DM Tips to other DMs

[Rob-hin]

Originally posted by Mulligan

In one session we met both Jesus and Hitler and did the "Alice in Wonderland" adventure, all inside a spaceship that'd crashed. And when players complained he did one amazingly horrible thing; he took a candy in his mouth and rolled it around in an ashtray full of ash and promised 10.000 XP for anyone eating it !!

Sounds like one freaky game.
Coming from this, another advice.

Be original, avoid cliche's as much as possible. Naturally, this is harder in the beginning, then cliche's aren't bad. When you get more into the game though, try to be as original as possible to avoid players (and DM's) getting bored. Remember, you can be as original as you can imagine, think outside the box. Play a game from ending to beginning for instance, whatever you can think of.

[Emancipator]

I Agree that using props is ace when you can get them, especially weapons or McGuffins. They give a lot more effect when you can say "You see a sword that looks like...THIS" (Cue large amounts of fawning to see who gets to hold it first...)

I have a problem though, In my last campaign the PC's all more or less declared their intent to be heroes, fight the good fight etc. The first thing they do is to find the opening of the plot, leave the city, go to a farm and con an old man out of 200 GP. Later on they MURDER an unconscious goblin that one PC said he wanted to interrogate. They do the quest, then go back to the city where a PC insults a wizard (Who he was trying to buy a ring off).

By this point i am rather confused as to why they are doing what they are doing, so to add some "Justice" i make the ring cursed (Anything he tried to levitate with it stuck to it). He then complains that i am "victimising" him and can't see what he has done wrong (He killed the goblin and conned the man). I explained why I did what I did, and he agrees to stop being so harsh.

Next session, he kills a sleeping troll who did not wake up despite being shouted at and nudged. (The troll was wearing the livery of the castle they were in and was obviously a guard)

What am i supposed to do about this?

[Rob-hin]

It's important that players know they just can't get away with everything.
What you did with the ring is a good example, he tried to con a man but got conned instead.

So if they kill a guard, I bet the king would be mighty angry. He sends his guards the get the PC's and brought for justice.

I have to say though, from your post it seams like your story is missing a obvious goal or direction (but you could simply not have mentioned it). Make sure the players know what to do otherwise they can go off and do strange things.

[Emancipator]

Doing random things isn't the problem, everyone does it from time to time, it's the fact that they are behaving like thieves and murderers after they told me that they wanted to be heroes.

I have asked them whether they want to play evil characters, but the answer is a unanimous NO. So, do I let them do evil things with Good characters or stop them?

(Another example from same campaign, they are arrested by the Lord of the city because they have broken several laws. They are let out on the condition that they accomplish a task for the Lord. As soon as they leave jail, they try to kidnap a bakery worker!)

[Rob-hin]

If the players don't act like their allignment, change it.
Let a cleric or paladin fall from grace with it's good god for instance. Action = concequense

But to be honest, I'd say the lord has had his fill and sends a bunsh of stronger characters (paladins) to fight this evil. No one should be allowed too just kidnap anyone. This is the roleplaying solution.

You could also just quit the story and tell them this isn't working. This is the out of game solution.

If you want to continue this conversation, I suggest you start a thread about.

[Halsy]

If you really want to improve your stories/plots/conventions/archetypes I can't suggest enough that you read Joseph Campbell's, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...237080-7995312)

A must have book which utilizes this to great effect is Christopher Voglers', The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (and the classic Jungian archetypes) is (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books). It deals more with screenplays, but the premise is the same. In effect what you're producing is a pageant anyway.

You should find these two books will help your writing immesurably - and thus your game sessions. Understanding archetypes and common mythic elements will make your writing much more dynamic because you'll know much better how to use archetypes to better effect and how to avoid stereotyping characters in your writing and sessions.

[Rob-hin]

That's good advice.
Read books, I recommend:
- Feist
- Hobb
- Jordan
- Tolkien

[Halsy]

I'd actually reccomend staying away from narrative fiction as people tend to subconciously plagiarize it and it makes the adventure overly familiar. Any good writer worth his salt does a ton of non-fiction research so they can incorporate that knowledge into their fiction to make it that much more believable.

Apart from the books I mentioned above, there's a considerable amount of information online. Do a search for 'jungian archetypes' or 'writing archetypes' or 'archetypes in literature, and you'll find a plethora of knowledge.

[Rob-hin]

I disagree.
Feist for instance used to be an d&d player himself untill he started wrinting. The writers I mentioned are all very good. Their books are all extremely well written fantasy which will only give you a good idea about what fantasy should be like. It can give you idea's for stories, characters and make you more experienced in the fantasy genre.

