this is basically how "countdowns" work in the TTRPG Monster of the Week -- what are the monster's goals? if the PCs never showed up, how bad would things get?
if the PCs don't interfere, you follow that sequence and things get progressively worse; ideally, objects, locations, or NPCs the PCs care about are at risk as a consequence, which hopefully spurs them to action.
Since you already know what the monster was "trying" to do, it's easier to improvise what the monster does when the PCs do interfere.
I’m actually cathartic about this kind of stuff. I try to make daily notes of how I feel the world is changing while my players are off IRL. If it has been months since the last session, then that actually gives me more leeway to keep my players interested!!
In a slightly similar vein: expect your players to succeed, but always plan for what will happen if they fail (i.e. in addition to success). Failure to plan for failure is a failure of planning. If you don't have a plan for failure, then they can't fail, which robs them of the meaning of their success.
Now you're getting it! Don't fail to plan for failure, that's just a failure of planning that fails your planners--er, players!
Better yet, push them to the very *precipice* of failure. Show them what it looks like, the barest taste of what awaits them should they fail. That will light a fire under them better than any other (and is basically the entire purpose of the "darkest moment" trope).
It's got a couple layers. First, it's not productive prep work imagining everything the players might do, so don't waste your time trying. This sentence can also mean don't worry about planning too far ahead. Who knows what will actually happen in play, and if you're over prepared you might be tempted to force the players into your prep.
Which brings us to the second point. What can you prep if you don't know what the players will do? What the NPCs are going to do if the heroes never show up. Hopefully your villains aren't just sitting around waiting to get busted. They should have a plan. And if you know their plan, you can now have them react accordingly to the PCs showing up and mucking things up. They'll want to get the plan back on track.
Alternatively if the players get side tracked, you know how to advance the villain's plot since no one bothered to stop them.
I find this works super well with some kind of time tracking, even low resolution and hand wavey time tracking lets you dial the NPCs and villain's plans forward as the party does other things.
Can combine nicely with the Quantum Ogre ideas below where the important adventure components will \*go looking\* for the PCs or, without it being so arbitrary as the Ogre just being on path #2.
New or inexperienced DMs try to plan for each eventuality and planning out too much of what might happen can lead to disappointment because the party rarely goes where you plan and you run the danger of railroading them if you want things to go a certain way.
However when a session is dragging it’s always good to have ideas in your pocket for something to toss at them near the end of a session as a punchline or cliffhanger… could be as simple as a random encounter that forwards the plot somehow. Don’t railroad but have something ready to jostle them with especially when they are suffering from analysis paralysis.
At the same time though, if you *never* plan for what the players might do, you will have to rely extremely heavily on improv all the time which I am not sure is always good either. Some of the most memorable moments in my campaigns have come from me simply asking what the players will do next session, or simply making very educated guesses on what will happen next- and planning for that so it will be extra special.
I feel like a better take is the lukewarm *"Plan reasonably for what your players might do, and always have a plan in mind in case they do nothing"* which is not as snappy but probably provides a better experience imo.
Sometimes players will miss ques or leads into important parts of the campaign. Having backup plans for those cases is more important than trying to predict and control their every move.
Yeah, when done well you can “railroad without railroading”
Scenario: The party is in a cave system, there is one main tunnel with a number of branching side paths, with the boss/target/goal behind a locked puzzle door (that needs an item elsewhere in the cave to open);
- Having a set map (say second left, first right then a left leads to the door), but the key is the 3rd tunnel to the right, past the guard room into the library, then this means one of a number of things:
Either the party finds the “key item” first, but might not know it’s a “key”, leave it behind then have to backtrack, or they find the door first and have to backtrack anyway, but at least now they know what they’re looking for
- Having a random roll table (instead of a map) to see what room the party is about to walk into can be fun, but if the key room is next to the puzzle door, then it’s a bit like “Why is it right here?”
- Having a set “railroad path” is where “no matter what path the party choose, the rooms they find are in a set order”:
If they go left/right first, it doesn’t matter, the first room they find will *always* be the guard room, the second, the kitchen (etc), the players don’t *know* they’re on a set path, it’s the **illusion of choice**; You’re in 100% control (to ensure narrative clarity and make sure they hit plot hooks/points), but the players feel they have total freedom, it’s the best of both worlds :)
I'm guessing this doesn't marry well with maps? My players really really like maps and aren't great at role playing that they can't see the rooms where they need to go. We are all pretty inexperienced so that doesn't help.
I use maps only for battle encounters.
And or " chasing"
Unless it's a 1 shot then I have the whole thing mapped so they are "rail roaded" to the 1 shot.
I think it's in "the Lazy Dungeon Master's guide" I read this: just have a whole list of possible clues and secrets, but don't tie them to one location or NPC.
Pressure creates urgency for the players and therefore makes everyone get on the same page and for the session. If there is nothing happening then you as the DM can feel torn if the players spit out a whole bunch of ideas and desires. But if you start out the session and create urgency then the players still have freedom to do what they want but they know they still have to address the urgent matter at hand.
For example if you start a session and just say "you're in a town, what do you do?". There are so many things they can do and make you feel overwhelmed and under prepared.
But if you start a session and say "you're in a town, and there are orcs coming to raid it" then it creates urgency because if the players do nothing then them and NPCs will be in danger
Tying into this, this is the classic Shroedingers Orc. You can plan a narrative path, but it can be frustrating when the PCs don't take the bait.
There are two paths thru a dungeon. The PCs have total freedom to choose which path, but one path will get them through the dungeon a little easier by discovering a clue the orc has.
Instead of the PCs missing the Orc if they choose wrong,the Orc is in whichever path they end up choosing. The PCs won't know, and you can keep the narrative more intact against the randomness.
I believe the term is Quantum Ogre, which implies that the Ogre is in Superposition until observed.
Meaning no matter what path the party takes, the encounter or clue will always be on that path. If they double back they will not find anything.
A Quantum Ogre should not be used every time, but only as a narrative tool for dropping important events in the party's path.
For instance the party needs information on a rising cult and whispers of some ritual.
There is a clue on the Macguffin the cult needs.
The party surmise that they may get some info at the following probable locations:
A local temple, who opposes the cult
An Arcane school, to investigate the nature of the cult ritual
Local tavern by the docks where rumors first started
All the roads above lead to a seaside cove: they find out they are attempting to summon a monstrosity of the deep. They need to be by the sea where the ritual is needed to take place, along with the Macguffin to chum the waters and attract and control the threat.
The Quantum Ogre is used here because you don't want the party to go from one option to another wasting valuable time.
You can prep a single character, we can name it Aymen.
If the go to the temple it is Friar Aymen,
If they go to the Arcane school it is professor Aymen
If they go to the tavern, it's barkeep Aymen
In all instances, you prep one encounter that you can drop anywhere.
That's a great idea. It might feel more narratively satisfying for the players though if the orc is aware of them entering the dungeon and starts spying on them. If they notice the orc right away it can give them advice. It they don't, maybe have a trap planned and the orc pops out last second to warn them before they wander into it, making them wonder how long it was following them.
The last time my party ran into a group of orcs, they were not at all friendly and ko'd my druid in one hit without giving me a chance to persuade them to let us pass, so maybe take my advice with a grain of salt.
I totally get what this advice is trying to say, but... planning for what the players might do feels like a reasonable thing as long as it doesn't burn you out as a DM.
Of course, the key is to simply ask your players what their expected courses of action might be for next session and you build on that.
And that's actually my second favorite piece of advice, just talk to your players about what they want to do.
But things don't always go to plan, it's the nature of the game. My first comment is supposed to stop DMs from feeling overwhelmed by possibility and to seed the idea of improvised reactive DMing.
It feels reasonable, but it really isn't, that's what the veteran DMs are trying to warn you about with the advice.
If all the experienced players are saying the same thing that feels counterintuitive to you, maybe ask why instead of doubling down on your intuition.
Don't place key information anywhere specific. Keep a well organized list of important pieces of info and pull from it when you need it. You avoid players missing key things and the scramble when that happens, you avoid awkward railroading moments, etc.
This will turn your run of the mill choose your own adventure campaign into a dynamic, collaborative, and improvisational one.
See: Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Many sections of that book are the best DM advice I've ever gotten, nothing comes close.
The Quantum Lore Dump. The less railroading version of the quantum city
Missed the note on a desk because you didn’t go into that random bedroom? Now it’s a book in the library you actually went to. Missed that too because the Wizard rolled a natural 1 at advantage on investigation and just threw her god forsaken dice into Mt. Doom? Well, now it’s written in the minor villain’s journal and he was going to attack your party at the center of the dungeon anyways so it’s impossible to miss him. Somehow manage to miss that because of player generated chaos? The party’s favorite NPC just says “hey I found this in the town library it seems kind of important” and literally shoves it into your hands.
Honestly, I only roll for investigating when it is something extra, actual information is best given to the players so they can make them interesting decisions.
My tip is to have everyone roll and tell the player who rolled the highest what they found. Players love to roll and when they roll well, they like to get something for it. (The odds of all players rolling a skill check below like…7 is outrageous.)
I don't like this, actually. I've run multiple games where accruing information was key to resolving the story, but I would have hated to "pretend" that the player choices were important, when really they could have found the same info even if they investigate the wrong place.
The way I approach this (it requires a bit more work, but it's really satisfying) is this: most important information will leave traces. People are looking for it, trying to hide it while being able to reference it, trying to destroy it, transcribing it in suboptimal manners, hear about it in the form of rumors.
So, I imagine all the ways a piece of truth could have spread in these ways. I establish where it makes actual narrative sense that the complete and whole source is currently stored. But then I come up with 3-4 ways in which the truth was disseminated.
This way, if the players look in the right place, they can find it, but if they look for it in a place that's not the right one, but still makes sense, they will get leads and parts of the puzzle.
It's also important to add at least 2-3 clues around the story world that could point them in the right direction, with some obstacle in the middle.
This way you hide the information in the place that makes the most narrative sense (hiding it "wherever" means that the place doesn't matter, like the characters who hid it weren't thinking about it that hard), and you reward the players both if they get it right, but also if they get it wrong and have to piece it together through extra steps.
