D&D General What is YOUR GM style?

[JiffyPopTart]

I have been on these boards a long time now, and over many discussions I have picked up some good ideas for my own GM style. I thought it might be fun to have a look at everyone else's "table".

My general GM Style/Mantras are as follows.

1. I will probably be running the current incarnation of D&D but will be inwardly wishing the others in my group would want to play something new. When I am running that something new I never can sustain a campaign before everyone checks out.

2. I will allow anything from an official book but will have to consider things from other sources before OKing them.

3. It is impossible for me to have too many monster books.

4. I make a strong effort to include all the skills in my adventures. I'm never going to make Animal Handling (as an example of a neglected skill) as valuable as Perception, but I will try to give you the spotlight in a scene if you have it available.

5. I'm not going to kill your character unless you do something really stupid (usually prefaced with an "are you sure?) or if the scene is notably dangerous. I WILL give you a strong setback in place of that death.

6. I'm not an actor. My NPCs have personalities and motivations but those will mostly be spoken of in 3rd person. Sometimes a really well liked NPC may get a voice or mannerism over time.

7. My campaign has a living world where things are happening in the background unlinked to your characters. If you involve yourself in a conflict you can affect that outcome but if you don't intera t with that portion of the story it is going to move forward without you.

8. You can expect alot of difficult choices as a PC. I have almost 0 black hat wearing evil factions. All the groups have a goal and a method they use to achieve it. The goal is almost never "take over the world" or "kill people and take their stuff". The otherwise good dwarf clan might be selling weapons to a lawful evil theocracy. The neutral druids might be teaming up with an evil dragon working as a mercenary.

9. Weaved into my world events are stories crafted around your PC backstory and goals. You get as much out of these subplots as you put into it. A life goal of "Being rich" is not a story plot I'm going to craft around. A life goal of "I want to get rich enough to buy out and destroy my families rival that drove is to bankruptcy" is awesome.

10. When I don't get feedback from my players and look up to see an entire table with heads buried in phones, tablets, and books I deep down want to ragequit...but I never do. It's my biggest peeve.

 

[payn]

I run a variety of games and GM style varies a bit depending on the system. I like short and long campaigns in addition to one shots. Different systems and settings will determine which length works best. I try my best to rule on mechanics in a consensus manner, but reserve the right to make final calls as I see fit. I do tinker with house rules a little, but mostly go RAW/RAI. I really enjoy Paizo adventure paths (way more than WOTC stuff) and make my own stuff too.

Ideally, I enjoy players who engage the story, like to develop characters, and pay attention during sessions. I try and provide players guides to my campaigns to facilitate such involvement. My games always contain a healthy amount of political intrigue, mystery, and exploration.

 

[HammerMan]

I am big on story telling, and major challanges that sometimes (Okay my PCs may say more often then not) are above the weight class of the characters.

It's funny I switch between CaW CaS and CaP on a whim.

I am big on letting PCs be creative, but not silly.

 

[el-remmen]

1. I design fun and challenging encounters for players for whom being challenged is fun.
2. Tough choices are fun but have diminishing returns - so I make sure to throw in the occasional possibility for a "clear win."
3. I will limit character creation/development choices (classes, races, spells/items available) based on the setting and my own sense of what is appropriate for D&D as I see it, but I am open to argument.
4. It is easier to say "no" and then give a little than to say "yes" and then try to reign it in.
5. You can work towards a build if you want, but the best D&D games were ones where your character is shaped by in-game events.
6. I am totally willing to range between granular NPC interactions in 1st person ("Hey there, merchant! How much for that coil of rope?" and handwaving stuff so we can move on ("Just subtract the cost of rope from your sheet.), depending on the mood and energy at the table and what we're trying to get done in a session. Most stuff is somewhere in-between.
7. Related to #6: If you are a player that feels more or less comfortable role-playing in first-person, I will do my best to meet you where you're comfortable.
8. Meta-game table talk is fine since players don't know the world and environment the way characters would - as long as it does not slow down the game and does not lead to one or more players dominating.
9. Slow advancement (my every 3 to 5 weeks 5E game has just reached 6th level after 29 sessions (22 months of play).
10. Magic is not a commodity to be bought or sold. Magical items are special and nearly unique and can never easily be reproduced as to become a form of everyday technology.
11. Anything you include in your character backstory is fair game for use in the campaign, but not having a fleshed out one is fine too.

