D&D 3E/3.5 [3rd/3.5] DMing Tips -- Friendly DMs assistance please?

[Gottohneaffen]

I am fairly new to DMing, though not to D&D. I have played D&D since around the age of ten. But have only DMed my first time starting around 3 months ago. Since then I've DMed about 5 sessions and I am wondering if you have any particular tips for anything from the D20 System, the skills, feats, spells, balancing things, killing PCs, & tips for 3rd/3.5 editions. Possible DMing styles, what would you suggest? What can I do to be a better DM? Anything I need to know? How can I be an impressive DM to ensure enjoyment of the group? What type of adventures are best? How long should I spent reading an adventure? Should fun be over rules?

My group consists of newbs, but regardless of that: I'd like to be the best DM i can be so please if you are feeling kind, may I get some tips on how to be a successful DM or what has worked for you? Also flaws or things to be aware of in 3.5/3rd edition would be useful.

 

[Nomnath]

Generally, keep the pace going. Try to keep rules discussions out of the session even if it means being wrong during session.

If the PC's are standing around, make something happen, helps to have a random occurence table to be rolling against. I like to make the PC's feel a sense of urgency by constantly rolling against a table that is 70% nothing happens, do these rolls outside your screen if you use one (I don't) to give the sense of urgency for the pcs.

For your random tables, don't organize by type, scatter the categories, so that one dice doesn't determine too much ie for loot don't put all the weapons on 0-30, instead spread them out and don't do repeating last digits either try to spread it amoung 90-00 and 9-0.

Be generous with loot, if they get too strong you always have rust monsters and sunderers to remove loot, but if there isn't enough, the PC's feel limited. At the same time, don't give out so much loot that you can't remove it.

Use middle length descriptions, a few repeated details is the best thing, use longer descriptions for important atmosphere.

Since they aren't all that experienced, feel free to talk with them over what to do, put npc's that they can go to for answers, nothign is worse then spending a 4 hours session trying to think but not getting anything, over time they should be able to d&d plan for themselves.

Don't demand that they do things, have contigencies for what would happen if they don't do something, even better, don't plan out what happens instead plan out what npc's are like and planning and live their roles, it helps with thinking on the fly and is less railroady.

Finally, just have fun, the best DM is the one that is laughing with the party, or at them, it lightens the mood and relieves tension, if you want tension then it makes it better when suddenly you get serious.

 

[krupintupple]

although my style tends to lean more toward tactical hack and slash combat, i can surely appreciate well-placed thematics and story-telling. since your group is mostly new, you probably won't really need to be the most polished on all of your rules. thinking along these lines, sometimes the best thing to grab everyone's attention is to go well outside of the boundaries of the rules, in order to further the story.

for example, when trekking to find a rare type of plant, flower or herb in the forest for some random quest they're doing - perhaps a friendly fae or druid could take them through a magic grove or something, and when they emerge from the tangle of trees, weeds and grasses, they're ironically in the farm fields 30 seconds outside of town. perhaps even a cow mooing at them comedically (however, not before they get nervous that this was a serious encounter). even though the friendly 4th level druid probably didn't have the power to teleport them all back to a safe location, you can hand-waive that and consider it something that will further the story, and add to the feeling and depth of the campaign. i typically would write a few of these little vignettes down, maybe 2 or 3 per session, but no more than like two sentences each, and every time the action or story began to go stale, i'd consider reaching for one, just to keep things fresh and interesting.

also, if you absolutely cannot locate a rule or something, there's no harm in saying "Ok, so I can't actually find the rule to preform a ninja-style backflip over the Orc chieftan while throwing your dagger at the rope that your friend is being hung by without harming him and intimidating the Orc...but how about we roll on it?" and then break something normally really rules-heavy and intimidating in a series of singular checks.

for example: leaping over the orc? let's say a jump DC of 17 or so, maybe 15 if the PC has a running start. tossing the knife exactly to sever the rope without hurting a friend? sounds pretty impossible, but then again, this is a game of magic and fantasy, so maybe it's AC18 if the person's less than 20 feet away. intimidating the orc? how about just making the PC roll against the "orc" (you) except they get a +4 for each previous successful stunt they just pulled - so a +8 if they did flip over the orc and they did cut their ally loose. again, even failure can be advantageous: maybe a failed jump check means they just plow midair into the Orc, but they're both so unaware so noone gets any attacks. now, with both crumpled on the ground, they have to roll initiatives to see who can get up first, or perhaps begin wrestling with the snarling beast!

that was all done on the fly, didn't officially use any of the real rules, but probably would lead to a story that your friends would remember for quite some time, or at least until the next session.

