DM Tips

[DangerousPuhson]

A thread for some of the pieces of advice we've discovered on our DM journeys. I'll shoot first:

1) You can make players think to solve problems in-game rather than rely on character skills, even in modern editions. The old adage "the answers are not found on a character sheet" still holds true if you encourage your players to come up with actual solutions rather than picking a skill off a list. How do you encourage this? You have the player tell you what they want to do, and then you (the DM) either assign a related roll to it, or not. The key is to never let the players decide what to roll - they tell you want they want to attempt, and you tell them what to roll (if a roll is even necessary). Example:

Old, bad way -

DM: "The room contains a dusty bookshelf against the North wall stuffed with colorful tomes, and an empty birdcage stands in the South-East corner. What do you do?"​

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Player: "I search the room. I rolled 17 on my Investigation check. What do I find?"​

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DM: "You poke around and eventually discover that a book in the bookcase is a switch to open a secret door"​

New, good way -

DM: "The room contains a dusty bookshelf against the North wall stuffed with colorful tomes, and an empty birdcage stands in the South-East corner. What do you do?"​

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Player: "I want to search the room"​

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DM: "What do you want to search first?"​

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Player: "I want to check out the books"​

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DM: "The titles on the leather-bound books identify them as tomes of collected poems and short stories, with names like 'The King's Favorite Fables' and 'Lady Lawson's Lovers'"​

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Player: "I want to interact with the books - pulling them off the shelf one by one, opening them up and shaking them out"​

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DM: "This takes you 10 minutes of time. When you pull on one of the books called 'Little Secrets', a section of the East wall pivots open..."​

2) Encounter balance is a guideline, not a rule. There is nothing that says you can't pit a CR20 monster against a Level 1 party; the guidelines for balance only serve to stipulate that an encounter of this kind would be deadly for the characters, not that you should never create such a situation. CR exists because the older editions sorely lacked any good indicator of monster strength beyond Hit Dice (which is an incredibly narrow metric to gauge balance). CR was not meant to be taken as gospel for all encounter design - it's intent is to give a DM the ability to craft tight battles on the fly, that's it.

3) Whatever the party doesn't know definitively is open to change, so long as it doesn't violate rules of consistency. What is established needs to be heeded; what is unknown can be anything. If the players are poking around Location A and know nothing of it, but you want them to go to Location B (of which they also know nothing), then there is zero harm in swapping Location A with Location B, because all you are doing is swapping things around in your own mind. Nothing becomes real until it is communicated with the players. (Note: I personally call this practice a "Quantum Ogre", much to the frustration of folk who don't quite grasp what "quantum state" means.)

Now if the party already knew something of Location A (like they know it's a temple that stands in the shadow of Mount Silverpeak), then obviously you couldn't switch A with B, because it would violate the rule of consistency. Consistency is paramount to verisimilitude. Likewise, you can't swap the singing harpies in the next room with an owlbear if the party has already listened to the door and heard the singing; however, if the party didn't put their ears to the door, then that room is still in the limbo of "anything", and could therefore be "anything", regardless of what is written on your prep notes.

4) If you or your players can't/won't roleplay, you can abbreviate the interactions. This is a personal choice made at the table, and so long as everyone is on board, there will be no real impact to gameplay. You play whichever form your are most comfortable with, and that's it. Some DMs want in-voice actions, some don't; some players feel comfortable playing a character, some don't. Beyond a minor ding to verisimilitude, there is no discernable difference between these two interactions:

Player: "Hello shopkeeper, I would like to inquire if you happen to have any apples for sale today, perchance?"​

vs.​

Player: "My character is going to ask the shopkeeper about apples"​

​

5) When the game hits a lull, inject action. My go-to if I see eyes glazing over and phones coming out. As the old piece of writing advice goes: "when things are in a slump, have a man burst through the door with a gun"...er, sword. If your words are trailing off, if your players are sitting silent, if your mind is going blank - have something explode! Even the most cautious players thrive in times of action and excitement, and this always works to perk things back up.

