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Message: <blockquote data-quote="roytheodd" data-source="post: 485670" data-attributes="member: 1508">I consider myself to be a good DM. I don't know the rules too well. I don't do things conventionally. I have gaping loopholes and plotholes. I hack 'n' slash, dungeon crawl, and weave stories. I've had total party kills and expelled munchkins left and right. Yet somehow I have a line of people waiting to get into my games and giving me praise at every turn. I don't do anything special, yet I'm a crowd favorite. It beats me as to why, but I consider myself a good DM on account of all the positive feedback.Edited in:After rereading the question, I thought perhaps I should give a pointer or two as to why I think I've got a good reputation. I think the biggest thing I do right is a totally internal issue that I think many others already do to - I beleive that out there somewhere is a legendary DM who's got their act together. This other DM has all the means to create awesome scenarios, weave finely wrought stories, improvise as needed, knows the rules, is prepared, caters to the players, and has the action peak where necessary. I try to live up to this. Seriously. I think that we all imagine the other guy is just doing something better than us and if we could only figure it out we'd be just as good. Typically, we DMs are better than we give ourselves credit for.Other advice would be to know your story. Create a world that you understand (or can improvise) well. Leave many story threads at every turn and let the party pick them up as they see fit. Then alter things to match what they're doing - and make sure that the Big Bad Evil Guy sees which path they take so as to thwart them later. This gives you a flexible story that responds to the players and most role-players will eat this stuff up. Controlling the story too tightly isn't good.Cater to the players. Give them situations where their really cool abilities or gear shine brightly. Allow them to use what they've given themselves - it's a great sense of satisfaction to have a great quickdraw artist take down 3/4 of the bad guys before anyone can sneeze. Just build that stuff into situations and encounters and it won't seem like the party is overpowered.Give them some big victories, but try always to keep the shadow cast upon them as well. What I mean is look at Star Wars or Spider Man, even when the good guys win, they've had to give up something grave for it or they haven't really won yet. Keep that going for a while in a story arc and when they reach the final finish give them the big parade.Try to match playstyles as best as you can. If they want hack'n'slash then play it that way (or don't play at all). If they want uberhighmagic then play it that way (or don't play at all).  The reason why I say "then don't play at all" is because they'll try to force it on you even if they couch it in polite ways. Try to get a group with the same ideas and motivation. I've found that telling the group what the theme and tone are is a great way to get everyone like minded. If I find a cool article that would seem like flavor, then I let them read it just so they can see what I want. If we don't all agree then there's usually some struggles and that's not good. Get that stuff ironed out before you play.Learn to let them play "unplugged". Game balance is often the hardest thing for new DMs to get together. Piling on gear and skills is a disaster that happens and it will always collapse a game. By using the term "unplugged" I'm refering to the level of power of the group. Let them stay on the low end of the magic scale for the campaign setting and you should be okay. (The term is in reference to MTV's Unplugged series where artists would play their usual overly-loud music in unusual acoustic style - get the party off of the over-amped magic goodies and let them use mundane stuff). By keeping the party wanting you give them further impetus to explore and you keep them in check by having tougher beasties out there - it's a good thing for an adventure based game.</blockquote>

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