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Message: <blockquote data-quote="weem" data-source="post: 5022330" data-attributes="member: 9470">Ok, here is the challenge.Try and choose one (at least) aspect of your DM-ing skills/characteristics for each of the grade letters A, B, C, D and F based on how good or bad you are at them.Here's mine!AImprov: I think immersion is a really important thing to have in a game, and immersing the players in the story is top priority (second to them having fun of course). I do not respond with "Uhhh" or "Ummm". I feel like I either know the answer to a question they might ask an NPC (for example), or I need be able to answer it quickly based on my knowledge of what the NPC would know of the question. Sometimes, in dialog, Uhh's and Umm's are appropriate - for example, when someone is hiding something. But the answer to the question "Where did you grow up" is not "Uhhhh... hmmmm... lemme look at the map" or "Uhhhh... he would be from [insert city] so yea, from there".This comes up most often with dialog and NPC's and I consider this aspect of my DM-ing to be my specialty, but it carries over to PC actions as well. If they do something unexpected, they will never know I was not prepared. I respond as the situation would call for and keep the game moving. My goal in these situations (where PC's surprise you) is to make them feel like I knew they would do that. I represent the world and everything in it... I should not be stumbling around for an answer.BCreative/Unique Stories: I could do better at giving the players something new that they have not seen, but not much better (imo). Of course I get my inspiration from various sources and borrow ideas, but I always try to make them my own and keep the PC's guessing. I do not run modules and instead try and come up with my own stories and ways in which I can turn stereotypical ideas on their heads or twist them into something new. Of course, there isn't much left that hasn't been done - but I'm simply referring to what I have seen myself and what I know the players have seen, etc. CEncounter Building: I'm simply average here. There is a lot of room for improvement. I tend to think "well, realistically what would be here" and choose some monsters etc as opposed to thinking tactically as well in order to make an encounter more challenging/exciting. I'm okay at setting up dynamic encounters, with interesting terrain etc, but with regards to the combat aspect, I can get pretty lazy.DPreparation: I wait till the last minute to put things together. My NPC's I think about a lot as I want to get the immersion and feel right, but when it comes to putting pencil to paper for all other details (I don't use the computer for game prep) I wait too long and end up rushing things. This leads to me, after a game, saying "oh man, I forgot this" or at the next game saying, "sorry, forgot to mention this" etc. These kinds of details get missed.FI have been playing for 21-ish years and DM-ing most of that (probably 19-20 of em). All of the things I would have graded as an F over the years, I have worked on making better. So, I don't have anything I feel I completely Fail at. I'm interested to see what everyone else has for this - if anything.Bonus Challenge...Since new years is coming soon, and some people like to do new years resolutions (I have never had one yet) I'll ask... if you made a new years resolution to work on improving one aspect of your game next year, what will it be?For me, it would be the "Encounter Building" I graded as a "C" above. I intend on working on this much more in the months ahead as we move closer to the middle of my second 4e campaign. My goal will be to make at least one of the encounters for each session memorable in some way - do something really interesting and fun with it.</blockquote>

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