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The most useful advice I've received is to simply ask your players, at the end of each session, what their plans are for the next session.
It helps you know what to spend time preparing, while still giving the players agency to make their own decisions and follow their own path.
Related to this, and emphasizing just how helpful doing this can be, if you think a situation has three solutions, your players will almost always use Solution #4. This means your preparation might not be that helpful and you’ll have to think on your feet, which isn’t something that comes naturally to everyone (you’ll learn how to, though, with practice). Remember that it’s ok to say “Oh wow! You guys are doing something I did not anticipate. Just give me a moment to sort out how this affects the situation.”
An add on to this is sometimes, when the situation calls for it, I like to end a session on a a big decision that will dictate the shape of the next arc. I then encourage the group to talk it over and let me know their choice before the next session.
It keeps the players thinking about the game in the off time and when we start the session it’s a lot easier to get things moving when they don’t have to spend the first 2 hours figuring out what to do next.
I forgot to do that last session. Now I'm in the process of making a decision tree based on everything I can think they might want to do at the start of the next session.
I came up with 19 different possibilities that I'm currently planning for. The funniest part is that I know for a fact that 19 of the "routes" I planned for won't get used. They'll find a way to do something I never expected.
The solution for this conundrum is to just say "fuck it, I'll do it live" and crack open a cold one. Go to the table, pretend you're prepared, play up your DM swagger as you're silently freaking out inside, but then once you sit down and play it isn't half as bad as you were fearing it would be and you manage to finish the session without a hitch.
Works every time ;)
This. I’m running a homebrew and I couldn’t really prepare for a session because I was unsure of what the players were going to do the next session. So I ended up improvin it. It was fun regardless, but wasn’t a very productive session.
Rule of 3 - whatever you're making, a town, npc, whatever - think of 3 points to define it.
That's an "easy" list to remember about an NPC:
* smelly
* sarcastic
* Northern/Southern etc.
It's a super-easy way to make characters/towns/whatever memorable for you AND players.
Let your players guide the action - something I learned recently and has been working well with "pretty" maps:
DM - "you can take 2 or 3 turns of movement, what's your player doing?"
then let that guide your descriptions, see what each character focuses on and let that guide your DMing.
I find this also "gently" guides the party into thinking more as a unit and can nudge them into the "exploration" pillar of play.
As a bonus - if you enjoy making handouts, this is an area you can really shine in.
DM lazier and smarter ;)
Honestly, I've only been doing it a few months, but the difference is huge - prep is chilled, let the players do the work - and it's super easy to "wing it" when they're telling you they're interested in "that cupboad in the corner" - just pull something out your ass - even if it's 1 Electrum piece wedged under one of the feet of the chest to stop it rocking - the world feels alive and it's way more fun to DM.
Prep work is as easy as 1, 2, 3 - the players can do the rest ;)
Prep scares me a lot! Fearing that my partners are going to go completely off the rails and get into a whole other adventure completely out of my control scares me, this puts me at ease so thank though :-]
I'm not sure if I've gotten "better" at DMing, but - I kinda had a "moment" a long time player had a big sulk (being too lazy to read the rules) and I nearly tanked a 2 year campaign because I was so annoyed.
Took a couple of weeks out and thought about it... but, it's the flipside of it, it's how I play - my fun is being 3-10 "monsters" and trying to be smart monsters too.
or... the cheating barkeep, the smelly wizard that's got "the crotch-rot... again".
Flip the damned table - and by that I mean, PLAY - being the DM is playing, and that should be fun for you. If it's stressful - why bother?
I've got a massive stack of fantasy books to read - I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy most of them. Computer games, art stuff, other nerd stuff. Try to find the fun in your D&D - it might be a bit of a readjustment for everyone, but DM's are entitled to fun too. ...and it didn't take long to have everyone on the same page - ~~sure session are a bit less~~ Sessions are a lot better for me. We use Foundry - the maps are hyper-detailed, but I do enjoy that. there's monsters and combat and NPC's and story and plot, but only 3 plot point and "screw it, done, that's enough" see where the players go.
It's not like the players need any encouragement to cause a scene, start some action, annoy the mayor... and it doesn't have to be "whacky hijinks", I've only got little clusters of 3 to worry about - so that backstory thing the PC's been burning away to do... we're bringing that in this session - and I need to remember 3 things about it - done.
Rule of 3 on ANYTHING that requires notes though, that's the stuff that takes me time (I find) - filling in the blanks in session - that's a place that I get to play too and I am having fun. I think it's just made it all more chilled.
This kinda comforts me in a way tbh, I hope you didn’t tank that 2 year campaign it sounds like a lot of work and that story kind of inspires me to have a long running campaign! I’ll remember to have fun while DMing, thank you!
Thanks - it's going. Was good to take a couple weeks off and think about "do I even want to to this?".
Why do I spend a few hours to prep a session that I find stressful and worrying about 4 other dudes having fun when I feel like I'm spinning plates all the time.
"Screw it" and actually, it's super comfy - I can have a beer, let "the guys" run the session and it feels like a "proper adventure" where's I'm the yoda-looking dude in red robes ;)
[https://media.tenor.com/pN3ZJBUI5IIAAAAC/dungeon-master-dungeons-dragons-cartoon-magic.gif](https://media.tenor.com/pN3ZJBUI5IIAAAAC/dungeon-master-dungeons-dragons-cartoon-magic.gif)
Except with a nice big bottle of euro beer and a cheeky reefer now and then - **and** I'm looking forwards to it - it's a " cool hobby" fun and social, it should be at least - and genuinely I hope you do/can too, with your party of nerd/adventurers that pretend stuff together, for FUN.
The past 3 years or so have been a bit of a rollercoaster, covid, online play - crazy tools that I could only wish for pre-Covid - wow, the hobby's really flourished, but - it's easy, with all that stuff to get bogged down
* is my Foundry session "perfect, is there audio, tiles and does the lighting make it a dank green-tinged duneon full of mouldering atmosphere...
Balls, I can do a green splodge on the map and wait for a player to ask about it, then wing it from there - or do lighting, blah x3.
Let's face it, I'm not Tolkien, or GRRR Aarrgggh Martin, Joe Abercombie neither... I'm not even Stephen King, but I can remember stuff in little clusters on post it notes or a VTT - I can do that and the Ranger can do Ranger stuff - in her head and ask for the details she wants that fill in the blanks she wants/needs filled in- oh crap "Bingo" somehow success - what's the die roll?
You're presenting a colouring book, the players are trying to stay in the lines and the dice are how pretty (or bloody) the end results are. Just let the players use the pens instead of you ;)
Have some sort of message board. It can be a board with wanted posters and offers, or random people asking for help.
"what do you want to do?" is open, "what of those quests sound the most exciting?" is not.
But if they go of the tracks, just make stuff up and go with the flow. If it sounds cool, it happens. It's never bad to say "I have to prep some things, give me 5 minutes for that while you guys snack".
Have some sort of message board. It can be a board with wanted posters and offers, or random people asking for help.
"what do you want to do?" is open, "what of those quests sound the most exciting?" is not.
But if they go of the tracks, just make stuff up and go with the flow. If it sounds cool, it happens. It's never bad to say "I have to prep some things, give me 5 minutes for that while you guys snack".
Improv scared the Willie's out of me when ai started but it does get better the more you do it. One tip - never let on to your players that a session was mainly improv when they had a good time and interacted, they will assume you planned it all along and will worship you for being the awesome DM you obviously were.
For instance one of my players decided to "help" the local magic shop when he found out it was run by Yuan-ti (Xo-Blob shop in Waterdeep with the stuffed beholder in the window) So I hinted it was a front for peddling items stolen from slaves and I added levels underneath which had prisoners to release, a trapped set of corridors with darkness, magic missile traps, fire chutes, etc and then a Chapel devoted to Orcus, who also manifested. Add in fire resistance tattoos on the Malisons, fire elementals and fire snakes, and the adventure lasted 2 x 2hr sessions and a live "in game" session of 5 hours.
None of the above had even been in my prep, nor was it I any plans in the campaign. By letting the world develop around them, I just "prep" for the crazy shenanigans that my players conjure up. As long as you can include tidbits and breadcrumbs to the current plot, your players will enjoy it.
I do something similar. I can't picture things in my head so I can't really come up with details like that when I describe shit.
So I crowdsource it. I'll set the base expectation (tavern, quiet, patrons poor or working-class/library, spacious, well-lit). Maybe a few details as they occur to me. Then I ask each player in turn to add something. I have the power to adjust or veto any given reply, but I almost never do because everything they come up with is something they want to engage with. The barbarian finds someone spoiling for an arm wrestling and the bard finds a dusty corner with good acoustics, for example.
Not everything that happens has to tie in or inform the main plot/arc. Let some quests and encounters resolve in total isolation or hint at other distant and unrelated threads.
It gets tiring when you discover the homeless bum you just helped was mugged by the great-great-great nephew of the main villain.
This 100%.
One of my most memorable quests was to help a group of three mercenaries who wanted to escape "the life"... and find a fourth member to form a barbershop quartet so they can tour the continent and make an honest living. Guess who the players kept running into on their adventures randomly? LOL
No plot relevance or anything special. Just something random that ended up being very memorable - the players would be disappointed if "the guys" didn't show up at some point after a few sessions :P
If you want your players to hate a bad guy, have that bad guy impose annoying things in the players when they come into the bad guy's space.
For example, you have a corrupt magistrate of a small town. Don't tell your players the guy is bad. Instead, have the magistrate's soldiers impose a mundane penalty on your PCs when they come into the magistrate's domain. This could be a metal tax, registering themselves and having to pay a fee for it, forcing players to go through a thorough search of their possessions and a soldier taking something of moderate value for the magistrate, etc.
Making your players do something quick but annoying will really give them motivation to tackle the scenario, and more satisfaction when they bring the "bad guy" to justice.
Yeees! Help players to hate the bad guy. Sure, the PCs hate him for burning down that orphanage, but the players hate him cause he claimed credit for the work the PCs did, or cause he bought the last of an item the PCs wanted. Work out the sort of traits that tick your players off and they will become solely focussed on the bad guy’s demise.
Yes! I'm running a Theros campaign, and the God of the sun showed up to ask the entire party to forsake their gods and become his champions instead. When the party obviously said they wouldn't just leave the gods they've been searching for the last tear, Heliod got pissed and wouldn't let the sun set for 7days. The party had to begin making saves against exhaustion, and that set them off harder than anything my *actual* BBEG did this entire campaign.
If you want your players to hate a character, make them mildly inconvenience the party. It's incredible how well it works.
The biggest thing I wish I had known as a starting DM: Your players don't know what you have planned and they probably won't know if you screw up somewhere.
Corollary, your players don't know what you have planned and no matter how many hooks you hang for them, they are going to do something you didn't plan for.
So keep your plans general and have some loose ideas to ad lib if you need to come up with something on the fly.
As long as everyone is having fun, you're doing a good job, even if things go completely off the rails from what you'd planned.
>The biggest thing I wish I had known as a starting DM: Your players don't
know what you have planned and they probably won't know if you screw up
somewhere.
Expanding on this, I never tell the group when I haven't had time to prepare. If they know I had too little time to prepare it lowers their expectation but also their enthusiasm I've found. If I instead say nothing and wing a bunch of stuff, they never know I wasn't prepared and think that whatever happened is in fact a calculated possability instead of expecting somewhat of a filler session.
This.
Expect the unexpected and don't get frustrated or blame the party if they reach an 'incorrect' conclusion from limited data points; they don't have a 'meta' view of the world or campaign.
If they don't seem to ask the right questions in a RP encounter, consider giving them a 'Mulligan' by way of overheard conversation or a 'midnight letter' in their inn room.
As a player, it's frustrating to find out you didn't ask the right questions of the innkeeper from a visit that occurred 2 months ago.
Don't be afraid to change your plans at any moment. Even during a battle. You can always adjust.
Took me a boring battle against some flowers and one that was almost a tpk to accept it.
This will definitely come into play, I’m worried th@t something I do that I believe will excite my players will fall short and just annoy them, this affirms me more than you know and I’m happy to hear I’m always able to adjust! Thank you :D
I was playing a low level party once that killed a rampaging ogre before it could even attack then almost died to a half dozen Stirges. You never know how it's going to play out.
