What are your strengths as a DM?

This thread is a companion to the "What are your failings as a DM"? http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6497

Among my strengths are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, an almost fanatical dedication.... ACK!

Among my strengths are:

Interesting environments: I think in 3D when I'm planning buildings, rooms, etc. that will be combat areas. I think about ledges, arrow slits from one area into another, chasms, obsticals, places to gain cover, etc.

Interesting combat encounters: I typically have a good mix of critters and NPCs in any given encounter.

Developing encounters to allow a particular PC to shine.

Developing choke-points in adventures that aren't obvious. You know, like in a computer game where you need a specific key to enter the next part of the dungeon, but mine are never as obvious as keys or even physical objects.

Making "dungeons" semi-logical, at least doing a mental walkthrough to see where the inhabitants might keep falling into pits and so forth.

Developing interesting campaign premises -- the "hook" that the whole campaign revolves around.

Campaign continuity -- logging adventures so folks can refer back to those notes between sessions.

If I have some general ideas in mind, and a little bit of planning for monsters, NPCs and treasure, then I think i'm a pretty damn good improvisor when it comes to making up quests and descriptions on the spot.

I do try and make lots of different voices for NPCs too...though early in my years all of my villains started having southern accents for some reasons....lol.

EricNoah said:

Among my strengths are:

Interesting environments: I think in 3D when I'm planning buildings, rooms, etc. that will be combat areas. I think about ledges, arrow slits from one area into another, chasms, obsticals, places to gain cover, etc.

Interesting combat encounters: I typically have a good mix of critters and NPCs in any given encounter.

Developing encounters to allow a particular PC to shine.

Developing choke-points in adventures that aren't obvious. You know, like in a computer game where you need a specific key to enter the next part of the dungeon, but mine are never as obvious as keys or even physical objects.

Making "dungeons" semi-logical, at least doing a mental walkthrough to see where the inhabitants might keep falling into pits and so forth.

Developing interesting campaign premises -- the "hook" that the whole campaign revolves around.

Campaign continuity -- logging adventures so folks can refer back to those notes between sessions.

Click to expand...

I havent had a chance to be DM yet, but i predict that when I do i'll be exactly like what you said here. But with even more action and fighting! (No offense intended. Im just a really blood-thristy kindof guy, you know?)

And I think its logical that dungoens would have more monsters than some of the store-bought adventure modules i've seen on the shelfs. I mean, sheesh!, these are ADVENTURES, right? I would definitely want to be known as the Monster DM (heh!).

I'm much better at finding fault with myself then I am at complimenting myself which is why I started the other thread and not this one. However I'll give it a shot:

After four years of high school debate (2nd place at state and went to nationals) I feel like my oratorical skills are pretty good. I may not do voices very well, but I can keep the players attention without any problem at all.

My over-arching campaign theme is very interesting and engaging.

I know the rules better than any of my players (not too hard). Although this is mostly a side-effect of these boards.

I run a very tight ship. We play every Tuesday at the same time and have since 3E was introduced. To me this is the single biggest factor in campaign longevity.

My near god-like good looks make everything I do seem special. (Okay that's obviously not true.)

Telling a good story, and letting the players' choices affect that story.

Interesting NPCs and situations.

Satisfying my players with a good mix of combat and roleplay.

Ad-libbing plot, encounters, and such, if my players do something unexpected.

Keeping combat fast and interesting. Or perhaps that's just the group, all I really bring to that is the index card trick, and not really strictly keeping track of monster hit points and such. (I do for the big guys, but tend to have 1-hit and 2- hit peons)

I'd say my strengths include:

Creating interesting NPCs and a believable campaign world (goblin bard, paladin-turned-housewife, resort town, decadent capital city).

Letting the players pursue whatever plotlines or quests that they want.

Adding environment factors to combat - snow cuts movement rate and adds concealment, the rooftop battle means bodies fall through the skylights and possibly hit you while you're assaulting the Duke in his throne room, etc.

Making sure each PC gets a lot of individual attention, including running as many as three separate locations/encounters at once, around the table, cutting back and forth between groups at decision points/cliffhangers.

And I never eat more than my fair share of the pizza.

I think my campaign design technique is pretty good. I plan my campaigns a lot like Sagiro does (although i'm not nearly as good at it as he is) with several plot-arcs and lots of dangling threads for the players to pick at.

This highlights another thing I think I'm good at which is tying all the loose little threads they've unraveled together in such a way that it looks like I planned for all those things to come together when, in actuality, they were just a bunch of jumbled ideas.

Strengths

• Not railroading - I am pretty good at setting up a scenario so that players have a fair amount of flexibility in dealing with it.
• Continuity - I am a fiend for continuity
• Adaptability - I run NPCs and Power Organizations as real people, so it is easy to gauge their response if the players do something off the wall
• Rules guru - I know the rules fairly well, and can make additions and adaptations fairly easily.
• Gauging encounters - I am fairly good at telling what sorts of encounters will challenge the party. This is less true at higher level, which is unfamiliar territory for me in 3e, but I am working on it.
• Epic theme - My campaign background has bushels of jup off points that I can easily exploit for epic high level games.

I think my best strength as a DM is that I have the best intuitive grasp of the D20 system out of everybody in my group. I'm pretty good at being able to tell how well an encounter is balanced and figuring out how accurate the various CRs are.

Depressingly enough, I think this is my only strength as a DM.

Freeform. If I plan I usually screw up the plan anyhow. So I don't plan. It makes it too boring. I just make most of it up as I go along. No need to do a detailed set up of encounter X if they'll just ignore it or go around it, so I leave it on the backburner and hope I get to use it. Do to this freeformness, it is nearly impossible to railroad my players. But sometimes I need to anyhow as their characters don't seem interested in actually doing anything....