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GoblinGilmartin
2013-03-23, 11:16 PM
I'm looking to better my DMing style. Stuff like speaking in character ( I had a bad experience with a jamaican Planeswalker once, my player(s) laughed at me.) and describing events and, say, criticals and fumbles.

I don't actually get to play regularly, I have a group and an ongoing campaign, but we don't get to meet on a scheduled basis, because one of my players has a busy work schedule. I was hoping that someone could help me develop a way to practice DMing without any players!

Grinner
2013-03-23, 11:29 PM
Well...GMing is two parts preparation and one part improvisation, right? While it won't help you with your Jamaican Planeswalker, might I suggest doing some writing? It seems like writing up a scenario and then continuing it through stream-of-consciousness writing might be the ticket. Focus on developing concise, descriptive language.

I've never tried anything like this though, so I'm really just making blind suggestions. :smallredface:

GoblinGilmartin
2013-03-23, 11:41 PM
Well...GMing is two parts preparation and one part improvisation, right? While it won't help you with your Jamaican Planeswalker, might I suggest doing some writing? It seems like writing up a scenario and then continuing it through stream-of-consciousness writing might be the ticket. Focus on developing concise, descriptive language.

I've never tried anything like this though, so I'm really just making blind suggestions. :smallredface:

Blind suggestions are just as valid as well thought out ones. thank you. anything else?

Xeratos
2013-03-24, 12:51 AM
This may be a bit off-topic to what you're specifically asking, but in regards to good DMing, I've found that it's a lot harder to get my players involved if I'm reading a description off a piece of paper or out of a book. They seem to respond better when I'm actually talking to them about what they see in the room (go figure).

GoblinGilmartin
2013-03-24, 01:57 AM
I hate pre-published mods for that reason specifically. When I started out DMing, I'd write out flavor text for moments that I knew that we would be getting to. I stopped when I realized I'd written a half page long description of a princess looking out a window.

It's harder for me to do nowadays as My style has gotten a lot more sandbox-y.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-03-24, 02:39 AM
This is actually a pretty interesting problem: The part of DMing that's the hardest is reacting to the actions of an unpredictable player on a time pressure in a way that makes the game come together coherently. You can't practice DMing against yourself because the entire point is the players will come up with things you don't expect and would never have thought about yourself. How can you simulate the creativity of a person without having an actual person there to do the creative work?

I can see the beginnings of a somewhat workable solution for the specific context of a player in a TTRPG, but I need more time to sit and work it out. If it turns out to not be completely terrible I'll come back later and share my findings.



For now, though, my advice is this: Find a guinea pig. A single person with a flexible schedule (or at least a schedule that more or less matches yours) who is always eager to spend time with you, infinitely patient and tolerant of your dumb mistakes, and around whom you're comfortable enough to share really personal thoughts and concerns and take big artistic risks without having to worry about them hating you forever or losing their trust in you as a DM. And hopefully, just hopefully, the learning experience can be two-way.

I have my boyfriend to fill this role for me. He's not perfect, but awesome nonetheless. I think it's worked out decently enough for us. The hard part will be finding your own.

Souju
2013-03-24, 02:44 AM
My players respond alright to room descriptions (mostly cuz I suck at them, and there's only so many ways you can say "the room has a table, 4 chairs, and a fireplace") but 9 times out of 10 any attempt to come up with scripted dialog falls flat.
My advice would be to make use of outlines. If something needs to be described a certain way, write it down in that way (successful Knowledge-type skill checks, for instance) but for most things keep just the bare minimum written down. 2 parts preparation and 1 part improvisation is right, but you can also flip those numbers if your players are...well, like mine.
Example: I set up an elaborate system of 20 ships in a fleet escaping from a conquered nation (yes, this was inspired a lot by what you're thinking about) complete with intrigue and power plays and enemies for the party to fight.
They blew the whole thing off and went to play on an island on the rickety boat I made special efforts to keep them OFF of.
As long as you're prepared for that eventuality, you're good.

