DMing 101: An introduction

Welcome to the first installment of my new weekly advice column, DMing 101. Since it’s the first installment I thought I should include a little introductory explanation about the purpose and nature of the column first. My goal is to provide tips and advice to new 4th edition D&D DMs – or those still on the fence – in easy to digest chunks. These will be supported by links, references, and concrete examples from my own games. While the advice I will be offering is largely universal and applicable to most RPGs, I’m focusing on 4th edition D&D for a few reasons:

1. I am running two regular, ongoing 4E campaigns from which I can draw a lot of examples from. In contrast, most of my indie RPG activities are very short term or one-shot games which don’t work nearly as a source of regular material.
2. The lion’s share of players out there are playing D&D of one flavor or another, and thus I’m targeting the largest audience available. Almost everything I’ll be writing, at its core, can be used for any type of D&D game, irregardless of which edition you prefer.
3. There’s a lot of support material out there that can be used for new 4th edition, as well as ready access to the books, which makes it a natural choice.
4. Trying to write advice columns that are truly system neutral are a pain-in-the-ass which often aren’t terribly useful at the table since they lack concrete examples.

If you’re an experienced DM, you may or may not find some of the advice useful – since a lot of it comes with experience – and you may or may not agree with everything. That’s okay because there is no right or wrong way of playing and different methods work for different people. A lot of the advice I have to offer is based on my own style which involves playing with a regular group of players in a campaign built around one or more stories centered on the characters. Thus, if you’re primarily DMing Living Forgotten Realms games, some of the advice isn’t going to be applicable or even feasible.

What I’m not going to write about:

• Mechanical optimization of monsters, traps, or NPCs
• Min/maxing characters
• How to intentionally kill PCs
• Analysis of rules, updates, or mechanics

Tip #1: Good DMs are made, not born

So let’s start with my number one piece of advice, aimed at readers who are still on the fence about trying to DM or think they don’t have what it takes:  Good DMs are made, not born. Running a game is not a talent one is born with and which only is possessed by a mystical few. It is a learned skill, honed with practice over years of play. Sure there are certain personality types that naturally gravitate towards GMing and the ability to think on your feet or create stories out of thin air helps but even those are unlikely to be completely inborn. In fact, neuroscience has revealed that the majority of things we like to think of as natural talent are in large part the result of a lot of very focused practice.

DMing is not rocket science. It is merely a mixture of creative storytelling, impartial judgment, and proper preparation (how much prep largely depends on your choice of RPG system).  Improv skills are a plus, but hardly required to get started and they can be learned too.  The same applies to running an exciting combat encounter or creating an interesting NPC. Practice. Review. ..read more

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The fifth session marked a bit of a change, format-wise because rather than pushing the hereto missing player’s character in to the background by having him wait at the camp, I created a simplified NPC version of him (following the guidelines in the DMG2) for the characters to take along. We did this for two reasons: The first was to preserve the possibility, for now, for the missing player to join the group at a later date. The group is quickly reaching a point where simply “dropping him in” isn’t going to be an option. The second reason was that we were down another player due to vacation and thus the group was somewhat undermanned for what they had planned. Thus, the NPC offered a bit of support. As it turned out, that wasn’t really necessary, but read on to find out why.

Session Summary

The session began as Hoam, Shai Hud, Fea’ma’reth, & Rakash (the NPC) sneaked in to the outskirts of Kelmarane with the hopes of gaining more information about what the hulking form roaming the lower streets was and to assess the gnolls’ strengths and weaknesses. Hoam immediately picked up the faint smell of alchemical reagents and following his nose, lead the group to a dilapidated house at the edge of the village. Inside they discovered a hideous, yet apparently friendly, harpy named Undrella who made her living on the fringes of the gnolls’ camp by selling them potions, poultices, and unguents. Embittered by some sort of slight – whether real or imagined was unclear to the group- by the gnolls and sensing a way of getting revenge, Undrella was eager to answer the group’s questions provided they provide payment. Of course being a harpy she wasn’t interested in gold, but rather the head of a massive drake living in the village’s ruined mill.

So off to the mill they went, managing to get ambushed by the drake while they debated on how best to sneak up on it in its lair. With a wave of his hand and a few words of power, Fea’ma’reth caused the giant reptile to fall in to a deep slumber after which the entire group to attack it at their leisure. Despite doing their best, the beast managed to regain consciousness and its feet just in in time for Fea to send a magic missile in to its head and slay it. Party 1, big lizard 0.

