Friday 31 August 2018

DM Guidance

As a DM of 16 years this fall (2018) I have uncovered many things about running a game that may help others in learning to DM. There are too many tips and tricks blogs, web sites and famous people now on the band wagon giving advice and I did not want to do the same thing, so mine will have more of a twist on it. This will be more realistic guidance on how to run a successful game without the same generic quote answers.

Designing your game/encounter for the night

Your game is coming up and know full well that you won't be able to spend hours writing some extravagant story line for three to four hours of a game on Sunday night. So what's the best approach and what is the downside of spending hours writing for one game session?

Too much effort: In the beginning I used to write every detail, every outcome and how that one game will feed into the next and into the over all plot and plan way down the road. Here is why this is a bad idea. When you overwrite or over-plan you are basically writing a finished story. You have most likely read it over a few times and have been satisfied with the way you've now first experienced it and experienced it a second or third time. It is the same as reading a book or watching a movie, you've experienced the events and seen the outcome and it's time to move on. 

Too vague: You also do not want to under plan by using just a concept of how the game will go. (Example) The PC's will go to town to do their town stuff then meet someone who wants something back at a cave and we'll throw cave monsters at them. Being too vague will show as your struggling to come up with places, people and plausible reasons for the adventure during the game. The cave will be a series of monsters and traps with no outstanding or memorable point. You will need to flip around the book to randomly generate things on the fly and have no answers to any questions.



Mid ground: The best approach IMO is to start with a set of points of where you think the PC's will go, who they will talk to, where the action will take place, and so forth and then spend what time you have putting effort into the parts that make up the highest feelings of immersion. (Example) Write out a tavern concept (this can be vague such as dive bar and high end merchant trade bar), the details need to be based around who they will interact with to create a memorable RPG encounter. How the staff look (details on uniforms and attitude), a three item menu with a unique item that only this place has and what makes the place unique (again a small quick detail, this requires no big backstory, in fact keep this vague to allow the PC's to speculate as to the significance of an item, a saying, or such in a bar). Also list one NPC by full name, race, and a basic background detail as somehow, someway (don't over plan) the PC's will come into contact with this person.


For the encounter part have general concepts of the site or what most rooms are like but work on one major even taking place there that they can experience, but don't write any outcomes. Let them determine the outcome by interacting with the environment you've created. (Example) If the encounter concept for the night is that in this cave there is a large wall holding back a mass amount of water for some unknown reason, you've made an intriguing point and someone will want to know why it's there. Come up with some ideas behind why it's there but nothing permanent, let the PC's discussion and their ideas on why its there be the actual answer. If someone breaks it, have a basic idea of how the flooding will add fun to the encounter such as by sweeping the PC's into a new area or pose a threat of being pushed off a cliff. Either way don't go overboard writing all details on the encounter, who built it and why, what happens 100% and don't go to vague as in just writing a wall holding water, but go in the middle and have some specific thing that happen if the wall is broken and if the PC's want to figure out more information on the glass wall such as putting a wizard in who can dispel it to flood the cave in care of emergency or maybe an old journal by a skeleton of the wizard who's plan this was years ago.

The idea is to have details your familiar with that are seamless when questioned about the people, places and things in the world but not have a completely written out story on how your encounter or event is going to go.

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