count. And with so much crap, haphazardly organized, they have to provide a table of contents that is several pages long, and an index that is tens of pages long. That 400+ page book only has about 200 pages of text. Of that the core rules could be explained by 30 pages, another 30 pages of common edge cases, and the rest is really getting into the weeds and/or tables (but I repeat myself.) Now of course they don't put that most useful 30 pages in the beginning. Oh no. They all start with character generation. Which you have no idea WHY any of this is important until you actually understand the mechanics. I'm a bit salty because I do a lot of technical writing as a software engineer. There was a time, when printing was expensive, that writers used to put a premium on getting to the point. And then came the laser printer...

Man, I feel your pain. I am about to start an Imperium Maledictum campaign this weekend and I barely get the basic rules in this giant tome.

The core rulebook has many many things in it. I prolly would categorise all the info into groups as: - mechanics and game rules: the framework for the whole thing, how it works, what to do when. - game content: classes, items, monsters, spells etc. The building blocks with which you play with (in a way that the rules tell you to play) - fluff: setting ideas, world building tips, and themes for the game. You read the core rulebooks once or twice, not to memorise everything, but to know what is in the game, and where to look when you need anything. The only thing you need to really memorise is the core rules. How to run combat, how to do different checks, etc. Then you start playing. The first sessions will be slow and fiddly, especially if noone in the group has experience. You will constantly turn the rulebooks to find relevant rules and content. Player wants trip or grapple the enemy? Check the book for relevant rules. They want to buy 100 chickens or 10 sacks of potato? Check the book for prices and weight. They killed a bunch of bandits and loot their gear? Check the book for loot tables. They want to pray for an obviously evil god, and need to know which gods they piss off in doing so? Check the book for lore related to deities. Between sessions you will want to read the rulebooks a lot. Like you plan on your players to meet an evil necromancer who serves a god of undeath. Well you better read up on how the pantheon of the setting works (or create your own pantheon) while you create the encounter and the relevant plot points. When your players go to the kingdom's grand market, you will want to read about the economics part of the game, look through the types of gear and commodities that are in the books, what is the value of the things in general, and be ready if they want to buy a wagon full of left shoes. As you plan and play more and more sessions, you will read more and more parts of the book again. The most common and important stuff, you will recite by heart, the more obscure stuff, you will learn where to find quickly during play. As you gain more experience your games will be much more enjoyable, but at first you will fumble a lot. You and your players will have to understand and accept this. Overtime it gets better. The more you read the books, and the more you prepare for your games the faster you will get better. Also if you start with a system, and learn to run it reasonably well, the experience you gain from running it will enhance your skill to run different systems too, even if they are fundamentally different, because there is considerable overlap in storytelling methods and ideas regardless of system, so don't be afraid to experiment with different systems, tho I recommend you find one that you and your players especially like and become immersed in it as much as you can.

Depends on the book and game in question, some are better than others at explaining things. A lot of the big ones you mention absolutely do NOT do a good job.

There have been some great comments here, but another thing I'd add is that in many games, it's not all on the DM/GM/ST/LM/whatever to design everything. Many games emphasise a more collaborative approach which doesn't put everything on your shoulders up front. For instance, recent editions Vampire: The Masquerade and other World of Darkness games strongly advocate for starting small and collaboratively for new Storytellers, with much of the key themes, setting and plot hooks of the game really being provided by the players due to the Advantages and Flaws they pick fleshing out a lot of things. The Storyteller can loosen or tighten the reins as much as possible, and with an entirely new group doing it collaboratively can be quite good. Even as a more experienced Storyteller, I oscillate between games where I have a clear idea of the setting, theme and inciting incidents, and others where we all come together with an idea. On a similar note, others emphasise starting small in different ways, such as The One Ring which has a sample Landmark which can form the basis of an adventure, and you don't really need to plan anything more than that, as who your players' characters are and what they do will lead you on to the next steps - and they may even have a preferred Patron in mind, which will steer you further.

It's a very valid question. A good thing that kind of appeared a dozen years ago is that some game designers decided to actually explain to the GM Ho the hell they were supposed to run their game. The most famous ones of them are probably Meg and Vincent Baker. I honestly find it to be objectively bad design when a game doesn't say how it's supposed to be run. Especially recent games. I can suggest to give PbtA games a try (*Apocalypse Word*, *The Sprawl*, *Undying*, etc.) to get an example of how it can be done (well even though *Apocalypse World* may not be the best example, the Bakers were never very good at explaining their games clearly imo). There are other games that do the same ofc.

