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View Full Version : How do you DM? Let's reflect



Jon_Dahl
2010-02-18, 02:50 AM
I've seen some threads here about advicing people how to DM, but let's see how do you actually DM and what kind of principles do we have. Or do we have any?

Here are some of my rules of DM'ing:
1. PC's are heroes, but they don't have special rules over NPC's. They are simply favored, but law is the same for everyone. If law is different for someone, it will be bad (somehow)
2. Avoid DMPC's. If you have to do it, you have to really careful about designing it. If possible, make passive and/or crappy DMPC. NPC-classes and low INT are good ideas.
3. Don't advice players. Let them succeed or fail themselves. If you help them with rules but they have access to read them, they will just get lazy.
4. Avoid railroading. By following Rule #3 you can fairly easily avoid railroading.
5. Even if it's fantasy, it has to make sense.
What else? Hmm... I'll write more later.

Superglucose
2010-02-18, 02:51 AM
I don't GM well, but since everyone else seems to have fun...

Farlion
2010-02-18, 03:13 AM
I just have one rule as DM and it took me a while to grasp it.


Play WITH your players, not against them.


This rule implies alot and out of my expirience, it seems to distinguish between good and not so good DM's. As a starter DM I always wanted to make life hard for my PCs, tried to harass them wherever I could, but time goes by. Now I let them feel like heroes, allow them to achieve things that make them happy and as a payoff I can let them suffer even harsher than in my DM beginnings, but they don't complain, heck they don't even mind! :smallbiggrin:

So it all comes down to using carrot and stick methods, with enough carrots, they won't mind the sticks =)

Cheers,
Farlion

Superglucose
2010-02-18, 03:15 AM
Play WITH your players, not against them.

but mother always said not to play with my food!

Melamoto
2010-02-18, 03:30 AM
but mother always said not to play with my food!
Only after it's dead.

Chrono22
2010-02-18, 03:34 AM
I co-DM with my two friends. The three of us assign priority/control according to the circumstances (this serves as a form of damage control when issues of creative control come up).
We also have a set of goals or standards that we abide by for the benefit of our mutual enjoyment.

Priority 1: The overarching plot- the three of us construct this based on our intentions for the campaign. It needs to somehow draw our three characters in and connect them. Some of the information one DM knows may be a secret from the others.
Priority 2: The rules of the game- typically we hash this out as we go. No rules are holy- if we determine that a particular build, class, or spell is broken, we fix it or ban it. We usually do a good job with this.
Priority 3: Subplots- these are typically shorter story arcs centered around an adventure location or a conflict. For arcs in which one PC is central to the conflict and resoluation, the two other DMs are assigned narrative control. This way the PC can fully enjoy playing.
Priority 4: The environment- usually one DM is assigned to control the environment (towns, npcs, combats), and we swap. His PC has to play an inactive role in the resolution of environment-based challenges, unless the other two players are unable to do so.
Priority 5: The player- the player has control of his character's actions, barring supernatural abilities or other nonsense. If the two other co-DMs believe he has acted out of character or is doing actions that are inconsistent with the game reality (metagaming), they can disallow specific actions for that circumstance.

When we play, we have a set of objectives that we turn to in the course of designing adventures, playing games or overcoming challenges.

1. Mutual Fun- everyone has to have fun. It is the responsibility of a player to tell the others how he derives his fun, and it is the responsibility of the DM to find ways to institute this information into play.
2. Adherence to a Theme- some types of games require seriousness and a level of realism. Some types of games are for kicking ass and slapstick comedy. Switching halfway through a session tends to ruin the mood, so we don't do that.
3. When arguments arise (and they do)- be ready to listen, stay calm and emotionally unattached to the outcome, be ready to cooperate and compromise, and be respectful to eachother regardless of your feelings.

