So, I'm new as a DM, I've watched a lot of videos (a lot of Matt Mercer from Critical Role and DawnForge Cast) on the basics of DMing, and thought I would be rather prepared for it.
And, of course, I was wrong as hell. O_O
I've been the DM of two games now, and it was insanely difficult... I know the people I'm playing with, and know how they can be, but it is so hard to keep track of what everyone is doing, what they should roll, what NPCs they've interacted with, who they've offended and the NPC's reactions as a result, and on, and on, and on. Additionally, there is one player who is very reserved when it comes to roll playing, so she doesn't say much, and I found myself accidentally excluding her from the roll playing portion.
So, how do you keep yourself organized and on top of what you need to do in the game while at the same time keeping it running smoothly and the players engaged? Any tips and advice?
Public Mod Note
(Sedge):
Moved to new DMs Only board
Personally I take a decent amount of notes before hand in OneNote. I use this as a reminder for things I want to tell the players about, and the major plot points that will be coming up soon. I do this with my encounters as well. I wind up grabbing screen caps of the Monster's stat blocks and throw them in OneNote as well.
I also keep a pencil and notebook for tracking monsters health for combat, and to jot down quick notes like a name I had just made up off the top of my head just in case someone asks me "Hey what was that guys name again?" a couple minutes later.
Also, if you ever forget something, or if you think you forgot to tell the players about something really important, don't stress. Just come up with another reason, or place they could find that same bit of information. I do it all the time, cause even with all my notes, I tend to forget all sorts of stuff.
What I do between sessions is that I take all the notes I took during the game and reorganise them in a document/sheet of paper where I always have general information on, like NPC names with their current opinion on the party next to them. This helps when running a longer campaign, that I found helped me when I was in a similar situation.
Also, if you have a player who is a bit passive when it comes to rp, you could always talk to them to see how they feel during your sessions. And if they say that they enjoy the way things are then everything is fine, if they want to rp more they might step up themselves. However, if they say they want to do more but doesn't know how, have someone in your game ask their character directly. I had a bard who's player didn't like to rp but they wanted to do more, so I had an NPC challenge them to a bard-off. That helped them a lot as it gave them a problem only they could deal with by rp-ing.
Realm Works. It's designed specifically to assist in making your life easier. It takes the information you give it and links it all together (automatically) in a way that makes it easier for you to use and manage the data.
Changed everything for me.
I was drowning in notes and print-offs. Tried to use OneNote (hated it). Kept having to search through books.
And then I discovered Realm Works. Now everything is so much easier.
Also now that they released the ability to import and export data my prep time is plummeting since I can just load data straight into the tool. SRD is getting released soon apparently!
I just keep a note pad by my side and jot down anything I think would be noteworthy, breaking everything down that's going on into smaller pieces can help. Usually my players like to at least do chores in pairs, so I focus on the duo heading to the library, and then the two who are talking to the village mayor, and then etc etc. When it comes to roleplay in that sense, I try and give everyone a fair amount of time doing what they'd like, and making sure they get at least some result out of it, if not there's always another time, but usually I try and answer their questions/sell them their potions and so on
DM5e for windows has been really nice for me. You can basically write your campaign, build your encounters, create your party, leave notes etc. Everything is there already set to go and you can even leave notes if you like. I don't use all of the features but for planning out encounters and combat tracking it really makes things much easier.
I bring my laptop with me to the table. I know a lot of people do notes with OneNote. I use Trello for adventure notes, I think it's just a matter of preference but it's perfect for my needs. I also use improved-initiative.com to track combat, Obsidian Portal for campaign notes, and I have a folder of potentially useful bookmarks like name generators, random tables, monster stats, spells, and other miscellaneous information. I also keep a physical notebook next to me at all times.
Also, don't feel like you need to keep track of every little thing. Your players should know what their spells do and how to make attack rolls, saves, and ability checks. It can still be really overwhelming at first, but you start to get the hang of it. I've only been DMing a little over a year and it's gotten much easier.
