I want to be the best DM...

[Stacie GmrGrl]

I want to be the best girl DM in the world... Then I'll strive for mantle of best DM in the world period...now, which world we are talking about, since there are like a few billion in the universe plus all the worlds of our imagination, I think that there are options that all of us could be the best DM in our own worlds of imagination.

Of course, I must first pick and run a game to begin this epic quest of DMing Greatness And it won't be D&D.

 

[Piratecat]

Where there specific questions/survey points in that feedback? I know the hazards of putting a large 'fill in the blank'
...
So.. if you were going to write a survey to get good feedback from our regular group, what would you ask?

It doesn't have quite the same effect in your regular group for three reasons:

- Your players love you and won't be jerks to you
- Your players know your play style and may not have a wide range of GMs to compare you to
- I found the aggregate scores really useful; if dozens of people with different play styles rated me lower on one aspect, I figure that's something I should work on.

Those surveys asked the player to rate, on a 1-5 scale, include:

Rules knowledge
Roleplaying
Preparation/knowledge of adventure
Organization
Overall performance

I like to do a survey for my players every year, less about my own DMing and more about the campaign's direction. There are a few old threads about this I can dig up if you're interested. If you do want a weekly post-game survey, I'd ask two questions:

- what's one thing I did you really liked?
- what's one thing I might have been able to improve?

Those two questions, filled out after every game by the players, will help a ton.

 

[Scotley]

I too love dming and want to do my best. My enemy these days is time. No time to get behind the screens and no time to prepare.

I will comment on one thing you said. You noted that you had no interest in being a player. As others have said you can learn a lot for watching other DM's good and bad. If you only DM you miss out on a lot of potential learning. If you really want to be the best you have to play some times too.

 

[Oryan77]

...is DM-ing something you strive to be very good at? The best at?[/B]

I strive to be the best DM I can be. I really do listen to people and take criticism to heart. I enjoy doing all the things online that you listed.

But, I understand that "being good" depends on the players you have. Players from one group will say that their DM is really good, the best even. And other players will say that same DM is the worst DM they've ever had. So it's hard for me to tell if I am really good or not. All I know is that I have a group of players that still show up to play every other week. So I assume I'm doing pretty good.

I'd like to think I'm a really good DM. I know I do things that don't sit well with a lot of players (no magic item shops, no childish PC names, slower character leveling, micromanaging magic items in treasure), but the kind of players I want to DM would be the kind that can overlook those issues and still find it worth playing because I run a really good game. I also don't make a lot of the mistakes that a lot of bad DMs make (DMPCs, DM vs player attitude, railroading, etc).

And in all honesty, any of my past players that would say I'm a bad DM would not be people that I would be sorry to hear that from. The funny thing is, they don't realize how crappy they are at being players

 

[Amaroq]

Just remember that sometimes you need to allow yourself the freedom to not "be the best" and indeed, even to fail. Because sometimes focussing on "being the best" might not actually get you to your goal. Often you can end up trying too hard with these things, and as a result stymie your own creative juices. You over prepare, you get writer's block, or just stop taking risks because of the fear of failure. As a consequence, you don't enjoy yourself, and neither do your players. Of course, your drive to be the best demands a regime of rigid self criticism, which becomes either self indulgent or crippling...

Great advice from spunkrat here, well before he got to the bit about subverting the dragon-princess trope.

I was doing a lot of fiction writing on the web, free and for fun, to the point where I started winning awards and getting a lot of user feedback suggesting that I "go pro".

As soon as I started "writing professionally", I got the worst case of writer's block: basically, I felt like any plot I could think of had, quote, already been done, endquote, and wasn't original. It completely stymied me, to the point where I let go of that dream and went back to working a day job.

When I started DM'ing again, I found myself facing the same mindset - so I visited www.tvtropes.org, and set out intentionally to write myself a stereotype by cribbing tropes from the site and filling in names. Seriously, I tossed in something like ten stereotypes in the first gaming session alone. And discovered that, as I gave each of them depth, they got a long way away from "stereotypical".

It was a fun exercise in creativity, honestly, and has left the players with more questions than they'll be able to answer anytime soon!

 

[Piratecat]

I
But, I understand that "being good" depends on the players you have. Players from one group will say that their DM is really good, the best even. And other players will say that same DM is the worst DM they've ever had.

I think a good DM adapts to his players. If your group loves a dungeon crawl, you deliver a really fun one even when it isn't full of meaty roleplaying (or puzzles, or what have you) that you might prefer.

(This gets us into a whole different topic, that of group-to-DM fit, but you know what I mean.)

And let me just say that Amaroq has a fantastic point. Take risks. Subvert expectations. Make sure you're having fun.

 

[Oryan77]

I think a good DM adapts to his players. If your group loves a dungeon crawl, you deliver a really fun one even when it isn't full of meaty roleplaying (or puzzles, or what have you) that you might prefer.

That's true if it is just a short lived game. But a DM would get bored over time if he wanted to run a long term game but was always forced to hack-n-slash when he wants more in depth roleplaying situations. And a bored DM can lead to being a bad DM.

I've DMed groups filled with players that wanted to hack-n-slash when I wanted to focus more on roleplaying. What I've realized is this:

1. A DM is sometimes expected to cater to players by DMing a style of game that he may not really want to DM. If he does this, he's a good DM.