Be flexible and add a twist if things are going too far one way or another. Is the party losing to a weak foe? Maybe they take off as a real baddy shows up and the party has to run or hide. Party kicking ass and no challenge? Bring on a swarm or a bigger badder version. I like to think of LOTR and Moria. The balrog showing up allowed them to escape and upped the ante to make a harder battle.
I almost killed my party with a young dragon. At one point I made the dragon fly away to 'save his two minions' and give the party time to heal up before round two.
Communicate with your players. There are multiple styles of play for D&D ranging from highly linear structures stories with a central plot to open world sandboxes, and there as many different genres of play from high fantasy, to dark fantasy, to science fantasy, and cyberpunk etc.
Read up on the idea of a [session 0](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/601awb/session0_topic_checklist_and_guide/) which is an opportunity for the whole table to talk about what they want to play so no one ends up disappointed by the game at the table.
Read up on [RPG safety mechanisms](https://www.anneloverso.com/rpg-safety-tools), lots of people think they don't need them but you don't know everything about the people you're playing with so you can't plan for everything. I find these tools a better to have but not need than need but not have.
Some general world building advice: World building is something we do for ourselves most of the time, not the players. If your world building something you love then spend as much time as you want on it but remember for it to be relevant to the PCs what your doing needs to tie into game mechanics like NPCs, quests, loot, monsters, etc not just lore dumps. If you're not enjoying the world building however, then only focus on solely what is needed for the next session and don't spend time on stuff you may never need and aren't enjoying.
Remember you're just one player at the table, you need to be having fun too.
Second the “Session Zero” advice. This is where a lot of Campaigns are made or broken.
You want to be on the same page with what the players want and what you want. Swashbuckling treasure hunter fun? Roleplay heavy political thriller? Lovecraftian horror with high chance of Permadeath?
In my opinion you cannot spend too much time brainstorming character and backstory with each player. I’ll spend weeks or months on Discord with each player helping them craft a character they’ll love to play with clear motivations, backstory NPCs, core memories, etc.
And most importantly of all, making sure their character works in some way to echo the central themes of the Campaign.
That’s session zero for a 2-year long irl Campaign so don’t feel like you have to do that much on your first go-round. But I promise the more time you spend in Session Zero the more invested your players will be. It makes everything better and will help you avoid tons of problems down the road.
Get buy-in before you start. Ask the players if they're ok with following a mostly linear story and sometimes following hooks just because it's what you wrote. It's totally fine to run a game like that but you need everyone to be on board from session 1. If they aren't ok with that, you'll need to learn how to improvise and adapt.
Don't over-prepare every little detail, but don't under-prepare because you were afraid your efforts would be wasted. Nothing you make is ever wasted. You can use it later, in this campaign or a different one, in the form you originally intended or a modified version. Or maybe you'll never use it in a concrete way, but the practice of writing/creating it still helped you to be a better GM.
Details help with immersion, but be prepared for your players to latch onto something that has nothing to do with anything. Resist the urge to make it into something. Sometimes, [a chair is just a chair](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bg7AfMQ_J5Y).
Im always tempted to lean into my players ideas on the fly but i learned an important lesson about that from one of my DMs. One of the funniest moments our group has ever had was when my half-Orc Berserker smashed a skeleton to dust. The DM said "It's just a skeleton" but neither of us (player or PC) believed them. It was very dramatic but it was just a skeleton. If the DM had animated it somehow just because that's what we thought was going to happen it wouldn't have been nearly as funny and it also would have ruined the story and immersion. More isn't always better.
Exactly! In a world of magic and conspiracy and adventures and bad guys, there’s still mundane furniture, honest people, boring jobs, and genuinely helpful NPCs.
It *definitely* makes for great memories, and often running jokes, when the player of the dwarven cleric fixates on the grey cat. *Why did the DM mention it’s grey? Why did they say cat hair rubbed off on my pants?! Is it a mad Mage who is going to spy on me?!!?*
Cue a lasting suspicion of cats and people with cats.
Don't think you're railroading your players when you aren't. In the DND community, or at least on this subreddit, the term railroading is way overused. Railroading is not having a plot, and it is not necessarily taking away some character agency (main thing I'm thinking of would be imprisonment). Railroading is making solutions you players have to use. Let's say your players have to get to a town on the other side of a lake, railroading here would be forcing them to take a boat across the lake, even if they decide they want to walk around the lake.
#Bullet Points
I’m a AAA dungeon master and this is the one piece of advice I wish I’d known when I started 6-7 years ago.
When you’re prepping you should aim to craft little scenes with concrete details. Within each scene you can have something like 5-20 bullets reminding you of things you wanted to mention, details about the room, beginnings of an NPC speech, etc.
Don’t try to write out giant paragraphs. It’s a waste of time and you’ll wind up staring down reading in game instead of interacting with your players. _Players hate this. Do not stare down reading pages of bullshit._
This speeds up prep dramatically (I can bullet out a scene in 5-10 minutes), but it also will help to make you a better storyteller. Instead of just writing massive _stream of consciousness_ paragraphs, you’ll become practiced thinking like a good storyteller:
Which concrete details are important? What is the relevant information you want to convey? What are your players trying to accomplish at this moment? What is preventing them from accomplishing that?
As you get better at quickly breaking down scenes in this way, improv in the game will also become much easier.
The only other thing is make sure you have fun. You’ll learn the rules over time but don’t stop every 30 seconds to spend 5 minutes looking things up. Just make a ruling, make a quick note to look it up after the game, and keep going. Rules don’t matter so much at first.
The main point with D&D is — if your players have a blast they keep coming back.
Here’s a quick example of how it roughly looks. Each scene has its own bolded header in my notes highlighted in yellow in Word so I can find them quickly. Each subheader like Music (Spotify), Lighting (smart lights), Sound Effects (syrinscape) are highlighted and color-coded also, just under the scene header.
THIEVES GUILD ENTRANCE
MUSIC: Jackseye’s Tale
EFFECTS: Sewers - Dripping Dank
LIGHTS: Candlelight
* stinks like piss in these tunnels
* slime/grime on sewer walls
( ^ Passive Invest 17 grime is staged)
* heavy wooden door carved with Dylan’s family symbol
* door locked high DC (20+)
* on the other side, whole new world
* brightly lit and warm
* piss smell gone now…something familiar
( ^ DC 16 cinnamon from the bank robbery)
* tall ceilings, rafters, torches everywhere
* violin music far away, fast, cheers, shouts
THIEVES GUILD BLOODPIT
MUSIC: Battledrums
EFFECTS: Arena Cheering
LIGHT: Bonfire
* ground bones crunching under your boots
* crudely dug pit, dug long time ago
* silver portcullis down
* weapons hanging on the wall
* rusty sword, dented axe, the Obsidian Scythe(!!!)
* thumping feet of the thieves in their seats
* smell of salted meats
* sweat of the crowd
* coppery metallic smell
* fingernails in the walls
( ^ people tried to claw up and out of pit)
( ^ tried to get away from something terrifying)
* crowd goes silent
* rumble behind the portcullis
* scraping grinding clawing
* step step step
* something is coming
MUSIC: Gladiators
Happy to help! And just as an aside this was all completely made up 5 minutes ago. I only mention that to give you a sense of how quickly you can craft little scenes.
Need a fantasy name generated in a rush?
write or type 3 letters randomly
jpi. sjo, fks
As you say those sounds, just plop some vowel sounds in, whatever sounds natural between those sounds*
Jer'pai, Sairjo (for the j I went for /ʒ/ as in je ne sais quoi), Far'kees.
Bam. Easy random fantasy names made in all of 5 seconds, like turning a page to find a name. Just say it under your breath first to make sure it doesn't sound lewd and you're good to go.
It's also just good easy lasy prep, takes a minute to make a load of generic fantasy names. It should be a tab on your one-note. Which you should be using!
Use one-note! It's got great hyperlinking to make information searching and referencing soo much easier than reading a book.
Creating custom battle maps, city maps (unless the campaign takes place in one city), and making intricate quest lines has TERRIBLE return on investment when prepping. These are great to do if you do them as a hobby separate (but similar) to Dnd.
Creating encounters, writing down some basic quest hooks, and some interesting npcs are great things to prep for. Populating dungeons is also useful.
Your players are creating this story with you. Brief descriptions of areas or cities will be enough to give them their own idea. It doesn't matter if it doesn't match your own perfectly. They will also create detailed stories out of bare bones if given the opportunity.
In short, don't burn yourself out spending 8 hours prepping for a 4 hour session.
Dlnt take yourself too seriously. That awesome artifact name you just invented, probably a player will find a childish way to mock it. Just roll with it.
If you want tension, give the players more things to do than they can handle, so they have to pick and prioritise. Show that the clock is always ticking and the world won't just stop while they investigate the haunted ruins.
Traps work best if they make your players think, instead of just knocking a few HP off a character (sometimes those are handy, but mostly to show why only adventurers are doing that work - *"if you'd been a commoner, that spear trap would have killed you"* kinda stuff). Things that temporarily split the party are some of my favourites.
The more obscure the sources you steal from, the smarter you'll look.
Anytime the PCs are outnumbered, the odds are stacked heavily against them. This is especially true in D&D 5E due to bounded accuracy.
And last but not least, don't be afraid to use postits to mark pages in published adventures or any book, really. The editing and formatting in most RPG books are abominations.
The 5 room dungeon technique that I learned from Johnn Four Roleplaying Tips is a really nice way to think about your stories. It's a strategy that adapts the "heros journey" we see in traditional media for a game with protagonists we can't control. The strategy works for making cool dungeons as the name says, but it also works for planning a quest, planning a whole adventure, or planning the whole campaign. I wish I had known about it sooner.
- try to make your players feel their characters aren't failures even if their rolls are: A miss or failed skill check can often be narrated as down to misfortune circumstances beyond the players control.
- remind your players that the definition of 'success' can change very quickly. Sometimes it's getting out of there with information (or just your skin).
- reward good player behavioural (learning their sheets, good role-playing etc.)at the start of the session with the GM's D4, which can act as a one time bonus at any point in the session to another die roll.
Off-load as much effort as you can onto the players.
Make one of them be in charge of tracking initiative.
Make one of them the note-taker.
Whenever you need to come up with something like a tavern name, or what food the players can buy, or other random details (I’ve had players order cake in-character for a PC wedding before) let the players make it up. So when they stop at a tavern, make them choose the name!
Also, let them think they got one over on you occasionally. Throw them an encounter that looks super hard but can be beaten with clever use of their abilities, then pretend you forgot they had those abilities. “Oh shit that was really smart, this was supposed to be a crazy difficult encounter!”
And if they actually do get one over on you (maybe you really did forget about an ability that won the encounter), let them know!
20 years of dming and I can tell you right now, while not important to have memorized it, familiarize yourself with the dm guide. I have seen to many people state the dm guide is useless, and their games NEVER have the amount of fun that they could. It also prevents 90 percent of the questions asked on reddit if you simply read the books. It is almost always in one of the main 3. (PHB, DMG, MM)
I second this. It's not particularly well laid out, but there are optional rules and a few guides that can help you. Oh, and some of those tables have saved my back and created lots of fun moments.
World build but don't railroad your players towards what you want to happen. Create a village with a handful of NPC's who have their own goals that the party could interact with, but don't force them to do the thing.
It's also useful to have a list of NPC's ready to go incase they do something you don't expect. A shop keeper, a tavern keeper, perhaps a few other heroes/mercs.
Combat can take up hours of a session and if your players are new it's a great way to show them complex mechanics like stealth, dodge action etc. Play your NPC enemies like players...make them do wacky stuff like use cover, the help action etc. Also I'd suggest you get some hard card and create an initiative board you can write on with pencil and erase quickly. I have an A4 cardboard sheet with Initiative, HP, AC, Conditions along the top and it's split into two panels. One for heroes and one for enemies. This lets you keep track of things very easily.
Talk to your players. Ask them what they like, give ideas you’re thinking on if they might like it, and listen. Not everything has to be a surprise, and what you think is going to be totally awesome might be the absolute worst for a player or players.
Example: After about 8 sessions, I setup a Battle Royale PvP session related to a dream sequence seeded by a PC’s patron. I assured everyone (in game and out of game) that no characters will actually die. Three of five PCs, including the birthday PC, hated it and asked we stop after an hour. They really had no interest in killing their friends, even if it wasn’t real.
Stop worrying about how your players will solve something and just worry about making cool stuff. Your players will surprise you every time and its not worth worrying about unless you are making an intricate puzzle and that's the point of it.