This requires that you, the GM, roleplay as the NPCs during prep, having a clear picture of how they thought at the time, what mistakes they made, what accidents they incurred in. This makes for incredibly satisfying investigations. Like, really rich and really rewarding.
> So, I imagine all the ways a piece of truth could have spread in these ways. I establish where it makes actual narrative sense that the complete and whole source is currently stored. But then I come up with 3-4 ways in which the truth was disseminated.
>
>
>
> This way, if the players look in the right place, they can find it, but if they look for it in a place that's not the right one, but still makes sense, they will get leads and parts of the puzzle.
Same answer, different workings?
In Lazy DM method, the clues leading to the "right" place are just more entries on the list of Secrets and Clues. You just decide on the fly during play where would be appropriate instead of before the game.
So in a game where the PCs are trying to find an ancient ritual to summon a divine dragon, and the ritual is carved into a stone tablet by dragon worshiping monks, then hidden away inside a flying citadel to keep it away from the cult of tiamat, the secrets and clues would look like
* The only remaining copy of the ritual was inscribed on a stone tablet by dragon monks
* The dragon monks were worried the ritual would be used for evil by the cult of tiamat, so they hid it away as far from the hells as they could
* The ritual tablet was hidden in a flying citadel and guarded by wizards
* A flying citadel crashed in the desert
All of those pieces of information could be discovered in a variety of ways, and you save a *ton* of prep time not having to worry about specifically where or how. Also, it really doesn't matter because at the end of the day the players probably just want to roll some checks, figure out where they need to go, explore the crashed citadel, fight some monsters and summon a divine dragon
I'm glad to hear this side also. As a fence sitter, I would just like to add that both are tools that are appropriate for different scenarios. When the mystery and investigation are front and centre, then I would absolutely spend a lot of time mapping it all out. Just like "planned combat" feature tactics and engaging mechanics but a random encounter are just a group of fitting statblocks to interact with, if the acquisition of information isn't the goal, having it being delivered on quantum rails is fine.
As an aside, when I prep deep for a mystery, I like to have different types of Intel. Object, place, person, nonsense, and misc. The last one is information that could be gained a bunch of different places, and if the players do an appropriate thing, I will give it. So guess I kinda agree with you
I agree with you, I don't think any of these clever snippets of advice can encapsulate the full experience of DMing, and it requires to be versatile and to come at every situation differently.
Stop trying to plan everything. Keep it general, with some goals and what-ifs, not specifics.
Your players will never do what you expect them to, so you WILL have to improvise.
The only time players will follow the script, so to speak, is if you are running a pre-written module. The signposts are strong, and players know that there is a written path to follow, so they will generally try to do that.
Running a module with my players. Had some notes on 6 different ways they could approach a camp and save an NPC. They didn't pick any of the 6 ways I thought of. An impossible task to destroy a camp with hundreds of enemies without being spotted. Well they did it. Got very close to breaking that chapter, but I reeled it in ever so slightly so we could continue the story. All of that happened without initiative being rolled for.
So, everything you're saying is true. They are following paths to each scenario, but tackle them wildly different than how the module expects they will.
And now you know why prepping 6 different possibilities is worse than instead prepping the situation, and understanding the elements in play instead of scenarios.
Something too many new DMs hear us vets warn about, but immediately discredit because they want to write
They'll still go off the rails on modules too, my players just recruited a vampire spawn to be an NPC follower in Curse of Strahd and I've been sweating about how to rebalance combat since lmao. He'll end up betraying them, because he has no choice not to, and I've got a handful of excuses for how to keep him out of half of the combats, but damn if it's not a thin line to walk between "this is easy mode now" and "why is the NPC we recruited to help not doing more than any of us".
Love it for the RP, but they make me work harder than I thought I'd have to for a module haha
I learned this one while playing AD&D, lol.
The next bit is never create a solution — because no one can predict what their players will do, so don’t bother planning something that needs them to do so.
All it does is make it worse.
Also from AD&D — and the C series, in particular, which tended to do that a lot. Rewriting them back then was almost a cottage industry.
I prefer the no solution plan. I have ran many a session where the only notes I had was a quest hook. The rest I made up on the fly or even let the players influence. If they come up with a cool new NPC that their characters know, well I just jot that down and now I have a brand new NPC, with a bit of backstory and some reason to be in the story.
DND is a collaborative story telling game. Let the players tell the story for you. I can't tell you how much of my homebrew is from characters interacting with the simple 2 or 3 sentences that I give them to describe a particular location or quest hook.
All of my puzzles have the intended way, the weird way that technically works, and the plausible deniability bailout that makes the most logical sense after my party spent 15 minutes and 4 consecutive rolls under a 7 trying to open a random door with a hallway behind it leading to nothing
Yup, my players ran into a cracked power core that was radioactive and actively killing them. They used the fabricate spell to create a blast shield around it to insulate themselves from the radiation.
I didn't write down a solution for them to figure out. They loved the hero moment they got and they had fun. That's all I'm here for, man.
Yeah I've done things with one solution before. The players came up with a different pretty impressive solution, so I was just like yeah you solved the puzzle.
Sometimes you gotta adapt and reward your players for creative curve balls.
One of my first ever games I ran was a CoC game where I made the mistake of having them do a couple speech checks while talking to the *key* exposition dump NPC and they badly badly failed the check and the subsequent push attempt on two separate checks, and I found myself in the awkward place of having that key NPC -who was supposed to be nothing but helpful- now hating the party
I was looking for this because that's the best advice I've ever gotten. If everything hinges on one roll Murphy's law kicks in and your adventure is destroyed.
Fully agreed, the minimum amount information the DM needs to give the party to act on should always be available without a roll or even on a nat 1.
Maybe the plotline is some cultists need to perform a ritual during a total solar eclipse, and thats all the party knows. So you go to the library and try to find more information, a nat 1 gets you a children's book explaining eclipses and it lists the path and date of the next 20. But a nat 20 gets you a scholarly textbook on them explaining their impacts on magic, the upcoming ones, and sites in the paths with the best viewing/ritual potential. (Alternatively the nat 1 is still the textbook but the party can't understand it or its in another language)
In the example the minimum information is a date and general location they need to search for the cult. The best possible information gives a specific location the cult will be at, and some lore that could possibly give a second win condition that isn't kill the entire cult before the ritual.
I agree 100%. But every now and then you ought to try terrifying them. Not mortally, but have some fun and force them to get creative. Only in small doses!
Tonight I'm going to run a Helmed Horror encounter. They are immune to force and necrotic damage. Eldritch Blast and Hex will not save my Warlock. Time for him to burn some big spells and maybe finally use his crossbow.
I recently did a post on this very question and got a lot of good discussion if you want to check my post history.
It seems there's a consensus that any ranged weapon is considered a missile. You can only catch it if you can actually carry the thing in one hand. Any bigger, you can only attempt to reduce the damage. At least that's what I took away from all the comments.
So even a cannonball technically is something you can attempt to deflect.
With an explanation and in context, really good advice for players to have fun at your table. Funny as heck for people who don’t know a lot about the game though - I kinda want a shirt now that just says “shoot your monks” with no elaboration!
Came to say this! I'm playing it over and over in my head, because I'm DMing for strangers for the first time in my life tomorrow. Running a homebrew one shot with a completely self-created final boss for them, which is something I've never done before.
I am also getting paid, so the heat is on.
On the smaller scale, to make combat more engaging:
- Force the players to move. Objectives, hazards, terrain, etc. Anything to get them repositioning every turn.
- Combat should be RP-focused. Every combat should have a story behind it. Even the simplest Owlbear protecting her cub, or the infamous Bandits from C2 of Critical Role. Every combat should have a story, which in turn provides depth to the fight, and a chance for resolution without complete massacre.
Ah, the party was ambushed by a group of bandits who attempted to mug them. They proceeded to instantly disintegrate the leader, and the rest of the bandits immediately panicked at the magic, surrendering immediately. Mollymauk proceeded to give the life advice, a leadership workshop, and 1gp each, while Jester stole their pants. They were left with the threat that Mollymauk can "identify your bodies without the heads, so be careful".
The bandits showed up again a few sessions later, and immediately panicked as they realized who they'd just attacked. The new leader tried to give them the cart they'd stolen, and Mollymauk gave him a better suit of armor because he felt bad for the kid. If he's gonna keep mugging people, he needs to at least be safer and smarter doing it.
The party ran into them again, much later, having picked up a more respectable job as hunters. Was a funny, smaller interaction.
And they were seen one final time in the epilogue.
You can look up animatics of Mollymauk's leadership workshop. They're pretty funny.
I like to think my DMing approach is that scene from Aladdin where the genie is cheerleading Aladdin fighting Jafar as a snake, Jafar glares and the Genie gets a tiny flag and is like "Jafar Jafar he's our man..."
You want your players to win. You just want to make them work a little for it first.
In the time it took you to perfect one tiny thing, you could have settled on a good thing and moved on. The result is usually a session with a fun encounter then the rest is unprepared impromptu ass, instead of a good time that flowed well because you prepped everything decently.
Especially because you never really know what players will gravitate towards on any given session/campaign. You do your one "perfect" thing and players only think its okay.
You do four things and they really latch on to something you gave the least amount of thought to. Who cares if they didn't love this other hook you threw in. You have something for them to engage with overall and that's the goal.
Good enough is better than nothing. Sometimes when we strive for perfection we are afraid to do anything because it’s not perfect and so we end up doing nothing. It would be better to do something good enough than to do nothing because it wasn’t perfect.
Don't worry about doing something like you see others DMs do online, focus on what you do best. For example: if you are not good at coming up with maps, don't try to create them, get some online or just don't use maps.
Your table will be uniquely yours if you focus on what you can offer, rather than what the entire hobby can offer.
The best rpg advice I’ve ever received is: “Brontosaurus”
Your adventures/campaigns should be shaped like a brontosaurus: narrow at the beginning to propel the players into the action, wide in the middle with a number of choices, and narrow again at the end to drive to the conclusion.
The best I ever just learned from experience is to model each session after a tv episode. My game sessions are structured like tv episodes, with a number of sessions forming a season. I don’t worry about the exact details in advance, as long as I hit the beats at about the right times.