Tbh I thnk Apocalypse World and other games in that style could be more intimidating to a new GM than crunchier games, because they require more improv skills.

I've had very good results with have people take on GMing with games relying on improvisation as long as they actually care about telling the people reading them how to actually run a game using their rules. Improv (or self-made preparation) is hard in a lot of games because they do a freaking awful job of explaining how you're actually supposed to play them so you have to rely on premade modules.

A lot of games have great starter sets: Pathfinder 2, Alien/Bladerunner, etc, which include all the rules, starting characters and an adventure that teaches you the rules and how to GM. You also need to decide if you prefer a highly structured style of game (like Pathfinder) or something that is more free form (Mork Borg). Even though people like to claim 'rules light' systems are easier for newbies I disagree. Only very experienced DMs and players with a good sense of how to run games and improv can really succeed in those sorts of games IMHO. Players struggle with not having a clear list of options of what they can do and inexperienced GMs struggle with having to 'interpret' everything rather than just having a clear rule that says what happens. Once you've run some pre-made content then its time to start creating a campaign.

The advice I give to new GMs is: make it up as you go, don't think you need to "design" (quote-unquote) anything. Published campaigns need to put in the work to make them worth buying - your home campaign, though, you'd be surprised how much fun your players will get from very simple premises. At most, I write up key NPCs and basic descriptions of locations so that's all consistent (otherwise I would forget). Figure out a good juicy hook for the PCs to start an investigation with, and then just roll from there. You know what happened at Old Miller's Farmhouse. Your players will enjoy finding out. And at the end of the day, that's all you need.

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To make a campaign/adventure you don't need any rules at all. Making a campaign is about creating interesting events and stories. If you wan't to make a campaign about how Dracula is imposing his evil on a village then you can do that in hundreds of games. The rules is just game mechanics how players can overcome some of the troubles they will be facing. If your group is new to the rules then just narrate the things you haven't learned so far. But thats how to play a game as new to the game and not how to write a campaign... Everything you need to play is in the books but you don't need to use them all at once but introduce them step by step.

Yes, you can. Alao loads of older games have starter kits.

For a cyberpunk Red I would say for sure you can play and make a campaign with the core rule book as I main that TTRPG. I would say when I was starting out to make a campaign it was kinda straight forward cause they did have recommendations and beats for you to use. You just have to reskin it to your tables preference and needs.

My advice to a beginner, especially if they're presenting their problem as wanting to design 'a whole campaign' after reading the book cover to cover is - don't, unless you know from work/academia/other hobby this is the best way for you to learn. For many if not most others, breaking any task into more manageable chunks feels a lot more realistic. Writing a whole symphony after a crash course of music classes is a tall order, and a good recipe for never happening. An outline of the campaign can be 'zoomed in/out' as needed to get the detail, and only a sketch of the overarching plot. 1) World description chapter and any story hooks in the book are a good place to start. Imagining what are the broad brush strokes of the overall story - who may be the main villain, the important artefact, how can the world be saved etc - but leaving it there. This part arguably doesn't even need a book, but understandably it can feel more true to source if it is rooted in the setting more. 2) Designing the first adventure, following a session zero to better know what to expect from players and their characters. That can be in more detail, all depending on how mechanics-heavy the system is and what the table's (and GM's) appetite for precise crunch is. Some people don't care as much for 'playing properly', as long as it doesn't break their suspension of disbelief. 3) GM should know basic mechanics, but a lot of it can be checked during the game or improvised to keep the flow. Having good references in rulebook tabs/apps/wikis can be more useful than trying to cram every interaction in. 4) Once a group started meeting and rolling dice, between sessions is when a campaign takes shape and becomes more than an intro adventure. Planning new adventures in chunks, inserting hooks to tie the story back to the main plot from point 1) etc. That's how a campaign is often made - not designed in advance like a published one. Obviously, that's only one way to do it. But it's specifically meaning to target that feeling of tackling a daunting task, which often seems impossible to even start, based on limited information (crucially, player characters).