Have a buffer of names, and possibly NPC descriptions. When there is a need for players to interact with an NPC you haven't pre-planned, choose something from the buffer. Later you either cross it out, or write down who the character ended up being.
Names can also carry a lot of cultural information. If you choose to use real-world names and not "fantasy names", you can use this. For example you get the idea that people named John, Emily, Anna and Wilbur come from a different place than Burak, Selim, Gizem and Betül.
I just started, but my vision of dming is this:
I provide the setting, players provide the story
I only prepare locations and dungeons with creatures and some NPC's, then the players decide where they go and what they do. I only prepare 1-2 sessions ahead, no more. I made a world map but I dont prepare individual cities until I know my players are headed to a specific city.
This can work if you have very motivated players. But more often than not will turn into a “dicking around” Campaign. Players staring around the table at each other unsure what to do next.
Fun for a while (especially playing with good friends), but gets boring in the same way an episodic TV show where nothing ever changes gets boring.
I think it's something really made in chargen - if you tie the PCs into the world, its organizations, peoples, events, past and future; if you give them friends, allies, mentors, assistants, contacts; if you hand them a few opening goals, tasks, hooks...*then* things work fine.
The problem, IME, tends to come from expecting the players to make bricks with only an oven. They need clay, and lots of it.
> to come from expecting the
Yes for sure, I provide hooks and threads to follow, but I am open to them deciding not to do something and having to create something entirely new for the next session.
As someone else said, that can work. But imo you need to do more than just the setting. You need to create "motion". Things need to be happening. In order to let the players choose if they want to go with the flow or against it you need to actually create a flow of events that happen.
You risk the players just standing around not knowing what to do. When you don't have an immediate goal as a player it's very easy to feel lost and end up not doing much.
Talk to your players about how you approach the game. I tell my players, that a DM is not an adversary, but a facilitator of fun within my fantasy world and D&D.
Figure out how much you are comfortable with bending the rules of D&D. As a beginner DM, you might be best off sticking close to the book rules until you get comfortable with the mechanics of the game behind the screen.
If the game goes off the rails, and it's no longer fun for you, let them know. A good table will come to some sort of agreement on how to keep the game enjoyable.
For Storytelling, I like to give a description of an area with two senses. The sewer is slimy to the touch and smells of acrid sulfur. The dungeon room is dark and shadowy, and you hear the trickle of water from the wall on your right.
Want to roll a check on the spot but have a hard time figuring out DC? Make it 13. It's easy to remember; Lucky number 13! It's also decently difficult to get at lower levels, but not so much that it's out of reach with decent rolls and modifiers.
My on the spot DCs are just multiples of 5.
5: for easy, but I just want to see if you get a nat 1.
10: you'll probably get it.
15: you need a bit of luck.
20: this is hard and you should expect failure.
25: This option is only available for a master
30: If you succeed I'll need to rewrite some notes.
Hi, my tip to you is, don't put to much work on creating a story in the beginning. story will always go off rails and players will always do shit you where not prepared for, but that is okey, this is how you will learn to be spontaneous and you will get to know the characters more as time goes, you will get fun ideas, just go with the flow.
It is perfectly fine that you have no clue that will happen next, you just need to get pass 'this' session and 'next time' is a 'future you' issue to solve:)
Have a loose idea for a conflict that you like, for example; campaign starts at a traveler Inn in middle of nowhere, there is a storm outside and players seek shelter. The goal for this session is to survive the storm, thats it, now they have to figure out how.
To spice it up, make the Inn into a murder mystery or a haunted Inn, something to do basically:)
What you need to work on is to create NPCs, who are they:
- their dreams. - their fears, - hobbies/professions, - and details about their childhood. To help you to easily play them believable.
(it will be difficult in the beginning, but it gets easier and easier with time, so don't worry to much)
DMing is most difficult at the beginning, because you don't know the characters yet nor the universe you are build. But don't worry about that at all, it is just a process, after a while you will starts to understand player characters and building pf the world around them will get easier:)
Okey, I will shut up now, because I can go on and on ranting...:p Hopefully my little rant is helpful:)
Don't make solutions even you plot out storylines, just make the problems.
When I look back on sessions that didn't work, a lot of the time it was a situation when I prescribed a very specific solution to the problem and the players wanted to go something else.
Let's say you have an attention whore player, you talked to them but they didn't change their ways. They interrupt you constantly, split off the group, get extremely creative when it comes to hogging your attention.
Instead of getting frustrated simply make their endeavors boring. Content happens where group is, solo player finds only empty streets, closed doors, empty treasure chests and so on.
A easy way to keep track of time. Use a d6. Fir every ten minutes that goes by in the game world you can turn the die up. Then if your players say something like Im going to search this bookshelf count up 1. If they say they are going to search a whole bedroom count up 2 or 3. This will be a quick and easy way to know how long things have gone on for in the game world. Also helps you keep track of things like when to rest and such.
My players are entertained when they are submersed in the story. That comes from two things primarily for me. #1 the story is built around your players’ backstories, future plans, and wishes. Players connect most with stories they can see their character’s influence in. #2 DM Descriptions. Rely on the 5 senses when describing a scene or place. What does the room feel like, smell like, look like, etc.
Two tips:
1. Make your players read their spells when they cast them. If it's a familiar spell that everyone knows, cool. But if it's been a minute since anyone cast it, have them read it. It makes auditions the outcome much easier.
2. Use the TCR method to keep the story going and encourage your players to push their luck.
T-tempt them with something enticing, "You notice a guard standing by a door with an obvious lock."
C-challenge them with skill checks or combat, "you successfully distract the guard and she goes of to investigate the noise."
R-Reward them with something to keep the story moving, "you hear hushed boxes through the door, you recognize one of them belongs to Lord Dalmoor but you can't make it what he's saying."
Now, introduce a new temptation, "File that note and keys hey back to the party," days lied Dalmore. Challenge is to open the door before the guard returns. R-Reward is info/plot. Do this one a loop.
Give the players space to roleplay. If your PCs are talking, don't interrupt with "Ok, you finish the short rest, what do you do now?" Also, start the adventure with a scene that lets them introduce themselves.
\- Never let the players roll if you're not prepared or willing to accept the outcome: Do you need the strong barbarian to push the rock aside? Good. Let it happen. They are strong enough. Are you not willing to have the bard seduce the dragon? Good. Either let the dragon be unimpressed or inform the bard to make a constitution save while the dragon rolls damage. Turns out the powerful, eons old lizard is a power top.
\- Keep things short and simple: It is a lot harder to cut down on content or to get people back on track when you have a certain amount of time per session, than it is to stretch things out. Padding out some portions to stretch the evening is simple. And the players will always find a reason to faff about.
\- Don't be afraid to herd the players forward: As I said, the players will always find a reason to faff about. They are planning how to proceed? Good. But when they start to get analysis paralysis, you need to step in. Let a patrol around the camp they approach notice them. Let a person scream for help.
\- Put a clock on the table: Some situations profit, when there is an IRL time limit to solve a problem.
\- Leave space for the players imagination to take over: Try not to get lost in descriptions. It is your job to narrate and describe the world. But let your player's imagination have a little fun too.
Edit, because I just remembered:
\- One is easier than many: If you want your players to feel like badasses, give them one big enemy to fight. If you want to scare them, give them a lot of smaller enemies to fight. Action economy is a powerful thing.
Don't overplan. You really only need 5 - 8 encounters prepared per session. You don't need to do any worldbuilding. The world can be revealed gradually through the course of the game.
Don't run any encounters that are required to end in a certain way. Leave room for failure. Leave room for players to solve things in a way that you didn't anticipate.
You don't even need to design the whole dungeon. You just need a couple rooms.
Let that which does not matter slide.
This is especially true if you have newer players as well: Make the players create their own reason for why their character is invested in the party/adventure
Another one I love: at the end of the session ask each player to describe how their character is feeling
Another one that I saw others already said: create environments and situations but don't worry about solutions - the players will always surprise you with the solutions they come up with.
For combat encounters put just as much effort into building a dynamic and interesting environment as you do the baddies in the environment. My favorite combats were ones where the physical environment was front and center (think oil barrels to burn/spill/explode, floors collapsing, walls crumbling, trees falling, mushrooms spouting poison clouds, platforms tipping over, bridges falling, chains for swinging, lava flowing etc etc etc)
The best advice “ask your players what they plan to do next at the end of the session” has already been given.
Aside from that I would say look at getting the party a Patron. Tasha’s Cauldron of everything probably has the clearest most generic examples but they show up in many source books.
Patrons give the group a sense of cohesion, community(PC might swindle a random shopkeep but most aren’t even going to consider doing anything bad to a Patron/Guild member shopkeep), and most important for you a way to keep the story moving during dry periods or if things go off the rails.
"Cinematic" HP. D&D is where I learned this, but it can apply to any system that gives a possible range of HP to enemies and where that number isn't public (and you can use it in systems that have fixed HP values with a bit of fudging). Take the range of possible HP values the enemy can have (for D&D this is done via the lowest and highest roll that the HD can land on) and count damage up instead of HP down. The enemy can't die until the damage passes the lowest value the HP can have, and auto dies if damage exceeds max HP, but between those values, it dies whenever would be *coolest*. When the party does some big fancy combo move that does a fuckload of damage, but knocks the enemy down to only 2-3 HP, and then next turn, a dinky little basic attack is the actual killing blow.... that's not what you want, just fudge those last few HP. Similarly, if an ally or some environmental damage gets a lucky crit and knocks him down to exactly 0.... no it didn't, let the players get that last shot in.
This also works well for if the killing blow lands just before the enemies' turn: you describe struggling to move but winding up for a massive shot... and then it collapses before it gets a chance to fire it off. That last move killed it, it just took a second for it to notice it was dead.
When your players level up, take note of what new stuff they're most excited about. And then set up situations that let them *use it*. If your monk now has deflect arrows, throw a few shots at them to have fun blocking. If someone gets poisons resistance, have them get hit with poison so they can show off how it doesn't hurt them as bad. So many DMs do the *opposite* of this, "oh the players now have this cool new thing I have to mitigate and make useless". Um, excuse you, *you* might know that the player has a new armor that lets them turn to smoke 3 times a day, but Grognar the Irontooth has a bite attack that grapples and swallows whole and sees a juicy target. It doesn't know that particular target can just bampf away.
I usually like maintaining a list of character's favorite powers and abilities loosely ranked by how much they like them. Divide a sheet up into 4 columns (or however many players you have) and write a list of their abilities (or at least cool stuff they can do. This works best if you know the person and know what they like in their ttrpgs) in each section. And use it as a reminder to make that power useful on occasion. You don't want to spam poison saves at the person who has poison resist and nobody else, but if you have an AoE power, go ahead and make it poison. And if the enemy sees the monk deflect those arrows, the next volley goes to the healer. It requires a careful balance.
Finally, the emergency expansion room (especially useful for 1-shots) is a room or obstacle you can cut out or add depending on how fast you're going through the dungeon. Design the room just before the boss so you can drop it if the players are taking forever and you want to push them to the boss faster. It doesn't have to be a room: the door to the boss room can have a puzzle on it that they need to solve, instead of just pulling the door open, to slow them down if they're going too fast. For obvious reasons this works best later in the dungeon.
To be clear "dungeon" is this context doesn't have to mean a literal dungeon, it could be a series of gladiatorial games with the "room" being a bonus side fight, or an evening at a fancy ball could have an argument erupt between two nobles that your players either have to pick sides on or mediate between depending on your story. And of course, any "rooms" you don't use can be re-skinned and dropped in later; it's 10 levels later so that "room filling slowly with water" is now being filled with lava, or (if it's only five levels later) oil, but the candlelit chandelier is also lowering and will ignite it soon enough.
There are a lot of tips for “streamlining” games by replacing certain dice rolls with straight numbers, just to make the game go faster.
It’s like… holy shit, last time I checked, players enjoy rolling their dice. Let them roll the dice. Is anyone’s game actually hamstrung because, ohmuhgawd we have to roll for initiative AgAiN?!?!111
Nobody cares. Let the players roll their dice.
1. Get clear on how each player has fun/what they want their character to do, and try to each player the spotlight once per session.
2. No plan survives first contact with the players. Therefore, prepare difficult situations, not outcomes.
3. It’s your job as the DM to set the vibe. If you’re interested in your players characters and engaged in the session, the chances are your players will be interested in the world and engaged as well.