I expect a lot of blowback on this (because I know who I'm talking to), even though these are just ideologies that consistently work for me at my table. Anybody got their own tips they want to put out there?

 

[Beoric]

1) You can make players think to solve problems in-game rather than rely on character skills, even in modern editions.

Agreed. My approach to encouraging this is to let players know that trying to solve things narratively has a good chance of providing information that will help increases their chances on the skill check, and may even obviate the check.

2) Encounter balance is a guideline, not a rule.

A caveat for me is that over the top dangerous encounters should not be forced. If it occurs through some sort of random chance, and not player decisions, it should be avoidable, or at least not necessarily combat based. There are also a couple of corollaries to this. DMs should not treat combat as the default state for all encounters. And DMs should provide at least some information to players to telegraph when a path leads to danger, so they can make somewhat informed decisions.

3) Whatever the party doesn't know definitively is open to change, so long as it doesn't violate rules of consistency.

I greatly disagree with this, at least as you have presented it, for Classic or OSR play. Part of maintaining neutrality as a DM is not changing the world as you have created it, merely for dramatic purposes, or because you want content to be seen. If you are nudging things in a particular direction, or outright moving obstacles so they are in the PC's way, you are no longer an objective observer. Your unconscious biases are going to have an impact on play, and you increase the danger of negating the players' choices.

If you playstyle is focussed on "DM tells a story that the players exerience," or "DM provides a vehicle for players to showcase their characters," then go nuts. But for Classic or OCR play I think this is a no-no.

That isn't to say you can't recycle material that the players skipped. I have Hommlet placed in more than one area of my campaign world, altered for local conditions. Same with Orlune, and the Keep. I also think it's fine to have hooks (or rumors, or whatever) that point back to the parts they have skipped. But going there always needs to be a player's choice, and the illusion of choice does not count.

4) If you or your players can't/won't roleplay, you can abbreviate the interactions.

I agree with the intent of this statement, although I think making decisions in character and narrating them in the third person is also "roleplaying."
Acting it out in the first person is "acting," and isn't necessary. (I dislike the word "playacting" for this approach, which I know EOTB uses, because I think it sounds perjorative.)

5) When the game hits a lull, inject action.

I disagree with this for Classic/OSR play for the reasons stated in #3.

I expect a lot of blowback on this (because I know who I'm talking to), even though these are just ideologies that consistently work for me at my table. Anybody got their own tips they want to put out there?

Well, maybe don't refer to playstyles as "ideologies" ....

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Ah, I expected you up first, all ready to come in and disagree with most stuff, offer up your conditional approval of other stuff, and not contribute any of your own tips (beyond the subjective "shouldn't"s and "should"s) to the conversation... classic Beoric, ever tilting at my lovely windmills. You need to stay gold, Ponyboy!

I can substantiate my own positions and offer counter to your counterpoints, naturally, but I think we've had that dance before. Frankly I'd rather let someone else onto the floor, if it's all the same. Unless of course you'd like to come down from the peanut gallery and actually offer up your own tips for the scrutiny of the ravenous masses?

 

[Beoric]

Dude, I basically agreed with you on 1, 2 & 4, and said that 3 & 5 don't work for my preferred playstyle, but would work for other playstyles. You are manufacturing disagreement.

You want some lesson's I have learned since becoming terminally online? Fine:

1. Mechanics matter, and should be used, altered, ignored or invented mindfully.

2. A corollary of #1 is that system mastery matters, because you can't mindfully treat with mechanics without it.

3. Designers of mechanics often don't have system mastery of them, and their advice as to how to run games using those mechanics should be taken with a grain of salt.

4. In broadly similar systems, at least in D&D so far, mechanics don't matter as much as playstyle in terms of the experience at the table. Because of #3, you don't have to default to the playstyle suggested by the designers and their modules; if you do, you shouldn't be surprised that the game feels different.

