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all, and it is a good thing to share 'Za and Dew and jokes and expand your minds to possibilities you never thought you could. However, being the GM may mean that you will need to check on your friends numbers from time-to-time, to watch their dice rolls like a hawk to make sure they're not trying to gyp you out of as fair a game as you're giving them. Sometimes, it's a good thing to allow them to cheat, as it were, and just let it go, even at the chagrin of your other friends playing across the table from you. The simple rule of thumb is this: "Does it advance the story?"; as long as the story is being advanced and all are having a good time, who cares how the dice come out. Still, you have to keep track.

You are also made responsible for tracking every creature and non-player character (NPC) and every piece of weather in the area your character's are adventuring in, and other environmental considerations, such as falling rocks, traps, poisonous darts from a local non-hero tribe, etc. The most important of these is the non-player character (NPC for short), which is used to combat the characters, to give them information, to guide them to the next part of the adventure and the world in which they will conquer it, and from time-to-time, perhaps as simple drinking and brawling buddies. NPCs are used, by you the GM, to sew the fabric of the character's world together, and to help immerse your players that much further into your imagination.

Next comes your knowledge of the game world and the rules. First, each person will read and interpret all manner of supposedly simple things in their own way. For instance, if I read the description of the entrance to a kingdom, I may think the gate in Bartertown leading to the Kingdom of Throal in the Earthdawn Fantasy RPG, is a single huge door shining with orichalcum influenced metals with runes carved into it that were used to keep the Scourge out for the last 400 years. However, another player may read that same description, or have more information than I do, and believe the entrance is a series of three smaller doors made of elemental earth and reinforced by runes and columns. It turns out the other player was absolutely right, but this is a perfect illustration of how different players and you, as the GM, may think individually of separate visions for the very same description.

The primary idea in a game, however, is that it's the GMs world, and what they say, goes. That being said, it's always a good idea to keep an

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