Edit to add

12. Make stuff like this:

 

[JohnF]

My style: Jerry Bruckheimer + my 13 year-old self’s wishlist of monster fights

(I didn’t say I was good.)

 

[Malmuria]

I see gming duties as similar to hosting a dinner party: make sure everyone is comfortable, refill their glasses (literal and figurative), understand how to pace the evening in a subtle manner, and keep the conversation going.

In terms of logistics, I get overwhelmed if I have anything more than 1-2 pages of notes in front of me. If I'm playing 5e that means I keep things pretty loose but there might be 1 set-piece type encounter; or an osr game I'll just have a one page dungeon map with one page of notes.

 

[Musing Mage]

I run what could be called a permissive yet oddly restrictive game...

Player agency is important, as DM I'm simply the arbiter of the world, so I do my best to adjudicate their choices without bias or vested interest in an outcome.

That said - I keep tight control over the parameters of the campaign - Whether it be my 1e or 5e game, I only allow options from the PHB as a default, anything else is a no-go unless I've specifically allowed it. IE: My 1e game allows SOME stuff from UA and OA. To date, I dislike all expansion options for 5e, so nothing outside of the PHB is allowed.

I neither encourage nor discourage character conflict or PvP specifically, but players know they have freedom to act accordingly. Nothing is taboo in terms of class or alignment... but I DO stress to players regularly to remember not to take actions personally, this is a game - organic in-character conflict is great - PLAYER conflict is not. But everyone at my table generally knows the score so we've had some memorable stories and situations come up.

I do my best to play NPCs as accurately as possible - bearing in mind alignments and goals etc. I use reaction charts, Charisma, racial modifiers etc... quite liberally. Players at my table learned long ago not to dump-stat Charisma.

I don't like to railroad players, even though some scenarios are fairly linear. But I tend to note several options as potential adventure threads and let the group decide their own path. When we restarted the in-person campaign, I had over a dozen adventure hooks all ready to go, with the adventures plotted out - mix of modules and original ideas - in addition to giving each player a personal hook or rumour that they were free to share or keep to themselves. In a rather humourous turn - they'd narrowed it down to searching for a Noble's kidnapped daughter (reward 10k gp!) or hunting a wyrmling dragon. The 1st level team of chaotics said of the missing girl 'Ah, she'll be fine... let's go kill a dragon! It's a baby - how hard can it be?'

I don't fudge rolls - they are almost all done in front of the players. The dice land where they will. The only rolls I hide are NPC reaction rolls, and things like search rolls, or stealth rolls - where players shouldn't know how well they rolled rather must accept the description of the result. (I still don't fudge!)

I don't scale encounters, though in planning a specific adventure I WILL ballpark it to the group's level. So no, my team of low level characters is not going to the Tomb of Horrors... but anything goes in the wilderness when it comes to random encounters. My charts are mostly animals (which isn't to say animals can't be a problem!), but there's the occasional super-tough monster and it's on the players to know when they are outmatched and run away. You cannot assume I have made the encounter beatable, especially if it's a random encounter.

I track the calendar and dates quite thoroughly, and time passage is a big thing. Time away from the table is time passed in-game. If it's not logical to apply it right away, then I bank the time to apply later. Years pass quite quickly in game.

And yes, I use the fiddly things that most other DMs dismiss as things that bog down play - Disease checks, aging modifiers, Weapon Type vs AC (for 1e), weather generation (I prep weather conditions several in-game months in advance so I know what's coming)... none of these things bog down play, rather they generate situations that add levels of detail I couldn't think of independently, and they are not arbitrary.