On the video front, have you checked out Matthew Colville? His stuff is on YouTube and his Running the Game series of videos is indispensable information for DM's.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder) Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
I see a lot of good advice here but I might have missed it if someone already said it.
DELEGATE Assistance.
Buy a Combat Tracker and let one of the players announce combat order as the turns pass. if you have a fellow DM at the table ask them to sit close by and tap them of their experience when you need to look up rules in the roll of (DM assistant)
As to your quiet player. Talk with them away from the table .. Sometimes quiet players just are quiet because they enjoy being an active voyeur in the game. If that is not the case here is my player interaction tip.
Each game session I pick one player that I will interact with a portion of their background something in game. I also at the end of game note if I had any quiet players and make sure that the next session I go to them early in the game.
Lastly, I use to keep an egg timer. If I was dealing with anyone at the table longer than it took the timer to run out. I wrapped up what I was doing with that player or players and flipped it over and moved to the other players that were not involved. It really helped me learn to shift the pacing around the table and keep everyone included.
I have developed a chart for the different players (there's 7 in our current campaign!) and different actions they take. I just jot down in a notebook as the gameplay happens, and although probably no one else could read it, I can tell you almost every action they take, with whom, and it takes just a few seconds to record. (There's pages of "J-6-12-hmng3-a-fp-8-3" type notes that mean absolutely nothing to anything but me.) When they do something I haven't thought of, or meet a new npc, it just gets added to the chart.
I keep track of everything I need to by way of making sure that I have the least possible number of things I need to keep track of.
My whole philosophy on DMing can be summed up as an effort to maximize the results of minimum effort, so that all my "I'm going to do something D&D related outside of actual play session time" time can be spend on the frivolous extras like painting minis, finding music to play during sessions, and the like.
I currently don't have any more to keep track of for any campaign than a published adventure or rough outline of my own devising and a piece of scratch paper, which is mostly for temporary tracking of things like monster hp, but also gets short reminders written down like "Unidentified Oil on Belgar's sheet = oil of sharpness" or "Party just defeated mummy - has not rested or healed" so that I don't get lost when a player says they identify something during a rest, or when starting the next session.
The way I make that work is to have the players responsible for keeping track of everything else. Somebody takes notes. Somebody doodles maps. Somebody tracks initiative. Somebody specifically notes not generally events, but NPCs met and how the party feels about them - and in all those cases it is because the player in question is invested in their part of tracking things: the guy taking notes is the one that forgets things more often than the rest of us and he doesn't want to, the guy doodling maps has fun with it, the fella tracking initiative is the one of us that cares about the tactical aspect of the game so it's something he'd be doing for himself even if I were trying to keep track of it too, and the lady keeping tabs on every relationship the party forms does so because the story is her favorite part of the play experience.
As for helpful tools, something I found very useful to me a long time ago was the old red box set (Mentzer version of Basic D&D), which talks about assigning responsibilities to players like having one of them be the mapper, and one be the "caller" which basically meant they were the one to tell the DM what the entire party was doing in a concise fashion after the players each discussed what they wanted their own character to be doing. It also presents a formalized order of play for out-of-combat activities, that while I've de-formalized over the years I still basically adhere to as a means to keep the game-play moving forward.
You guys are awesome, I really appreciate the help! DMing was much more intense than I thought it would be since I'm not exactly a veteran player either, so there's a lot of learning going around.
I'm new to DMing as well but I played years ago. So I've been doing a lot of research on this very topic and so far my favorite tool that has helped speed things along is an app called encounter + it has all the monsters in it, you can quickly throw in the PCs and NPCs I've even found myself copying the monsters and adding named monsters (you can add anything) with a few more HP. It's at it's core an initiative, turn and hp tracker but you can access perceptions, save rolls, monster stats, most basic information you can mark players and monsters when they are stunned charmed etc. if you want to put a little time in you can add portraits as well, so far it's been fantastic. And it was free!
