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<blockquote data-quote="Festivus" data-source="post: 2933020" data-attributes="member: 34532">I am still not quite through my first year of DMing pen and paper 3rd edition.&nbsp; What have I learned thus far?1. Know as much as you can about the rules.&nbsp; One way I have been improving my rules use is to setup encounters with my players that forces me to use them.&nbsp; For example, tripping was hard for me to understand at first, but now tripping is so commonplace it's easy for me to work through it.&nbsp; At present I am grappling with grapple, and so I try to use those rules when the opportunity presents itself.2. Know the adventure.&nbsp; Read through the adventure ahead of time and look up rules and spells that might come up.3. Use aids, like spell cards, initiative cards, a laptop with the SRD loaded, etc.&nbsp; All of these are huge timesavers when you can't recall something about a spell or how to handle sundering a weapon.4. Don't worry about if you don't fully understand a rule and something comes up, just use DM Fiat and then look it up afterwards.&nbsp; This is subject to the sicilian clause of course, which means that if a death is on the line you should look it up.&nbsp; I use this a lot in my games.5. Read some good books.&nbsp; I just recently finished reading the DM for dummies book, which I found to be a rehash of a lot of stuff I get from here, but it's all in one book I can read on the commute.&nbsp; Also Johnn Four's email list and GM Mastery book I found very helpful for running games.6. Ask a pile of questions on EN World.&nbsp; I do all the time, and nobody has become angry at me thus far.&nbsp; <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"&nbsp; class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid&nbsp; &nbsp; :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /> 7. Relax and have fun.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Festivus, post: 2933020, member: 34532"] I am still not quite through my first year of DMing pen and paper 3rd edition. What have I learned thus far? 1. Know as much as you can about the rules. One way I have been improving my rules use is to setup encounters with my players that forces me to use them. For example, tripping was hard for me to understand at first, but now tripping is so commonplace it's easy for me to work through it. At present I am grappling with grapple, and so I try to use those rules when the opportunity presents itself. 2. Know the adventure. Read through the adventure ahead of time and look up rules and spells that might come up. 3. Use aids, like spell cards, initiative cards, a laptop with the SRD loaded, etc. All of these are huge timesavers when you can't recall something about a spell or how to handle sundering a weapon. 4. Don't worry about if you don't fully understand a rule and something comes up, just use DM Fiat and then look it up afterwards. This is subject to the sicilian clause of course, which means that if a death is on the line you should look it up. I use this a lot in my games. 5. Read some good books. I just recently finished reading the DM for dummies book, which I found to be a rehash of a lot of stuff I get from here, but it's all in one book I can read on the commute. Also Johnn Four's email list and GM Mastery book I found very helpful for running games. 6. Ask a pile of questions on EN World. I do all the time, and nobody has become angry at me thus far. :uhoh: 7. Relax and have fun. [/QUOTE]

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