Speaker 1: Every table has rules, but the best stories usually begin
when someone ignores them. A risky move, a broken alliance,
a perfect role at the worst possible moment, and suddenly
it's not just a game anymore. It's the victory nobody expected,
the argument everyone remembers, and the story your friends will
still be telling years from now. I'm Scott Ralph and
this is table tales where board games, card games, and
role playing adventures become stories worth retelling. So pull up
a chair. The next tale is already on the table.
Speaker 2: In this episode, we will be discussing some initial tips, thoughts,
and pointers which we hope will help those looking to become,
or those who have recently become a dungeon.
Speaker 3: Master or dem or games master.
Speaker 2: We will be laying out some guidance and advice to
help you make that leap.
Speaker 3: Hopefully these tips.
Speaker 2: Will help in any DMING or GMing system, but as
with most of our experience, these thoughts will be focused
mostly around Dungeons and Dragons fifth Edition. And as I've
said before, D and D is an amazing, diverse and
fun hobby. And if you don't agree with what we're discussing,
that's absolutely fine. You run the game however you want.
This is just from our experience and as I'm sure
we'll discuss, every DM is different. So with that said,
let's get into it.
Speaker 4: Let's go dungeon delving.
Speaker 3: Let's go dungeon delving.
Speaker 2: So I've got a few things, and i know Simon's
got a few things on his list. We've tried to
narrate it to five each. I actually found it fairly
difficult to narrate it to five, so I've called it five.
But some of them are kind of like point one.
Speaker 4: I've definitely got five and a half. And what I'm
going to try and do is keep it to as
we say, things that will help the beginner most, not
things will make you the best DM out there. I'm
fairly new to it, certainly compared to yourself. I am
very new to dming. I've only been doing possibly run
ten games at the very most, probably less than that.
So these are the ideas and tips that have helped
me along the way to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fair to say. I've absolutely done the same
as you. We've we had a quick discovery beforehand about
what the direction should be, and we're absolutely going to
keep it to the beginner DM and for me, I've
kept it very general, some more general guidance for DMING.
We could always come back and go into more detail
on some of these points if it comes so slightly more,
say intermediate level DMING, I mean even yeah, even then,
I loath to be considered any sort of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot to explore, and you I could
quite literally talk forever. What we are looking to do
is just kind of pick up and highlight the things
that you either may not have considered or you might
want a different kind of outlook or perspective on. Suddenly
make you think, actually, yeah, that would be the thing
that will help me do my next session or even
my first session.
Speaker 3: That makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: So let's start with your first one. Then, Sion, we'll
see if you've got any crossover like we did in
episode one, I'll just let you know and we'll talk about.
Speaker 3: That at length.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm piquking your notes, and I'm seeing that we've
written literally the same thing. Start small, Start small in
every way.
Speaker 2: That's literally the first thing on my list is start small.
So tell me what you mean by start small.
Speaker 4: So what I'm saying is is not to not be ambitious,
just to not try it all at once, And that's
the main thing I was thinking of here. There's a
vast world created by Wizards of the Coast. Again, I'm
going to reference D and D a lot here. That's
my entire experience for role playing games of this type.
They've created a huge amount of world and law and
background already for you, and you can use as much
or as little of it as you need, and there's
no expectation that you indeed use any of it. The
world that you're creating and running is yours to do
with what you want, and the more you try and do,
the more overwhelming it's likely to be. So keep things
simple and straightforward for your first few sessions.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, The big plans can always come later.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: If you're starting with your own world building, or even
if you're doing a setting that's already published, regardless of
the system, start with like one small location, dot it
with a few interesting things that your players can go
and investigate, and don't worry.
Speaker 3: About the rest. The players will fill in the gaps
for you.
Speaker 4: They will, and they will spend a vast amount of
time doing almost nothing if you give them free rein.
Speaker 2: Quite right, So if you can give them a good framework.
It's important to think about when you're starting small. Give
them a good basic framework with which to play in,
and they will actually point you towards the things you
need to prepare. Start with one adventure, maybe one quest.