- Feist, Riftwar Saga
- Hobb, Farseer Saga
- Jordan, Wheel of time
- Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

[tirann]

Emancipator...

Just a quick thought on your wayward character.

I agree with previous topics, change his alignment. But in doing so don't forget to use the rules to your advantage. Physical damage can always be meausred by the roll of a dice. Try adding psychological damage to the mix as well.

If your character (in the most basic of moral terms) sins, then repents, then sins, repents, sins etc, make the character confused, the effect being the same as if a high-level mage casts the spell Confusion on him/her. WITH NO SAVE.

If the character is 'confused' about their allignment, make it so. If they get really confused don't be afraid to threaten them with a loss of Wisdom. A permanent Wisdom -1 won't inspire a 'hero' to become more confused.

Doesn't do the trick and you want to get realy nasty? Impose harsher penalties. "You are so sonfused about your personal moral compass that it plays on your mind constantly. You can't help but be constantly thinking about it. You suffer an indefinate -1 constitution as a result of your constantly having to reassure yourself of your own path in life. You are predisposed to distraction and thus have a lesser chance of loking after your physical wellbeing."

A 'hero' with reduced Constitution. I gurantee he'll seek counselling ASAP.

[Maeglor]

As all DM's have to manage their prep time - for both their and the players' sanity, it's always a good idea to focus on details that will be the most useful and versatile. One of the best I've found is setting. By that I mean both the terrain/ecology and the human (or otherwise intelligent) aspect to the world your players are in. If you spend a lot of time developing this, it gives a load of benifits:

1) Details, details.. Nothing helps getting into the role-playing like feeling you're actually there, and nothing does that like detail. The more descriptive you can be, whether its the color of the trees, or the myriad factions of the bartending guild, the less we feel like we're goofy kids sitting in a basement.

2) Motivation. Knowing the world your NPC's/monsters are in lets you know why they act the way they do. This allows for a lot of sponteneity encounter-wise. Say you roll an ecalypse (shadow horse)... If you're in the deepest, darkest corner of the plane of shadow, it'll hide. If you're in the night layer of the beastlands and exotic hunters abound, it might have merely lost its owner and be friendly. Knowing setting gives you a solid foundation for building motivation onto random (or unexpected PC-driven) events. And if you want your campaign to have a realistic, slightly chaotic feel, you'll need plenty of random or unexpected (by you, the DM) events. This adds to the whole idea that the players are running the story just as much as you are - i.e. you don't know everything that is going to happen.

3) Innovation. Knowing where they are gives the players an edge when trying to be creative in their actions. You can't very well think to knock a pillar onto a chained basilisk without noticing that the pillar has a discolored, crumbly patch on one side.

There are plenty of other advantages, but I think these get the idea across. Oh, and here's a practical map-making idea I got from a friend last year. Take a sheet of poster board, draw a grid, and laminate it. Use dry-erase markers to draw terrain on it for your PC's. Feel free to add pillows, books, lincoln logs, etc. to fill in terrain. It makes for an easily changeable, but solid way of conveying the setting.

[MikeCooper]

dont think that dm'ing an evil party is easy... you will get yourself in way over your head and than regret ever playing.... Especially if you have good roll players. My group decided to start a new campaign and all the players would be evil and eventaully become a party, after like 10 sessions we were finally grouped... Than once we were grouped, my character taking on "the monster personna" ended up killed 3 of the party members and dying to the last one. Campaign over...

[Magpie]

The main thing in DMing is to be able to describe a world in words and twist it into a spectacular adventure, instead of die and numbers.

[Rudar Dimble]

Make sure the world lives. When do PC's go wandering the planes and return to their home city after years, have some girl that used to be the youth-friend of one of the PC's get married with the PC's former (youth)nemesiss.

Make sure you know everything about your own world, escpecially NPC's.

Have a note ready with ten male names and ten female names, in case you have to come up with a name for a NPC. If you have to think about a name, it takes away the credibility of the NPC

It's cool to meet a (high level) NPC who seems to know everything about the PC's and who apparently even speaks the drow language, when there is a drow PC. But don't make every 10+ level mage be omniscent. It's very frustrating for the PC's and not very credible (was your own 16th lvl mage omniscent...NO!)

Prepare a few random mini-quests in advance, so you can throw them in, whenever you like.

And last....credibility, credibility, credibility, and oh, ehm...credibility!

[Mr.Waesel]

Remember that the players can leave at any time.