I'm actually moving the other direction with my current group. Started off using a LOT of passive checks to keep the game moving, but the players actually said they felt like they were not involved enough, not getting to roll dice. So I went to a lot more perception / insight / history / arcana checks out of combat (but I tend to fudge the DCs if they roll for crap but should get the info by their passive) and they seem to really enjoy it.
How have you grown and/or changed as a GM over the years?
I'm actually moving the other direction with my current group. Started off using a LOT of passive checks to keep the game moving, but the players actually said they felt like they were not involved enough, not getting to roll dice. So I went to a lot more perception / insight / history / arcana checks out of combat (but I tend to fudge the DCs if they roll for crap but should get the info by their passive) and they seem to really enjoy it.
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
Probably my biggest change was when I stopped running all games more or less the same way and learned to adapt my DMing/GMing to the specific game. This includes various editions of the same game each of which I treat differently as a DM/GM.
I made this change when I saw that my D&D 4e games just weren't working as well as they could be. I came to realize I was still bringing habits from AD&D 2e and D&D 3.Xe into my D&D 4e game. Once I learned to firewall these games off as well as their corresponding DMing techniques, everything has simply clicked going forward to this day.
I made this change when I saw that my D&D 4e games just weren't working as well as they could be. I came to realize I was still bringing habits from AD&D 2e and D&D 3.Xe into my D&D 4e game. Once I learned to firewall these games off as well as their corresponding DMing techniques, everything has simply clicked going forward to this day.
Nebulous
Legend
Same here. If I can just write down a page or two of loose notes it's enough to get a whole session. I can usually scatter a few good ideas that I wouldn't have come up with on the fly. I had to run a solo adventure for a player yesterday, and given a little prep time I found 12 pictures online to illustrate what I wanted the player to experience. Totally changed the whole session. Without that it would still have worked, but would have been much less visceral.
Tyler Do'Urden
Soap Maker
I started DMing again this fall after a 14 year hiatus, which, other than a couple of one-shots and a failed attempt at starting an FFG Star Wars campaign which only lasted for a single session. I've now got a group of five regular and four occasional players who meet for five hours two Sundays a month, and it's going absolutely great!
What's changed:
1. I no longer game with complete wangrods and challenge them to an armsrace.
While I look back with fondness on my high school games, the truth is my players were a herd of jackasses. Most of them are still close friends to this day, but the way they gamed back then left me scarred for years. The way they could find options and tactics and persuade me to make rulings that utterly broke 2e was brilliant in it's exploitativeness. This lead to an armsrace - I'd pour over Combat & Tactics, not to amp up my NPCs, but to rewrite and rebalance the game. I'd start new campaigns with new rules, trying to give players as much flexibility as possible... and they'd use that flexibility to construct monstrosities. Occasionally this backfired on them (like the guys who thought making an evil Necromancer and Cleric both with a 3 CHA was a smart idea, and found their characters burned at the stake by the end of the first session), but often they'd clean my clock. After the session where the 5th level Paladin with the Berserker kit and 18/97 Strength (YES, I ALLOWED THIS) managed to kill the main campaign villain in two rounds with his BARE HANDS, and I walked out of the room in dismay, I vowed to never let my players push me around again.
Since then I became obsessed with making sure I knew the rules inside and out and had balanced, official rulings on everything.
But then, in one of the last campaigns I ran during college, one of my friends pointed out,
"Dude, when your game is on, it's on. You have moments of greatness as a DM. But most of the time you seem more obsessed with the numbers than the game."
After that campaign I didn't run a game again for years, but when I returned to DMing, I took it to heart. I got over my wangrod-gamer-PTSD, and found that when playing with mature adults, such obsessiveness is not necessary. So I've dialed down my worry. I also love 5e because it isn't filled with the sort of niggling optimization that started with 2.5 (Player's Option) and reached it's zenith with 3.5; it doesn't punish players for not understanding how to optimize their characters, but isn't filled with builds that are utterly broken. I'm sure there are ways to break the game at high levels, but I have a much better idea of how to deal with that now.