And flow - I do my best to maintain a table flow and keep everyone engaged. If I see someone zoning out, I try an bring them back, but mostly people engage with one another... which means I'm doing it right. I've have great sessions where the players talked to each other in character for long stretches where I didn't have to do or say anything... and that's when you know they're vested.

That's a taste of my DM style, for better or worse.

 

[prabe]

This is some of what I have in the "About the GM" portion of the package I hand to new players:

I have a preference for multi-threaded campaigns where character decisions matter on multiple scales, and I like to connect characters' backstories to those threads. It may take a while for threads to emerge, but they eventually will.

I don't aim for character deaths, but I won't protect characters from consequences, either. Other a few houserules, I try to run very much to the rules as they are in the books. If I screw up the story or the rules I will apologize and do what I can to make things right.

 

[Lanefan]

In my game the setting is, in many ways, ultimately out to kill you if you decide to mess with it. As it's the job of adventurers to go out and mess with things those adventurers can probably expect to, sooner or later, die and-or suffer other foul consequences. If, however, they succeed and survive then the rewards will be ample; and the game/setting provides some means of revival from death, though at costs both physical and monetary.

As a game, both skill and luck play their parts; though luck probably factors in to a greater degree than in most "modern" games.

The campaign will run for as long as anyone wants to play in it - as DM I plan for ten years and see where things are at after then. Character turnover is expected; player turnover also though not as frequent. Players may (and probably should) have multiple PCs in the setting; and characters are rolled up where I or at least one other player can see the rolls.

In character, anything goes: kill each other if you want to, it's all the same to me. But the arguments stay in character; out-of-character arguments will get shut down fast. Separation of self from character is expected.

Player input, suggestions, or questions regarding rules and rulings are welcome (and sometimes quite necessary!), but in the end my word is law: abide or die. I'll think through any rulings as carefully as I can before making them, as rulings once made are locked in as precedent for that campaign and I don't want to lock in a bad one.

I'll start the ball rolling with an adventure or two and maybe some backstory, but after that it's largely up to the players, via their characters, to tell me what comes next. If they don't, I'll have something ready as a fall-back.

Metagaming is, as far as possible, discouraged and-or banned depending on the situation. Players cannot act on info their characters would not have (e.g. if a player knows an away scout is in trouble but the player's PC does not, the player cannot have the PC start a rescue mission).

Where possible, reality has its say; and magic is explained using real-world physics as a starting point. Magic in any form can be high-risk high-reward; magic items can be destroyed by clumsiness or bad luck (and might go 'boom' or otherwise generate some wild magic), and casting is easy to interrupt.

I'll telegraph danger when it makes sense to do so, but I don't telegraph everything. "Gotcha" is very much a part of my vocabulary; just as it could be for the PCs were they to set up a good trap or ambush. That said, "Are you sure?" is also part of my vocabulary when it looks like someone's really about to go off the deep end.

The setting is static in that things don't move or change behind the scenes due to meta-concerns such as which PCs are in the party or what they've chosen to do. The setting does have an ongoing backstory (a bunch of them, in fact) which will carry on as they would until-unless the PCs interact with them in some way.

And in the end I know I'm doing it all wrong if the players ain't either a) laughing and-or b) engaged in in-character roleplay and-or c) on the edge of their seats wondering how they're gonna survive this one.

 

[R_J_K75]

5. I'm not going to kill your character unless you do something really stupid (usually prefaced with an "are you sure?) or if the scene is notably dangerous. I WILL give you a strong setback in place of that death.

I prefer the game have an element of danger as a player and a DM. There should be a very real sense that a character isnt going to make it out alive in some situations. I'm never going to single out a player character and try to kill them unless they continuously attack something well out of their league or do something stupid. But Im not going to fudge rolls in anyones favor either. Characters surviving should never be an expectation.