A great example, and this is going to come kind
of later for me, but if you can arrange it
where they already have some sort of experience in maybe
monster hunting a nice and nice cliche, but a good
starting one is they're members of a monster hunting troupe
and they've gone to the local sort of bounty hunting board,
and here's the first three things that they need to
go and that are up for up for bounties. Which
one do they want to go and do? Prepare those
things and they can discuss it, and there's your first adventure,
probably your first two adventures.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely. The most players in my experience want to
go out and hit hit stuff, So test out all
those cool abilities. Have a bit of that going on,
as I'm sure o ressents're already. I'm a big critical
role fan, and that guy has a vast amount of
world building already done for himself, but he is supremely experienced.
I also play under another DM who has written and
created a vastly deep world. But we're never going to
find all of that, probably ever, much less in an
episode a game. So focus on that game. Focus on
the game ahead of you, by all means. Have grand
plans and schemes if you want to think about that
kind of style, and have them bubbling away in the
background of your head, But focus on the game ahead
of you, and make sure that that is clean and focused,
so that you don't have to worry about, oh, well,
what if this didn't happen. It didn't happen, so it
didn't happen.
Speaker 2: The players don't know what you've got planned, yep, And
they don't know what you don't have planned.
Speaker 3: And I'll let you into a little secret.
Speaker 2: The grand trick of dming is the illusion that everything
is planned, when really it's just flying by the seat
of your pants and reacting to how the players move
and what they do, because trust me, trying to account
for everything the players might do will drive you insane.
Speaker 3: And we'll talk about that a little later on.
Speaker 2: I think for me, yeah, but yeah, the big plans,
even if you've got a couple of seeds in the
back of your head. Just keep them with seeds and
keep them flexible, because who knows, you may based on
how the players play, you may want to change them.
And if you try and create something too big too early,
you may end up possibly railroading the players or possibly
writing yourself into a corner that you don't that you
might find hard to write out of.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, you definitely want to avoid over promising. So
as Wayne says, keep those little seeds, perhaps hint at
the little ideas, but don't have the little ideas become
the focus in front of them something that they will
want to do.
Speaker 3: And people will.
Speaker 4: Want to do the thing you put in front of
them almost always, So have that been the focus and
enjoy it.
Speaker 3: I think one more.
Speaker 2: Thing I'm going to say on start small for me is,
in a literal sense with your play account, start with
four or five at tops. I mean, I went crazy
when I went back into d ming after a sort
of a fifteen year break. I went straight into seven players.
Speaker 3: And it, as funny as it was, it was hard.
So it was really hard.
Speaker 2: So I would and now I genuinely generally don't like
to do more than five.
Speaker 3: At the very most. Six is an absolute push.
Speaker 2: But if you're just starting, want to take that leap,
go for four, and if you've got loads of enthusiastic friends,
cap it at five.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's great advice. I'm generally running six. Essentially,
I inherited the group that Wayne started. We've got a
bit of a weird set up with a rolling dmship.
I'm currently number four in that roster, so we've had
an interesting journey in the last year and a half.
But it definitely if I was starting out and without
knowing the background of these players, six would terrify me. So, yeah,
you want to be able to manage the group size,
to be able to manage their expectations easier, and to
make your life a lot easier. The more players there
are is not a case of one more is a
bit more complicated air player double the difficulty kind of deal.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, it's exponentially more challenging. Games take much longer,
decisions take longer. Combat is immeasurably longer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, turns in combat take longer. The group decision on
shall we go this way all that way? It will
go on for longer. It becomes a political debate, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it can depending on the group, it can do. Yeah,
so I think generally start small in all aspect, both
in the literal and the figurative sense.
Speaker 4: Yep, Okay, what's your next point in I space.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll flavor it into or segue into one of
the things we mentioned in start small, which is for
me is react to your players. And I want to
go into a little bit more detail there because, Okay,
I think for beginning dms, it's tempting to want to
plan and write out like a plot thread, and arguably
one of the key sins of DMING is to force
your players down a route that they may not necessarily
wish to go down.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Some dms love a linear storyline and they want and
some players love to go Well, you tell me, DM,
where are we going next and what's the story doing.
I prefer something way more open. I like to give choice,
and I like to have consequences for choices.
Speaker 3: That's how I like to run games.
Speaker 2: But if you react to your players, you minimize the
amount of planning you have to do. You can't predict
what the players are going to do, and you certainly
can't account for all of it. You'll drive yourself crazy.
