New DM advice

[sambouchah]

So I have never been too good at being the dungeon master. I want to get better just in case I need to be. No one who plays with gives any good advice other than "don't drag them by the nose". How about you more experienced and hopefully articulate Dungeon Masters

Thanks in advance, Sam

[Illarion]

The best tip I got for you is to be as prepared as possible. Start with pre-written adventures at first. Read the whole thing once, then re-read what you need for your next session. That and you should have a strong understanding of the game. The less time you spend looking through books during a session the better.

[ArcturusV]

The sticky note is your friend. As a DM you have to remember a lot of oddball stuff, like circumstance bonuses/penalties, and such. If there is a random number you know you're going to have to call up from time to time? Put it on a sticky note. Put said note on your DM screen of choice, or other convenient place.

The other thing I'd say? Don't "Try too hard". I think that's the mistake a lot of rookies make with DMing. They try to craft something masterful, and due to their lack of experience, it just comes out BAAAAD.

Think of it like... cooking. If you're a total newbie at cooking, what's the first thing they teach you to make typically? A fried egg. As basic as basic can be. You have all of one ingredient, one prep item (grease the pan), and one mid-cooking task to do (Salt the egg).

So in this case? Go with something simple to start out with. A typical "Go there, kill people, take their stuff" plot. Make it in an open place without a lot of terrain widgets, or having to worry about lighting (Wait for the fancier stuff when you are more experience in what is a balanced encounter, what tactics people use, etc). Don't be afraid to be inflexible. If you misjudged your encounter and you're wiping out your PCs, have the enemies pull back, get cocky, get sloppy, fight inefficiently, etc, if you can pull it off.

Consider this first, basic, adventure a "Learn how stuff gets done", experience. Don't worry too much about an overarching plot. Practice the basic skills you need to as a DM.

A) Creating interesting (But in this case not difficult) settings to have things happen.

B) Home brew your enemies, do NOT use the Monster Manual except as a baseline. Eventually you will need to be able to figure out how to alter stuff and what not anyway. Considering you are going "simple" on this and won't have difficult terrain, odd effects, etc, to consider. This is a good time to experiment.

C) Focus on making the game fun in a Beer and Pretzels game way, because it's not going to be too deep intellectually at this point. Long as you can have fun with it (Maybe use unusual attacks/effects on your homebrew enemies, etc), most everyone is going to have a fine time with it.

If you explain what you're doing, and why? Most people will probably be fine with it being a one off or a training session for greater DMing. Once you have a feel for that. You run another session with some "Fancier" things. Use lighting and adverse/varied terrain and doodads. Vary up enemy tactics, maybe consider things like enemy morale, etc.

After that you start throwing in more cerebral stuff, giving plots that aren't just "Go there, kill that, take their stuff". You should have a decent enough grasp of the basics you can start sprinkling in advance plots a little at a time, give characters something else to do.

Before you know it? You'll be off running full campaigns. Just take it slow, do not try too hard, too fast. Don't add more details and experiments into your game until you are comfortable running what you DO have.

[sambouchah]

The sticky note is your friend. As a DM you have to remember a lot of oddball stuff, like circumstance bonuses/penalties, and such. If there is a random number you know you're going to have to call up from time to time? Put it on a sticky note. Put said note on your DM screen of choice, or other convenient place.

The other thing I'd say? Don't "Try too hard". I think that's the mistake a lot of rookies make with DMing. They try to craft something masterful, and due to their lack of experience, it just comes out BAAAAD.

Think of it like... cooking. If you're a total newbie at cooking, what's the first thing they teach you to make typically? A fried egg. As basic as basic can be. You have all of one ingredient, one prep item (grease the pan), and one mid-cooking task to do (Salt the egg).

So in this case? Go with something simple to start out with. A typical "Go there, kill people, take their stuff" plot. Make it in an open place without a lot of terrain widgets, or having to worry about lighting (Wait for the fancier stuff when you are more experience in what is a balanced encounter, what tactics people use, etc). Don't be afraid to be inflexible. If you misjudged your encounter and you're wiping out your PCs, have the enemies pull back, get cocky, get sloppy, fight inefficiently, etc, if you can pull it off.

Consider this first, basic, adventure a "Learn how stuff gets done", experience. Don't worry too much about an overarching plot. Practice the basic skills you need to as a DM.

A) Creating interesting (But in this case not difficult) settings to have things happen.

B) Home brew your enemies, do NOT use the Monster Manual except as a baseline. Eventually you will need to be able to figure out how to alter stuff and what not anyway. Considering you are going "simple" on this and won't have difficult terrain, odd effects, etc, to consider. This is a good time to experiment.