Fighter1000
2013-03-24, 04:05 AM
I have GMed myself, just me no other people, quite a lot.
I must say it is difficult at times and it can be hard to start a campaign, but once you make the push and get the ball rolling, the game can be quite awesome and fun.

Lorsa
2013-03-24, 07:31 AM
Speaking in character you can practice by taking acting classes. Usually it's good to avoid speaking with accents you actually can't master. If I wanted to speak scottish for example, it would just sound ridiculous. What matters a lot more is the tone of your voice (the pitch), the words / phrases chosen and don't forget body language. So yeah, acting class (or just practice at home at the mirror).

As for describing events, writing short stories on your computer might help with that. You could even bring forth a couple of character sheets and dice, play out a tiny battle and write the outcome out in story form.

Strawberries
2013-03-24, 08:34 AM
Hmmm....wouldn't help with speaking in character, probably, but on the "writing in character", "practicing descriptions" and "reacting to unforeseen players' action" side, why don't you give a try to play by posts?

randomhero00
2013-03-24, 11:33 AM
Flashcards! Make like 50-100, as many as you can with as many different scenarios as you can.

Examples:

1. Say "Who goes there man? I don' think you belong here." in a Jamaican accent.
2. As above but different sentences for different accents you want to use/practice.
3. A player is about to die. He swings his sword, but rolls a 1. There is an enemy in front, and an ally 2 squares to the right. Describe what happens.
4. As above but think of as many scenarios as you can. But also include nat 20s and crits. Do the same for skills as well as combat.
5. Your players surprise you. You need a new, random terrain. Draw a small map on a scratch sheet of paper.
6. If you need to work on CR estimations that's pretty straight forward.
7. You need a trap, quickly. Think of one that goes on a statue somehow in a hallway. There is a gem involved.
8. You need a natural trap. It is forest. Deals does poison.
9. Your players were supposed to go to the inn to meet their new paladin ally, instead they've decided to side with the enemy thieves guild! Quickly think of a 4 person party that would be accepted by a thieves guild and one that wouldn't be. Details are a plus.
10.Your players are in a dungeon facing enemies above their head. Its the underdark. You need to help steer them away or they could TPK. Make up an ally that would help them.
11. etc. you can think up almost any situation and put it on a flashcard. Once you have enough, it'll be almost like true randomness in games to practice.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-03-24, 11:35 AM
Alright, I promised I'd share my idea if I managed to turn it into something marginally useful, so here it is. I call it:

The Reginald Cuftbert Simulator

Reginald is a DM's Worst Nightmare(tm): A Chaotic Stupid troll character who has no respect for your setting, your characters, or your dignity, and has no motivation except to make everyone around him as miserable as possible. He cannot be helped, placated, or reasoned with. He's the man with a bomb strapped to his chest who wants nothing more than to see as much panic and destruction around him as possible before he goes up in flames.

A sane DM who cared about her players would kill off Cuftbert and kick his player out of the group before the end of the first session, but you're no sane DM, and you've got no players who need protecting.

You're going to do something very stupid: DM for Reginald Cuftbert.

Yes I watch Spoiler Warning, why do you ask?



To end with the dramatics, Reginald Cuftbert (henceforth abbreviated "RC") is a PC whose actions are basically completely randomly generated through some deceptively simple card and dice mechanics. Your job as the DM is to try to build a setting and a cohesive narrative around the randomly generated actions of RC.

Here's how he works. You'll need a blank stack of index cards, a pencil, and some booze to drown out the memories afterwards.

RC interacts with your world in much the same way the protagonist of a text-based adventure game would. Start by making a set of index cards, each one with a verb and keywords in capital letters, these will make up your Verb Deck. Verb cards should look like this:

"eat FOOD"
"attack CHARACTER with WEAPON in the BODY_PART"
"use ITEM on OBJECT"

The keywords in capital letters correspond to labels for your Noun Decks. You can build these decks as you go, adding and removing cards as it becomes appropriate. When the King's in the room, add the king to the character deck. When he leaves (or is horribly maimed) remove him from the deck.

