Running a tabletop role-playing campaign can be one of the most unique and rewarding experiences in gaming. You and your friends gather together and all of a sudden you’re the director, camera operator, and writer (or at least co-writer) of a custom-made fantasy epic. You construct a world of danger and glory and then you watch your friends fight monsters you have conjured, overcome hurdles you have put in their way and celebrate hard-earned victories. Indeed, there are few things more gratifying.

Or, potentially, more stressful. Anyone that has ever sat down on either side of the gamemaster’s screen knows that all is takes is a few bad dice rolls, some intra-party strife or a player that just doesn’t want to go on an already-designed dungeon crawl to turn a fun game sour. Well, we here at GeeklyInc want to help scrub as much anxiety out of your role-playing as possible so you can spend your gaming time with loot in your hands instead of your head in your hands. Our new column, Ask The GM, is here to help you work through all your tabletop tension. We want to answer any GM’ing questions you have, from the straightforward “What are good resources for dungeon puzzles?” to the philosophical “How can I make sure the characters care about each other” to the awkward “How can I tell someone that his half-orc barbarian is distractingly sexist?” And we also want to help players too, whether it’s how to talk to a GM about rules disagreements or how to stay emotionally invested in a character who has already gotten what she wanted.

Just email us your question at AskTheGMquestions@gmail.com and our resident Gaming Advice Columnist, John Serpico, will weigh in and help you find your way out of the forest… or into the forest, if there is some kind of artifact in there that you need.