Brag about your DM

[lotusblossom13]

I would love to hear about all the good things that DMs have done to make their games epic for their players. Please, post about any original campaign settings, strategies your DM uses to get players excited, fun house rules or traditions.

Talk about memorable experiences made possible by hard work and creativity from your DM.

I also feel like sharing these things will help other DMs gain new strategies and ideas to implement when leading their own games to create a fun experience for all.

Basically I want you to brag about your DM and the things they do to make the game playing experience awesome!

[MesiDoomstalker]

My DM has what we call "The Idiot Die." Its a bright pink d20. Whoever says or does something incredibly stupid, even if in character, get the idiot die and must use the idiot die for all d20 rolls. The only way to lose the idiot die is to prove the reason you got it in the first place wasn't stupid, someone says or does something stupider than yours or when the DM thinks your not acting stupid anymore.

But heres the kicker. Every session, I try to intentionally get the stupid die. Because it works really well for me. The lowest I've rolled on it was a 7 on a roll against a particularly weak minion. I've crit'd at least 6 times in the 8 sessions that I've had it. I haven't crunched the numbers (Because I didn't count how many times I've rolled) but that is far greater than the supposed 5% chance. The DM has caught onto this but doesn't stop me.

[TheCountAlucard]

I would love to hear about all the good things that DMs have done to make their games epic for their players.

Though I might disagree with your usage of the word "epic," I nonetheless agree with the sentiment.

Talk about memorable experiences made possible by hard work and creativity from your DM.

Another minor point of semantics, "DM" is a system-centric term; I don't play D&D often, so I'm going to describe awesome work on the parts of my Storytellers and/or GMs.

I also feel like sharing these things will help other DMs gain new strategies and ideas to implement when leading their own games to create a fun experience for all.

Fair enough.

Basically I want you to brag about your DM and the things they do to make the game playing experience awesome!

One of my favorite STs is a fairly skilled improviser; while he's not ashamed to admit that we've completely derailed his plot, he will still run with it.

• One of the PCs decides to accept the infernal bargain? He'll run with it.
• One of the PCs decides that the best thing to do is travel halfway across the world and attend a martial arts tournament? He'll run with it.
• We figure out an unconventional way of discovering the infiltrator in our ranks? He'll run with it.

He's also remarkably-creative, and despite the occasional stumbling over a word, he evokes an amazing image in your head, whether he's a player or a GM.

[Jay R]

Nolen loves character design, and answers all emails promptly and completely. He also allowed me to take Bugsby's Expressive Single Digit as a cantrip.

When Bob ran Flashing Blades, he ran Richelieu as he was - a coldly practical, manipulative minister in service to France, not the absurd wanna-be king seen in the latest movies.

Dirk gave a 1,000 xp bonus for a reasonable action that derailed his next step. He then quickly adlibbed something else. He is also supremely self-confident, and is perfectly comfortable saying "no" to a request that he thinks isn't acceptable for whatever reason.

Brian kept track of the complete fighting system in the original Chivalry and Sorcery.

[Re'ozul]

One of my favorite STs is a fairly skilled improviser; while he's not ashamed to admit that we've completely derailed his plot, he will still run with it.

This one. I am lucky to have one of those for my 4E game.
So far his willingness to let me manipulate his NPCs (I play a greedy healic with a bit OCD) has brought me good and bad.
Bad: Failed to Diplomacies a necromancer, got minused in one blow (then lucked out by rolling a nat20 in the first death save, so I spring back to life immediately).
Failed us on some checks against various guards causing us to be seen as a menace AND incompetent even before we were the former.(apparently my dice don't like me manipulating the authority).
Good: Instead of having to flee a pirate ship at lvl 1 I barered a compromise (you take us where you go, we don't wreck the mechanism that keeps the ship afloat) that then led to us actually taking over the ship when the rest of the crew were zombified.
My cleric now has deeds to two villas and a flat (one villa was fixed up last session and is now for rent).
We managed to make a large amount of money via a gambling fraud (fight club, we controlled both participants).
And we are now going into drug-dealing.

If you can't guess, we aren't a good party.

[Kaveman26]

Great DM Moments:

We had played about 12 sessions getting characters to around level 10, and after getting ambushed by giants we tracked the ambushers back to their lair...and promptly had the game session ended two hours early. The next week we showed up two hours early to find the DM's entire basement cleared out to make room for a scaled grid map that was easily 20 feet long and ten feet wide on about eight or ten folding tables. He had well over 200 d6 in various sizes filling in for various humanoids. Basically he spent three months developing large scale battle maps and had us "interrupt" the giant's shaman performing a ritual where he sacrificed a rival tribes champion. We spent two hours planning an assault and then about nine hours working our way through 200+ plus enemy combatants. It took him almost a week to set everything up a couple hours each night.

