DM tips - what makes a good DM?

Hey everyone. I haven't posted outside "Talking the Talk" and "Playing the Game" but my topic has no place there, so.. hello I'm new to PnP/PbP games, the only RPGs played before being PC games (not the full RP experience by a long shot, as i learned)

So then, off i went and joined half a dozen games, and seem to be doing ok so far. And now, thoughts of me DMing my own game become more and more frequent. See, with stories and characters i have no problem - I am sure i can make this interesing. But, what do you veterans say, must one learn prior to taking on the responsibility of DM-ing? What adivce would you give? What should i avoid, what should i expect of the PCs? I am more interested in character development and role playing than hack-and-slash dungeon crawling. Thanks!

Myth and Legend said:

But, what do you veterans say, must one learn prior to taking on the responsibility of DM-ing?

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Nothing.

Myth and Legend said:

What adivce would you give?

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Communication is the most important single factor imo, particularly at the start. Explain what sort of game you plan to run, ie lots of roleplaying, not much combat. Find out what sort of game the players are looking for.

Well surely there will be combat and trinkets! And if the group chooses to they can fight anyone - i am not planning on restricting them. What i meant by not being a dungeon crawl is that i don't plan to take them trough weeks or months worth of combat sequences without any talking or party/npc interaction.

Doug McCrae said:

Nothing.
Communication is the most important single factor imo, particularly at the start. Explain what sort of game you plan to run, ie lots of roleplaying, not much combat. Find out what sort of game the players are looking for.

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This bears repeating. Some gamers prefer a Beer and Pretzels game over in-depth storytelling. Nothing destroys a game faster than players and DM being on different pages on the subject.

Aside from that, I think the only advice I'd give is to not become too attached to any grand storylines you may come up with. Sometimes the players' imaginations take them in entirely different directions, and a good DM has to be ready to roll with it and adjust his own plots as a result.

Ask Piratecat to ask you about the March of the Modrons sometime.

Myth and Legend said:

But, what do you veterans say, must one learn prior to taking on the responsibility of DM-ing?

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Some bullet points:

1. Expect the unexpected. You will put a lot of time into an NPC -- maybe a villain, maybe a quest-giver, whatever -- only to see the players ignore/sidestep that NPC. Don't railroad if you can help it. Instead, simply reuse your work. Are they getting actively involved with some other NPC? Apply your work -- you spent hours statting an NPC, giving it a background and a motivation, then use it when the players want it. I was joking around with another DM last week, about a group that was quested to clear a small dungeon. The group approached the dungeon entrance, the wizard cast stone to mud and then reversed it, killing everything in the dungeon in a single round. I said how disappointed the DM of that game must have been to invest all that time, but the DM I was chatting with laughed & said, "Why? He just uses that unexplored dungeon for the next dungeon they enter." And I thought, "Duh, shoulda seen that one coming."
2. Get comfortable ad-libbing and rule-arbitrating. This sorta builds on the previous point -- the players will do stuff you didn't plan for, and it's OK to say, "Crap, you stumped me, I need 3 minutes to work up what happens." It's also OK to say, "I don't need any time to react, but what I'm about to say isn't a permanent house-rule. I'm going to make a judgment and then look it up later, and make changes for the future if I have to." I had players (at the end of a particularly uneventful game last month) ask if the local mage's guild would conjure up an illusory monster for them to fight, just for fun. One player offered to pay for the spell to be cast. Technically he didn't have enough money, but I said "to hell with it, yes, and if you manage to beat it, I'll even give XP." Several games later they want to repeat the process, but I'm very comfortable saying that was a one-off, and if they try again it will follow the rules (since I know what the books say about such things now). You have to be able to do this so that you can balance the players having fun with you own feelings about what's reasonable in your game world.
3. Get comfortable taking 1 minute to check something or read a paragraph. Get uncomforable taking 15 (or 30, or 45) minutes to look up rules, discuss something with one player, role-play a single element, etc. All the players need to be involved, and if you get comfortable having lulls in the fun, the players will get increasingly dissatisfied.
4. Remember that you're running a complicated game that has dozens of rule books, maybe hundreds or thousands if you allow in third-party splatbooks. So don't let yourself be run over by books. There is a way to know it all or most of it all -- spend years running games, never switch systems or versions, and spend lots of time here reviewing what you did. However, since most people are not that insane, you have to fall back upon your own judgment. Try to make decisions that are level-headed. If you make a house-rule on the fly and it hurts a player, think about how to help the player without undermining yourself. Last Saturday, I was running the players through the Cage of Delirium module (a haunted house) and I didn't understand how the Unhallow effect would work with an evil cleric -- it actually boosts their rebuking ability (my intention was to inhibit the turn undead ability, but that backfired, and I'm OK with that). So I accidentally gave the cleric command control of some powerful undead. I told him I needed to revisit that after I had some time with the rules. This freaked out the player, who insisted he would have played differently. I wanted to stick to my guns -- I'm not giving 4th level players uber-undead as free henchmen -- but I didn't want the player to feel that I yanked away all his combat efforts. So in the end I decided that he does have control of these undead, but I set their CR down to something appropriate for his level. I retain game-world balance, and he gets to have the flow of combat remain unaltered. Being able to see the rules as malleable helps immensely. Don't get caught painting yourself into a corner when you have control of the corners themselves.

Thank you all (especially aboyd for that large post). I intend to play PbP and exclusively here in enworld. In which case i can recheck and revisit rulebooks (i would play IRL if anyone even knew what DnD was where i live) but the advice stays true for PbP i reckon.

