You can't talk about the plot or actions or what would have happened or what you are thinking of doing with your party. Everyone else that you are playing with is on a team and to some extent you are trying to oppose them and they are trying to oppose you.
You are the one expected to lead and organize things. You are the one who has to put the most time and effort into the games. You are the one who has to know the rules and know when one of your players is messing up their abilities or spells.
This is painfully true, especially the part about not being able to talk about the plot. My party is basically the extent of my direct friends that play D&D, so beyond these forums I don't have anyone to talk about the cool stuff i am planning or bounce ideas off. It's extra frustrating because the number one person i normally bounce my ideas off and use as my sounding board is my wife, but she is in the party so I can't. I can't even talk about general D&D stuff or lore too much, because I don't want to bias or influence her play by putting any ideas in her head of what I might be planning.
A hard thing is having players who aren't as invested in the campaign as you are. You spend your free time building maps and writing adventures and stocking lairs and then the players don't take initiative and wait for everything to be served to them. That may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but honestly not by much. Players won't follow obvious adventure hooks, or read their character sheets, or connect any dots in the plot you've been trying to set up for Ages.
I had a DM who, for the first session, refused to speak unless describing a location or the PCs were interacting with an NPC, and i honestly think it got the whole party actually Doing Things much faster than anything i've tried before, so maybe i'll steal that idea lol.
A hard thing is having players who aren't as invested in the campaign as you are. You spend your free time building maps and writing adventures and stocking lairs and then the players don't take initiative and wait for everything to be served to them. That may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but honestly not by much. Players won't follow obvious adventure hooks, or read their character sheets, or connect any dots in the plot you've been trying to set up for Ages.
I had a DM who, for the first session, refused to speak unless describing a location or the PCs were interacting with an NPC, and i honestly think it got the whole party actually Doing Things much faster than anything i've tried before, so maybe i'll steal that idea lol.
I think I am starting to run in to this with my current party a bit. I am finding myself saying "So, what do you want to do?" quite a bit after describing a scene or conveying what an NPC said.
A hard thing is having players who aren't as invested in the campaign as you are. You spend your free time building maps and writing adventures and stocking lairs and then the players don't take initiative and wait for everything to be served to them. That may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but honestly not by much. Players won't follow obvious adventure hooks, or read their character sheets, or connect any dots in the plot you've been trying to set up for Ages.
I had a DM who, for the first session, refused to speak unless describing a location or the PCs were interacting with an NPC, and i honestly think it got the whole party actually Doing Things much faster than anything i've tried before, so maybe i'll steal that idea lol.
I think I am starting to run in to this with my current party a bit. I am finding myself saying "So, what do you want to do?" quite a bit after describing a scene or conveying what an NPC said.
Ah yes, the dreaded question. I think something else i'm going to try is to just add a very obvious Interesting Thing in each description to get the players going, even if the interesting thing isn't actually the important thing in a given location. Sometimes the players just have low passive perception/insight irl, which is another hard thing to combat as a DM gfdjhsghd
A hard thing is having players who aren't as invested in the campaign as you are. You spend your free time building maps and writing adventures and stocking lairs and then the players don't take initiative and wait for everything to be served to them. That may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but honestly not by much. Players won't follow obvious adventure hooks, or read their character sheets, or connect any dots in the plot you've been trying to set up for Ages.
I had a DM who, for the first session, refused to speak unless describing a location or the PCs were interacting with an NPC, and i honestly think it got the whole party actually Doing Things much faster than anything i've tried before, so maybe i'll steal that idea lol.
This isn't a terrible idea. I would want to discuss it during Session Zero just to be sure everyone is on the same page though.
'When I'm describing a person or a scene, presume that everything that I say is easy to see and understand unless I say otherwise. Once I stop talking, that's your cue to figure out what you're all doing, if anything.' I can see this as a good team-building exercise because if one of the players likes to try and take the reins, but the character isn't good at it (and we've ALL seen this in movies and IRL games), then the others might have to scramble to cover.
My current DM likes to make a joke about 'block text' when he plays from a published adventure. Last session, the character in front blew their Perception roll, turned a corner, and was slapped in the face by 'Surprise block text!'
+1 for it being somewhat lonely. I have few other close friends who play D&D outside of my group. I ended up, having been asked by one of my other friends who's vaguely interested in starting how the campaign was going. I ended up regailing them for over half an hour on the plot twists and intrigues and links that currently remain undetected by the players. I could see his eyes glazing over, but It was seriously good to actually talk about it all!
The other hard thing for me as a DM is in knowing if I'm doing a good job. The players are all very polite when I ask and seem to be enjoying it, but I am also aware that I'm not the longest-running of DMs and I have a lot to learn!
You can't talk about the plot or actions or what would have happened or what you are thinking of doing with your party. Everyone else that you are playing with is on a team and to some extent you are trying to oppose them and they are trying to oppose you.
You are the one expected to lead and organize things. You are the one who has to put the most time and effort into the games. You are the one who has to know the rules and know when one of your players is messing up their abilities or spells.
This is painfully true, especially the part about not being able to talk about the plot. My party is basically the extent of my direct friends that play D&D, so beyond these forums I don't have anyone to talk about the cool stuff i am planning or bounce ideas off. It's extra frustrating because the number one person i normally bounce my ideas off and use as my sounding board is my wife, but she is in the party so I can't. I can't even talk about general D&D stuff or lore too much, because I don't want to bias or influence her play by putting any ideas in her head of what I might be planning.