[Talkan]

I feel like my best GM isn't as good now, but I still feel it's worth mentioning. He designed, play-tested, and ran a semi-futuristic d20 point-buy system purely to introduce his non-role-playing friends (myself included) to the world of role-playing. It was very simplified, and a lot of the people probably could've gone straight D&D, but he made this instead. It allowed you to do absolutely anything you wanted, the only restrictions were your point total, and even that could be worked around with enough restrictions on your ability. I know that probably sounds like a bad idea to some of you, but it was perfect for this group, who were mostly new to this whole thing and would not have enjoyed the slightly more restrictive classes of most standard d20 games I've heard of. Almost all of the characters had random stuff that probably wouldn't have worked RP-wise in other games, but the DM went with it. He was amazing at never letting any of us know what he was planning. He would drop a subtle hint here or there and watch us scramble to try and figure it out, but even the player who was usually the closest was miles off. He was also fantastic at incorporating new players into the group, even with about 10 players before I started. A good thing to note is that these were very infrequent sessions, and only about 6 or 7 could make it each session, but it was still fantastic. He always kept the characters straight, even after one character spent four months in a different country. The only person who didn't enjoy it was a character who chose to try and max out his own version of Wild Shape (with no previous knowledge of D&D) and ended up with a character/power combo that he really didn't like. He wasn't the type to remake characters, though, since he had put so much time and effort into this one. The GM did allow remakes, though. I attempted to make a fire-type character with absolutely no idea what I was doing, and he let me reassign my points. If I had not been ok with keeping my character, he would've helped me make a new one. He even helped me keep IC and OOC separate, kindly correcting me when I Meta-gamed, and really helped me to learn how to do everything without getting upset about my pathetic attempts at everything I did. He pretty much let the party do what they wanted (there were a lot people who tried to screw him over constantly) and just rolled with the punches and altered his campaign to match what we wanted to do. It was easily my favorite campaign and gaming group, but I haven't gamed with them since that campaign ended. If it weren't for him, I probably wouldn't have gotten into Gaming, and I have made leaps and bounds in my ability to role-play (rather than roll-play) since then.

[Captain Six]

Kristin. If Kristin had a catchphrase it would be "Sure why not." She reminds me of the DM from Darths and Droids in all the best ways possible. Her games are incredibly player centric and based on whatever haphazard direction we feel like going on. She greatly rewards suicidally over-the-top action and is positively gleeful whenever a player does something completely unexpected. And this is just from her first game ever as a GM, two years running now. A New World of Darkness game that is, so far as we can tell, about a dragon owned para-military outfit secretly fighting off a demon invasion while various other corporations, both supernatural and mundane, take notice and try to twist the situation to their advantage. The game has had so many highlights I don't even know where to begin. Just last session I got some of my demon contacts to hook me up with a Daedric Chainsaw because my strength reached the point where I could hold my greatsword in one hand and I felt like picking up two weapon fighting. And that's not even something completely out of the ordinary. In her games it's Rule of Cool > Rule of Funny > The repercussions we so thoroughly deserve.

[DigoDragon]

One of the better GMs I've played under was an old collage friend, Wyatt. I used to be part of his Earthdawn campaign and what I think was his best feature was his ability to use the "Rule of Cool" at just the right moments. He was also very good at description in combat to where we rarely needed to use miniatures.

[Dimers]

My 3.5 DM has two great points. First, he's cooooool as a cucumber; the man is a genius at keeping on top of who knows what and how different people perceive things, and he can watch you walk right by the answer to a weeks-long puzzle without batting an eye. For me it's a struggle not to tell all the players about this great plot I've been building, and it's easier to read my face than a large-print book, so I'm very impressed with that ability. It keeps the stories realistic and interesting.

Second, he's proactive in figuring out what'll break the game or the gameworld. He looks at every ability a PC wants to get, weeks or months before it comes up, and works with the player to make sure it's a good fit. There will never be a need to stop the game and say "You can do WHAT?!"

My 4e PbP DM is great about building a world with his players. We all write flavor text, and he integrates it like it was his idea all along.

[SamBurke]

I'll brag about two different ones.

First is a GM on these boards, great guy. He's fantastically nice about loot and such, despite having such a good excuse to not give it (zombie apocalypse!). The other characters seem to have other things going on, have a depth that will continue past us as PCs interacting with them.

The other one is a friend who GMs for me. He plays the best apocalypse you will ever see. Every single moment you're going to die, and no matter what, you have to keep moving. It's realistic, very, very, very, realistic, too. He's prepared for ages to play these.

[comicshorse]

Thanks to my G.M.s ability to create a good atmosphere during a OWoD game playing Giovanni ghouls I am now terrified by the song 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf'

[Vknight]

I'd like to brag about myself.
As I'm the only Dm for my group. I also Dm 2other camapigns on Skype.

I have the patience and clever wit to run with anything my players throw at me.
I try to make each campaign interesting and flavorful. When collaborating with my players I take what they give me and build upwards and outwards to create a full and exciting campaign/character/background.

[ChimingCopper]

One of the best things my DM does is bring the game into the real world now and then. At the time, she was Directing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, set in Cleveland, with our characters trying to keep the Hellmouth under control.

We show up, sit around the table, and she stands up, and, as NPC Philosophy teacher Will, asks us to look into the case of a missing student. He thinks something supernatural may be involved. Okay, say we. Any leads?

She thunks a backpack on the table, IRL. That's his. Ok, see you guys later. And Will leaves.

After a moment of hesitation, we tear into the backpack.

It is crammed with papers, textbooks, trash (he is a male college student), and other errata. Everything papery has been covered in writing. Some is plain english, the majority are symbols, and there is one good copy of what appears to be some kind of message. We also come across a website address: it's the kid's blog. It details his rapid fall into obsession. Turns out the poor guy, Matt, was being used to channel automatic writing by way of splitting his soul in half, and having part of it fused to a sharpie marker (also in the backpack). The clues to breaking the code were hidden in his papers.

Very effective session that must have taken her FOOOOREVER to prepare, and also lead to a heartbreaking RP when we found him next session. He wanted his sharpie back soooo bad.

Actually, thinking about it, that one event probably spawned our group's obsession with game artifacts.