Trying to do that. So as your players go through
the game, make notes on what they're doing, make notes
on the things that they're interested in, make notes on
the things they're talking about and the things they're grasping towards.
Even if you didn't expect it, if you mentioned a
particular shop one time just out of interest and said, oh,
the shopkeeper there has an unusual history.
Speaker 3: Maybe you said it.
Speaker 2: Offhand and they've suddenly grasped onto that and found that
super interesting. Well, guess what you can make something out
of that. And as far as the players are concerned,
you've had that planned all along.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it's going to be a recurring theme. I've
had it further down in my list. The players don't
know what was ever going to be coming up. Correct,
So as you say, if that little idea is a
bit of flavor in the background suddenly becomes the next episode,
it was always going to be the next episode. So
bit they don't have the plot because there isn't necessarily
a plot there, You've paid attention as the players should
be to you, and we touched on that in our
previous D and D discussion of respecting the players and
the DM. So in the same way the DM should
be listening to his players. He's not waiting for his
next line to deliver. Yeah, seeing what they are interested in,
and then going all right, then there's an option there
if they choose to. Of course, it might by the
end of that session have steered wildly away from it,
but if they don't, if they're still there and you think,
all right, well, I'll nudge them that way and see
if they really want to grasp it, and then have
that idea fleshed out, then yeah, it's definitely an option
for you.
Speaker 2: And if what your players latch onto isn't what you
thought they would, don't be afraid of that. Embrace it,
run with it, see what it.
Speaker 3: Can turn into.
Speaker 2: And if you have some other encounters that didn't happen
that you'd planned, they can always be reflavored and reskinned and.
Speaker 3: Put in later on.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. Yeah, that was going to be my last point.
And we've already touched on being flexible and in a
computer gaming called radiant missions, So that's the idea that
there's not necessarily set number of but there's a number
of missions if you will, and there's a number of
NPC's non player characters. There's a number of monsters, but
they don't necessarily all have to be that. This person
gives you this one, and this person gives you this one.
If you've come up with a really cool idea and
you haven't quite got to the point in the story
where you thought it would happen, change where it happened,
be flexible with it. If you really want to get
that rock flying down from out of nowhere, but they're
in the middle of town, have it happened where they
are anyway?
Speaker 3: Guess what rock attack on the town?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can describe the layout of the town unless
you've gone to the effort, which I wouldn't advise. Remember
keeping things small to start with. Unless they've got a
map of the town. Well, yeah, there's a really big
square in the middle of it. It's five hundred yards across,
plenty of space for a giant bird to come and
float it. Just have your stuff flexible. Or they didn't
meet Gary the Bartender because they didn't want to drink
that night, Well Gary the Bartender is now Alf the
anvil Worker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, met him there.
Speaker 4: They needs a new weapons. He still has the same information.
He's still going to point them towards the abandoned barrow.
Speaker 2: That's a great tip with regard to NBC's and like
they're being flexible and reskinning encounters that's not necessarily just
battle encounters, that's social encounters. And with regard to that reaction.
Just my last point on there and that flexibility is
when you're dming, don't be scared to ask at the
end of your session of your players, what do you
want to do next time?
Speaker 4: Yes? Yeah, If there's no immediately obvious next thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't be afraid to ask it. They'll tell you
just oh, we want to go and fight this thing
and save the town from the young green dragon that's
been harassing it.
Speaker 3: Great, Well, that.
Speaker 2: Gives you all of the material you need to arm
your next session or two.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and even if it's not a direct question, listen
to the post game chat same as you were listening
for their reactions in the game.
Speaker 3: What have you got something for your next one that
you want to discuss?
Speaker 4: My next one is my next three? Really they're a
bit of a group, and I'm going to start with
who who who? And that is to say, unless you're
on a pure monster hunt where the who doesn't really
come into it, and it is just a bulletin board says,
go kill the thing. Then have a little list of
key NPCs, so they're the ones, as we've been discussing,
that will provide the goals and the directions when you
need to, and you can place them anywhere you need
even if the group is out traveling in the wilderness.
They're not the only six people or four people, or
however many players you've got. They're not the only ones
traveling from said town to next said town. So if
you need to put in a lonely traveler or a
small group of travelers or bandits or whoever else. If
you find that the players are getting off track and
they are just bumbling around, have that encounter just happen
and it can be a social encounter out anyway you like,
and just say, oh, you come across or so and so,
and then you can give them that little bit of
pointer and direction again when you need it.