Though this may not work for everyone, as a DM myself, and player, I have acted as a sounding board for other DM friends of mine. Should I be a player in one of the adventures that we discussed, I step back to a party support role with my character; a pseudo NPC as it were. I then make no decisions as a character, and offer no advice to the other players or characters, but still get to enjoy the action at the table, and collect experience and goodies for my character.
Again, this may not work for every person or group. The DM must be able to trust that their 'sounding board' will not take advantage of their knowledge of the scenario, and ruin the game for the others at the table.
Speaking as someone who much prefers to game in person, finding aa group of players who can and want to game at the same time AND who get along with each other as well as being positive about your campaign world's direction is pretty challenging.
You can't talk about the plot or actions or what would have happened or what you are thinking of doing with your party. Everyone else that you are playing with is on a team and to some extent you are trying to oppose them and they are trying to oppose you.
You are the one expected to lead and organize things. You are the one who has to put the most time and effort into the games. You are the one who has to know the rules and know when one of your players is messing up their abilities or spells.
I feel that, I can barely remember what it's like to be a player anymore. My players either lack the experience to DM or they don't feel like DMing, so I have like 18 characters that I can't use. And my players rarely RSVP about sessions, so I have to cancel most of them, and then they all ask "When is the next session? We never have sessions." and it drives me crazy.
A hard thing is having players who aren't as invested in the campaign as you are. You spend your free time building maps and writing adventures and stocking lairs and then the players don't take initiative and wait for everything to be served to them. That may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but honestly not by much. Players won't follow obvious adventure hooks, or read their character sheets, or connect any dots in the plot you've been trying to set up for Ages.
I had a DM who, for the first session, refused to speak unless describing a location or the PCs were interacting with an NPC, and i honestly think it got the whole party actually Doing Things much faster than anything i've tried before, so maybe i'll steal that idea lol.
For me it's running out of ideas when I have an idea I put it in the next game but when I run out of ideas it's hard to be inspired so I watch some dnd content intll I get an idea
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
This is painfully true, especially the part about not being able to talk about the plot. My party is basically the extent of my direct friends that play D&D, so beyond these forums I don't have anyone to talk about the cool stuff i am planning or bounce ideas off. It's extra frustrating because the number one person i normally bounce my ideas off and use as my sounding board is my wife, but she is in the party so I can't. I can't even talk about general D&D stuff or lore too much, because I don't want to bias or influence her play by putting any ideas in her head of what I might be planning.
A hard thing is having players who aren't as invested in the campaign as you are. You spend your free time building maps and writing adventures and stocking lairs and then the players don't take initiative and wait for everything to be served to them. That may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but honestly not by much. Players won't follow obvious adventure hooks, or read their character sheets, or connect any dots in the plot you've been trying to set up for Ages.
I had a DM who, for the first session, refused to speak unless describing a location or the PCs were interacting with an NPC, and i honestly think it got the whole party actually Doing Things much faster than anything i've tried before, so maybe i'll steal that idea lol.
:)
I think I am starting to run in to this with my current party a bit. I am finding myself saying "So, what do you want to do?" quite a bit after describing a scene or conveying what an NPC said.
Ah yes, the dreaded question. I think something else i'm going to try is to just add a very obvious Interesting Thing in each description to get the players going, even if the interesting thing isn't actually the important thing in a given location. Sometimes the players just have low passive perception/insight irl, which is another hard thing to combat as a DM gfdjhsghd
:)
This isn't a terrible idea. I would want to discuss it during Session Zero just to be sure everyone is on the same page though.
'When I'm describing a person or a scene, presume that everything that I say is easy to see and understand unless I say otherwise. Once I stop talking, that's your cue to figure out what you're all doing, if anything.' I can see this as a good team-building exercise because if one of the players likes to try and take the reins, but the character isn't good at it (and we've ALL seen this in movies and IRL games), then the others might have to scramble to cover.
My current DM likes to make a joke about 'block text' when he plays from a published adventure. Last session, the character in front blew their Perception roll, turned a corner, and was slapped in the face by 'Surprise block text!'
+1 for it being somewhat lonely. I have few other close friends who play D&D outside of my group. I ended up, having been asked by one of my other friends who's vaguely interested in starting how the campaign was going. I ended up regailing them for over half an hour on the plot twists and intrigues and links that currently remain undetected by the players. I could see his eyes glazing over, but It was seriously good to actually talk about it all!
The other hard thing for me as a DM is in knowing if I'm doing a good job. The players are all very polite when I ask and seem to be enjoying it, but I am also aware that I'm not the longest-running of DMs and I have a lot to learn!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Though this may not work for everyone, as a DM myself, and player, I have acted as a sounding board for other DM friends of mine. Should I be a player in one of the adventures that we discussed, I step back to a party support role with my character; a pseudo NPC as it were. I then make no decisions as a character, and offer no advice to the other players or characters, but still get to enjoy the action at the table, and collect experience and goodies for my character.
Again, this may not work for every person or group. The DM must be able to trust that their 'sounding board' will not take advantage of their knowledge of the scenario, and ruin the game for the others at the table.
Speaking as someone who much prefers to game in person, finding aa group of players who can and want to game at the same time AND who get along with each other as well as being positive about your campaign world's direction is pretty challenging.
I feel that, I can barely remember what it's like to be a player anymore. My players either lack the experience to DM or they don't feel like DMing, so I have like 18 characters that I can't use. And my players rarely RSVP about sessions, so I have to cancel most of them, and then they all ask "When is the next session? We never have sessions." and it drives me crazy.
Have the PCs make an int check to remember.
For me it's running out of ideas when I have an idea I put it in the next game but when I run out of ideas it's hard to be inspired so I watch some dnd content intll I get an idea