Start the game with a bit of exposition, explaining where RC currently is and what's around him. Add the appropriate cards to their decks.

When you're all done adding cards and writing down your description of the starting exposition, it's time to see what RC spits out at us. Shuffle the verb deck and draw a card, then, shuffle the noun decks for each keyword and draw a card from each, matching the noun on the card with its deck's keyword like you're playing madlibs. Most of the results you'll get will be pretty silly: That's okay, that's why we're imagining our player character as Reginald Cuftbert instead of a reasonable human being. Simulating a reasonable human being through randomly drawing cards would be way harder.

Write down in your description what RC does. This is important: Be as literal as possible. Add details only for the purposes of illustrating what's going on physically.

Then, write down another piece of exposition explaining what the consequences of this are, like how the NPCs react to it. Optionally, put yourself on a timer: Give yourself, say, 30 seconds to come up with something. Don't include any details except the stuff that's directly relevant to what RC just did. Maybe some other stuff's going on in the background but that's not relevant (and thus should not be mentioned) until RC decides to do something with it.

Once you're done, shuffle the cards back into their decks, add and remove cards as appropriate, then draw another verb card, rinse, and repeat.

It'll be tempting to try to twist, modify, or even rewrite RC's actions to be something you're more comfortable dealing with; You must resist this temptation at all costs. The *whole point* of RC is his complete absurdity gets you out of your comfort zone. If you start overriding the output of the deck, RC ceases to be a (legendarily stupid) PC and starts being just another NPC under your omnipotent control.



Anyway, that's my idea. I've done a couple of "playtests" of it myself, and it seems to work decently well (you do have to be careful with what cards you put in; Making the palette of verbs too small will make RC too predictable). If anyone else tries it and has some interesting experiences with it, I'd be very interested in hearing about it!

GoblinGilmartin
2013-03-24, 12:14 PM
Alright, I promised I'd share my idea if I managed to turn it into something marginally useful, so here it is. I call it:

The Reginald Cuftbert Simulator

Reginald is a DM's Worst Nightmare(tm): A Chaotic Stupid troll character who has no respect for your setting, your characters, or your dignity, and has no motivation except to make everyone around him as miserable as possible. He cannot be helped, placated, or reasoned with. He's the man with a bomb strapped to his chest who wants nothing more than to see as much panic and destruction around him as possible before he goes up in flames.

A sane DM who cared about her players would kill off Cuftbert and kick his player out of the group before the end of the first session, but you're no sane DM, and you've got no players who need protecting.

You're going to do something very stupid: DM for Reginald Cuftbert.

Yes I watch Spoiler Warning, why do you ask?



To end with the dramatics, Reginald Cuftbert (henceforth abbreviated "RC") is a PC whose actions are basically completely randomly generated through some deceptively simple card and dice mechanics. Your job as the DM is to try to build a setting and a cohesive narrative around the randomly generated actions of RC.

Here's how he works. You'll need a blank stack of index cards, a pencil, and some booze to drown out the memories afterwards.

RC interacts with your world in much the same way the protagonist of a text-based adventure game would. Start by making a set of index cards, each one with a verb and keywords in capital letters, these will make up your Verb Deck. Verb cards should look like this:

"eat FOOD"
"attack CHARACTER with WEAPON in the BODY_PART"
"use ITEM on OBJECT"

The keywords in capital letters correspond to labels for your Noun Decks. You can build these decks as you go, adding and removing cards as it becomes appropriate. When the King's in the room, add the king to the character deck. When he leaves (or is horribly maimed) remove him from the deck.

Start the game with a bit of exposition, explaining where RC currently is and what's around him. Add the appropriate cards to their decks.

