Do's and Don'ts of a Dungeon Master?

[Godhead]

Do not be the "Whizzard"

Spoiler: Magical realm incoming

Also, if this hasn't been stated enough, it's always important to make sure that everyone is having fun, not just inside the campaign itself, but also hanging out with each other in general at the table and that there's little to no resentment going on between players.

And make sure everybody takes turns bringing snacks and drinks. I always cooked burgers and brought capri suns when it was my turn to do snacks/meals.

 

[Zipa]

Don't play like you are the enemy of the players, you are not. You may play the things trying to kill the player party but that is not the same thing. The key is to keep it interesting and fun for the participants, sometimes that means lieing about a roll (this can work in and out of the favor of the players).

Have your plot adapt to the people playing it as well, if they want to try something that you didn't expect let them and reward them for it if it was good. Be prepared to improvise because your players damn well will!

Also have a listen to the Penny Arcade and PVP [http://www.wizards.com/dnd/podcasts.aspx] podcasts and learn from Chris Perkins who is DMing for them, he is a wonderful DM.

 

[Alakaizer]

Don't let your players min/max. Have them roll their stats like everybody else. It's a lot more organic that way, and can hopefully avoid hostility and a wizard starting with only three hit points.

I thought rolling your stats was the only way to fill in your character sheet? You roll your numbers and assign them to the six abilities in whichever way you like?

Incidentally, in the current D&D game my friend is hosting I'm a Wizard who's started with three hit points

There's a stat mode called point-by wherein all stats start at 10 and you can sell off and buy stat points. Our wizard sold as much Con as he could to max out his Int.

 

[Peregrin130]

Be flexible: no matter how much you prepare, players will deviate from the story. Reward their inventiveness with success, punish their foolishness with failure.

Contrary to what some GM say, splitting the party is fine: just keep the players in the same room (and ask them to remain fair according to what their characters know, not them) and never leave any one player out of the field of your attention for more than five minutes.

 

[emissary666]

A few things I picked up from my last GM:
Rules Lawyers are not necessarily bad. If you have someone who has the system memorized or can find them in seconds, use them. I knew New World of Darkness better than my GM and it helped streamline the session by reducing the amount of time searching the book. However, you need form an understanding for how much lawyering they can do.
Remember that the players are the center of the story, not side characters. The GM was using his college Vampire: The Masquerade game as the basis of the story and we were essentially just playing as bystanders while the action happened around us.
On a related note, NPCs should, for the most part, follow the same rules as the players. While actions driving the plot can skirt the rules, NPCs should be making the same rolls as the players. If you hit the players with a mind-control spell, let them make Will saves, even if it is impossible for them to actually pass. Have NPCs use spells from the book instead of made up ones. Pretend you are following the same rules.
Keep track of inter-player relations and keep them from letting those opinions affect their in-game actions.
Know your player's playstyles and attitude towards the game. A rules lawyer who is seriously invested in the game can easily become frustrated with a new player who doesn't understand the system. Similarly, role players may come into conflict with people who can't even figure out what their character is saying. Additionally, make sure character personalities and builds do not come into conflict with each other.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

Work with your players prior to character creation and give them a basic understanding of the kind of story you're wanting to tell and any character/class limitations you might be setting.

If you are limiting character options be prepared to defend it.

"No magic users because the game is set in an Imperial city where magic has been outlawed" is an understandable limit.
"No magic users because magic is dumb and I hate it" ...not so much.

Also, talk with your players to get an idea of what they want their character to accomplish. Adding plot elements to your game that will help them achieve their desired character arc can do wonders for keeping your party on track.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The basic thing to remember is always: Work with your players. It doesn't matter how well you've prepared something if it isn't what the players want. If they want a dungeon crawl instead of your politics heavy campaign about corruption within the mage's guild, give it to them. If they want to crack jokes and go easy in your dark, moody campaign about how newly embraced vampires discover that they've become monsters, adjust the mood to accommodate.