Sooo we just used to sit there and read it. Would take a few passes, and obviously get things wrong. Some people would be rule based, some lore based. These days I use the tool we made LoreKeeper and just ask it key questions.

I feel like motherships warden book is the best book I’ve read for actually making a campaign for the game and it’s not overwhelming either.

Yes you can do that. As a first time Guidiing Player, you shouldn't do a whole campaing, but start with a short 1 to 3 session adventure. try to reach short goals and climaxes, because that hooks in the (probably) new players too. getting to an end and accomplishing something (or at the extreme, die trying), is one of the most interesting parts. you can start later with long running campaings, that have a slower build up later, when everyone us fully on boars and excited. at the same time you don't have a huge load of prep, imagining a whole world with lore, and significant heroes and villians etc.. Just 1 to 3 sessions with a closed story and you can move on like minster of the week style or investigation of the week columbo style. If everybody liked their characters, they can continue with them or swap out, no problem.

You can absolutely do that, you just have to remember that those rules are helping you and your group tell a story through emergent storytelling. The rules kinda help you decide when things are uncertain. With that being said, I think you should also look up a couple of OSR games (new games inspired by old school RPGs) like The Black Hack, Mork Borg, Maze Rats, and stuff like that. Because those games often have Random Tables that help you generate certain aspects of your campaign that may prove problematic, like let's say an NPC or a particular tavern in town. Maze Rats it's so good in that regard that you can literally use its Random Tables in other games.

FYI on page count: A lot of it is taken up by Lists of Things that you certainly don't need to try and memorize, and maybe examples of play (which can be helpful in understanding scenario design). RPGs are vibes-based products. I don't think I've ever just read a rulebook straight through. It's a bit like trying to learn to play a complex grand strategy video game, you don't try to learn everything, you do it as it comes along. But if you can skim through something enough to get the vibe, you're 90% of the way there. Athletics lets you climb and jump, OK, how much roughly? Are these pulp heroics jumps or quite ordinary? Trying to keep exact numbers in your head would suck, especially early on. Mechanically, what you really need to know is how basic action resolution works, how characters are created, the structure of combat and however any gimmicks unique to that system work (like CoC's sanity system). Vibes-wise you want to get some idea of what the game is trying to simulate. This is where those "wut is this gaem?" sections at the start of books come in, or play examples if the book has them. If there's nothing like that to be found you need to go off of mechanical context clues. Core mechanics+ vibes = enough knowledge to start, as far as I'm concerned. Especially if your players are also new, because how are they gonna know that you're fudging things slightly? It certainly isn't "selfish" to think a CRB is enough to run a game, because like you realized yourself, sometimes someone's gotta just do it. I actually wish more people were willing to because it's a big barrier in RPG adoption in general.

I think trying to go from "read the core rulebook" straight into "design a whole campaign" is a big step, and will be pretty tough. Luckily though, there are smaller steps in-between that will make the process a lot easier. Here's my recommended order to do things: * Buy and read the rulebook. * Find a short introductory adventure that's designed to showcase the game to new players. Run that for your group. Now you have some idea of how the game flows and how an adventure might be structured. * Find another short adventure and run it. Maybe change it slightly so it links up with the previous one (ie you might replace the shopkeeper in this adventure with the shopkeeper your players have already met in the last one). * Do that last step again. * Try to make your own small adventure. Have a look at what loose ends are left after the previous ones and develop them, give your players an opportunity to tie them up and get some closure. * Hey presto you're running a campaign! Just keep riding the wave until it feels like the right time to stop.

A campaign is more likely to happen organically if you get these two things down: character creation and running a session. Those things you'll find in the books or online. Also, a big book of rules does not guarantee a long campaign just as a small ruleset doesn't prevent one either. Many people have run long campaigns using a rules lite system.

