Advice for a virgin DM?

I'm currently in a 3e FR campaign with several very experienced players and a very experienced DM. The DM has expressed disinterest and discontent with the campaign, as have some of the players, all for varying reasons. One option is for someone else to take over the campaign, and the DM to create a character to fill the empty slot. I'm seriously considering taking over the campaign, but I've never DMed before. So my questions to all of you are:

1) Is there anything that all of you, in your numerous collective years of experience, feel that a virgin DM should know?

2) How exactly do you DM a good session?

3) Would you recommend using a module at first, just to get used to DMing?

4) If the players are more experienced than myself, will that matter?

5) What's the hardest/most time-consuming/disliked aspect of DMing?

and finally, How did your first DMing experience turn out?

I thank all of you in advance for any and all wisdom, insight and advice. Hopefully this won't be as painful as I fear...

~Box

boxstop7 said:

1) Is there anything that all of you, in your numerous collective years of experience, feel that a virgin DM should know?

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There are four very nasty mistakes you can make. In order of importance:
A) Give out too much treasure/XP. I've seen countless campaigns come down in flames because of this.
B) Have a pet NPC which is more powerful than all PCs combined and is always around to show off his power. I've seen three campaigns come down in flames because of this.
C) Behave as if you were playing against the players. I've seen one campaign come down in flames because of this.
D) Excessive railroading. Railroading is when you force the players down a path. While a bit of railroading is a good DM tool, excessive railroading is when the PCs are following a mountain path, and you tell them that they reach a dark cave, and they say "we aren't going to enter because we have stuff to do in town", and after 500 meters they reach another identical dark cave, and they still don't enter, and after 500 meters they reach another identical dark cave AND the path after it has collapsed AND the path they've just come from suddenly collapses too.

2) How exactly do you DM a good session?

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Avoid doing A), B), C) and D) above. 90% of the "Horror DM Stories" I've heard were because of those factors*. Avoiding them won't automatically make you good, but it does prevent most real botches.

3) Would you recommend using a module at first, just to get used to DMing?

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Yep.

4) If the players are more experienced than myself, will that matter?

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Eh... it depends on the players. Just don't let yourself be pushed around.

5) What's the hardest/most time-consuming/disliked aspect of DMing?

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Hardest: constantly come up with new and interesting plots and NPCs that make sense.
Most time-consuming: write down and detail the new and interesting plots, assign stats to the NPCs.
Most disliked: when players just bash everything in the plot and, instead of trying to understand the NPCs' psychology so as to discover where he is or what he's going to do or what he cares about, they just cast Commune, Divination and Scry. Also, when the players challenge what you deem an irrevocable decision.

and finally, How did your first DMing experience turn out?

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Fairly good. Mind ya, all the players were green as well and couldn't really tell a good game from a bad game. In retrospective, it wasn't bad though.

I thank all of you in advance for any and all wisdom, insight and advice. Hopefully this won't be as painful as I fear...

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In any case, tell us how it goes. You can improve by making mistakes.

* The remaining being due to more... creative things. Like a Vampire game involving a kindred-manned space station where cybernetic elders injected the PCs with genetically engineered blood cells which gave them new disciplines, for example.

1) Is there anything that all of you, in your numerous collective years of experience, feel that a virgin DM should know?

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Yes. Try to limit combats to a single monster per PC or less. The fewer monsters, the easier the fight is to manage. You'll be swamped with details, so this really helps YOU keep things straight.

Also - don't screw up initiative. PCs hate that. Write it down in order, so you can just read it off.

2) How exactly do you DM a good session?

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That's a broad topic, and it really depends on the group. Some prefer intrigue, other groups like dungeon diving... Most prefer some mix.

Subscribe to any of the online newsletters that focus on DM tips. There's a number of them, though I don't recall the names off hand.

