DM-Nastics #28: Advice From the Masses

My lil advice is to use voices. It is boring to talk to npcs all with the same voice. The more you get involed the more likely the players will. Different voice can be as lil as speed of the way you talk to the high pitch Monty Python women.

Mine is going to be broken up into different posts since I'm posting from work and will only have time for one quick thought at a time. My first advice is...

Preparing for combat. Regardless of whether you run a story-centric or combat-heavy campaign, the odds are that you're getting involved with combat at least every other session or so. There are a few things I do to really help me prepare for a good fight.

1) Determine HP ahead of time. The newer editions put an average HP in there to make this easy for you, but if you like to vary or leave things up to the dice - Roll these up ahead of time. Then get a scrap piece of paper and list them out so you can make all your tallies for each creature very quickly. Also, figure out how you're going to tell the mini's or tokens apart and how those compare to your HP list. For example, my tokens are numbered so token 1 will have a little HP tally area, token 2, etc. You can always use little colored markers, put yarn on a mini, or just list them by area on the battlefield. Just make sure it's clear to you what creatures are in the fight, have a place to track their HP, and a way to quickly tell which is which. This will save you time figuring that type of thing out mid-fight.

2) If you're like me and don't use an initiative tracker, an easy way to do this is simply fold up a few index cards numbered 1-8 or however many you need. Fold them up so they stand upright, like you see people do with name tags when you attend a class or workshop. I've even started rolling initiative for my creatures ahead of time. This allows me to listen to the players as they roll and quickly jot them down, and I often know their numbers before they officially report them to me. With that knowledge, I can quickly pass out the cards in initiative order and have the players stand them in front of them. I put creatures on the top of the DM screen. What this does is allow EVERYONE to quickly and easily know who is next. It also cuts down your time as the DM fumbling around with initiative order. It also has the benefit of helping players that are up next start to think about their actions.

3) Try to prepare the scene of ahead of time for the first combat of the night. If you draw your scenes on a dry erase battle mat, try to do so ahead of time and then just keep the mat flipped over. If you use Ironforge stuff, try to have the ones you need ahead of time, and little diagram reminder. If you use map tiles, have them stacked up in order so you can quickly flip them over.

4) Don't be afraid to use theatre of the mind. My current group has many new players that didn't grow up on D&D as kids in the 80s or 90s. They like their minis, and honestly, I do too. However, occasionally it's fun to just do it more quickly and theatre of the mind style. It can be difficult to get as tactical, so this works best on simple battles that aren't high tension. Then you can spend more time describing the scene, the fights, the hits, etc. Make these rare fights more about the flavor and the story. It's a good change of pace.

5) Describe the hits. Most players love this. I would bold this bullet point if I could figure out how! Remember that in most rules, your attack action isn't simply a simple swing of the sword at an enemy in which it either glances off armor or hits. These are really 6 second chunks of time in which characters are feinting, parrying, dodging, grunting, sweating, etc. Your attack roll isn't one swing, it's did you manage to get in one good hit or not during that 6 seconds. A miss doesn't have to be just a swing and a miss, it could also be several feints in which you can't get a good opening for an offensive move. And then sometimes you DO get the opening and glance off of armor. Mix it all up! Mix up the hits as well, and describe them well. Give your characters a feel for their own fighting styles, and let them participate in how their character's hits are described. Describe the monsters reactions. We've started letting the characters describe their own hits when they roll a critical and drop a creature. Sometimes that gets a bit odd as they can go overboard, but feel your group out and see how you like it. Whatever you do, make the fight seem like a real fight - not just a video game in which you press attack over and over and hope to do more damage than the monster.

6) Group your enemies. For example, roll initiative for all goblins together, all bugbears together, etc. If you group everything in the fight (when there are multiple types), it becomes a bit odd when all the players go, then all the DM creatures go, and doesn't flow well. However, when you split them all out - it takes way too much time and involves too much data management. Having your creatures split into 2-3 groups seems optimal in my experience. If you have all 1 type? Group the goblin fighters from the archers, or have the shaman go separately from the rest.

7)  Have your stats ready to go! I tend to write all the creatures stats on one piece of paper in my own little short hand (all I need are to hit, dmg, HP, AC, and Init as well as relevant abilities).  Some people print out stat cards, some use their ipad, or even use post-it notes to mark the pages in the MM.  Whatever works for you, but have it ready to reference.

You'll notice that theme on most of these combat points is to prepare in such a way that you spend less time as the DM flipping through books, getting the fight ready to start, etc.  That's time when the players start to zone out of their immersion.  This allows you to spend more time describing the battle, being excited and involved, making eye contact, and really listening to the players.  Set the scene.

I'll think up more later. I Know that most of you probably do this, and some of you might have some improvements on these ideas (I'd love to hear them!), or might disagree (I'd love to have a friendly debate!), but I think some of these types of things aren't obvious to a newer DM, and hopefully we can compile a list of important tips and tricks for old and new DMs. Great idea on this thread!

