For several years at the Guild and at MACE, I ran a GM Improv contest. You would get the name of every GM and what system they want to run (each making generic pre-generated characters for that system). Each GM would end up writing for another GM a single paragraph summary of an adventure and the running GM would not see it until 5 minutes before the session. And for 4 hours, they would completely wing an entire adventure.

In hindsight, I would have made sure that it was a system and setting that did not require specific strong familiarity of the setting – more generic settings. I had one guy that had to right for World of Darkness and he knew nothing about the setting.

They used this for scoring.

Scoring the Game Master

Game Master’s Name: _________________ 

System: ____________________

Scale

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Seriously Bad	Very Bad	Bad	Needed to be better	Average	OK	Good	Very Good	Damn Good	Never Seen Better

Score the GM according to the above scale on these points:

_____ (1) Initiation: How well did the GM handle the very beginning of the adventure, getting the characters introduced, etc.?

_____ (2) Random Encounters: How well did the GM handle the Random Encounters (events not directly  related to the plot)? (If none, rate him how you think he might have handled them.)

_____ (3) Plot-Related Encounters: How well did the GM handle the plot-oriented Encounters (events directly  related to the plot)?

_____ (4) Rules: How well did the GM handle the system rules and any rules hang-ups?   (If none, rate him how you think he might have handled them.)

_____ (5) Game Flow: How well did the game flow?

_____ (6) “Bunjee”: How quickly did the GM handle snapping back into game when the group strayed?   (If none, rate him how you think he might have handled it.)

_____ (7) Roleplaying: How well did the GM roleplay characters?   (If none, rate him how you think he might have handled them.)

_____ (8) Rap-Up: How well did the GM handle the game rap-up?

1	2	3	4	5
Worst place to end a  session	Very Bad place to end a  session	Bad place to end a  session	Didn’t finish, and didn’t end the adventure at a  good place	Didn’t finish, and ended the adventure at an OK place
6	7	8	9	10
Didn’t finish, and ended the adventure at a good place	Didn’t finish, and ended the adventure at a pretty good place	Finished it, but the ending could have been better	Finished it, and it ended well	Perfect Closure

____ TOTAL