The group returned with the head less than an hour later, much to Undrella’s surprise. The harpy revealed that the gnolls were lead by a gnoll named Ugruk, but that the true power in Kelmarane was now held by a strange woman named Nualia – though she had once been nothing but a slave of the gnolls, the girl had somehow bypassed a magically sealed doorway with in the village’s church, returning a changed (from Undrella’s description both physically and mentally) person, capable of using magic and even summoning a demon. In fact it was she who had summoned a goat-headed demon named Kezurkian, explaining the hulking, shadowed form that the group had spotted roaming the lower parts of Kelmarane while spying on the village from the nearby shrine. Undrella also told the group that both human smugglers and drow slavers had recently visited the town in the hopes of establishing trade pacts with the gnolls of the Kulldis  tribe. Finally, after extracting a pledge that she could remain in the town should ..read more

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The second volume in the two Dresden Files RPG books released by Evil Hat, Our World features an incredibly detailed overview of the world, creatures, and characters featured in the Dresden Files universe as established by the series of novels. The authors (and specifically Chad Underkoffler) clearly put in an exhaustive amount of research in detailing every notable character (these are likely to be used as NPCs in the RPG) from the novels up through Small Favor. The book also features an enjoyable short story by Jim Butcher that provides both a window in to the world and provides a fix for the compulsive Dresden-verse addict. The book is available both as a hard cover and a PDF; I’m reviewing the hard cover version here but everything I have to say applies to the PDF as well.

The Physical Product

The book, which is hard covered and weighs in at a very hefty 272-pages is done in full color and, to put it mildly, is beautiful. The writing and editing are simply great – better than many of the products put out by far larger companies – and the layout looks fabulous. The background image, made to look like a faded and torn spiral-notebook is superbly done with the left and right page inside margins lining up so well that they create the illusion that you really are looking at a notebook.

The art is excellent, though it’s style is likely not going to appeal to everyone, showcasing several styles which depict various scenes and characters in the book. The book also uses marginalia and “post-it” stylized commenting written in the voices of various Dresden characters, like in Your Story, which is really nice and somehow both enhances the appearance and the functionality of the book. It’s clear that a lot of thought, effort, and time went in to the creation of the book making it well worth the $39.99 cover price.

Contents

The book has four, very lengthy chapters, plus the aforementioned short story (AAAA Wizardry). It also includes a very comprehensive index that spans both volumes of the Dresden RPG.

What’s in the four chapters?

Chapter one, entitled Our World Order lays out the “canon” of the Dresdenverse, providing details of all of the factions, powers, politics, and conflicts going on, based on the novel series. This section is fairly exhaustive and very interesting but contains a lot of spoilers regarding the novels so readers of the novels will either love or hate, depending on where they are in the series.

Chapter Two, What Goes Bump is at its heart a monster compendium of all of the major creatures that inhabit the Dresdenverse, as detailed in the novels. Even those not interested specifically in playing a Dresdenverse based game will find the section invaluable since it provides more insight and examples on how creatures are constructed. The info provided for each creature, ranging in length from a quarter of a page to a full-page of write-up, is well-written, useful from a game standpoint, and also very informative for those interested in the novels. Like the first chapter though, you need to be prepared for some spoilers since some of the monsters only appear in later volumes of the novel series. One of the nice bits in this section is that many entries include notes on how the the NPC “plays” in the game as well as any specific vulnerabilities they might have which is a nice touch ..read more

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The images shown on Life After the Apocalypse are really awesome.

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You can check out the whole list of items here.

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The GameMastery Face Cards Enemy deck is the latest in Paizo’s line of playing card-sized play aids. They are designed to be handed out by GMs to give their players a face to put to the names of major NPCs. Most of the faces come from Paizo’s previous adventure paths and thus are perfectly suited for GMs running one of the adventure paths. For example, King Mokknock, from The Howl of the Carrion King, portrait appears on one of the cards. However, the images are generic enough that almost anyone will find a use for most of the enemies pictured. Also, while most of the faces definitely look somewhat sinister, enough of them are relatively friendly and so aren’t going to be a dead giveaway when introduced before the big reveal.

Like most of the other cards I own, the art on these is quite good although a bit more variable in style since they images are drawn from various products. All of them look good, although the pieces by Kevin Yan and Eva Widermann are probably the best in my opinion.

Unfortunately the quality of the card stock the cards are printed on is noticeably worse than the other GameMastery card sets I own. Specifically, the card stock feels slightly lighter, causing the cards to cup slightly, straight out of the pack. The finish on them is also less glossy than other sets, and the color is “chipping” (for lack of a better term) all along the edges of the card – tiny white spots are visible all along the edges. This last bit isn’t really a problem except that these are first cards where I’ve seen it happened. As a whole, the quality issues aren’t terrible but compared to other sets, it’s clear that these are a step down in value.

The Verdict

The Enemy card set is a highly usable accessory if you like using handouts at the table and, in my experience, add a lot to a game since players get a visual hook to associate with your NPCs – the results are much more memorable and meaningful relationships in game.* The quality issues are a shame since they detract from what I would think is a great product, but one which is minor enough to not be a deal breaker.

* The trick to getting the most out of these is to put them in a clear card protector sleeve and provide the players a piece of paper cut to fit the sleeve as well to write notes.

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