So, the party could decide to ignore obviously charismatic and important NPCs? Well then, how would you DM this situation:

A big event has happened nearby and the main NPC wants to send the group to investigate. He is way way above their level (think 4 7th level PCs, one 18th lvl NPC) and obviously a threat should they decide to attack him and loot his shiny gear. Similarly, they could refuse the job, but the town doesn't have that much else to offer apart from caravan guarding or vermin extermination (way below their level quest-wise). How could i steer them in the right direction should they prove stubborn, without throwing this NPC in their face and forcing them?

OK. The powerful NPC bumps into the players in town. He says, "Heh heh, this isn't really a coincidence. I've been trying to find you. I know you're hardy adventurers, and you may be willing to handle something that I do not have the time to do myself. Here is an explanation of the problem."

Then the players are given the explanation of the problem.

That's one way I might inject the NPC into the storyline. Now your other question is essentially, "What do I do with their response?" So let's look at it.

• If they actually attack the NPC, have the NPC actually defend himself. He might just teleport away and eventually guards run the players out of town. Or he might concentrate his attack on one player, killing that player very quickly as a "message" or hint to the other players. If they get the message, then you're off & running with a Raise Dead quest -- maybe the NPC offers to Raise Dead, but only if they now agree to do this thing for him. Or maybe the NPC says, "OK, now there is one fewer of you. I still want you to do this quest. Good luck finding someone to replace the dead character." And then the player rolls up a new character and the game keeps going. Of course, it's possible for a TPK. Personally, if players in my campaign attacked a powerful quest-giver and kept attacking after seeing a PC die, I'd invoke Darwin and just allow the TPK. At that point, they could all roll up new characters, or maybe if there is a cleric in the party, he/she has a meeting with his/her god, and that god offers to send them back for Some Important Reason. That is actually quite good for the storyline, because now you've injected some Ultimate Goal into the timeline.
• If they refuse the job, shrug and let them. If they haven't heard the details of the job, then simply drop it in whenever they do start talking to a NPC. Or if they have heard the details of the job and still reject it, try one of two things. First, you could let them. They've made choices, the town has a finite number of quests/events, and they've exhausted their options. At this point, they might need to leave town and find some other place to do stuff. The campaign will become a series of random encounters for a short while as they make their way elsewhere, giving you time to plot out the next town. The second option would be to see if they are gunning to try the quest from another angle. By that I mean, if they didn't like your main quest-giver, are they feeling itchy to find the opposing NPC and side with him? Are they interested in undermining the original NPC? If so, you still get to use your materials, but now you'll have players helping the dungeon inhabitants or whatever.
• Lastly, don't forget the rule of multiple hints. It's actually not called the rule of multiple hints. It's from an article that talks about how DMs should build in multiple people/items that can lead players to a quest or to the resolution of a quest. It's redundancy to help stabilize the storyline. Did the players kill an important NPC? No problem, that NPCs wife has all the info the players need, and if she won't talk, maybe there is a diary with key info. Do this stuff so that the players can overcome "missing it" once or twice.

Myth and Legend said:

A big event has happened nearby and the main NPC wants to send the group to investigate. He is way way above their level (think 4 7th level PCs, one 18th lvl NPC) and obviously a threat should they decide to attack him and loot his shiny gear. Similarly, they could refuse the job, but the town doesn't have that much else to offer apart from caravan guarding or vermin extermination (way below their level quest-wise). How could i steer them in the right direction should they prove stubborn, without throwing this NPC in their face and forcing them?

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What event and what PCs do you have? It's relatively easy if it's religious related and you have a member of some religion in your PC's. If it's something that could disrupt trade, you can have something the PC's break, go to get it fixed, and then learn that it can't be fixed until something is done. If the PC's have some family member, well, they can ask. Or the PC's can get in a fight, and find themselves in jail till they fix the road!

Or whatever. But one important thing about your hook is that it doesn't have to come directly from the Main NPC. They can meet an agent of the NPC. Or they can meet what you planned to be an agent, but it turned out to be an agent of the enemy of the NPC, who is now trying to kill the PCs because obviously they're working with the NPC.

See how it can work?

Try to say "Yes" when players want something. If it makes your DM senses uncomfortable, go for "Yes, and..." so that you take their idea, but weaken it or apply something else to it. If it's too outragous, try "No, but..."

When you get to a "no, but...", try to find out what the player wants with what they're asking, and try to come up with a more reasonable solution. For instance, if they want to play some exotic race from some splatbook. Do they want to play that race because the stats are cool? Because the race is cool to them, story wise? If they want the stats, but the race is too strange to fit into your game, take the stats and apply it to something else. If they want the story, but the stats are broken, take the story (let's say, insect people) and give them more mundane stats (elves or halfling stats).

Something I touched on above, but is much more universal: you can change the flavor of anything to become something totally different. The same numbers can represent anything you need to describe, as long as the numbers line up well enough. The stats for Orcs can become soldiers made of wood, the stats for a flail can be a simple length of chain, a spell can look completely different as long as it has the same mechanics, etc.

GMing involves negotiation.

The rules are a guideline. Sometimes you need to bend them or break them. Soemtimes they do not apply to your situattion.

Before the NPC even asks, have the PC's get some skin in the game.

Why would they want to do the investigation? Maybe the folks that needs investigating slighted the PC's or stole something from them or are threatening them. That way the high level NPC asking them to go do it is just icing on the cake.

The Chatty DM blogger just put up a post about this...

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