Improving as a DM?

One thing I'd really like to do is improve my DMing skills. With D&D 4e, I've really taken to DMing I've read the 4e DMG front-to-back, looked through KotS, read Dungeon every month, etc. I now have a couple months of DMing experience under my belt, which has certainly helped to make things go more smoothly.

The thing is, it's hard for me to judge where I need to improve as a DM! Whenever I ask my players for feedback, it's a general "you're doing a good job" type of response. When I ask about specific details, the response is usually just "good" ("how's the pacing?" "good" "what about the loot?" "good" "the atmosphere?" "good" "the balance between roleplay and combat?" "good" etc etc..)

Now, on one hand, it's nice to see my players are enjoying the games I run! On the other hand, some way to get feedback and advice would be great. Part of the issue, I think, is that they don't have much to compare my DMing to. For the most part, my gaming group's D&D experience consists of our play time, and maybe the occasional one-shot adventure or two outside of that.

Does anyone have any advice on what I can do to improve my DMing? For the most part, what I've been doing is just reading whatever I can get my hands on, but I'd like to think there's more than that (and I've exhausted most of my current supply of reading material on the subject).

Hmmm...

1. Practice Practice Practice - This one is the most important. Simply put, keep DM'ing

2. Read what others are doing - ENW is a good place for that of course. And nt just about DM's - Sometimes (as has happened to me) you will come across a post of Players complaining about something their DM does, effectively asking if anyone else has had a DM do such and such - and you will realize you are guilty of the very thing they are discussing. To what degree it may vary, but you get the idea. Sometimes, it will be something you would have never known was an issue - maybe your players don't notice it yet, or don't care enough to mention but you realize it's something you want to change.

3. Think about the mistakes you know you made after you DM a session. I have been playing D&D since I was 12 (will be 33 this year) and DM-ing since I was 15 or so... since then DM-ing is what I have done 90% of my gaming time. Despite the experience, there are still plenty of things I can do better - plenty of missed opportunities, or mistakes made during a game that I notice as it happens, or after the session. Note these things, or at least keep your mind on them and what you can do to fix them if possible.


I'm sure there are more than that - but that's all I have for now

DM more. The more you do it, the better you tend to get.

Pay attention to the players' moods and know the kind of play style they enjoy. No matter how good a DM you are, if there's too much clashing of styles, the players probably won't enjoy it. Make sure you balance the risks and rewards well too. Players hate stingy DMs, but get bored if you give them too much or make it easy.

Ugh, the dreaded, "Oh, you're game is fine." response. I hate that. Even if it's 100% true, I still hate it. Getting real critical feedback from your players can be very difficult. Likely they don't want to hurt your feelings, and, even stronger than that, they may not have given any thought to it either. Not that they don't care about your game. That's not it at all, but, expecially if they've never DM'd, they just don't really consider the game outside of the box of their personal involvement. "Did I have fun?" is about the only criteria that most players apply to a session.

Getting them to tell you why they had fun, or what parts were fun can be like pulling teeth. I feel for you.

My advice would be to be very specific in your questions. Don't try to put it at the level of enjoyment, but rather ask them for reactions to very specific elements of the game. For example, say your session featured a lot of combat. Don't ask if they liked the combat, but, ask about a specific event in the combat. "Hey, that fight with the X kinda dragged didn't it?" or, "Did you expect Y to jump out at you?"

Another tip might be to keep track during the session. Have a note pad beside you during the game and write down some observations. Come back to those notes afterwards. "Hey, Jim, I saw you were zoning out a bit during that fight with the Giant Badgers, everything ok?" or "Wow, Carla, you really seemed to dig those Giant Badgers, why was that?"

It does really help to be as specific as you can.

Before you design the next game session ask them what they would like to do. So would they like say a mystery, more roleplaying, more interaction with NPCs, more combat, what kind of combat, etc, etc. Essentially ask them what kind of game would they like to see.

Then when game day rolls around see how they react to these implementations. Not only can it be a good judge of your own skill overall (you may be really good but if it not something a player is interested in it won't be viewed as well and vice versa) and also to see if what areas you explored are ones you should continue too.

