Five Flaws - How to be a better DM in 5 steps
Hullo, Gentle Readers. So, it probably doesn’t surprise you to know that I’m usually the DM for the games I’m involved with, and that’s fine, because I really enjoy it. But when someone I know tells me they’re planning on running a game, I get excited and start thinking of characters. And when it’s a friend who’s never DMed before, I get even more excited, because I love seeing someone’s GM-style come to life.
So when my good friend Jay told me he’s thinking about becoming a first time DM, I got excited. I can’t wait to play in his game. Since I had a Freestyle article available to me, I thought I’d ask Jay what kind of advice he’d like. He asked me if I could come up with a few pitfalls to avoid for someone who’s never GMed before, and I thought I’d try to distill things down to a list of five things to avoid.
Here, then, are Five Flaws to avoid, and the ways you can instead make strengths from being aware of them.
1. Letting One Player Dominate: At your table, some players are naturally going to be more engaged and engaging than others. Some players are more prone to speak up, role-play, take action, etc, while other players are more passive and willing to sit back and go with the flow. Sometimes, however, your game has one player who really wants to grab the spotlight and go with it. That’s when this becomes a problem area.
While you don’t want to stifle the active players, sometimes the more passive ones need a little coaxing. I will sometimes say to a player, “Let’s hold that thought one moment, Hamlet. Polonius, are you still hiding behind the curtain? Is there anything else you want to do?” Some players are just going to tell you what they’re doing, while you might have to ask what others are doing. I find it can be very helpful to say, “Well, you’re looking in the barrels, and that’s going to take some time. While he’s doing that, what are the rest of you doing?” Doing this will give your players who don’t want to talk over the spotlight grabber a chance to speak up and be heard. You want to try and make sure everyone has a chance to speak, as well as a chance to be heard. Which leads us to the next potential pitfall.
2. Not Listening: There is nothing worse than players with a DM that you don’t think is listening to what you’re saying. I’ve had DMs completely misunderstanding what I was describing for my character to do, which has led to some disasters. If they had just listened or even asked a few qualifying questions, things could’ve been much better for everyone. Instead, there were hurt feelings and, in one memorable case, the premature end of a campaign.
Active listening is a key skill in relationships in general, and being a DM for a group of players is a kind of relationship. Even when they’re not talking to you directly, it’s good to listen to your players. They will often reveal lots of things during conversations with each other about their hopes and goals for the game. If they’re roleplaying with one another, you can get insights into their characters, get a sense of their plans so you can start thinking of how things will play out in your adventure, and so on.
3. Railroad Plots: While it’s good to have a sense of where the story will go, you have to leave leeway for player agency. If you don’t, then you’re dealing with a railroad plot. It can be really difficult to let go of control and let the players drive the story, but, if you don’t, then you’re really just writing a novel and not playing D&D (or whatever your game of choice is).
Even if you’re just giving the illusion of choice, it will still feel better to your players than if you don’t. I’ve described how I intended to put my first major villain in whichever adventure my players chose first. Even though I knew they’d meet the villain wherever they went, it still would’ve flavored the adventure itself, and it let the players choose what interested them most.
4. Cookie Cutter NPCs: Not everyone is Matt Mercer, and you don’t need to try to be. You don’t have to give every NPC a distinctive voice, accent, facial expression, etc to make them memorable. If you give every important NPC some small thing that makes them memorable, your players will remember them. Simple, no?
For each NPC, come up with just a little something…it could be an accent, or a voice, or a facial expression…but it could be a catchphrase, a simple element of description like having a big underbite, a distinctive piece of clothing, or something else that you mention to the players.
My favorite example is the gnome who always speaks as if he’s quoting his friend, and the friend who only ever grunts in reply. “It’s like Winther always says, you can’t get eggs from a goat. Don’t you always say that, Winther?” “*grunt*”
5. Internal Consistency: Nothing crashes a game harder than not being consistent. Messing up little things won’t cause a lot of problems, but major things are going to make the players wonder how invested you really are in this game. If you say it’s winter when the PCs enter a dungeon, and then you’re describing the hot summer wind, your players are going to ask what’s up. Now, it’s a fantasy world, so maybe there’s a legit reason for the season, but you’d better be ready to explain it!
I find the best way to maintain this is to take lots of notes and refer to them when necessary. It’s why I use a wiki for my campaign; I can generally quickly look up NPC names and the like when someone comes up that the PCs haven’t referred to in three years. During my sessions, if I improvise any NPCs or locations, I jot some notes about them so I’ll remember them and make new wiki entries. At the end of every session, I make some notes about what happened. That way I don’t have to try and remember when I start to prep for the next session.
Well, Jay, I hope all of these pitfalls and ways to avoid them are helpful advice. I can’t wait to play!
titsay
kianamaiart
jacobvanloon
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