@ Kanachi:
I just go by Freelance GM on this forum, it's based on the title, Freelance Artist, that I earned among my friends in middle school for making comics. I don't actually get paid to GM (that would be awesome), but Wizards of the Coast does send me free stuff for D&D Encounters. That sort-of counts, I guess.

Your advice was very good. You guessed right, though, and I have already tried a lot of these things. My NPC's have as much HP as the plot demands. I avoid mobs, mainly because they take forever to kill, rather than the "Can I roll a 14" issue you pointed out; bigger monsters are generally more fun than mobs, anyway. Players who actually write a backstory are rewarded by having it laced into the plot somewhere. Also, I go out of my way to describe their rolls based on how close they were to hitting, i.e a miss by only one would glance off of the enemy's armor or shield, or a fail by 5 or more misses the enemy entirely.

As far as my DM'ing goes, I can easily identify a few of my flaws:
  • Too chivalrous to fudge enemy's bad attack rolls on Rule of Drama.
  • Stories take too long to build up.
  • Loot is few and far between, but when you get it, it's worth it.


However, my players are wrapped in a really uninspired and very meta-game attitude that their high A.C's and HP will protect them at lower levels, and that nothing can stand before their wrath. To add credibility to their disillusioned mindset, they run away from any encounter that they don't believe they can handle, while complaining that Kobolds are too weak, but the evil cultists and the Bugbears don't die fast enough. Every time an enemy actually scores a hit on a tank, they stare in disbelief. Every time I target the weaker ones, they accuse me of being spiteful.

The point of this system was to appeal to their Meta-gaming sides with an actual system to make the enemies die faster, only it applies to them, as well. My descriptions of traps and combat are widely ignored on the grounds of "Ooh, big deal, I've got heavy armor and a tower shield, and I still have hitpoints left!" This system makes everything as fatal as I make it sound in the descriptions, giving the meta-gaming players meta-game reasons to take warning.