DMs: what have you learned from PLAYING that has made you a better DM?

[fba827]

If you're playing with the same group that you DM for (such as switching DM turns/campaigns) you get different insight in to the other players. Info such as 'what types of things bore/interest them more' either at the table or what they're talking about/referencing a week later (things you might not have noticed while you were staring at DM notes or a subtle eye gesture that one of them would make, etc).

 

[Wraith Form]

It took me a while to figure out why, but then I realized: his bad guys always had a plan to win. They were never there as speed bumps or XP pellets or just the next routine fight. They attacked and fought not just with intelligence, but with a strategy and a goal. It was as though they actually expected they could win--and sometimes they almost did!

Could you elaborate on this, please? Maybe by giving an example or five? And how does his method relate to minions in the current incarnation of the game (which appear, to me, to be speed bumps/XP pellets/the next routine fight).

 

[Wraith Form]

"Unbelievable" is relative. I read that situation and don't have any problem believing it, even when you say it's impossible. Sometimes it's possible to suspend your sense of reality.

Exactly. Otherwise, how else could Anakin and Obi-Wan have had their second-to-last big falling out?

 

[Wraith Form]

Sometimes I use a battle grid, sometimes I don't. I think running a game without a battle grid is useful, because it helps some players visualize things more; however, the strategic aspect of combat really shines with a battle grid!

I'll be the jerk to put it out on the table (and no, I'm not trolling or aiming for a flame war about D&D4):

D&D4 basically requires that you have a battlemap, otherwise you're blunting or dulling the effectiveness of certain characters' powers (push, pull and slide powers, specifically). Once you neuter the characters' powers, the players start really crying and resenting, and who wants that?

 

[Wraith Form]

Pacing is the biggest thing I have learned from sitting on the player's side of the table. Always, always, keep things moving.

I want to clarify: pace suggests "movement, then rest...movement, then rest."

You're saying "always movement".

I ask because, as a somewhat inexperienced DM I don't really understand pacing, yet it's been mentioned and emphasiszed in every thread (including this one), article or chapter (DMing for Dummies in D&D4, I'm looking at you) in all of the DM-self-help stuff I can find.

 

[Wraith Form]

I didn't mean for my posts to sound confrontational, if they did (and I apologize if they did).

I'm trying to glean understanding from others who've experienced DMing so that I can absorb that experience and be a better DM. So instead of confrontational, my comments are meant to be....challenging to you (i.e. I challenge you to clarify or elaborate upon your experience so that others may gain from it).

 

[GnomeWorks]

Remember that the player has a vision of how their character is and thinks and in what ways s/he is capable; so long as that vision is backed up by numbers, then at least do something to acknowledge that the character has a skillset that the player may lack; be it giving them a hint or - heaven forbid - roll dice for a relevant skill.

Don't completely and utterly negate certain aspects of the system by saying that you hate that subsystem and will "just wing it" or somesuch, because then characters who invest in that subsystem get screwed because you're too much of a stick-in-the-mud.

Do not screw the party because you're being slavishly adherent to the system. Wealth guidelines are called guidelines for a reason; you can break them. If the party is having internal disputes over cash because the wizard is being a prick and wants all the loot, throwing treasure at them that is only really useful to a mage is just fuel for the fire.

If you plan on completely screwing the party out of things they've earned, such as by sundering equipment, then at least have reasonable repair methods in place, or don't do it while you're screwing the party out of cash, at the very least.

Binary effects, such as - and specifically - save-or-suck, suck. Use sparingly. Even save-or-die is better, because then at least the player can get excited about a new character. With save-or-suck, you get to sit there for two hours while everybody else is doing useful stuff. Specifically fear effects can do a lot to screw with a player's perception of their character.

Even if the rules say that multiple fear auras from the creatures of the exact same type stack, and even if you save against four, the fifth can still make you run screaming like a little girl - your reaction as DM should be "...wait, what?", not "Haha, sucks to be a fighter, don't it." Don't screw the players over with stupid rules.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Sure. When it's plausible and sensible. Epic-level character with fire resistance out the arse? Hell, lower-level character with fire resistance? Adventuring on the Paraelemental Plane of Magma where you've prepared for, well, running around a bunch of sodding lava? Sure.

Random mountain interior designed to be a test for warriors? Uhh... Level 9 Bard 4/Swashbuckler 5 wearing the standard Studded Leather armor a L1 character would have, whose only magical item was a cold iron longsword which was presumably the stock +1, who doesn't have resistance to anything? Umm... Nope. Not plausible at all.………

………Some concepts in some situations are simply so patently ludicrous that they simply cannot be handwaved.

This particular puzzle was a glorious example of really bad design. Room slowly flooding with lava due to cannons shooting holes in the wall. This was something that had supposedly been used before by the local population for testing warriors. Uh... Right. They reset it how? How are they planning to reset it after this? Why can't I jump on the cannons? Are they greased? 1 inch wide? They're not really cannons if they are now are they, more like guns. I've got a +10 Balance mod and a +9 Jump mod, I like my odds. I've got 83 HP, why can't I jump through that wall of fire and just soak up some fire damage? I'll use some cure spells on myself later. What, you mean later on in the puzzle after I've solved it much to your chagrin by accident I have to convince this NPC with me to jump through a wall... Of the same kind of fire? That he takes no damage from? What the hell was stopping me then? And this is on top of, yeah, magic antireality lava that does no damage until you're in it. (And no, it wasn't actually magic lava) Nevermind that a wall of stone thin enough to be shot through by a cannon likely wouldn't hold back molten magma very well...

Yes, yes, complaining about realism or the lack thereof in D&D is pointless/etc, but some things are just too much. Selectively hot lava. Any dragon living in a cave with tunnels smaller than it is. Some things just plain are stupid.

I'm not going to complain about realism in D&D specifically. I am going to ask, however:

Why do you believe that a fictional world will work as you expect it to work rather than possibly having rules that allow it to operate in ways antithetical to your perceptions?

 

[billd91]

In 4E, the DM needs to ask himself, "is this easy, hard, or average difficulty?" That's a pretty easy question to answer. And he can do it after the roll is made:

Player: I want to do this other thing.
DM: Roll for it.
Player: I get a 25.
DM: (thinking) Is that a failure or a success? Well, he was trying to do something wickedly difficult, so I'll set a hard DC. (checks to see whether a 25 beats a hard DC at that level)

It takes a lot of the arbitrariness out of adjudication, and helps to solve the problem of the DM who always says no, or who just makes things up on the fly all the time.

This is actually one thing I hate about 4e, from a player perspective. I don't want the DCs to be set based on my level + difficulty. I just want them set by difficulty. I want the investments I've made in my character to matter more than that. I want challenges that would have been impossible when my character was less experienced to become routine.

 

[Kask]

This is actually one thing I hate about 4e, from a player perspective. I don't want the DCs to be set based on my level + difficulty.

Yes building the "Uncertainty Principle" into a game rules engine is pretty lame.