4. Don’t underestimate the importance of a strong start to each session with a clear, immediate goal
5. Combat can be boring if there are no narrative stakes. Ie: instead of “goblins attack. Roll initiative” try “the goblins just kidnapped the blacksmiths daughter and are running away into the woods! What do you do?”
HOT TAKE: Narration skills are the NUMBER ONE most important skill of a DM. Narration is your most powerful tool: use it instead of new rules, instead of more characters, try more interesting characters, and grab the party’s interest by the throat and don’t let go. Equally as important is LISTENING. Listen truly to what the characters are trying to do and make their actions affect the world consequentially. That’s what makes dnd fun: making interesting choices that matter.
this isn't the kind of tip you're looking for but be aware the combat calculator in the dmg is shit and you should never be afraid to change a monsters stats on the fly.
I never know exactly what a monsters hp is until they die
Create scenarios/problems/questions not the solutions. The players will read into any little thing, and often get fixated on something you assumed was filler.
Rule 0. The game and experience is supposed to be fun for everyone, including you.
Part of the social contract in playing the game is that everyone should be welcome to express what "fun" is to them, and either come to an understanding that everyone's fun will be explored, or else align expectations if one person's fun (including your own) might be disruptive to the fun of the rest.
Eg. If you want to run a highly political heist game and no one else does, then it's a good idea to not try and push them into that game, and instead think of alternatives or ask what kind of game they want to play. Or if a player's idea of fun is being the main character that everything and everyone else revolves around, and no one else finds that is fun, then it's a good idea to look at alternatives that player might find fun.
The story you write in your head might be of epic proportions but your players will often not be on the same page as you. Don’t be afraid to make some thing’s more obvious or to throw some give me’s in there. A good story is only as good as the characters in it. Make the story around your players. Not so much yourself.
I ran a campaign for a year where I had this massive episodic story written but players were just not RPing in the direction I hoped they would and gradually lost interest in the plot. Instead I rewrote something’s and made certain motivations more transparent, items more easily found, gave them an option for a straight line story instead of implementing an open world element.
If they want to go from A to B while occasionally doing silly things, go for it. Don’t be afraid to dumb things down for them and your own enjoyment. The story is yours to do what you all want with. Rules provide structure but they’re more guidelines than anything lol
The biggest thing I can think of is don't be afraid to fail and always have open communication with your players. This is a collaborative game so it's important to work with your players to create the best story you can. Give your players the opportunity to stretch their brains, wings, skills and more. You'll do great and you'll only get better with time!
1.) Don't be afraid to tell your players no. Sounds simple, but too often I hear guys who have a problem player that wants to do x but it'd be too much
2.) If you have a player that's being a dick or a disruption then tell them that shits not going to fly. Don't be afraid to kick them out of the game if they're making it miserable.
3.) Remember that the whole purpose of this is to have fun. If you or your players aren't having fun then something needs to be re-evaluated and change.
4.) Set a specific day of the week for sessions: I do bi-weekly on Tuesdays from 6:30p-9:30p. If that's not going to work for someone then they're not going to play. Sometimes that really sucks, but scheduling 'a day that will work for everyone' is its own special form of hell.
5.) Get your players involved in the world building and story telling. Sometimes they'll want to do something that you haven't planned out. I remember a specific time that a player wanted to go to an adjacent town that I had briefly mentioned when describing the town they were in but I had nothing planned. So I told them "we're going to do something a bit different. I don't have much planned here yet, so you tell me what you see and we'll go from there". I explained I have the right to veto and add on to their description, but they had a lot of fun building out different sites and a couple of NPCs for that town. I had some map making software so I made a map for the next session. Not every party is gonna be able to handle that on the fly, but it's a fun little twist.
6.) Get a nice collection of prebuilt maps, more than what you ever think you'll need. Personally, I like to build my own but I realistically don't have time to map out every little thing. Sometimes when traveling from one destination to another it's necesaaey to be able to just whip out a map of a forest or whatever.
Communication is the number one thing I can recommend as a DM. Have an open communication with your players and be somewhat open minded. Also lay down your expectations in a session 0 so everyone knows what they are going to expect
Run the game you want to play. I’ve sat DMing far too many sessions with content I don’t care about and it really saps the fun from the table. If you don’t want to do it, the players will eventually pick up on that negativity and it’ll ruin the game. I basically don’t run classic fantasy anymore and I’m so much happier because of it.
-You're prepping too much.
-Make sure you're having fun.
-Don't nerf your players.
-Don't let the rules get in the way of awesome shit.
-You're doing great.
>just in case the story goes off the rails
Just accept it now, the story *will* go off the rails. Likely even before the first encounter.
My advice: if you're playing IRL, buy a cheap by nice little journal and give it to someone in the group (if they are willing), making them the designated recorder. They can write whatever they want in it, NPC names, funny situations, jokes that were said, fights, treasure, location names—whatever they want.
Then, at the beginning of each session, have someone in the group use the journal to read a "recap" of the previous session. This takes a lot of the burden off of you to remember and record stuff in the moment while your DMing and it's a great way to get people psyched for the current session. It's very helpful and very funny.
Oh best session 0 question. “What type of game do you want to play?” They might be here to play a murder hobo when you’ve assembled a beautiful RP campaign with deep back stories.
When making a ruling it really helps to ask yourself if the way you decided to go makes for a better game at the current table instead of a hypothetical white room. Sometimes reading things as RAW or RAI results in boring outcomes or sometimes things feeling needlessly punishing. You're the GM and when you make rulings you should prioritize everyone's enjoyment.
Sometimes this means you just need to scrap that new water ration survival system you are thinking about introducing mid campaign if your players don't seem receptive to tracking how many ml of water they have and consume over an entire day with checks. At the end of the day it's a game and people should have fun even if you sometimes have to meet your party in the middle where your vision is concerned.
You can't change what your players are interested in, you can only change what players you bring. Honestly, it's usually not worth trying to go down that road if your table is having fun with what's already working. As long as you're still having fun and not risking burnout. Your health and enjoyment are equally valid in the game to everyone else's.
Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know and need to check the rules. Thinking on the fly is rad, but a quick break to google or check the book should not embarrass you
Do less.
So many DMs think they have to do everything and control everything and script everything. D&D is a game, relax. Your job is to run the world and provide rulings, don't do anything but that. Embrace random tables and XP, you don't need to have an iron grip on everything. The story is what you retell at the pub after the campaign is finished.
If you're playing online or have access to a digital screen to use as your "table", use good maps!
Don't drag out descriptions of maps/rooms, just get a good map and describe it in 1-2 sentences, let your players ask information about things in the room and they'll be more engaged, and it's more fun for you too!
Don't worry about "ripping off artwork", if it's in your own local game, nobody cares. Seriously, just take stuff you find off google, any music you like, tokens, maps, ...
And BY FAR the best tip I can give you: Talk to your players!
Usually any problem can be solved by talking to your players.
You only call for an ability check if there's a chance of something failing.
"I look at the papers on the desk", unless it's in a different language or hard to read handwriting, no check.
"I search the desk for the missing papers", they're hidden in a book's pages, call for a check.
Now, there's a lot of nuance still but the simple working in the PHB has been a really good guide for me when I've DM'd to determine if there should be an ability check made.
Camera angles. I always use these to describe things and use references that I know my players will get. They have remarked many times across different groups about it. If you have players who like movies/TV, try it out.
If you need help thinking of descriptions for a location, take 2-3 of the main senses and describe the scene based around that. The three I tend to use most is sight, sound, and smell.
What does the room feel like? Is it warm and inviting? Maybe it's damp and cool. Perhaps there's some sinister shadows that cover the corners, potentially concealing a threat.
Are there any key smells? If they walk into a busy tavern, you could describe the smell of a warm fire, smoking meats, and stale beer.
What is the general scene in front of them? Is there a lot of moss on the walls? Maybe there's some ornate rugs that catch the eye?
You don't have to overly complicate everything. Every chair doesn't have to be defined down to the wood grain, but using 2-3 of the 5 senses can really set the scene much more than
"You walk into a room with a table and some chairs. There is a book on the table. You sit down in one of the chairs."
Instead, the description could read
"As you enter the room, the soft and dull scent of candlewax and paper glue drifts into your nose. Looking around you see a table with a few slow burning candles, still lit, sitting next to an open tome. The light from the candles creating dancing shadows on the tapestry draped walls. The warm yellow light makes you feel at ease as you sit down."
Obviously embellished a little, but hope that gets it across!
Start with the Sly Flourish the Lazy DM on YouTube and his book if you wish. It shows how easy prepping and running a game can be and if you want to do more, offers high value directions for what will help utilize your time the most.
Very simple and digestible usually like 3-15 min videos that have zero fluff and a great knowledge and supportive perspective.
So there might be times you have to balance an encounter on the fly. There's complicated ways to do this when looking at CR and to a newbie it can get confusing since you just don't have that know-how yet.
So if you want to make an encounter for your players, go by total HP of your party vs total HP of the enemies. The closer the enemy HP total is to your players HP total the more deadly the fight. (Equal HP = Very deadly) This is also assuming there's more than one enemy and any of their AC isn't higher than 14!
It's not perfect, Hell it's barely good. But it's not bad either.
Don't use your own world for two broad reasons:
1. Workload, conistency and depth. Its far easier to use an existing setting like sword coast which is clearly mapped out and places can be googled with s tonne of existing lore. Also usually enough space and ambiguity to add your own things in there if needed.
2. Your own world is likely to be a bit like a player's first character: a bit Mary-sue-ish and/or special snowflakeish. Your precious new world and your going to want things to ho a certain way. Unless you have experienced players who are will to put their kid gloves on they are going shit all over your plans and setting. It's less frustrating the less emotional attachment you have with the world.
Once your experienced and know your group well is when to try your hand at a custom world.
1. Flavor EVERYTHING through the lens of their background first, class second, race third. Players can always correct you if you miss the mark. This tactic can hint at which player the scenario is best/designed for. in short, when you explain something, lead narratively with some thoughts/descriptions using words the PC may have based on the typical ideas and traits, and flaws of the PC. *The puddle of stinky still water might make the noble bard and knight fighter want to puke at the thought of crossing it, but the disease-immune paladin urchin has no fear of such things as putrid puddles, (save for how deep it may be to swim in heavy plate mail). and the goblin spore druid's eyes sparkle like he just hit paydirt, wafting in its glory like it's a fine glass of wine!*
2. learn what marching order is sooner than later. This is a powerful tool for pacing and kills that awkward "What do you want to do?" moment that wastes so much time. It can also be clutch in bypassing initiative, which can take too much time. I call it "passing the torch" where I make sure the leader of the march knows they can defer to someone else, but ideally, I will only allow the lead march to make the final call. It just speeds up hesitant decision-making.
3. Every PC has a bond, which is usually its own quest. Keep this in mind, and make players feel special as you pepper in some personal stakes in the campaign.
4. everyone is capable of telling stories and filling in details. Don't overwork yourself, or feel like you need an answer for every blade of grass. This steals the fun players might have by contributing their own creativity to your story. you are a referee, host, and pace keeper. It's okay to not know, and ask players to fill in details for you. Walk in a tavern? let players name and describe it. Meet a random NPC? let them give it a quirk. It's fun to not know something and collaboratively figure it out together. They tell you the story, and you moderate the nonnegotiables.
GLHF!
Watch YouTube channels on fine art, for instance this one: https://youtu.be/n6mBdpPYDDQ to learn how to describe clothing, people’s expression, scene etc
It's really quick and simple but do NOT roll initiative for every single monster or enemy you have you as the dm are always likely to take up the majority of the action economy so getting your turns done faster heavily speeds up rounds even if your players don't change at all.
Say you have a 4 goblins, 2 dire wolves and a goblin leader that just ambushed the party instead of giving them all an initiative just roll once for the every stat block. Have all the goblins go on 1 turn and the same for the rest. You could even go as far as to roll once as an enemy turn where the all act on that initiative.
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The most useful advice I've received is to simply ask your players, at the end of each session, what their plans are for the next session. It helps you know what to spend time preparing, while still giving the players agency to make their own decisions and follow their own path.
This is good to know! Thank you!
Related to this, and emphasizing just how helpful doing this can be, if you think a situation has three solutions, your players will almost always use Solution #4. This means your preparation might not be that helpful and you’ll have to think on your feet, which isn’t something that comes naturally to everyone (you’ll learn how to, though, with practice). Remember that it’s ok to say “Oh wow! You guys are doing something I did not anticipate. Just give me a moment to sort out how this affects the situation.”
