Weem's "Grade your DM-skills" Challenge...

[steenan]

A
World building
I create interesting and consistent worlds with ease. I am able to start with a few ideas, make them into a setting for a one-shot in an evening and for a campaign in less than a week. When I run a game, the setting (its geography, history, important NPCs and power structures, religions and cultures etc.) plays an important role in the plot. This king of exploration is something I like and what my players really enjoy.

B
Improvisation
I nearly never prepare detailed plots, I let my players control where the game goes. It is not a typical "sandbox", with world being passive until the PCs show up. The world lives by itself and it reacts to everything the PCs do. For this reason, I, generally, don't plan "what will happen". I have places and NPCs with their methods and motivations and I improvise events during a gaming session based on my players' decisions.
It is B, not A, because it happens sometimes that I understand in-game situations differently than my players and either hit them with consequences they feel they couldn't predict or develop a subplot they got the hook for, but aren't really interested in.
Descriptions
I have very good visual imagination and I may make up fascinating descriptions on the fly, creating the mood I need. It goes for places, characters, items and action scenes. I can fit the descriptions to current situation, flavor them for each character's perception tendencies. Reading pre-generated descriptions in adventures is something I never even considered.
It is B, not A, because sometimes the descriptions (especially the more climatic ones) suggest aspects of in-game situation different than what I mean and in games where players have little narrative control it may cause problems.

C
NPCs
While I can create interesting and multi-dimensional NPCs, not always I'm able to play them to the full. I need to "feel" a character, to immerse like a player, to be able to roleplay everything I intended. If I need to create an NPC on the fly and don't come up with some catchy quirks, or if the situation calls for too many NPCs roleplayed in a short time, some of them become flat or are completely forgotten.
On the other hand, some NPCs I create are really good and are remembered by my platers even years after they met them in game. Some of them players like, some they hate, but they remembered best the ones who they cannot decide if they love of hate.

D
Communication
I quite often misunderstand my players or fail to see problems brewing up. I have nearly no empathy and don't know what people think and feel unless they speak it up. A few times I didn't see an issue in game until it was big enough to threaten the campaign.
For some time, I have tried talking with my players after game sessions to find out what they like and what they don't and it helps a lot, but I still can't call my skills in this aspect good.

F
Plot
No matter how I try, I cannot create a plot that my players would follow. After no more than a few hours, I'm faced with a choice between railroading them and getting out of tracks myself - so I give up, let the players take over the plot and fall back to my default, reactive and improvisational, mode of GMing. I focus too much on keeping the world consistent and alive to be able to keep players to a single direction.

 

[weem]

I thought I would bring this topic back to attention as I have been talking recently about improvisation and various DM skills. I would love to see more people rate their DM-ing skills.

So, what are you waiting for?

From my OP: Try and choose one (at least) aspect of your DM-ing skills/characteristics for each of the grade letters A, B, C, D and F based on how good or bad you are at them.

 

[Fifth Element]

A
Preparation/adventure design. I do a good job of drawing little bits and pieces from different published adventures, mixing them my own ideas and producing a coherent and interesting adventure or story.

B
Improvisation. Both in terms of on-the-fly rules interpretations and adapting to unexpected character actions, I'm fairly seamless here. It's rarely noticeable that I'm improvising.

C
World building. I put a pretty good job of making the world make sense. I'm not sure how much my players notice or care, but there you go.

D
Remembering small details. I'll often forget to include a detail I had intended to include, only to realize it afterward and curse. Sometimes it's important enough to squeeze in later, but generally it gets left behind.

F
Performance/characterization. While my NPCs have their motivations and quirks, when speaking in character they all sound pretty much the same. I'm no actor. Generally, my women sound like my men; my halflings sound like my giants.


All of these came into play in the last session I ran:

A. I took bits of a couple of things from Dungeon Delve, tied them into the party's current goal in the campaign, and set the whole thing in Hammerfast. It all worked together really well.

B. One of the characters is a changeling, and he came up with an on-the-spot plan to impersonate one NPC when talking to another, then vice-versa, in order to get some important information. It was an excellent idea, the conversations were fun to roleplay and the characters got more information than I had expected them to have at that point.

C. Things were going on around the party, regardless of whether they were involved with them or not. It should get interesting when the volcanic dragon rises from its slumber in two days (game time), since the players passed on all the hooks for that aspect of the adventure.