Most of the time it will come down to the fact that your players will be ready to try whatever campaign you've got planned, but they also want to make the character they've thought out in their head. So start compromising. How can you get a corporate spy to group up with a former-special forces officer turned mercenary, a drug addicted pop star and a Registered Nurse who lost her license due to malpractice and has spent the last half decade in jail, where she joined a prison gang? (Example based on an actual group of PCs my group ran) The answer lies in talking it through with your players and coming up with fun hooks to get everyone invested.

In the end, I always think of roleplaying as cooperative storytelling and not as a regular game. If everyone's having fun it doesn't really matter if you don't strictly adhere to the scenario, fully utilize the enemies abilities or play entirely by the rules. Talk things through with the players and never be afraid to call a short break if you need to collect your thoughts, decide on a tricky ruling or re-adjust the course of the session.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Additionally, make sure character personalities and builds do not come into conflict with each other.

Or do this on purpose if your players are cool with it. One of the most memorable sessions I've ever run was an NWoD scenario with a humans-only group caught in an old house during a storm with monsters running free outside. During the storm they were approached individually by a mysterious man (modeled on Swedish folklore descriptions of the devil) who gave them the option to kill another person in the group or condemn the entire group to death. The entire session eventually delved deep into paranoia territory as everyone started distrusting each other and ended with one of the characters attacking another when they were alone, only to be caught in the act and killed by the rest of the group. Even the player who lost his character of almost a year agreed that it was a great session. The trick is to make sure all players are comfortable with intra-party conflict and as the GM make sure you can regulate it through outside influence.

 

[Rblade]

Don't let your players min/max. Have them roll their stats like everybody else. It's a lot more organic that way, and can hopefully avoid hostility and a wizard starting with only three hit points.

I thought rolling your stats was the only way to fill in your character sheet? You roll your numbers and assign them to the six abilities in whichever way you like?

Incidentally, in the current D&D game my friend is hosting I'm a Wizard who's started with three hit points

There is point buy, for which you can probably find the exact rules somewhere but the basic idea is each set starts at 10 and you have a points pool to assign to stats. There is more details there so you should look it up.

as for stat rolling there is different methods depending on how strong you want your characters to be:
-the most random is rolling 6 x 3d6 in order, so you roll for strength first and go down the stat list. The makes it extremely random and gives the chance of really big weaknesses. Cool for roleplay but not very first timer friendly
-then you can roll 6 x 3d6 and assign at will. The still has the lower stat chance but at least you can pick your dump (low stat you don't really care about for the class you want to play
- 6 x 4d6: for each 4d6 you roll you discount the lowest result. This gets you a way higher average score
- 7 x 4d6: discount the lowest roll on each 4d6 and discount the lowest total. This is best used if you wanna pretty much ensure the party will be hero's with no real extreme weakness. This pretty much ensures you won't get stuck with any 3's or 4's

I suppose you could even give each player a standard list of stats and let them devide them. Stat assigning is a vital point in the game, if you are playing a pretty loose game where a character dying isn't that big a deal rolling risky tends to be more rewarding. But if you want to tell an epic tail with a mostly fixed party where replacements should be rare it isn't unheard off to cut your players some slack. In my experience high stats are easier for a DM to adjust for then some really low once.

 

[persephone]

Don't have more than six players. If you have more than six players, there's no way for everyone to have enough screen time, so to speak. And it just gets chaotic. Four players and a DM is honestly ideal.

Know your players. Some players will be happy to have their characters put through the wringer; others will hate it. Know who would and wouldn't enjoy a roleplaying challenge before you present it to the players.

Choose the right players for your game. A lot of having a good game is making sure that you have the right mix of players to help create the atmosphere you're going for. Of course, you don't always have options for who plays, but if you do, it's good to keep in mind how much player choice will affect things.