Game Master 5 iPad app from Lions Den. A 5e app for DMs. It's the app I'm comparing Beyond to. It's preloaded with SRD material and you can easily import more via XML for custom stuff.
the short answer is you really can't keep on top of it most of the time there are going to be those days that you just find yourself drowning in the players mayhem but also with that there are going to be days where you can keep on top of it. as a dungeon master i have found that this is the curse of being a dungeon master you cannot keep on top of what the players are going to do they will always do something unexpected that makes you just throw away everything you had planned for the session, in the end you just have to be prepared for anything your players throw at you and it makes it a little bit easier to cope with. hope this helps you out. :)
I'm not dm'ing right now, but I did our last campaign. It helps we have three (now) that have dm'd.
I bring a tablet to use for DndBeyond. I look up character sheets, adventure, and rules with that. I also use tokens for status conditions. A pen and paper gets used for quick notes and combat. I condense notes later after the session both as a dm and player.
On my dm screen, I used some paper to make quick initiative trackers that I set up there with all the player's names and passive perception. I also have a few marked big bad and bad guy group 1-4.
I have lots of resources for tracking monster stats, but I tend to homebrew them to help me remember their stats and adjust difficulty on the fly. I use narrative to change them up. Been very popular so far, since even the experienced player gets surprised by them.
At our table, players track their stuff. I just toss them tokens. One player draws maps and writes initiative on the map, while I use my dm screen for it. The other dm helps with rules and such when I'm too busy herding cats.
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So, I'm new as a DM, I've watched a lot of videos (a lot of Matt Mercer from Critical Role and DawnForge Cast) on the basics of DMing, and thought I would be rather prepared for it.
And, of course, I was wrong as hell. O_O
I've been the DM of two games now, and it was insanely difficult... I know the people I'm playing with, and know how they can be, but it is so hard to keep track of what everyone is doing, what they should roll, what NPCs they've interacted with, who they've offended and the NPC's reactions as a result, and on, and on, and on. Additionally, there is one player who is very reserved when it comes to roll playing, so she doesn't say much, and I found myself accidentally excluding her from the roll playing portion.
So, how do you keep yourself organized and on top of what you need to do in the game while at the same time keeping it running smoothly and the players engaged? Any tips and advice?
How do you want to do this?
Personally I take a decent amount of notes before hand in OneNote. I use this as a reminder for things I want to tell the players about, and the major plot points that will be coming up soon. I do this with my encounters as well. I wind up grabbing screen caps of the Monster's stat blocks and throw them in OneNote as well.
I also keep a pencil and notebook for tracking monsters health for combat, and to jot down quick notes like a name I had just made up off the top of my head just in case someone asks me "Hey what was that guys name again?" a couple minutes later.
Also, if you ever forget something, or if you think you forgot to tell the players about something really important, don't stress. Just come up with another reason, or place they could find that same bit of information. I do it all the time, cause even with all my notes, I tend to forget all sorts of stuff.
What I do between sessions is that I take all the notes I took during the game and reorganise them in a document/sheet of paper where I always have general information on, like NPC names with their current opinion on the party next to them. This helps when running a longer campaign, that I found helped me when I was in a similar situation.
Also, if you have a player who is a bit passive when it comes to rp, you could always talk to them to see how they feel during your sessions. And if they say that they enjoy the way things are then everything is fine, if they want to rp more they might step up themselves. However, if they say they want to do more but doesn't know how, have someone in your game ask their character directly. I had a bard who's player didn't like to rp but they wanted to do more, so I had an NPC challenge them to a bard-off. That helped them a lot as it gave them a problem only they could deal with by rp-ing.
Hopefully, that helps!
To help you keeping track: notes with differnt colours
To help involve players: create npcs particuraly interested in that player's character.
