Where do you shine?

[Mercule]

Got to the point that I said to myself, "Self, you have got to start planning things that the PCs will be playing in the immediate future, not after the PCs are at a level that they won't reach until after the players have moved away."

Heh. I learned that lesson once. Now I'm learning it again. I hadn't tried running a huge campaign arc since having kids. I'm learning just how little time I actually have to plan things. *sigh*

The thing I'm good at is politics and intrigue. My degree is in Political Science, so I've got quite a bit to draw from in that area. Probably the best example I've got is as a player (playing the mostly mortal scion of a political devil), when we toppled three governments at the campaign's climax, I was able to come up with three new, functional governments in about a half an hour total. The GM spent three weeks trying to poke holes in them but couldn't.

Unfortunately, most of my current players have degrees in things like computer science, animal ecology, and chemistry. And their brains work accordingly, so I have to seriously reign in my machinations.

 

[Viking Bastard]

My strengths:
I am a good world, plot and NPC creator. Crazy crackpot "storylines" with far-out
locales and memorable characters. That's my forte.

I'm good with cinematic action. And... um... yes.

Winging it. I'm a good winger. In fact, if I overplan things it usually ends with ruining
it for me more than it helped.



My weaknesses:
I cannot remember the rule details. Just absolutely not. Oh, all the big things I
remember, the core mechanics, but the details you don't use every sessions like
spell/skill/feat functions and such is lost on me.

And I suck at tactics. Absolutely. My players usually mow through my baddies like
butter. I've never in my life had a TPK, for example. I've learned to work with this,
though, to focus on simply making the fights cinematic, kewl and memorable if I
can't do challenging.

And deep political intrigue is not in my bag of tricks. I think it comes down to the
tactical thing. I can make deep, complex politics into a background, but to weave
the PCs into it, that I can't.

 

[Rackhir]

I find many DMs shine on the top of their heads...

 

[diaglo]

I find many DMs shine on the top of their heads...

grass doesn't grow on a busy street.

diaglo"going bald for over 30 years now" Ooi

 

[BSF]

I have no idea where I shine. Well, that's not entirely true. I have the areas that I think I do pretty well, but those might be different from what my players think.

I wing it a lot. In the past few years I have really tried to focus on only preparing stuff I absolutely know will be used. For the rest, I work to know the NPCs and understand how the world will react around the PCs. My players do many things that momentarily take me off guard, but since I have a good idea how everything around them operates, I can accomodate it fairly easily.

I like description. Though the amount that I use it compared to the amount I would like to use it differ. Sometimes I gloss over the description too much.

I do a decent job integrating twisted plots for story arcs. It is very satisfying to finish a convoluted story arc and have the players recognize the way it was laid out after the fact. They can go back and look at everything and realize that if they had poked at X a little more, or turned right instead of left at the right point, they would have unravelled the whole thing sooner.

Of course, it is even more surprising and satisfying when the PCs do unravel the whole thing quickly. I may wing it, but that is the fine details. I know where my story arcs are heading almost all the time. It is possible for the PCs to get the drop on the BBEG and achieve success early.

I don't know. Are these areas I shine? Maybe, maybe not. They are the areas I have been working on lately though.

 

[Wombat]

My players have given me positive feedback in three areas:

1) World creation. They feel like the worlds I put together feel very real, like they can smell the food, know what people wear, how nations fit together, etc. I take that as a huge compliment.

2) Role-playing NPCs. They know exactly who they are dealing with by word choice, accent, body language, etc. And they feel like the NPCs are much more than simply a collection of stats or a plot hook.

3) Improvising. Since they tend to run off at all sorts of odd angles, I often find myself having to fill in a lot in my adventures (which is a lot of fun!). Ask them about the infamous One Sentence Adventure sometime.

Okay, where I do more poorly...

1) Overly tricky political/moral situations. There are times when my players think I have gone too grey in my interpretations; they wanted to deal with Moral Greys and Questionable NPCs, but think I tipped too far that way.

2) Giving them too many choices. I enjoy watching them make choices, but they feel I should definitely limit their options, especially in choices of where to go when searching for clues to a mystery. This is pretty much a backlash on my part to being railroaded a few too many times and, again, I went too far. I'm working on it.

3) High level adventures. Any game that goes above about 12th level I do very poorly. I start looking at the rules, realizing all the permutations available with all that magic, all those feats, all that equipment and all those abilities and I realize that if I put them all into affect in my world, the world would spin wildly out of control from the vision of it that I had. Subsequently, I have had difficult time trying, then, to put in any opponents at high levels other than other high level NPCs, which some of my players find very boring. This coupled with my general loathing of planar adventuring, high level adventures become, at best, tricky business. I guess this explains why I start all my campaigns at low levels and stop my campaigns somewhere around 8th-12th level.

 

[Galethorn]

Strengths...
1. World Building. It's world building that got me into DMing in the first place.

2. The rules. Sure, I use a lot of house-rules, but I also know exactly how they effect everything.

3. Running any adventures that I've actually made room/area/landmark descriptions (or notes for) before hand, and have a good idea about.

Weaknesses...
1. Improvising. Well, ok, not improvising in general, but describing things when I don't have notes saying what sorts of things are in the room and how big various things are.

2. Glossing over long periods of not much going on...in enough detail. For example, if the PCs are traveling down river from one town to another, I would say something like "Not much happens...and then it gets dark, and then it finally is day again, and you see smoke rising from chimneys in the town on the horizon. Around lunch time, you get into the town." I just can't describe that kind of stuff very well. I'm sure I'm getting better with practice

3. Controlling the flow of time, in game and out. My sessions are usually light on the whole getting much done thing (which is only half my fault), but in the game, I have a hard time going smoothly from the round-by-round combat to the hour-by-hour walking around the city. I'm fine going from combat to indoor exploration, but...I dunno. I sort of lose focus when I'm not going from room to room, or moment to moment. This is another thing I think I'm getting better at.

All of that said, I think I'm a pretty bad DM in the grand scheme of things, but my players still have fun, I still have fun, and I'm getting better with every game. Now, if I could negate those three main weaknesses, however, I think I'd be a [Good] DM, but that's just me.

 

[D+1]

as a DM, in what area are you best in? Dungeon crawls? Political Intrigue? Wilderness adventuring? Planar travel?

What I'm best at is making it all up as I go along. The more desperately in need I am of coming up with something in-game the better I am at coming up with it.

I am also top-notch at tying unrelated campaign events into parts of a greater whole. Unfortunately, I am not as good at bringing that greater whole to a satisfying resolution. Tends to give the game an X-files feel. Each answered question only brings up another, or proves a previously answered question to be wrong. It's hell on jets for repeatedly sending a campaign off in new, interesting directions but without the ability to more consistently wrap things up players get the feeling of never really accomplishing goals.

I wouldn't call it political intrigue though as my campaigns involve at least as much combat and dungeoneering as pure roleplaying sessions working to discern various NPC's real motives and activities (which is what I assume you mean when you say "political intrigue").

 

[Corsair]

I am at my best when I have a list of NPCs, each with their own motivations, plots, and secrets. Take all those NPCs, put them at a scene (dinner party, theater, train car, etc) add player characters, and stir. Garnish with a slice of mystery and spice it up with a crime (murder, kidnapping, theft) and you've got yourself my forte.

I figure the more confused the players are, the more wiggle room I have, and the more time I have to get things straight in my head while they argue amongst themselves over clues.

 

[pogre]

I shine in preparation. I spend a ton of time making sure the game will move quickly as possible. I guess keeping an exciting pace is my best skill.