 

[aboyd]

How can I be an impressive DM to ensure enjoyment of the group?

Avoid problems with only a single solution

Do you remember those old video games where you'd point & click your way through it? Games like Myst? I believe they call it "pixel bitching" when you have to find juuuust the right pixel to click on. I remember doing it in the Baldur's Gate games, before the enhancement that highlighted what you could click -- as I moved the characters through a forest, for example, I'd randomly move around the cursor, watching to see if it changed. If it did, I'd go back and hunt down that one pixel that linked to a hidden magic item. It was fun the first time you discovered something, but after that it was just, "Really? I have to do this now? I have to find just the right pixel? Ugh."

DMs do that in games. They are so proud of their riddle, they don't have any alternative if the players can't figure it out. So the game grinds to a halt while players try to find just the right answer. Or the DM assumes that the players will fight the villain, but when the players find an entirely reasonable (and unexpected) way to negotiate peacefully, the DM forces the fight even though it plays out as contrary to rational thought.

Thus, you should read about the three clue rule.

Favor many small skirmishes

When a DM tries to balance a fight, keep in mind some tips. First, combat is chaotic, so some tough fights are going to be easy, and some easy fights are going to be difficult. Deal with it. Don't game the system (much). If you do, the players may notice and feel that no combat is "real." At that point they'll stop being invested in the outcome. Sometimes, PCs have to die because things didn't go well. Same for villains.

Second, keep in mind that not every fight is supposed to be a fair, equal fight. In fact, the majority are supposed to be one-sided, if the DMG's advice is followed.

I played with a DM who assumed that every fight should be an even match, and if it ended with the last bad guy dying just as the PCs were at 1 hit point and on their last Cure potion, it was a great combat encounter. Epic. Turns out, those fights played out mostly just as slogs. We grew weary of having to sleep after EVERY fight, just to regain life & spells. We grew weary of being out of loot because we ran through wands & potions at an incredible rate, just to survive everything.

When it got bad enough that we started metagaming about suspiciously inflated enemies -- "wait, we've done 140 hit points of damage on a perfectly ordinary tiger and it's still coming at us??!?!" -- we knew combat wasn't good. The slavish adherence to everything being life or death not only wasn't fun, but isn't how D&D is intended to play.

In addition, it turns out one of the big complaints about D&D is lessened if you run combat as intended (a few easy encounters followed by a tough BBEG). The super tough fights cause players to scrutinize and hyper-optimize every decision. The combat drags out, which is a typical complaint for 3.5 edition, especially at higher levels. However, if you throw at them what is considered to be a "normal" encounter by the DMG -- something that uses just a fifth of their daily resources (in other words, leaves them with hit points to spare, spells to spare, and equipment to spare), the combat will go MUCH faster.

When my old DM would run these life-or-death combat encounters, we'd typically get through two in a five hour session. Yet when I ran a game, we'd get through six or seven in the same amount of time. I was not better at the game. In fact, I had a worse grasp of the rules and sometimes had to stop combat to refer to books. However, I was throwing four encounters at them that were typically a CR below the average level of the party, and then one tough fight to wrap up. Contrast that with the other DM throwing EL 10 fights at us when we were 6th level. That possible but when every battle is that, ugh.

So for balancing fights, I find it's best to use one of the many free encounter calculators. That calculator will show you how hard a fight is -- look at the "difficulty" field near the bottom after entering your data. 80% of fights should be "easy" or "challenging." Only 20% should be "very difficult" or "overpowering."

For a group of four sixth level adventurers, that means that one ettin is a normal fight. Or two owlbears. Or four worgs. "But wait," you might say, "those fights are probably kinda easy!" YES. Such characters should be able to have 3 or 4 or 5 such fights in a day before everyone says, "let's rest."

Don't get overloaded by world creation

Finally, the advice I personally give over & over again is to follow just-in-time build processes, or lazy loading engineering practices. That is, just build what you need to deploy during the upcoming game. If the party ends a game standing at an intersection that will lead to one of four towns, you do not need to stat up all four towns and everyone in those towns. Instead, you need to stat up one. They will only explore one of the four towns the next game, and whichever direction they pick, they get the one you made.

