DM tips - improv

My DM game was somewhat lacking in last night's session. I always get excellent advice that I never would've thought of on here so that's what I'm fishing for again.

Background is as follows, but feel free to skip to the last paragraph.

Tips on improv. I know I focus too much on the campaign guide, this is my downfall. For example, last night my party went to Old Owl Well in LMoP. There, 12 zombies appeared, I thought I'd give a couple of my characters an attack or two before having Kost intervene. As luck would have it, my first player up to bat was a cleric who cast turn undead and killed all the zombies. Granted this was my error, I couldn't be bothered to roll 12 separate saving throws so rolled one for all and failed. The point of this quest was to have Kost call off the zombies in exchange for the party doing another side quest, with the zombies dead, he had no bargaining chips and the party just outright refused to do him a favour. They kept questioning why he was there, what he was doing, what he wanted etc, the guide says he does not divulge any information. I tried this, I tried about 5 different times to be secretive, refusing to divulge secret information but my party were being stubborn and just spamming the question. I even tried attacking them in the hope that they'd kill him and move on, but they kept charming him and talking to him. Eventually I said it and had him disappear into a cloud of smoke. The players were disappointed and bemused as to who this guy was and what he was doing here.

I know I screwed up with the zombies. And I know I follow the notes too strictly, i.e. this character has no other appearances later in the game, it really wasn't important if I divulged his intent or not, I could've done anything, but my improv game is weak and I'm no good at thinking on the spot (great characteristic for a DM right?).

So, sorry about the long post, but I'm really after some tips and examples you guys have used in the past to think on your feet and adapt to the unexpected.

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I'm not especially familiar with the NPC and situation you're describing only because I never ran LMoP... I threw my group straight into CoS. But on improv in general all I can honestly say is it's a skill that comes with time and practice, there are very few who are good at it right out if the gate. And hey, if you're feeling backed into a corner and your improv is failing you there's nothing wrong with disappearing in a puff of smoke.

Just keep practicing it and you'll get there. One thing I try to do that's helped me is purposely not absorbing every piece of information a module throws at you regarding specific encounters with NPCs and the like. This sounds like terrible advice, and it probably is to be honest, but what I tend to do is commit the truly important stuff to memory and then use that as a framework to make the encounter my own. What does the NPC know, what don't they know, what are their motivations and what are their fears. Write this stuff down as little bullet points in your notebook and then make the NPC and the rest of the encounter your own... forget whatever else the book says.

That's something else that comes to mind too... write stuff down. If you're running a published adventure always read through the book a few times cover to cover and by all means reread each section as you know it's coming up in the next session, but write down your own notes. Just because you have a book there to refer to doesn't mean you should act like you don't need to take notes, writing things down helps commit them to memory. The less you find yourself referring to the book... or even those notes... the more comfortable you'll probably be just shooting from the hip when the PCs inevitably throw you a curve ball.

Something else I've done more than a few times come up with a short adventure of my own creation, typically unconnected to any campaign or even involving the same characters, basically a one-off to change the pace a bit, that's almost entirely a blank slate. Get the plot for the adventure sketched out, some NPCs with the relevant information about them (the short bullet points I mentioned before), and then whatever maps and stat blocks you might need... and that's it. Don't over prepare it. Don't write out every scene, don't think too much ahead about what's supposed to happen at any given part of the adventure. Make it the barest bones you can... and then just run it. Basically force yourself to fill in the blanks on the spot. Now, this is fundamentally different from running something published because you can make the argument it's almost impossible to screw up a one-off creation of your own if your improv isn't up to snuff, whereas with a published adventure you might botch something important... that's the whole point. If you can take the pressure off of yourself and just improv an entire session, mostly, you'd be surprised how much more comfortable you'll be improving something that's more structured and not your own work. I've improved several eight hour sessions like this and it helped me noticeably.

Anyway, these are things that have helped me over time. Every person will be different. Some with disagree entirely with everything I've said and have their own take, and that's cool! Take their advice too. We're all DMs, but we're all going to find our own styles and what works for one may not for another.

Good luck and keep practicing. Final note, forgive any awful typos or grammatical errors, I'm phone posting and it makes proofreading and editing my posts difficult. Hopefully this hasn't been painful to read.

This is my first campaign and what I've done is read the book and write up each scenario/encounter/chapter etc into a PowerPoint, but in bullet points like you said, I leave out a lot of stuff because it's just not relevant.

And I too have thrown in a bit of homebrew to change up the pace, once it's done we'll move onto an entire homebrew campaign by me which I think will be easier because I won't be worried about notes on NPC's, they're my characters, I know if they need to come back later in the story etc so I think it'll run smoother.

I'm using LMoP as a foundation to learn the structure of the game, our previous DM started us on CoS, we did the death house then he got bored of DMing and quit, that's when I took over, and CoS, while critically acclaimed, is a beast, far too heavy for me at this early stage.