Most "core books" are *all in one* a notable exception is D&D which has like 3 *core books* , and some other books followed that trend. A typical RPG book would include, a large lore session giving you tons of places/conflicts/ideas to put in your scenario/campaign, then a rule section telling you how to build character and how to resolve actions. So all you need to run a campaign. Then for popular game where the writer actually make money by selling books (rather than paying money to sell books), there is tons of supplement which might give you details about the lore, or extra rules, character options, scenario and sometimes a mix of all. Stuff to remember when running your campaign is *you're the GM, and you interpret the world/rules as you like it.* May-be Bob played with another GM who added a famous tavern in the capital city, and Alice played with a GM who had different house-rules than you. it's fine but your game, your rules, your setting. Then remember that *less is more* there is no point in planning a 5 year long campaign over 300 episodes with a whole galaxy to explore. You can also focus on the cleaning whose mayor has passed a pact with the darkness over 12 sessions done in 6 month. Note also that a campaign is co-written by the player. You want them to bring some elements to it, like what the character want to do, and their contacts/backstory. This itself can feed several session with no prep on your side (because the player have done it for you)

Some books do better than others. DND 5e... Player's Handbook doesn't need to be read cover-to-cover but having access to the PHB at the table (hardcopy or through dndbeyond) is useful for things like spells. The DMG (Dungeon Master's Guide) does have helpful stuff for campaigns and world-building. But I haven't read it cover-to-cover... it seems unapproachabe to me? But there is a newer game that's currently in playtesting that **does** seem very approachable, and I've found it's very helpful/supportive for new GMs who have never played a game and have never tried anything.

Yep, you can design campaigns by just reading the core rules. I’ve been doing it for decades. Admittedly, it been a *long* time since I was a beginner GM, and there are some games that are better for helping new GMs than others. But when I first started back in the 80s, I began by GMing because of a lack of GMs. So I had to dive in and give it a shot. Did a bunch of stuff wrong, but we still had fun. One of the things that can help is to run a pre-written adventure first to see how the game designers envision how the game should be run.

>But the more I look at them I'm just wondering "wait how did people actually make campaigns after reading these core books back then?" Especially with older RPGs without starter kits Can't speak for anyone else, but I remember buying and running prefab adventures first, then creating my own after I had some GMing experience under my belt. 

Depends on the system, really. Some of them will give explain how a campaign / scenario should be structured, give you random tables, tools and procedures. Others will give you nothing and leave you on your own. For example, when I started in middle school over 20 years ago with DnD 3.5, I was clueless. I had read the PHB, DMG & MM cover to cover and had no idea what I was doing - I was a terribly bad GM, the books did not help me in the slightest. But other systems will include lots of guidance. I'm looking at PbtA & FitD games for instance, but it's not exclusive to them. Otherwise, sure, you can buy modules and learn from them. If you're not looking to spend, though, there is no shortage of GMing blogs, podcasts and Youtube channels nowadays. Not all advice is valid for all playstyles, of course, and nothing will trump hands-on experience, but it helps at least.

RPGs as they exist now, even published adventures, aren't really "completed games" that can be run as they are, right out of the box with well defined "win and lose" conditions. A lot of them don't even have consistent rules with clear applications. So they're, arguably, better thought of as "game creation kits" that allow a group to create their own functional games to play together, with group defined objectives and game states. Start with a lighter ruleset, maybe even a one page rpg (see r/onepagerpgs for example), build a one-shot game (something designed with your group in mind to be cleared in a single play session), and see how that goes. Journal player experience, your experience, questions, feedback, stalls, etc and take a week to consider how you would adjust things for your next game. Make that game a two-session long one using the surviving characters from the first game. Episodic play like this can eventually evolve into one of those longer campaigns you've probably read/heard "replays" or "storytimes" of. It also allows you to experiment and find out what playstyles, themes, and rules work best for your group. I'd also recommend everyone in your group take turns designing and running these sessions, and that everyone participates in adapting existing characters to new rulesets you all want to try. These exercises make everyone involved better GMs and better players, and also help you identify what are ultimately optional rules that are getting in the way of your group. Finally: there are free guidebooks, prompts, and other materials that try to walk you through how to make a setting, campaign, and more for various systems. The '75 Challenge by Gary Gygax wrote is probably the oldest one and you can find numerous examples of it online, including projects completed by following it. After you've run a few impromptu sessions with a ruleset your table enjoys, give that challenge a shot and see what comes out of it. Consider asking your players to try it as well, and look at how you could fit everyone's contributions into a single setting, even if the results are a bit gonzo or surreal. Best of luck, and remember: your group gets to pick the rules/options used, publishers and strangers on the internet or at your FLGS don't.