Despite what others have said, *don't* roll stats. Some people always roll really well, and get to play stupidly broken characters; others always roll poorly. (I'm infamous, in fact, for rolling ridiculous stats every time, while a friend of mine always rolls absolute crap.) Instead, let them min max -- and then exploit those mins. Mins and maxes are both story hooks waiting to be used, and a good player knows that just as well as a good DM. Some players greatly enjoy roleplaying a poor stat; some of the best fun to be had is watching a player who's socially adept in real life act as though he has a Charisma of 6. Besides, rolling stats takes an important sense of agency away from the players; I and some other players I know hate having to roll stats simply because it takes away control of the chargen process.

After each session, ask for and accept constructive criticism. We've all played with the DM who won't change his ways no matter what his players say. Don't be that guy! If the players don't like something, change it, or at least honestly discuss it with them. My first session as a DM, my players got really pissed at me, and I spent about ten minutes taking down notes from them after the session ended. My second session as a DM, those same players were flabbergasted at my improvement, all because the top of my notes for that session was simply a condensed version of the feedback they'd given me the session before, which I was doing my damnedest to follow.

In other words: you *will* fuck up as a DM, but roll with it and learn from it. Some of the most instructive games I've run were also my worst, and they let me do better with other games.

When you're designing an arc, don't decide how it will go. You want to design situations, not stories. This is a lot harder than it sounds, and a lot of DMs, new and old, design stories, with a beginning, middle, and end, then get upset when the players don't follow their script. You aren't in control of the game, and you shouldn't be, either; it's a collaborative effort. Think up a situation, then adapt the situation to respond to what the players do and what would be fun for everyone. You can brainstorm some ways things *could* go, just to help yourself out, but always stay open to other possibilities. Let your players surprise you.

Most importantly: fudge. Fudge, fudge, fudge, all in the name of fun. If the dice say that a character dies when you know the player will be heartbroken, then lie to that player's face and tell them that they're now hanging on by a thread. If a combat is dragging on and everyone keeps wandering off to get Cheetos or talking about Breaking Bad instead of the game, then start fudging the numbers so the combat wraps up quickly. A DM should always be fudging *everything* in order to keep the session flowing smoothly.

 

[Qvar]

1. Don't stop to read the manual while in the middle of action. If necesary, just make shit up as you go, rectify later. Pace is more important than strict rule balance, specially if you can tell your players "remember when...? Doesn't work exactly like that" later.

2. Don't Deus ex Machina, unless you can explain it perfectly AND it is extremely badass.

3. Don't give players a single gold piece more than they know what to do with. Keep them thirsty but alive. Showing them cool things they could be buying IF they had the money may help, be it items form the manual or in-game ideas (such as... A castle, things like that).

4. If your players aren't specially forthcoming when it comes to roleplaying or keeping with the missions, you may want to assign them some permanent NPC that can talk them into missions / remind about objectives without becoming patronizing. When playing D&D, I like to use a low-level bard that writes the tales of the group spoils (no, he's not called Deekin), and doesn't get involved at all with the action or anything else unless they're desesperate for help.

Also, if you know their tastes, work hard to give them a story that they will enjoy. Sometimes creating the story that YOU would like is very satisfying, but don't let that happen constantly or you won't have players to play your story.

IMPORTANT: This only applies if the players have no idea about what to do or what are they doing. If possible, it would be prefered that they make their own stories instead of feeding them what you want them to.

5. Don't let players decide background traits when they become relevant. If they haven't specified that their house has a fire-proof system before it catches fire, they it doesn't have one. If the mother of a character is suspected guilty of an assassination, she hasn't lived at Cuba all along unless this was said before the DM mentioned the issue.

6. Don't make all out to be everything it seemed to be. Plot twist constantly. Treasons. Lie to them. Presenting everything to be as it seems at first glance is a boring cancer present not only at role-playing, but also films and literature. This doesn't mean at all that those treasons have to end with them killed, just spicing up the story.

7. Create memorable villains that don't die as soon as they encounter them. Wizards, with their teleports, contingencies, etc, are good for this. "Random boss #5" fights should be banned from existence. He always should be somebody they've meet before, somebody they've heard of, or something that has been foreshadowed (as in "there have been subtle hints of the bid bad being a red dragon, which they realize only after actually seeing the dragon by themselves").