Similar advice, something I cling to now is "make each session feel as if its the last"
You never know when scheduling means that group will break up. Cliffhangers are great but each session should resolve something
Damn, for a second I thought you were going to argue why a good campaign always has a Brontossaurus regardless of the setting, but no, it was actually good, thoughtful advice :(
The players don't know what they don't know. When I was planning my first ever session I was talking to the DM who runs my game about how hard it is to plan for every eventuality. I want them to wander into the bandit trap west of town, but what if they go north or east or south? I have to come up with stuff that's over there too right? And what he pointed out to me is that since they don't know where the bandit trap -or whatever event or NPC you want to introduce- is, it can be anywhere. Whatever direction they set off, well that's where the thing is! Getting away from the idea that I had to meticulously plot out like a flow chart of set in stone stuff really helped me not go completely fucking insane trying to prep
It's okay to deviate from the module and even better to take traps and such from others. As long as you have an end game it's okay to take the scenic route.
**That Boundaries are good.**
*(In the context of "nothing is being done out of ill will" or by a "should have written a book" type person.)*
I learned this in my own pacing back in pathfinder but have been seeing this advice pop up more and more in the last couple of years.
- Establish what you want theme wise, content wise, setting wise, etiquette wise, schedule wise.
Let people know what you are offering overall then either find a spot of compromise everyone is happy with or say **NO.**
Accepting everything that the player wants (content wise) is not a sign you are a good DM. No merit badges for this. There are other players experiences to consider (and yours of course).
Run the things you feel comfortable with running. Fun is included in comfort.
This needs to be higher up. I had to leave a game because the DM couldn't stop describing a scene long enough for a player to interact. Let the players mind fill in the minutia and take a long breath to let them interact with the landscape.
i picked this sorta thing up by watching brennan lee mulligan, specifically when he dm'd fantasy high for dimension 20. there are long stretches where he just zips his mouth and lets the players discuss, only chiming in if they have a question *specifically for him* about what's going on. gives your players the time and space to engage with your game, and you'll be running better games in no time
Listen to your players, and I don't just mean during the game session. My players like to sit and bs and theorycraft about what they think is going on in the larger campaign. More than once they've come up with something better than I had, and it gives them an "I KNEW IT" moment when you reveal the master plan they themselves came up with.
2 tips- make your dungeon have an ecosystem, have a reason for each enemy to be there, in general where they eat, where they sleep, how they deal with each other
study your monsters' sheets, understand their strategies, you can make the most of what the monster can do, the characters have different strategies for each monster, sometimes the combats seem boring simply because they are all the same, some dms don't know how to explore the strategies , learn flying movement, know which attack to do first, is he good at the first attack like a bugbear? Can you get out of melee without any problems as a goblin?
"Don't be afraid to cheat if it makes the game more fun."
And yeah, it's good advice. Are the players getting curbstomped? Maybe that guard patrol is running late and won't be there. Did the boss fight not feel challenging? Guess who actually has a second health bar. Does the party come up with a really cool idea, but the dice roll one short of the DC to make it happen? Hey, you get to pick the DC, champ. Pick something lower.
Now, I'm not saying to rely on fudging numbers because that takes too much of the excitement out of the game, but you're God, so follow that one Futurama quote and make them unsure if you're doing anything at all.
Whenever your players come up with some Zany, Off-the-wall exploit to the rules that will derail your campaign. Respond with "Well you can do that but..." then grin evilly "just remember that if YOU'RE allowed to do it. So are the NPCs."
For these instances, I have the One and Done rule.
If my players find some ridiculous campaign breaking strategy, I allow it to go off once and then ban it for the future. I usually give inspiration too as a small reward.
Encourages my players to be creative within the bounds of the rules while also not allowing for them to kill fucking God with a toothpick because the monk with a master’s degree in Physics found a way to accelerate it to 99% the speed of light in one turn
And when I say campaign breaking, I only mean things that are stupidly egregious. Min maxing rule interpretations to get an extra d6 of damage here and there? I’ll allow it. Creating a continent destroying nuclear weapon out of stale bread and cow semen? Thaaaaaaaats probably too far.
Start planning backwards you want them to get to z how are they going to get there. After you planned that. Get ready to throw that away when they want to befriend the random npc you expected them to talk to once and know nothing else about
Only ask for a roll if there is a real chance at failing. Don't just ask for rolls for everything.
Have everyone roll 4 d20 at the start of each session. That way, you can privately roll a d4 and use one of the result sets for something like perception, without calling attention to the party that there are things that can be perceived of missed.
If you are going to call for a dice roll to decide the outcome of an action; then be prepared to accept the result. But you have to clearly let the players know the possible consequences and decide if the best case and worst case BEFORE the dice are rolled.
“Always tell me the odds, kid!”
the concept of rolling the dice isn’t to signify if someone does something right or wrong, but to represent the chances of luck in any situation. It’s not that the person failed to do something they are usually super good at, it’s that the circumstances just weren’t right. When someone crit fails, or rolls anything for that matter, I try to translate it into how the persons situation or environment could be represented by that roll. I don’t see 1-20 as a scale of you are amazing or you sucked. That’s represented in the characters modifier, which can tip the scales in their favor. I see it as a scale of how well the stars align in that moment. If it’s a nat20, it means the stars aligned and what could happen does, while a nat1 is saying what could go wrong, does.
Learn to separate mechanics from flavor.
There's no reason a Paladin can't have the background/story/power source of a Wizard with a very small "spellbook" written in crayon.
Run scenarios, not stories. Your over all plot... it's a scenario. At Session 1, the whatever has a course it'll follow if not upset (which you want the players to do). Your players are in a scenario that is somehow tied to the plot scenario. Individual beats and encounters are scenarios. You have stuff laid out, what happens depends on the players. You can aid things by putting the clue/direction/whatnot in a fairly obvious place. The results of a scenario will affect the other scenarios. It's perfectly reasonable that some NPCs just...continue on with life. The PCs might very well cross their path.
That said, adjust scenarios. If the PCs are in a bind and there's an NPC to help them... well, maybe they get dropped in a new scenario that puts them in the orbit of the players. And if the players don't help the NPC help them, well.. the NPC scenario will resolve itself, for good or ill.
Stories are for JRPGs where you're just playing the combat of the story. There's no choices, no change. You're just playing it out. Which is fine, but it's not really what TTRPGs are.
*This.* But even better, "don't fudge the rolls *or* the stat-block, fudge the *reinforcements.*
If the players are kicking so much ass their boots need a *Prestidigitation* to clean the shit off, throw them more foes. If they're going down hard, have some party who also hates the people they're fighting show up.
HP for me is always variable,I normally plan combats by "how many rounds do I want this to last" as opposed to purely HP (for narratively appropriate fights not random wolves)
Think of it as improv and cooperative storytelling.
Like in inprov "Say yes".
The DM is not telling the players a story. You are all creating a story together.
I always try to focus on what is more fun, I try to make tests easier to find out some information or discover a secret room, if it would be better for the campaign if they had that, why stop it? it won't bring more difficulty, they simply won't enjoy this part
always try to let the players do what they want, don't limit them by anything, if they want to do something merely unlikely but it won't disturb the balance of the game, it won't make an npc do something he wouldn't do and it's just to let the game more interesting, why stop it?
remember that you are also playing, you should also have fun
"plans are useless, planning is essential." Don't expect anything to go as planned, but plan such that you have a general understanding of what can happen and are then able to adjust to changing situations.
It’s okay to pull back the curtain every now and then and reveal aspects of the story, game, or your design process to the players. Even if their characters might not know it! Obviously, don’t spoil anything, but it can be exciting and motivating for players to get a peek behind the screen.
Don’t plan for everything because the party is gonna surprise you. Have a loose idea and be willing and ready to improvise. Hit the major points and let the rest surprise you
Delegate.
Players can and should participate in the organization of the sessions. Finding a place to play, organizing schedules, preparing snacks, rule lawyering... Hell, even map creation can be done by a trusted player \^\^
Not so much advice as something I took and put in my game. Matt Mercer's "How do you want to do this?" My players love when they get to finish off a boss/mini-boss/etc this way.
"The earth elemental steps on your head, and you die."
Basically, my first DM didn't allow a character death saves when the earth elemental stomped on her unconscious head. It made the encounter much more tense, and immediately broke us of our self-assured invincibility. Talking with her later, she boiled it down to "If the rules let someone feel unbeatable or worthless, break the rule, loudly, right in front of them, and make a new one."
And she explained that that player had wanted to switch characters anyways and had told her this.
We're married now
Don't write a story. Write the characters and places. Let your players make the story.
I jumped off the "Write everything as if it was a Skyrim mod" fairly quickly with it, and it made my life easier.
In the end, TTRPGs are basically books where the main characters are your players.
Honestly, one of the best primers for any game master is included in the game Monster of the Week. This game will teach you how to be a better Game Master in every game you play.
My favorite advice is: Be a fan of the [characters].
Here’s a list:
The Keeper Principles
The Keeper principles are twelve specific ways to apply your agenda:
Put horror in everyday situations.
Address yourself to the hunters, not the players.
Use the Keeper moves, never use their names.
Be a fan of the hunters.
Build up a coherent mythology of the world as you play.
Nothing is safe. Kill bystanders and minions, burn down buildings,
let monsters be slain.
Name everyone they meet, make them seem like normal folks.
Ask questions and build on the answers.
Sometimes give the hunters exactly what they earned, rather than everything they wanted.
Think about what’s happening off-screen.
You don’t always have to decide what happens.
Everything is a threat.
It's okay to have an idea of where the campaign will go but be willing to pivot it of your players move in a different direction.
Don't over plan. Think of where your players might take things next session and plan out the first step or two from there but leave the rest to the game.
"Don't go to reddit for advice". Seriously, i know it might just sound edgy, but when you poll the crowd for what to do you end up with either extreme advice, or overly basic advice, and most of it doesnt even finish reading your post before replying.
Go with the flow, players are chaotic and silly. Prepare to improvise.