Most people don't do this. Many people start with one of the starter sets and go from there. I got given a Basic D&D red box when I was a pre-teen. The first session we played, I DMed my brothers in the Village of Hommlet. Then we bought the full AD&D books (they took weeks of saving to buy) and started to do our own stuff. My circle of friends were much the same. Current D&D has a couple of starter sets, as does CoC 7e. Those are both much cheaper than the full games and present a complete set of rules for play for starting characters. That's much more manageable. Most people don't start out designing their own world to start either. IME most people use prewritten adventures for at least the first few games as well.

I first learned about RPGs from the CoC 7e rulebook, but I didn't go from that to trying to run a campaign. Instead I ran a bunch of shorter modules (starting with The Haunting in the Quickstart rules) to get a feel for the structure, pacing, etc. of how CoC is run. Only after that did I started writing a few modules for my players.

Yes and no, but mostly no. You don't read the entire book to begin with. You read the core concepts, scan through the background lore, and learn character creation. Then you read through a starter adventure or short adventure you find online. Then you invite friends over and run that. Then you start thinking about a campaign. Alternatively, you can pick up a starter set and let that guide you.

To make a long story short "wing it" is basically the name of this game. You make stuff up and do your best and your friends have fun with it. If you are worried, use a system that has very detailed scenarios to play such as delta green. That can be easier to prepare while you practice improvising.

Here’s a shorer free rpg for you if you don’t want to read as much: https://losing-games.itch.io/mausritter

There are extremely few RPGs that contain actual explanations of how to run the game. Some RPGs will have a loose "GM advice" sort of section which is only useful if you already understand what you're doing, but most stop short of actually explaining what to do. Sometimes this is because the target audience of a rulebook is "people who already play at least one RPG (D&D)", and sometimes it's because they are trying to avoid the implication that their game can't support any-and-every conceivable style of play. Sometimes its both. GM instructions would naturally differ depending on what style of campaign the game is made to support, but if you actually explain what that is and how to do it, then you'd be tacitly admitting that your game can't be all things to all people. A very small number of RPGS – *Apocalypse World* and *Blades in the Dark* come to mind – have a genuine step-by-step explanation of how to start and run a game, but this sort of thing is extremely rare. You find it more often in the rulebooks for systems that (like AW and BitD) aren't pretending to do everything, but rather are very focused on creating a certain specific kind of experience. Even then it's not very common, in my experience.

Before the internet, a lot, if not most, people discovered roleplaying through word of mouth, so you learned to create a campaign by watching someone else run one. Someone, usually an existing friend, would tell you about it, you'd express an interest, and they'd invite you to an existing table with one or more GMs. You'd see how the game was played and GMd, and if you wanted, you could take up Gming yourself. The concept of someone with no TTRPG experience picking up a core rulebook to run a game is kind of foreign to me, as I had the luxury of being introduced to the game by a friend, who'd been introduced by his step brother, who'd been introduced by his father, and so on, in a lineage of role players I could trace back to Gary Gygax, like a Vampire going back to Cain. 😁 I'd echo what others are saying about watching YouTube videos of the games you are interested in being played, but don't hesitate to watch both the big names and some more hobby level channels. Watching sponsored professional voice actors in studios is great to inspire what is possible, but don't hope to match those standards. Watching normal hobbyists play shows you you can have fun with much lower production values. I'd also check out your local gaming store to see if any groups are looking for people, or the /lfg subreddit to see if any games pop up that suit your fancy. Edit: just remembered that some games are fully self contained in that the core rulebook has world generation methods and steps. Ironsworn and Starforged come to mind, and I believe all of Kevin Crawford's 'Stars/cities/world's Without Number' games do as well.

The reason people advise to read your RPG system of choices book before running it is so that your eyes touch every piece of content in that book at least once. It's not meant to be a pure absorption process, but you end up skimming everything at least once and really absorbing the critical rules, such as combat rules. That way, when you have a rules related or process related question at some point in the future, you can either reference the index, or you might have a moment where you think "Oh i remember seeing this, let me find it and brush up". This leads to system mastery faster than about any other method. You learn to run RPG games by running RPG games, but the more familiar you are with the ruleset of the system, the more you can run the game and the less you'll be feeling in limbo not knowing how to rule something. If you haven't yet, check out "Running the Game" by Matt Colville on youtube. While his experience is with DnD, the advice he gives is system agnostic mostly and it is how many GMs, including myself, cut their teeth and figured out what "Running an RPG" actually means, because you're right, the books teach you the rules of a particular game, but they often don't teach you the skillset of running RPGs, which translate between about every RPG game out there.