Maybe I'll post an example of a really simple fight that I've prepared for my first session in this new campaign (which will happen on the second session because.......)

8) The player will rarely move at the pace you expect. Things you think will take several sessions will be over in hours, and things you expect to take 10 minutes will last two sessions. THAT'S OKAY! If it's fun for your players absolutely run with it!

Drugs and alcohol do not make you a better DM, no matter how much you think they do.

My advice has become house rules for pretty much all the games I run. I didn't invent these ideas but kept hearing them, and when I tried them, my games become more fun for everyone.

Let it ride. Don't call for 5 stealth checks to sneak into the castle. Call for one, and then roll with it. If it is a fail, then pick the most interesting point to fail and jump into the action there. If it is a success, the character is inside the castle where they wanted to be. What happens next? Skipping all the little rolls to get past every 1 hit-die guard doesn't take anything away from the story, and not spending the time with tedious rolls gets you to the good stuff faster.

Fail forward. The most boring result for the dice to provide is to say something didn't happen. A failure should lead to some interesting complication, but never a halt in the story. If a failure doesn't mean anything interesting, why are you rolling dice in the first place, if nothing interesting is at stake? Imagine if, in a book you're reading, the character fails and the story comes to a grinding halt. Instead, fail like Indiana Jones. Every failure makes his life more difficult and interesting.

Say yes or roll the dice. This connects to the one above. If there's nothing interesting at stake in a situation, just go on to the next one. If your Strong Guy needs to kick in a door, and failing to kick in the door won't be interesting (providing at least a delay for the monster behind the door to prepare an ambush) then String Guy just kicks in the door. Move on to the next point in the story. Have an idea, going in, what will happen with a success and what will happen with a failure. If either of those is boring, it's often better to just not roll dice at all and narrate your way through it. Similarly, if Lore Guy needs to figure out a clue to move the story forward, then Lore Guy figures out the clue. You don't even need to roll, since there's always a 1 in 20 chance that Lore Guy will draw a blank and the story halts.

And then some other things that aren't house rules, but are what I enjoy in games whether I'm playing or running:

Don't sweat the small stuff. It can be fun once in a while to obliterate hordes of low-level foes, but it's pretty rare that 5hp kobolds will fight your 5th level party to the death in droves. It can make the PCs feel pretty baddass if, after a few casualties, the kobolds just run away. It also plants the seed for when the PCs might need to run away sometime during the story - which all heroes (with the exception of maybe Beowulf) do once in a while.

DM, roll as few dice as possible. Use average damage when you can (I love how 5th Ed does this), or have the players roll attacks against saves as a set DC (like in 4th Ed, or as with AC). When a DM is rolling dice behind his or her screen, I'm not proud of it, but I start to zone out.

Don't have NPCs talk to each other in-character. I used to do this, and it wasn't pretty. If the king and the queen are having an argument, give a couple of highlights and just say what the argument is like. Then the Queen turns to the players and says "You there, who do you think is correct in this?" Pull the PCs in, and whenever you can, portray one NPC at a time.

Being fluid and flexible are the best way to approach every aspect of preparing for the game, and while in the game. Don't get in a rut with your preparation methods, try new and interesting things regularly, so that you and your players are always encountering/dealing with new things. This could potentially find things that you and your players love, or things that you will never try again. Of course not being stuck in your ways while in the game is necessary because there is no telling what in the world your players will do once the dice hit the table.

I also really like the idea of running a pre-written adventure for a DM's first outing. I know it's been said here there and everywhere, but as someone who often incorporates, or uses completely, prewritten adventures I think it needs saying again: read the WHOLE adventure, and re read the pieces that you are about to run before you run them. It is likely that the beginning sets up the end and has ties along the way. I know I have thought that it would work, and just charged ahead blindly, and it was all bad, haha.

Awesome advice so far all around!

My small bit of advice it to let the players write the story.

What I mean by that is that is, our group has a character creation night. During which they come up with backstories and i help them find their fit in my world. Then I use bits of their backstory to come up with the smaller plot arcs in my campaign. It takes a little brainstorming at times but if you can find connections between backstories then do so and if enough line up then have that be another arc.

Ive noticed by doing this the players are more invested in the story and it can create some interesting party dynamics. If you have a rogue that is an ex-thief and a fighter who was from a well off family, then have the rogues Thieves Guild have something in their vaults that really belongs to the fighter. Then you can have that fighter find out and need to get it back.

I'm not saying to forget your story altogether but have it be the large story arc that all the players need to accomplish, but throwing in interests from the players past is a good break from the villain that wants to take over the world but not a pointless one off either.

(examples were for ease of understanding I see now that they are very dull)

addendum to this.

Theres nothing wrong with playing in already created worlds, because lets face it, Worldbuilding is a tough and lengthy task and frankly not worth the time if you're just getting into the game.
A suggestion for this is to play those one off adventures first and if you decide to build a whole new wooorld you can just smack the traveled locations into the game.

Maybe even recruit your players to help shape the world