D&D 5E Let's Have A Thread of Veteran GM Advice

[overgeeked]

When your creativity is falling short, how do you create the bones of an interesting session when prepping?

Random charts and PC / player goals.

If your PCs or players have any goals at all, focus there. Instant interest from at least one player. You can sprinkle hints and clues throughout for the other PCs’ / players’ goals.

Check out Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. It’s a masterwork on minimal and quick prep.

 

[overgeeked]

I may have even asked this here on ENW before - how do you onboard a new rules set into your brain so that the experience for the players is pretty ok?

(not perfect, but pretty ok)

Minimize what you try to do early on. You don’t need everything from the jump. Stick with the simple stuff like basic skill/stat/save checks. If it’s a heavy combat game, avoid fights the first few sessions. Then plan a normal fight for the system for the 3rd or 4th session and be ready for that fight to be the whole session. Books out on the table, everyone flipping pages and checking things, etc. Alternately, run lighter games that don’t have as much crunch to worry about.

 

[overgeeked]

I’ve got a few.

How do you stop rules lawyers and power gamers from ruining the game? Currently the only thing that works is booting them. Simply accepting the bad behavior isn’t an option. Neither is pretending it’s not bad behavior.

How do you get players to stop expecting you to constantly feed them the plot? This is something the Alexandrian talked about. So many players have been lead around by the nose for so long they don’t seem to get there’s any other way to play. What do you do to break the players of this habit? And no, simply leading them around by the nose isn’t an option.

 

[Lanefan]

A question I’ve been mulling… When you’ve got a lot of house rules (like me), what have you found is the best way to disseminate that info to your players? This is assuming players are bought in / that conversation has been held. Do you let it be a slow build of knowledge, pointing out house rules as they come up? Do you assemble a document and if so, do you go over it together at beginning or do you expect players to read it on their own? Do you find a wiki is effective or players don’t even check? Do you redo char sheets with house rules embedded? What works for you insofar as communicating lots of house rules with your players?

Put them online, tell the players (repeatedly!) where to find them, and after that it's on the players to read them as needed.

 

[Lanefan]

I’ve got a few.

How do you stop rules lawyers and power gamers from ruining the game? Currently the only thing that works is booting them. Simply accepting the bad behavior isn’t an option. Neither is pretending it’s not bad behavior.

The way to stop rules lawyers is to make sure you decisively win every argument. Which means, you have to know the rules better than they do. Failing that, put up a sign on your DM screen to the effect of "The DM's word is law. Abide or die."

The way to stop - or at least greatly slow down - power gamers is to proactively houserule out whatever loopholes you think they will use. And yes, this can sometimes mean rewriting large chunks of the game.

How do you get players to stop expecting you to constantly feed them the plot? This is something the Alexandrian talked about. So many players have been lead around by the nose for so long they don’t seem to get there’s any other way to play. What do you do to break the players of this habit? And no, simply leading them around by the nose isn’t an option.

Drop some more or less obvious adventure hooks and then at some point, just stop talking. Let them sit there and stare at each other all night if nobody takes the initiative to follow up on anything; and when they complain they're bored, bluntly tell them why they're bored.

 

[Sulicius]

Always keep an eye on the clock. Take a break after each hour and a half of play. When the final half an hour of the session arrives, make sure you either slow down the game or speed it up so you can end on a cliffhanger or suitable end point. Don’t be afraid to call the session to an end early if it fits with the pacing.

 

[overgeeked]

The way to stop rules lawyers is to make sure you decisively win every argument. Which means, you have to know the rules better than they do. Failing that, put up a sign on your DM screen to the effect of "The DM's word is law. Abide or die."

I normally do the latter. Doesn’t seem to do much, honestly. We end up in a looped argument that would make this place proud. That’s why I end up just booting them after a few go rounds.

The way to stop - or at least greatly slow down - power gamers is to proactively houserule out whatever loopholes you think they will use. And yes, this can sometimes mean rewriting large chunks of the game.

I already do that. It gets me the dirtiest looks. That’s also why I prefer rules light games. Fewer rules, fewer rules lawyers. I was hoping for something easier.

Drop some more or less obvious adventure hooks and then at some point, just stop talking. Let them sit there and stare at each other all night if nobody takes the initiative to follow up on anything; and when they complain they're bored, bluntly tell them why they're bored.

Yeah. That’s hard advice to follow. Probably right, but hard.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

When your creativity is falling short, how do you create the bones of an interesting session when prepping?

 

[ilgatto]

(...)

I will start:

One thing I still struggle with after all of these years is finding a concise but effective way to note the PC abilities. I believe that in an ongoing campaign, the DM should at least no and sometimes even cater to the mechanics of the PCs -- because those mechanics, the things the players chose, tells you as DM a lot about what they are looking for in play. I am fine with the broad strokes and character motivations and personalities. Where I have trouble is thinking about specific abilities or classes of abilities that individual characters have. I want that information at hand when prepping or running so i can use it as a tool, but I don't know how to organize it and I am just not going to review character sheets all the time (especially with complex versions of the game like PF2 or 5E; Shadowdark is easier).

So there we are. Help me out, and then ask a question of your own.

I have always striven to have all info relevant to sessions/campaigns on a single sheet of paper.

So, I’ve used versions of the DM sheet provided below* for info on PCs and short notes on the current state of affairs in the adventure. I keep this sheet on the table behind the DM screen and it is usually enough to keep me going without noticeable interruptions to play.

In addition, since this DM sheet doesn’t have room for all NPCs the party encounter, the stat blocks of my NPCs have a section called “Party Connection:”, with notes on which PCs they have encountered, when, and why. These stat blocks are where they are supposed to be in the text of the adventure, as well as on one or more separate sheets stapled together and within easy reach during play.

Finally, since these stat blocks allow for short notes only, I keep a timeline of what happened in each session, which is likewise within easy reach during play.

While all of this used to be quite a bit of work in the days of yore, things have become a lot easier with the invention of computers, which allow for files and folders, copy-pasting, easy color coding, and, above all, CTRL-F-ing.

Still some work to be done both before the adventure/campaign starts and after each session, but I find this to be very much worth my while in that it prevents me from having to frantically page through source books, modules, magazines, binders, and stacks of notes during play, which is a good thing.

* Although things can get complicated here as well, I suppose the stats of 2E PCs are a lot less.... um..., involved than those of later versions of the game. Similar sheets (for 1E) are provided in the Dungeon Masters Adventure Log (TSR, 1980)

 

[ilgatto]

(...) Failing that, put up a sign on your DM screen to the effect of "The DM's word is law. Abide or die."

Brilliant! Seriously considering doing that.

(...)
Drop some more or less obvious adventure hooks and then at some point, just stop talking.

"Just stop talking", that's it.
I've recently discovered and started watching the "Into the Darkness Club" sessions on utube (no plug, it's just what it is) and this is exactly what the GMs there do. They dish out info, often in brilliant ways (OK, minor plug, but not associated with them in any way), and then just shut up and leave the PCs to it, even if they are missing extremely obvious clues. Of course, Call of Cthulhu is a game that requires a lot of player input for any of its adventures to work, but still.
So I've recently started doing this myself in, admittedly non-storyline-based, AD&D games and I must say that it I've found it to be quite liberating, if anything. ("You no react? Fine by me. [Puts module down]) So what you guys gonna do?"
I'm currently very interested to see whether this will have an effect on how the players are going to deal with the phenomenon as I continue doing this. Will they start realizing that they're missing out on things? Especially when 'the story goes on without them' and I start referring to earlier events and NPCs further down the line?