Are you a good Dungeon Master?

[pogre]

I'm a good dm for the fantasy genre. I'm very well prepared, well-versed in the rules, but not inflexible, possess decent pacing skills, create imaginative scenes, and try to let the PCs shine. I wish I had more time to run the game. I do think varied experiences, as PC mentioned, is key.

The only reason I ever play is to gain better insight as to how I can improve my DMing.

 

[ShrinkyLink]

Well, the day you sit back, pat yourself on the back and say, "Damn! I'm a great DM!" is the day you start to backslide. The fact that you worry about your ability probably means you're doing a fine job.

Personally, I have a difficult time remembering all the rule intricacies *all the time*, and feel bad when I have to stop the game to grab the PHB to check something. I game with a rules lawyer who rolls his eyes when I do this, but such is life.

Whenever I start getting too hard on myself, I just remember one DM I had: he announced at the beginning of the game that he had nothing prepared, since he'd decided to go out the night before instead of game prepping. After we finished playing his 'adventure', he then announced none of us got any experience points because we failed to do anything he thought we should have.

Now that's a crappy DM. If you're doing better than that--actually preparing the game beforehand, worrying about everyone having fun, and doing your best to bring the game alive for your players, then you have nothing to worry about.

 

[Gahnomen]

I think I'm a good DM, though relatively new in the game (only five years experience or so, nothing compared to a lot of folks here). My players all say that they enjoy the game, and I'm almost never the one to initiate play, so they seem eager to play.

I know the rules well and have a good grasp of coming up with "crunch" of my own when a judgement call is needed. Usually my judgement calls turns out to be actual rules when we eventually revise the rulings.

Beyond that though, I'm a very disorganized person and could do with a lot more structure to the chaos that goes behind the DM screen. Common quote: "I KNOW it's here somewhere.."

I don't prepare much either, 2-3 hours or so for around 10-12 hours of gametime. I have never accurately planned anything beyond the scope of the next session, though I always have a general idea of what I want to happen. I really enjoy winging it, and I can squeeze out a few hours of playtime with just half a page of scribbled notes and keywords.

I toss out tons of major events, plothooks and looming threats with the intention that the players won't have time for even half of them, and that I can fall back on something from a few sessions earlier if I suddenly come up short.

I'm not as Rat Bastardly as I would like to be, but I'm working on that

Of course, the fact that I view myself as a good DM might be indicative of the opposite, if one is to follow the trend of this thread.. I think there might simply be a lot of perfectionists on this board though

 

[Gahnomen]

On the other hand, this thread is giving me second thoughts.. Maybe I do suck after all

 

[devilbat]

Being a good DM is not that easy or simple. That's being an entertaining DM. While players having fun is important, it does not determine if someone is good or not. In fact one can be a good DM and the players won't always have fun.

After reading this quote, and then reading through the rest of the thread, I wonder the following: If entertaining your players, does not qualify you as a "good DM", then what does?

Is it being well planned and organized? Maybe it's the ability to come up with interesting stories and then execute them well in game? Perhaps being able to match wits with the PC's and provide a variety of NPC's, all with different voices and characteristics, makes you "good"?

Every single DM will give a different opinion on what makes a succesful game master. I think, that only the players at your table can tell you, with any accuracy, whether or not your any good. 10,000+ posts on EnWorld, does not make one the absolute authority on all things gaming.

I have gamed with DM's at conventions, who I thought were terrible. Yet, I'll bet you that their regular players think they are the cat's ass, when it comes to running a game. My players rave about my games, but I've run for people who said "meh" after a few sessions. DM's abilities are in the eyes of the beholder. If your players are having fun, why waste time second guessing? You won't ever be hailed as the world's best DM. No matter what the hundreds at EnWorld say.

 

[Ace]

I am a mediocre DM but a very good GM.

My players don't seem to enjoy my D&D games all that much but they love Angel and GURPS and some of the other games I have run

I think this is a mixture of system friction issues (class and especially level don't work all that well for me) and a general sense that more modern settings are a better fit for my style

 

[wedgeski]

I doubt I'm the best judge but I think I'm better than some, and worse than others, that I've seen and/or played with. That's good enough for me just at the moment. There are still a couple of really key areas to the art that I must improve on before I would consider myself even 'pretty good', as well as dozens of less important ones. The fact that I think I know what they are is a good start.

As others have said, a DM can only ultimately be judged by the amount of fun his players are having at any one point in time.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

I don't feel that I'm that good, but everyone keeps coming back, so I guess they must enjoy it. Heck, they were even prodding me to get another campaign off the ground after the TPK last time. Maybe they just enjoy the abuse.

 

[mtbdm]

chicken salad from chicken ? Not likely.

I don't believe there is an objective measure of a good DM--even entertainment value. A bunch of twinks might enjoy a Monty Haul DM that will let them become gods and rule the universe. That doesn't make it what I'd consider a good game.

The most important facet of DMing, or playing, is finding players and a DM that enjoy mostly the same things about the game, whether that be combat and tactics, story, eating pizza, exploration, continuity / suspension of disbelief, or whatever.

I think I'm a damn good DM so far as I achieve the kind of game I set out to run. I like good continuity, depthy characters and NPCs, intrigue and exploration. If you like those things, you'll probably love my game.

If I have faults as a DM, they are:

1) that I'll spend too much time looking up rules due to my past DM abuse by idiot twinks. I'm getting over that and I've got players now who are respectful of me and each other and want mostly the same things out of the game.

2) that I often try to cram too much into a single campaign and extend the story beyond the point of it being interesting. In other words, in the past I have not always had the wisdom to end campaigns before they "jump the shark." What you don't put in a campaign can be as important as what you do.

If I had one piece of advice for new DMs it'd be "You can't make chicken salad outta chicken ." In other words, good players and a good DM can make ANY game in ANY system fun. Get good "ingredients" for your game, and the result will be gourmet fun. Get a bunch of twinky gunbunnies and an overcompetitive rules lawyer with a mean streak for a DM and it'll suck (unless you enjoy 8 hour rules arguments, in which case go for it.)

 

[StupidSmurf]

I've had lots of people tell me I'm a great DM. I've had one positively inept and long-winded DM tell me my game "has its moments". WOW.

I think I'm a pretty terrific DM. But I know there's always ALWAYS room for improvement. Heck, in the relatively short period of time I've been here, I've read some nifty stuff that has made me said "I need to incorporate this....wish I had thought of it first".

And perhaps, and hopefully I'm not being too self-congratulatory here, the mark of a terrific DM is someone who admits that they don't have all the answers, and is always willing to acknowledge other people's good ideas, and incorporate them!

Here's how I see myself in terms of positives and negatives:

Positives
Realistic NPCs with their own agendas, personalities, lives.
Creating and maintaining a consistently self-referencing game reality that adheres to its internal logic.
My willingness to let a PCs' plan unfold without trying to throw in stuff that wasn't there before to try and trip them up.
A willingness to admit when I'm wrong, and/or to learn new stuff.

Negatives
I used to be an absolute AD&D rules master. The 3.5 system has swept my legs out from under me and I'm still learning the new system, even to the point of sometimes accidentally using the old rules, forgetting that they've changed.

I can get predictable. It seems all of my campaigns has its requisite eccentric, one really nice inn, and a solid, reliable authority figure in there somewhere.