5. Most DMs learn how to game by example. That can be by the example set by their own DMs, but it can also be by the examples set by modules and by Actual Play podcasts/videos. As the player base for gaming expands, the latter two have become more common.

#1 is why most conversions are so bad. You need to have good system mastery of both systems, and think really hard about those systems' approach to encounters, in order to make a conversion feel like the original. For example, 1e assumes that you will find secret doors 1/6 of the time if you are looking for them (or 1/3 if you have an elf in the party). 4e's assumptions are likely to reveal every secret door even if you aren't looking. If you want a 4e converstion of T1 to feel like the 1e version of T1, you have to alter the odds of success from the 4e baseline.

Because of #1 & #2, it is a fool's errand to try to convince DMs to adopt your playstyle by also adopting your preferred edition. Even if they try it, they won't have the same experience because they don't understand the system. Assuming your audience is not someone you actually game with (in which case you as DM can use your own preferred edition), you need to write for their preferred edition, and you need to understand their preferred edition well enough to do so, and to not make misinformed assumptions about how it works. (Related: today I leanred that the 5e DMG has optional rules for loyalty and morale. I had no idea.)

It wasn't until I had an argument with @EOTG, many years ago, that I realized how, for example, segment based initiative was supposed to work. I now understand it well enough that I see what the appeal is for some people. It probably would have enhanced my experience with 1e in my late teens and early 20s. I also think that I still would have liked 4e more, if being a 1e curmudgeonly grognard didn't prevent me from seeing how it didn't have to be run the way the designers were marketing it (which it may well have done).

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Dude, I basically agreed with you on 1, 2 & 4, and said that 3 & 5 don't work for my preferred playstyle, but would work for other playstyles. You are manufacturing disagreement.

I'm not manufacturing disagreement. The writing above is plain as day for anyone to read.
You agreed with me on one point (#1).
You then heavily asterisked one point (#2), "greatly" disagreed with another point (#3), agreed "with the intent" of a point (#4), and then finally outright disagreed again with a point (#5).
That sounds mighty disagreeable to my ears, but I'm willing to push past it for discourse's sake.

Thank you for contributing your tips.

 

[squeen]

I pretty much agree on the other points, but for me personally, #3 is a deal-breaker. There needs to be object permanence beyond the immediate room. Not an unbreakable rule, but very nearly. I think knowing this is critical to player buy-in (i.e. I can "win" in some sense), but also is what makes the game unfold in unexpected ways for the DM---which is a joy.

We've touched on this before (long ago), and it's at the heart of your improv DMing, but it's just radioactive for what I'm trying to do in a campaign. It at the heart of a challenge game vs. an entertainment game.

#5 I can live with, so long as you borrow from existing structure.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

This fucking forum keeps giving me errors when I try to post, deleting everything I just wrote. Fucking maddening.

I'm only addressing this because I know it won't be dropped if I don't. I'm trying to build a repository here, not start debates.

I'm not saying there's no place for permanence in a game. If the players are going through Tomb of Horrors, you can't switch anything around because it defeats the whole point (going through THE Tomb of Horrors). It's the gauntlet, I get that. The challenge is laid down, the pieces are set up, the players overcome it. They're going to be hella pissed after the fact if they encounter the green face in the last room instead of the first one. Tomb of Horrors (and other iconic dungeons) are known and well-documented - Players can easily look up afterwards to see if you fudged anything, and they'll feel cheated out of their victory if you have.

Likewise if the players already know of something in the game, they'll be mad if what they know changes - you can't switch out the legendary red dragon Olgophax for a common lich in the final room of the dragon's den, for example. What is already put out there cannot be changed, no argument there.

Being said, outside those very specific scenarios, every other instance would be a literal case of "what the players don't know won't hurt them". Or maybe more like "if a tree falls in the woods"... type deal. Buy-in is done during the session; learning you changed something after the fact can't spoil what already happened in the past. Likewise left-field developments and "unfolding in unexpected ways" are things that happen on the fly in the moment, and are not robbed of the game if something changes (I am always surprised by my players and the outcomes of their choices, no matter if the content they go through is custom bespoke or famously well-known).

