D&D General What DM-skills are you bad at?

[ART!]

Can relate. Have stammer.

And me as well.

Apparently, I'm bad at finishing a game I start. I run out of steam, or even have mild panic attacks. I'm pretty sure it's not because of the stutter, because I manage it pretty well, but that does require energy and focus.

Basically, I sweat the details, and get wrapped up in my own...whatever. Players have said they thoroughly enjoyed the games, though, so...?

 

[Democratus]

I am terrible at accents.

I do them as much as possible.

 

[Seramus]

Accents. I can roleplay and act with the best of them, but I always mess up my accents. Including using the wrong one from sentence to sentence. I honestly try, but somehow I can go from Irish, Egyptian, then Upper England all in the same scene for the same character. It's like I don't remember the accent I just used a few seconds ago.

 

[Hungry Hobbit]

sticking to my planned story. always getting new ideas and chop and change as I go through. really annoys me!

 

[Lanefan]

I'll add my name to the list of DMs who are bad at on-the-fly note-taking. I've run entire sessions with lots of crap happening and when I look at my notes afterwards there'll be maybe three words on the page, plus the encounter/xp table, the in-game date, and details of when/where they stopped.

The next day (usually) when I do up the game log I'm mostly going from memory, aided by such notes as I did manage to take.

I'll also add my name to the list of DMs who refuse to touch VTT game-running. Nearly all my adventures these days are either homebrew or using very old modules that VTTs don't support, meaning (from what I gather) to run them halfway well the prep time would be insane, mostly due to mapping. If VTTs supported on-the-fly drawing by means other than a mouse (e.g. finger on a touchscreen, or stylus on a tablet) that'd be different, as I could draw the maps in real time just like I do on the chalkboard in person - or I could describe it and a player could draw it, same diff. But they don't, meaning all the maps have to be digitized, cleaned up, scanned, uploaded, and otherwise farted around with; and life's too bloody short for that.

 

[Minigiant]

I make my NPCs, locations, and organizations too complex. I came remember half the stuff I say and my players pick up on things I forgot. And I accidentally weave crazy webs because of it

 

[Lanefan]

Accents. I can roleplay and act with the best of them, but I always mess up my accents. Including using the wrong one from sentence to sentence. I honestly try, but somehow I can go from Irish, Egyptian, then Upper England all in the same scene for the same character. It's like I don't remember the accent I just used a few seconds ago.

I - pun intended - hear you.

Some accents I'm OK at and can maintain all day, but there's others that I just can't seem to hold for more than a few words or a sentence. For some strange reason, people from cultures that might have those accents seem never to appear in my games...

 

[pukunui]

Intrigue and mystery. I just do not know how to run these sorts of stories effectively, so I tend to avoid them whenever I can.

I would say improv as well but I’m getting better at that!

 

[Blue]

I'm bad at one shots. I almost always homebrew, and getting something satisfying that will wrap up in 4 hours is not in my wheelhouse. Tried running a packaged module that was supposed to be 4 hours, ended up closer to 13 - mostly though extended RP, fun inter-party drama, etc. It wasn't wasted time, but it was more than 3 times as long when I ran it.

So recently I started up a West Marches style campaign with some friends. Trial by fire.

 

[Stormonu]

I'll add my name to the list of DMs who are bad at on-the-fly note-taking. I've run entire sessions with lots of crap happening and when I look at my notes afterwards there'll be maybe three words on the page, plus the encounter/xp table, the in-game date, and details of when/where they stopped.

The next day (usually) when I do up the game log I'm mostly going from memory, aided by such notes as I did manage to take.

I'll also add my name to the list of DMs who refuse to touch VTT game-running. Nearly all my adventures these days are either homebrew or using very old modules that VTTs don't support, meaning (from what I gather) to run them halfway well the prep time would be insane, mostly due to mapping. If VTTs supported on-the-fly drawing by means other than a mouse (e.g. finger on a touchscreen, or stylus on a tablet) that'd be different, as I could draw the maps in real time just like I do on the chalkboard in person - or I could describe it and a player could draw it, same diff. But they don't, meaning all the maps have to be digitized, cleaned up, scanned, uploaded, and otherwise farted around with; and life's too bloody short for that.

I can sympathize with the set-up time, but at least for roll20, if you can find an image of the map, it’s not too bad to upload, rescale and drop a fog-of-war onto the map to obscure it. People have done some bang-up jobs colorizing and otherwise fleshing out those old-school maps and sharing them for free or almost-free. And if you’re using custom maps, good chance someone’s done something close enough to copy it off the net and use it in a pinch (and looks better than anything I can put together, that’s for sure).

However, having said that, I have spent hours pre-adding counters, music, monster stats and the like - but that’s similar to the same sort of prep for physical battle maps, minis and whatnot.

Just putting that out there from a fellow 50 (soon to be 51)-year old.