D&D General Professor DungeonMasters Advice on DMing


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Theming goes a long way. At a recent con, I completely randomly rolled the dungeons an hour before the sessions (using Shadowdark) but I had a very strong theme with established factions and other elements, so prep was insanely easy. I could have done it at the table at the time with how simple it is with Shadowdark, but having the complete picture in front of me made it easier to present options to the playrs.
 

I like this advice with the (somewhat big) caveat that the GM must be extremely open to the players ideas and proposed solutions. Too often, GMs will only allow things to work that they had thought of themselves and it devolves into guess what the DM is thinking:

DM: Ok, how do you propose to get out of this mess...
Players: We try A.
DM: Nope, because reasons.
Players: We try B.
DM: Nope, because different reasons.
All the way to - assuming the PCs are not dead or worse, the players get bored and give up:
Players: We try Z.
DM: That works. Great creative solution that I, in no way, was fully shooting for!
The famous « think outside the box » is often Think inside the DM box!
 

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