I know there's a sort of unspoken player-DM social contract about keeping things absolutely 100% unbiased fair, but I assure you those lines can be blurred from time to time in the interest of keeping things fun. It's a tautology, but it's true: "more fun is more fun". The players' fun comes from what their characters undergo at the table, not from adhering to a nebulous arrangement that only you (the DM) are privy to. If you choose to nix something you know the party would enjoy in favor of preserving a facet of honesty that only you get to know about, then I don't know what to tell you - you have chosen your personal enjoyment over that of your friends, which strikes as the wrong call to make.

If you have any tips, please share them.

 

[squeen]

I feel like #3 is playing with fire. I purposely try to tie my own hands in this aspect. I feel it is more honest, and more honest equals more fun. That's just my personal DM code. Tactics are single-session, but player's strategy is long-term. By moving the off-screen targets, you have the potential of invalidating their (often unspoken) strategic goals. Player often guess about unseen things better than you might give them credit.

The embedded "tip", if you chose to follow this orthodoxy, is that you need to over-prep and allow the players to walk past large portions of the campaign world. This is actually OK for two reasons:

1) You will invariably have to dynamically create content and/or react to player actions where your prep fails. With "over-prep", you already a deep well from which to draw. What might seem spontaneous to the players, will be informed by off-screen content. It may even draw them back to "skipped" material, and that's a real treat when it happens.

2) You can do just-in-time prep. Basically, there will unrealized areas that you create/key only one or two sessions before the players arrive based on their current trajectory. Sometimes you will miss because the players have zig-zagged, by that's ok. When that happens you are then in random-tables and improv-land, which for me is a last resort, but can also be a real creative font for others.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I feel it is more honest, and more honest equals more fun. That's just my personal DM code.

Fair position, and your mindset towards prepwork reflects that. But you realize that's not the norm, yes? It's a personal code, after all. Your consideration for players who might surprise with how much they know is a factor to consider, sure, but it's still an edge case and not commonplace enough to outright discourage what I've personally found effective. It sounds like you've deliberately decided not to benefit from my tip #3 anyway, so why fret over it?

As to your tips, I think regardless of your position on how much honesty equals fun, they have good validity. Don't let my famed improvisational style fool you - there are campaigns I've pre-prepped like a mofo. I've made over 10GB of custom game materials, written thousands of pages, made hundreds of maps and images... I get the value of prepwork. What's nice about a good stockpile of prepped locations that get skipped over is that they can be effortlessly ported over to a different session/campaign, and nobody except you will ever really know it wasn't supposed to be there to begin with (tip #3!).

I think when it comes to just-in-time prep, it's super beneficial if the areas that you leave unprepped are ones that are naturally easy to quickly populate. I'm talking random tables kind of easy to populate, likes cities or hexes or whatnot. Dungeons and other "sites" benefit from baking a bit longer and having more thought given to them (which is incidentally why I don't care for the 5room format), so I find that JIT tends to harm more than help in those cases.

 

[Beoric]

I'm trying to build a repository here, not start debates.

A repository of conflicting tips isn't very useful without some sort of discussion of the relative merits. Otherwise, how is anyone reading this going to choose among them? Feel free to poke holes in my tips if you want.

I think the only thing I have left to say about your #3 and #5 is that DMs and players often have very different experiences at the table. That is, DM's are often not great judges of what the players enjoy and don't enjoy, and tend to assume that what is fun for the DM is also fun for the players. Creating and populating a setting is already going to contain a lot of your preferences. But if you telegraph the elements in the environment adequately, your players at least get to choose from among the elements you have created to suit their own tastes. But if you change the environment by fiat because it is your perception that the game needs it, you are putting even more of your preferences into the game, and you run the risk of invalidating the preferences of the players.