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Glomb175 said:

Tips on improv. I know I focus too much on the campaign guide, this is my downfall. For example, last night my party went to Old Owl Well in LMoP. There, 12 zombies appeared, I thought I'd give a couple of my characters an attack or two before having Kost intervene. As luck would have it, my first player up to bat was a cleric who cast turn undead and killed all the zombies. Granted this was my error, I couldn't be bothered to roll 12 separate saving throws so rolled one for all and failed. The point of this quest was to have Kost call off the zombies in exchange for the party doing another side quest, with the zombies dead, he had no bargaining chips and the party just outright refused to do him a favour. They kept questioning why he was there, what he was doing, what he wanted etc, the guide says he does not divulge any information. I tried this, I tried about 5 different times to be secretive, refusing to divulge secret information but my party were being stubborn and just spamming the question. I even tried attacking them in the hope that they'd kill him and move on, but they kept charming him and talking to him. Eventually I said it and had him disappear into a cloud of smoke. The players were disappointed and bemused as to who this guy was and what he was doing here.

I know I screwed up with the zombies. And I know I follow the notes too strictly, i.e. this character has no other appearances later in the game, it really wasn't important if I divulged his intent or not, I could've done anything, but my improv game is weak and I'm no good at thinking on the spot (great characteristic for a DM right?).

So, sorry about the long post, but I'm really after some tips and examples you guys have used in the past to think on your feet and adapt to the unexpected.

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Could I suggest a different approach - more a matter of mental positioning - try assume that everything is contingent. Start looking at everything as a prop with a mission or motive but with zero pre-scripted actions. Some super-props have tools - things they use to achieve their motives.

So Kost has a motive - get the players to do his side quest. He thinks his zombies are a bargaining chip and players wipe them? These guys are the hotness! Kost can try flattering them, or propose to join them. He can very much go off-piste and offer information for assistance. He'd be crazy to attack them but he needs that quest done. Maybe he threatens to end his own life. Focus always on the motives and the rest follows.

Also, always avoid a deus ex machina. Motives. Action-response. It's all improv.

This is the kind of advice I was after. Awesome

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One thing I try to keep in mind when improvising is that the players enjoy success more than failure, particularly when they've earned it. It sounds to me like you did a decent job improvising, but I'd say where you went wrong was in not rewarding the players' success. They annihilated what was supposed to be a tough encounter and then successfully charmed the NPC. It sounds to me like they earned letting the campaign go in an unexpected direction (which in this case would've been the NPC, who would never otherwise do so, disclosing his motives).

Even if the NPC/scene is "important", there's always another NPC or scene waiting in the wings, and oftentimes letting the campaign run in unanticipated directions is where the real magic happens.

In other words, try to keep the game moving forward. Challenges are great. Roadblocks that cannot be surmounted (or even worse, can only be overcome via a SINGLE method of the DM's choosing) are not. The latter simply leads to frustration, which is not why I play this game. If the game bogs down, try to find a way to get it moving again. You can always throw some more challenges in their path later.

Go easy on yourself. Improv is hard and a lot happens at the gaming table. If I remember correctly, Kost's motivations aren't even fully spelled out in the encounter. It simply says what he wants the party to do, but his deeper rationale isn't explained. (He wants to learn the name of the wizard who built the tower... but why?) That can put you on the spot as a DM; even experienced DMs can't always spin out fully sensible backstory on a dime.

One thing that I try to keep in mind is that I owe no fealty to the published module. I'm only bound by the events that actually occur at the table. At your table, Kost disappeared in a puff of smoke. Cool. Now the question becomes, why did he do that? Maybe your players aren't interested, and you can just let it fade away. But maybe they mutter about him in the future and remain curious. If you take a bit of time to figure out who he really is and what he was up to at the well, then you could bring him back in the future. Maybe it's just like the module implied, though you'll have to generate a bit more backstory. Or maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe he was a djinn in disguise, testing the party for some reason. Maybe he was a priest of Orcus. Maybe he is an insane spiritual manifestation of the wizard who originally built the tower, trapped perpetually until someone speaks his name.

Between games, you've got time to think back over the session and come up with new storylines to rationalize events that didn't go according to plan. That's much of the fun of DMing. Pretty soon you'll have a thick, intricate tapestry of NPCs and storylines that will belong to your group alone, even if they were born in a published adventure.

You're right, the book didn't elaborate at all as to what his intentions were.

In terms of future interest, my players have none. They're metagaming a lot of the time, so the players know it's a side quest, so the characters aren't interested.

They're pretty rubbish tbh, they also lost Glasstaff so I'm going to write him into the end of the campaign leading into my homebrew.

I also had to improv the king grol encounter. They disused themselves and tricked the drow into leaving the room, but they didn't attack grol, they tried convincing him to leave the castle and succeeded on a really hard deception check so I was just like "erm ok, I'm leaving the castle now, bye!" Completely unexpected. They missed out on a lot of xp by getting all the goblins to leave the castle.

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Following on from this topic; what do you do if a player throws their melee weapon, like if they want to throw their longsword at the enemy. What kind of attack roll would you have them make?

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Glomb175 said:

Following on from this topic; what do you do if a player throws their melee weapon, like if they want to throw their longsword at the enemy. What kind of attack roll would you have them make?

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Click to expand...

Two options spring to mind.

1) An attack roll without proficiency.
2) An attack roll with disadvantage.

I'd probably go with #2 just because there's no math involved.


(And maybe require the attack be made with Dex instead of Str if I think about it at the time).