D&D General The Best Advice for New DMs I Can Give

[DarkCrisis]

Best DM advice: (It's just a joke relax)

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Maybe this has been said in varying degrees already in this thread but this really helped me:

There's no "one way" or "right way" to do anything.

Any given situation has any number of solutions or rulings. Don't kill yourself trying to figure out the exact skill roll or rule to handle a specific thing.

To use D&D as an example: Sometimes you can call for a INT (history) check to intimidate someone. Sometimes it'll be the player that suggests it. Often it won't be what another GM would do. That's okay.

I mean, sure, this might not help anyone make specific rulings but it sure makes adjudicating things less stressful.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

Yeah this is really good advice. I definitely felt this when I started writing my own adventures, but I was raised in a very pro-art environment (my mum was an illustrator), so had already got the message that you can get better, you can get more skilled, you can achieve your vision, if you put the time and effort in, but it won't be perfect immediately - or necessarily any time soon.

My advice to DMs would be to also remain open-minded and self-critical about your own DMing, and to know you can always improve, even once you get good. Because just as we have some DMs who quit early on, because they wrote a mediocre adventure or the like, we also get DMs who just assume they're great, and never learn, nor improve, nor question their own DMing, which can lead to them being perpetually mediocre or worse as DMs.

Also I'd always advise DMs to think hard about why and when they're calling for rolls. DMs I play with these days, in their thirties and forties are typically pretty solid and have long since stopped doing anything petty or annoying or adversarial, but a problem I do see a lot of DMs struggle with, not just D&D ones, but it is worst with long-time 3.XE/PF1 DMs, which is just calling for way too many rolls in games designed around the DM only calling for "necessary" rolls (which includes 5E). It's very important to consider the specific game and when it expects rolls to be called, not to call for a roll at every conceivable opportunity, especially in binary pass/fail systems.

 

[Lanefan]

So, in short: the best way to learn how to DM is just do it, and let trial and error take over from there.

Which is what I've been saying - against steady pushback in these forums - for ages.

 

[Mannahnin]

So, in short: the best way to learn how to DM is just do it, and let trial and error take over from there.

Which is what I've been saying - against steady pushback in these forums - for ages.

Links welcome!

 

[Mort]

So, in short: the best way to learn how to DM is just do it, and let trial and error take over from there.

Which is what I've been saying - against steady pushback in these forums - for ages.

Has there been pushback?

I often disagree with your positions, but on this one -The best way to learn how to DM is to just start doing it - absolutely.

 

[Oofta]

I think another aspect of this is to not let perfection get in the way of good enough along with everyone always has room for improvement. If I put off starting a campaign until I had a perfect setting, perfect NPCs, perfect understanding of where all the organizations and groups stood my campaigns would never get off the ground.

You will never be a perfect DM. I've been DMing for longer than I care to remember and I still get imposter syndrome whenever I DM. Fortunately I'm a good enough of an imposter that my players don't seem to notice. So there are times where I'm still experimenting here and there, still trying different options and trying to figure out how I could do things a bit better. It's one of the reasons I'm still reading through the new DMG even though it's not targeted at experienced DMs. Because sometimes it's good to challenge yourself and revisit the basics.

So when you start to DM, just jump in with both feet. The worst thing that can happen is that you learn a lesson and hopefully you can figure out how to do it better. But you'll never know how to do better if you don't try. Besides, more often than not in my experience people give new DMs a lot of slack and if you can keep the game moving people will have fun.

 

[Lanefan]

Has there been pushback?

I'm not about to go digging through old threads but it seems whenever I suggest trial and error as a learning method I catch flak from some (I can think of a few specific posters but won't name them here) who would rather the "error" piece be excised in favour of the DMG providing strong - even to the point of rigid - instructions and guidelines on how to DM.

I often disagree with your positions, but on this one -The best way to learn how to DM is to just start doing it - absolutely.

That's our agreement for the year - we now return you to our regular programming.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

My advice: Get the money up front!!!

 

[Scribe]

No matter what your level of talent, in any field, nothing is more important than doing.

I said that exact thing earlier. "How did you learn to do that, did your Dad teach you? No, I learned by doing it."