Impartiality is hard, particularly when you put so much of yourself into the gameworld. Taking some of the choices out of your hands helps you to maintain it. That is also why, for the Classic style of play, random encounters are better than, "I think it's time for an encounter." Whereas for the Trad playstyle, where the DM's role is really to entertain the players, and to some extent to direct the plot, it makes perfect sense.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

A repository of conflicting tips isn't very useful without some sort of discussion of the relative merits. Otherwise, how is anyone reading this going to choose among them?

I was kind of hoping common sense would take the driver's wheel in most cases. People appropriate what they find useful and desire to appropriate, and don't what they don't - we don't need to hold their hands through it.

For example, I don't think I can personally make use of any of your tips Beoric, because I am not authoring a brand new ruleset from scratch and your tips seem to diverge almost solely into that territory. An author trying to invent Ruleslite #2232 might be able to use those tips, but I sure can't. Now does that make your tips bad, or false? Does it make them unworthy of being documented somewhere?

 

[Beoric]

For example, I don't think I can personally make use of any of your tips Beoric, because I am not authoring a brand new ruleset from scratch and your tips seem to diverge almost solely into that territory. An author trying to invent Ruleslite #2232 might be able to use those tips, but I sure can't. Now does that make your tips bad, or false? Does it make them unworthy of being documented somewhere?

The common theme for all of my "tips" is that you should master the rules of the game you are already playing.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The common theme for all of my "tips" is that you should master the rules of the game you are already playing.

Got anything... a bit more specific? "Know how to play the game" is sort of a meme tip, like "if you die a lot, try sucking less!".

 

[The1True]

CR exists because the older editions sorely lacked any good indicator of monster strength beyond Hit Dice

Yeah, I was looking at an old AD&D Random Encounter table the other day wondering what the hell a Level X monster is actually supposed to be. Like 10th level of the dungeon? A challenge for 10th level characters? It seems wildly arbitrary. EL's, CR's, and DC's are some of my favourite things introduced by 3e (along with ascending AC).

 

[squeen]

Got anything... a bit more specific? "Know how to play the game" is sort of a meme tip, like "if you die a lot, try sucking less!".

This is not entirely superfluous. With the introduction AD&D especially, we had a lot of folks who where modifying rules left and right (to match OD&D or Basic) before actually reading the complete picture.

I would suggest maybe that's the essence of the tip should be:

"Learn to run the rules-as-written first, until you can perceive the inherent checks-and-balances of the system before you launch into home-brewing."

 

[Beoric]

Yeah, I was looking at an old AD&D Random Encounter table the other day wondering what the hell a Level X monster is actually supposed to be. Like 10th level of the dungeon? A challenge for 10th level characters? It seems wildly arbitrary. EL's, CR's, and DC's are some of my favourite things introduced by 3e (along with ascending AC).

Level X is just a category that says how likely it is for that sort of monster to appear on a given dungeon level. It isn't meant to be used to balance combat encounters, because AD&D expects players to choose their level of risk, rather than designing combat encounters for their level. Also, 1e's AoO rules were more forgiving than later editions, so it's my impression it is easier to run away (in 4e you usually have to sacrifice your fighter if you realize you are in trouble). Balancing encounters was done by players choosing how deep they wanted to go in the dungeon, where lower levels of the dungeon are more dangerous than the upper levels.

 

[Beoric]

I would suggest maybe that's the essence of the tip should be:

"Learn to run the rules-as-written first, until you can perceive the inherent checks-and-balances of the system before you launch into home-brewing."

Yes, that is one of the takeaways. You need to know the RAW to get the most out of your game. You need to know the RAW to understand the impact of your houserules. If you are doing a conversion (which I do a lot of), you need to know the RAW of your game, but you also need to have enough of an understanding of the RAW of the game you are borrowing from to make the conversion accurate to the original experience.

This last is why I'm often on here asking questions about monster design in 3.5 (which I have never played), and 5e (which I have only played a little of).