DM Best Practices

At the behest of ckutalik.  I feel like every non-art post on my blog is striving to discover these, but it's good to stop and try to boil down what you know.  Take these with the usual caveats: I'm still learning, I realize I have a lot to learn, and I'm constantly reflecting and revising my practices.

One really important practice I was going to list Paul and Blair listed first: keep the game flowing, anything that slows or stops play should be ruled on quickly, handwaved, or revised to be quicker for next time.  The exception I would make would be when the slowdown is fun enough to actually become part of the game (see #4).

Here are some practices I don't think anyone mentioned yet and that I think are essential to my game and that I'm good at:

1 Describe Combat
For old school play the randomness of the dice is essential but sometimes puzzling.  It's your job as DM to meld these into some sort of sense.  Especially in combats.  You are in the best position to do this because, unlike players, you have to pay attention to what everyone is doing, you have a sense of what the monsters look and act like, and you have a sense of what tone you want to give players (isolation, desperation, victory).  So, I do these things:

• describe hits and misses for both sides
• every few hits/misses back up and reiterate what has happened
• leave critical hits and misses to my own judgement (no charts) so I can come up with whatever ridiculous or awesome things fits the context
• if players make a great suggestion run with it as always

I learned to elicit some description from players by being DMed by Tavis, but I don't want to put too much of a burden on them and (for the reasons above) I'm usually better equipped to evoke the scene as a whole.  I do try to ask spell casters what their spells look like because a) that seems very personal, and b) I can reuse that over and over with slowing the game down waiting for a player to be creative.

This isn't just for combat either-- missed saves, made saves, reaction rolls, morale rolls-- you are the interpreter of the randomness of the dice.

2 Don't Worry about Time
The single thing that kept me from DMing for years was worrying about how to keep track of rounds, and when to roll for wandering monsters, and when a torch will go out, etc.  But I remember now, watching Tarzan movies on TV and trying to see if I could hold my breath as long as he could.  Invariably, there would be a cut to a commercial, a cut to a scene happening elsewhere, a flashback, whatever.  Tarzan underwater time was not literal time, we, the audience could forget about it to focus on something else for a bit and then be reminded of it with dramatic music and underwater closeups.  My D&D is just like that.  It isn't a simulation.  Time is emotional.  Time is narrative.  Some specifics:

• If I forget to roll for wandering monsters then other interesting things were most likely happening and it isn't a big deal.
• If I suddenly remember, "Hey, it's been a while since I rolled for encounters," then there is either a lull in action or, more likely, players are dithering about what to do next.  A fight to remind them of the danger of the underworld is just what's needed.
• If there's a dramatic time for a torch to go out, a spell duration to run out, especially if players mention it, then I might roll to see if that does happen.

Now I realize that players need info to make decisions and I am always striving to come up with simple systems that will, for example, give them a better sense of when their torch will go out.  But for now this works and quite well: fast paced, tense and dramatic.

3 Try to Engage All Your Players
I don't see myself as a distant arbiter of rules, a neutral judge.  I'm there to have fun and see everyone else having fun.  The rowdy, confident folks that turn out to be natural party leaders are not a problem.  It's the person visiting and playing for the first time, the shy person, or even the person tired from work.  So here are some things I try to do:

• I ask folks being quiet to roll initiative for the party
• I ask quiet folks what they are doing.  To make sure they aren't talked over and forgotten.
• I'll have characters with little to do (the 1 hp MU who's cast his spell) make rolls for hirelings or npcs in combat
• If I roll a wandering monster I tell the quiet person that they hear something
• I give one session visitors a perk and try to make them essential to the session
• I try to make sure the players know their options "What was the spell you memorized PlayerNoobie?  Oh, you're saving it, cool, cool."

In a nutshell, the last thing I want to see is a player huddling in a corner of the couch, quiet and bewildered.

Here is a fourth for good measure:

4 Don't Worry About the 4th Wall
If breaking it is fun, do it.  This I learned from Jeff Reints.  My hireling traits chart can result in some real doozies: hirelings with no feet, bearded women, slobs and pervs.  It turns out players quite enjoy rolling to see the results.  So, I let them do that during the session when they get hirelings.  Other mechanics like pulling Jenga blocks or rolling a big d30 or whatever, if it adds choices, adds excitement, adds fun it gets added.  I don't worry so much about ruining the player's sense of disbelief.  The right mechanic will oddly make them more engaged. This all works better if you subscribe to my rule 1, because I will rewind a little and then narrate what the result of the goofy mechanic means in the game world, and this probably goes a long way to re-immersing everyone present in the shared daydream.

Other than that I'm not sure I have specific points for this practice. 

Blog Highlights - Simple Domino Mechanic

I'm going to be housesitting for friends the next few days and since I'm also approaching 600 posts I thought it might be a good time to slow down and reflect on some of the stuff I've blogged about.  I'll start with stuff I've used in my game and share my experiences with them.  So, let's start with something from a year ago:

Simple Domino Mechanic
This allows my Divine-petitioners to ask for aid with a diminishing likelihood of the requests being answered.  I need to ask my players how it feels to be denied at times, but they don't seem disgruntled.

I've also allowed them to ask for aid above their level of ability, with each additional order of miracle (what I call their levels) reducing likelihood of answer by a step.  This has been cool, with one party avoiding a TPK only because a cleric miraculously Held some foul creatures.

The combination of uncertainty of answer and fuzziness of "level" has made clerics work more the way I think they should and makes them feel completely different than Magic-users.

Difficulties with the Diminishing Returns Mechanic
There have been a few difficulties with the diminishing returns, though.  First, allowing it to apply to multiple prayer requests (down) and more powerful requests (across) can make it harder for players to know which step they are at. They may have asked for Hold Person (2nd order) and now they're asking to Heal Light Wounds (1st order).  I'm thinking of giving them a poker chip of a certain color to represent the chance of their next petition succeeding.

Second, you can't really apply Jeff's big purple d30 rule to dominoes.  Although, talking with my player, she said, "Yeah, you let me roll it instead of drawing." So I guess I made a ruling on the fly converting probability to a result on the d30.  Heh, I don't remember doing it.  Maybe I'm a good DM but just don't remember it away from the table :)

The third difficulty is the thorniest-- how to scale these diminishing returns to level.  I'm still working on an answer to this. As the highest level DP is just now 3rd level and they don't ask for aid all that often, I've gotten by, but it needs to be solved.

Using the Bones
As far as the logistics of using the dominoes, they work great.  Get yourself a set of thick, bone-like, plastic ones, no colored pips, no travel size.  Get yourself a sheet of green craft felt.  Have the player shake them up and pull when they ask for aid.  There is something oracular about it and more involved than a die roll.  Sucks when God doesn't heal your plague, but it's cool when God gives you a golden halo of holy light when you're in a dungeon with a roaming witch and you have a broken arm.

At first I thought I would need a set of bones for each DP being played, but unless you have a super big group or table, it doesn't take long to slide them over, and it adds to the drama.

Final Thoughts
If you're playing a one-off game with clerics of low level I don't see any reason not to try it out.  If you're planning on a whole campaign, you need to think about the level problem.

I think the reluctance to use a diminishing resource (and the chance that it might fail) has made Divine magic a rare thing in my campaign.  This makes clerics more like constrained fighters.

I'm thinking of adding permanent saint-like abilities at key levels (5th/9th?), so characters might be able to permanently talk to animals, or lay on hands once a day, or whatever players want to negotiate with me.  This could add a little more power back to the class as well as help them fulfil my vision of the archetype.