One of the hardest jobs in playing a roleplaying game is that of the Dungeon Master, or Storyteller. Sure, you cannot play without players showing up at your table to participate, but, without a good Dungeon Master (DM for short) what are the players going to do? It's the DM that brings the players back again and again to tackle the challenges of the game. Whether it's a custom designed dungeon crawl put together by the DM himself or a published module direct from Wizards of the Coast, just having words on the paper doesn't make it a memorable adventure. The DM is responsible for bringing the page alive in the minds of his players so that they live the adventure, and want to know what lies beyond the next door, staircase, or forested trail.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
I have been playing D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) since I was 7 years old. I have played under many different DMs in all the various editions of the game, not to mention several other games that came about after D&D hit the scene in 1974. in the 31 years that I have been involved in the game, I have also found myself the most common DM in our groups. In that time I have come up with several little tips and tricks to making the game move smoother, and to draw the players into the adventure.
1. Come prepared for your game. I'm sure this advice has been stated before, but it cannot be stressed enough. Now, by being prepared, I don't mean there's no running a game by the seat of your pants, coming up with the encounters as you go along. That can be a very fun method of play on occasion. Some of the greatest DMs I know do exactly that. What I mean by come prepared is have your rulebooks handy. Know where you left off last session. Have an idea of what kind of adventures your players enjoy. Have your rulebooks and charts and everything handy so you can quickly resolve any rules aspects of the game and let the roleplaying take over. If you do use a published or pre-prepared adventure, make sure you look it over, be familiar with the encounters, the areas, the monsters and tactics they should use. An intelligent monster is going to fight intelligently, unintelligent creatures are going to follow their instincts and attack according to their species norm. Know what creatures are in encounter areas around those that the players are going through. Parties that make a lot of noise are going to attract other monsters from other "zones" of the adventure to investigate, which will allow the suspension of reality to be more easily accomplished.
2. Have your players work with you to come up with a character background. Not every player needs to write out a 20 page history with illustrations and graphs and a family tree of course, but a 1 to 2 paragraph blurb about the character's earlier life before entering your world can help you bring their characters to life in your campaign. If a player's family was slaughtered by humanoids you can inspire more fury and dedication in his character by having him come across the same kind of humanoids, or at least the same situation happening in another town. Even better, you can secretly flesh out some leaders of the original humanoid band and have the characters encounter that leader later on and take advantage of the background to make the whole game more real and meaningful. Fitting your characters into the history of your adventure helps them realize that what they do in the game does shape the world around them.
3. While working with players on their background, as was stated in tip number 1, get to know what kind of adventures that your players enjoy. Is it a party of political intrigue types you are DMing for, or are they hack and slashers who prefer the focus to be on combat over intrigue? Are they into the classic dungeon crawl are they into exploring swamps and forests? Do they like alot of smaller scenarios that link together loosely, or are they more into the epic campaign that ends with throwing the ring into the fiery mountain like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings?
4. Set yourself up with some playing aids to help let the rules fade to the background and let the game flow more smoothly. Combat is one of the situations in the game where rules come in quite a bit, and constantly stumbling over said rules can defeat the suspension of belief you have fostered. To help combat move more smoothly, I like to use a flowing initiative system and index cards to keep track of the encounter. I have an initiative card for every character in my game. The card already has their total initiative bonus, so at the start of a tactical encounter, where initiative is used, I just have them roll the d20 and give me the number rolled, so I can put them in appropriate order, adding in their bonuses myself. I rarely run off the cuff in my games, so I generally come with initiative cards for the monsters already prepared, and even pre-rolled so I can just layer the character initiatives into the stack and move from one turn to the other smoothly. The initiative card system is great as well because if people ready actions or hold their actions, I need simply rearrange their card in the order, instead of erasing or trying to keep such order in mind. For some combats, I have a separate initiative card for every opponent, and in others, I use group initiative for each subset of opponents. In an encounter with 5 zombies and 3 skeletons, I may have a zombie card and a skeleton card, and a place on the cards to note what has affected each individual. I always note ongoing conditions on the cards so when their turn comes up I can remember to affect them by their new conditions, have them roll saves, etc.. Now, individual boss type monsters, as well as intelligent monsters who might hold actions or ready actions just like players should have their own initiative cards as well.
5. When I do run a game off the cuff, I usually don't have everything laid out like I would normally; however, in preparation of this, I keep a card box with a single card in it for every monster in the Monster Manual. This way, I can just look up the monster card, roll the initiative (with the modifier already on the card) at the same time that I have the players roll their initiatives. This is a lot more work than some are willing to do, but I find it helps when you run a lot of games, or have a tendency to run on the fly. I am a backup DM for a game that I normally play in weekly, so I often need to come up with encounters on the fly when the regular DM cannot make it. If you don't want to go through the effort of creating cards for every monster to prepare, you can also prepare "generic" cards. Before I have had the time to come up with individual cards for every monster, as well as when I run games at conventions where I won't have cards for my specific players, I use cards that I can easily keep track of and re-use a hundred times. Generally speaking, I have 10 cards labeled "Monster 1," "Monster 2," "Monster 3," etc... and 10 cards labeled "Player 1," "Player 2," "Player 3," etc... and then I have a sheet of notebook paper that has a space to put down what each card represents.