Speaker 2: That's some great practical advice. Actually having the who a
few NPCs prepped and what they might know is absolutely
great great advice and a little bonus step associated with that,
I guess.
Speaker 3: Just have a big old random list of names.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's my point five, that's my half.
Speaker 3: Yeah, throw that in then.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So essentially making a list of names and some
descriptors of the NPCs just.
Speaker 3: Like twenty your handful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, either specific NPCs you know, make those as details
as you want to, or even just some random one.
Give yourself the benefit of having quick and easy notes.
You can make up names in whatever fashion you like.
There's random name generators out there. There's one of my
friends who only ever plays with a randomly names character.
I find it quite hilarious because he comes out with
some ridiculous stuff. My other little sneaky tip for this one,
and I found it to work quite well, is to
use names from film credits. Nice go I mean not
obviously the cast, don't start introducing Tom Hanks. But wait,
wait till you're about halfway down. Then you're into the
electricians and the lights of the lighting guy, and you
know you've got your grips and your best boys and
whatever they are down in the bottom half of the credits.
You'll generally find that there's some interestingly named people in there,
especially if you watch foreign movies. Depending on your setting
and a sci fi setting, you won't want the oldie
worldie gotten realms type names. But I've found some fantastic
names in the bottom of film, either that or Scandinavian music.
Speaker 3: That is.
Speaker 4: I listened to a lot of metal and there's a
lot of awesomely named guitarists from Norway. But people don't
tend to know what those people are called. So yes,
take their first name, take their surname. That's fantastic and
shove it in.
Speaker 3: Make out a character, good shout.
Speaker 2: So having your names prepared for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So have your names and have a few key people,
and as I said with that, have some descriptors as well. Yeah,
if you can. It'll be as detailed as you want
to make it. I find the more details to make it,
the more convincing it will sound. And again, slightly more
prepared it will be. But it doesn't have to be
fully prepared. To give yourself a list of things that
will combine. So as an example, you see a man
waiting for you, All right, yep, that's information, but combine together,
tall and slender, with the steely gaze, his ashen face
turns to you, and his unexpectedly reddened eyes stare through you.
My name is malvinas you must be the group I've
been sent to collect. Really, all that is is a
collection of descriptors. Tall, slender, steely, gay's, ashen face, reddened eyes.
He then has a name, He's not just an anonymous NPC,
and he has a connection to the group, which I
think really invests the group in a specific NPC if
you want them to attach to it.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 2: It immediately gives a level of intrigue that players will
want to discover what this guy wants and what he's about.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, that's my who.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll go on to one of my ones, which
is it seems to be a favorite topic of mine
is know your stuff, which we also talked about in
our top things that we like about awesome role players.
We certainly did, but we also like it about excellent dms.
And this is going to be slightly more sympathetic in
that respect because the DM has a tough task. There
is a lot to think about, as lot to think about.
But what will give you more confidence in dealing with
that is having a solid grasp of the basics.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I think this is where I really got
lucky because I didn't come into dming until after a
solid year of playing, and by solid year, I mean
once a week. So I'd played fifty plus games before
I even thought about running one. So I had that
really solid base in knowledge of the game and how.
Speaker 3: It might work.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think if you've not even played but you
want to DM, finely, everyone has to do it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think I would recommend everyone doing some
DMING at.
Speaker 2: Some point, But if you're in any way anxious about it,
do some playing first. Get yourself comfortable with how the
game is structured, how it flows, what a turn looks like,
what the action economy is, the EBB and flow of encounters,
the three pillars of D and D, the exploration, social,
and fighting. It's knowing your stuff in terms of battle mechanics, movement,
the types of actions that players might or could be
able to do. Doesn't mean knowing every role in the
PHB and every spell.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I genuinely don't think it's possible.
Speaker 3: It's not that way.
Speaker 4: The best possible DM will not know every single possible
thing in every single possible situation. There are too many variables, correct,
But it's having that base idea, as you say, yeah,
just having.
Speaker 2: The basics of what your players might do a little
bit of movement stuff the battle mechanics, for sure. How
do you roll an attack? What does what do skill
checks do? What do the different skills mean