This is the evil twin of another thread I created (1-3 important lessons you've learned as a DM)
So this is also for more experienced DMs to share lessons with newer DMs, but from a different perspective.
What kind of big mistakes have you made that you've now learned to avoid?
1-3 things to keep the thread readable.
I'll start:
1. My settings in the past have been waaaay too huge. Way too much utterly unimportant lore. I'm talking countless hours of lorecrafting a detailed world history and how the world functions. So basically building from my otherworldly perspective and eventually reducing it into the player's super narrow local perspective.
This can lead to the DM forcefeeding lore to the players or becoming frustrated when they don't show active interest in the lore that you spent 50 hours creating.
I've started doing it the other way around, inside-out. Starting from the player's perspective and expanding from there. You know, the things that are interesting from their point of view.
2. Constantly reinventing the wheel and coming up with unique stuff. Going to great lengths to avoid clichés. Unique is great, but the classics are relatable. I've instead started reskinning old classics, borrowing stuff from all over including my children's favorite shows like True and the Rainbow Kingdom or My Little Pony. Also using premade materials and browsing forums for ideas. And throwing in a tiny bit of something unique. If everything is super unique and unfamiliar, the players might have a hard and frustrating time grasping it.
Still technically a new DM here so some of this is building experience.
1. keeping track of things as DM, enemy NPCs, monsters, events, layout, etc. I end up forgetting about friendly NPCs as I don’t want them to be centre stage. E.g. in CoS I keep forgetting about Ireena when keeping track of everything that’s going on which means they don’t develop player relationships as well
2. when home-brewing aspects I constantly tweek aspects right up to the game date as I’m always thinking of how it could be better
3. over prep, fairly self explanatory here. I’ve got aspects planned way beyond where the party is and these will probably then get changed as we play as per point 2
Every official module that I know of other than CoS, has zero, or very little contact with the big boss until the very end. A lot of the time the don't even know who it is until the module is practically over. Rather than it being a big reveal, it just makes it so defeating them doesn't feel like anything special.
Mysteries in plots might make a lot of sense in the DMs head, but if you play 1x a week, there is a lot of time for the players to forget things and totally lose the thread of what's going on. If it takes 3-4 sessions to travel to the dungeon, crawl though it and do what they need to do, by the time the players and done there is a good chance they will have forgotten why they went there in the first place or who sent them if it's at all complicated.
1. I focused on a single player because they had a really good backstory and the other players didn't really have a backstory but I was called out and was able to save the campaign from being boring for the other players.
Don't overthink things, I would try to plan every detail, and would act like I was righting a book. Relieved I stunk out that, and was much better at improvisation. Now I like to have rough idea of what the area the players are in, town name, and a few key characters/places and the rest I Leroy it. Taking notes of information I give to the area and store/lore and building it from their.
1. Unless you are playing in a comical type campaign, make sure that the choices the characters make have reasonable consequences. e.g. Don't protect the characters from their own stupidity. Don't give them a safety net that they become aware of so that the choices they make don't come with any risk (unless that is the kind of campaign the players really want to play). Don't follow the "rule of cool" to the detriment of the campaign as a whole. It is great when players do cool things but not every thing they suggest is either cool or reasonable. It takes some practice and judgement to let the characters do mostly cool but reasonable things that don't push the boundaries of "reasonable" so much that the players just end up constantly pushing the boundaries until the game is more like a cartoon than a campaign.
2. Try and preserve some of the things that make certain characters and classes special so that every player can feel like they are contributing. Some players are very imaginative which is awesome but then try doing something extreme and magical with a skill that is being pushed beyond its limits. e.g trying to use persuasion with a high enough roll like the Suggestion spell. It isn't.
3. Plot out some broad strokes for the campaign. Fill in a bit more detail on local elements or events. Add more detail for the immediate environment where the party currently is. Be prepared to improvise and add extra content details on the fly if the characters go in an unexpected direction. However, even the unexpected direction should have something rough in mind - but it is the plot, NPCs, events and how they fit together into the storylines in the world that the characters may or may not choose to engage with which are usually more important than the details of a specific town/village/farm/keep/manor/county/barony etc. Basically, the area near the PCs should be more detailed than elsewhere since the DM probably doesn't know where the PCs are going next so it isn't worth preparing an immense amount of material that won't be used soon.