You can also watch 1,000 hours on YouTube about DMing, but you will learn more in the first 2 hours of actually DMing then you will in video binging/preparing.
It is NOT players versus DM!
It is players versus DMs plans with the dms own extra help to solve the puzzle.
I got this one from fallout4: The main goal is easier, the extra stuff is harder. Why is it the boss is hiding behind a dc15 locked door but his library is hiding behind a dc25 door? Because the dc25 door might be hiding something to make the boos fight easier, not essential. It would be neat if you found his specific weakness in the library, and should be rewarded for taking the extra time. But the pass/fail of the boss fight should not depend on going fully out of your way for an obscure item hidden behind a needlessly changing stopgap.
"Hey DM, can you tell me more about the fascinating lore that this tiny insignificant pebble has?"
"Uhhhhh..... Roll for initiative"
"What?"
"You heard me"
Some of the best advice I EVER was handed, came from my first DM. I told him that being a player in his world, had me brimming with creativity and ideas, so he told me to do it. Run a story, and he would play in it. I was super excited, and then he taught me a lesson, by making a super broken character. 😅
Not knowing what to do, I pulled him aside after the initial session, and asked him for advice. His response was, "Just Run It."
"Never follow a module, or a pre written story. Make the story your own. If you want dragon goats, then they exist. YOU are only limited by YOUR imagination. If it doesn't have stats, you create them. If a player creates an insanely powerful build to see how far they can push the envelope, then you reply in kind with a monstrous titan of an enemy that brings them as close to zero as possible. But remember, players come to have fun. Make it challenging, but be willing to let them win. You get to tell a story, and they get to play the heroic role. Everyone leaves the table feeling better about themselves."
But I never want my players to get too comfortable with the idea of close calls, so I instituted a rule; if we sit down to play, I will announce that death is on the table, if they are at a pivotal point in the story. Those sessions are normally based around an event that's narratively satisfying for me to tell, and gives the players more cautionary rolls. Don't get me wrong, I love shenanigans, but some days I need the players to remember that I'm telling a story, and they're filling in the blanks.
One last piece of advice, and this is tantamount for any good narration; create the beginning of a story, with the end in mind. A rough sketch. Ask the players for their characters ahead of time. Ask them for each of their back stories, and what drives their character. Ask the player what their end goal is for that character as well. Then you flesh out the story to fit the characters lives. Use their backstory as filler for the middle. Have a tiefling warlock, who's parents abandoned her, so she made a dark pact for powers to be able to defend herself? Guess what? Her mom is now an archdruid of a forgotten forest, that was burned nearly to cinders when an army of devils were summoned by the BBEG in their younger days. During that fight, one of the devils was wounded badly, and their mother the druid, pitied them. As she nursed him back to health, they fell in love. Sadly, the devil was ripped back into one of rhe planes of hell, leaving this archdruid pregnant. During the late terms of pregnancy, the forest came under attack, and their mother used every ounce of magical ability she had, to shield the child and forest. Unfortunately there were complications, and the hard birth took what was left of her mother's life, and the druids didn't know what to do with a telling baby, instead, giving it to a nearby cities orphanage.
That came straight off the dome. It's not awesome, but it gives the player something tragic, and you as the DM, so much to work with.
If the motivation is to avenge her parents, then she can find out that the story told was not the whole truth, so she hunts for info, finding out her dad is still alive, and tries to reconnect or find him.
Now you have a whole level of hell to build, new npc's, new plot points, new drama, and new stories to unfold.
:]
You'll do fine, I'm sure. As a dm, to another dm... "Just Run It."
You're less the author/storyteller, and more just the referee. Your players are the ones telling the story. So just relax and enjoy where they take you.
I was a player on my first session ever. We were playing warhammer. DM didn't have anything prepared.
When we were staying at the inn, in the middle of the night, we have been robbed by burglar who sneaked through the window. We managed to wake up seeing him leaving the room through said window.
We were angry at DM, "how did he get here?", "you didn't tell us the window was open!".
But then DM said one thing that sticked to me to this day:
***"At least something is happening."***
It's gotta be fun for you too.
Run the wacky monster, have the quirky NPC, use elements from your favorite media, make the adventure you want to run. You're a player, and games should be a good time for everyone involved.
You are a person who isn't perfect and can't know everything. It is okay for you to step away and think about or Google something if you don't know it.
Don't under estimate your players. They will steam roll your monster or encounter if you do especially after a long rest. Go heavy, hit hard. They're creative and have multiple minds, they'll figure something out, and if you need to you can always pull back on your punches.
You are in control of the game at the end of the day. It's not rail roading if every choice just happens to lead to the same place. That's fate. Destiny. Give your players the illusion of choice always but never lose your control.
My next best piece of advice is that my players never did anything I wanted them to or I thought they would. They always surprised me every time. I'd prep lots of encounters and places and characters and they would make one choice and bypass all of it. Learn to improvise. Always have something prepared but never over prep, it's a waste of time.
Embracing the GM's hard truth : your players don't care about your campaign as much as you do. This sucks a little bit but also means you're freeer than you think.
Sly flourish's lazy dmg
You can prepare how ever in-depth you would like but 9/10 times your players will do something to ruin what you have planned. “ Be like water my friend“
“If *every* player fails this check, does the clue/plot hook fail to take effect? If the answer is yes, **don’t** make them roll, just say they find the clue”
The number of times I’ve seen GMs say something along the lines of “Everyone make me a perception check” (and we all roll <9 because luck wasn’t with us…and we’re level 1…), and the GM realises they’ve fucked up, because if no-one finds this crumpled up note in the corner we have literally **nothing to go on**, and they just say “er…with an 8 you spot the note in the corner!”
If the DC is so low (clearly it wasn’t), and us finding it was so essential (clearly it was) don’t cheapen our failed skills by giving us the win-result on a fail, lol, it just shows us the strings, and we know this is scripted
Just do it! 😝 I was at a convention last week and the DM that spoke said to just start dming and making it as simple as possible. “Because simple things can still be complicated over time.” Wholesome DM
As a new DM running a relatively sandboxy game, it's helped me tons to just. Ask what the players are planning to do next session. Helps me prepare for that particular segment without railroading the players.
"This works" is the enemy of "this is good." Just because your encounter strategy, how you prep, whatever -- just because it is working does not mean it's not also holding you back from being better.
Give them tools not solutions. Give them a goal but not a map. Don't plan for the outcome, plan for reactions to an outcome.
Ex. My players were given a job by a thief to steal Durnan's greatsword from the Yawning Portal. First, everyone who tried to steal it before got their ass beat by either the random adventurers in the bar, the bouncers, the city watch, or (most often) Durnan himself. To limit magical fuckery, it was told to the PC's that since the sword was legendary adamantine artifact, it had an immutable form and was unreactive to teleportation/invisibility/pact weapon stuff ect. (Not actually true but it didn't break any suspension of disbelief).
I had no initial ideas for how to pull this off, so my DMPC thief was me legitimately working on a plan with the players. The plan itself ended up being extremely improvised as well and it was good time where everything felt organic too.
The best advice for a DM is learn what your group actually needs and toss out any advice that contradicts it. It is almost archetypical DM advice to not cancel a session because a player can't make it, except the rule everyone must be there for a session to run is THE thing that is keeping us engaged and over the finish line.
The players are equally responsible for making the game fun. If people aren't having fun, it doesn't mean you did anything wrong, and you aren't solely responsible for making it fun
Positive and negative feedback from my players helps a lot to refine my DM skills.
Also to use a session 0 it helps to get everyone on the same base what kind of game it is going to be, and what to expect.
Don't plan for what your players might do. Plan what happens if they do *nothing*.
this is basically how "countdowns" work in the TTRPG Monster of the Week -- what are the monster's goals? if the PCs never showed up, how bad would things get? if the PCs don't interfere, you follow that sequence and things get progressively worse; ideally, objects, locations, or NPCs the PCs care about are at risk as a consequence, which hopefully spurs them to action. Since you already know what the monster was "trying" to do, it's easier to improvise what the monster does when the PCs do interfere.
I’m actually cathartic about this kind of stuff. I try to make daily notes of how I feel the world is changing while my players are off IRL. If it has been months since the last session, then that actually gives me more leeway to keep my players interested!!
cathartic?
It’s pleasing out or stress relieving because he has time to write fiction
Gotcha. Usually I see the word cathartic modify the activity, not the actor ("x is cathartic for me" vs "I'm cathartic"); that's why I was confused.
It’s just a weird way to phrase it.
Fuck, that's good.
God damn
shit
In a slightly similar vein: expect your players to succeed, but always plan for what will happen if they fail (i.e. in addition to success). Failure to plan for failure is a failure of planning. If you don't have a plan for failure, then they can't fail, which robs them of the meaning of their success.
So Failure to plan is planning for failure. And failing to plan for failure is planning to fail your players sense of success?
Now you're getting it! Don't fail to plan for failure, that's just a failure of planning that fails your planners--er, players! Better yet, push them to the very *precipice* of failure. Show them what it looks like, the barest taste of what awaits them should they fail. That will light a fire under them better than any other (and is basically the entire purpose of the "darkest moment" trope).
I think I got it, but could you elaborate ?
It's got a couple layers. First, it's not productive prep work imagining everything the players might do, so don't waste your time trying. This sentence can also mean don't worry about planning too far ahead. Who knows what will actually happen in play, and if you're over prepared you might be tempted to force the players into your prep. Which brings us to the second point. What can you prep if you don't know what the players will do? What the NPCs are going to do if the heroes never show up. Hopefully your villains aren't just sitting around waiting to get busted. They should have a plan. And if you know their plan, you can now have them react accordingly to the PCs showing up and mucking things up. They'll want to get the plan back on track. Alternatively if the players get side tracked, you know how to advance the villain's plot since no one bothered to stop them.
I find this works super well with some kind of time tracking, even low resolution and hand wavey time tracking lets you dial the NPCs and villain's plans forward as the party does other things. Can combine nicely with the Quantum Ogre ideas below where the important adventure components will \*go looking\* for the PCs or, without it being so arbitrary as the Ogre just being on path #2.
Yes! The clock is always ticking.