Realm Works. It's designed specifically to assist in making your life easier. It takes the information you give it and links it all together (automatically) in a way that makes it easier for you to use and manage the data.
Changed everything for me.
I was drowning in notes and print-offs. Tried to use OneNote (hated it). Kept having to search through books.
And then I discovered Realm Works. Now everything is so much easier.
Realm Works and Hero Lab - A DM Tour
Also now that they released the ability to import and export data my prep time is plummeting since I can just load data straight into the tool. SRD is getting released soon apparently!
Daplunk's YouTube Channel: Realm Works and Hero Lab Videos / Campaign Cartographer 3+ Videos
Realm Works Facebook User Group
I just keep a note pad by my side and jot down anything I think would be noteworthy, breaking everything down that's going on into smaller pieces can help. Usually my players like to at least do chores in pairs, so I focus on the duo heading to the library, and then the two who are talking to the village mayor, and then etc etc. When it comes to roleplay in that sense, I try and give everyone a fair amount of time doing what they'd like, and making sure they get at least some result out of it, if not there's always another time, but usually I try and answer their questions/sell them their potions and so on
"Roll for kink."
My homebrews - Naturalcrit
DM5e for windows has been really nice for me. You can basically write your campaign, build your encounters, create your party, leave notes etc. Everything is there already set to go and you can even leave notes if you like. I don't use all of the features but for planning out encounters and combat tracking it really makes things much easier.
Funny that you make this question, since I've just realized I forgot how i described my last session's improvised NPC :(
Link please.
I bring my laptop with me to the table. I know a lot of people do notes with OneNote. I use Trello for adventure notes, I think it's just a matter of preference but it's perfect for my needs. I also use improved-initiative.com to track combat, Obsidian Portal for campaign notes, and I have a folder of potentially useful bookmarks like name generators, random tables, monster stats, spells, and other miscellaneous information. I also keep a physical notebook next to me at all times.
Also, don't feel like you need to keep track of every little thing. Your players should know what their spells do and how to make attack rolls, saves, and ability checks. It can still be really overwhelming at first, but you start to get the hang of it. I've only been DMing a little over a year and it's gotten much easier.
On the video front, have you checked out Matthew Colville? His stuff is on YouTube and his Running the Game series of videos is indispensable information for DM's.
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder)
Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
I see a lot of good advice here but I might have missed it if someone already said it.
DELEGATE Assistance.
Buy a Combat Tracker and let one of the players announce combat order as the turns pass.
if you have a fellow DM at the table ask them to sit close by and tap them of their experience when you need to look up rules in the roll of (DM assistant)
As to your quiet player. Talk with them away from the table .. Sometimes quiet players just are quiet because they enjoy being an active voyeur in the game. If that is not the case here is my player interaction tip.
Each game session I pick one player that I will interact with a portion of their background something in game. I also at the end of game note if I had any quiet players and make sure that the next session I go to them early in the game.
Lastly, I use to keep an egg timer. If I was dealing with anyone at the table longer than it took the timer to run out. I wrapped up what I was doing with that player or players and flipped it over and moved to the other players that were not involved. It really helped me learn to shift the pacing around the table and keep everyone included.
I have developed a chart for the different players (there's 7 in our current campaign!) and different actions they take. I just jot down in a notebook as the gameplay happens, and although probably no one else could read it, I can tell you almost every action they take, with whom, and it takes just a few seconds to record. (There's pages of "J-6-12-hmng3-a-fp-8-3" type notes that mean absolutely nothing to anything but me.) When they do something I haven't thought of, or meet a new npc, it just gets added to the chart.
I keep track of everything I need to by way of making sure that I have the least possible number of things I need to keep track of.
My whole philosophy on DMing can be summed up as an effort to maximize the results of minimum effort, so that all my "I'm going to do something D&D related outside of actual play session time" time can be spend on the frivolous extras like painting minis, finding music to play during sessions, and the like.
