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Got a chance to chat with him on Friday, it went well overall. Turns out he did want some DM-level feedback, and I hope I managed to chisel through some of his bad habits and clued him in on some good DM habits to replace them with. We aren't going to get to run another game for almost a month...

Yeah, you're right. It was a bit easy to miss. Thanks for the clarifications! The +1 size modifiers to attack/AC/Sneak and -1 modifier to CMB/CMD for being small is implied and applicable in addition to the ability score and natural armor adjustments. Not that I'm particularly worried about a...

Even though I've DM'ed for years, I am still somewhat new adjudicating rules for pathfinder and frequently find myself at a loss for certain interpretations for how some indirectly-linked rules should apply. For example, for one game I'm running, one player is playing an Elemental Fire...

I'd say the other way around, really. If you have numbers written down for, say, an encounter, but they're having too easy of a time, adding HP or calling hits for damage is probably fudging. Nobody but the GM knows when this happens, but the players notice you have your eyes buried into...

I arrived in on the middle of a grandiose homebrew campaign of his design, so I'm leery about doing an Intervention and top it off with shelving his arc. That would very easily be misconstrued as sending him to the kiddie pool when he just needs to use the guidance set for DM's and do his...

As his former DM and only sitting in on two sessions (24 hours total time), I see him making the same mistakes he made four years ago as a player and not reading up on what he's trying to do. Instead reading half and making assumptions about the rest. Such things ranged from casting an evil...

I'm thinking the first order of business is to get rid of his myriad of 'house rules' to start and get him back to a 'vanilla' that's more sweet than bitter. The second order of business is to convince him to remove the munchkin gear from play. There's no reason to have to play a power race of...

The party was railroaded into him and his 'apprentice', and they both whipped around keen rapiers +2, leather +2, and belts of dex +4 and had the 5' entryway flanked at the top of a switchback staircase where nobody could get LOS up except if you were on the stairway. On top of that, he was...

The major issues aren't so much in his storytelling, so much as his lack of knowledge about the rules, poor adjudication, poor homework, and hasn't learned that you provide the engine and the atmosphere, but the players drive the game. I can take a bunch of CR 4-5 encounters and traps together...

For a little back-story, I've done small friend/circle GM'ing since AD&D and have gotten nothing short of great feedback from all my players. I took a few years off and reunited with one of my players who has taken up GM'ing himself under the Pathfinder books and invited me along. Happily, I...

I often come up with archetypes and flesh them out in advance when it comes to limited-choice features such as 3e/Pathfinder feats. When I'm not running adventures myself, I'm usually running under DM's that aren't aware that we're aware that the encounters they run aren't even in the same...

Any player can try to do what they want to with no guarantee of success, but if something is mechanically forbidden in the rules, quickly summarize the applicable rules at hand and explain what can and cannot be done. If you feel this is deliberate, remember you are the referree. If you HAVE to...

The true art in DM'ing is to never get caught fudging, winging, hand-waving, lamp-shading, stealing, or lying. If you shatter the illusion that you are playing by the rules (except in good humor), you can cause a lot of table trouble.