Can't Find Trees- Damn Forest. Secret of Good DM'ing?

I've had a bit of downtime from D&D lately (damn real world) & I've been thinking about what contributes to a really enjoyable campaign.

Sure, if your all already a group of friends it's easy to have fun together, and this is a hobby we all enjoy & hopefully as we roll the dice & declare our actions we're thinking a lot more heroically than (most of us) sound...

But with the increasing popularity of RPG'ing again (at least in Oz!), that means there are a lot of new DM's out there who want to try their hand- and who most likely will repeat the same new-DM mistakes that everyone else has.

So I thought to myself, if I had to choose 3 important pieces of advice to give a DM, other than Rule 0, what would they be?
(Rule 0 being Relax & have fun).

What would your 3 points be? I don't doubt others views will remind me of really obvious things I haven't thought of in a while

Advice 1: Know- and be comfortable- with the rules as a tool.

This doesn't mean memorising DC's for climbing different gradients of slopes (that's what the DM screen is for). This means when you need to make a rule as DM, you don't have to refer to a book OR if your not sure of the EXACT rule, your comfortable enough to say "Well make it an {ability X} check followed by an attack roll." And the rules are a tool, not the game itself. Thus, you don't NEED to change the rules to change your game.

Advice 2: Match the players to the game

Most people will have a preferred type of game. Dungeon crawl, intrigue, role-play with nary a dice in sight... you can't cram dungeon-crawlers into your epic political intrigue. Just as you can't throw role-players into dungeon crawl after dungeon crawl without an NPC in sight.
Before starting a campaign have one of two quick one-offs, possibly related to your campaign story, but not necessarily. See what courses of action people prefer right off the bat. Your campaign storyline can continue as you'd planned howveer they choose to play- the only thing you'll have to change if they're a different style of gamer to what you expected is the WAY that the players uncover plot clues or identities.
Remember, there is no information on old parchment within a dungeon that couldn't, retrospectively, be changed to be in the hands of the Thieves Guild Master- or by an experimental Mage who needs Creature X Heart from nearby dungeon before he'll help them.

Advice 3: Make the world breathe as much as you can.

So important! And it's not spelled out in the DMG just how important this is! (this is the forest for trees part of the title).
True, we're not all great public speakers. We're not all incredibly fast on our feet with creative descriptions. We can all GET BETTER at it though, with practice.
What I mean is, don't say "the dragon walks out of the back of the cave & roars at you." from out of the blue.
If you know they're on their way to a dragon, one of the villagers at the tavern might be drinking heavily & crying because his flock was savaged by the beast recently. (this is the "every evil will visibly affect SOMEONE nearby" rule of thumb). Near to the cave a peasant has put up a sign "Dragn Ahed. Dangar!". And finally, the entrance to the cave has torn vegetation & heavily trampled earth. .. within the cave, the dragon doesn't walk out- two short lived nostril flames briefly illuminate a huge scaled beast. Looking up, you see the glitter of sheer malice in it's reptilian eyes & you feel dread make your limbs cold & heavy. The beast looks like it's about to bathe you all in flames as it's mouth starts to gape wide... now, roll initiative!!!

Sorry. I got a bit carried away there. You can tell I haven't played in a while, right
I guess I should of thought about making the third advice "Don't love listening to yourself talk" lol

But I do think 1) DM not having to stop to look up rules regularly- or count numbers on his fingers! is NECESSARY for a fun game. Similarly, if a PC doesn't know how a spell/ability works before his turn, he can't use it that turn.
2) You can't make chicken soup with beef. Make it fun for everyone, and incorporate what the players want to do- and HOW they want to do it.
3) The game is more than dice rolling. If you want players to get involved, you have to make your game descriptive enough that they can see a world they can get involved in.

Wow, there is so much to playing this game. Just remember Rule 0- if you remember that, the rest will come with time & practice.