C) Focus on making the game fun in a Beer and Pretzels game way, because it's not going to be too deep intellectually at this point. Long as you can have fun with it (Maybe use unusual attacks/effects on your homebrew enemies, etc), most everyone is going to have a fine time with it.

If you explain what you're doing, and why? Most people will probably be fine with it being a one off or a training session for greater DMing. Once you have a feel for that. You run another session with some "Fancier" things. Use lighting and adverse/varied terrain and doodads. Vary up enemy tactics, maybe consider things like enemy morale, etc.

After that you start throwing in more cerebral stuff, giving plots that aren't just "Go there, kill that, take their stuff". You should have a decent enough grasp of the basics you can start sprinkling in advance plots a little at a time, give characters something else to do.

Before you know it? You'll be off running full campaigns. Just take it slow, do not try too hard, too fast. Don't add more details and experiments into your game until you are comfortable running what you DO have.

My brother is gonna help me out some this week with the Dungeon Mastery and I will be using the advice from you as well! Also at what point should I play around with throwing spellcasters at the players and stuff?

[javijuji]

Also be ready to improvise. Do not punish your players for choosing a path which was not layed out by you. Sometimes they will suprise you with stuff that you may not have considered when designing a campaign/story/dungeon.

Do not grow attached to Npcs. They are simply npcs and when dealing with evil characters/parties they might die very quickly even if you had a lot of ideas thought out for them. Which takes me to my final point:

Do not plan everything. Ive learnt that half the sessions I plan ahead and the second half I improvise.

[ArcturusV]

Well, depends on how fast you are used to running more "basic stuff".

Here's the pattern I'd go to.

First time out, it's a typical slugfest. You have mostly mundane enemies using mostly mundane tactics, in a fairly straightforward type. Use color (Non-game mechanic style details and descriptions) to make it more exciting than it normally would be.

Second time out, use terrain to make fights more difficult than Charge and Smash and such. Spiders are a typical "go to" for this, since they have climb speeds, have webs that can work as terrain, can approach players from different directions, dropping from ceilings, skittering on floors, traversing web, etc. Places like ruins are also good because you can use effects like rubble for difficult terrain, weak floors for simple "pit traps", broken walls/columns to experiment with cover mechanics, etc.

Third time out go for spell casters and supernatural stuff. Things with unusual abilities like Undead or Outsiders, sorcerers and wizards, enemy clerics. Don't try to imitate the "Batman Wizards" or anything like that. Keep it simple. Just get used to ideas like zone debuffs, how enemies act when they have to worry about the AoE of a Fireball. How you can combine basic spells like Stinking Cloud with other enemy types for basic (But effective) strategies.

Just remember that your enemies should always be thinking in terms of basic and effective strategies. Even though the first time out is a simple encounter, still try to have them use proper strategy. Set up flanks, use range to pick off exposed and lone characters, use readied actions triggered to attack when "That goofy guy in the robes and pointy hat starts wiggling his fingers and chanting", etc. Things that enemies should reasonably do. Second time make sure the enemies, who should have home field advantage, try to properly use the terrain. Use cover, use difficult terrain to keep enemies at bay, set up ambushes at effective locations where you have high ground and killing zones, etc.

If your players feel like stuff was too easy? Means you didn't QUITE get the hang of what you're going for yet, and you need to do it again and tighten the screws a bit more.

Also, and I cannot stress this enough. It's good to have a short little chat about a game, get feedback from players.

It also helps if you have someone run a Chronicle of the game. It's an old tradition I picked up from.. I don't know where... where one of the players writes up accounts of what happened in game, usually "in character", but sometimes not. It's handy for two reasons.

1: It instantly gives you a "recap" for the next session you run. Just have whoever wrote it up go read off what happened last time.

2: It gives you a peek into the minds of the players, what they think is important, what they ignored, how they felt about encounters, NPCs, plot aspects, etc. Sometimes revealing in ways they wouldn't mention if you just asked them. Particularly on overlooking important plot points.

[Phelix-Mu]

The best advice that I can give without an essay attached is to be fair.

Along the lines of being fair, be consistent. As DM, you can house rule/homebrew anything you like, and DM handwave and setting flavor can obviate most all of the core rules if you desire. But if you change things for some reason, remember what you've changed. Keep records of what happens in each session, the decisions the characters make, and any ad-hoc rulings that you have to make on-the-go that may later be referenced as precedent. Nothing is worse as DM than for the players to have a decisive advantage over you in understanding how the game works.

If it's your first time out, I'd stick with trying out a module. If you are feeling adventurous, only use the first half of the module, toss out the ending, and improv some plot twist that takes it in a totally original direction.