Game Masters 101:

3 Tips to get you started!

  1. Castles & Cats is a Tabletop Role Playing Game. You cannot just sit down and play like your average board game. Game Masters will need to take time to prepare before the game. For the Castles & Cats Adventures alone this includes setting up the game and learning the story you will be playing through.  If you are making your own Adventure, you’ll want to prepare a realm of your own for your players, including the characters and monsters that populate it.  What types of conflicts are happening in your realm and why would the characters be motivated to quest there?

  2. Game Master Discrepancy. Throw the rules out the window and just play!  Game Masters feel free to change anything to keep the attention and fun on the players. Much of the time I play Castles & Cats 75% of the game becomes improvised based on the characters choices.  Get Silly!

    There is one rule that I often change for younger players and that is the 1 action per turn rule.  With younger players I want to encourage creativity and imaginative ideas so I will often let them have both a role-playing action and if failed 3 combat rolls in the same turn. Not punishing them for trying something new will increase future creativity. It’s up to you to be discreet with the changes you make so that it feels very natural for the players. A Game Master Screen is a very handy tool to have when you play.

  3. Enemy Encounters in Adventures are designed to last between 2 – 3 rounds as this seems to be the best amount of time for younger players.  With this known enemy Encounters are very easy to change in Castles & Cats.  You can do this by:

·       Subtracting or adding Heart Points to enemies

·       Increasing or decreasing their ability to hit

·       Increasing or decreasing the number of mobs appearing in the encounter

Depending on the group I will often change around the encounters if my rolls are bad and I want to increase the difficulty.  On the other hand, I suggest ways to role-play away the encounter if the encounter seems to be dragging on.

I hope these tips helped, RPG’s can be complicated but once you immerse yourself it opens a world of creativity and fun you and your family/friends will remember for a long time to come.