2. I'm running a game, not writing an epic.
My earliest campaigns were attempts at writing novels; they were railroad, filled with attempts at replicating my favorite novels and movies... and broke down because of it. In fact, I realize now that this mentality only fed into the "arms race" above - trying to wreck my plans became the main goals of most of my players, who started to get their jollies from "beating the DM".
Now I just go with the flow, and go the way the players go, letting the game unfold as it may. I have no particular attachment to my villains, or to any particular heroes. The story is what we make of it at the table.
(Matt Colville had a very good video on this, re-imagining The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings as two D&D campaigns run by a teenage boy a few years apart. The first, The Hobbit, was a game - fun, sandboxy, and unexpected. The second was overly planed, overly detailed, and railroad - but a whole lot of fun for the players who decided to wander off-script and make it their own (The Aragorn player and his murderhobo buddies playing the Elven and Dwarven fighters), if extremely dull and frustrating for the ones who found themselves locked into the story (particularly the Frodo and Sam players))
3. Serve the Players
There's no one right way to play. All of the player types identified in Robin's Rules are cool, and fun to play with if you give them what you want. I have no preference.
Equally, I no longer try to be extremely restrictive. I give guidelines, but if players have a cool idea that steps outside of them and fits the setting, I run with it.
4. Simulationist? Narrativist? Gamist? It's all D&D to me...
As I noted above, I started my DMing in high school as an obsessive narrativist running 2e (and a number of other games, including Star Wars and Earthdawn), and in college became an equally obsessive simulationist running 3e/3.5. I was trying to make everything fit together and logically cohere, and obsessed over details that didn't matter one bit to my players. Naturally, I hated 4e when it came out because it threw out all my crazy simulationism.
While I still don't care much for 4e, I no longer hate it for throwing away my simulationism, as 5e isn't particularly simulationist either. I focus on running the game. To make everyone - including myself! - happy, I need to emphasize all three at different times.
But it's all D&D to me.
What's changed:
1. I no longer game with complete wangrods and challenge them to an armsrace.
While I look back with fondness on my high school games, the truth is my players were a herd of jackasses. Most of them are still close friends to this day, but the way they gamed back then left me scarred for years. The way they could find options and tactics and persuade me to make rulings that utterly broke 2e was brilliant in it's exploitativeness. This lead to an armsrace - I'd pour over Combat & Tactics, not to amp up my NPCs, but to rewrite and rebalance the game. I'd start new campaigns with new rules, trying to give players as much flexibility as possible... and they'd use that flexibility to construct monstrosities. Occasionally this backfired on them (like the guys who thought making an evil Necromancer and Cleric both with a 3 CHA was a smart idea, and found their characters burned at the stake by the end of the first session), but often they'd clean my clock. After the session where the 5th level Paladin with the Berserker kit and 18/97 Strength (YES, I ALLOWED THIS) managed to kill the main campaign villain in two rounds with his BARE HANDS, and I walked out of the room in dismay, I vowed to never let my players push me around again.
Since then I became obsessed with making sure I knew the rules inside and out and had balanced, official rulings on everything.
But then, in one of the last campaigns I ran during college, one of my friends pointed out,
"Dude, when your game is on, it's on. You have moments of greatness as a DM. But most of the time you seem more obsessed with the numbers than the game."
After that campaign I didn't run a game again for years, but when I returned to DMing, I took it to heart. I got over my wangrod-gamer-PTSD, and found that when playing with mature adults, such obsessiveness is not necessary. So I've dialed down my worry. I also love 5e because it isn't filled with the sort of niggling optimization that started with 2.5 (Player's Option) and reached it's zenith with 3.5; it doesn't punish players for not understanding how to optimize their characters, but isn't filled with builds that are utterly broken. I'm sure there are ways to break the game at high levels, but I have a much better idea of how to deal with that now.
2. I'm running a game, not writing an epic.
My earliest campaigns were attempts at writing novels; they were railroad, filled with attempts at replicating my favorite novels and movies... and broke down because of it. In fact, I realize now that this mentality only fed into the "arms race" above - trying to wreck my plans became the main goals of most of my players, who started to get their jollies from "beating the DM".