Masaioh
2010-02-18, 03:41 AM
-Weaken the fourth wall. It helps for comedic purposes.
-By extension, the PC knows what the player knows.
-If anyone says that my plot makes 'less than no sense', it's fine. If anyone says that Neon Genesis Evangelion makes more sense than the plot, I need to add some verisimilitude in order to keep the player's minds safe.
-Fun and awesomeness are more important than verisimilitude.
-Keep the players guessing.
-If a PC is in serious trouble, invoke a literal Deus Ex Machina in the style of Ancient Greek theatre. But everybody only gets one unless they are very devout worshippers that have garnered the favour of their patron deity.

Kurald Galain
2010-02-18, 03:55 AM
Law of Karma. The outcome of a situation is such that it gives the PCs the chance to shine and be the hero.

Law of Drama. The outcome of a situation is such that it furthers the plot.

Law of Logic. The outcome of a situation is what would logically (versimilitudiously) follow in the real world.


These three have no particular order of precedence, and the trick is finding a balance between them. Too much karma, and the players start feeling like they're entitled to win everything. Too much drama, and you end up railroading. Too much logic, and the campaign gets very lethal.

For instance, suppose the party thief wants to rob a local jeweler. By law of logic, that puts him in peril of getting arrested and thrown in jail. By law of karma, he won't get the death penalty, but he can escape (or avoid arrest in the first place) if he's clever enough. By law of drama, a noble that's meant to be important to the plot will react to this, e.g. helping the PC to put him in his debt, or use the event as an excuse to get more city guards and raise taxes.

Katana_Geldar
2010-02-18, 03:56 AM
-Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny will always get a yes, but if you are going to insist on disemboweling bodies in the forest, expect some predators...

illyrus
2010-02-18, 04:28 AM
It depends on the game and group. The last time I DMed was for a group that had never gotten to try a more PC driven game.

My rules/methods were:
1. I tried DMing off of a time-line. Every major faction and NPC had important tasks that without interruption would complete on X date on the calender. PCs actions could modify that time-line by either delaying, changing, or removing actions. That also meant that possible quests-lines would open or close depending upon the date.

2. The world was stable without the PCs but the majority of it was run by evil people. Most of this evil was of the non-obvious sort. This was to allow the PCs to play in a world where they could overthrow rulers and become overlords without having to be of an evil alignment if they so chose.

3. People of all alignments had things they needed done and so the PCs could feasibly work with any NPC or faction or against it.

4. Every PC has a history and is expected to have goals, if you don't give me one by several sessions in I'll makeup a history and your goals will not be factored into the world at creation time but later. Their goals became the focus of the campaign.

5. If it made sense I'd happily give the PCs access to followers and allies if they so requested and had them run those followers and allies in addition to their own characters unless they specifically requested that I run one. Past the first game session (yay intro) there were always people the PCs could either pay or get to help for free. By the end one PC ran their own faction and could call on quite a bit of free aid.

6. I did not softball or buff up encounters based on the PCs level (this I told to them). So a pack of CR 5 gnolls stayed CR 5 even if the PCs were level 15 just like going to the great wyrm dragon's lair at level 5 was a bad idea (though I tended to provide OOC knowledge of "this will more than likely get you all killed"). By the same token if the PCs decided to bring enough allies or followers they would probably succeed at encounters out of their own range or else roll encounters within their range.

7. People in power were still there for a reason. This meant that any ruler already had reasonable defenses laid out to handle a group of assassins trying to kill him or her. By that same token I was perfectly fine with the PCs trying to assassinate the king while they had an audience with him.

8. I gave important NPCs two methods of fighting, normal mode and nightmare mode. Nightmare mode just involved different tactics not any stat changes. The nightmare mode was meant for if the PCs went with polymorph/gate/scry-and-die/etc shenanigans.

9. I was permissive with material. We're usually a core-only crowd but I let the players request what they wanted to play and I would read over it to see if I saw anything massively-game breaking and I ended up accepting all requests. The caveat to that is that if I accepted Duskblade or Battledancer for a PC then NPCs were free to take those classes as well. Also any class/PrC an NPC had a PC could have as well.

10. I gave them gold past their level. Our other DMs were stingy with gold in an effort to curve party power so I wanted to see what the difference was. Past happier PCs I didn't really notice one for my group.