6. Enough on rules, now let's talk about bringing the game alive. Remember, you as the DM are the eyes and ears of your players. Their characters see only what you describe, feel only what you portray in the words of your adventure, and hear only what you tell them they hear. If you want your players to suspend their belief and be drawn back to your game again and again, make sure that you paint a picture that is both fantastic enough to fit into the world they came to play in, but realistic enough that they can begin to visualize what their characters experience. Many encounters are detailed as "A 30ft square room with a zombie shambling towards you, roll for initiative" even in some published adventures. A better encounter might be portrayed as "The old, half-rotten oaken door squeaks open on the rusted iron hinges set into the stone wall, revealing a medium sized chamber, smelling of age and mold. The floor is littered with dust and old bones and cobwebs adorn the ceiling, hanging down to show that the chamber has not been disturbed in ages. Just as your taking this all in, you notice that rising from the floor, one of the piles of bones and old desiccated flesh has come alive and is shambling menacingly towards you, mouth open as if in the last scream of it's death, although no sound issues from it's rotten jaws..." In the former example, the dimensions of the room and the creature they are encountered are put forth in very dry, unimaginative detail. This is sufficient for just a generic encounter when your characters aren't into too much suspension of belief. The later example describes what the players see, smell, hear, and feel about the encounter. The monster is not named, and the dimensions of the room are not provided, but these can be detailed on the battle mat when you set up the figures for the fight, instead, the DM uses the flavor text to paint a picture and draw the players into the story.
7. This brings me to another excellent tip. Use figures. If you can, buy a dry or wet erase battlemat, or get some kind of dungeon tiles or even the Dwarven Forge interlocking terrain pieces to put those figures on in order to make the encounter come visually alive. Encourage your players to get a figure that they think represents their character as they see it, so you don't have to worry about getting the figures mixed up. When I use figures for my monsters and have several of the same type, I tend to color code the bases on the figures so I can note the colors on my initiative cards and hit point tracker sheet. Not everyone can afford figures for every monster and player, and this I understand. If you have a personal computer and a printer, you can go online and get pictures of creatures you plan to use, and those representing your players, or even just put their names and monsters with names on paper cut-outs for your adventure. This is a cheaper way for you to work out the tactical encounter so that it can be run quickly and efficiently, while allowing the visualization of the situation to come through to your players.
8. The final bit of advice I would give is don't just bow down to every splat book and supplement that comes out. Just because a new book comes out doesn't mean you have to start using it right away, or even ever. The cardinal rule of roleplaying games, especially D&D has always been that the rules are guidelines, that every rule in the game is optional, and you as the DM are welcome to keep or discard any rule that fits into your game or doesn't. You do have to consider your players when you do this, keep consistent in your rulings, and if at all possible, print out a list of your regular house rules so players can read then and refer back to them. A general rule I use is that I will not use any book I don't own a physical copy of. Just because the player has a copy, and is willing to print out or write out copies of the pertinent information for an optional bit of fluff they want to play isn't enough reason to allow it in my game. I need to have the actual book so I can go over the rules not only at the table, but at my leisure, to see if they fit how I want my game world to run. I also have the ability to look at the rules in the context they are presented, and not just in the bits that the player provides to me, that may leave out other elements that make the new rules work in one world, but maybe not in another. Another rule I use is that I won't allow any enhancement series of books into my game until that series of books is completely available, as pertains to my game anyway. Case in point: in the 4e D&D game, they now have the Martial Powers book to enhance characters with the Martial Power Source. This month (April) the Arcane Powers book comes out. Still missing in this series of enhancement books is the Divine Powers book and the Primal Powers book. Until the Divine Powers book comes out, a game using the Player Handbook 1 alone would not get to use the Arcane or Martial Powers books. As the Player Handbook 1 doesn't include any of the Primal Classes so they don't have to wait for the Primal Powers book to come out. Of course I still have to approve the books and own them, as they still might not work in my game world. In a game that includes the Player Handbook 2, the players would have to wait for the Primal Powers book to be released (in September I believe) before using it. I would treat racial books in the same manner. If I allow the races, all races must be represented before the new books enhancing them would be included. In older editions, they had the Complete Elf, Complete Dwarf, etc.. and any of these books that came out would not be used until all of the ones representing the races in my game where there. Rules like this do 2 things. 1. They encourage your characters to play fairly in the books already available to them without trying to beg me to include all the splat books and magazine articles. 2. If they really want me to include a set of rules in my game, they will go in together and make sure I own the books. It's excellent for birthday and holiday lists of gifts.
I do hope these tips help fellow DMs run their games. Each DM and each player is different in how they approach the game, and I know some of these tips will work for you, and some won't. I just hope that at least one of these tips inspire you the reader to think about how you approach your game, so you can come up with methods of your own to keep the players coming back session after session. Until next time, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />GAME ON!