D. There were a couple of minor NPCs that I completey forgot about. They wouldn't have changed anything, but would have made it a bit more interesting.

F. I can't do voices. All the dwarves sounded alike, though I think we avoided any confusion as to who was speaking at any one time.

It was a great session. Five hours of 4E, and not a single fight or skill challenge!

 

[Celebrim]

A: Rulesmithing: I can produce professional or near professional quality rules for almost any situation.
B: Characterization: I can produce highly memorable NPCs, and have frequently been complimented on this. I'd do better at this if my voice work was better.
C: Setting: I can produce exotic detailed settings at both the micro and macro levels. I'm good with maps. However, I'm not as good at impromptu setting creation as I ought to be. I need to spend time producing the tools that experience has taught me I need to run impromptu sessions - lists of names, random encounter tables, random events/event lists, etc. - successfully.
D: Communication: My desire to keep the game fast paced and exciting frequently conflicts with the needs of having clear communication between the players and the DM. I frequently fail to communicate the game state properly, and I frequently forget or misimagine the current game state, resulting in confusion. This is partly because my setttings are, as I said, quite complex and detailed. I need to learn to slow down my thinking and communicate with the players at more of a metalevel when I need to.
F: Pacing: Historically, I've been very bad at adopting the proper pacing of my games. I rush scenes that don't need to be rushed. I linger on scenes that don't need to be lingered on. I don't bring the awesome soon enough, and I rely to heavily on the assumption that the story will eventually evolve on its own in response to the players input. The result historically has been players who are at various times (particularly early in a campaign) lost, impatient, or bored when none of that was necessary. I'm attempting to rectify that problem in my current campaign by reversing my usual approach. Instead of trying to evolve from sandbox to adventure path, I'm starting with a mini-adventure path and evolving toward sandbox. I hoping this emmerses the players in the setting more quickly than the more naturalism/realism approach I adhered to when I was younger.

 

[Shoe]

A - Creating Memorable NPC's, items, locations and events: Every campaign I run there is something super cool that everyone remembers from years to come. Be it the Half-Red Dragon Bluebird to the Player Death by an animated sofa, each game has that moment that the players will NEVER forget

B - Improv: I have Ummmm...moments from time to time, but up until recently i barely planned my campaigns at all. I had a list of important plot points from start to finish and improved the rest. I even designed encounters on the spot...sometimes whole dungeons (and without delaying the game too much)

C - Roleplay: While I try to make each NPC unique I am often unprepaired to answer in question for some of the more boring NPC's. Shopkeeps, while i keep the name consistant per town and the like have little to no personality, as do the random town guardsman...etc. Major NPC's are interresting but the minor ones i could work on

D - Preperation: I never prepare for my games more than like an hour in advance...it's something i have been working on with my latest yet-to-be-run game


F - Keeping the game on track: my players love to joke, tangent, go on food runs, and wax political at the table, some of them even bring laptops and Code while gaming and I am not super good at keeping this kind of stuff in check....our sessions can last 8 hours and we only game for 3

 

[Neonchameleon]

A
Combat Encounters - I rock. I keep them fast, interesting, dangerous, and not quite lethal.
B
Improvisation - I'm pretty good. I can't cope with PCs re-writing reality (or worse yet coincidental magic) as my reaction is to take a five minute time out to work out as much as I practically can of the consequences. So I don't play with those power levels. Other than that with some structure (like the Skill Challenge Rules) I can, I think, cope with most things.
C
Being Mean - Room for improvement. I really don't like hurting PCs or being that cruel to them. I push them to the limit (see Combat Encounters) but don't bring the hammer down even in games like Paranoia.
D
Vocal performance - I'm too quiet and not good at all at accents.
F
I hope not. And would do something about it if I spotted.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

A: Improv & performance - Rolling with the PCs unexpected choices, doing in-character NPCs, etc, is not a problem. Comes from teaching & public speaking experience, I think.

B: preparation & record-keeping - I always try to have all necessary statblocks, rules, session plot points, props, etc at my fingertips before a session begins. After the session, I always put together a session summary, indicate NPCs met, and maintain a coded list of unidentified treasure and other mysteries; the session summary gets emailed to the players.

C: rules mastery, world building - There's a lot of rules, and I don't DM enough to commit them all to memory. I tend to favor campaigns about more or less ordinary people in times where the weirdness is hidden away, as well, so the the worlds I build probably don't appeal to a wide range of players. To compensate, I tend toward low-power/low-level games.

