Thus Begins the Lesson
LESSON 1:
Now then, the first rule of DMing is being familiar with the rules. The second rule of DMing is be familiar with the details. The third rule of DMing is to be creative with the details while still honoring the rules so that you provide an entertaining session for everyone involved.
LESSON 2:
Our next lesson will be about over kill. A DM/GM/Story Teller(From now on only listed as DM) never uses Over Kill. Now, some players will claim that their DM uses over kill all the time. This is due to one of two problems. The most obvious problem is that they have a bad DM. The second possible problem is that the PC party doesn't know the meaning of Discretion. Sometimes, if the DM throws something that seems insermountable at you, it means you arn't supposed to face it yet, or you are supposed to try to come up with a nonviolent way of solving the problem.
LESSON 3:
Today's Lesson will be on resolving player conflicts. Remember, when a party member is causing the entire group to not enjoy themselves, it becomes time for DM intervention. The first step should be having a side conversation with the player and point out the problem. Their have been many occasions when this has actually fixed the problem, as the player hadn't been aware that he was the sorce of the problem. If that doesn't work, point out the consiquences to the player in game. Give the player a quest that if he follows, it will put him in direct conflict with the rest of the party. At this point, the player has to decide where his characters loyalties lie. With whoever gave him his quest, or with his friends and allies. If the player decides to take the quest, and the players confront him over it, do not intervene to help the player. Let his character pay for his decisions. If the party kills him, then let him role up a new character. Hopefully he'll play something that gets along better with the rest of the party. If not, you may be forced to tell him that he can't play with the group any more, and no one wants that to happen.
LESSON 4:
Todays lesson will be about inter party conflict. Now, some of you aspiring DM's are going to say that I covered that in the last entry, but there is a difference between player conflicts and inter party conflicts. A disruptive player is bad for your game and I have already lined out the actions you should take against them. However, inter party conflict is the spice of gaming. Why, back in my adventuring days, I used to get in fights with the party all the time. I flat out told them, that if the fight went against us, I would grab the cleric Serrena by the arm, cast my teleport, and the two of us would survive. This was for two reasons. The rest of the party was fighters, and yet I could summon monsters that would have been handy in a number of the fights. However, I did not want to dedicate myself to any one school of magic, so was not about to go around conjuring all the time. Funny thing is, instead I found myself pretty much an evoker that dabbled in the other schools, but that is neither here nor there. The basic matter I was getting at, was by arguing with my friends and telling them that in an emergency, if I only had time to save one of their lives, I had already decided which one I would save, the entire party knew what I was about and where they stood with me. The inter party conflicts make the game more fun for almost everyone and gives you an occasional well needed break from storytelling, and you just get to sit back and make certain the players are following the rules as they fight amonst themselves.
LESSON 5:
The next lesson should be about encounters. If you are going to use random encounters, remember that at first level, you have a chance to encounter anything in the region, and the high level characters should still have a chance of encountering any creature in the region as well. Now, fixed encounters on the other hand should always be either appropriate for the party level or important to the story. The last encounter in a dungeon should usually be a final fantasy style boss, IE more powerful then any monster they have fought to date. And remember, not all encounters have to be about killing the bad guy. Sometimes an encounter is a trap. Sometimes you need to help someone. Sometimes it's a puzzle that needs to be figured out. It's not always about Hack and Slash.
LESSON 6:
All right, up until now, I have concentrated on screwing with the PC party. However, many DMs are also players in other games, so today we will cover screwing with the DM. The easiest way to handle that is with player relations. These fall into 2 major catagories. Good relations and Bad relations. Good relations covers anything from Master/Servent, Good Friends or even Lovers. Due to the good relations of the characters, they work together well, and can disrupt the DMs best laid plans. On the other hand, there are Bad relations. These are the characters that for whatever reason just don't get along. Whether they are childhood rivals, both Alpha type personalities, former lovers, or just don't like each other, this is even more dangerous then good relations. What is more dangerous then 2 "heroes" that just can't get along or agree on anything? Now, of course, both of these scenarios require the players to be able to play the relationship/rivalry properly. If they can't, then the DM will be able to handle the problems with little effort. Now, DMs, I know what you are thinking. If the players can disrupt my plans so easily, why bother? Well, the answer is motivation. You just have to find a motivation that will keep the characters involved. If they are having fun, they won't need to make their own fun. That doesn't necessarily insure that the players will not make their own fun, but with proper motivation, you can at least minimize damage done.
|
|
Warning!