When you're all done adding cards and writing down your description of the starting exposition, it's time to see what RC spits out at us. Shuffle the verb deck and draw a card, then, shuffle the noun decks for each keyword and draw a card from each, matching the noun on the card with its deck's keyword like you're playing madlibs. Most of the results you'll get will be pretty silly: That's okay, that's why we're imagining our player character as Reginald Cuftbert instead of a reasonable human being. Simulating a reasonable human being through randomly drawing cards would be way harder.

Write down in your description what RC does. This is important: Be as literal as possible. Add details only for the purposes of illustrating what's going on physically.

Then, write down another piece of exposition explaining what the consequences of this are, like how the NPCs react to it. Optionally, put yourself on a timer: Give yourself, say, 30 seconds to come up with something. Don't include any details except the stuff that's directly relevant to what RC just did. Maybe some other stuff's going on in the background but that's not relevant (and thus should not be mentioned) until RC decides to do something with it.

Once you're done, shuffle the cards back into their decks, add and remove cards as appropriate, then draw another verb card, rinse, and repeat.

It'll be tempting to try to twist, modify, or even rewrite RC's actions to be something you're more comfortable dealing with; You must resist this temptation at all costs. The *whole point* of RC is his complete absurdity gets you out of your comfort zone. If you start overriding the output of the deck, RC ceases to be a (legendarily stupid) PC and starts being just another NPC under your omnipotent control.



Anyway, that's my idea. I've done a couple of "playtests" of it myself, and it seems to work decently well (you do have to be careful with what cards you put in; Making the palette of verbs too small will make RC too predictable). If anyone else tries it and has some interesting experiences with it, I'd be very interested in hearing about it!

Wow, above and beyond there, Cheese. Can you give us the DL on what your decks started out as?

Craft (Cheese)
2013-03-24, 12:45 PM
Wow, above and beyond there, Cheese. Can you give us the DL on what your decks started out as?

Well, I didn't actually keep any notes on what my initial verb deck was, probably should have done that. So I'll explain it best I can from memory:

Verbs:

eat OBJECT
attack CHARACTER with WEAPON
move LOCATION
take OBJECT
destroy OBJECT
use OBJECT with OBJECT
talk CHARACTER

The starting scenario is that Reginald is locked in a cell. There's a bed made of straw, some chains on the wall, a window, some fungus in the corner, the cell door, and the guard for reginald to mess with. (I also included parts of his own body like his head, arms, and legs.)

The very first problem I encountered is that many of these verbs are distressingly vague. "Talk" is the worst one: I can literally just plug in whatever I want, which defeats the whole purpose of randomly generating Reginald's actions. So the first thing I did was replace "talk" with a series of verbs like "insult", "compliment", "flirt", "accuse", and "complain."

The second problem was a probabilistic one: I now had more verbs for different kinds of conversation than all the other types of actions mixed together, so of course the majority of actions generated were the various talking verbs. So the first thing I attempted to do with this was try to break up the other verbs in a similar way, like replacing "destroy" with smash, snap, rip, incinerate, etc. This had the problem that most of these divisions were meaningless: It doesn't really functionally matter in most cases whether you bash something with a rock until it shatters or if you set it on fire, but it pretty much always matters whether you insult someone's mother or try to talk them into sex when you open your mouth.

I stuck with this system for a while until I had the bright idea to merge the talking verbs back into a single verb "talk", then add another deck of nouns I called SUBJECTS, leaving the verb card "talk to CHARACTER about SUBJECT". This solved the probabilistic problem because I could move the semantic features of the verb into the subject matter noun, therefore I don't need to have a bunch of different types of talking verbs.

GoddessSune
2013-03-24, 08:25 PM
I was hoping that someone could help me develop a way to practice DMing without any players!


Run a Play By Post game? You could do it small, just do a solo game or two. Or get a group of four or five. You would get to practice DMing, by, well, DMing.

Or you could play in a PbP game and see how other DM's do it.

Or, for a really radical idea: run a PbP game with you as the DM, but have a DM Mentor to make suggestions and critique things you do and such.

Or you could head over the the PbP boards and read through a couple of dozen games and see how other DM's do it.