D: plot & story - Building a world is tough, but piecing together compelling storylines with lots of intrigue and mystery is very difficult for me, without ending up with something pretty cliche and predictable.

F: mood - Unfortunately, I'm a jokey guy, so it's hard to keep in-game seriousness, dread, mystery, etc, at the forefront.

 

[Iron Sky]

A
Improvisation: I've been improvising since I started DMing 17 years ago. I wasn't aware there was any other way of playing until they invented the internet and those search-engine things and I read about this "planning" thing and the "adventure" concept. 17 years later, I still improvise 70-99% of my games (depending on the system, with DnD being on the "most planning" end).

Rules mastery: Until very recently, I'd consume rulesets just for fun. I consider it important to master the rules to be as fair and consistent as possible. I'm also OCD about playing RPGs as RAW as possible, so it bothers me whenever I need to house-rule something. I do occasionally get rules wrong, but its the exception rather than the norm.

Unique and fantastic worlds: Worldbuilding is half the fun in DMing for me. I tend to spend a bunch of time before the game starts thinking about the world/universe of the game, then random ideas tend to come to me during the week between sessions about the "big picture".

B
Encounter design: I try to make combats interesting, unique, and challenging. I sometimes fail at one or more of these, especially if I'm winging it and just throw together some enemies on the fly without any inspiration.

Enemy design: I've created some really cool, mechanically interesting enemies for some pretty cool combats. Sometimes I get so into the mechanics that I forget about actually describing what the enemy's cool powers and abilities look like though...

C
Guiding the players: My games are usually pretty "sandboxy", so the players can do whatever they want. Sometimes, however, I give too many options at once or don't make what options are available clear enough, so they can't figure out what to do next.

Remembering to tell PCs details: Often I'll have a really neat idea of what the terrain, setting, enemies, etc look like, but I'll forget to tell the players. Especially in combat. I have a tendency to say "you're hit for 23 damage" and forget to say which enemy is attacking which PC in what way. Leads to some confusion and breaks immersion in what's going on.

NPC design: My NPCs tend to be pretty bland. I'll come up with occasional interesting NPCs, but (especially with DnD games), I tend to get caught up designing the world and monsters and NPCs lose out. This is one of my primary "to fix" items.

D
Roleplaying NPCs: Due to the above, my portrayal of NPCs if often pretty bland. Sometimes I'll make a special effort to make an NPC distinguishable (accent, way of talking, mannerisms, etc) but I'll forget about them in the midst of the scene and find the PCs saying "didn't this guy have an accent a while ago?"

In systems where combat mechanics aren't as important, I spend more time on NPCs personalities and would give myself a C, but we've been primarily playing DnD lately...

F
I don't think I have any Fs.

 

[EP]

A
Storyline/Plot
Me likes the plot where there are machinations going on behind the scenes and just when the players think they've done something I would never think of, it falls directly into my evil hands. Nothing is what it seems, characters have deep motivations, and the conclusion will almost always blow the players away.

B
Improvisation
While I never get to improvise on stage as much as I would like, I try to make up for it in my games. For the most part, I keep my adventures down to a bare minimum: who is involved, what can they do, what are their motivations and how will they try to do it? Then I just unfold things as I think of them. Allows the players to be involved in the storytelling and keeps me on my toes.

C
Voices
Giving each NPC their own voice and characterization makes the entire roleplaying experience, as far as I'm concerned. And it encourages players to add their own elements.

D
Combat
Winging it on combat a bit here - I like to stray from the normal power descriptions and embellish on the action a bit. Including the use of stunts and bonus attacks just because it would look really cool if the player actually did that.

E
Perception Checks
While I'm actively trying to cut them down to a bare minimum, I'm constantly asking players to make Perception checks. It became so ridiculous in our last game that I'm thinking of banning Perception checks when players enter a room/area and simply telling them what I want them to see. Odds are that someone will make the check and I'll describe it to them regardless.

F
Monsters
This is just my own take on the topic but I never feel like I've truly used a monster to its full potential. Once the fight is done, I always feel like I held back and never used it as was designed. It's the opposite of Combat and Rules in that the players get to do crazy stuff and I'm always holding back the monsters to allow them to do what they do. It's that fine balancing act, I guess.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Mood: F
Okay, I like to make jokes (hey, with this face I was forced to develop a personality).

Brian Posehn plays D&D?

Dude, I am a big fan.