Game Mastering is the fine art of making a group if intelligent and creative people do what you want them to do. It is an exciting, fulfilling, frustrating, enraging, beautiful, painful experience people can put themselves and others through. It can be a nasty addiction,or a one-time thrill. Here are some ideas and notes for people who are, or are considering becoming Game Masters.
First and foremost, it will be up in front of a group of people. Ideally, they will all be your close friends, but you will be the one (nominally) in charge. If other people take control, you have lost control fo your own game. Even the people who take over are not always even aware they are doing it: they usually do still want you to grab the wheel and steer. A Game Master needs to be able to grab the groups attention and say “This is how it’s gonna be.”
This is not to say you need an iron fist. The whole point of a role-playing game is to encourage creativity and imagination. You don’t want to end up telling a story, that’s the Player’s job. Your job is to give them the locations and situations to react to. Players should be free to come up with new ideas to try out. However, the final answer to any argument is yours: whether it is about physics, the rules, text interpretaions or anything, your word as GM is the final one. If someone else wants to decide the rules, they can do so in their own game. If the pigs can fly in your game, then bring on the flying bacon. The whole point of being there is to have fun, and two people bickering is not fun. For now, play through, as everyone else wants to role-play or roll-play.
Here are a number of essays about running games, and Game Mastering in general. Members may join the discussion forums.
And links to Game Reources for particular games or game systems.