I currently don't have any more to keep track of for any campaign than a published adventure or rough outline of my own devising and a piece of scratch paper, which is mostly for temporary tracking of things like monster hp, but also gets short reminders written down like "Unidentified Oil on Belgar's sheet = oil of sharpness" or "Party just defeated mummy - has not rested or healed" so that I don't get lost when a player says they identify something during a rest, or when starting the next session.
The way I make that work is to have the players responsible for keeping track of everything else. Somebody takes notes. Somebody doodles maps. Somebody tracks initiative. Somebody specifically notes not generally events, but NPCs met and how the party feels about them - and in all those cases it is because the player in question is invested in their part of tracking things: the guy taking notes is the one that forgets things more often than the rest of us and he doesn't want to, the guy doodling maps has fun with it, the fella tracking initiative is the one of us that cares about the tactical aspect of the game so it's something he'd be doing for himself even if I were trying to keep track of it too, and the lady keeping tabs on every relationship the party forms does so because the story is her favorite part of the play experience.
As for helpful tools, something I found very useful to me a long time ago was the old red box set (Mentzer version of Basic D&D), which talks about assigning responsibilities to players like having one of them be the mapper, and one be the "caller" which basically meant they were the one to tell the DM what the entire party was doing in a concise fashion after the players each discussed what they wanted their own character to be doing. It also presents a formalized order of play for out-of-combat activities, that while I've de-formalized over the years I still basically adhere to as a means to keep the game-play moving forward.
You guys are awesome, I really appreciate the help! DMing was much more intense than I thought it would be since I'm not exactly a veteran player either, so there's a lot of learning going around.
How do you want to do this?
I'm new to DMing as well but I played years ago. So I've been doing a lot of research on this very topic and so far my favorite tool that has helped speed things along is an app called encounter + it has all the monsters in it, you can quickly throw in the PCs and NPCs I've even found myself copying the monsters and adding named monsters (you can add anything) with a few more HP. It's at it's core an initiative, turn and hp tracker but you can access perceptions, save rolls, monster stats, most basic information you can mark players and monsters when they are stunned charmed etc. if you want to put a little time in you can add portraits as well, so far it's been fantastic. And it was free!
Game Master 5 iPad app from Lions Den. A 5e app for DMs. It's the app I'm comparing Beyond to. It's preloaded with SRD material and you can easily import more via XML for custom stuff.
Game Master 5e on App Store
if you use more than twice, you'll want to pay the small unlock fee of 3-5usd to get no ads or restrictions.
Link for DM5e if anyone wants to check it out
http://goatheadsoftware.com/
the short answer is you really can't keep on top of it most of the time there are going to be those days that you just find yourself drowning in the players mayhem but also with that there are going to be days where you can keep on top of it. as a dungeon master i have found that this is the curse of being a dungeon master you cannot keep on top of what the players are going to do they will always do something unexpected that makes you just throw away everything you had planned for the session, in the end you just have to be prepared for anything your players throw at you and it makes it a little bit easier to cope with. hope this helps you out. :)
You can't keep track of the mayhem. You wing it.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I'm not dm'ing right now, but I did our last campaign. It helps we have three (now) that have dm'd.
I bring a tablet to use for DndBeyond. I look up character sheets, adventure, and rules with that. I also use tokens for status conditions. A pen and paper gets used for quick notes and combat. I condense notes later after the session both as a dm and player.
On my dm screen, I used some paper to make quick initiative trackers that I set up there with all the player's names and passive perception. I also have a few marked big bad and bad guy group 1-4.
I have lots of resources for tracking monster stats, but I tend to homebrew them to help me remember their stats and adjust difficulty on the fly. I use narrative to change them up. Been very popular so far, since even the experienced player gets surprised by them.
At our table, players track their stuff. I just toss them tokens. One player draws maps and writes initiative on the map, while I use my dm screen for it. The other dm helps with rules and such when I'm too busy herding cats.