As far as seeking advice from what your players want, I know hwo that can be. Some people are incapable of giving critique, others are just easily satisfied ("Hey, I jsut want to come and roll dice and socialize.") However, if your friends are just too polite, you could take one aside between sessions, and ask, "So, do folks say anything about my DMing away from the table?"

A lot of folks have contributed what I was going to say. But here's a few things:

1) Try different things. Look back at what you have done in previous adventures, and ask yourself, "What have I not been doing?" If it's been, for instance, heavy dungeon crawling, avoid that for a session or two. Do some "You need to broker peace between these two groups" or, suddenly it's an adventure about being stuck in one place, and the tension slowly ratcheting up (like The Thing).

Variety is important. Although, be aware that when you are going to do certain things, there are aspects. Horror (depending on what type of horror) has a lot of atmosphere to it, and it takes a lot of practice to implement it well. It's tone of voice, pacing, how much you reveal when, etc. Same with intrigue and mystery - it's Not Easy, so it takes practice.

The caveat here is that be sure it doesn't come across as a total about-face for the game. If, for instance, the game has been very "Good Vs. Evil" with very black and white terms, suddenly dropping moral ambiguity in there might confuse your players because "We assumed this is how the game works" (See the thread about Realism as an example of consistency and suspension of disbelief).

However, if you do want to drastically change things, it's easy to just do a one-off adventure. "You all are peasants, with NPC stats. Here are your characters. And now, let us play Night of the Living Dead. Let's see if you survive."

2) Think About it Constantly. That's usually how I develop an adventure; I just keep thinking about it and polishing it up. For instance, if I get a module and I look at it and keep thinking about it, eventually I'll think of a better way to do it, or a different way, or a way to change it so it's more interesting to me. Like "Hmm, this villain's motivation is a little bland. I'll change that."

On that same note, never run a module fresh out of the box. Look it over, think about how to change it to suit your needs, the needs of your group, how to make it more interesting, etc.

3) Read Everything you Can, even that which is unrelated to D&D. Inspiration for things can come from whole other sources. Movies, books, video games.

Not only that, but real world things. There are tons of sites about "Real world wonders!" Check those out, and drop one into your game. Reading up on strange real world cultures lets you drop interesting things into That Tribe of Elves Over There. Seeing things about History lets you see how things might progress, or useful implementations of things ("Hannibal went over a large set of mountains with lots of elephants in order to sack Rome. Army with weird animals traveling long distances for surprise attack! Hmm.")

Additionally, real life experiences can give you stuff to flesh out NPCs. If you want this NPC here to be comedic relief, think about who you've met/seen, and drop in traits of that person on that character.

4) Look at Other RPGs, Too. Yes, I know. But other games have other ideas. Gives you perspective as far as running games. Not necessarily DM advice, but different mechanics, and different ways of thinking. Other games have campaign settings you might go, "Oo, I like that, I'll use that in my homebrew."

5) Failure is okay. You're going to make a ton of mistakes as a DM. Just accept it, apologize, learn from it, move on. Talk to your players about it. They'll cut you slack.

6) Think about your "Style" of DMing, and what appeals to you. Do you like your players to account for every gold piece, have everything in their inventory listed ahead of time? Do you not care about the specific details, but you care more about the story? Know what you like, and try to develop that.

Rechan said:

4) Look at Other RPGs, Too. Yes, I know. But other games have other ideas. Gives you perspective as far as running games. Not necessarily DM advice, but different mechanics, and different ways of thinking.

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I recommend this one wholeheartedly from personal experience. I would say the vast majority of my DMing style across a wide swath of genres and games comes from what I learnt and read in WoD. It just well fit with my mindset and let me prioritize and somewhat set down what I wished to accomplish.

Play!

A recent thread talked about things you learned as a DM from playing. I think I learned some of my best lessons from playing with really good GMs. And even playing with less good GMs can help, as you start to see things that don't work out well.

