D&D 5E Oh, Man, Do I Need Some DM Tips. . .

[jasper]

Use a dm cheat sheet which list their level, spell dc, armour class, etc.
Hot swap spells. You had fireball and hold person written down, change to x or y. BUT don't do that all the time and correct spell books after the fact.
Crazy one shot dungeons. Throw away monsters and pc so you can practice encounters.
If you have time before bed, read 1 or 2 pages of the spells or class each night.

 

[Kalshane]

[MENTION=6749050]pontinyc[/MENTION] It's probably going to be a few sessions yet for this AP, but start thinking about the next "boss" fight (against TSM) now. While it's probably too early for legendary actions, IMO (I personally would save those for Ms. X at the end of Chapter 2), make sure some of those baddies waiting outside TSM's room are in there with him instead and, considering the location, lair actions would be very appropriate. I'm going to incorporate both lair actions and minions when my PCs reach that point (though I haven't settled on the details of the specific Lair Actions yet.)

I'm also considering following the PC polymorph rules for when TSM dons his mask during the encounter and giving that form its own separate amount of HPs.

 

[pontinyc]

A quick update. . . we had our next session this past weekend and it went much better, thanks to you all. I certainly didn't take any quantum leaps as a DM (that's going to take time) but I felt good about the progress that was made. I embraced the game style that they prefer (math, murder-hoboing, beer and pretzels style fun) much more while trying to incorporate elements of what it is that I enjoy most (rp'd discussion, descriptive actions, etc.). I made the fights much more dynamic, took risks with the bads by running through opportunity attacks to get to clothies, used their clutch abilities earlier in the fight which forced the party to think more tactically or scramble a bit, etc.

I was also much more prepared in terms of familiarity with the stat blocks and abilities for the encounters, hand waved stuff that they didn't seem interested in (even if I may have loved it), and tried to stay ahead of them in terms of pacing. Al in all an improvement with still a long way to go.

Huge thanks again to all who've contributed to this thread so far. It's been invaluable to me and hopefully somewhat helpful to a few others, as well. I'll be coming back to it constantly as I move forward.

Cheers!