tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post1145843061351027154..comments2024-03-23T05:46:31.832-07:00Comments on Power Score: Dungeons & Dragons - The Difficulties of Being a Dungeon MasterSeanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07263753821685936593noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-17681755929303526872020-01-31T07:31:20.351-08:002020-01-31T07:31:20.351-08:00I must admit that your post is really interesting....I must admit that your post is really interesting. I have spent a lot of my spare time reading your content. Thank you a lot! <a href="https://miniaturehub.com.au/blogs/news/finding-affordable-high-quality-d-d-miniatures" rel="nofollow">Reaper miniatures</a>Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06344159280573907231noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-72219986872392934202017-05-18T08:03:43.958-07:002017-05-18T08:03:43.958-07:00I really liked that last quote, probably because i...I really liked that last quote, probably because it matches well with how I treat everything I plan as a DM. I prepare what I can, but leave many options for the PCs. Better to prepare a buffet where everyone can get a little bit of what they want than a fancy 3-course meal that they may not have even wanted to begin with.<br /><br />On that same philosophy, that is why I <i>prefer</i> homebrew over modules. At least for me, it is a lot more stressful to go on the fly for a pre-made adventure if the PCs do something that breaks how the module is made.Scotty Hoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02339397921704101509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-88014667331863260942015-07-20T21:29:46.442-07:002015-07-20T21:29:46.442-07:00Ricardo Giro: No pencil and it's his house...!...Ricardo Giro: No pencil and it's his house...! That is pretty bad! Don't be too hard on them, a lot of players just aren't comfortable role-playing.. i think it might be a bit like having a fear of public speaking. The new player might have a ripple effect that will change things a bit. Thanks!<br /><br />Anonymous: Alternity! I always get that mixed p with Amazing Engine. Thanks!<br /><br />Mark Gardner: Awesome.. no matter what you do, there's a certain amount of winging it in a game. You should plan for it by cooking up a list of names and NPCs that you can draw from if the heroes go off on some weird tangent. Good luck!<br /><br />jradcliffe: One of the best things I've read is that the DM should be a fan of the characters. You root for them from behind the DM screen. I've had a lot of DMs who let the power go to their head and it leads to crappy games. Sounds like you are doing an awesome job!Seanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07263753821685936593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-11134640498374410832015-07-17T13:32:15.063-07:002015-07-17T13:32:15.063-07:00I just started DMing, and as a former player, I am...I just started DMing, and as a former player, I am familiar with how the game runs. But DMing is a whole new animal. I recently started a group with fresh players, and we're running The Lost Mines of Phandelin campaign from the starter set. This was done deliberately so that the players can learn the basics of the game and how to roleplay, and so I can learn how to DM. For the first campaign, I have been extremely lenient in allowing rerolls on failed checks and dropping big hints to players when they don't pick up important information from an NPC, and after our first session, they picked up the basics of roleplaying very well! I'm really proud of them, especially after them skipping a plot piece of the campaign by making an entire cave of goblins fall asleep and silently knocking out the goblin second-in-command in one hit! <br /><br />But like I said, I'm using this particular campaign to get everyone in the group, including myself, acclimated to how the game runs, and while there are blunders and mistakes, we're having fun; and I think that's the point. I've had several DMs who are perfectionists and want their worlds realized, but I'm quickly learning that, as a DM, I'm guiding my players through a challenging story and seeing the story itself realized. I'm having fun seeing my players succeed, one of them my baby sister who hesitantly joined and quickly had fun, and to see how they approach combat and problems. Once we get started on other campaigns, I'm going to be more strict on how they roleplay as their characters, but since they're using premade characters, I let it slide, since them learning how to adventure right now is a more important objective. <br /><br />But I think nothing else is as fun as a group getting together to have fun and experience fun moments together; and that is what you take away from this game. Being a god or wanting your players to suffer as DM is not the point of the DM, as stated in the rulebooks. It's be a story guide, to fill the NPC roles, and to guide your friends through a magical realm of adventure. And I thank that's what players want out of that too.jradcliffehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09063311909160229049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-78934265004000640022015-07-16T15:23:24.130-07:002015-07-16T15:23:24.130-07:00Oh and for the record, to give you an idea of how ...Oh and for the record, to give you an idea of how long I've been working on the Dominion of Essalund setting for our livestream... I've got almost 80 pages of encounters and adventures as well as an island mapped out that's about 30,000 miles in area. What is WRONG with me?! Then again I really LOVE the storyworld for the show.MarkGardnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14835167340208080145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-57083330389241790462015-07-16T15:20:47.825-07:002015-07-16T15:20:47.825-07:00I'm prepping to start DM-ing our first live st...I'm prepping to start DM-ing our first live stream show for our group and this article makes me feel WAY better. I'm probably over-preparing and knowing our players there's no way they're going to do all the things I want them to. I think there's a level of joy when they do something unexpected. We'll see how it goes though. I've learned a lot from our DM Brandon. He's been a