DM questions

[AllanniaNevini]

I am a new DM. I started playing pathfinder about a year ago when my friend introduced it to me. I decided I wanted to try my hand at DMing. I think I'm doing well but my friend creates amazing world's and crazy storylines and I'm feeling rather small in compare to him.
What are some things I could do to improve my DMing skills?

[Zaq]

DMing is about balancing two mildly conflicting values: preparation and improvisation. You need to prep enough that you can keep things going smoothly, but you need to be flexible enough to roll with it when things don’t go as planned (and they never, ever go as planned). This is hard! It’s legitimately hard. I’m not great at it. The goal of both of these elements is to keep things running.

Oh, and take this to heart: you WILL screw up, and that’s okay. Really. It’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up over it. If you make a bad choice and it doesn’t go great, just learn from it and improve. Again, easier said than done! But beating yourself up helps no one. Just keep going, only better.

Also, never forget that the goal of the game is for every human being at the table—including you—to have fun. If you keep that as your guiding principle, you’ll be fine. If you forget about making it fun, you’re gonna have a bad time. Don’t burn yourself out. Don’t “punish” players. Just focus on fun.

[AllanniaNevini]

Thanks, I try to do that but it's hard not to beat myself up when I know that the other DM is way better.

[Zurambas]

I have to echo Zaq. Everything he said is spot on. You WILL make mistakes, and you WILL need to keep things moving. You WILL get angry at the wrong moment. You WILL make the wrong call and have to roll with it. Your party WILL get irritated with your calls. BUT...it's your CALL. Not theirs. Listen to their advice; take their input; they're the PCs, the heroes and your friends.

BUT...in the end, it's your CALL. Not theirs; never theirs.

The responsibility of the CALL is both heady and terrifying, and I get that. But that is DM'ing's first lesson. When you sit in that DM chair, what you say goes. It doesn't matter if the rules lawyer or the power gamer know the rules far better than you. They're NOT the DM. You are. If you don't like how they're using a rule, or you don't like the rule, period, change it. Or toss it. Especially if you feel it's being used to abuse other players.

The responsibility of the CALL, of the DM, is to make sure everyone has fun, like Zaq said. Use it to help the players tell their story.

As a final note, I got started DMing in the most informal way possible. Instead of world-building, I strung together a bunch of free 3.5 modules with a little tiny bit of fluff in the middle. My players were monstrous PCs(half-dragon minotaur, pixie, drow) and they had a blast. One of them got cursed by a Wendigo and had to have a murder trial. That wasn't part of the adventure, but it fit, because he killed a prominent villager and ATE THEIR ARM. The pixie left permanent images of random stuff all over the town they frequented. Etc. None of this was really planned by me; I only had the NPCs react much as they would IRL.

[Resileaf]

In my opinion, as a new DM, you shouldn't be afraid of being a bit more railroady. GMing is a learning process, you need to be able to keep things under control lest you get overwhelmed and don't know where to go anymore. You need to ease yourself into the role by first learning how to create specific things.

I'm not saying force the players into a specific path. I'm saying get them to buy into the game so they know what to expect and how to proceed the way you would be more comfortable with, while still giving them enough slack to let them be creative about how they do their objectives. The worst thing a new DM can do is run a sandbox, you'll just lose track of everything that's going on, and even worse, burn yourself out.
I would suggest reading modules as well, see how professional DMs build their campaigns.

After an adventure or two, you'll have the experience to be a better world builder.

[daremetoidareyo]

Matt Colville has a series of YouTube videos called running the game that really help aspiring new DMs

[gogogome]

Just try simple things. For example, a demonic invasion. Just throwing demons at the party gets boring quickly, so you start hiding the demons in the populace with possession and corruption stuff. So now there is quite a bit of roleplay between each encounter. But repeating this gets old so you bring in different monsters that are the demonic cultists so now you can throw non demons at the party. By that time the players should be strong enough to handle an actual demonic invasion and you can foreshadow this with madmen on the streets or seers having vivid nightmares.

If players behave in a way you didn't expect take that as a challenge and try to get the PCs into the situation you want without railroading and if you can't, ask the forums for help.

One advice I'd like to give you though is learn the system. If a player brings in an optimized build from the internet, use the internet to learn how to deal with it instead of banning or house ruling. Resort to bans and house rules as an absolute last resort.

[RNightstalker]

Don't compare your new start to someone who sounds experienced. Enjoy the learning process, be humble, and have a load of fun.

There also takes some time to prep for things like that for most of us. Some people are gifted, others have to work it. The really great ones are the gifted ones who work.

To improve your DMing skills? 1) keep DMing. 2)keep playing. You'll see stuff you wouldn't see otherwise from both ends of the table, and they'll conversely make you a better DM and player.

Enjoy the journey!

[Crake]

One piece of advice I would strongly urge you to heed is: DM for your players, not for yourself.

To delve deeper into that statement, DM in a way that fits your players' playstyle. You as a play, may love open world, sandbox-y games, where you choose your own adventure, and make your own story, but your players may find such a style daunting, or just flat out uninteresting, and thus, when they get plonked into an open world game, they just kinda twiddle their thumbs, and are left unsure what to do.

This kinda leads into my second piece of advice: Don't be afraid to give players direction. People will harp on about railroading, but they aren't quite the same thing. Giving players direction gives them motivation, and a sense of purpose. Just don't go too far. Tell them where to go, not how to get there.

[KillianHawkeye]

My number one advice for you right now is to not be afraid to run a basic, cliche, fairy tale kind of story. Don't worry about being wacky or coming up with some groundbreaking stories. Just kidnap a princess, summon a dragon, and run a few fun, simple games until you get a handle on the general flow of things. Maybe come up with a cool village or a castle instead of worrying about an entire amazing world.

As the saying goes, you have to learn to walk before you can run. Nobody expects a new DM to be able to match what an experienced one can do, and at the end of the day everybody DM's the game differently.

[Covenant12]

The thing I suggest always keeping in mind is: you are a storyteller. Dice and mechanics are something you should understand, yes, absolutely. Boring story is a bad campaign, fantastic story and screw everything else up and everyone has a good time.

Also: your players are the stars of that story. Let them succeed or fail, epicly either way. You may have fantastic NPC's in your setting, perfectly fine. Those NPC's should be the weather like a snowstorm or a tornado, they change something quickly and the PC's get back to being the stars.

After that a lot it's hard to say because it depends on the players. (not the PC's, maybe them too but I mean the players) Some demand heavy sandbox, some prefer complete railroad. That can't be answered in one forum post.

[Missing]

Something I've taken to heart from the WebDM youtube series (which I strongly recommend) is that is the players ask to do something/go somewhere that you're not ready for DON'T be afraid to just say that.
It's totally OK to say "Yep you guys can do that but I'm not really ready for that area etc. we can look into that next time/" or something like that. It's better to wait and have a chance to prepare rather than spend a few hours bumbling through trying to half-ass something that may end up getting retconned later or negatively impacting your campaign/world.

You don't necessarily need to end the session then and there, by being open with them your players might decide to hold off on that idea, do some down-time stuff or explore something else (hopefully something you are ready for)

[AllanniaNevini]

Thanks guys, I have a good idea of where my campaign is going. Thank you