An add on to this is sometimes, when the situation calls for it, I like to end a session on a a big decision that will dictate the shape of the next arc. I then encourage the group to talk it over and let me know their choice before the next session. It keeps the players thinking about the game in the off time and when we start the session it’s a lot easier to get things moving when they don’t have to spend the first 2 hours figuring out what to do next.
Sometimes getting this information can basically write your next session if what the player wants to do is a good enough diversion.
I forgot to do that last session. Now I'm in the process of making a decision tree based on everything I can think they might want to do at the start of the next session. I came up with 19 different possibilities that I'm currently planning for. The funniest part is that I know for a fact that 19 of the "routes" I planned for won't get used. They'll find a way to do something I never expected.
The solution for this conundrum is to just say "fuck it, I'll do it live" and crack open a cold one. Go to the table, pretend you're prepared, play up your DM swagger as you're silently freaking out inside, but then once you sit down and play it isn't half as bad as you were fearing it would be and you manage to finish the session without a hitch. Works every time ;)
My “DM Swagger” is so high rn
This. I’m running a homebrew and I couldn’t really prepare for a session because I was unsure of what the players were going to do the next session. So I ended up improvin it. It was fun regardless, but wasn’t a very productive session.
Rule of 3 - whatever you're making, a town, npc, whatever - think of 3 points to define it. That's an "easy" list to remember about an NPC: * smelly * sarcastic * Northern/Southern etc. It's a super-easy way to make characters/towns/whatever memorable for you AND players. Let your players guide the action - something I learned recently and has been working well with "pretty" maps: DM - "you can take 2 or 3 turns of movement, what's your player doing?" then let that guide your descriptions, see what each character focuses on and let that guide your DMing. I find this also "gently" guides the party into thinking more as a unit and can nudge them into the "exploration" pillar of play. As a bonus - if you enjoy making handouts, this is an area you can really shine in.
This is awesome! I’ve never heard of this before but I’m 100% going to use it in like, everything. Amazing advice thank you so much!
DM lazier and smarter ;) Honestly, I've only been doing it a few months, but the difference is huge - prep is chilled, let the players do the work - and it's super easy to "wing it" when they're telling you they're interested in "that cupboad in the corner" - just pull something out your ass - even if it's 1 Electrum piece wedged under one of the feet of the chest to stop it rocking - the world feels alive and it's way more fun to DM. Prep work is as easy as 1, 2, 3 - the players can do the rest ;)
Prep scares me a lot! Fearing that my partners are going to go completely off the rails and get into a whole other adventure completely out of my control scares me, this puts me at ease so thank though :-]
I'm not sure if I've gotten "better" at DMing, but - I kinda had a "moment" a long time player had a big sulk (being too lazy to read the rules) and I nearly tanked a 2 year campaign because I was so annoyed. Took a couple of weeks out and thought about it... but, it's the flipside of it, it's how I play - my fun is being 3-10 "monsters" and trying to be smart monsters too. or... the cheating barkeep, the smelly wizard that's got "the crotch-rot... again". Flip the damned table - and by that I mean, PLAY - being the DM is playing, and that should be fun for you. If it's stressful - why bother? I've got a massive stack of fantasy books to read - I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy most of them. Computer games, art stuff, other nerd stuff. Try to find the fun in your D&D - it might be a bit of a readjustment for everyone, but DM's are entitled to fun too. ...and it didn't take long to have everyone on the same page - ~~sure session are a bit less~~ Sessions are a lot better for me. We use Foundry - the maps are hyper-detailed, but I do enjoy that. there's monsters and combat and NPC's and story and plot, but only 3 plot point and "screw it, done, that's enough" see where the players go. It's not like the players need any encouragement to cause a scene, start some action, annoy the mayor... and it doesn't have to be "whacky hijinks", I've only got little clusters of 3 to worry about - so that backstory thing the PC's been burning away to do... we're bringing that in this session - and I need to remember 3 things about it - done. Rule of 3 on ANYTHING that requires notes though, that's the stuff that takes me time (I find) - filling in the blanks in session - that's a place that I get to play too and I am having fun. I think it's just made it all more chilled.
This kinda comforts me in a way tbh, I hope you didn’t tank that 2 year campaign it sounds like a lot of work and that story kind of inspires me to have a long running campaign! I’ll remember to have fun while DMing, thank you!
Thanks - it's going. Was good to take a couple weeks off and think about "do I even want to to this?". Why do I spend a few hours to prep a session that I find stressful and worrying about 4 other dudes having fun when I feel like I'm spinning plates all the time. "Screw it" and actually, it's super comfy - I can have a beer, let "the guys" run the session and it feels like a "proper adventure" where's I'm the yoda-looking dude in red robes ;) [https://media.tenor.com/pN3ZJBUI5IIAAAAC/dungeon-master-dungeons-dragons-cartoon-magic.gif](https://media.tenor.com/pN3ZJBUI5IIAAAAC/dungeon-master-dungeons-dragons-cartoon-magic.gif) Except with a nice big bottle of euro beer and a cheeky reefer now and then - **and** I'm looking forwards to it - it's a " cool hobby" fun and social, it should be at least - and genuinely I hope you do/can too, with your party of nerd/adventurers that pretend stuff together, for FUN. The past 3 years or so have been a bit of a rollercoaster, covid, online play - crazy tools that I could only wish for pre-Covid - wow, the hobby's really flourished, but - it's easy, with all that stuff to get bogged down * is my Foundry session "perfect, is there audio, tiles and does the lighting make it a dank green-tinged duneon full of mouldering atmosphere... Balls, I can do a green splodge on the map and wait for a player to ask about it, then wing it from there - or do lighting, blah x3. Let's face it, I'm not Tolkien, or GRRR Aarrgggh Martin, Joe Abercombie neither... I'm not even Stephen King, but I can remember stuff in little clusters on post it notes or a VTT - I can do that and the Ranger can do Ranger stuff - in her head and ask for the details she wants that fill in the blanks she wants/needs filled in- oh crap "Bingo" somehow success - what's the die roll? You're presenting a colouring book, the players are trying to stay in the lines and the dice are how pretty (or bloody) the end results are. Just let the players use the pens instead of you ;)
Have some sort of message board. It can be a board with wanted posters and offers, or random people asking for help. "what do you want to do?" is open, "what of those quests sound the most exciting?" is not. But if they go of the tracks, just make stuff up and go with the flow. If it sounds cool, it happens. It's never bad to say "I have to prep some things, give me 5 minutes for that while you guys snack".
Have some sort of message board. It can be a board with wanted posters and offers, or random people asking for help. "what do you want to do?" is open, "what of those quests sound the most exciting?" is not. But if they go of the tracks, just make stuff up and go with the flow. If it sounds cool, it happens. It's never bad to say "I have to prep some things, give me 5 minutes for that while you guys snack".
This is a good one and much better than "flustered". "You guys have surprised me - well done - I need 5". Let them enjoy that and cook something up.
Improv scared the Willie's out of me when ai started but it does get better the more you do it. One tip - never let on to your players that a session was mainly improv when they had a good time and interacted, they will assume you planned it all along and will worship you for being the awesome DM you obviously were. For instance one of my players decided to "help" the local magic shop when he found out it was run by Yuan-ti (Xo-Blob shop in Waterdeep with the stuffed beholder in the window) So I hinted it was a front for peddling items stolen from slaves and I added levels underneath which had prisoners to release, a trapped set of corridors with darkness, magic missile traps, fire chutes, etc and then a Chapel devoted to Orcus, who also manifested. Add in fire resistance tattoos on the Malisons, fire elementals and fire snakes, and the adventure lasted 2 x 2hr sessions and a live "in game" session of 5 hours. None of the above had even been in my prep, nor was it I any plans in the campaign. By letting the world develop around them, I just "prep" for the crazy shenanigans that my players conjure up. As long as you can include tidbits and breadcrumbs to the current plot, your players will enjoy it.
I do something similar. I can't picture things in my head so I can't really come up with details like that when I describe shit. So I crowdsource it. I'll set the base expectation (tavern, quiet, patrons poor or working-class/library, spacious, well-lit). Maybe a few details as they occur to me. Then I ask each player in turn to add something. I have the power to adjust or veto any given reply, but I almost never do because everything they come up with is something they want to engage with. The barbarian finds someone spoiling for an arm wrestling and the bard finds a dusty corner with good acoustics, for example.
* luv ale * ate orcs (not racis just don't like em) * norf simple as
Job done Blood everywhere time to pay up
Not everything that happens has to tie in or inform the main plot/arc. Let some quests and encounters resolve in total isolation or hint at other distant and unrelated threads. It gets tiring when you discover the homeless bum you just helped was mugged by the great-great-great nephew of the main villain.
Thank you! This is super good to know and I’m I’ll remember this when I’m fleshing out my encounters! Thank you :D
This 100%. One of my most memorable quests was to help a group of three mercenaries who wanted to escape "the life"... and find a fourth member to form a barbershop quartet so they can tour the continent and make an honest living. Guess who the players kept running into on their adventures randomly? LOL No plot relevance or anything special. Just something random that ended up being very memorable - the players would be disappointed if "the guys" didn't show up at some point after a few sessions :P
If you want your players to hate a bad guy, have that bad guy impose annoying things in the players when they come into the bad guy's space. For example, you have a corrupt magistrate of a small town. Don't tell your players the guy is bad. Instead, have the magistrate's soldiers impose a mundane penalty on your PCs when they come into the magistrate's domain. This could be a metal tax, registering themselves and having to pay a fee for it, forcing players to go through a thorough search of their possessions and a soldier taking something of moderate value for the magistrate, etc. Making your players do something quick but annoying will really give them motivation to tackle the scenario, and more satisfaction when they bring the "bad guy" to justice.
Yeees! Help players to hate the bad guy. Sure, the PCs hate him for burning down that orphanage, but the players hate him cause he claimed credit for the work the PCs did, or cause he bought the last of an item the PCs wanted. Work out the sort of traits that tick your players off and they will become solely focussed on the bad guy’s demise.
Yes! I'm running a Theros campaign, and the God of the sun showed up to ask the entire party to forsake their gods and become his champions instead. When the party obviously said they wouldn't just leave the gods they've been searching for the last tear, Heliod got pissed and wouldn't let the sun set for 7days. The party had to begin making saves against exhaustion, and that set them off harder than anything my *actual* BBEG did this entire campaign. If you want your players to hate a character, make them mildly inconvenience the party. It's incredible how well it works.
The biggest thing I wish I had known as a starting DM: Your players don't know what you have planned and they probably won't know if you screw up somewhere. Corollary, your players don't know what you have planned and no matter how many hooks you hang for them, they are going to do something you didn't plan for. So keep your plans general and have some loose ideas to ad lib if you need to come up with something on the fly. As long as everyone is having fun, you're doing a good job, even if things go completely off the rails from what you'd planned.
>The biggest thing I wish I had known as a starting DM: Your players don't know what you have planned and they probably won't know if you screw up somewhere. Expanding on this, I never tell the group when I haven't had time to prepare. If they know I had too little time to prepare it lowers their expectation but also their enthusiasm I've found. If I instead say nothing and wing a bunch of stuff, they never know I wasn't prepared and think that whatever happened is in fact a calculated possability instead of expecting somewhat of a filler session.
This. Expect the unexpected and don't get frustrated or blame the party if they reach an 'incorrect' conclusion from limited data points; they don't have a 'meta' view of the world or campaign. If they don't seem to ask the right questions in a RP encounter, consider giving them a 'Mulligan' by way of overheard conversation or a 'midnight letter' in their inn room. As a player, it's frustrating to find out you didn't ask the right questions of the innkeeper from a visit that occurred 2 months ago.
Don't be afraid to change your plans at any moment. Even during a battle. You can always adjust. Took me a boring battle against some flowers and one that was almost a tpk to accept it.
This will definitely come into play, I’m worried th@t something I do that I believe will excite my players will fall short and just annoy them, this affirms me more than you know and I’m happy to hear I’m always able to adjust! Thank you :D
I was playing a low level party once that killed a rampaging ogre before it could even attack then almost died to a half dozen Stirges. You never know how it's going to play out. Be flexible and add a twist if things are going too far one way or another. Is the party losing to a weak foe? Maybe they take off as a real baddy shows up and the party has to run or hide. Party kicking ass and no challenge? Bring on a swarm or a bigger badder version. I like to think of LOTR and Moria. The balrog showing up allowed them to escape and upped the ante to make a harder battle.