11. All NPCs could be killed. Some were harder to kill than others (liches for example) but none possessed plot armor.

bosssmiley
2010-02-18, 08:59 AM
"Are you sure you want to do that?" - It's the players' responsibility to keep their character alive. The DM is not here to protect you from your own bad choices. His job is to explain the situation, and then adjudicate what happens based on your decisions and the dice.
"He's dead Jim. Oh, wait. He is Jim." - There are no precious snowflakes here. No DMPCs, no PvP=0 areas, and no plot critical, contractual immortality PCs. All true heroes die eventually.
"What is this 'plot' you speak of?" - There are adventure hooks, not railroad tracks. Beyond the initial set-up the players choose where the party goes, not the DM.
"Name, rank and serial number." - Backstory emerges during play. Anything more than the basics is just blahblahblah, wordswordswords.
"I'll allow it." - Entertain the group, and things will be easier. The gods favour fools and show offs.
"Shut up and roll!" - Argue the toss on DM calls and 'unfairness' after the game, not during.

SpikeFightwicky
2010-02-18, 09:14 AM
I don't GM well, but since everyone else seems to have fun...

Ah, but if everyone's having fun, then you are, in fact, GMing well.

When I DM, I think up a storyline (vagueness depends on how long it took the players to get back to me about their characters) and find a way for the PCs to fit in. Once that's done, I find a way to make the PCs the main focus of the story (usually starting on a 'local' level). I've learned early on that PCs will ALWAYS do something you don't expect, so I morph the adventure as it goes (though the PCs seem to always think it was my plan all along).



-Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny will always get a yes, but if you are going to insist on disemboweling bodies in the forest, expect some predators...

http://people.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith/cloaking/predator.jpg

valadil
2010-02-18, 09:36 AM
I run collaborative storytelling sessions, not games.
PC backstory/personal plot is more important than the overarching plot. All individual plots should be tied into the uber plot to strengthen it.
Vonnegut's rule of writing #4, "Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action." This means I don't putz around with stuff like random encounters. The closest thing you'll get to a random encounter is a fight scene that seems innocuous at first but ends up spawning plot.
The world goes on, even when the PCs aren't looking.
Each game has a theme. This is not something the players are usually aware of. Having a set theme gives me something to go back to and draw inspiration from when I'm out of ideas or stuck in a hole I've dug.
Players usually get beat down before they can pull of the big win. I attribute this to basic pro wrestling psychology. It applies well to games even though nerds hate wrasslin'.
Game is written no more than one session in advance. I have plot musings and background events. Some events are queued up well in advance. But I have no idea what the players will hit or where they'll be until they get there.
Everything should make sense, though it may take time to piece together how it got there. This rule unfortunately makes elaborate dungeons harder to use.
NPCs are imperfect sources of information. They can lie and be lied to. Social encounters are not logic puzzles.
Each campaign should be unique in some way. I need to change what I'm doing as GM or else I get bored. I have AD&D ADD :-P
Finally, here's a motto I try to live up to. I don't always do it because I'm not cruel enough but it does help me come up with shocking events and twists. "Just when you think you know all the answers, I change the questions."

agumathebear
2010-02-18, 10:37 AM
i write my game in chapters, usually about 3 chapters farther than where the players are now and i have a very specific goal set up. the way i start is i keep them in a "shut off" nation, like right now they are in a nation called Gryphos and it is not allowing anyone to come or go through their ports or any of the neighboring nations to come through and no one from their nation to leave, this is due to recent terrorist attacks from...well, anyway you get the idea. anyway at this point they are so familiar with gryphos they kinda want to move on to more nations but they realise now that if they just wander around aimlessly they will get nothing done. in between chapters there are "side quests" which are quests specifically created for a certain character's storyline. for instance; the last side quest we did our character's drakk and bael (played by the same person) finally met up after years of seperation and ended up fighting and drakk left the party because of it...dont get me wrong, this side quest wasnt just "oh, btw, you see bael" it consisted of deep plot and character history, kidnap, dungeons, new arch enemies and hard decisions, and in the end bael joined the party and drakk left to find his true father.

in conclusion; i kinda lead my party by the nose, so to speak, until they finish a chapter; in between this chapter i fill it with things to do; bounty hunts, festivals, character plot, travel time, etc. just so long as they come back and finish their buisiness.