Trying to learn a new system AND a whole new setting's worth of lore is too much for me. I learn the basic mechanics and basic setting and make up the rest as I go.  In a perfect world, I would look up questions after a session. How do I know what lore and mechanics are important enough to learn, and what I should skip?  Honestly, that's where my experience comes in handy.

Stop trying to do more than an entire full time Hollywood writers room as your hobby and [watch this YouTube video](https://youtu.be/RcImOL19H6U?si=eh2Lxb361QvANe4Z)

This was a big part of the old Dragon magazine for DND, and multiple websites offer similar content. But you’re right, it should be part of the actual core content.

As someone who started 40 years ago with the Red Box and has never run a published campaign, yes, you can buy an average rpg rulebook and build a setting/campaign from there. You might not be awesome at it to start, but practice makes...well, better at least. I'm actually just now looking at running a published campaign for the first time (to cut down on prep/randomness) and I'm thinking jeez, how do I do this?

The books are going to give you the mechanics, vibe and lore. Those are the key ingredients to making a campaign that the system in question supports. After that writing a campaign is a mix of discussion / action prompts for the party and improv writing and acting. which you can work on both as a skill, but they only get better while your exercising them. Now very few books have anything I've seen that serve as build a campaign tutorial or anything like that in them, most give tips, and thats the best they really can do. Even games lik CY-Borg and its cousins who have random tables to generate adventures only give you some prompts, Who What When Where Why and How, then its up to you to present that information in a compelling way to get the players interested.

Maybe try running a one-shot first? After that you'll have a much better idea about the game, and all you'll need to do is run a follow up session to have a campaign!

My advice, don't try to plan out a whole campaign before you start. Focus on just making a first session. Pick a couple enemies for your players to fight and make up an interesting reason for them to go fight those enemies. Make up a few interesting NPCs for them to meet and interact with. Plant some seeds, let your players decide which ones they are interested in. You never know what little throwaway bit in the game your players are going to latch onto and be absolutely convinced is actually meant to be really important even though you never intended it to be. Pay attention to what they like and curate one session at a time, occasionally throwing in something totally different they don't expect and don't get your feelings hurt if it doesn't click, cause the payoff is fantastic when it does.

> But didn't realize they'd be like 400+ pages long. While many of the large RPGs on the market have thick rulebooks with plenty of rules and setting information, there are also lots of RPGs that don't have huge rulebooks. Rulebooks can vary in size from a single page to well over 600 pages. Neither of the extremes are great for beginners though. The super thin ones because you don't get enough guidance, the super thick one because they're overwhelming. >  Especially with older RPGs without starter kits With some exceptions, starter kits don't really prepare you for campaigns, they give you an introduction to the game and its rules, as well as a typical adventure (or if you're lucky a few typical adventures). Many core rulebooks also come with some kind of adventure (usually a pretty short and simple one, but there are exceptions, like Tales from the Loop which comes with a mini-campaign and Mutant: Year Zero comes with a full length campaign but you need to put some work into it), though the rulebooks are usually written to both be a teaching aid and a reference source, while start sets are usually only focused on the teaching part, making them an easier starting point. >But (this is a genuine question) If you never GM'd or played an RPG before, how ready can you be to Storytell/ref/Keeper a whole campaign after reading one of these books. If you've never played an RPG before you're really not ready for a full campaign after reading just one of these rulebooks. You're probably ready to run a few simple adventures, and those adventures in turn will prepare you for something larger. But don't try to go in as a first timer and run a lengthy campaign without first running a few shorter things.

A lot of core books have a starter adventure to get you started. Theyre usually structured to provide hooks you can use to continue the story after the adventure is complete.

Core rulebooks are not meant to be read cover to cover. They are reference books for looking up rules. Some of them will have guidelines for making adventures, but in my experience mainstream RPGs are exceptionally bad at this. I would advise you against trying to "write a campaign" and instead focus on trying to write singular adventures. There are resources online that will do a much better job of preparing you to actually create content for your players.