8. Remember to describe the places the group is at. You may see it bright as day in your mind, but they may not know that the door is made of wood and therefore smashable unless you mention it!

Don't make your own super powered, Mary Sue character that does all this cool shit that the player characters could never hope to match.

It sounds like a no-brainer, but loads of DMs I've played with did it to some extent.

But... but... there's no reason to DM if you can't avatar yourself int othe game!!!!

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Don't let your players min/max. Have them roll their stats like everybody else. It's a lot more organic that way, and can hopefully avoid hostility and a wizard starting with only three hit points.

I'd strongly disagree with this, particularly if you're going for a balanced party. All it does is force power gaps. The last game I played where we rolled I got a 15, 12, 11, 10, 8, 9. If I hadn't rolled the 16 my highest score would have been a +1 and I'd have had 0's every else, which would have been the most boring character I could imagine. On the other hand, two other characters got far better scores, one got 18, 17, 16, 16, 14, 10 and the other got ever so slightly worse than that. While my stats forced me into playing a wizard, cleric or druid to avoid being crippled by comparison, they deliberately chose weaker classes to avoid absolutely dominating the party members who rolled awfully. If they weren't actively trying to balance the party or even tried to minmax than that would have only exaggerated this gap even more.

At the very least in my experience I've never found rolling stats to add balance between party members.

Actually... ironically this stat array forced me to play a wizard with absurdly low hit points. At level 7 I had under 20 hp because I had to put my one good score into intelligence.

OT: While a lot of people are saying not to feel compelled to follow the rules exactly (which I agree with) you need to make sure not to swing too hard to the other side. I had one green DM who pitted us, a level 3 party, against a large iron construct. During the fight a party member won a grapple check against it and the DM ruled that we ripped off one of it's arms. Okay... a little unorthodox, but I guess I can accept this. After the fight he was laughing about how we didn't use the obvious solution to beat this enemy, and I want to emphasize that I am not making this up, pulling the rug from underneath it to make it fall over. Yeah. How did we not think of doing that to kill it?

Throughout this game we could also tell that he was pretty much winging all of the rules. He just gave the enemies random hp, attack bonuses and damage. I'm pretty sure that none of them even had an ability score. The rules are there for a reason, they're an understanding between the player and the DM for how the game works. Let the party break the rules for the sake of something cool, but the party should always believe that the DM is following them himself. Particularly given the power the DM has, it's important for the party to believe that he's following some rules so that they can feel like they have power.

I'll probably edit in more later, but I'll post this for now

EDIT: Give some time pressure, particularly if you're party is absolutely neurotic and spends 20 minutes before opening each door or room. You don't want to be too harsh with this, but you also don't want them to spend the vast majority of their time not playing the game

 

[Rack]

Very important one: Do not, under any circumstance, expect the players to follow the story you thought about.

Very much this. In fact I'd go further and say you shouldn't be writing a story at all. The point of an rpg is interacting with a world, far too many GMs want to tell a story but that very rarely makes for a good game and incredibly often makes for a terrible game. If the players don't feel like they have any agency they'll get bored fast. Your attempts to rairoad the plot will always be obvious. Make situations, not stories.

1.) Never call for a die roll when failure isn't interesting. When character's don't find the clue, or get over the fence, or locate the secret door the game slams to a halt and you lose any momentum you've built up.

This is key, but also you should never call for a dice roll unless you are prepared to have it fail and you shouldn't be rolling a dice behind your screen. Once I was playing a game and the GM gave me a disarm roll against a bomb. When I failed the bomb didn't go off. At that point the game was effectively over, it had no teeth, the GM wasn't going to let us fail. If he'd rolled the check behind the screen it wouldn't have been AS disastrous but I'd have been similarly certain the bomb had no chance of going off.

I'm not a fan of D&D for this reason, 99% of combat rolls are uninteresting and 1% will wreck the game. That and the min/maxing, it couldn't possibly be less balanced.