2. A player is sometimes expected to cater to the DM by playing in a style of game that the DM wants to run, but the player may not want to play in. If the DM does this, he's a bad DM.

So players may think a DM is a bad DM, but other DMs may not think he's being a bad DM. But then it's the players opinion that sorta matters more, right? It's situations like this that make me question my DMing ability because I have no problem refusing to DM a game I don't want to DM. But I've had plenty of players make me feel like scum for not letting them get what they want 24/7.

Sometimes people make it seem like you have to be a huge pushover in order to be a good DM.

 

[Piratecat]

Sometimes people make it seem like you have to be a huge pushover in order to be a good DM.

Hmm. I'm not so sure I agree. No one can take advantage of you without your permission, so I think it's fully within a DM's right to say "I'd rather not run a game like that, but I'd love it if you did." You need to pick and choose your games without feeling the least bit guilty for avoiding the ones you don't care for.

I'm not a big fan of pure combat, and I know that I'd suck running a cool game like World's Largest Dungeon -- it just wouldn't be fun for me. I'd never agree to do so as a result. I'd be more likely to try and inject more tactical play into a game that also has the plotty roleplaying that I personally enjoy. I'm sure that compromise would satisfy everyone, but it'd keep me interested, and as you say, that helps the game overall. If the compromise didn't work for someone, I'd want to see if there was a solution.

But as I said, this may be more of a "player fit vs DM fit" issues than a "what makes a good DM" issue. I dunno.

 

[MortonStromgal]

I always strive to be the best DM/GM/Storyteller I can be. Some of this is practice another part is finding other guys I can steal ideas off of by playing in their games or just having converstaions with them. The more I do this the shorter the list of guys is that I can steal ideas from.

 

[Heathen72]

Great advice As soon as I started "writing professionally", I got the worst case of writer's block: basically, I felt like any plot I could think of had, quote, already been done, endquote, and wasn't original. It completely stymied me, to the point where I let go of that dream and went back to working a day job.

Thanks Amaroq.

That is why I found the 'break the routine' model so effective. It's basically a tool you can use when you aren't feeling creative. It means you don't have to strive to come up with a truly original idea off the cuff, which is a blessing when you are feeling flat and uninspired. It takes the pressure off you - in a way it feels like you are getting your ideas from someone else.

Once you are comfortable with the basic idea you can then 'break the routine' more and more creatively. You'll note in my examples above, each of 5 different ideas broke the routine in a different way. I could have come up with 5 same-y ideas (the princess is secretly the dragon; the dragon is secretly her father; the dragon is actually the Princess's twin sister; the king's wife is actually a were-dragon; the player is a dragon, but doesn't know it, etc) but when you force yourself to find different ways to break the patterns, your imagination really begins to take wing and 'good' ideas really start to flow.

The first step is not to limit yourself to simply breaking 'the narrative' routine. There are so many different ways you can make something mundane interesting. Any area which bores you or your players, anything which is stale and ordinary, is a routine to be broken. It can be a subtle break. It can be a massive break.

So, if I were to break the routine setting of the princess and the dragon story in a simple way, I might eschew the 'Knights and Shining Armour' era in favour of a story set in the dark ages, where the Princess is no more than a feudal lord's illegitimate daughter, and the dragon just a massive worm whose lair is the riddled intestines of some dead titan from an earlier age. Or for more radical 'setting' breaks, I might make it about a princess of a Zulu tribe, or a gnollish princess, or even Princess Leia!

Another way is break the routine is to change the concept a little: maybe the story is about a Dragon which has been caught by evil humans. Maybe the dragon is a 'Paint Dragon' that has taken up residence in a massive landscape on the mural behind the King's throne. Or maybe the Protagonist is the princess, and she needs to rescue everyone else as they have been sucked into the black Belly of some stellar Dragon.

Or I might pick a routine character, and change them. Or put a moral dilemma where there wasn't one before. Or add an unintended consequence to the saving of the Princess where it was previously happy ever after. And so on.

One thing that is important to remember, though, is that you need to establish the routine before you break it! The routine is the foundation which forms the basis of your creative surges and is the part of your story which is recognisable and reassuring to your players. To put it another way, if you have no routine, there is no level of expectation to be broken, and no resonance for the players. So even though some of the examples above involve quite radical 'breaks', the stories are still recognisable at a basic level as the 'princess and the dragon' stories.

The more you play against expectations the more suspense you will build in your game. As long as you choose things that are sensible for the situation you really can't over do it. And if you never pick the cliche'd path, at some point picking the cliche is itself a surprise...
..You can even do this to avoid lulls and pauses in the game.

Yes, it's very important to remember not to draw ideas from right outside of the circle of expectation! You haven't been given a licence to be totally wacky and 'out of the blue'! That is not to say that you can't do something unexpected, but you don't want the players to go "WTF? Where the hell did that come from?" or to be looking at you nervously, so terrified of what twist you might throw at them that they can't relax. You can get away with bizarre 'breaks' very occasionally for shock value - the spaceship scene in Life of Brian comes to mind - but for the most part, any twist should totally make sense after the fact (even if it is in a slightly odd way).

As markq suggests, it's not just limited to prep time either. Get used to the technique, and you can do it on the fly. For me it's now more than a creative tool; it's a way of life. I only want to write a play, write a story, or run a game that is in some way different, or out of the ordinary. Otherwise, what is the point?