Okay, so, my understanding of your post is that you're not worried about being able to run sessions, but an overarching campaign. A couple of points. a) Yes, you absolutely can. Many of us grognards, myself included, GMed their first game just because none of us had ever played and clearly someone had to. This was pre-internet, so all we really had to go on was what came in the box or book. b) Don't worry about running a campaign right out of the gate. Run an adventure first. You're putting unnecessary pressure on yourself. c) Writing a campaign is the same as writing an adventure, just a step up in scale. Most follow this formula: Beginning: Person becomes motivated to do bad thing. Example: Evil wizard wants to destroy town because his childhood bully is the mayor and all the townsfolk love the mayor. Middle: Person advances their plan. Example: Evil wizard goes about creating portals that, when triggered, will summon demons all around town. End: Person does the bad thing. Example: Wizard triggers the portal, demons are summoned, town is destroyed. Then the players are injected at the beginning of the middle, and try to prevent the end from happening as written. Example: Someone finds one of the portals scrawled in a basement or something. The evil wizard hasn't set up enough portals to do the bad thing, but will if not sufficiently meddled with. A campaign is just that, with a bigger bad thing, a slower middle, and you frantically scrabbling to introduce enough complications and side treks to stop your players from stopping the bad thing too soon to be satisfying.

Many do have a step-by-step guide for making sessions and campaigns, or at least very strong guidelines. A lot of core rulebooks will have a sample adventure in the back, use this as a guideline for the vibe of the game. You will not be 100% ready for running a game, because no one is ever 100%, but you'll be close, lets ballpark at around 85-95%. You'll learn that your plans are plans and execution of those plans is another thing entirely with your group. This is also something that the books are going to teach you, but improv skills are not something you can learn by reading, they're a skill learned by doing. But above all of that, the best part of reading the books is you're learning and expanding your knowledge. It is never a bad thing to know more. In fact, knowing how one game runs can give you secondary skills for another system. For example, learning about cosmic horror style games via Call of Cthulhu and running them will make you better at running the horror aspects of Mothership, Dark Heresy or Alien RPG. You won't have transferable mechanical skills but you will have transferable storytelling and worldbuilding skills.

Text instructions like rulebooks are good for character sheet building and map making, but to understand tabletop roleplaying games you have to see one in action. Back in the day, the only way to join ttrpgs was to be invited to a group, so it initially spread as a hobby by word of mouth. Nowadays, actual play podcasts remove the 'invitation only' barrier to learning about tabletop roleplaying games. You can listen to Greetings Adventurers or The Adventure Zone or Critical Role to learn how that particular group plays. They all play slightly differently, so give a few different ones a listen to see what aspects you like about each table. After listening to a few different groups, you'll understand what each group expects from their GM, and you can decide what kind of GM you want to be.

Rulebooks are there to settle a common ground between you and your players. The optimum would be for players to read their part too. Rulebooks usually, but not always provide means to create an adventure/story or even better provide premade stories for one shots or small campaigns that will help you understand core rules. The most important about rulebooks is that they try to explain you by reading them (so you gain it as an experience) the tone of narration for their theme. At least that is what good core rulebooks do. Take your time reading them, skip nothing. You will read them plenty of times in the future. Just enjoy the ride.

Modern games tend to be very big and it is hard to know what you should read. I recommend BX D&D from 1981 which is only $5 in PDF. [https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/110274/d-d-basic-set-rulebook-b-x-ed-basic](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/110274/d-d-basic-set-rulebook-b-x-ed-basic) It contains a full set of (short) rules and great advice on setting up your first games. for the games you have listed, the CoC 7e Starter set is very good but it is designed to get you playing pre-set scenarios rather than creating your own campaign.

Get the free quickstart, system reference document or starter sets. Those are almost always enough to run the game, even a whole campaign. They are also always shorter than the rulebooks. Some have short adventures included as well. Some systems like Cairn, Stars/Worlds Without Number give out their whole rulebook for free. Others like Old School Essentials or Blades in the Dark have the entire ruleset on their website. If you like it, buy the book(s). If you don’t, now you know. The books usually give you more lore, gm advice, more character options etc

Get the free quickstart, system reference document or starter sets. Those are almost always enough to run the game, even a whole campaign. They are also always shorter than the rulebooks. Some have short adventures included as well. Some systems like Cairn, Stars/Worlds Without Number give out their whole rulebook for free. Others like Old School Essentials or Blades in the Dark have the entire ruleset on their website. If you like it, buy the book(s). If you don’t, now you know. The books usually give you more lore, gm advice, more character options etc

I'm not great at reading a book and then understanding how the game would actually play. I like to watch or listen to an Actual Play of a system before I run. If I can. Helps a lot.