 

[Ratty]

You guys forgot the Counter Monkey specifically about DMing


Watch that, and read DM of the Rings http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=14

The most important things for a DM to do though, are to be flexible, have energy and remember you're all there to have fun, not for the players to entertain you. As Spoony mentions in the video, encourage your players to flesh out the backstories for their characters so you can tie the quests to them directly in some way. It makes the game's story feel so much more organic, fun and engaging for the players.

And whatever you do play the kind of game your players want to play. If they want heavy RP with little to no combat give it to them, if they want a run and gun dungeon crawl that can be fun to. Most people like to play somewhere in the middle.

Don't let your players min/max. Have them roll their stats like everybody else. It's a lot more organic that way, and can hopefully avoid hostility and a wizard starting with only three hit points.

I thought rolling your stats was the only way to fill in your character sheet? You roll your numbers and assign them to the six abilities in whichever way you like?

Incidentally, in the current D&D game my friend is hosting I'm a Wizard who's started with three hit points

Min-maxing is when you try to build a character who will be tough in combat more than because you want to roleplay as them. Like using a weapon you think is less cool or appropriate for your character because it has slightly better stats. Min-maxing is good if you just want a dungeon crawl campaign where the players barely do any actual RPing, but it can be very annoying in a group that wants to tell a story. And min-maxing players are often bored by long story-focused RP sessions.

 

[scotth266]

The best advice I can give is to get good at improvisation. Your players probably won't want to just follow your railroading ways, so you need to adapt to them going places that they shouldn't and doing things that you wouldn't expect (for example, treating NPCs like crap or trying to rob stores).

One of the better ways you can handle improvisation is to arrange your encounters in chunks, like so:

Chunk 1) Your party meets a merchant who drops a magic book, which unleashes a swarm of beasts.
Chunk 2) Your party finds a ransacked building, where some thieves have based themselves.
Chunk 3) Your party is attacked by some dwarvish mercenaries.

And then throw them at the party depending on what they do. Let's say you had planned for the party to stay in the starting city for a while, but they want to leave immediately FOR ADVENTURE. New DMs will typically get flustered and try to stop the party, but this just makes the party determined to do stupid shit as retribution.

Instead, you let the party leave the city. They can stumble across the merchant on the road, get jumped by the mercenaries in a cave they thought to explore, or find the building in the middle of nowhere. You still get to use your planned content, and the players get to make choices - and that leads to a fun game for everyone.

I will warn you that if you plan to hand the players a quest, be prepared to do so through MULTIPLE outlets, as they might otherwise piss off the one you had planned, and leave you without a way to give them the quest. If the tavern-owner wants his basement cleared out of giant rats, he can have put up posters throughout the city that your players can spot with a check. If they fail that, they could gather info from the locals and find out that the tavern-owner has been complaining about the issue. Or they can meet the tavern-owner himself.

Lastly, don't be afraid to kill people. If the dragon can use his fire breath, he should use it immediately. If your party wipes, they can start over with new characters (or maybe some of them can escape and get the rest of the group revived). DnD is about having risky adventures, and there's no risk if you're invincible. You don't have to go out of your way to kill people, but if they do dumb stuff, don't prepare properly, or just get unlucky (shit happens) they should pay the price.

Story time: my players go into the last chamber of a dungeon to face down a black dragon, which has been twisted by a necromancer (their big nemesis in the works). One person however makes a ballsy choice - he gets the group to try and break the enchantment on the dragon. I gave it low odds (19-20 to succeed) but they pulled it off and wind up persuading the dragon to fly a heavily-injured party member to a nearby city for emergency treatment.

Story time 2: In another session (this time running the new Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game) my party is getting their asses beat by a hired gun, but he's almost down and I decide it's time for him to make a run for it. As the mook starts running, one of the players comments that "He should totally kidnap that unconscious player!" One evil grin later and the mook is dragging the PC to his hovercar - and he makes it out with a single hitpoint. Meanwhile, another PC (who had run for help when he saw how strong the mook was) arrives on the scene with his own hovercar, allowing the next session to start with a dramatic arial chase.

