If you want to become a good game master, nothing is a better than practise. Recently, however, I came up with an exercise which, first of all, trains your imagination, teaches you how to respond quickly on unpredicted events on sessions, and leaves you with ready-to-use ideas or story hooks.
The whole idea of this exercise is to take four random words, ignore one of them, and by connecting the remaining three formulate a story hook.
Where I can get random words from?
The easiest way is to use random word generator, however, in that case I recommend to take six words and ignore three of them. Those generators draw, apart from nouns and adjectives, prepositions for instance, and even if you get none of them, it is hard to make a good story hook from three adverbs. By generating six words and picking three of them you get rid of this problem.
Another source of random words are people around you. This is much better than generators because people hardly ever choose prepositions or pronouns and tend to stick to nouns, adjectives and verbs. In that case there is no modification to this exercise needed. You can ask your friend for those four words, or, to include a little more randomness, ask several people for less words which, in the result, will give you four.
One more source: lately, when I have to attend a very boring lecture, I pick four words from the surroundings, for example from lecturer's speech, or random things which other students write in their notebooks around me. This way I can do something useful instead of wasting my precious time!
Is it all what can I use it for?
No! If you have more friends who are game masters you can organise some kind of training session for all of you. On a piece of paper each one of you write down four words, and put them into a bag, jar or something alike. Later on, you draw four cards from the container and you have to run a short session prepared from three of those words. The rest of your friends do not know what words you have drawn until the end of your story. After you finish, you show your friends the words out of which you have made your story and their task is to rate you and tell you which elements you should improve. When your turn is over, the next of your friend repeats the whole procedure. In this way, you not only train your imagination, but also practice your game-mastering skill in the same time.
What is more, you can prepare a deck of cards with spare words on them. In case of emergency, when you are short on ideas during the session and you have to run something, you just simply draw four cards out of your deck, discard one, and you can help your improvisation skill.
I will gladly read your story hooks created that way. If you have anything interesting, put a comment with that story hook and the set of your four random words. I am waiting for your feedback!
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