What do you do well?

[The Shaman]

Here's a chance to pat yourself on the back.

What do you do well when you are running a game? What do your players like about how you referee? What do you think are your greatest strengths behind the screen?

 

[OnlineDM]

I build interesting encounters. I do a good job of making the environment matter, building/choosing monsters that work well together and/or with that environment, add wrinkles like traps or puzzles to combat, etc.

Sadly, I mainly run pre-published material these days, but I still tweak encounters to make them more interesting when I have time.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Making my players feel part of the campaign setting, they have a vested interest in the story, plots and sub-plots that I have going on.

Had a lot of good feed back on that over the years.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Provide mystery and other opportunities to discover and gnaw on clues and information--often deep and broad in scope. (This is absolutely critical to this group. I've gotten good at it because I've had a lot of practice. )

Keep the game moving with a large, social group. But keep the running commentary and other asides that are so much part of our fun. Also lots of practice.

Give the players meaningful choices for their characters.

 

[Glade Riven]

Combat. I like to have a very interactive enviroment with interesting terrain and let my players try crazy stuff. Granted, I had to clue-bat a Jedi once to try force powers on a Rancor, but my players have fun.

 

[Ahnehnois]

When I speak, people listen. And I'm very good at listening to other people.

I'm also very good at improvising and maintaining coherence while doing so.

Also thought I'd link this old thread for an interesting take on the topic.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

People love my homebrewed campaign settings. How well they play out in game may vary, but a lot of people who have played in my games anticipate my next one, regardless of how the previous one played out.

I guess that makes me the Alfa Romeo of campaign designers.*














* watch Top Gear and that will make sense.

 

[Super Pony]

I geek out on the settings I run to the point that I almost always have a response for how something affects the senses (look, smell, taste, sound, touch), who the movers and shakers are in the nearby world, and I like to paint a picture of events happening in the setting around the players so that it doesn't seem like a staged set and more of a living world where NPC's move away, die in accidents, become more powerful in their own right, etc.

But then there is the hefty tome containing my faults...*slides 30lb leather bound tome of failures under nearby bed with foot*...

 

[Umbran]

I yank chains. You give me a character who has a history with plot hooks and emotional entanglements, and I'll find new and interesting ways to push that character's buttons.

 

[Janx]

I make NPCs that the PCs care about.

I make the game world and its problems be personally relevant to the PC (and appealing to the player).

I portray NPCs well.