Parts of DMing you suck at [Any]

[Swordgleam]

Everyone likes to commiserate, and with all the DMing advice around online, it's easy to feel like you suck if you're not the uber-DM. So in the spirit of feeling better about ourselves, let's all share the parts of DMing we suck at.

I'm bad at combat description. I can pull off a few awesome "His sword arcs through the air with a keening whine and slices into your shoulder" every fight, but then I get caught up in managing all the numbers and the dice and rapidly backslide into "he hits you for 12 damage." It usually ends up with only criticals getting more than a verb and an adverb worth of description.

I'm mediocre at monster tactics. I can remember to use their special powers and stuff, but I don't usually have them do anything unexpected or clever or that distinguishes them from other monsters with similar powers. Same as the above problem - I just get too caught up in keeping the combat running smoothly.

How about you?

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Tracking init.

[AstralFire]

As a DM, I often try to give my party extremely intricate encounters using mechanics I myself have only used a few times before, and often fall to extreme ad hoc just to keep things moving.

[Drakevarg]

Improv. I need, at minimum, a few hours to prepare for a session. Making stuff up literally on the fly results in bad things happening. *shudders at the memories*

[Fuzzie Fuzz]

Heh, the combat description at my table is... lacking as well.

I also have difficulty getting the railroad/sandbox mix right, alternating between dropping a hook in the players' laps and expecting (not really demanding, but expecting) that they follow it, and giving them no or very few hooks, leaving them searching.

I also feel like the RP between encounters is just killing time until the next one, but I think it's more the party's fault than mine. (One player even told another to "come on already" during a roleplay-heavy discussion with a guardsman.)

[Lycan 01]

Lets go by game...


DnD: Probably my best game. No major issues.

Star Wars: Balance and challenge. The players just walk though encounters... Jedi make my soul weep.

Dark Heresy: I'm better at winging it than running pre-written scenarios.

Shadowrun: *points imaginary gun at side of head*

Paranoia: I don't get to do anything. They spend 2 hours killing each other in the briefing room.

Call of Cthulhu: Players who don't realize they're supposed to be scared.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Improv. I need, at minimum, a few hours to prepare for a session. Making stuff up literally on the fly results in bad things happening. *shudders at the memories*

Oooooo, I forgot to add that, I remember the last time I made a medium-length adventure with 30-minute prep time.

[Froogleyboy]

Well, keeping characters from murdering everyone is one of my big flaws. Also, I can't work with pre-written stuff

[Swordgleam]

Tracking init.

Some people use index cards that they put in the right order at the start of the battle and then move around when people delay/whatever. Have you tried that?

As a DM, I often try to give my party extremely intricate encounters using mechanics I myself have only used a few times before, and often fall to extreme ad hoc just to keep things moving.

I know how that goes. Especially when starting a new system. I feel like ad hoc'ing stuff is a lot better than letting things grind to a halt while you look everything up.

[Enix18]

Prepping for adventures. I pretty much have to improvise all my games. I find it exceedingly difficult to actually plan things out, which doesn't always work in my favor...

Also, running dungeons. In my entire DMing career I have run only one dungeon, and since then I have stuck solely to encounters as far away from dungeons as humanly possible.

[Private-Prinny]

I suck at:

1. World building.
2. Descriptions.
3. Not killing my party.

Fortunately, I'm DMing with someone else who can cover my flaws.

[doliest]

1.Reminding myself that the players intend to survive each session; usually I counter my lethal DMing with various ways to survive, incorperating it into the story.

2.I can't predict my players. My story has been killed so many times because I can't predict the players. 2 can fuse with 1 where I attempt to off the players for completely destroying my story. (Un?)Fortunately I have a player who loves Monks and turns them into invincible death machines. I once had the players grow 8 levels in an hour and a half.

[Temotei]

As a DM, I often try to give my party extremely intricate encounters using mechanics I myself have only used a few times before, and often fall to extreme ad hoc just to keep things moving.

This.

[ZeroNumerous]

Does 'all of it' count?

[Darakonis]

Sorry for the off-topic, but you're the creator of Chaotic Shiny? Love the site. Great resource for my world-building. Thanks for contributing to the community.

Peace,
-Darakonis

[Dienekes]

Dropping subtle hints at complexity.

I love making highly intricate storylines with layers of different things happening. I think I'm fairly good at keeping all this strait and consistent. Of course the only way this works (for me at least) is if hints are given to the players to show that no, I'm not throwing a wrench into their plans just because I don't want them to get stuff, but that certain other characters have plans of their own. I can't get the right mix of hint yet, either I say something in passing that goes completely over their heads or it's a beacon that pretty much informs my players of what the next big surprise will be.