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This is the evil twin of another thread I created (1-3 important lessons you've learned as a DM)
So this is also for more experienced DMs to share lessons with newer DMs, but from a different perspective.
What kind of big mistakes have you made that you've now learned to avoid?
1-3 things to keep the thread readable.
I'll start:
1. My settings in the past have been waaaay too huge. Way too much utterly unimportant lore. I'm talking countless hours of lorecrafting a detailed world history and how the world functions. So basically building from my otherworldly perspective and eventually reducing it into the player's super narrow local perspective.
This can lead to the DM forcefeeding lore to the players or becoming frustrated when they don't show active interest in the lore that you spent 50 hours creating.
I've started doing it the other way around, inside-out. Starting from the player's perspective and expanding from there. You know, the things that are interesting from their point of view.
2. Constantly reinventing the wheel and coming up with unique stuff. Going to great lengths to avoid clichés. Unique is great, but the classics are relatable. I've instead started reskinning old classics, borrowing stuff from all over including my children's favorite shows like True and the Rainbow Kingdom or My Little Pony. Also using premade materials and browsing forums for ideas. And throwing in a tiny bit of something unique. If everything is super unique and unfamiliar, the players might have a hard and frustrating time grasping it.
Here's a couple. What are yours? 🙂
Finland GMT/UTC +2
Still technically a new DM here so some of this is building experience.
1. keeping track of things as DM, enemy NPCs, monsters, events, layout, etc. I end up forgetting about friendly NPCs as I don’t want them to be centre stage. E.g. in CoS I keep forgetting about Ireena when keeping track of everything that’s going on which means they don’t develop player relationships as well
2. when home-brewing aspects I constantly tweek aspects right up to the game date as I’m always thinking of how it could be better
3. over prep, fairly self explanatory here. I’ve got aspects planned way beyond where the party is and these will probably then get changed as we play as per point 2
"Mystery"
Every official module that I know of other than CoS, has zero, or very little contact with the big boss until the very end. A lot of the time the don't even know who it is until the module is practically over. Rather than it being a big reveal, it just makes it so defeating them doesn't feel like anything special.
Mysteries in plots might make a lot of sense in the DMs head, but if you play 1x a week, there is a lot of time for the players to forget things and totally lose the thread of what's going on. If it takes 3-4 sessions to travel to the dungeon, crawl though it and do what they need to do, by the time the players and done there is a good chance they will have forgotten why they went there in the first place or who sent them if it's at all complicated.
1. I focused on a single player because they had a really good backstory and the other players didn't really have a backstory but I was called out and was able to save the campaign from being boring for the other players.
Don't overthink things, I would try to plan every detail, and would act like I was righting a book. Relieved I stunk out that, and was much better at improvisation. Now I like to have rough idea of what the area the players are in, town name, and a few key characters/places and the rest I Leroy it. Taking notes of information I give to the area and store/lore and building it from their.
1. Unless you are playing in a comical type campaign, make sure that the choices the characters make have reasonable consequences. e.g. Don't protect the characters from their own stupidity. Don't give them a safety net that they become aware of so that the choices they make don't come with any risk (unless that is the kind of campaign the players really want to play). Don't follow the "rule of cool" to the detriment of the campaign as a whole. It is great when players do cool things but not every thing they suggest is either cool or reasonable. It takes some practice and judgement to let the characters do mostly cool but reasonable things that don't push the boundaries of "reasonable" so much that the players just end up constantly pushing the boundaries until the game is more like a cartoon than a campaign.
2. Try and preserve some of the things that make certain characters and classes special so that every player can feel like they are contributing. Some players are very imaginative which is awesome but then try doing something extreme and magical with a skill that is being pushed beyond its limits. e.g trying to use persuasion with a high enough roll like the Suggestion spell. It isn't.
3. Plot out some broad strokes for the campaign. Fill in a bit more detail on local elements or events. Add more detail for the immediate environment where the party currently is. Be prepared to improvise and add extra content details on the fly if the characters go in an unexpected direction. However, even the unexpected direction should have something rough in mind - but it is the plot, NPCs, events and how they fit together into the storylines in the world that the characters may or may not choose to engage with which are usually more important than the details of a specific town/village/farm/keep/manor/county/barony etc. Basically, the area near the PCs should be more detailed than elsewhere since the DM probably doesn't know where the PCs are going next so it isn't worth preparing an immense amount of material that won't be used soon.