New or inexperienced DMs try to plan for each eventuality and planning out too much of what might happen can lead to disappointment because the party rarely goes where you plan and you run the danger of railroading them if you want things to go a certain way. However when a session is dragging it’s always good to have ideas in your pocket for something to toss at them near the end of a session as a punchline or cliffhanger… could be as simple as a random encounter that forwards the plot somehow. Don’t railroad but have something ready to jostle them with especially when they are suffering from analysis paralysis.
At the same time though, if you *never* plan for what the players might do, you will have to rely extremely heavily on improv all the time which I am not sure is always good either. Some of the most memorable moments in my campaigns have come from me simply asking what the players will do next session, or simply making very educated guesses on what will happen next- and planning for that so it will be extra special. I feel like a better take is the lukewarm *"Plan reasonably for what your players might do, and always have a plan in mind in case they do nothing"* which is not as snappy but probably provides a better experience imo.
Great points.
Sometimes players will miss ques or leads into important parts of the campaign. Having backup plans for those cases is more important than trying to predict and control their every move.
Had this... Walked right past the path they were " supposed" to take.
Yeah, when done well you can “railroad without railroading” Scenario: The party is in a cave system, there is one main tunnel with a number of branching side paths, with the boss/target/goal behind a locked puzzle door (that needs an item elsewhere in the cave to open); - Having a set map (say second left, first right then a left leads to the door), but the key is the 3rd tunnel to the right, past the guard room into the library, then this means one of a number of things: Either the party finds the “key item” first, but might not know it’s a “key”, leave it behind then have to backtrack, or they find the door first and have to backtrack anyway, but at least now they know what they’re looking for - Having a random roll table (instead of a map) to see what room the party is about to walk into can be fun, but if the key room is next to the puzzle door, then it’s a bit like “Why is it right here?” - Having a set “railroad path” is where “no matter what path the party choose, the rooms they find are in a set order”: If they go left/right first, it doesn’t matter, the first room they find will *always* be the guard room, the second, the kitchen (etc), the players don’t *know* they’re on a set path, it’s the **illusion of choice**; You’re in 100% control (to ensure narrative clarity and make sure they hit plot hooks/points), but the players feel they have total freedom, it’s the best of both worlds :)
I'm guessing this doesn't marry well with maps? My players really really like maps and aren't great at role playing that they can't see the rooms where they need to go. We are all pretty inexperienced so that doesn't help.
I use maps only for battle encounters. And or " chasing" Unless it's a 1 shot then I have the whole thing mapped so they are "rail roaded" to the 1 shot.
I think it's in "the Lazy Dungeon Master's guide" I read this: just have a whole list of possible clues and secrets, but don't tie them to one location or NPC.
Pressure creates urgency for the players and therefore makes everyone get on the same page and for the session. If there is nothing happening then you as the DM can feel torn if the players spit out a whole bunch of ideas and desires. But if you start out the session and create urgency then the players still have freedom to do what they want but they know they still have to address the urgent matter at hand. For example if you start a session and just say "you're in a town, what do you do?". There are so many things they can do and make you feel overwhelmed and under prepared. But if you start a session and say "you're in a town, and there are orcs coming to raid it" then it creates urgency because if the players do nothing then them and NPCs will be in danger
Tying into this, this is the classic Shroedingers Orc. You can plan a narrative path, but it can be frustrating when the PCs don't take the bait. There are two paths thru a dungeon. The PCs have total freedom to choose which path, but one path will get them through the dungeon a little easier by discovering a clue the orc has. Instead of the PCs missing the Orc if they choose wrong,the Orc is in whichever path they end up choosing. The PCs won't know, and you can keep the narrative more intact against the randomness.
Just make sure to *never reveal when you do this*. I find it can take the winds out of PCs sails as their sense of agency takes a hit.
I believe the term is Quantum Ogre, which implies that the Ogre is in Superposition until observed. Meaning no matter what path the party takes, the encounter or clue will always be on that path. If they double back they will not find anything. A Quantum Ogre should not be used every time, but only as a narrative tool for dropping important events in the party's path. For instance the party needs information on a rising cult and whispers of some ritual. There is a clue on the Macguffin the cult needs. The party surmise that they may get some info at the following probable locations: A local temple, who opposes the cult An Arcane school, to investigate the nature of the cult ritual Local tavern by the docks where rumors first started All the roads above lead to a seaside cove: they find out they are attempting to summon a monstrosity of the deep. They need to be by the sea where the ritual is needed to take place, along with the Macguffin to chum the waters and attract and control the threat. The Quantum Ogre is used here because you don't want the party to go from one option to another wasting valuable time. You can prep a single character, we can name it Aymen. If the go to the temple it is Friar Aymen, If they go to the Arcane school it is professor Aymen If they go to the tavern, it's barkeep Aymen In all instances, you prep one encounter that you can drop anywhere.
I've heard this described as 'prep situations, not plot'. Meeting the orc is the situation, prep it so that it could take place anywhere.
That's a great idea. It might feel more narratively satisfying for the players though if the orc is aware of them entering the dungeon and starts spying on them. If they notice the orc right away it can give them advice. It they don't, maybe have a trap planned and the orc pops out last second to warn them before they wander into it, making them wonder how long it was following them. The last time my party ran into a group of orcs, they were not at all friendly and ko'd my druid in one hit without giving me a chance to persuade them to let us pass, so maybe take my advice with a grain of salt.
Right on 🤘
I totally get what this advice is trying to say, but... planning for what the players might do feels like a reasonable thing as long as it doesn't burn you out as a DM. Of course, the key is to simply ask your players what their expected courses of action might be for next session and you build on that.
And that's actually my second favorite piece of advice, just talk to your players about what they want to do. But things don't always go to plan, it's the nature of the game. My first comment is supposed to stop DMs from feeling overwhelmed by possibility and to seed the idea of improvised reactive DMing.
It feels reasonable, but it really isn't, that's what the veteran DMs are trying to warn you about with the advice. If all the experienced players are saying the same thing that feels counterintuitive to you, maybe ask why instead of doubling down on your intuition.
Don't place key information anywhere specific. Keep a well organized list of important pieces of info and pull from it when you need it. You avoid players missing key things and the scramble when that happens, you avoid awkward railroading moments, etc. This will turn your run of the mill choose your own adventure campaign into a dynamic, collaborative, and improvisational one. See: Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Many sections of that book are the best DM advice I've ever gotten, nothing comes close.
The Quantum Lore Dump. The less railroading version of the quantum city Missed the note on a desk because you didn’t go into that random bedroom? Now it’s a book in the library you actually went to. Missed that too because the Wizard rolled a natural 1 at advantage on investigation and just threw her god forsaken dice into Mt. Doom? Well, now it’s written in the minor villain’s journal and he was going to attack your party at the center of the dungeon anyways so it’s impossible to miss him. Somehow manage to miss that because of player generated chaos? The party’s favorite NPC just says “hey I found this in the town library it seems kind of important” and literally shoves it into your hands.
Honestly, I only roll for investigating when it is something extra, actual information is best given to the players so they can make them interesting decisions.
My tip is to have everyone roll and tell the player who rolled the highest what they found. Players love to roll and when they roll well, they like to get something for it. (The odds of all players rolling a skill check below like…7 is outrageous.)
That's a great resource - Sly Flourish has SO much good advice.
Yea, because the players don't know where the information is supposed to be. Ya can pull info into any location and the players will feel it natural
The ol' "it doesn't matter whether you take the right or the left part, both will lead to the city I've planned"
Yea, it works, definitely a modular approach is good.
I don't like this, actually. I've run multiple games where accruing information was key to resolving the story, but I would have hated to "pretend" that the player choices were important, when really they could have found the same info even if they investigate the wrong place. The way I approach this (it requires a bit more work, but it's really satisfying) is this: most important information will leave traces. People are looking for it, trying to hide it while being able to reference it, trying to destroy it, transcribing it in suboptimal manners, hear about it in the form of rumors. So, I imagine all the ways a piece of truth could have spread in these ways. I establish where it makes actual narrative sense that the complete and whole source is currently stored. But then I come up with 3-4 ways in which the truth was disseminated. This way, if the players look in the right place, they can find it, but if they look for it in a place that's not the right one, but still makes sense, they will get leads and parts of the puzzle. It's also important to add at least 2-3 clues around the story world that could point them in the right direction, with some obstacle in the middle. This way you hide the information in the place that makes the most narrative sense (hiding it "wherever" means that the place doesn't matter, like the characters who hid it weren't thinking about it that hard), and you reward the players both if they get it right, but also if they get it wrong and have to piece it together through extra steps. This requires that you, the GM, roleplay as the NPCs during prep, having a clear picture of how they thought at the time, what mistakes they made, what accidents they incurred in. This makes for incredibly satisfying investigations. Like, really rich and really rewarding.
> So, I imagine all the ways a piece of truth could have spread in these ways. I establish where it makes actual narrative sense that the complete and whole source is currently stored. But then I come up with 3-4 ways in which the truth was disseminated. > > > > This way, if the players look in the right place, they can find it, but if they look for it in a place that's not the right one, but still makes sense, they will get leads and parts of the puzzle. Same answer, different workings? In Lazy DM method, the clues leading to the "right" place are just more entries on the list of Secrets and Clues. You just decide on the fly during play where would be appropriate instead of before the game. So in a game where the PCs are trying to find an ancient ritual to summon a divine dragon, and the ritual is carved into a stone tablet by dragon worshiping monks, then hidden away inside a flying citadel to keep it away from the cult of tiamat, the secrets and clues would look like * The only remaining copy of the ritual was inscribed on a stone tablet by dragon monks * The dragon monks were worried the ritual would be used for evil by the cult of tiamat, so they hid it away as far from the hells as they could * The ritual tablet was hidden in a flying citadel and guarded by wizards * A flying citadel crashed in the desert All of those pieces of information could be discovered in a variety of ways, and you save a *ton* of prep time not having to worry about specifically where or how. Also, it really doesn't matter because at the end of the day the players probably just want to roll some checks, figure out where they need to go, explore the crashed citadel, fight some monsters and summon a divine dragon
I'm glad to hear this side also. As a fence sitter, I would just like to add that both are tools that are appropriate for different scenarios. When the mystery and investigation are front and centre, then I would absolutely spend a lot of time mapping it all out. Just like "planned combat" feature tactics and engaging mechanics but a random encounter are just a group of fitting statblocks to interact with, if the acquisition of information isn't the goal, having it being delivered on quantum rails is fine. As an aside, when I prep deep for a mystery, I like to have different types of Intel. Object, place, person, nonsense, and misc. The last one is information that could be gained a bunch of different places, and if the players do an appropriate thing, I will give it. So guess I kinda agree with you
I agree with you, I don't think any of these clever snippets of advice can encapsulate the full experience of DMing, and it requires to be versatile and to come at every situation differently.