This Section is not for Player Characters. If you are running a campaign and have used the tools Damian has laid out for you on this page, do not let your players know about the page. If they find out about it anyways and you find out they have visited Damian, you must extract a cruel and painful revenge on there characters. Unfortunately, they will be prepared for anything I have given you, so you must use your own skill and powers to come up with something fitting for this character.
|
|
Rolling Methods
Well now, there are quite a lot of these, so lets get started. Of course, there is 3d6, 6 times in order and 3d6, 6 times and assign
Then there is 4d6, 6 times in order, and 4d6 6 times and assign
For people interested in high power campaigns, theres 5d6, 6 times in order and 5d6, 6 times and assign.
Then there is 3d6, 8 times, drop the lowest 2 and assign
4d6, 8 times, drop the lowest 2 and assign
And the ever popular 5d6, 8 times, drop the lowest 2 and assign.
This last one is somewhat uncommon, but I like it. 3d6, 8 times in order. I know what you are thinking. 8 times? But you only have 6 stats. Well, if you drop a number, it pulls all the remaining numbers up by one. This gives you some control over what type of char you get, but still makes you play a class based off of how you rolled, not chose your class and then roll.
I guess it's time to add another stat generation system. This one is my all time favorite for players in my games to use. Get the DM SOOO drunk that he will let you just write down what ever you want. Anyone interested in trying this one?
TRICKS:
Encounters
So, you have a party that is just hacking and slashing there way through everything? Well, here's a nice trick to make them think, even during a fight. Put them against 2 great worm dragons. One a Red dragon, the other a White dragon. If the players think, they will try to move to positions where the dragons breath weapons will hit each other. If they don't think, the combination of these 2 ancient dragons will rip the party to shreds. Either way, hopefully they will learn caution for going into a fight, and to use there minds, not just there swords.
So, you think you've given your party to powerful of magic items and want to give them a challenge? Heres what you do. Put your party in Forgotten Realms. Have the villian, some legendary Evil Warrior, or a Lich that used the Shadow Weave to animate himself, live in a dungeon that just so happens to be in a wild or dead magic zone. Here's why this is so much fun. In a dead magic zone, the parties magic items just won't work, but since your villain uses the Shadow Weave, all of his magic works perfectly. Along the same lines, in a wild magic zone, the parties own magic could turn against them, but the magic of the Shadow weave is once again unaffected! After the party gets there asses kicked, arrange for them to be able to escape and find a way to overcome there opponent. Do not let them know about the shadow weave unless they put in the research to figure it out, and if the resort to the shadow weave to take out your villain, have an Arch Mage of Mystra ready as a new NPC. Have him hunt down the party and attack them. Make them realize that the Shadow weave is evil, and if they are going to use it, they will pay a hefty price.
Here's a useful little tactic for figuring out if you've overpowered your player characters. Put them against something that is One to Three CRs above them. If they wipe out this enemy like it was a party of goblins, then they are overpowered. If they struggle to overcome it, but at last manage to defeat their enemy, then they are at the right power for the game. If they get slaughtered in two rounds of combat, then you underpowered them, and should take a look at what you did wrong. Obviously, as the party get's higher in levels, the margin of CRs that they should be able to struggle through will increase. Use this as a tool. At 20th level, a group of four heroes should be able to handle one Great Wurm Red Dragon, CR 26. If they slaughter it, you may want to see what you can do to tone down the party. If they get butchered, remember, they got beat by something that should have taken 10 heroes of 20th level to destroy, but have a way of bringing the heroes back prepared. If they put forth an exhausting effort, loosing a character or two in the process, but finally overcome this adversary, then they are around the right power level. And remember, if you put the party against something that they can't handle but give them no choice but to fight it, give them a way out, and make it look like that was the plan all along. There are few things more irritating then a DM that gets caught unprepared and can't Improv his way out of it...
TRAPS
First off, I would like to say that Traps are the single most overused danger in D&D. You sneak into the evil castle, and almost immediately set off a trap. I'm sorry, but that's not believable. The castle would serve no purpose if you couldn't get in to it to meet with the castles owner. Traps should be used sparingly, to protect rooms and items of importance. And don't try to outsmart your players by always trapping the important things and then putting a difficult trap on the entrance to an unimportant room. All you're going to do is piss off the players. Instead, put the trap on what looks like an unimportant room, but hide a secret compartment in a wall, or put in a hidden door. The room is still important, the players have reason to believe it's important, but they have to find why it's important.