Some people say that's cheating and diminishes player choice. However, a few things. First, screw player choice if it burns you out and ends the campaign. Second, screw player choice if you can pull some smoke & mirrors and have the same happy outcome as some poor schmuck DM who stayed up until 3 AM for 15 nights in a row just so he could really build all the towns before the next game. Third, it doesn't really screw player choice to do these things. Why? Because eventually they will go to a new town and you'll stat up that new town, and it'll be different from the first town you made, thus actually causing real differentiation in outcomes, but without you needing to frontload the whole process.

Don't burn out. It's OK to be an illusionist as a DM. It's OK to stat up a monster like this:

AC: 20
HP: 30
Attack: long sword, 1d8 + 2.
Description: green & warty bogeyman.

That's it. That's the stat block. Took 5 seconds. It's legit, it works, and if someone tells you that you must slavishly create fully equipped and totally complete stat blocks in monster forge or something, well, just think about what's important to you: getting burnt out trying to hit an unrealistic goal, or having loads of fun with your buddies.

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

Possible DMing styles, what would you suggest? What can I do to be a better DM? Anything I need to know?

First off, have any of your players complained about what you've done so far? If not, then...well, that's pretty amazing. Talk to them and get honest feedback. That will do wonders for you as a GM.

The real problem with answering this question is that we don't know what your style of DMing IS so we can't tell you how to make it better. As far as DMing style goes, personally, my style is that I know how each session is beginning (and where we left off last time), how I want each session to end, and at least one (maybe two) encounters that HAVE to happen somewhere between the start and end of each session. I have a plan and plenty of details, but if things go a different direction, I have the flexibility to change on the fly.

I try for a relatively good mix of RPing and combat. Last night, for example, was heavier on the combat and the next session will most likely be heavier on the RPing, but generally, I try to mix the two to keep things interesting. However, this depends on what your players want. If they want combat heavy, go combat heavy. If they want more RPing, make sure to have plenty of description ready to go.

How can I be an impressive DM to ensure enjoyment of the group?

The easiest way to do this is to know your group. Or ask. Ask your players what they want and work on incorporating that.

What type of adventures are best? How long should I spent reading an adventure?

If you're using a module, then read through it at least a couple of times to make sure you understand the mechanics and encounters, as well as any surprises that might come up. Once you do that and you have a good feel for the adventure you can change it as needed. For example, I was running a module last night (that was actually two adventures that I cobbled together from two separate modules) and in a flash of insight (in the middle of the session), the Big Bad Guy became one of the dead NPCs that was mentioned earlier. It worked because it tied things together.

Should fun be over rules?

Always. The rules are a framework for your group to have fun. Change them, ignore them, reinterpret them as you see fit. Try to use the rules to increase the amount of fun you have instead of using them as limitations.

I'd like to be the best DM i can be so please if you are feeling kind, may I get some tips on how to be a successful DM or what has worked for you?

To be the best DM you can be, figure out what your own style is and what your group wants and find a way to mix the two.

Good luck!

 

[Rakusia]

okay. remember any rule in any book is only a guide line. dont try to change the game over night but if you dont think a rule works either a. remove it or 2. change it to suit your and your groups preference. keep in mind though game balance. also once you step over the line into rule changing make a rule, talk it over with your group and once you state the rule follow it. dm is always right but frequent rule shifts will confuse your players and lessen their enjoyment.

i would suggest making a table bylaws. conduct of play stuff like that.

keep meta gaming to a minimum. just because you know where a trap is doesnt mean your npc's do. also true for pc's just because a player may know somethign dont let them know that in character unless they would actually know that.

changing stats on monsters/ bad npc's isnt wrong or cheating if something is too strong retool it on the fly same if something is too easy. just try not to do it a lot or be obvious about it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Avoid problems with only a single solution

That has been the death of many a PC, adventure and campaign. ALWAYS provide some alternative solution because:

1. The key object will be lost, broken, sold or missed entirely
2. The NPC of Destiny will be killed, ignored or left behind
3. The spell the PCs need was not memorized, was already cast, or was never learned.

...and so forth.

The reason I'm repeating this is as reinforcement of the point, because everyone forgets it at least once- even veterans and professional game designers.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Listen to your players' table-talk before, during and after the game.

This will clue you into whether or not you're running a fun game.

More importantly, it will include a lot of their speculation as to what is going on in the game world. This means you will know if they're on to the BBEG's secret plans; if they have an idea about the direction of the plot that is actually better than what you wrote; you will have a bigger well of ideas from which to draw future adventures.