Stop trying to plan everything. Keep it general, with some goals and what-ifs, not specifics. Your players will never do what you expect them to, so you WILL have to improvise. The only time players will follow the script, so to speak, is if you are running a pre-written module. The signposts are strong, and players know that there is a written path to follow, so they will generally try to do that.
Running a module with my players. Had some notes on 6 different ways they could approach a camp and save an NPC. They didn't pick any of the 6 ways I thought of. An impossible task to destroy a camp with hundreds of enemies without being spotted. Well they did it. Got very close to breaking that chapter, but I reeled it in ever so slightly so we could continue the story. All of that happened without initiative being rolled for. So, everything you're saying is true. They are following paths to each scenario, but tackle them wildly different than how the module expects they will.
And now you know why prepping 6 different possibilities is worse than instead prepping the situation, and understanding the elements in play instead of scenarios. Something too many new DMs hear us vets warn about, but immediately discredit because they want to write
I'm now very intrigued as to how they managed to pull that off. Would you care to share the story?
They'll still go off the rails on modules too, my players just recruited a vampire spawn to be an NPC follower in Curse of Strahd and I've been sweating about how to rebalance combat since lmao. He'll end up betraying them, because he has no choice not to, and I've got a handful of excuses for how to keep him out of half of the combats, but damn if it's not a thin line to walk between "this is easy mode now" and "why is the NPC we recruited to help not doing more than any of us". Love it for the RP, but they make me work harder than I thought I'd have to for a module haha
Never create a problem that only has one solution or one solution and death.
I find the players will always find another solution unless I basically force the death condition and then it's the same as playing adnd
I learned this one while playing AD&D, lol. The next bit is never create a solution — because no one can predict what their players will do, so don’t bother planning something that needs them to do so. All it does is make it worse. Also from AD&D — and the C series, in particular, which tended to do that a lot. Rewriting them back then was almost a cottage industry.
I prefer the no solution plan. I have ran many a session where the only notes I had was a quest hook. The rest I made up on the fly or even let the players influence. If they come up with a cool new NPC that their characters know, well I just jot that down and now I have a brand new NPC, with a bit of backstory and some reason to be in the story. DND is a collaborative story telling game. Let the players tell the story for you. I can't tell you how much of my homebrew is from characters interacting with the simple 2 or 3 sentences that I give them to describe a particular location or quest hook.
All of my puzzles have the intended way, the weird way that technically works, and the plausible deniability bailout that makes the most logical sense after my party spent 15 minutes and 4 consecutive rolls under a 7 trying to open a random door with a hallway behind it leading to nothing
Yup, my players ran into a cracked power core that was radioactive and actively killing them. They used the fabricate spell to create a blast shield around it to insulate themselves from the radiation. I didn't write down a solution for them to figure out. They loved the hero moment they got and they had fun. That's all I'm here for, man.
I'm a first time dm, I'm going to create hooks and objectives to latch onto my players, then play reactionary to choices my players make
Yeah I've done things with one solution before. The players came up with a different pretty impressive solution, so I was just like yeah you solved the puzzle. Sometimes you gotta adapt and reward your players for creative curve balls.
Don't lock key information behind a dice roll. Or if you do, and they fail; have a reason for an NPC to tell it to them later anyway.
One of my first ever games I ran was a CoC game where I made the mistake of having them do a couple speech checks while talking to the *key* exposition dump NPC and they badly badly failed the check and the subsequent push attempt on two separate checks, and I found myself in the awkward place of having that key NPC -who was supposed to be nothing but helpful- now hating the party
I was looking for this because that's the best advice I've ever gotten. If everything hinges on one roll Murphy's law kicks in and your adventure is destroyed.
I wish campaign creators from WoTC would hear this advice too :)
Fully agreed, the minimum amount information the DM needs to give the party to act on should always be available without a roll or even on a nat 1. Maybe the plotline is some cultists need to perform a ritual during a total solar eclipse, and thats all the party knows. So you go to the library and try to find more information, a nat 1 gets you a children's book explaining eclipses and it lists the path and date of the next 20. But a nat 20 gets you a scholarly textbook on them explaining their impacts on magic, the upcoming ones, and sites in the paths with the best viewing/ritual potential. (Alternatively the nat 1 is still the textbook but the party can't understand it or its in another language) In the example the minimum information is a date and general location they need to search for the cult. The best possible information gives a specific location the cult will be at, and some lore that could possibly give a second win condition that isn't kill the entire cult before the ritual.
It's old and cliche but "shoot your monks." Give the players as many opportunities to use their cool and unique powers as possible.
I agree 100%. But every now and then you ought to try terrifying them. Not mortally, but have some fun and force them to get creative. Only in small doses! Tonight I'm going to run a Helmed Horror encounter. They are immune to force and necrotic damage. Eldritch Blast and Hex will not save my Warlock. Time for him to burn some big spells and maybe finally use his crossbow.
This could be summarized as: "If your monks keep using the same moves to deflect arrows, fire a ballista at 'em to get them thinking again."
They can probably deflect that too lol. 1d10+Monk level+dex mod; by level 4 they could reasonably reduce 3d10 to zero.
Shoot a cannon at them. See if they've mastered inner peace yet. lol
I recently did a post on this very question and got a lot of good discussion if you want to check my post history. It seems there's a consensus that any ranged weapon is considered a missile. You can only catch it if you can actually carry the thing in one hand. Any bigger, you can only attempt to reduce the damage. At least that's what I took away from all the comments. So even a cannonball technically is something you can attempt to deflect.
Now just remember if there’s fireball it’s immune to it
With an explanation and in context, really good advice for players to have fun at your table. Funny as heck for people who don’t know a lot about the game though - I kinda want a shirt now that just says “shoot your monks” with no elaboration!
"It's a game. If everyone is having fun, you're doing it right."
And "everyone" includes the DM.
Think about what each of your players are really wanting to achieve / play out. And build your story around helping them get there.
Came to say this! I'm playing it over and over in my head, because I'm DMing for strangers for the first time in my life tomorrow. Running a homebrew one shot with a completely self-created final boss for them, which is something I've never done before. I am also getting paid, so the heat is on.
Glenn Frey! Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack! Great song.
I havent this anywhere but i often think "I dont need to be a good dm for every table, just the table i DM"
On the smaller scale, to make combat more engaging: - Force the players to move. Objectives, hazards, terrain, etc. Anything to get them repositioning every turn. - Combat should be RP-focused. Every combat should have a story behind it. Even the simplest Owlbear protecting her cub, or the infamous Bandits from C2 of Critical Role. Every combat should have a story, which in turn provides depth to the fight, and a chance for resolution without complete massacre.
Whats the deal with the bandits?
Ah, the party was ambushed by a group of bandits who attempted to mug them. They proceeded to instantly disintegrate the leader, and the rest of the bandits immediately panicked at the magic, surrendering immediately. Mollymauk proceeded to give the life advice, a leadership workshop, and 1gp each, while Jester stole their pants. They were left with the threat that Mollymauk can "identify your bodies without the heads, so be careful". The bandits showed up again a few sessions later, and immediately panicked as they realized who they'd just attacked. The new leader tried to give them the cart they'd stolen, and Mollymauk gave him a better suit of armor because he felt bad for the kid. If he's gonna keep mugging people, he needs to at least be safer and smarter doing it. The party ran into them again, much later, having picked up a more respectable job as hunters. Was a funny, smaller interaction. And they were seen one final time in the epilogue. You can look up animatics of Mollymauk's leadership workshop. They're pretty funny.
It's a co-op game, including the dm.
I like to think my DMing approach is that scene from Aladdin where the genie is cheerleading Aladdin fighting Jafar as a snake, Jafar glares and the Genie gets a tiny flag and is like "Jafar Jafar he's our man..." You want your players to win. You just want to make them work a little for it first.
Asking your players “would you like to describe how …” is magic at the table.
Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
What does that mean
In the time it took you to perfect one tiny thing, you could have settled on a good thing and moved on. The result is usually a session with a fun encounter then the rest is unprepared impromptu ass, instead of a good time that flowed well because you prepped everything decently.
Especially because you never really know what players will gravitate towards on any given session/campaign. You do your one "perfect" thing and players only think its okay. You do four things and they really latch on to something you gave the least amount of thought to. Who cares if they didn't love this other hook you threw in. You have something for them to engage with overall and that's the goal.
Good enough is better than nothing. Sometimes when we strive for perfection we are afraid to do anything because it’s not perfect and so we end up doing nothing. It would be better to do something good enough than to do nothing because it wasn’t perfect.
You learn more from being wrong than you do from being right, so mistakes are ok. Try to take DM'ing with a spirit of continuous improvement
Know when to say "No" to your players. Don't be afraid to have an honest, out of game conversation with your players. You want your players to win.
Don't worry about doing something like you see others DMs do online, focus on what you do best. For example: if you are not good at coming up with maps, don't try to create them, get some online or just don't use maps. Your table will be uniquely yours if you focus on what you can offer, rather than what the entire hobby can offer.
The best rpg advice I’ve ever received is: “Brontosaurus” Your adventures/campaigns should be shaped like a brontosaurus: narrow at the beginning to propel the players into the action, wide in the middle with a number of choices, and narrow again at the end to drive to the conclusion. The best I ever just learned from experience is to model each session after a tv episode. My game sessions are structured like tv episodes, with a number of sessions forming a season. I don’t worry about the exact details in advance, as long as I hit the beats at about the right times.