 

[FrozenLaughs]

Yes, typically you use the "roll 4 use highest 3" for easy generation. Some DMs make you go down the list, then choose a class that fits. It reflects your character growing up naturally with those stats, and choosing a class that fit them best.

Most DMs, however, let you pick where you want to place your stats because the player typically knows what class he wants to play ahead of time.

Min/maxing is (i believe) the point buy system where you can basically max a couple stats at the expense of everything else "not needed" being a 10.

And if your system doesn't already give max Hit Dice at level 1, do your players a favor and give them it. 3hp Wizards are bullshit.

 

[Ratty]

Min/maxing is (i believe) the point buy system where you can basically max a couple stats at the expense of everything else "not needed" being a 10.

And if your system doesn't already give max Hit Dice at level 1, do your players a favor and give them it. 3hp Wizards are bullshit.

Yeah, your stereotypical minmaxer is a Barbarian with insane STR etc. but with INT so low they couldn't tie their shoes. A good DM will make them RP as that to.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Let me expand a few things I said earlier.
On munchkins/min-maxers: The main reason I say don't encourage this behavior is mainly for fledgling DM's who are inexperienced with the game. Its a quick way to let your players walk all over you and run your campaign instead of challenging them to create characters that are interesting. A seasoned DM can counter munchkins/min-maxers by knowing the ins and outs of said character's flaws (because they will have many) and exploiting them when situations arise. Case in point a character flaws that limit communication to hand gestures only; A good DM would pit that character in a situation where perhaps an NPC who is a tribal elder who will only reveal secrets the PC's need is blind and cannot see these interactions, thereby challenging said player, who for sake of argument, has massive points in diplomacy and is the only one who has the best chance of getting these secrets, to find a way of communicating with the elder. BTW that is a scene from a game I had once. Min/maxers tend to pick the oddest stats sometimes and don't always realize that some of their carefully chosen stats don't always co-mingle with their flaws well.
I also say that Rules Lawyers aren't the same as folk who are well versed in the game's mechanics. A rules lawyer is the guy who argues with the DM over arbitrary crap to gain an advantage or proclaims "you can't do that" and freaks out when the DM invokes the golden rule of table-top RPG's, which is that the rules are guidelines for the DM to run the campaign and not set-in-stone mechanics that cannot be violated. Pretty much every D&D core rules has stated that somewhere in the beginning chapters of the DM's Guide, and seems to be the one rule all Rules Lawyers ignore.
I am all about players having fun, but I'm also about challenging said players comfort zones without getting personal and also giving players a choice in every situation. Sure every encounter can be solved by killing things or breaking shit. But at the same time being destructive can have its own consequences where perhaps diplomacy would have garnered better loot or information or perhaps breaking down that door wouldn't have opened the pit trap underneath the only cleric with healing powers and resurrection spells.
I agree with others that punishing players for things they're not good at personally such as roleplaying is a bad thing. I never take away XP from players, except maybe in the case of game mechanics such as being touched by certain undead who suck levels out of PC's. Reward players for their strengths, even just a good idea with a bad result. Remember, failure teaches us sometimes much more than success does. XP for trying to do something and failing is an option that a lot of DM's seem to overlook. That is provided the action didn't lead to the character misjudging the distance of a canyon when they attempted to leap across it and decorated the canyon floor 1000yards below with a pancake of flesh and blood.
Also be mindful of just how often you reward players for doing things in character. They may come to expect XP every time the flip a switch or turn over a rock or spend hours searching a room that clearly has nothing in it. Reward innovation, or well played ignorance.
Also curb your players from quoting Monty Python during campaigns. It tends to slow the game down and turn it into a bad rendition of the parrot sketch... without the parrot, or the humor especially after its the 99th time it happened that session.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Wow, as someone who's only been running a game for just about a year, I'm starting to find advice that helps me too

This is a great thread, I added what I could, but you guys rock.