Now I just go with the flow, and go the way the players go, letting the game unfold as it may. I have no particular attachment to my villains, or to any particular heroes. The story is what we make of it at the table.
(Matt Colville had a very good video on this, re-imagining The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings as two D&D campaigns run by a teenage boy a few years apart. The first, The Hobbit, was a game - fun, sandboxy, and unexpected. The second was overly planed, overly detailed, and railroad - but a whole lot of fun for the players who decided to wander off-script and make it their own (The Aragorn player and his murderhobo buddies playing the Elven and Dwarven fighters), if extremely dull and frustrating for the ones who found themselves locked into the story (particularly the Frodo and Sam players))
3. Serve the Players
There's no one right way to play. All of the player types identified in Robin's Rules are cool, and fun to play with if you give them what you want. I have no preference.
Equally, I no longer try to be extremely restrictive. I give guidelines, but if players have a cool idea that steps outside of them and fits the setting, I run with it.
4. Simulationist? Narrativist? Gamist? It's all D&D to me...
As I noted above, I started my DMing in high school as an obsessive narrativist running 2e (and a number of other games, including Star Wars and Earthdawn), and in college became an equally obsessive simulationist running 3e/3.5. I was trying to make everything fit together and logically cohere, and obsessed over details that didn't matter one bit to my players. Naturally, I hated 4e when it came out because it threw out all my crazy simulationism.
While I still don't care much for 4e, I no longer hate it for throwing away my simulationism, as 5e isn't particularly simulationist either. I focus on running the game. To make everyone - including myself! - happy, I need to emphasize all three at different times.
But it's all D&D to me.
I feel less need to be constrained by the game system. Back in the day, I tried to stay as close to the rules as written as much as possible (even before the term RAW was a thing). Now I don't keep the rules from keeping the game going, even though I still houserule a lot of things. If I forget a rule/change, I just run with it for the session and try to remember next time.
Interestingly, I currently have to do more prepwork than before, but that's because I play only on Roll20, rather than IRL. The system of Roll20 allows for a great experience, but as a DM I feel I have to put in extra effort to make it work for combat and exploration. Before I put only a handful of thought into each encounter/challenge.
Interestingly, I currently have to do more prepwork than before, but that's because I play only on Roll20, rather than IRL. The system of Roll20 allows for a great experience, but as a DM I feel I have to put in extra effort to make it work for combat and exploration. Before I put only a handful of thought into each encounter/challenge.
Our games have quite a bit of rolling and quite a bit of social. These aren't mutually exclusive.
I'm hoping to run a session of Wuthering Heights some time soon. That's heavily social but with plenty of rolling!
ccs
41st lv DM
I've grown fatter and balder.
I've also become many magnitudes better at improv & storytelling - wich comes in really handy as I've also become a lot lazier.
See, my "prep" for many sessions these days? It typically consists of me jotting down a handful of bullet points on a single legal pad page & then riffing off of that + whatever my players actually do during the session.
Often that one page will serve for several weeks.
I've also become many magnitudes better at improv & storytelling - wich comes in really handy as I've also become a lot lazier.
See, my "prep" for many sessions these days? It typically consists of me jotting down a handful of bullet points on a single legal pad page & then riffing off of that + whatever my players actually do during the session.
Often that one page will serve for several weeks.
Li Shenron
Legend
I started playing BECMI in the 90s but became a DM with the advent of 3.0. Moved to 3.5 for half a year or so then back to 3.0 until the end of the edition. Took a hiatus off D&D completely during 4e, and came back as soon as D&D Next was announced, playtested various packages then moved to actual 5e.
In my very early days (maybe 1st year) of DMing I was very strict and practically a rules lawyer. Then I realized how narcissistic that was, as it only made me happy about it and nobody else, and became a strong proponent of RAI over RAW, and that still most defines me.
