1,000 GMing Tips

[delericho]

20) Don't prepare your home adventures in the same style as the pre-published ones you've seen. Remember, you're writing for your group, not for some general group "out there", so you don't need to cover every single eventuality, and you're writing for you, not some general DM "out there", so you only need enough to remind yourself of what you were thinking.

 

[delericho]

21) Regularly give your players small amounts of information rather than a lot all at once - after a few sentences their eyes will glaze over and they'll stop paying attention.

(I try to give my players a handout at the start of each session with "5 Things You Know About..." covering some random topic about the setting. That may or may not be relevant to the events of the session.)

 

[Morrus]

22) Prepare a "one-sheet". A single page summary of the setting and character options. Include pictures, catchy lines, avoid dense text. Try to imagine it as a leaflet designed to quickly convey the basics at a glance. You can always make a 33-page player's guide to your setting available to those who ask for it, but be prepared for those who will only read the one-sheet.

 

[TarionzCousin]

23. Reward awesomeness.
When a player does something outrageous, cool, or dangerous-but-fun, reward him. Give that player a bonus on the attempt, such as a +2 on the die roll.
This will encourage other players to be creative, try strange stuff, and attempt difficult tasks. Ideally, this should make your game more fun.

 

[innerdude]

24) Steal material from other sources. Correction: SHAMELESSLY steal material from other sources.

This doesn't mean accessing copyrighted material illegally, obviously; it means wherever you see a good idea for an adventure, a session, an encounter, a plot line, an NPC, USE IT.

Remix, remash, create your own creative spin on it, and make it your own, but don't feel an ounce of guilt or shame out of using someone else's idea(s).

(Editor's note: If you're anything like me, most people's ideas are better than mine anyway. )

 

[delericho]

25) Keep a folder of ideas that don't get used, and recycle from it often - if the PCs take Path A through the dungeon instead of Path B, don't just bin all the encounters you had planned for Path B, keep them for some other dungeon six months down the line. Remember - if the players never saw it, they don't know it was there.

 

[Morrus]

26) Base your NPCs on movie characters and celebrities. Do your best impression/description of them without actually naming them. Your players will subconsciously recognise them and fill in blanks themselves, resulting in a fully fledged character in their minds.

 

[Big J Money]

27) If you make a ridiculous continuity mistake and the players notice it, be dead-pan, pretend like you aren't surprised, and don't admit to making a blunder. Later when you have a moment, ask yourself the question "under what circumstances could that actually have happened?" You might even develop an interesting twist in the campaign this way that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

 

[delericho]

28) When writing a mystery, remember that everyone has something to hide and everyone has something to fear. That might not be true in real life, but it should be true in a mystery adventure.

 

[Cristian Andreu]

29) A way to keep everyone invested when a conversation involves only a single PC for a long while is to have the rest notice things from an outsider's perspective ("You notice the Mayor is fidgeting with something in his back pocket"), or giving them intel on the stuff they overhear. This will make everyone feel useful even if they are not participating directly, while at the same time helping you seed more hooks.