[Mattaeus]

When I DM’d I stick to a few good rules

1. Never, and I mean NEVER let a player bring in a character from another game. Transferring over the name exp lvl are fine and a choice of one or 2 magic’s if required and reroll stats. The reason I say this is because some players (Munchkins) think that they should be the most powerful character in the party and be able to do what they want in the campaign and they cheat. To this day I really don’t understand why not having a powerful and all mighty toon is detrimental to ones psyche.

2. Supervise all character creations and rolls. Know one ever got 3 18 rolls in a row without me watching, and keep notes on character stats, magic, HPs and skills.

3. Keep notes! Have a log book, write everything down that’s important; like major NPCs, dates, hoards, unfinished quests, unresolved situations, and as stated in 2. The more organized you are the harder it is for that 5th lvl toon to say “What do you mean you don’t remember giving me that +10 Holy Defender of Demon Slaying??”

4. Giving exp for not only killing monsters but evading them or getting out of a tough situation. If you show the characters that there are other ways of getting exp without killing everything they see, they become more willing to Role-play.

5. Now on the other hand a well played monster can be a lot of fun. Try taking that single monster against the party and using you brain to try to defeat them, or take a small party of low lvl monsters and use tactics. Iv mad a party of 4 6th lvls squirm from ½ a dozen Orcs that had high ground as an advantage as well as 50 to 90 percent cover and using Bows.

6. Don’t give too much at once! Dragon hordes are fun but they usually give WAY too much. I know your saying you don’t have to roll what they tell you to in the book. But its fun to! Especially when they see there treasure melt befor them from one to many dragon breaths…..it easily turns that 40,000 gold and platinum (not to mention the 300,000 copper) into a shiny new floor for that damp dingy cave!! Saves for anything magical and any gems as well as percent for how much platinum/gold/silver/copper where destroyed. I usually roll 2d4x10 as a start and dwindle down from there. Besides! If they got all that gold where the hell would they put it!!

7. Colorful NPCs, and plots as well as a good story line are good ways to keep your players interested. If they are interested in the story and want to see what happens they need to play right? But try to remember that you are the story teller and they are the players in you world; what they do and how they act change what the world is like around them, and you can never know for sure what the players are going to do.

8. I believe in being fare and giving chances in the game. I rarely kill a party off with no way out. For instance I had a mid lvl party get surprised by a haunt, well after a lot of bad save through the party got whipped out! Not killed just paralyzed until they where finished draining them at which point they would become part of the undead. The party in question had lackeys…followers, which were back at camp. Even though they were not even half there level they did have a number of them. To be fair I let the party play them as they went to rescue the heroes and put there fate back into the players hands.

9. Now stupidity on the other hand! If your players think there immortal and do acts of utter stupidity then they should be punished! A pally walks into a bar. To show off to his friends in a over full bar he pulls out a knife (not proficient in it) and throws it into a table to mark his territory and proudly says “Well sit here!” Fumbling his roll he misses the table and with a loud shriek a peasant grabs his chest as blood spits forth from his mouth. Within moments the bar becomes silent with anger as the parts path to the table is blocked with onlookers…they see the peasant slump forward. (surprise roll) within seconds of the death a roar begins, a chair flies across the room as the patrons become enraged. *combat round* …….The pally lost his paladin hood and forced change of alignment. Another piece of stupidity was a young mage with a wish ring! (I love them!) Wished a dragon hoard to be teleported into his tower. He specified the floor above him….45thousand tones of copper/silver/gold/platinum (it was a multiple dragon hoard) suddenly appeared and filled the next 4 levels above him. He heard a rumble and felt the floor shift under him, as he stood there waiting for it to stop he seen that one of the support walls next to him was vibrating and cracking….suddenly with tremendous force the center beam explodes into shards. I turned to him and asked what he was going to do…he replied “I’m going to wait and see if it looks like the floors going to come down”….you can use you imagination for what happened LOL.

But most of all HAVE FUN. If your not having fun something has to change