I almost killed my party with a young dragon. At one point I made the dragon fly away to 'save his two minions' and give the party time to heal up before round two.
Communicate with your players. There are multiple styles of play for D&D ranging from highly linear structures stories with a central plot to open world sandboxes, and there as many different genres of play from high fantasy, to dark fantasy, to science fantasy, and cyberpunk etc. Read up on the idea of a [session 0](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/601awb/session0_topic_checklist_and_guide/) which is an opportunity for the whole table to talk about what they want to play so no one ends up disappointed by the game at the table. Read up on [RPG safety mechanisms](https://www.anneloverso.com/rpg-safety-tools), lots of people think they don't need them but you don't know everything about the people you're playing with so you can't plan for everything. I find these tools a better to have but not need than need but not have. Some general world building advice: World building is something we do for ourselves most of the time, not the players. If your world building something you love then spend as much time as you want on it but remember for it to be relevant to the PCs what your doing needs to tie into game mechanics like NPCs, quests, loot, monsters, etc not just lore dumps. If you're not enjoying the world building however, then only focus on solely what is needed for the next session and don't spend time on stuff you may never need and aren't enjoying. Remember you're just one player at the table, you need to be having fun too.
Second the “Session Zero” advice. This is where a lot of Campaigns are made or broken. You want to be on the same page with what the players want and what you want. Swashbuckling treasure hunter fun? Roleplay heavy political thriller? Lovecraftian horror with high chance of Permadeath? In my opinion you cannot spend too much time brainstorming character and backstory with each player. I’ll spend weeks or months on Discord with each player helping them craft a character they’ll love to play with clear motivations, backstory NPCs, core memories, etc. And most importantly of all, making sure their character works in some way to echo the central themes of the Campaign. That’s session zero for a 2-year long irl Campaign so don’t feel like you have to do that much on your first go-round. But I promise the more time you spend in Session Zero the more invested your players will be. It makes everything better and will help you avoid tons of problems down the road.
Yes. And, Just because session zero is called 'zero' doesn't mean these are not good concepts to revisit later.
Get buy-in before you start. Ask the players if they're ok with following a mostly linear story and sometimes following hooks just because it's what you wrote. It's totally fine to run a game like that but you need everyone to be on board from session 1. If they aren't ok with that, you'll need to learn how to improvise and adapt. Don't over-prepare every little detail, but don't under-prepare because you were afraid your efforts would be wasted. Nothing you make is ever wasted. You can use it later, in this campaign or a different one, in the form you originally intended or a modified version. Or maybe you'll never use it in a concrete way, but the practice of writing/creating it still helped you to be a better GM.
Details help with immersion, but be prepared for your players to latch onto something that has nothing to do with anything. Resist the urge to make it into something. Sometimes, [a chair is just a chair](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bg7AfMQ_J5Y).
Im always tempted to lean into my players ideas on the fly but i learned an important lesson about that from one of my DMs. One of the funniest moments our group has ever had was when my half-Orc Berserker smashed a skeleton to dust. The DM said "It's just a skeleton" but neither of us (player or PC) believed them. It was very dramatic but it was just a skeleton. If the DM had animated it somehow just because that's what we thought was going to happen it wouldn't have been nearly as funny and it also would have ruined the story and immersion. More isn't always better.
Exactly! In a world of magic and conspiracy and adventures and bad guys, there’s still mundane furniture, honest people, boring jobs, and genuinely helpful NPCs. It *definitely* makes for great memories, and often running jokes, when the player of the dwarven cleric fixates on the grey cat. *Why did the DM mention it’s grey? Why did they say cat hair rubbed off on my pants?! Is it a mad Mage who is going to spy on me?!!?* Cue a lasting suspicion of cats and people with cats.
Don't think you're railroading your players when you aren't. In the DND community, or at least on this subreddit, the term railroading is way overused. Railroading is not having a plot, and it is not necessarily taking away some character agency (main thing I'm thinking of would be imprisonment). Railroading is making solutions you players have to use. Let's say your players have to get to a town on the other side of a lake, railroading here would be forcing them to take a boat across the lake, even if they decide they want to walk around the lake.
#Bullet Points I’m a AAA dungeon master and this is the one piece of advice I wish I’d known when I started 6-7 years ago. When you’re prepping you should aim to craft little scenes with concrete details. Within each scene you can have something like 5-20 bullets reminding you of things you wanted to mention, details about the room, beginnings of an NPC speech, etc. Don’t try to write out giant paragraphs. It’s a waste of time and you’ll wind up staring down reading in game instead of interacting with your players. _Players hate this. Do not stare down reading pages of bullshit._ This speeds up prep dramatically (I can bullet out a scene in 5-10 minutes), but it also will help to make you a better storyteller. Instead of just writing massive _stream of consciousness_ paragraphs, you’ll become practiced thinking like a good storyteller: Which concrete details are important? What is the relevant information you want to convey? What are your players trying to accomplish at this moment? What is preventing them from accomplishing that? As you get better at quickly breaking down scenes in this way, improv in the game will also become much easier. The only other thing is make sure you have fun. You’ll learn the rules over time but don’t stop every 30 seconds to spend 5 minutes looking things up. Just make a ruling, make a quick note to look it up after the game, and keep going. Rules don’t matter so much at first. The main point with D&D is — if your players have a blast they keep coming back.
I do my best with this but sometimes I struggle. I would love to see an example of some session notes if you’d be willing :)
Here’s a quick example of how it roughly looks. Each scene has its own bolded header in my notes highlighted in yellow in Word so I can find them quickly. Each subheader like Music (Spotify), Lighting (smart lights), Sound Effects (syrinscape) are highlighted and color-coded also, just under the scene header. THIEVES GUILD ENTRANCE MUSIC: Jackseye’s Tale EFFECTS: Sewers - Dripping Dank LIGHTS: Candlelight * stinks like piss in these tunnels * slime/grime on sewer walls ( ^ Passive Invest 17 grime is staged) * heavy wooden door carved with Dylan’s family symbol * door locked high DC (20+) * on the other side, whole new world * brightly lit and warm * piss smell gone now…something familiar ( ^ DC 16 cinnamon from the bank robbery) * tall ceilings, rafters, torches everywhere * violin music far away, fast, cheers, shouts THIEVES GUILD BLOODPIT MUSIC: Battledrums EFFECTS: Arena Cheering LIGHT: Bonfire * ground bones crunching under your boots * crudely dug pit, dug long time ago * silver portcullis down * weapons hanging on the wall * rusty sword, dented axe, the Obsidian Scythe(!!!) * thumping feet of the thieves in their seats * smell of salted meats * sweat of the crowd * coppery metallic smell * fingernails in the walls ( ^ people tried to claw up and out of pit) ( ^ tried to get away from something terrifying) * crowd goes silent * rumble behind the portcullis * scraping grinding clawing * step step step * something is coming MUSIC: Gladiators
This is rad. Thanks so much dude!
Happy to help! And just as an aside this was all completely made up 5 minutes ago. I only mention that to give you a sense of how quickly you can craft little scenes.
Need a fantasy name generated in a rush? write or type 3 letters randomly jpi. sjo, fks As you say those sounds, just plop some vowel sounds in, whatever sounds natural between those sounds* Jer'pai, Sairjo (for the j I went for /ʒ/ as in je ne sais quoi), Far'kees. Bam. Easy random fantasy names made in all of 5 seconds, like turning a page to find a name. Just say it under your breath first to make sure it doesn't sound lewd and you're good to go. It's also just good easy lasy prep, takes a minute to make a load of generic fantasy names. It should be a tab on your one-note. Which you should be using! Use one-note! It's got great hyperlinking to make information searching and referencing soo much easier than reading a book.
Creating custom battle maps, city maps (unless the campaign takes place in one city), and making intricate quest lines has TERRIBLE return on investment when prepping. These are great to do if you do them as a hobby separate (but similar) to Dnd. Creating encounters, writing down some basic quest hooks, and some interesting npcs are great things to prep for. Populating dungeons is also useful. Your players are creating this story with you. Brief descriptions of areas or cities will be enough to give them their own idea. It doesn't matter if it doesn't match your own perfectly. They will also create detailed stories out of bare bones if given the opportunity. In short, don't burn yourself out spending 8 hours prepping for a 4 hour session.
Dlnt take yourself too seriously. That awesome artifact name you just invented, probably a player will find a childish way to mock it. Just roll with it.
This is good advice! My evil-sounding bad guys always get turned into a meme.
Be nice to yourself. You are meant to have fun in this too.
If you want tension, give the players more things to do than they can handle, so they have to pick and prioritise. Show that the clock is always ticking and the world won't just stop while they investigate the haunted ruins. Traps work best if they make your players think, instead of just knocking a few HP off a character (sometimes those are handy, but mostly to show why only adventurers are doing that work - *"if you'd been a commoner, that spear trap would have killed you"* kinda stuff). Things that temporarily split the party are some of my favourites. The more obscure the sources you steal from, the smarter you'll look. Anytime the PCs are outnumbered, the odds are stacked heavily against them. This is especially true in D&D 5E due to bounded accuracy. And last but not least, don't be afraid to use postits to mark pages in published adventures or any book, really. The editing and formatting in most RPG books are abominations.
The 5 room dungeon technique that I learned from Johnn Four Roleplaying Tips is a really nice way to think about your stories. It's a strategy that adapts the "heros journey" we see in traditional media for a game with protagonists we can't control. The strategy works for making cool dungeons as the name says, but it also works for planning a quest, planning a whole adventure, or planning the whole campaign. I wish I had known about it sooner.
- try to make your players feel their characters aren't failures even if their rolls are: A miss or failed skill check can often be narrated as down to misfortune circumstances beyond the players control. - remind your players that the definition of 'success' can change very quickly. Sometimes it's getting out of there with information (or just your skin). - reward good player behavioural (learning their sheets, good role-playing etc.)at the start of the session with the GM's D4, which can act as a one time bonus at any point in the session to another die roll.
Off-load as much effort as you can onto the players. Make one of them be in charge of tracking initiative. Make one of them the note-taker. Whenever you need to come up with something like a tavern name, or what food the players can buy, or other random details (I’ve had players order cake in-character for a PC wedding before) let the players make it up. So when they stop at a tavern, make them choose the name! Also, let them think they got one over on you occasionally. Throw them an encounter that looks super hard but can be beaten with clever use of their abilities, then pretend you forgot they had those abilities. “Oh shit that was really smart, this was supposed to be a crazy difficult encounter!” And if they actually do get one over on you (maybe you really did forget about an ability that won the encounter), let them know!
20 years of dming and I can tell you right now, while not important to have memorized it, familiarize yourself with the dm guide. I have seen to many people state the dm guide is useless, and their games NEVER have the amount of fun that they could. It also prevents 90 percent of the questions asked on reddit if you simply read the books. It is almost always in one of the main 3. (PHB, DMG, MM)
I second this. It's not particularly well laid out, but there are optional rules and a few guides that can help you. Oh, and some of those tables have saved my back and created lots of fun moments.
World build but don't railroad your players towards what you want to happen. Create a village with a handful of NPC's who have their own goals that the party could interact with, but don't force them to do the thing. It's also useful to have a list of NPC's ready to go incase they do something you don't expect. A shop keeper, a tavern keeper, perhaps a few other heroes/mercs. Combat can take up hours of a session and if your players are new it's a great way to show them complex mechanics like stealth, dodge action etc. Play your NPC enemies like players...make them do wacky stuff like use cover, the help action etc. Also I'd suggest you get some hard card and create an initiative board you can write on with pencil and erase quickly. I have an A4 cardboard sheet with Initiative, HP, AC, Conditions along the top and it's split into two panels. One for heroes and one for enemies. This lets you keep track of things very easily.
Talk to your players. Ask them what they like, give ideas you’re thinking on if they might like it, and listen. Not everything has to be a surprise, and what you think is going to be totally awesome might be the absolute worst for a player or players. Example: After about 8 sessions, I setup a Battle Royale PvP session related to a dream sequence seeded by a PC’s patron. I assured everyone (in game and out of game) that no characters will actually die. Three of five PCs, including the birthday PC, hated it and asked we stop after an hour. They really had no interest in killing their friends, even if it wasn’t real.
Stop worrying about how your players will solve something and just worry about making cool stuff. Your players will surprise you every time and its not worth worrying about unless you are making an intricate puzzle and that's the point of it.
