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<blockquote data-quote="Gizzard" data-source="post: 89355" data-attributes="member: 527">Its mostly a matter of experience; the more games you run, the better feel you get for what works and what doesnt.&nbsp; One key (and difficult) thing to do is to look at the long term.&nbsp; That is, ask yourself, &quot;will my campaign still be functional in a year if I let event X happen now?&quot;&nbsp; Two simple mistakes I see DMs make are opposite ends of this spectrum:1) &quot;You are all dead....again!&nbsp; Hehe.&quot;&nbsp; Some DMs take DMing to be a contest of wits; DM against the party.&nbsp; They fill their dungeons with CR17 Demons, fatal contact poisons and crushing room traps with no escape.&nbsp; If your players are constantly dying, they probably arent having fun.&nbsp; The DMs role is to put together an entertaining game, not to entertain himself by squishing the party.2) &quot;You defeat the Kobold and find that he is carrying the Hand of Vecna.&quot;&nbsp; Sometimes a DM is entranced by some cool item and feels he must put it in his campaign despite its awesome power.&nbsp; (The Deck of Many things is a frequent choice along these lines.)&nbsp; Sometimes a player is fascinated by the one cool thing which will make his character unstoppable.&nbsp; (The +5 Paladin Holy Avenger Sword or being a Half-Dragon are popular choices.)&nbsp; In either case, obtaining powerful things at low levels seriously upsets the balance of the game.&nbsp; (A level 3 fighter who is also a Half-Dragon is closer to a level 6 character for instance; he'll dominate the party.)&nbsp; It still comes back to the question of keeping the campaign viable; &quot;If I give the Paladin the +5 Sword when he gets to level 5, what do I give him when he gets to level 7?&quot;A lot of this stuff is really hard to figure out until you've run 3E a couple of times.&nbsp; Subtle stuff comes back to bite you later; classes, feats and items which appeared too strong at first turn out to be junk and conversely, stuff you never thought would make a difference ends up dominating the playfield.On a totally different tack; one thing to do before you DM is try to get to know the rules as well as you can.&nbsp; Its pretty hard to know them all, but nothing bogs down a game like a player asking if he can do something and having the DM say, &quot;Hmmm, let me check.&quot;&nbsp; And then flip through the DMG for 5 minutes before saying, &quot;I cant find anything relevant in here.&quot;&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :-)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gizzard, post: 89355, member: 527"] Its mostly a matter of experience; the more games you run, the better feel you get for what works and what doesnt. One key (and difficult) thing to do is to look at the long term. That is, ask yourself, "will my campaign still be functional in a year if I let event X happen now?" Two simple mistakes I see DMs make are opposite ends of this spectrum: 1) "You are all dead....again! Hehe." Some DMs take DMing to be a contest of wits; DM against the party. They fill their dungeons with CR17 Demons, fatal contact poisons and crushing room traps with no escape. If your players are constantly dying, they probably arent having fun. The DMs role is to put together an entertaining game, not to entertain himself by squishing the party. 2) "You defeat the Kobold and find that he is carrying the Hand of Vecna." Sometimes a DM is entranced by some cool item and feels he must put it in his campaign despite its awesome power. (The Deck of Many things is a frequent choice along these lines.) Sometimes a player is fascinated by the one cool thing which will make his character unstoppable. (The +5 Paladin Holy Avenger Sword or being a Half-Dragon are popular choices.) In either case, obtaining powerful things at low levels seriously upsets the balance of the game. (A level 3 fighter who is also a Half-Dragon is closer to a level 6 character for instance; he'll dominate the party.) It still comes back to the question of keeping the campaign viable; "If I give the Paladin the +5 Sword when he gets to level 5, what do I give him when he gets to level 7?" A lot of this stuff is really hard to figure out until you've run 3E a couple of times. Subtle stuff comes back to bite you later; classes, feats and items which appeared too strong at first turn out to be junk and conversely, stuff you never thought would make a difference ends up dominating the playfield. On a totally different tack; one thing to do before you DM is try to get to know the rules as well as you can. Its pretty hard to know them all, but nothing bogs down a game like a player asking if he can do something and having the DM say, "Hmmm, let me check." And then flip through the DMG for 5 minutes before saying, "I cant find anything relevant in here." :-) [/QUOTE]

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