Jason Corley, in addition to being a regular commenter here at Gameplaywright, is an assistant attorney general for the state of Arizona, a long-time roleplayer and GM, and a husband. He co-hosts the “Out of Character” podcast on the Pulp Gamer media network and is on the Board of Directors of the Southern Arizona Gamer’s Association (SAGA).  He tells me that he has been “yelling at people about RPGs online since the mid-90s.”

Earlier this year, Jason mentioned that he was putting together a GM’s conference in his area — the Southern Arizona Gamemaster’s Conference — as a means of helping GMs share and learn the craft of GMing. (Here’s the “Out of Character” podcast episode about the conference.) Yeah, I was as thrilled to hear about this as you think I would be. Short version: very.

So when Jason radioed back to let us know the thing had gone swimmingly, I tossed a few questions his way to see just what this GM’s conference was… and how others could do get one going in their area. After the jump, my interview with Jason Corley.

Gameplaywright: How did the GM Conference come together? How did GMs hear about it?

Jason Corley: It came together like this:

I’m on the Board of Directors for the Southern Arizona Gamer’s Association.  We host two monthly meetups, one mostly for RPGs and one mostly for board and card games. At the Player’s Handbook 2 “launch day” meetup, we had WAY too many people and WAY too few GMs.  So afterwards I and a few of the GMs were talking about how much fun we’d had and how we would really like to have more GMs, and that turned to a conversation about the broader issue of finding GMs for games.

I, or someone else there, said, “What if we had a GM’s conference of some kind, to try to help people get started…”  Everyone got really excited, really fast.  The conversation quickly turned away from an “intro to GMing” conference and more towards sharing of ideas, experiences and techniques among existing GMs.  Everyone felt like they could learn more.  So I said, sure, let’s do this. I recruited Don Dehm from Pulp Gamer and Jim Myers from the SAGA board and we hashed out a schedule. Don knew a guy who knew John Wick and we contacted him to be our “keynote.”  It all fell into place with suspicious ease.

We did very minimal advertising/marketing for the game. We announced it at the meetups for a few  months, we put flyers at the local game stores, and I talked it up on Out of Character a few times.  Honestly, we had limited space at the local library conference room, so we didn’t want a HUGE turnout. That makes what we got doubly amazing.

GPW: What was the turnout like?

JC: 32 people attended. For a city the size of Tucson, that’s a staggering number, especially given how little we advertised it. We filled the available space completely. If only a handful more had attended we would be turning them away from the doors!

GPW: What sorts of topics did you all cover? How much of that was planned and how much was in reaction to issues or topics the GMs brought with them?

JC: The topics included worldbuilding, campaign design, general GM-player relationships, modifying published material, and a TON of stuff about characterization.  If there was a theme that ran through the conference it was that characters (NPCs especially, since they are the job of the GM) were the key to GMing success.  During the breaks, I heard dozens of stories about dozens of games and everyone was talking about their NPCs.

We divided each presenters’ segment into approximately 2/3 to 3/4 “prepared” material and 1/3 to 1/4 directed discussion.  Some presentations were very interactive, others less so, but everyone had some time to interact with the group.  I think we could have just had a day-long discussion from how hungry everyone was to talk!

GPW: How was the conference structured? Were these seminars or actual play events or something else?

JC: It was “seminar style”, with those discussions at the end of each presentation. We wanted to do a full discussion section at the end of the day but we didn’t get time to.

GPW: What made the conference a success?

JC: Let me be very clear.  This conference was a success because GMs want things like this so badly that they are willing to snag flyers off of game store counters, scour bulletin boards in hobby stores, listen to half-hearted pitches at meetups, drive across town on a Saturday afternoon and then participate energetically and with great collegiality and professionalism.  The presenters were great, but I could have switched any presenter with any audience member and I am confident that they would have been equally great.  GMs have developed their skills independently and in parallel over the years.  Just having a forum for getting together specifically to talk about that is so incredibly great.  Everyone walked out with grins on their faces. This conference was a blazing success because people want things like this conference very, very much.

GPW: What advice would you offer to groups trying to put together such a conference in their own city?

JC: Do it today. Start right now.  It is easier than you think because even a relatively new GM has something, even if it’s just a small thing like “here’s how I use name cards to make initiative go smoothly” that can be shared and enrich even the most experienced GM.  Everyone has something to share, and that means your job as an organizer isn’t finding presenters, it’s figuring out which of the presenters will fit into your available time!

GPW: What would you do differently?

JC: I think I would put on a couple of slightly longer presentations instead of the smaller, shorter ones, and I definitely would have expanded the discussion time.  Maybe I should have started with a 2-day conference instead of one!

GPW: What’s next?

JC: We are doing another, shorter Gamemaster’s Conference presentation at RinCon ’09, and another free-standing Gamemaster’s Conference in the spring. The enthusiasm after the first conference was so amazing, though, that we may try to have another one before that, to keep things going!

Also, I want to go back to that initial question of “how do we get people who have never GMed before to try it?”  That is less of a “conference” thing and more of a mentoring question, I think.  Yet experienced GMs, as I saw at the conference, could also benefit from mentoring and partnering with each other.  That’s something that’s still in the “how do we do this” phase, but as with the conference, the enthusiasm level is extremely high and if we can work out the logistics, I’m confident of success.