Also my encounters could use some fine tuning on the balancing side.

[tiercel]

One of the things I've had the most trouble with involves the "referee" hat the DM wears -- in this case, not so much as "rules referee" (though sometimes I do have a tendency to let the game get bogged down because I *really do* want to know what the result "should be") but as a referee for the players themselves.

Sometimes players get their characters into intraparty disputes -- handled well, this can be amusing and/or dramatic. If this starts to drive the party into more of a PvP mentality where the game is a traditional cooperative campaign, or more generally it starts to result in bad blood/hurt feelings *between players,* it's a problem for the game.

I tend to be a "hands-off" kind of DM, in trying to give my players and their characters free reign within reason in how they approach the story seeds I present them with. Recognizing -- and heading off -- a personal dispute between players is not my strongest suit though, and if anyone at the table has/is supposed to have the authority to head off a dispute like this, it should be (or at least include) the DM.

It's not a part of DMing that you tend to think about unless or until things go wrong, for whatever reason -- but when it's needed, it's pretty important. The game doesn't work so well if you have players cheesed off at each other and not wanting to play together.

Dropping subtle hints at complexity.

I don't think this is easy for *anyone*. It's potentially awesome to try and run some kind of mystery/conspiracy/etc., because there are plenty of examples of such in literature (fantasy and otherwise) -- but in a book, the author can control exactly what the reader sees and how his characters will obtain and react to information.

In D&D, you never know if your players will blow up your entire plot by asking the right question you're not prepared for, using the right divination spell, getting a crazy hunch (they are 3-6 brains to your one, after all), or alternatively just shrugging blankly and wandering their characters off to kill more orcs.

Riddles in D&D are problematic for much the same reason -- though they can be a staple of the genre, riddles tend to be either silly easy or pointless torture for most players. Finding a riddle that is challenging and satisfying is a lot harder than trying to balance the EL of a fight.

[Kylarra]

descriptions are my big failure.

[Talon Sky]

I also feel like the RP between encounters is just killing time until the next one, but I think it's more the party's fault than mine. (One player even told another to "come on already" during a roleplay-heavy discussion with a guardsman.)

God, this. Just so this. My group is so bloody unbalanced between RPers and combat masters it's sickening. Two of the girls in my group adore RPing, their characters are specifically built to do it well (lots of ranks in appropriate skills, Cha+ items), but they severely lack in combat skills. Then, two of the guys in my group are combat-oriented, with little interest or attention for plot and role playing.

That's where my biggest flaw shows: I try to give everyone a chance to shine, but it's so split. During the RP sections, the girls have a blast but I can't keep the two guy's attention. During combat, everyone does well, but the combat masters far outstrip the RPers to the point they don't see the point in joining in.

My other major flaw is I'm generous with treasure....extremely generous.

[Dust]

Villainous dialogue. I often find I have NPCs and BBEGs lacking a coherent response to whatever the party just blurted out, and they end up standing there slack-jawed most of the time.

[Talon Sky]

Villainous dialogue. I often find I have NPCs and BBEGs lacking a coherent response to whatever the party just blurted out, and they end up standing there slack-jawed most of the time.

Throw an insane BBEG at them that no matter what the party says, will simply spout off nonesense like "Beware! The donkies fear the one-eyed cheese!" Very effective for a laugh, and the PCs WILL try and find some hidden meaning where there is none.

[PersonMan]

I'm not good with treasure. I don't get too bad, but I tend to give out too little treasure. Other than that, it's sometimes hard for me to work out the parts of my plot between the beginning and the end.

[Swordgleam]

Dropping subtle hints at complexity.

Seconding the "everyone sucks at this" motion. I've only gotten a really cool "big reveal" exactly right twice, and I just finished a campaign that was filled with that kind of stuff. And the second time had more to do with my players being exactly the right amount of paranoid than me planning well - to quote two of them, "Why didn't you tell me that?" "I assumed you already knew and were hiding it." "Why?!" "Because it's exactly the sort of thing you wouldn't tell us!"

Sorry for the off-topic, but you're the creator of Chaotic Shiny? Love the site. Great resource for my world-building. Thanks for contributing to the community.

Thanks! Part of the secret motivation for this thread was actually to get some inspiration on what sorts of generators DMs can use. For example, I made the Damager (don't think I can directly link to it in a post since it's on the site I make money off of, even though it's free) to help with combat description, since it's one of the things I'm bad at.

