D&D General What are "soft" skills that a DM benefits from learning?

[Rhenny]

Keeping game notes to make it easier to plan and make meaningful connections in later game sessions. Players love when they see the fruits of their labor as the campaign continues. They also love to meet re-appearing npcs or villains and know that their actions (successes and failures) have consequences.

 

[Quickleaf]

Active Listening
Plausible situation extrapolation / improvisation
Maintaining consistency in rulings

For your 2nd one, would you consider that pretty much the same as "Adapt the Rules to Cover Situations Outside the Rules"?

 

[darjr]

Patience
Listening
Subtly moving the focus along to other players
Not saying to much
Not saying enough
Not showing how the pizza is made

 

[darjr]

Oh also
Mind reading
Thought projection
Really, or at least doing your best to make it seem like that’s what’s going on.

 

[Nagol]

For your 2nd one, would you consider that pretty much the same as "Adapt the Rules to Cover Situations Outside the Rules"?

Not really. Here's a few examples:
The group unexpectedly decides to appeal to a power in the area for general help with a problem. There may be rules pertaining to how the NPC will react, but generally nothing about what action that reaction will generate. Does it share money, manpower, or knowledge?
The group locks themselves in a trap. How long until a denizen of the area notices? Which one? What actions will get taken?
While in a new town, the group starts flashing a lot of wealth in lower class areas. Will an attempt be made to relieve them of said wealth? What level of resources will be put into the effort? What manner will the attempt take?
A random encounter chart has a listing for "something goes missing". Where has it gone? If it has been stolen, who is the thief?
A named NPC is randomly determined to be in the area. The PCs run into them and engage in conversation. Why is the NPC here? Is company desired?

 

[pemerton]

Active Listening
Plausible situation extrapolation / improvisation
Maintaining consistency in rulings

For your 2nd one, would you consider that pretty much the same as "Adapt the Rules to Cover Situations Outside the Rules"?

I was going to post Deciding on consequences. Which I see as related to Nagol's extrapolation/improvisation, but with a particular focus on (i) honouring success/failure, and (ii) a good sense of explicit or implicit stakes, as well as (iii) consistency with the established fiction and its trajectory.

Nagol's follow-up post gives some examples of this. He also gives some examples of knowing how to frame a scene with effective stakes:

The group unexpectedly decides to appeal to a power in the area for general help with a problem. There may be rules pertaining to how the NPC will react, but generally nothing about what action that reaction will generate. Does it share money, manpower, or knowledge? Narrating consequences of success
The group locks themselves in a trap. How long until a denizen of the area notices? Which one? What actions will get taken? Narrating consequences of failure
While in a new town, the group starts flashing a lot of wealth in lower class areas. Will an attempt be made to relieve them of said wealth? What level of resources will be put into the effort? What manner will the attempt take? Effective scene framing
A random encounter chart has a listing for "something goes missing". Where has it gone? If it has been stolen, who is the thief? Effective scene framing, which might also build on consequences
A named NPC is randomly determined to be in the area. The PCs run into them and engage in conversation. Why is the NPC here? Is company desired? Effective scene framing

You'll see that I've tagged Nagol's examples.

I think this set of skills is one of the most important for GMing. It's what makes the game worth playing on the player-side of the experience.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There are a whole bundle of skills that a Dungeon Master can learn from reading the books, talking to fellow DMs, and watching streamed games. And then there are "soft" skills that DMs tend to pick up as a result of either trial-and-error, mentorship by a more experienced DM, or just raw talent.

What are the important "soft" DMing skills that the DMG is silent on?

I ask because a friend and I are collaborating on an adventure to help new DMs learn how to be a Dungeon Master. I've jotted down these twelve...

1. Improvise NPCs & Dialogue
2. When to Roll Dice… and When Not To
3. Learn Your Players
4. Present Scenarios with Multiple Paths to Victory
5. Encourage Outside the Box Thinking
6. Know When to End a Scene
7. Handle the Start of Initiative
8. Running Combat, Monster Tactics, and Keeping Track
9. Group/Table Management
10. Flow Between Players & DM: Action-Reaction
11. Adapt the Rules to Cover Situations Outside the Rules
12. Pacing

I think bullet points massively undersell some of this and make other bits seem far more important than they are. Group/table management is actually a vast array of fairly deep skills (and some DMs never learn them!), which involve actively listening to the players, helping them to actually say what they want their PCs to be doing (a lot of players are quite weak at this), making sure everyone gets heard, everyone gets time to play their PCs, that everyone understands what is going on, and so on. As well as stuff like presenting information in a way that's compelling and engaging and actually gets ideas across to the players and generally is more at the heart of good DMing than anything else. This sort of stuff is very easy to overlook and it seems extreme to bullet point it equally to say, handling the start of initiative.

The other big one you're missing, which the DMG mentions, is "be a fan of the players", which cannot be overstated, especially for a new DM because starting off with an adversarial attitude is probably the worst possible way to start a DMing career.

 

[pemerton]

Group/table management is actually a vast array of fairly deep skills (and some DMs never learn them!), which involve actively listening to the players, helping them to actually say what they want their PCs to be doing (a lot of players are quite weak at this), making sure everyone gets heard, everyone gets time to play their PCs, that everyone understands what is going on, and so on. As well as stuff like presenting information in a way that's compelling and engaging and actually gets ideas across to the players and generally is more at the heart of good DMing than anything else. This sort of stuff is very easy to overlook

The 4e DMG discussed this stuff I don't know how good that discussion is as a teaching tool because by the time I read it I already had a reasonable handle on this stuff. To me it seemed at least OK.

 

[jasper]

....

What are the important "soft" DMing skills that the DMG is silent on?

So I should use the nerf bat to correct my players, not the cricket bat. OOPS.

 

[Inchoroi]

My big four:
1. I always recommend that a DM start with a published adventure or adventure path first, before trying to write their own (this is the voice of experience). Learn how one is built first, then build your own.
2. Don't create what you don't have to create; if you're not publishing it yourself, steal literally everything that you need to.
3. Prep is key; not too much, but not too little. If you're not writing from scratch, 4 hours for a session is a pretty good ballpark.
4. Not everyone is Matt Mercer. Its okay not to do voices. Its okay to try to do voices but suck at them. You're not a group of trained voice actors (unless you are, in which case I envy you).