EDIT: oh, i forgot to mention, there are options to become kings and queens of nations and clans and so forth, but the upkeep is very hard. to do this, i actually took the game The Settlers VI and turned it into a pen and paper game...the party seems to like it, so why not? that and most of us play warhammer so we also like wargames, and i dont see why d&d and wargames cannot be one in the same.

Piedmon_Sama
2010-02-18, 04:22 PM
Just being a PC class makes you part of a very special .001% of the population who are just fated/talented/lucky enough to star in their very own fantasy story. That terrible warlord stalking the plains with his bandit army? 9th level warrior. The famous general who took the untakeable city and fought in the first wave? 6th level warrior, with 2 levels of aristocrat tacked on after retirement. Elite knights or shock troopers may be 3rd or 4th level. You have to explicitly kill around 26 guys just to get to 3rd level--most soldiers don't directly kill that many even in the Middle Ages. There will only be a handful of Clerics in the world, and Wizards and Druids seal themselves far away from civilization. Paladins, I usually say they don't exist.

Don't expect to go to the local Cleric to get your sword-slashes fixed. Don't expect to find a friendly Wizard in town, willing to teleport you. An Adept on the edge of town who makes minor potions and scrolls? Sure, that's feasable. And I don't generally go in for that stereotypical "the peasants and the church hate and fear ALL MAGIC" thing, either. Now, if you want to get some big-time magical services (like a resurrection, interdimensional transport, whatever) you are going to have to work for it. Cut your way through random encounters in the dangerous wilds, climb a mountain while battling the elements, reach the Wizard, and then get told he wants powdered bone from a young adult black dragon before he'll even consider helping you out.

Dwarves, Elves and Gnomes are not your friends. (Halflings I usually don't include at all). They are separate races, with their own agendas and social values strikingly different from mankind's.
-The Gnomes: Advanced centuries ahead of man, they regularly employ steam power, the electric light, and their weapons of war (martini-guns, massive howitzers with a range of almost 100 miles) ensure they need no army. They are not native to this world; they came from somewhere else, and not even the Wizards or Druids are sure where. They mock the power of human empires and their invisible gods (Gnomes worship only progress and capital), secure in their lands and confident the human primitives will keep lining up to buy their trinkets--outdated tech to the Gnomes that has catapaulted human civilization from Late Antiquity to mid-Renaissance in two generations.

Gnomes are too capitalist and competitive to be stereotypically nationalistic; but almost all hold casually racist attitudes towards outsiders. They continue to expand with their machines of industry, like locusts within their great threshers and mills, untouchable and uncaring of the "primitives" around them.

The Elves worship powers too ancient and strange to even be called Gods. They created the Druidic and Arcane Orders essentially as covers so they could rule humans and use them for sacrifice by proxy. They are virtually immortal, splendidly beautiful, and take a glacial perspective to nearly everything. They live in a land only half-in our own world, and half-within its own plane, accessible only to those who know the rituals to enter. "Younger, unwise" races of Fay, such as Killoren, Centaurs, Catfolk, Satyrs or Minotaurs they keep as guardians or servants. They think nothing of enslaving or secretly manipulating Mortals, who are no more "alive" to them than the wheat that grows in half a year. There is at least one ritual the players know of, wherein the Elves sacrifice a seeress of their own, to a horrible death stretched over millennia, to fuel a magical tree that helps them see the future. What is one life to creatures who see all in Past, Present and Future?

Dwarves haven't really been covered in my campaign yet, but I'm sure somehow they're jerks.

What all this adds up to is, playing a demihuman means playing something inhuman. There are no Elves randomly wandering around human villages. An Elf in the party does not mean you have Mr. Spock or Legolas to be your buddy. They can act whatever part they need to manipulate you, but you are worth less than a young ash to them.

