A question for DMs more experienced than myself - aka everyone

[jydog1]

Thanks to everyone for the advice and support - both are much appreciated. I do think I'll give it a try, and hopefully the shop will let me take one of the mods home to study/MYRE a few days ahead of time. The usual 8-16 people show up so I should be in decent hands.

Jydog, a couple thoughts.


Quick: the dragon is flying and out of reach. My fighter uses my L7 Encounter power "Come and Get It" to pull the flying dragon down 2 squares and adjacent to me! Ruling: allow it, or no?

[sblock]Answer: RAW = not allowed, however many DM's including myself would allow it. The "right" answer is "whatever your first instincts told you to rule". The "wrong" answer is "stop, look it up for five minutes, then get into a discussion with the player about whether its allowed for another five minutes ..." by which time, you've lost your players.

The point is, its not the ruling that matters, its the fun and fairness of the ruling, and the speed and confidence with which you made the ruling, that matter ... and bonus points if you describe whether it works or not in terms of the dragon's actions in response to the power rather than in rules terminology.[/sblock]

. . .

As for "things to watch out for", the thing I'd say is "force your characters to be specific" - and remember its always okay to buy time with questions!

For example, orcs have just attacked the village to the north. The PCs have escaped to the next village south. I describe them arriving at the outskirts of the village, describe a fairly empty street, and ask what they want to do .. fully expecting and prepared with material for answers like "I demand to see the mayor," and "I try to find the captain of the guard", but also prepped for "I find an inn", "I go to the store to buy provisions", even "I look for a saucy wench".

One of my players says "I make a Diplomacy check to try and convince the people to start building a wall! The orcs are coming!"

So. If I allow him to roll the dice with that, I'm doing the entire game a disservice: he's using "diplomacy" to talk to .. whom exactly? And he's offering them .. what exactly?

If he's a high-charisma, trained-in-diplomacy character, allowing him to roll the dice risks him coming up with a great roll, and then him expecting that that means that he's got the people energized in building a wall.

So you need to stop him before he rolls - or tell him before the dice stop rolling, "hold on a second" .. and then ask him questions. Ideally, ask him who he's talking to. Describe the scene in more detail. Take a moment to drill down, to get more specific - he can't simply mobilize a major wall-building initiative with a single Diplomacy die roll!!

While he's getting specific, you're thinking about how you want to run this unexpected side encounter. You're on the spur of the moment, so you might decide, "Uhhh .. skill challenge, .. 6 success before 3 failures ... fairly hard I guess? ...bluff, diplomacy, intimidate, and .. history? .. sure .. uhhh.. failure results in somebody reporting the rabble-rousing to the local authorities, success requires getting some big men mobilized, and .. maybe when it gets to 2 failures, or 5 successes, I bring the mayor or the captain of the guard into the conversation, kinda like I have already prepared."

By the end of his more-detailed description, he's gotten specific, he's talking to one specific housewife he sees in the street, and you've got an idea of how this is going to work mechanically.

If he rolls high enough, maybe you have her tell him she'll send her son over to help him. If he fails, she hurries off in fear. Either way, he's still standing in a fairly empty street trying to roust up wall-building ... and you move on to the next character - "And what do you do, Bob?" - so as to prevent our rabble-rousing wall-builder from dominating the session for the next.

(IMO, the "original flaw" in this example was not the player deciding to try to get a wall built - that's awesome! The flaw was, him telling me "I make a diplomacy check to ..." ... as the DM, you want that transaction rephrased, so that he tells you what he wants to do, and you tell him what skill check that is, when to roll dice, etc.)

1) I completely agree with the loose interpretation of rules. If one of the players wants to to a handspring off the fighter's shoulders, grab on a low-hanging prisoner's cage and swing over the front line to land a resounding kick in the evil overlord's face, then I am going to say screw squares of movement and come up with the appropriate skill rolls. Most of these people have been through every LFR mod at least once at this point, so trying new stuff is something I want to encourage. I usually run Inspectres so I'm kind of used to clever players coming up with fun ideas to battle the forces of evil (that they've created themselves).

2) Right on board with you with making the players sing for their supper. The first mod I played the Dm would accept the 'I make a diplomacy roll' approach and that kind of bummed me out, but most others give you a bonus or minus depending on how well you actually do before the roll. I plan on using that mindset, especially with assisting.

Thanks again, everyone. My schedule is such I may not get a chance to do this for a bit, but I'll let you know how it goes when I do. I'll keep checking for more advice as well.

 

[jydog1]

Just want to send a thank you to everyone for the ideas and support - I actually ran consecutive session on a Thursday and a Sunday, and I think they went okay. I was lacking minis for goblins and their wolf mounts, so I went with play-doh versions and they were well-received (and squished by their vanquishers). For the most part everyone was helpful and seemed to have a good time - had a minor disagreement with one player but the others were of the opinion he wasn't paying close enough attention to what was described.

I definitely made some tactical errors - I squandered a bugbear strangler by not keeping him hidden long enough in one mod, and in the other an imp that gave my party (un)holy hell when I went through as a player got flat out clobbered by a 1st level bard daily immediate interrupt, which pretty much changed the scope of the battle (an odd mod, but you're basically forced from a tough battle with a solo brute right into the final fight, so they had pretty much no encounter powers left).

Anyway, I loved it and if they had asked me to run again last Thursday I would have done so in a second. I'm almost sad I'm starting up as a player in a Pathfinder home game as it will limit my opportunities to run. (okay, not too much). But thanks again for the advice and good ideas!

 

[jimmifett]

DMing the LFR modules isn't too bad. Just make sure you study it before you sit down for the group.

A Highlighter is handy for marking up your copy of the adventure.

I draw a grid and number the edges horizontally and vertically of the maps, making it easier to count how many squares over the tree is from the cart, etc, when i draw the map out.

Have some way to mark conditions on the battlefield. Some of us use the rings from soda bottles of different colors, I use 1 inch colored foam circles to put under minis.

If you use a DM screen, the conditions portion is useful.

Some of the early modules had whacked out skill challenges. Allow for secondary skill usages to give bonuses to primary skills. Some skill challenges are spread out over multiple scenes and can be confusing(Silver Lining, I'm looking at you!) if you don't dry-run or play it first.

 

[Kinneus]

1) I have maybe 15 sessions as a player under my belt right now (including one run by Piratecat) and while I've read the books numerous times I'm not sure my grasp of the rules is strong enough. There's always some rules defining going on during the games now, but I'm concerned my inferior exposure would make for a less-than-fun experience for the players, especially if I make glaring tactical blunders or whatnot.

That alone makes you qualified, in my opinion. Certainly more qualified than I was the first time I ran a session. My first time playing 4e was as DM... I imagine that's the experience for a lot of DMs out there. There's no magical prequesite number of sessions played.
Experience helps, though, and you have plenty of it. You got a solid handle of the rules and a drive to DM. I repeat: you are more than qualified. Go for it.