That's where my biggest flaw shows: I try to give everyone a chance to shine, but it's so split.

You could have a combat that also involves negotiation - convince half the guards to free the hostages / switch to the side of justice / whatever while slaughtering the half that will never help you. Or split up the party, have the girls RP somewhere while the guys smash faces, and switch back and forth every round. Those tricks only work every once in a while, though.

[Starscream]

Not very good at giving a unique voice and personality to my NPCs. I do alright when I'm a player, because there's just one character for me to look after.

But with NPCs I tend to not speak as them and just sort of say what they're saying, so to speak. For example, I'll say "The barkeep nods and explains that the wizards' tower is on the other side of town" rather than speak as the barkeep and say something like "Aye, if it's the book-thumping know-it-alls you're wanting, you'll find them across the way in that shrine to overcompensation they erected."

I do better when it's stuff I've written ahead of time. But I'm hopeless when I need to make stuff up on the fly for people to say. Best trick I've learned is to imagine some well known actor playing the role, and imagine what they'd say.

That's how I ended up with a kingdom being run by King Brian the Blessed, by the way. The players recognized my amateurish impersonation, and decided to run with it.

[Talon Sky]

You could have a combat that also involves negotiation - convince half the guards to free the hostages / switch to the side of justice / whatever while slaughtering the half that will never help you.

The combat masters would kill them anyways, not trusting them ;p I tried this once and it didn't help that the guy actually WAS a spy for the BBEG and they ended up having to kill him in the end. Lol

Or split up the party, have the girls RP somewhere while the guys smash faces, and switch back and forth every round. Those tricks only work every once in a while, though.

This could work. I see how it would bog the combat down, but I could try it once and see how well it works.

[Swordgleam]

This could work. I see how it would bog the combat down, but I could try it once and see how well it works.

It stays at about the same pace, since the girls aren't taking up rounds of combat. And it heightens tension in the diplomacy-ing part, especially if it's something that should get finished before the combat is over. I've used it a couple of times to good effect. Just gave the missing characters an initiative same as usual and switched back to them on that.

[Talon Sky]

It stays at about the same pace, since the girls aren't taking up rounds of combat. And it heightens tension in the diplomacy-ing part, especially if it's something that should get finished before the combat is over. I've used it a couple of times to good effect. Just gave the missing characters an initiative same as usual and switched back to them on that.

Oooo, like convincing the BBEG not to fry them why the Samurai and dwarf fend off his ever-infinite minion army....

You, my friend, have just given me my next session climax. :D

[Swordgleam]

Oooo, like convincing the BBEG not to fry them why the Samurai and dwarf fend off his ever-infinite minion army....

You, my friend, have just given me my next session climax. :D

Good luck! Just try to have the action taking place in different locations or else your combat monkies will probably end up charging the BBEG instead.

[IonDragon]

NPCs. The party always wants to kill the one's I don't have statted up and completely ignores the ones I have a full sheet for. ALWAYS. That and just D&D in general. It takes a lot of thought and work for me to cram the rules into a believable world. It feels a lot like trying to put a giant octopus in a 3' box with nothing but a broom handle to help you.

I usually just hang the idea and take a generic fantasy world and let the only people who follow the rules be the PCs and those in their immediate vicinity. Everyone else moves at the rate of plot.

[Dienekes]

Well it's gladdening to know that many have the same trouble as me (misery and company and all that). So I'll add in another.

Dialogue during combat. I can't seem to get the flow of it at all, it ends up being whatever villains are involved giving half-arsed cliches, and the players saying snippet one liners back at them without any thought put into it.

And that's on a good run, most of my combats (Bosses included unfortunately) fight in utmost silence. Rather anti-climatic.

Not very good at giving a unique voice and personality to my NPCs. I do alright when I'm a player, because there's just one character for me to look after.

But with NPCs I tend to not speak as them and just sort of say what they're saying, so to speak. For example, I'll say "The barkeep nods and explains that the wizards' tower is on the other side of town" rather than speak as the barkeep and say something like "Aye, if it's the book-thumping know-it-alls you're wanting, you'll find them across the way in that shrine to overcompensation they erected."

If I may be a bit presumptuous as to give advice on this. I found for me, that when fitting a voice and talk distinctly it's easier if before you open your mouth to sit as the character would sit (or stand if you're roleplaying standing for whatever reason). Would the barkeep be hunched over cleaning a filthy mug for example? Fit yourself into that position then talk.

If you try it, I hope it helps.