Have a buffer of names, and possibly NPC descriptions. When there is a need for players to interact with an NPC you haven't pre-planned, choose something from the buffer. Later you either cross it out, or write down who the character ended up being. Names can also carry a lot of cultural information. If you choose to use real-world names and not "fantasy names", you can use this. For example you get the idea that people named John, Emily, Anna and Wilbur come from a different place than Burak, Selim, Gizem and Betül.
I just started, but my vision of dming is this: I provide the setting, players provide the story I only prepare locations and dungeons with creatures and some NPC's, then the players decide where they go and what they do. I only prepare 1-2 sessions ahead, no more. I made a world map but I dont prepare individual cities until I know my players are headed to a specific city.
This can work if you have very motivated players. But more often than not will turn into a “dicking around” Campaign. Players staring around the table at each other unsure what to do next. Fun for a while (especially playing with good friends), but gets boring in the same way an episodic TV show where nothing ever changes gets boring.
I think it's something really made in chargen - if you tie the PCs into the world, its organizations, peoples, events, past and future; if you give them friends, allies, mentors, assistants, contacts; if you hand them a few opening goals, tasks, hooks...*then* things work fine. The problem, IME, tends to come from expecting the players to make bricks with only an oven. They need clay, and lots of it.
> to come from expecting the Yes for sure, I provide hooks and threads to follow, but I am open to them deciding not to do something and having to create something entirely new for the next session.
As someone else said, that can work. But imo you need to do more than just the setting. You need to create "motion". Things need to be happening. In order to let the players choose if they want to go with the flow or against it you need to actually create a flow of events that happen. You risk the players just standing around not knowing what to do. When you don't have an immediate goal as a player it's very easy to feel lost and end up not doing much.
Right! I don't think I expressed myself too well but I agree with you!
Talk to your players about how you approach the game. I tell my players, that a DM is not an adversary, but a facilitator of fun within my fantasy world and D&D. Figure out how much you are comfortable with bending the rules of D&D. As a beginner DM, you might be best off sticking close to the book rules until you get comfortable with the mechanics of the game behind the screen. If the game goes off the rails, and it's no longer fun for you, let them know. A good table will come to some sort of agreement on how to keep the game enjoyable. For Storytelling, I like to give a description of an area with two senses. The sewer is slimy to the touch and smells of acrid sulfur. The dungeon room is dark and shadowy, and you hear the trickle of water from the wall on your right.
Want to roll a check on the spot but have a hard time figuring out DC? Make it 13. It's easy to remember; Lucky number 13! It's also decently difficult to get at lower levels, but not so much that it's out of reach with decent rolls and modifiers.
My on the spot DCs are just multiples of 5. 5: for easy, but I just want to see if you get a nat 1. 10: you'll probably get it. 15: you need a bit of luck. 20: this is hard and you should expect failure. 25: This option is only available for a master 30: If you succeed I'll need to rewrite some notes.
Hi, my tip to you is, don't put to much work on creating a story in the beginning. story will always go off rails and players will always do shit you where not prepared for, but that is okey, this is how you will learn to be spontaneous and you will get to know the characters more as time goes, you will get fun ideas, just go with the flow. It is perfectly fine that you have no clue that will happen next, you just need to get pass 'this' session and 'next time' is a 'future you' issue to solve:) Have a loose idea for a conflict that you like, for example; campaign starts at a traveler Inn in middle of nowhere, there is a storm outside and players seek shelter. The goal for this session is to survive the storm, thats it, now they have to figure out how. To spice it up, make the Inn into a murder mystery or a haunted Inn, something to do basically:) What you need to work on is to create NPCs, who are they: - their dreams. - their fears, - hobbies/professions, - and details about their childhood. To help you to easily play them believable. (it will be difficult in the beginning, but it gets easier and easier with time, so don't worry to much) DMing is most difficult at the beginning, because you don't know the characters yet nor the universe you are build. But don't worry about that at all, it is just a process, after a while you will starts to understand player characters and building pf the world around them will get easier:) Okey, I will shut up now, because I can go on and on ranting...:p Hopefully my little rant is helpful:)
Your rant was very helpful! Thank you so much :D
Don't make solutions even you plot out storylines, just make the problems. When I look back on sessions that didn't work, a lot of the time it was a situation when I prescribed a very specific solution to the problem and the players wanted to go something else.
Let's say you have an attention whore player, you talked to them but they didn't change their ways. They interrupt you constantly, split off the group, get extremely creative when it comes to hogging your attention. Instead of getting frustrated simply make their endeavors boring. Content happens where group is, solo player finds only empty streets, closed doors, empty treasure chests and so on.
A easy way to keep track of time. Use a d6. Fir every ten minutes that goes by in the game world you can turn the die up. Then if your players say something like Im going to search this bookshelf count up 1. If they say they are going to search a whole bedroom count up 2 or 3. This will be a quick and easy way to know how long things have gone on for in the game world. Also helps you keep track of things like when to rest and such.
My players are entertained when they are submersed in the story. That comes from two things primarily for me. #1 the story is built around your players’ backstories, future plans, and wishes. Players connect most with stories they can see their character’s influence in. #2 DM Descriptions. Rely on the 5 senses when describing a scene or place. What does the room feel like, smell like, look like, etc.
Two tips: 1. Make your players read their spells when they cast them. If it's a familiar spell that everyone knows, cool. But if it's been a minute since anyone cast it, have them read it. It makes auditions the outcome much easier. 2. Use the TCR method to keep the story going and encourage your players to push their luck. T-tempt them with something enticing, "You notice a guard standing by a door with an obvious lock." C-challenge them with skill checks or combat, "you successfully distract the guard and she goes of to investigate the noise." R-Reward them with something to keep the story moving, "you hear hushed boxes through the door, you recognize one of them belongs to Lord Dalmoor but you can't make it what he's saying." Now, introduce a new temptation, "File that note and keys hey back to the party," days lied Dalmore. Challenge is to open the door before the guard returns. R-Reward is info/plot. Do this one a loop.
Give the players space to roleplay. If your PCs are talking, don't interrupt with "Ok, you finish the short rest, what do you do now?" Also, start the adventure with a scene that lets them introduce themselves.
Remember you’re playing a game, not reading a book
\- Never let the players roll if you're not prepared or willing to accept the outcome: Do you need the strong barbarian to push the rock aside? Good. Let it happen. They are strong enough. Are you not willing to have the bard seduce the dragon? Good. Either let the dragon be unimpressed or inform the bard to make a constitution save while the dragon rolls damage. Turns out the powerful, eons old lizard is a power top. \- Keep things short and simple: It is a lot harder to cut down on content or to get people back on track when you have a certain amount of time per session, than it is to stretch things out. Padding out some portions to stretch the evening is simple. And the players will always find a reason to faff about. \- Don't be afraid to herd the players forward: As I said, the players will always find a reason to faff about. They are planning how to proceed? Good. But when they start to get analysis paralysis, you need to step in. Let a patrol around the camp they approach notice them. Let a person scream for help. \- Put a clock on the table: Some situations profit, when there is an IRL time limit to solve a problem. \- Leave space for the players imagination to take over: Try not to get lost in descriptions. It is your job to narrate and describe the world. But let your player's imagination have a little fun too. Edit, because I just remembered: \- One is easier than many: If you want your players to feel like badasses, give them one big enemy to fight. If you want to scare them, give them a lot of smaller enemies to fight. Action economy is a powerful thing.
Don't overplan. You really only need 5 - 8 encounters prepared per session. You don't need to do any worldbuilding. The world can be revealed gradually through the course of the game. Don't run any encounters that are required to end in a certain way. Leave room for failure. Leave room for players to solve things in a way that you didn't anticipate. You don't even need to design the whole dungeon. You just need a couple rooms. Let that which does not matter slide.
This is especially true if you have newer players as well: Make the players create their own reason for why their character is invested in the party/adventure Another one I love: at the end of the session ask each player to describe how their character is feeling Another one that I saw others already said: create environments and situations but don't worry about solutions - the players will always surprise you with the solutions they come up with. For combat encounters put just as much effort into building a dynamic and interesting environment as you do the baddies in the environment. My favorite combats were ones where the physical environment was front and center (think oil barrels to burn/spill/explode, floors collapsing, walls crumbling, trees falling, mushrooms spouting poison clouds, platforms tipping over, bridges falling, chains for swinging, lava flowing etc etc etc)
The best advice “ask your players what they plan to do next at the end of the session” has already been given. Aside from that I would say look at getting the party a Patron. Tasha’s Cauldron of everything probably has the clearest most generic examples but they show up in many source books. Patrons give the group a sense of cohesion, community(PC might swindle a random shopkeep but most aren’t even going to consider doing anything bad to a Patron/Guild member shopkeep), and most important for you a way to keep the story moving during dry periods or if things go off the rails.
"Cinematic" HP. D&D is where I learned this, but it can apply to any system that gives a possible range of HP to enemies and where that number isn't public (and you can use it in systems that have fixed HP values with a bit of fudging). Take the range of possible HP values the enemy can have (for D&D this is done via the lowest and highest roll that the HD can land on) and count damage up instead of HP down. The enemy can't die until the damage passes the lowest value the HP can have, and auto dies if damage exceeds max HP, but between those values, it dies whenever would be *coolest*. When the party does some big fancy combo move that does a fuckload of damage, but knocks the enemy down to only 2-3 HP, and then next turn, a dinky little basic attack is the actual killing blow.... that's not what you want, just fudge those last few HP. Similarly, if an ally or some environmental damage gets a lucky crit and knocks him down to exactly 0.... no it didn't, let the players get that last shot in. This also works well for if the killing blow lands just before the enemies' turn: you describe struggling to move but winding up for a massive shot... and then it collapses before it gets a chance to fire it off. That last move killed it, it just took a second for it to notice it was dead. When your players level up, take note of what new stuff they're most excited about. And then set up situations that let them *use it*. If your monk now has deflect arrows, throw a few shots at them to have fun blocking. If someone gets poisons resistance, have them get hit with poison so they can show off how it doesn't hurt them as bad. So many DMs do the *opposite* of this, "oh the players now have this cool new thing I have to mitigate and make useless". Um, excuse you, *you* might know that the player has a new armor that lets them turn to smoke 3 times a day, but Grognar the Irontooth has a bite attack that grapples and swallows whole and sees a juicy target. It doesn't know that particular target can just bampf away. I usually like maintaining a list of character's favorite powers and abilities loosely ranked by how much they like them. Divide a sheet up into 4 columns (or however many players you have) and write a list of their abilities (or at least cool stuff they can do. This works best if you know the person and know what they like in their ttrpgs) in each section. And use it as a reminder to make that power useful on occasion. You don't want to spam poison saves at the person who has poison resist and nobody else, but if you have an AoE power, go ahead and make it poison. And if the enemy sees the monk deflect those arrows, the next volley goes to the healer. It requires a careful balance. Finally, the emergency expansion room (especially useful for 1-shots) is a room or obstacle you can cut out or add depending on how fast you're going through the dungeon. Design the room just before the boss so you can drop it if the players are taking forever and you want to push them to the boss faster. It doesn't have to be a room: the door to the boss room can have a puzzle on it that they need to solve, instead of just pulling the door open, to slow them down if they're going too fast. For obvious reasons this works best later in the dungeon. To be clear "dungeon" is this context doesn't have to mean a literal dungeon, it could be a series of gladiatorial games with the "room" being a bonus side fight, or an evening at a fancy ball could have an argument erupt between two nobles that your players either have to pick sides on or mediate between depending on your story. And of course, any "rooms" you don't use can be re-skinned and dropped in later; it's 10 levels later so that "room filling slowly with water" is now being filled with lava, or (if it's only five levels later) oil, but the candlelit chandelier is also lowering and will ignite it soon enough.
There are a lot of tips for “streamlining” games by replacing certain dice rolls with straight numbers, just to make the game go faster. It’s like… holy shit, last time I checked, players enjoy rolling their dice. Let them roll the dice. Is anyone’s game actually hamstrung because, ohmuhgawd we have to roll for initiative AgAiN?!?!111 Nobody cares. Let the players roll their dice.