Also, don't get bogged down in the details of combat. IF there's a disagreement, let the player make their case once, make your ruling and MOVE ON. If there's still disagreement , the time to go into it and make a more permanent ruling is AFTER the combat.

3) Would you recommend using a module at first, just to get used to DMing?

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Yep. Many fewer details for you to deal with. Most modules go overboard on the loot, though, so you may need to remove a magical item of treasure or two - use the DMG treasure chart as a good guideline for how much to give out.

4) If the players are more experienced than myself, will that matter?

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Depends on the group. If you can get away with it, have a couple of the experienced PCs act as "DM assistants", if you will. They can be the ones to go to with rules questions, and you can even enlist them to do things like deal with initiative orders and such. DMing is a heavy load, and anything you can do to lighten it is a good thing when you are a bit inexperienced.

5) What's the hardest/most time-consuming/disliked aspect of DMing?

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Record keeping. Tracking experience. Detailing the adventure once you've done the much-more-fun-part of thinking up cool adventure ideas. Keeping track of which hotel had the creaky door and the bartender with the lisp. The list goes on....

and finally, How did your first DMing experience turn out?

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Horrible, I'm sure. I had no idea what I was doing, and I was 11. I read too much, so thought I could do a "deep roleplay experience." Ha. The only thing that saved THAT experience from driving me out of D&D was the discovery that HEY, they have these things called modules!

Ah yes, A1-4... memories...

One thing that has helped me GM is a little time tracker boardy thing.

Basically, it's a big sheet of consturction paper with a column labeled Initiative and a grid labeled Durations. Cut up 30 or so pieces of construction paper, and be prepaired to write down names of monsters, characters, spells, powers, and abilities.

The Init Column has 10 slots. When players and monsters (and flying trashcans and dancing walnuts and talking cardboard boxes and everything else that I left out) declare init, put the highest ranking in box 1, second highest in box 2, etc.

The Duration grid has 20 rows, and 4 columns. 1 column is labeled rounds, the second minutes, the 3rd 10 minutes, and the last hours. When a duration ability is used, place a slip of paper with it's name in the appropriate place on the grid. For example, a Haste at caster level 13 would go in the 13-rounds box. After each round/minute/hour/whathaveyou, adjust the slips of paper to their appropriate durations.

I just started using this this past session, and it's helped A LOT. Also, try to right the stats of all the monsters that you'll be using on a notecard. That has also helped me A LOT. Might want to do the same thing with common spells that you don't have memorized.

-Jeph

"1) Is there anything that all of you, in your numerous collective years of experience, feel that a virgin DM should know?"

If everyone has fun, its a good session.

Don't get locked into a plan.

Just because you figure you are going to have to drop it half way through the session, is no excuse for not having a plan. Grab the plan when things are moving slowly. Drop it when the events start to have a life of thier own.

Roll up random encounters ahead of time, or don't use them at all. Don't let the dice run your game.

Extemporeous is best when it is an illusion brought about by your preperation.

2) How exactly do you DM a good session?

Prepare. Prepare. Prepare.

Relax.

Laugh. Smile. Joke. Tease. Entertain. Keep your players focused on what they should be doing. Don't let them get so distracted that the game starts to fall apart. Encourage them to be IC all the time. Encourage them to plan ICly. Encourage them to address each other ICly. Encourage them to yell there war cry and charge into battle ICly.

"3) Would you recommend using a module at first, just to get used to DMing?"

A module isn't a bad idea, especially if it is a good one, especially because a good 1st level module is the hardest type to write.

However, no module can be ran well right out of the wrapping. Any designer will tell you that 64 pages (or less) is terribly constraining and that alot of how he ran his own module couldn't make it into the text. You will need to flesh the story out usually, and in many cases add depth to the introduction and/or the NPC's. You will also need to go through the module and determine if the ammount of magic/treasure being given away corressponds to your desires for the campaign. I've seen supposed first level modules giving away +4 weapons and the like in earlier additions. I tend to read through modules and annotate any room that I think needs amendment, or make notes to clarify ambiguities or missing details. Go ahead and roll up random encounters ahead of time, and detail them sufficiently to run them seamlessly.

