What Are Your DM New Year's Resolutions?

1. Any resolutions on things you want to do?

2. What do you want to improve in your DMing?

3. Will you be trying out something new in 2019?

4. What are your DM weaknesses?

It's not always bad to be critical of yourself. Knowing your limitations can only make you a better DM!

My answers:

1: Start a new campaign!

2: I want to improve speed of combat resolution among my players but do it in a way that enhances fun for all and doesn't make me look like a hectoring boss.

3: No. Though I probably should.

4: I don't like to try new things!

I'm bad at designing my own combat encounters/adventures. I'm much better at modifying an existing module, so that's what I usually do. The most luck I had in my last campaign was a few REALLY fun social-type encounters.

1. I would like to run games for more people. My home campaign will continue to be my priority, but I enjoy meeting new players and almost always have a positive experience.

2. Say yes just a little more. I have endeavored to do that the last few weeks in my Waterdeep campaign.

3. I am going to crank up Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e campaign this Summer. Should be a blast.

4. I can get in a rut with my homebrew adventures - a bit formulaic. The nice thing about running some Adventure League is I run scenarios that force me out of my comfort zone. I think the more varied stuff you run the better you are at writing homebrew.

1. No resolutions, but goals certainly. I recently started an experimental game format that has produced very positive feedback so far. I'd like to formalize the process and post it to the public once I'm satisfied it's portable from my table to the greater community.

2. Tolerance for people who want to play anthropomorphic races.

3. Letting my players use anthropomorphic races.

4. I have no weaknesses, and if I did, there be players about. It would be foolish to show weakness in front of them. Vicious animals, they. >.>

1. Any resolutions on things you want to do?

I need to get about 50-60 minis painted up for an adventure in Feb. Now that Nov/Dec is done I have to get busy!


2. What do you want to improve in your DMing?

Nah, I'm good.


3. Will you be trying out something new in 2019?

New to me? No. New to the 5e group I DM for? Yes.
I have multiple good ideas (and some random stuff) I want to run for the next campaign that just won't work together. So I'm going to start the whole campaign at 1 central point - a drunken party - & have the players each make multiple characters who're in attendance. Definitely 2, maybe 3. And then they'll branch off on different paths. We'll run a lv with one group, switch to the 2nd, switch to the 3rd, etc....
And if somethings deemed more/less interesting? Then we can adjust the focus.
I've done this before, most recently in the last PF campaign I ran, & it's worked well enough. The 5e group though has never played a "campaign" that was focused on more than one quest/party. So this should be interesting.


4. What are your DM weaknesses?

Procrastination when it comes to prep. It's why I've developed a knack for ad-libbing/winging it over the years.

1. Any resolutions on things you want to do?

Several. I need to finish my Spelljamming rules, get all my Spelljammer setting info and rules organized, convert a Pathfinder adventure path (likely Strange Aeons) to 5E, and play at least a one-shot if not a mini-campaign at high level (15+). I also really want to play more IRL rather than online. All my gaming right now is either over Roll20 or forum PbPs.

2. What do you want to improve in your DMing?

Prep. I want to be better about having good maps and tokens ready for use instead of scrambling mid-session to find a token that'll work on Roll20. Plus I want to be better prepared in general so ad-libbing becomes that much easier if necessary.

3. Will you be trying out something new in 2019?

Yes! Moving Pathfinder stuff to 5E, homebrewing some more 5E magic items and hopefully class/race options, and I'd like to focus more on character instead of just dungeon crawls. That's already stuff I'm trying in my PbPs, but I'd really like that to be more of a focus in my Roll20 and (hopefully) IRL games.

4. What are your DM weaknesses?

Running pre-made adventures over writing my own. It's not a terrible weakness, but it makes it a little harder to tailor it to the group sometimes. That said, I'm still going to run published adventures, but try to do more to make them my own instead of being bound to the books.

First three are easy.

guachi said:

1. Any resolutions on things you want to do?

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I want to resume and finish our current adventure, we haven't played for a few months now and we're about only half way through. It's taken a lot more sessions than expected, so I would like to speed up the rest of it to take something like half the time it took for the first half.

guachi said:

2. What do you want to improve in your DMing?

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In our family game I've been essentially the keeper of all rules details on character abilities, to make it easier for our children: basically, they've only known the names of their spells and abilities and when they decided to use one, they resorted to me for details.

In the meantime, I've designed and printed out action cards with all the stuff their PCs can do at the current level. I am almost done with the finalization e.g. laminating the cards, printing the last few missing ones. When we resume playing, I want to start using these cards so that my little players can learn to take care of their own PC's abilities, but without ever having to look up the PHB during play.

guachi said:

3. Will you be trying out something new in 2019?

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Tabletop audio sound pads.

guachi said:

4. What are your DM weaknesses?

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Probably many, but after a couple of decades of DMing I would also like to believe that there isn't anything that bad about my DMing that would ruin everyone's fun...

Certainly I still have a lot to improve in my ability to create interesting plots. I can make interesting characters, encounters and places... but when it comes to actual stories I always have the feeling that they are too obvious.

In addition, I still haven't found enough consistency in how to deal with every aspect of the current edition. Despite thinking a lot on topics like trapfinding, using skills in social encounters, sneaking/ambushing, retrying failed attempts etc, I still find myself falling to the old "just make an X check" solution, without thinking enough of the long-term consequences of players expecting to be able to always do the same.

I hope to kill more player characters. I've been letting them off easy for far too long!

DM less. Play more!

1. Any resolutions on things you want to do?
Have more regular sessions. Things have gotten very irregular (I eventually had to take a hiatus), and I want to be prepared enough that I can actuIally run when I say I'm going to run. Obviously life events overrule this, as life>gaming.

2. What do you want to improve in your DMing?
Note taking. I've tried several methods of helping me keep track of things during the game, but all too often I get into the game too much, and forget to keep those notes. Considering that XP and treasure on part of those notes, I think it annoys the players when they don't get it until a week or later.

3. Will you be trying out something new in 2019?
Probably not.

4. What are your DM weaknesses?
That would require far more than a single comment could answer. I would guess it's my impatience. I often have grand ideas that i want to get to, but need to wait for the party to catch up. Often this leads to confusion by the party, because I failed to properly explain (or glossed over) parts in the middle.

I would like to put all of my house rules and home brew content into a pdf format.