Another big change for me, but a lot more gradual, was that I started off as a major "top-down" adventure planner and fantasy setting designer, and through the years I drifted slowly towards "bottom-up". So for instance, in the past I used to always pre-define geography, history, religions and politics of the fantasy world, and present them to the players in the first session. Gradually I realized that again it was all about me, as I was having fun planning those things, but it never made the game better than using a published setting or making things up along the way. So eventually I just started to run campaigns which start off locally and let the PCs discover the world lately, and I feel free to add stuff from my previous games or new without worry.
There was a period around 5 years into DMing when I was using a LOT of house rules. I went back from 3.5 to 3.0 and started to make my own variant, at some point it was pretty big, even though I never touched the fundamental mechanics of the game. I guess it was mainly an attempt at varying the game experience when it started to feel a bit repetitive. Nowadays I practically ignore house rules and get along with the game system.
I also at some point decided to settle with the idea of always asking the player of a dead PC if she really wanted the PC to die or rather accept some penalty and continue. I met players who were visibly upset by character death and I am sworn to help them, and don't care anymore about those who disagree.
There's a couple of less important changes which I might definitely go back once again in the future:
On the other hand, the main thing which NEVER changed about me is my love for RANDOM
There will always be plenty of dice rolls in my game, as well as me rolling on random tables behind the screen.
In my very early days (maybe 1st year) of DMing I was very strict and practically a rules lawyer. Then I realized how narcissistic that was, as it only made me happy about it and nobody else, and became a strong proponent of RAI over RAW, and that still most defines me.
Another big change for me, but a lot more gradual, was that I started off as a major "top-down" adventure planner and fantasy setting designer, and through the years I drifted slowly towards "bottom-up". So for instance, in the past I used to always pre-define geography, history, religions and politics of the fantasy world, and present them to the players in the first session. Gradually I realized that again it was all about me, as I was having fun planning those things, but it never made the game better than using a published setting or making things up along the way. So eventually I just started to run campaigns which start off locally and let the PCs discover the world lately, and I feel free to add stuff from my previous games or new without worry.
There was a period around 5 years into DMing when I was using a LOT of house rules. I went back from 3.5 to 3.0 and started to make my own variant, at some point it was pretty big, even though I never touched the fundamental mechanics of the game. I guess it was mainly an attempt at varying the game experience when it started to feel a bit repetitive. Nowadays I practically ignore house rules and get along with the game system.
I also at some point decided to settle with the idea of always asking the player of a dead PC if she really wanted the PC to die or rather accept some penalty and continue. I met players who were visibly upset by character death and I am sworn to help them, and don't care anymore about those who disagree.
There's a couple of less important changes which I might definitely go back once again in the future:
On the other hand, the main thing which NEVER changed about me is my love for RANDOM
There will always be plenty of dice rolls in my game, as well as me rolling on random tables behind the screen.
Imaculata
Hero
I've brought some ideas from 5th edition into my 3rd edition games, and on the whole I am a lot more lenient regarding the rules. I don't worry too much about metagaming anymore and allow my players more to narrate their actions. I've also brought a lot of my level design experience into the design of my dungeons, and I think on the whole the balance of my encounters is a lot better. More focus on enemy formations, flanking, height differences and balanced groups of enemies to better challenge the players. My encounters now always include plenty of optional tactical elements that the players can use. I've taken out gotchas, and my traps are now foreshadowed properly. On the whole I've also cut down on the amount of checks and taken out checks with a known outcome (such as checking for traps in empty rooms).
My work load has increased ten-fold for running campaigns. I do so much more world building and make a lot more maps. All of my campaigns are sandboxes so I have to keep track of a ton of stuff to keep things consistent and prepare ahead of where the players may be going. I don't mind the extra work, because I feel it severely increases the quality of the campaigns, but it does require a lot more time to prepare these days.
My work load has increased ten-fold for running campaigns. I do so much more world building and make a lot more maps. All of my campaigns are sandboxes so I have to keep track of a ton of stuff to keep things consistent and prepare ahead of where the players may be going. I don't mind the extra work, because I feel it severely increases the quality of the campaigns, but it does require a lot more time to prepare these days.
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