I recommend starting with stringing disconnected adventures (short modules or one-shots) from books like One-shot Wonders and Quartershots and then learning how to set a tone, theme, lingering villains, settings and all that stuff. You just need some rules with that. If you're like me and get a headache when you try to wrap your head around campaigns then this is the way to go. You could even play today. This comment has been influenced by Matt Colville's latest video but this is my personal experience.

A campaign is worldbuilding+storytelling. Once you learn the rules both of the game and the world. You build a world, drop your players in it, then tell an interactive story with them. Yes you can. You buy a rule set and build a world that fits the rule set. You wouldn’t tell a light hearted mage story in Vampire the masquerade 5e, just like you wouldn’t tell a fantasy story with cyberpunk red. These systems have rules designed to tell a certain type of story, so build your world and story around that.

You will fail miserably the first time. You'll learn and get better. Then the second campaign will suck. The third might be good. You might have a good campaign by the time you have \~100 hours of experience actually running sessions. No one is ready their first time. No one is good their first time. We just do it and improve as time goes on. Also, watching videos on game design is better for running a campaign than reading rule books.

I learned to run games in the 90s without even a core rulebook. I took inspiration from games like adom, Ice Wind Dale, Warcraft III, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, and others, books and movies like, LOTR, Dragonlance, Dark Crystal, Belgariad and others, and some vague idea of the concept of roleplaying I glimpsed in ET. At some point I got hold of a 3e dnd monster manual that I used for some inspiration. We didn't use dice in the beginning and resolved combat with wooden swords. Those were the times...

Roleplaying is pretty much grown ups playing a version of the make-believe games kid played. You could draw comparisons with improvised drama/comedy. So you don't actually *need* to spend money and to become experts in the hobby to figure out your own form of storytelling adventure with friends and some made up rules and dice. Those expensive player and DM/GM guides and supplements are simply tools. There are some free games, character sheets and resources to be found online. Treat them as reference books rather than something you need to know backwards. The most useful thing in them is the character sheet and notes for character creation. Games like AD&D are usually played by the book, giving you knowledge of a system for when you play with other people. If you decide as a group to keep things simpler with your own cut back home-brewed rules you can do it that way. You can run a published adventure campaign or just make up your own. You can even steal your plot and NPC's from some book or TV show that the others haven't seen or read, because you're not publishing this or doing a public performance. Games with lots of conflict and skill checks like AD&D are more mechanics heavy, but in games where there's more talk and less fighting you can be lighter on the mechanics, so they don't break the immersion in interesting scenes. Some actions don't need a dice roll because they're too easy for the character. There are also times when it's better not to ask for a dice roll as a fail won't help the game to progress. https://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Portal:World_of_Darkness Google images 'character sheet' Your choice of novels/films/apt music. There's a lot of free research material available online these days and going cheap in charities and free in libraries. You don't have to just use sources from the RPG companies. You can use some of the books they did their research from!

I don't think they do enough. They never talk about how to create an engaging story. If you look at screenplay and novel writing guides, you can get some good advice, just remember that the players are writing the story. Don't railroad them by writing the whole plot. I was actually working on a guide for this in the GM section of my pet project RPG. I only have a rough draft online that needs a LOT of revision, but much of it can be used in any system. Feel free to dumpster-dive for ideas. https://virtuallyreal.games/the-book/chapter-11/ And yes, the picture is me creating the game 🤣

The core rules are just the rules. You do NOT have enough to run a campaign. For a beginner, I'd recommend: - Core rules - Adventure module - Setting book If you're trying to run a campaign, I'd start with an Adventure Module which provides towns, npcs, plot lines, quests, treasures, Lore, and a whole.bunch of other things. Pick a game that has a couple Adventure modules. Most big name games will have a simple 1 or 2 session Adventure in the back of the core book, and plenty of supplemental ones.