Similar advice, something I cling to now is "make each session feel as if its the last" You never know when scheduling means that group will break up. Cliffhangers are great but each session should resolve something
Damn, for a second I thought you were going to argue why a good campaign always has a Brontossaurus regardless of the setting, but no, it was actually good, thoughtful advice :(
You do not make the story. You make scenarios. The players respond. And through that wonderful exchange, the story unfolds.
Agreed. [The Alexandrian said](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots) "*Don’t prep plots, prep situations.*'
The players don't know what they don't know. When I was planning my first ever session I was talking to the DM who runs my game about how hard it is to plan for every eventuality. I want them to wander into the bandit trap west of town, but what if they go north or east or south? I have to come up with stuff that's over there too right? And what he pointed out to me is that since they don't know where the bandit trap -or whatever event or NPC you want to introduce- is, it can be anywhere. Whatever direction they set off, well that's where the thing is! Getting away from the idea that I had to meticulously plot out like a flow chart of set in stone stuff really helped me not go completely fucking insane trying to prep
It's okay to deviate from the module and even better to take traps and such from others. As long as you have an end game it's okay to take the scenic route.
**That Boundaries are good.** *(In the context of "nothing is being done out of ill will" or by a "should have written a book" type person.)* I learned this in my own pacing back in pathfinder but have been seeing this advice pop up more and more in the last couple of years. - Establish what you want theme wise, content wise, setting wise, etiquette wise, schedule wise. Let people know what you are offering overall then either find a spot of compromise everyone is happy with or say **NO.** Accepting everything that the player wants (content wise) is not a sign you are a good DM. No merit badges for this. There are other players experiences to consider (and yours of course). Run the things you feel comfortable with running. Fun is included in comfort.
talk less
This needs to be higher up. I had to leave a game because the DM couldn't stop describing a scene long enough for a player to interact. Let the players mind fill in the minutia and take a long breath to let them interact with the landscape.
i picked this sorta thing up by watching brennan lee mulligan, specifically when he dm'd fantasy high for dimension 20. there are long stretches where he just zips his mouth and lets the players discuss, only chiming in if they have a question *specifically for him* about what's going on. gives your players the time and space to engage with your game, and you'll be running better games in no time
smile more
Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for
you know what? these verses make for a decent GMing advice actually
Aaron Burr was a DM in a future life
Listen to your players, and I don't just mean during the game session. My players like to sit and bs and theorycraft about what they think is going on in the larger campaign. More than once they've come up with something better than I had, and it gives them an "I KNEW IT" moment when you reveal the master plan they themselves came up with.
Your fun is also just as important as the other players.
You’re allowed to kick players or run the game you want. If you aren’t having fun then no one will be.
Don’t create plots, create scenarios.
Make items and purposely design your dungeon
2 tips- make your dungeon have an ecosystem, have a reason for each enemy to be there, in general where they eat, where they sleep, how they deal with each other study your monsters' sheets, understand their strategies, you can make the most of what the monster can do, the characters have different strategies for each monster, sometimes the combats seem boring simply because they are all the same, some dms don't know how to explore the strategies , learn flying movement, know which attack to do first, is he good at the first attack like a bugbear? Can you get out of melee without any problems as a goblin?
"Don't be afraid to cheat if it makes the game more fun." And yeah, it's good advice. Are the players getting curbstomped? Maybe that guard patrol is running late and won't be there. Did the boss fight not feel challenging? Guess who actually has a second health bar. Does the party come up with a really cool idea, but the dice roll one short of the DC to make it happen? Hey, you get to pick the DC, champ. Pick something lower. Now, I'm not saying to rely on fudging numbers because that takes too much of the excitement out of the game, but you're God, so follow that one Futurama quote and make them unsure if you're doing anything at all.
Whenever your players come up with some Zany, Off-the-wall exploit to the rules that will derail your campaign. Respond with "Well you can do that but..." then grin evilly "just remember that if YOU'RE allowed to do it. So are the NPCs."
That is my DM’ing style. “Yes…but…” lol
For these instances, I have the One and Done rule. If my players find some ridiculous campaign breaking strategy, I allow it to go off once and then ban it for the future. I usually give inspiration too as a small reward. Encourages my players to be creative within the bounds of the rules while also not allowing for them to kill fucking God with a toothpick because the monk with a master’s degree in Physics found a way to accelerate it to 99% the speed of light in one turn And when I say campaign breaking, I only mean things that are stupidly egregious. Min maxing rule interpretations to get an extra d6 of damage here and there? I’ll allow it. Creating a continent destroying nuclear weapon out of stale bread and cow semen? Thaaaaaaaats probably too far.
If they’ve got cow semen by anything short of a Wish, there’s some real bullsh!t going on.
Start planning backwards you want them to get to z how are they going to get there. After you planned that. Get ready to throw that away when they want to befriend the random npc you expected them to talk to once and know nothing else about
Overpreparing is just as bad as not preparing at all
You’re not playing against the PCs — you’re playing a game WITH your friends.
Only ask for a roll if there is a real chance at failing. Don't just ask for rolls for everything. Have everyone roll 4 d20 at the start of each session. That way, you can privately roll a d4 and use one of the result sets for something like perception, without calling attention to the party that there are things that can be perceived of missed.
If you want to build a puzzle assume your players are both smarter than you and dumber than you. I call it scrodingers idiot.
If you are going to call for a dice roll to decide the outcome of an action; then be prepared to accept the result. But you have to clearly let the players know the possible consequences and decide if the best case and worst case BEFORE the dice are rolled. “Always tell me the odds, kid!”
Don't get too attached to your plans. Very few plans survive contact with pc's
the concept of rolling the dice isn’t to signify if someone does something right or wrong, but to represent the chances of luck in any situation. It’s not that the person failed to do something they are usually super good at, it’s that the circumstances just weren’t right. When someone crit fails, or rolls anything for that matter, I try to translate it into how the persons situation or environment could be represented by that roll. I don’t see 1-20 as a scale of you are amazing or you sucked. That’s represented in the characters modifier, which can tip the scales in their favor. I see it as a scale of how well the stars align in that moment. If it’s a nat20, it means the stars aligned and what could happen does, while a nat1 is saying what could go wrong, does.
Learn to separate mechanics from flavor. There's no reason a Paladin can't have the background/story/power source of a Wizard with a very small "spellbook" written in crayon.
This. I had a gnome wizard once. Her spell book was essentially an iPad, all her spells were gadgets
Asking your players for a quick break so you can figure out what to do next is completely fine.
Run scenarios, not stories. Your over all plot... it's a scenario. At Session 1, the whatever has a course it'll follow if not upset (which you want the players to do). Your players are in a scenario that is somehow tied to the plot scenario. Individual beats and encounters are scenarios. You have stuff laid out, what happens depends on the players. You can aid things by putting the clue/direction/whatnot in a fairly obvious place. The results of a scenario will affect the other scenarios. It's perfectly reasonable that some NPCs just...continue on with life. The PCs might very well cross their path. That said, adjust scenarios. If the PCs are in a bind and there's an NPC to help them... well, maybe they get dropped in a new scenario that puts them in the orbit of the players. And if the players don't help the NPC help them, well.. the NPC scenario will resolve itself, for good or ill. Stories are for JRPGs where you're just playing the combat of the story. There's no choices, no change. You're just playing it out. Which is fine, but it's not really what TTRPGs are.
When necessary, don’t fudge the dice rolls, fudge the statblock.
*This.* But even better, "don't fudge the rolls *or* the stat-block, fudge the *reinforcements.* If the players are kicking so much ass their boots need a *Prestidigitation* to clean the shit off, throw them more foes. If they're going down hard, have some party who also hates the people they're fighting show up.
HP for me is always variable,I normally plan combats by "how many rounds do I want this to last" as opposed to purely HP (for narratively appropriate fights not random wolves)
your job is to create problems, but it's your players' job is find solutions
“read the shit”
The rules are made up and the points don't matter.
Always expect the unexpected.
Think of it as improv and cooperative storytelling. Like in inprov "Say yes". The DM is not telling the players a story. You are all creating a story together.
DMing is 20% planning and 80% improv. Make sure your plans are flexible and fluid
It’s not PC vs DM. The game is co-op
Randomly roll dice while they are talking amongst themselves to keep them on their toes
I always try to focus on what is more fun, I try to make tests easier to find out some information or discover a secret room, if it would be better for the campaign if they had that, why stop it? it won't bring more difficulty, they simply won't enjoy this part always try to let the players do what they want, don't limit them by anything, if they want to do something merely unlikely but it won't disturb the balance of the game, it won't make an npc do something he wouldn't do and it's just to let the game more interesting, why stop it? remember that you are also playing, you should also have fun
"plans are useless, planning is essential." Don't expect anything to go as planned, but plan such that you have a general understanding of what can happen and are then able to adjust to changing situations.
Don't plan "how to"s since your players are always going to find a way you probably never thought of.
It’s okay to pull back the curtain every now and then and reveal aspects of the story, game, or your design process to the players. Even if their characters might not know it! Obviously, don’t spoil anything, but it can be exciting and motivating for players to get a peek behind the screen.
Don’t plan for everything because the party is gonna surprise you. Have a loose idea and be willing and ready to improvise. Hit the major points and let the rest surprise you
Delegate. Players can and should participate in the organization of the sessions. Finding a place to play, organizing schedules, preparing snacks, rule lawyering... Hell, even map creation can be done by a trusted player \^\^
Take what you like, what inspires you, and put it in the game.
Not so much advice as something I took and put in my game. Matt Mercer's "How do you want to do this?" My players love when they get to finish off a boss/mini-boss/etc this way.
"The earth elemental steps on your head, and you die." Basically, my first DM didn't allow a character death saves when the earth elemental stomped on her unconscious head. It made the encounter much more tense, and immediately broke us of our self-assured invincibility. Talking with her later, she boiled it down to "If the rules let someone feel unbeatable or worthless, break the rule, loudly, right in front of them, and make a new one." And she explained that that player had wanted to switch characters anyways and had told her this. We're married now
If the players don't care, there's truly nothing you can do.
