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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MortalPlague" data-source="post: 5844168" data-attributes="member: 62721">Oh man, there's a few.  Some of the most important I've found...Keep Things Moving - Unless it's something critical at stake, like a character's life or a crucial plot point, just make a ruling and move on.  Nothing sucks the life out of the game like pausing to look up the exact rules for how high a character can jump, or how long it takes to copy a page of a tome, etc.The same goes for combat, and a lot of that side of things comes to being prepared.  If you know your stat blocks and have a good idea what monsters can do and will do, it keeps things flowing on the DM side of the equation.  And I've found that if you keep your monsters turns fairly quick, it helps speed up the PCs turns too.Lose Gracefully - One of the hardest lessons to learn is how to lose gracefully.  When the PCs take down your villain with a single clever trick, it's hard to just swallow your pride and let it work as intended.  I know I've had moments of weakness where I just rule "It doesn't work", and that never goes over well.  Letting your players have their victories is the hallmark of a good DM.As for 4th edition specifically?  Most of what I've learned has to do with clever monster design.  Variety in an encounter, for instance; if you put a single flying monster in an encounter against a melee-heavy party, that can be an interesting challenge.  If you field a whole force of flying monsters, that's just frustrating.  Also, too many insubstantial monsters, too many swarms, too many soldier monsters... the list goes on.  Variety makes things much more fun.  Also, I tend to use certain conditions sparingly; stunned and weakened don't often see use in my games.</blockquote>

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