great resource on how to have fun with an adventure. Here's hoping I can live up to it.MarkGardnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14835167340208080145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-75451973603282215642015-07-15T08:53:27.159-07:002015-07-15T08:53:27.159-07:00The Space Marine is from the cover of the Alternit...The Space Marine is from the cover of the Alternity Player's Handbook - I assume that picture is from the late 90s when TSR was convinced Sci Fi roleplaying would be as big as Fantasy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-40321284055071135472015-07-14T07:28:47.711-07:002015-07-14T07:28:47.711-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.xarop_pa_tosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00725149369549721105noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-63204806515732451182015-07-14T07:28:46.580-07:002015-07-14T07:28:46.580-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.xarop_pa_tosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00725149369549721105noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-17767050632420541802015-07-14T07:28:45.491-07:002015-07-14T07:28:45.491-07:00This was an amazing read and I'm so sad I didn...This was an amazing read and I'm so sad I didn't catch this reddit post. I'd be complaining about all those player issues.<br />My group is made of just three guys that I've play with for a year or so and a recent female lady addition that has never played before.<br /><br />Player 1 rerolled his character 2 times, to a total of 3 characters in LMoP. This guys first character was a wizard and 2 months later he still didn't know how Spell Slots work. Yes.. that guy that doesn't bring a pencil to the table (even though we play at his house). He has no idea what the hell is going on, still doesn't get what I'm asking him when I say "make a dex check for me please" and he is NEVER prepared to play.<br /><br />Player 2 thinks I'm there to make the game has less fun as possible for him. The kind of guy that says that a Hold Person spell is BS because he's a fighter and has low Wis. He's constantly using his laptop and even goes outside for a smoke after his round in combat. His character has zero personality and he can't roleplay to save his own life.<br /><br />Player 3 actually cares about the game, gives nice suggestions, corrects me when I get an rule wrong but without being an ahole about it. He did pull the Chaotic Neutral Rogue on me but he saw how easy it was to disrupt the game with it and backed out.<br /><br />The new girl is just delightful. New players are always a blast to have at the table, they are like fascinated kids with a world of imagination to explore in front of them.<br /><br />Sincerely, I think my players just go by the rules to much. I still have to say "but what do you say to him to try and convince him?" when they say "I roll Persuasion", which trust me, is ALL the time! NPC engages in conversation leads immediately to "I roll Intimidate" just like that! I was thinking of playing Apocalypse World with them but the idea soon vanished from my mind when I thought about how blandly they play D&Dxarop_pa_tosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00725149369549721105noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-40342357587006365822015-07-13T15:33:28.106-07:002015-07-13T15:33:28.106-07:00Nicholas Bergquist: Thank you! It's funny, mod...Nicholas Bergquist: Thank you! It's funny, modules are supposed to save people time, but more and more it seems like modules actually take more time to prepare than just making up your own stuff!<br /><br />Coffeemate: Thanks! Yeah some of those al qadim adventures are a bit short on details... they are awesome though. That is really cool that you are running an Al Qadim campaign. <br /><br />Patrick Henry Downs: I kind of can't control myself when it comes to writing/research. I try to keep it concise but it is not easy. I totally agree with your example about the orcs - that makes the world feel real, and the PCs choices matter. That's interesting that most of your player prefer to make a new character... I didn't expect that. <br /><br />Anonymous: I generally use theater of the mind, but if a fight is big or complicated, I'll use a map and minis. Theater of the mind has certain pitfalls you have to be careful of - you have to describe the room well, and you have to establish where everyone is before things get underway. I think most people use a grid as a default - a big, wipeable mat.<br /><br />Jason Raabis: Many of my best campaigns were ones that were full of random dungeon magazine adventures linked together in some haphazard fashioned, dictated by the whim of the players. Thank you!Seanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07263753821685936593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-88441768435026743242015-07-12T19:59:43.020-07:002015-07-12T19:59:43.020-07:00I was surprised by what sounded like a big chunk o...I was surprised by what sounded like a big chunk of DMs in your poll opting for "100% home-brew" or close to it. Although I know what kind of time and effort many published adventures need to be usable in a particular campaign, long gone are the days when I even considered drafting up a complete major adventure from scratch. My preferred method is to spend time "combing the archives" for material that kind of fits the overall situation the group is building on, and then modify it to fit seamlessly into the game. Not only does it (arguably) save time, but the quality is higher as mining the work of better writers than me is always going to produce superior results.<br /><br />That said, I love building all the bridge pieces between material, writing in all manner of ongoing plot threads, and otherwise mixing and matching. The end result certainly resembles home-brew, but without all the writer's block. It works for me.<br /><br />Great post as always Sean.Jason Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10308752560098089761noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-62974298193614477232015-07-11T11:05:25.128-07:002015-07-11T11:05:25.128-07:00Does everyone us maps, or do you use theatre of th...Does everyone us maps, or do you use theatre of the mind? Do you map out battles like 4th edition, or just use location maps to tell where the party is?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-83729699130679432072015-07-10T22:41:57.710-07:002015-07-10T22:41:57.710-07:00Wow! Comprehensive, as always.
