The almighty D'Ehm.

Here's a bit of relief. This post is not a rant for once. I thought I'd share a little bit of my experience as a Dungeon Master and give a few tricks of the trade for any budding young DM's out there.

First an outline of typical DM n00b mistakes.
1. Over/underpowering the party.
You've just gotten yourself your first party, they of course are all your friends and you want to be the awesomest DM ever so you give them all 18 stats and a pile of artifacts. Sure you’re players will at first think they are awesome but soon it becomes a burden to you as a DM, because now you have to figure out what this super party is going to go up against and still be challenging. Alternately you might fear the first scenario and lean toward the other extreme and giving your players all 10’s and allowing only a loin cloth and a stick for a weapon. Mages can only pull rabbits out of hats and produce seemingly endless piles of hankies from their sleeves. My suggestions: Stats, I tend to run mid to high power campaigns so I give my players the option to use 85 stat points (average stat of 14) with a max of 18 + racial bonus in any one stat, or the option of rolling 4D6 take out the lowest roll and can re-roll up to three 1’s. If they decide to roll I make sure they have at least a couple stats above a 14 by either boosting their highest roll or allowing a full re-roll. As for equipment, 1st and 2nd editions was a bit easier since each magic item had a related XP value, which gave it an indicator of what level of character would typically have access to a particular item. They did away with this in 3rd edition so it gets a bit tricky and mostly you have to learn this through play testing and experience. I usually go by these general rules. Level 1-4, mundane equipment, a couple scrolls for the casters, maybe one masterwork weapon or armor. Level 5-9, I usually allow a +1 weapon and/or armor and able to find up to a +2 or rare +3 with related misc magic items. Level 10+ usually I go w/ a +3 weapon/armor and 2ish misc magic items. These are just general guidelines, I’ll allow or deny items based on the party’s location and circumstances as well.

2. Unpreparedness.
This seems like a no brainer, but there are some aspects of preparing that are easily missed, and sometimes I even make this mistake. First, make sure you have a decent plot outline setup before play starts. Its not always necessary to plot every little detail or even necessary to write it down. But it certainly helps. Now what isn’t always obvious is what the players are going to do. I’ll give you an example, a good DM that I was a player in set up this vast elaborate dungeon with a huge deadly maze as its centerpiece. Our goal was to obtain some object or some such. We walked in discovered we were in a maze, then we simply had our druid cast Find the Path spell and boom, hours of preparation for our DM wasted as we found the easiest route through the maze in a matter of seconds. Now an inexperienced DM will be frustrated beyond belief because they have nothing more to offer the characters. There are a couple of solutions to this, one always have at least one idea in the back of your mind that you can pull out as an impromptu plotline just in case your main plot falls through. Also make sure you know at least generally what all the core spells for each casting class can use, you can use this knowledge against the party too. For instance, in the case of the maze you can quickly BS the fact that mysteriously the maze is engulfed in an anti-magic shell spell or something similar. If you allow the party to use stuff from other books be sure to read their spell sheets before the game so you know what they are capable of.

Those are the typical n00b mistakes, there are others but not as big of an issue. It also helps to have a decent grasp of miscellaneous rules like grapple or bull rush, or at least know where in the book you can quickly look it up. I also have a personal rule that if it takes longer than a couple mins to look up a rule I generally make at least a temp house rule to cover it.

Tips on campaign building.
Don’t get too elaborate, the party will often times not follow exactly what you have planned so don’t plan too much, try to make your world as sandboxy as possible. Nobody likes an extremely linear game. That’s not to say you can’t throw an occasional plot stab (not hook) their way to make them do something specific, just don’t over do it. When building a dungeon, think of a few things. Why did the NPC’s pick this place for their stronghold? How would you really defend it if you were actually there? Where do they sleep? Where do they poop? Is there an escape route? If you use traps, do the NPC’s have a way to get themselves around them on a daily basis or are they theoretically running a gauntlet every time they walk down the hall? Minor details like these really make a dungeon stick in peoples minds and makes it that much more realistic. When planning on making a whole DnD world to campaign in, make sure you at least have a general idea of what the temperature is like in various regions, politics, rivers/streams and mountains flow in the right directions. Keep the world small, maybe just stick to one continent or a small portion of a continent. The events that took place in Lord of the Rings for example took place in a very small area of the world. Its also good to have a list of random names you can just pull out if you have to create an impromptu NPC shopkeeper or something.

Last bit of info is a little touchy, and that is crowd control. Games of D&D should be fun, first and foremost so always remember that. Inevitably a game will degenerate into a side tracked conversation about something else, or someone tells a story about something or other. Allow this to happen, and don’t get frustrated but gauge the conversation and when you can interject, throw in a “meanwhile, back at the ranch” and go around the table and call for character actions to pull everyone back into the game. Make sure you ask everyone so their properly re-engaged in the game. I find this to work very well and keeps things very organized as an added bonus. Be wary though, its easy for a game to get derailed for hours if you let it and everybody walks away feeling like nothing got accomplished. Also make sure everyone gets involved in the game. Try not to set up a dungeon crawl where the fighters are kicking ass but the mage and the cleric are sitting somewhere in the background playing cards while everyone else does the butt kicking. Try to setup encounters where everyone’s skills are needed to survive. Setup a history and background for each character that you can draw from and sprinkle little bits of story here and there. A group will always remember that character even when the campaign ends if it has a history, or if only they could solve a particular puzzle.

Well that’s about all I can think of for now. Maybe I’ll revisit this topic some other time. My next one will be how to be a better player. Cheers!