D&D 5E 9 Things "Pro" DMs Do That You shouldn't

[Mort]

8. Letting characters talk endlessly;
Ummmmm, if the players are happy, why interfere? Let 'em talk.

If ALL the players are happy, sure. But that's not really what the problem is.

It's when a few talkative players just keep talking endlessly and the rest (likely the majority) just get pushed out and get bored.

 

[jgsugden]

D&D is an RPG. Characters play a role in a story. There are a million ways to tell a good story.

A lot of these ideas are going to be bad ideas most of the time. However, they're not always bad ideas in the hands of the right DM and right set of players.

I played in a game where - at about 7th level - the players beat the current BBEG ... and discovered that everything we thought up to that point was wrong. The BBEG we'd killed was not evil. He was fighting to protect people that were being enslaved. And we'd been the unwitting pawns on the slavers. This was revealed in about 30 seconds - but then we interrogated the person that revealed it. And that took many hours. And it was mostly the DM, in character as the NPC, recounting the campaign from the NPC's perspective.

That 3 hours should have checked the boxes on a number of red flags. The DM did 95% of the talking. The DM was telling us how clever he was. He was bragging about all the hints he'd been able to drop without us catching those clues. He was connecting dots between things that we had not caught with little 'cut scenes' for lack of a better word. And it was taking a major victory from us and turning it into a horrible defeat.

However, that DM was a great storyteller. And that was a great story. And I remember so many moments in the story where I figured out where it was going to go ... and waited with dread for the knife to turn. Sometimes it went the way I expected - but he had a few more tricks, especially as the story caught up to the present day. I can't say it was a laugh fest - but that session was engrossing and set up a great next adventure series. It was not a mistake.

My advice:

• Consider advice you get, but don't consider it law.
• Read the room. If you're doing something and the players are not invested, switch gears. (The easiest way to do this is a sudden attack that has an established reason to occur, such as enemies of the party that have been hunting them catching up to them at that time).

 

[pogre]

As random YouTuber advice this is pretty solid general advice. Naturally, there are going to be lots of exceptions. Veterans DMs are going to know when to do things differently. DMs who know their groups are going to know when to do things differently.

As someone who has run a high school D&D club - it seems like very good general advice for most younger DMs.

 

[Charlaquin]

Perhaps I’m the exception, but I’m regularly mentally critiquing Mercer’s DMing decisions and thinking what I would do differently. For example he recently had Cheney’s werewolf make a strength check to bust through a wooden door (which of course went against the player) and so what had been a tense exciting scene turned into a bit of a farce. I thought at the time, that was a bad call DM!

So I would say: watch these streams with a critical eye.

Sure, but a critical eye requires a certain amount of experience to develop. I have enough experience as a DM to recognize when Matt Mercer makes a call I wouldn’t. A brand new DM probably doesn’t.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Instead of basing things off whether the pros do it or not, we should all just talk to our groups and run things in a way that's fun for them or they want to try without getting upset or jealous or judgmental over whether Matt Mercer did it.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Heh.

On the rare times I have a BBEG (try to*) monologue I prefer to make it up as I go along, mostly because something made up on the fly almost always sounds more natural and in-character than does reading something that is pre-written. Occasionally, a published module will include a bit of BBEG monologue, and I can never make them sound the least bit convincing if I just read them out.

* - "try to" because oftentimes the moment my players hear the first inkling of a monologue they'll do everything they can to shut it down posthaste!

I have a hefty amount of rhetoric studies and training irl, and like to think that I've become rather adept at delivering ok evil dude monologues over the years. I'm also blessed with players that seem to enjoy those speeches - they won't move a muscle for exploding puppies, but evil Jeff Bezos types being really sarcastic hit the right button every time.

Or maybe my table just indulge me, since they know I really enjoy my monologue moments ;-)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Now some of these are MUCH more important than others, but overall I agree with all of them.

Thoughts?

The major problem with most of them is "what counts as 'too much'?"

I occasionally go on somewhat longer "monologues" explaining something, or have an NPC that needs to say several things. Sometimes this is prompted by players travelling to a new location, where they need a lot of information presented to them quickly in order to know what they're looking at. I do what I can to make maps and other things to help ease this process, but ultimately I cannot prepare for all possible things they might ask about, so I must rely on being able to answer them. I am very self-conscious about these moments, but my players have never once complained about it, so I can only assume it isn't "too much" DM talking, whether it be in Narrator Voice or in NPC voice.

I have, personally, waited to (in this case re-)introduce a character to the party. There were very important reasons why he had left, and his return was simultaneously meant to be understated and important, so an opportune moment was needed. I didn't intend for it to take a while for it to happen, but player actions resulted in it doing so. The player in question wasn't upset, he enjoyed getting to see what the other characters had become while he was away. But that sort of thing is going to happen some of the time.

Some of our fights have ended up in the multiple-hour range. One in particular, I made complex and multi-layered fight with two phases and a bunch of different possible consequences depending on exactly how it turned out. I did this because it was a really big, important fight, one the players had actively done a ton of work to prepare for and which they were deeply committed to seeing through, even if it might end up costly. (Their preparation paid off, and their digital dice were hot that night, so they succeeded with flying colors.) I try not to plan too many fights of this kind, because I want them to feel special....but I absolutely do still include such fights, every now and then. (I also include such fights...and allow the players to short-circuit them if they can find a way. That happens pretty rarely, but it's happened at least once.)

Many of the others I either don't entirely get what's being said. E.g., what are "truly high-tension moments"? I've had moments I would classify as "truly high-tension," but they were some of the most memorable and important moments of the game, where the players made lasting, campaign-altering decisions. What does "letting the characters talk endlessly" mean? I don't just allow my players to chatter in-character, I actively support them doing so. And I have no idea what "putting the story before the game" means, because....I'm working with my players to make their story happen, that IS the fun they're looking for.

So....yeah. I find that a lot of these warnings are more "don't let things get out of hand" rather than "don't do this AT ALL," and most of the remainder are too vague to really obey.

 

[robus]

Sure, but a critical eye requires a certain amount of experience to develop. I have enough experience as a DM to recognize when Matt Mercer makes a call I wouldn’t. A brand new DM probably doesn’t.

A new DM is basically a deer in the headlights (I certainly was) so anything that made DMing seem doable was a godsend. And yes after a while I grew comfortable enough to have an opinion, but really having ”actual play” examples was so helpful.

I remember when I first starting out I found some local groups on Meetup and of course they weren’t accepting more players (so why list on Meetup??). So I asked if I could sit in on a session just to see how the game works in action. I got no response, lol.

So yeah, for those of us coming to the game cold, having pros show some of the ropes is amazingly helpful.

I really don‘t understand the handwringing, this is the absolute best of times for D&D.

 

[Mort]

I really don‘t understand the handwringing, this is the absolute best of times for D&D.

This is true.

The D&D club at my son's school is, by far, the most popular after school club. It's so popular that it had a wait list!?!

And the very idea that D&D YouTube celebrity is a thing? That's just mind boggling!

 

[Argyle King]

I 100% agree with 3 of the 9 things.
I'd say I'm about 50/50 on 2 of the 9. (it depends)
I disagree with the rest.