For that matter, humans are different. They're always the point of reference in fantasy settings, 21st-century humans in various costumes. Not so here. Orgies of death and destruction in the Gladiator arena, unfit babies left to die on hilltops, slitting a cow's throat and pouring its blood over the altar of your god, packing the mentally disabled into traveling carnivals, treating slaves (except for the privelaged few who nursed and tutored you) like animals and deliberately working them to death because it helps the economy to buy new slaves every couple years (for that matter, regularly working horses or mules to death in the military), club-wielding street gangs becoming political powerhouses, and regarding an illiterate country peasant as something between a dangerous animal and a retarded child. These beliefs and practices are totally normal in the main human culture (e.g, the one that's less ****ed up and closest to ours). In fact, you'd be seen as some kind of deviant if you were gentle with your working slaves, the way we see someone who lets his horse into his house and feeds it at his dinner table.

Did I mention that 98% of society thinks women and children need to beaten every so often because otherwise you would be a negligent patriarch? They don't actually have to do anything wrong, although they will. Contrariwise, 98% of children start practical on-the-job training, whether they're going to be a soldier, tavernkeeper, hunter, plumber or medical doctor at the age of 12.

It's not in the game to be horrible (though it is), but when you have a civilization where a short string of draughts can kill half of everybody, where giving birth is equally or more likely to get you killed than going to battle, and where literally you live at the mercy of a city or landlord or you go out into the woods and starve, this is what you get.

Everything I've said is germaine to one setting that I'm currently using, but it reflects a lot of my philosophy behind storytelling/DMing or whatever. You can make anything a tense situation. Climbing a cliff, fording a river, foraging for supplies, these are things normal DMs gloss over. For me, they're the most exciting part, and the more realistically I can stress the dangers of travel the better. I'm weird, I don't know. I love playing up the mundane dangers, so when the PCs finally see their first Aberration I can really ham it up. To make Cthulhu scarier than Ghengis Khan, first make Ghengis as scary as you can and then introduce Cthulhu.

Which is another thing, in style I can't stay away from addressing horror. With D&D, or any Medieval/Ancient-ish Fantasy, it's unavoidable. To actual people before we invented electric light, the woods in your backyard were ****ing scary. They didn't know what was out there. They were small and short-lived, nature was big and eternal and sometimes the sun or plague vapors or a flood would kill them for no particular reason. This is why ancient mythology, folk stories, and history are dark as hell. And for D&D, that's all the source material. Gary Gygax talked about Caesar's Gallic Wars (which is about one of history's oldest and biggest genocides) and The Edda (which ends with the world destroyed and almost all humans and gods wiped out) being important texts for D&D, as well as the stories of Lovecraft or Howard. The horrific element has always been there, I can't ignore it.

Gamgee
2010-02-18, 04:31 PM
I don't make my games easy. How the hell can you be heroic if your mindset from the start is "I'm a little special princess PC, and no matter how bad it looks I know I can succeed."

The players need to feel threatened, and that they are not actually special. This can be tricky because they are, but you don't want them to know this. This means that sometimes bad things do have to happen. You have to remind them that it could be them, and every once in awhile they do have to fail. It has to be built up, and dramatic of course. This way it gives them a new sense of purpose to go and be heroes, but at the same time tempers them so they don't think they are special princesses.

If they do stupid things, and I try to get them out of those thing, but they continue to do more stupid things. Then they are on their own. I tried to give you some special treatment, but you guys were dumb and died. Deal with it. At least you learned right?

That's my key philosophy to being a DM. Yes, I do get a lot of whiny players, and yes I do go through a lot of players who want to dual wield maces made out of planets and who can spit lightening. They always leave in a hissy fit at not being special, or they adapt and learn how to tell a good story. I have an incredibly good group now because I kept my standards high, and while we can be silly from time to time it at least fits in character or is realistically plausible fun.

Edit
I have been described as an "optimizers worst dream". That might say a lot too.