Good advice. I would add:

4) Don't let it get personal: Too often, DM's start to see their relationship with the players as adversarial. Your job as DM is to create a situation in which the players have fun. You shouldn't judge your success in terms of players killed, missions failed, etc. You are the DM -- you can always defeat the party. There's no challenge in that.

5) Don't let your preconceived notions of where the campaign is (or should be) going prevent the players from having some say in the matter. If they wanted to have everything pre-determined, they'd read a book. They play because they want to change their pretend world, not be scripted actors in yours.

6) Don't play favorites. Nothing can kill a game faster than a DM who capriciously favors one player over the others, whether it be in the form of extra loot, more powerful abilities, invulnerability, etc. This is especially true if your significant other is one of the players. This is double-extra true if you are playing a member of the party as an NPC.

Scarred Lands rule #1 in BIG letters and glow red as if on fire...

When in doubt ask Nightfall.

7) Expect to have, don't expect the players to follow your lead. Many times New DMs plan out what they want to have happen, but the players don't follow it exactly. So, plan to be versatile and offer more then one direction and expect the players to also create their own every now and then.

8) Keep things moving. Nothing kills a game like rule hunting especiually when it is not critical. Know the rules you plan on using, like if a monster has grapple, reread that section and take notes if you can't memorize it. Worse case make something up if its really not important and then reread the section latter.

9) Let the players play. Don't say no to their cool ideas, say yes but just make it difficult if its a difficult manuveur. Reward creativity and enthuisism. It can be contagious and bring the other players into the game even more.

My three most important pieces of advice would be:

1) Avoid 'Mary Sue' type NPCs. Ie ones that are much more powerful than the PCs, travel with them and solve the mission for them.

2) Avoid railroading.

3) Treat your players as grown-ups. Be honest about the sort of game you're running, why you make decisions the way you do. Involve them in the decision making process, ask their advice.

Look_a_Unicorn said:

Near to the cave a peasant has put up a sign "Dragn Ahed. Dangar!".

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So helpful! Warning signs near monster lairs are sadly something of a rarity in most games I've played in. But they're so easy to make and could save lives.

OK, so some of this is just restating the great advice already given:

10) Remember, the players are smarter than you. It's always better to present them with challenges that have multiple solutions than try to predict one specific outcome. Give them situations where they can come up with a solution on their own--it's almost always going to be cooler than what you had in mind. And as an aside to that, don't base your entire campaign on them following any one course of action.

11) Forget every plot you've seen on Star Trek or played in Final Fantasy. All too often new DM's try to pull a plot device from pop culture, forgetting that pop culture is incomprehensibly stupid.

12) Figure out the major story of the campaign, then break it down into workable chunks. Try writing your campaign like a TV series. Say you want the campaign to take the characters from 1st-10th level. That's about 40 sessions. A good story arc is usually about 4-6 sessions (sorta like a short TV season). Each session can be broken down into scenes; my sessions are usually about 4 or 5 scenes. Figure out more or less what's going to happen in each scene, and how they're going to tie together. All this can help keep the campaign cohesive, make writing it much easier, and keep the action flowing at a good pace.

Spider

13) Don't get bogged down by over using miniatures. Miniatures are fine for combat, but don't force the PCs to move their minis over a landscape like a map. D&D is not a wargame, unless you're using the rules from the D&D Miniatures Handbook. And even then, it's a skirmish game. Miniatures should not become a burden or take the place of good roleplaying or having an imagination.

Knightfall1972 said:

13) Don't get bogged down by over using miniatures. Miniatures are fine for combat, but don't force the PCs to move their minis over a landscape like a map. D&D is not a wargame, unless you're using the rules from the D&D Miniatures Handbook. And even then, it's a skirmish game. Miniatures should not become a burden or take the place of good roleplaying or having an imagination.

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I just wanted people to have a chance to read this again....

Crothian said:

9) Let the players play. Don't say no to their cool ideas, say yes but just make it difficult if its a difficult manuveur. Reward creativity and enthuisism. It can be contagious and bring the other players into the game even more.

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Very good advice.