So, your characters are not afraid of your traps? Well, it's time to teach them the meaning of FEAR. Put a series of standard traps in your dungeon to lull your characters into a false sense of security. Then in a hall with vaulted ceilings, put in an old pit trap. As the party examines the pit trap, the door swings open on it showing a pit falling to a fast moving stream of water. The next 5 squares past this should all have a trap in it. The first one, something fun to play off of the trap door. A gust of wind spell, or something along those lines. This will blow the character backwards into the hole in the floor, dumping them in the fast moving stream. The second trap should be something just to be an iritating, like a flesh to stone spell. Character jumps ten feet, and is a statue. Make the third square anti gravity. The trap hurls you 30 feet straight up, take damage like you fell that far. The next square of course has to be another pit trap. Fall 30 feet to the ground, hit the pit trap, make your saving throw or fall into the river, removing you from the dungeon. The last trap should simply activate a wall of force behind the character, blocking him from the rest of his companions. Now of course you're asking, how does the party get past these traps? Well, it's quite simple. Instead of jumping across the first pit, they need to find some way to walk across the pit. After that, the party should have no problem disabling the traps. Just to be on the safe side, be sure you put in some sort of clue to this trap earlier on. Something like |/ -=- ||| /| |/ |__. If they can't figure out the clue, tough stuff. That's why it's a hint, and not a walkthrough.
I've received comments from some friends that seem to imply that this series of traps is a little bit obnoxious. So I'm here today to offer another trap combination that will be even more insidious, and make the party have to be really careful. Before I continue with this, I have to offer up thanks to Mike for providing this one. I've altered it a little, but for the most part, it's true to the original intent. The party comes across a trap. I don't care what the trap is, just make it something standard. The catch on this one comes on the second trap. Make it hard to notice, since it's hidden in the device, appearing as a harmless part of the original trap. The trigger for the second trap should be the deactivation of the first trap. The second trap should be relatively harmless. A Force Cage, blocking the hallway and capturing the rogue, or a teleport to a prison cell deep in the dungeon or in another dungeon. This takes the rogue away from the party meaning they better have another way to avoid traps, and blocks off a part of the dungeon if you use the Force Cage. Heck, you could even put a third layer on the trap. The second trap is now a wall of force behind the rogue, and a teleport spell to a prison cell beyond the wall of force. Now we're getting into some creative use of traps. Remember, the most important part of DMing is making certain everyone is enjoying themselves, so if the party gets stuck, unable to get their rogue back, give the rogue a chance to get back to the party.
So, it's time to once again explore the wild world of traps. This time we will be using cursed items as the actual trap. I mean, why bother trapping your items when you can just put a curse on them that prevents anyone but you from using them effectively. One of my favorite curses to use with this makes the item slowly drain the soul from who ever uses it. When the soul is completely drained, the character irreversibly turns into a vampire (or other type of undead. Use your imagination.) When the character becomes a vampire, take the character sheet away from the player, and run it as a villain. And be sure to enchant the item with powerful enchantments that will hide the curse. Remember, not all traps fall into a thief’s domain to handle...
|
Prestige Classes
Awhile ago in a game, I had a player managing to get over 100 damage with a bow due to prestige classes. If you are like me, you think this is a little excessive, so I imposed a new rule. If you take a prestige class, after that you can only go up in levels in that prestige class or any class you have already taken. After putting in all 10 levels of the prestige class, you can then take a second prestige class. The only other way you can take a second prestige class is taking a level in a normal class that you don't have yet. So if you are a Rogue/Dungeon Delver and really want to gain the benefits of the Thief Acrobat Prestige class, first you have to multi class. And if you where a Wizard/Thief/Arcane Trickster and wanted to gain the blood mage prestige class, you would have to take a third class before you could change. That or finish all 10 levels of your current prestige class.
This may seem like a very fascist policy, but if your players question it explain it like this. A prestige class is a way of expanding on your character. A Bard/Virtuoso would been a logical expansion of the character. For the Bard/Virtuoso to become a duelist, as someone that has specialized in Performance the whole time, he would have to take a class that helps get him to Duelist to change his approach to the character. This is just an example, so feel free to insert any other class/prestige class to explain it to your players.
|