"4) If the players are more experienced than myself, will that matter?"

Unfortunately, yes. They are going to be very frustrated if you don't know what you are doing. Make sure you have the basic rules more or less memorized and keep tables handy until you reach the point you are sure you don't need them. Nothing is worse than a referee that doesn't know the rules of the game he's running. You have to earn thier respect.

But just because you are new, don't forget that you are in charge.

Lastly, it is a sad truth that many experienced RPers are worse players than many neophytes. Experienced players tend to spend too much time meta-gaming.

"5) What's the hardest/most time-consuming/disliked aspect of DMing?"

What isn't time consuming about DMing? Most of the best DM's I've ever met struggled with real life because DMing consumed too much of thier time. Remember, it's just a game. Keep your life in perspective.

Try not to flesh out the whole world before you start gaming. Start with one little corner and some ideas and start painting outward as needed.

I love to DM, so there is little about it that just repels me. Writing up original room descriptions is probably the most time consuming part. Achieving a deep story while keeping the players full and active participants is probably the hardest part.

The absolute hardest part about DMing aside from the factors mentioned above is getting the action started. Once a good campaign gets underway, it partially writes itself as you just have to react to what the players are doing and they just react to what's going on.

But when you start off, and you ask "so what are you going to do?" the first time, pray for responses. Silence from the players is death.

There are two extemes in DMing, railroading and having no idea of what to do. The first has been described above. The second is when players don't know what to do and the DM can't prod them into doing something.

This happens for a few reasons like:

1. The players don't know the campaign setting and thus can't react to it. So you know everything about Darksun. Great. But when your players are thrown in Athas with only a brief introduction and no primer to help them, they're probably going to stare at you blankly and say 'uhhh, ok?'

2. There's nothing to do in your campaign setting. This usually happens when the DM shoots down any player conceived plan.

'We go look for a dungeon to explore.'

'You don't find any.'

'We go to the tavern and ask around for rumors and news.'

'Nothing is going on.'

'We attack the bartender.'

'He casts an epic quickened hold person and humiliates your characters.'

'...'

3. The players don't have enough information to act on. Your words are literally the only information the players can move on. Give them more information than they need. Repeat important pieces several times. More than you think is neccessary. Chances are they won't remember an important clue if you only mention it once.

virgin

as Zappo said rule #1 don't give out to much treasure or magic, nothing can unbalance your game faster. On the flip side don't put in a series of monsters that require magic weapons to hit if the party doesn't have them.

the best "advice" I can give you is listen to your players, find out what type of game THEY want to play in and run accordingly. If a question on rules/mechanics arises and you don't know the answer, ask. someone else probably does, if not take a moment and look it up - but always remember that YOU are the DM and its up to you to run and control your game.

It might also be a good idea to start in a very small area of an as yet unplayed (by your players that is) campaign world. That way, they won't run into discomfort because of you playing NPC's in a certain way, or having cities be smaller than they pictured them to be etc. If they are mature, they will not harass you to play them differently, but it might bother them nonetheless.

If you want, homebrew. It is a rewarding experience, and very educational. however, if you do, don't map out the entire continent and all it's dungeons. Take it slowly.

Rav

virgin DM

be prepaired to improvise this is especially true if you run a module. (90% or more of the time as a player my adjenda/ideas are differnt then how the module is written and I REALLY hate being railroaded)

Be prepared to say "no"

If asked on a ruling on a feat, PrC, or spell, always say, "Let me think about it for next week." Never say "yes" right away. Always give yourself time to think through the implications of feats, PrC, or spells from supplements.

On the other hand, during a game, be prepared to just make a ruling and play on. Do not let the game get bogged down in rules discussion. Just make a ruling, play on, and look it up after the game for clarification.