And, for fun in real life: you can randomly role play any time, anywhere. Just pick a 'character' to be and talk to someone else. This works best if they don't know you, of course.

valadil
2013-03-24, 08:56 PM
I'm looking to better my DMing style. Stuff like speaking in character ( I had a bad experience with a jamaican Planeswalker once, my player(s) laughed at me.) and describing events and, say, criticals and fumbles.


Have you tried speaking in character? I get myself into my NPCs' heads by speaking as them. Sometimes I'll practice something they need to say. Sometimes I'll make up a confrontation that won't happen just to see what comes out of their mouths.

I do this all the time when I feel like I'm not expressing an NPC very well. I haven't thought about it as GMing practice, so much as getting into a particular character. But given what you're trying to do I'm not sure there's any difference.

Guizonde
2013-03-24, 10:05 PM
i've got a few tidbits of info to share, being a new dm myself. this is what i've learned so far.

-inebbriation? bad. stressed about dm'ing? bad. feeling relaxed for dm'ing? good. being sober while dm'ing? good.
-even if you're using a printed module, do both of the following: commit the flavor to memory, take list-style notes about what you'll be doing in this scenario.
-pacing is crazy-important. no one wants the dm absent for 5 minutes while you're looking up a mechanic.
-grunt. seriously. learning how to strain your voice will help you cope with different accents. i sing death metal, but before that, i used to train by speaking the most clearly and powerfully possible with marbles or bubblegum (lots) in my mouth. if you can recite shakespeare clearly hampered by an ounce of marbles, you're ready for anything.
-pitch your voice according to your npc. fear not the stereotype. try and breathe out more for that airy elven sound, gruffly for dwarves, bark for monsters... all for example, of course.
-take breaks. my group plays for nigh on 8 hours straight. i found that a 30 minute break after 4 hours is pretty good on the headache.
-remember rule 0. remember: you're not you anymore. you're the dm. you're not friends with the players. you're not enemies with the players. you're the frelling universe to the players. your word is law.
-when in doubt, throw the halfling through the door :smallamused: (ok, substitute this for any rowdy player. don't damage them, but make sure they know that you can and will do anything to them to reign in idiocy)
-do a post-session debrief with your players. await feedback.
-if you see your players taking notes, keep going: this means that they're into it.

hope all this helps :smallsmile: good luck

GoblinGilmartin
2013-03-24, 11:06 PM
Can anyone recommend me a module with a lot of NPC flavor text? I figure I can try working out my voices.

Sebastrd
2013-03-25, 12:04 PM
Take a speech class or join a drama club.

At it's heart, DMing is a performance art, and it's all about acting and improvisation.

Guizonde
2013-03-25, 08:02 PM
Can anyone recommend me a module with a lot of NPC flavor text? I figure I can try working out my voices.

the first volume of the return of darkness for pathfinder is the one i use (being new, a gift from my mentor dm), and it's a mix between pirates, drows, and thieves. i've had a lot of fun with those voices, especially as it's npc-rich, with loads of flavor text (npc flavor to campaign is like a ratio of 1 to 4).

you could try the return to the temple of elemental evil, as it's got quite a bit of evil npc's, but i'm not sure if it's npc flavor or ambience flavor. good luck :smallsmile:

Glimbur
2013-03-25, 09:16 PM
See if you can join an (amateur) improv comedy group. You'll have to think on your feet and collaborate with other people.

Negativethac0
2013-03-25, 09:21 PM
Can anyone recommend me a module with a lot of NPC flavor text? I figure I can try working out my voices.

The first chapter of Skull and Shackles is great if you want to practise your pirate (was surprisingly hard for me, as I didn't want to overdo it).
You can also cram in a lot of strange NPC's/accents and the like in as part of the crew.

I've found that getting a webcam or something and sitting down, alone, to act out various of the NPC's I'm going to use can be a great approach. Also, you get to evaluate yourself afterwards, and it can ease off some of the tension or just give you a better idea of what works. Body language counts for a lot as well.