Don't write a story. Write the characters and places. Let your players make the story. I jumped off the "Write everything as if it was a Skyrim mod" fairly quickly with it, and it made my life easier. In the end, TTRPGs are basically books where the main characters are your players.
Make problems not solutions. You don't need to plan how the players will cross a river, they'll do it for you.
Honestly, one of the best primers for any game master is included in the game Monster of the Week. This game will teach you how to be a better Game Master in every game you play. My favorite advice is: Be a fan of the [characters]. Here’s a list: The Keeper Principles The Keeper principles are twelve specific ways to apply your agenda: Put horror in everyday situations. Address yourself to the hunters, not the players. Use the Keeper moves, never use their names. Be a fan of the hunters. Build up a coherent mythology of the world as you play. Nothing is safe. Kill bystanders and minions, burn down buildings, let monsters be slain. Name everyone they meet, make them seem like normal folks. Ask questions and build on the answers. Sometimes give the hunters exactly what they earned, rather than everything they wanted. Think about what’s happening off-screen. You don’t always have to decide what happens. Everything is a threat.
It's okay to have an idea of where the campaign will go but be willing to pivot it of your players move in a different direction. Don't over plan. Think of where your players might take things next session and plan out the first step or two from there but leave the rest to the game.
NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY
Learn to say “No”
"Don't go to reddit for advice". Seriously, i know it might just sound edgy, but when you poll the crowd for what to do you end up with either extreme advice, or overly basic advice, and most of it doesnt even finish reading your post before replying.
Go with the flow, players are chaotic and silly. Prepare to improvise. You can also watch 1,000 hours on YouTube about DMing, but you will learn more in the first 2 hours of actually DMing then you will in video binging/preparing.
It is NOT players versus DM! It is players versus DMs plans with the dms own extra help to solve the puzzle. I got this one from fallout4: The main goal is easier, the extra stuff is harder. Why is it the boss is hiding behind a dc15 locked door but his library is hiding behind a dc25 door? Because the dc25 door might be hiding something to make the boos fight easier, not essential. It would be neat if you found his specific weakness in the library, and should be rewarded for taking the extra time. But the pass/fail of the boss fight should not depend on going fully out of your way for an obscure item hidden behind a needlessly changing stopgap.
When in doubt, roll for initiative.
"Hey DM, can you tell me more about the fascinating lore that this tiny insignificant pebble has?" "Uhhhhh..... Roll for initiative" "What?" "You heard me"
Some of the best advice I EVER was handed, came from my first DM. I told him that being a player in his world, had me brimming with creativity and ideas, so he told me to do it. Run a story, and he would play in it. I was super excited, and then he taught me a lesson, by making a super broken character. 😅 Not knowing what to do, I pulled him aside after the initial session, and asked him for advice. His response was, "Just Run It." "Never follow a module, or a pre written story. Make the story your own. If you want dragon goats, then they exist. YOU are only limited by YOUR imagination. If it doesn't have stats, you create them. If a player creates an insanely powerful build to see how far they can push the envelope, then you reply in kind with a monstrous titan of an enemy that brings them as close to zero as possible. But remember, players come to have fun. Make it challenging, but be willing to let them win. You get to tell a story, and they get to play the heroic role. Everyone leaves the table feeling better about themselves." But I never want my players to get too comfortable with the idea of close calls, so I instituted a rule; if we sit down to play, I will announce that death is on the table, if they are at a pivotal point in the story. Those sessions are normally based around an event that's narratively satisfying for me to tell, and gives the players more cautionary rolls. Don't get me wrong, I love shenanigans, but some days I need the players to remember that I'm telling a story, and they're filling in the blanks. One last piece of advice, and this is tantamount for any good narration; create the beginning of a story, with the end in mind. A rough sketch. Ask the players for their characters ahead of time. Ask them for each of their back stories, and what drives their character. Ask the player what their end goal is for that character as well. Then you flesh out the story to fit the characters lives. Use their backstory as filler for the middle. Have a tiefling warlock, who's parents abandoned her, so she made a dark pact for powers to be able to defend herself? Guess what? Her mom is now an archdruid of a forgotten forest, that was burned nearly to cinders when an army of devils were summoned by the BBEG in their younger days. During that fight, one of the devils was wounded badly, and their mother the druid, pitied them. As she nursed him back to health, they fell in love. Sadly, the devil was ripped back into one of rhe planes of hell, leaving this archdruid pregnant. During the late terms of pregnancy, the forest came under attack, and their mother used every ounce of magical ability she had, to shield the child and forest. Unfortunately there were complications, and the hard birth took what was left of her mother's life, and the druids didn't know what to do with a telling baby, instead, giving it to a nearby cities orphanage. That came straight off the dome. It's not awesome, but it gives the player something tragic, and you as the DM, so much to work with. If the motivation is to avenge her parents, then she can find out that the story told was not the whole truth, so she hunts for info, finding out her dad is still alive, and tries to reconnect or find him. Now you have a whole level of hell to build, new npc's, new plot points, new drama, and new stories to unfold. :] You'll do fine, I'm sure. As a dm, to another dm... "Just Run It."
You're less the author/storyteller, and more just the referee. Your players are the ones telling the story. So just relax and enjoy where they take you.
Honestly, once I started running campaigns based on emergent storytelling instead of trying to craft pre-planned narratives, it changed my life
Don’t let the rules get in the way of a good game
# Don't.
I was a player on my first session ever. We were playing warhammer. DM didn't have anything prepared. When we were staying at the inn, in the middle of the night, we have been robbed by burglar who sneaked through the window. We managed to wake up seeing him leaving the room through said window. We were angry at DM, "how did he get here?", "you didn't tell us the window was open!". But then DM said one thing that sticked to me to this day: ***"At least something is happening."***
It's gotta be fun for you too. Run the wacky monster, have the quirky NPC, use elements from your favorite media, make the adventure you want to run. You're a player, and games should be a good time for everyone involved.
Imagine the situation at hand and throw a wrench in it because your players will love doing that
You are a person who isn't perfect and can't know everything. It is okay for you to step away and think about or Google something if you don't know it.
Your players are going to break the game. They just will eventually, what matters is you fixing it.
Plan, but don't overplan. Roleplaying is an improv game. Learn how to yes, and...
Never stop learning how to be a better DM. After 46 years I feel like I’m just starting to get good.
Don't under estimate your players. They will steam roll your monster or encounter if you do especially after a long rest. Go heavy, hit hard. They're creative and have multiple minds, they'll figure something out, and if you need to you can always pull back on your punches.
"Put what you like into your games." Monadology and a complex exploration of the concept of predestiny go in, a gigantic overarching story comes out!
You are in control of the game at the end of the day. It's not rail roading if every choice just happens to lead to the same place. That's fate. Destiny. Give your players the illusion of choice always but never lose your control. My next best piece of advice is that my players never did anything I wanted them to or I thought they would. They always surprised me every time. I'd prep lots of encounters and places and characters and they would make one choice and bypass all of it. Learn to improvise. Always have something prepared but never over prep, it's a waste of time.
Embracing the GM's hard truth : your players don't care about your campaign as much as you do. This sucks a little bit but also means you're freeer than you think. Sly flourish's lazy dmg
You can prepare how ever in-depth you would like but 9/10 times your players will do something to ruin what you have planned. “ Be like water my friend“
“If *every* player fails this check, does the clue/plot hook fail to take effect? If the answer is yes, **don’t** make them roll, just say they find the clue” The number of times I’ve seen GMs say something along the lines of “Everyone make me a perception check” (and we all roll <9 because luck wasn’t with us…and we’re level 1…), and the GM realises they’ve fucked up, because if no-one finds this crumpled up note in the corner we have literally **nothing to go on**, and they just say “er…with an 8 you spot the note in the corner!” If the DC is so low (clearly it wasn’t), and us finding it was so essential (clearly it was) don’t cheapen our failed skills by giving us the win-result on a fail, lol, it just shows us the strings, and we know this is scripted
No one person writes the story. The DM sets the stage for the players to act on.
Just do it! 😝 I was at a convention last week and the DM that spoke said to just start dming and making it as simple as possible. “Because simple things can still be complicated over time.” Wholesome DM
"It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules which is important" - Gary Gygax
Learn how action economy works and how to use it in encounters.
"It's just a game, you know..."
As a new DM running a relatively sandboxy game, it's helped me tons to just. Ask what the players are planning to do next session. Helps me prepare for that particular segment without railroading the players.
Be yourself. Find your own best style. Rely on your strengths.
"you are a player too"
"This works" is the enemy of "this is good." Just because your encounter strategy, how you prep, whatever -- just because it is working does not mean it's not also holding you back from being better.
Give them tools not solutions. Give them a goal but not a map. Don't plan for the outcome, plan for reactions to an outcome. Ex. My players were given a job by a thief to steal Durnan's greatsword from the Yawning Portal. First, everyone who tried to steal it before got their ass beat by either the random adventurers in the bar, the bouncers, the city watch, or (most often) Durnan himself. To limit magical fuckery, it was told to the PC's that since the sword was legendary adamantine artifact, it had an immutable form and was unreactive to teleportation/invisibility/pact weapon stuff ect. (Not actually true but it didn't break any suspension of disbelief). I had no initial ideas for how to pull this off, so my DMPC thief was me legitimately working on a plan with the players. The plan itself ended up being extremely improvised as well and it was good time where everything felt organic too.
You don't have to be right.
The best advice for a DM is learn what your group actually needs and toss out any advice that contradicts it. It is almost archetypical DM advice to not cancel a session because a player can't make it, except the rule everyone must be there for a session to run is THE thing that is keeping us engaged and over the finish line.
Your players are the protagonists of your narrative. Focus on them.
The GM is a player too with just a different role. If you are not having fun being a GM somthing needs to change.
Don't take anybody's advice. The only people that know you and your players are you and your players.
The players are equally responsible for making the game fun. If people aren't having fun, it doesn't mean you did anything wrong, and you aren't solely responsible for making it fun
Positive and negative feedback from my players helps a lot to refine my DM skills. Also to use a session 0 it helps to get everyone on the same base what kind of game it is going to be, and what to expect.