Here is the thread that Charles is referring to. Has various insights from DMs.

Also:

7) There is no shame in stealing ideas.

Just like as inspiration can be found in many places, so too can awesome ideas whole cloth. Be it from a person here on ENWorld telling about a cool scene/idea/House Rule, to finding something in a published adventure, to taking a character whole-cloth from a book and making them an NPC.

8) Reskin, reskin, reskin. I forget if the 4e DMG mentions this, but: any monster, any trap, any PC power can, with just a different description, serve any function.

9) Check out older edition stuff. It's cheap, and there are ideas there too. Even 3rd party stuff. You don't have to spend a boat load of cash, and while the rules may not be useful, the ideas are there. My favorite older edition thing to look to is traps, maps, and monster descriptions. There are adventure ideas in there, too; converting is fairly easy.

10) Prepare for the Unexpected. There are quite a few DM tricks out there, although some are style dependant. Here's one I've learned. Being a DM is a very challenging thing, because players have this habit of zigging when you planned for them to zag. They can wreck your plot or all your preparation. So, anticipate a zig somewhere, and have something for whenever it crops up. How do you do that?

Let's say, your adventure anticipates the party will go to the Caves of Badness, the Fortress of More Badness, and finally the Swamp of SuperBadness.

But between Point A to point B, the players might instead go to the Forest of No Badness because they think that's where the plot is. Or, they could turn left instead of right, and end up in the Valley of Nothing Important.

If they do this, your options consist of: wing it, or have nothing happen so they get the hint there's ntohing there of interest, and turn around. The former can lead to you grasping for nothing, and the latter can be discouraging because that's Boring.

Instead, you anticipate something like this happening. You draw up an encounter with some bandits; their stats, their description, maybe something interesting in the scene like a pit or a giant net rigged, etc. These bandits are totally unrelated to your plot.

When your players Zig to the Forest of Non-Badness or the Valley of Nothing Interesting, hit them with the bandits. Then, after they've mopped up the bandits, say "Otherwise you find nothing of interest". So at least they got a fight with some bandits for their efforts of wandering. Or, you could drop some sort of hint or clue that steers them BACK towards one of your three key places, like one of the bandits "Suddenly knowing something" or something like that.

Additionally, the above is not limited to just encounters. And it's not limited to "You went off the path of my plot." You could have something like this prepped for non-combat encounters like meeting an old crone on the road. Or, you could whip it out to throw it at the PCs when they are getting frustrated/bored because they can't find anything (an enemy kicking in the door and attacking livens things up, and you can drop a clue in the enemy's pocket to get them moving again.)

Finally, if you do come up with a cool thing, and the players bypass it without encountering it - don't throw it away. Work it in somewhere else.

11) One clue is okay - four is great. When you have a specific clue, your players may completely miss it because again, they zig when you zag. So when you're preparing your adventure, create several clues, and put them in many areas, so that no matter where your PCs go, they'll find a clue. And if they go to several areas, they'll find several clues. The clues don't have to be the same thing, but they still point in a direction that leads to the next thing.

For instance, let's say that your PCs are in a big city, and a body from a roof top falls in front of them. The body is a certain race (near that race's little neighborhood). The body:
1) In his hand, clutched tightly, is a crystal arrowhead.
2) Has a funny wound with a particular magical residue.
3) In his pocket is a journal.
4) There is a tattoo of a blue wyvern on his upper arm.

You throw a ton of clues at the PCs; if the PCs ignore the wound and the journal, they could ask "Who makes this crystal arrowhead?" They could do a streetwise check about the tattoo. They could go ask the people in that race's neighborhood if they recognize the guy.

There are lots of directions they could take, that will lead them to where they need to go. There's always something they could do, instead of having ONe clue, and not knowing what to do with it.

12) A few brief observations I've found that are helpful:
Players can't read your mind.
The real trick to being a DM is letting the players win without making it obvious you're letting them win.
You'll have your darlings killed; your favorite villain will die fast, your great plot will be wrecked by players being players. Accept it in advance, learn to laugh about it.