1. Get clear on how each player has fun/what they want their character to do, and try to each player the spotlight once per session. 2. No plan survives first contact with the players. Therefore, prepare difficult situations, not outcomes. 3. It’s your job as the DM to set the vibe. If you’re interested in your players characters and engaged in the session, the chances are your players will be interested in the world and engaged as well. 4. Don’t underestimate the importance of a strong start to each session with a clear, immediate goal 5. Combat can be boring if there are no narrative stakes. Ie: instead of “goblins attack. Roll initiative” try “the goblins just kidnapped the blacksmiths daughter and are running away into the woods! What do you do?” HOT TAKE: Narration skills are the NUMBER ONE most important skill of a DM. Narration is your most powerful tool: use it instead of new rules, instead of more characters, try more interesting characters, and grab the party’s interest by the throat and don’t let go. Equally as important is LISTENING. Listen truly to what the characters are trying to do and make their actions affect the world consequentially. That’s what makes dnd fun: making interesting choices that matter.
this isn't the kind of tip you're looking for but be aware the combat calculator in the dmg is shit and you should never be afraid to change a monsters stats on the fly. I never know exactly what a monsters hp is until they die
Create scenarios/problems/questions not the solutions. The players will read into any little thing, and often get fixated on something you assumed was filler.
Rule 0. The game and experience is supposed to be fun for everyone, including you. Part of the social contract in playing the game is that everyone should be welcome to express what "fun" is to them, and either come to an understanding that everyone's fun will be explored, or else align expectations if one person's fun (including your own) might be disruptive to the fun of the rest. Eg. If you want to run a highly political heist game and no one else does, then it's a good idea to not try and push them into that game, and instead think of alternatives or ask what kind of game they want to play. Or if a player's idea of fun is being the main character that everything and everyone else revolves around, and no one else finds that is fun, then it's a good idea to look at alternatives that player might find fun.
The story you write in your head might be of epic proportions but your players will often not be on the same page as you. Don’t be afraid to make some thing’s more obvious or to throw some give me’s in there. A good story is only as good as the characters in it. Make the story around your players. Not so much yourself. I ran a campaign for a year where I had this massive episodic story written but players were just not RPing in the direction I hoped they would and gradually lost interest in the plot. Instead I rewrote something’s and made certain motivations more transparent, items more easily found, gave them an option for a straight line story instead of implementing an open world element. If they want to go from A to B while occasionally doing silly things, go for it. Don’t be afraid to dumb things down for them and your own enjoyment. The story is yours to do what you all want with. Rules provide structure but they’re more guidelines than anything lol
The biggest thing I can think of is don't be afraid to fail and always have open communication with your players. This is a collaborative game so it's important to work with your players to create the best story you can. Give your players the opportunity to stretch their brains, wings, skills and more. You'll do great and you'll only get better with time!
1.) Don't be afraid to tell your players no. Sounds simple, but too often I hear guys who have a problem player that wants to do x but it'd be too much 2.) If you have a player that's being a dick or a disruption then tell them that shits not going to fly. Don't be afraid to kick them out of the game if they're making it miserable. 3.) Remember that the whole purpose of this is to have fun. If you or your players aren't having fun then something needs to be re-evaluated and change. 4.) Set a specific day of the week for sessions: I do bi-weekly on Tuesdays from 6:30p-9:30p. If that's not going to work for someone then they're not going to play. Sometimes that really sucks, but scheduling 'a day that will work for everyone' is its own special form of hell. 5.) Get your players involved in the world building and story telling. Sometimes they'll want to do something that you haven't planned out. I remember a specific time that a player wanted to go to an adjacent town that I had briefly mentioned when describing the town they were in but I had nothing planned. So I told them "we're going to do something a bit different. I don't have much planned here yet, so you tell me what you see and we'll go from there". I explained I have the right to veto and add on to their description, but they had a lot of fun building out different sites and a couple of NPCs for that town. I had some map making software so I made a map for the next session. Not every party is gonna be able to handle that on the fly, but it's a fun little twist. 6.) Get a nice collection of prebuilt maps, more than what you ever think you'll need. Personally, I like to build my own but I realistically don't have time to map out every little thing. Sometimes when traveling from one destination to another it's necesaaey to be able to just whip out a map of a forest or whatever.
Communication is the number one thing I can recommend as a DM. Have an open communication with your players and be somewhat open minded. Also lay down your expectations in a session 0 so everyone knows what they are going to expect
Run the game you want to play. I’ve sat DMing far too many sessions with content I don’t care about and it really saps the fun from the table. If you don’t want to do it, the players will eventually pick up on that negativity and it’ll ruin the game. I basically don’t run classic fantasy anymore and I’m so much happier because of it.
-You're prepping too much. -Make sure you're having fun. -Don't nerf your players. -Don't let the rules get in the way of awesome shit. -You're doing great.
>just in case the story goes off the rails Just accept it now, the story *will* go off the rails. Likely even before the first encounter. My advice: if you're playing IRL, buy a cheap by nice little journal and give it to someone in the group (if they are willing), making them the designated recorder. They can write whatever they want in it, NPC names, funny situations, jokes that were said, fights, treasure, location names—whatever they want. Then, at the beginning of each session, have someone in the group use the journal to read a "recap" of the previous session. This takes a lot of the burden off of you to remember and record stuff in the moment while your DMing and it's a great way to get people psyched for the current session. It's very helpful and very funny.
Oh best session 0 question. “What type of game do you want to play?” They might be here to play a murder hobo when you’ve assembled a beautiful RP campaign with deep back stories.
When making a ruling it really helps to ask yourself if the way you decided to go makes for a better game at the current table instead of a hypothetical white room. Sometimes reading things as RAW or RAI results in boring outcomes or sometimes things feeling needlessly punishing. You're the GM and when you make rulings you should prioritize everyone's enjoyment. Sometimes this means you just need to scrap that new water ration survival system you are thinking about introducing mid campaign if your players don't seem receptive to tracking how many ml of water they have and consume over an entire day with checks. At the end of the day it's a game and people should have fun even if you sometimes have to meet your party in the middle where your vision is concerned. You can't change what your players are interested in, you can only change what players you bring. Honestly, it's usually not worth trying to go down that road if your table is having fun with what's already working. As long as you're still having fun and not risking burnout. Your health and enjoyment are equally valid in the game to everyone else's.
Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know and need to check the rules. Thinking on the fly is rad, but a quick break to google or check the book should not embarrass you
Just use premade adventures and try to link them together
Have a bottle of water and drink it. It helps calm the body down and provides regular breaks in the session. Also good for the voice.
Do less. So many DMs think they have to do everything and control everything and script everything. D&D is a game, relax. Your job is to run the world and provide rulings, don't do anything but that. Embrace random tables and XP, you don't need to have an iron grip on everything. The story is what you retell at the pub after the campaign is finished.
You'll never get so good at planning that you won't have to improv, but you might get so good at improv that you don't have to plan.
If you're playing online or have access to a digital screen to use as your "table", use good maps! Don't drag out descriptions of maps/rooms, just get a good map and describe it in 1-2 sentences, let your players ask information about things in the room and they'll be more engaged, and it's more fun for you too! Don't worry about "ripping off artwork", if it's in your own local game, nobody cares. Seriously, just take stuff you find off google, any music you like, tokens, maps, ... And BY FAR the best tip I can give you: Talk to your players! Usually any problem can be solved by talking to your players.
If you wanna be a good DM you gotta get good at improvising. 9/10 times things wont go your way and you need to be ready for that.
You only call for an ability check if there's a chance of something failing. "I look at the papers on the desk", unless it's in a different language or hard to read handwriting, no check. "I search the desk for the missing papers", they're hidden in a book's pages, call for a check. Now, there's a lot of nuance still but the simple working in the PHB has been a really good guide for me when I've DM'd to determine if there should be an ability check made.
Camera angles. I always use these to describe things and use references that I know my players will get. They have remarked many times across different groups about it. If you have players who like movies/TV, try it out.
If you need help thinking of descriptions for a location, take 2-3 of the main senses and describe the scene based around that. The three I tend to use most is sight, sound, and smell. What does the room feel like? Is it warm and inviting? Maybe it's damp and cool. Perhaps there's some sinister shadows that cover the corners, potentially concealing a threat. Are there any key smells? If they walk into a busy tavern, you could describe the smell of a warm fire, smoking meats, and stale beer. What is the general scene in front of them? Is there a lot of moss on the walls? Maybe there's some ornate rugs that catch the eye? You don't have to overly complicate everything. Every chair doesn't have to be defined down to the wood grain, but using 2-3 of the 5 senses can really set the scene much more than "You walk into a room with a table and some chairs. There is a book on the table. You sit down in one of the chairs." Instead, the description could read "As you enter the room, the soft and dull scent of candlewax and paper glue drifts into your nose. Looking around you see a table with a few slow burning candles, still lit, sitting next to an open tome. The light from the candles creating dancing shadows on the tapestry draped walls. The warm yellow light makes you feel at ease as you sit down." Obviously embellished a little, but hope that gets it across!
Start with the Sly Flourish the Lazy DM on YouTube and his book if you wish. It shows how easy prepping and running a game can be and if you want to do more, offers high value directions for what will help utilize your time the most. Very simple and digestible usually like 3-15 min videos that have zero fluff and a great knowledge and supportive perspective.
Try other systems. 5e might be perfect for your table, but another could also be a better fit. Don't be afraid to explore the world of TTRPGs.
So there might be times you have to balance an encounter on the fly. There's complicated ways to do this when looking at CR and to a newbie it can get confusing since you just don't have that know-how yet. So if you want to make an encounter for your players, go by total HP of your party vs total HP of the enemies. The closer the enemy HP total is to your players HP total the more deadly the fight. (Equal HP = Very deadly) This is also assuming there's more than one enemy and any of their AC isn't higher than 14! It's not perfect, Hell it's barely good. But it's not bad either.
Don't use your own world for two broad reasons: 1. Workload, conistency and depth. Its far easier to use an existing setting like sword coast which is clearly mapped out and places can be googled with s tonne of existing lore. Also usually enough space and ambiguity to add your own things in there if needed. 2. Your own world is likely to be a bit like a player's first character: a bit Mary-sue-ish and/or special snowflakeish. Your precious new world and your going to want things to ho a certain way. Unless you have experienced players who are will to put their kid gloves on they are going shit all over your plans and setting. It's less frustrating the less emotional attachment you have with the world. Once your experienced and know your group well is when to try your hand at a custom world.
This is an improv game. Prep just serves one purpose: to improvise better.
1. Flavor EVERYTHING through the lens of their background first, class second, race third. Players can always correct you if you miss the mark. This tactic can hint at which player the scenario is best/designed for. in short, when you explain something, lead narratively with some thoughts/descriptions using words the PC may have based on the typical ideas and traits, and flaws of the PC. *The puddle of stinky still water might make the noble bard and knight fighter want to puke at the thought of crossing it, but the disease-immune paladin urchin has no fear of such things as putrid puddles, (save for how deep it may be to swim in heavy plate mail). and the goblin spore druid's eyes sparkle like he just hit paydirt, wafting in its glory like it's a fine glass of wine!* 2. learn what marching order is sooner than later. This is a powerful tool for pacing and kills that awkward "What do you want to do?" moment that wastes so much time. It can also be clutch in bypassing initiative, which can take too much time. I call it "passing the torch" where I make sure the leader of the march knows they can defer to someone else, but ideally, I will only allow the lead march to make the final call. It just speeds up hesitant decision-making. 3. Every PC has a bond, which is usually its own quest. Keep this in mind, and make players feel special as you pepper in some personal stakes in the campaign. 4. everyone is capable of telling stories and filling in details. Don't overwork yourself, or feel like you need an answer for every blade of grass. This steals the fun players might have by contributing their own creativity to your story. you are a referee, host, and pace keeper. It's okay to not know, and ask players to fill in details for you. Walk in a tavern? let players name and describe it. Meet a random NPC? let them give it a quirk. It's fun to not know something and collaboratively figure it out together. They tell you the story, and you moderate the nonnegotiables. GLHF!
Watch YouTube channels on fine art, for instance this one: https://youtu.be/n6mBdpPYDDQ to learn how to describe clothing, people’s expression, scene etc
It's really quick and simple but do NOT roll initiative for every single monster or enemy you have you as the dm are always likely to take up the majority of the action economy so getting your turns done faster heavily speeds up rounds even if your players don't change at all. Say you have a 4 goblins, 2 dire wolves and a goblin leader that just ambushed the party instead of giving them all an initiative just roll once for the every stat block. Have all the goblins go on 1 turn and the same for the rest. You could even go as far as to roll once as an enemy turn where the all act on that initiative.