I wasn't part ...Wow! Comprehensive, as always.<br /><br />I wasn't part of this informal poll, but I'd just like to add some of my persepctive. I'm GMing two games right now. One is set in the Forgotton Realms (not my choice - the player's opted for it) and the other hinges around the <a href="http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/138221/Dwimmermount-ACKS-version?affiliate_id=33229" rel="nofollow">Dwimmermount</a> campaign adventure. I usually run a homebrew campaign, but I really wanted to run Dwimmermount and made the concession of setting it in that world (Telluria) so that I didn't add or change something disastrously, and the FR campaign has ventured into Planescape and is now firmly entrenched in Waterdeep (which is the first setting I ever GMed so I'm in comfortable territory). I tend to let the players dictate the world and the primary adventure so I rarely do a lot of prep, and often I just play off of the things they give me. A side quest becomes a main quest only if the PCs focus on it, and I rarely try to compel a single story into the group (the Dwimmermount campaign is one of the rare exceptions). <br /><br />I have found that the key to making a really good campaign that leaves the players wanting more is to have a world that makes sense and reacts realistically. If the PCs are hearing rumors about orcs in the hills to the east and do nothing about it, then maybe that village in the east gets burned down and they can't rest there the next time they head east. If the PCs are hearing rumors about the King's bastard petitioning for the throne since no other heir exists and they don't investigate then maybe the bastard takes over the throne after a month of game time, or maybe a civil war starts. If the PCs are tracking down and questioning members of a thieves guild but one player is doubling back and assassinating those that they question, then at some point a higher up in the guild is going to put a contract out for the entire group, and if that fails then he may plead with them to spare his life (this actually happened in a game I ran). By having NPCs and a world that constantly changes and does it's own thing but then also reacts to the PCs' actions, the players end up caring more about how their roles can affect things. I never worry about game balance or making things easy, I just try to have the wider world react and move forward realistically. So far it's worked!<br /><br />I do the whole "if it's not on your character sheet then it doesn't exist" thing as well, but only because I don't want to keep track of everything. It's the player's responsibility to know what their character is capable of. I've only ever played with two cheaters but my solution is simple, confront them when I catch them. Usually they leave after being called out, if they stay then every roll they make is suspect if I don't see it (fool me once...). <br /><br />I also tend to make all of my rolls where everyone can see them, so if a PC gets killed then everybody knows I didn't fudge the dice. But if a character gets killed then I leave it to the player to decide how they go out. In a fantasy game they could get resurrected later, in a scifi game they could potentially have their body rebuilt (at great financial cost), or in a modern game they might just get lucky and be knocked out of the action rather than killed, and about 75% of the time when I put it into the players hands they let the character die and roll up a new one.Patrick Mallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04906639025904535922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-82125846701489808822015-07-10T11:24:43.315-07:002015-07-10T11:24:43.315-07:00I always enjoy your posts. Reading about your DMin...I always enjoy your posts. Reading about your DMing experience is a nice change of pace.<br /><br />The campaign I'm running is set in Zakhara (Al-Qadim), although the TSR adventures are more like outlines than actual modules that can be run right out of the box. This is my biggest pet peeve with written material, too often the writers just don't do the work. This has forced me to home brew a published product, and the results thus far have been for the better.<br /><br />Out sessions are played out on Roll20 for about two to two-and-a-half hours, so I need to cram in as much as I can. I often resort to the five room dungeon model, although at times, it may play out as scenes. I detest railroading my players on some pre-conceived plot, so instead, set up either a series of semi-random encounters or environments that have no set outcome. I prefer to let the players choose how they want to affect the situations they find themselves in.<br /><br />Like you, I would prefer to run the classics, although many of them can be a slog to either update or correct. I was hoping that this generation of rules would have modern examples of well-designed adventures and setting material, but to date, I'm stuck with only a trickle of product that has to coincide with some monstrous marketing campaign. Thus, I'm forced to home brew by default.<br />Coffeematehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03058067527499895714noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-422181426312081107.post-79373362995982546292015-07-10T07:50:35.305-07:002015-07-10T07:50:35.305-07:00That was one of the best reads I've had in a l...That was one of the best reads I've had in a long time, and very interesting. Thanks for that! As a side note, as a GM I also run homebrew (and have five settings I use!), and only recently got back into running modules....which indeed take more time to prep for properly than writing the material myself. I lean on improv, but more in the past....old age seems to have taken the edge off of my improv abilities a bit. On problem players....I used to be very tolerant of all sorts of stuff, but not anymore, and have no problem kicking people I realize are a detriment to group enjoyment.Doctor Futurityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02586371999646337047noreply@blogger.com