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Message: <blockquote data-quote="La Bete" data-source="post: 578073" data-attributes="member: 6079">Hi randomling,as has been said before, dont stress too much about your dming sucking - if it really did, people  wouldnt play under you!That said, there are two key things that have drastically improved my dming recently (I have run some good games, but Ive had my share of die-offs), but since trying to pay more attention to these points, my games have been doing well.1.  Preparation - not necessarily hours and hours of prep, but some quick cheat-sheets of names, etc. I frequently head to my game with just a few scrawled notes in my notebook. Plus I always have a dozen names for NPC of each race for that "name-brain-drain" moment.2. Consistency. If the nature of your games is consistent, then you players are more able to immerse themselves in your game. This can be everything from noting down the names of npcs the PC's have met, to ensuring house rules are clear and upfront. Also ensure that your world is internally consistent - i.e. why does the little village populated by good people nestled at the bottom of the Mountain of Doom, Stronghold of the Dread Wizard Hoojiwazzit survive? etc.Running short sessions can also help - though if you are running online games, you are getting the benefit of this already.I used to have problems sometimes when I was running evening games - sometimes there would be a session when the game really lost traction, and people were just milling around. 3-4 hours of that a few weeks in a row will kill most games. Or the party would take completely unexpected paths, and in the scramble to keep up, eventually, without the opportunity to collect my thoughts, I would make a mistake that would often appear 'silly' - which would damage the feel of the game.Recently however, I started running a lunchtime game - with only an hour to deal with, the sessions rarely run away from you.hope this helps....PS, whatever you do, dont do a'hand of god' or 'super-npc saves the party' until you are really confident with your dming - its really, really Really easy to screw this up.</blockquote>

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