Talk:Dungeon Mastering (DnD Guideline)

This is concept page

I set up this page to be a source of information for dungeon masters that provides best practices during gameplay. The many campaings that I have hosted for friends and others, have given me some experiance on how to deal with difficult situations as a DM while on the other hand I realized that I was making mistakes often, most of those mistakes was to "Save" the group and adjust combat outcomes sometimes even dropping dangerous enemies at half health or the party would be wiped. At some point I also realized that most of my benificial actions would not be nececary if the group wouldn't be so reckless or would try to use different actions like role playing and I started to turn my dm-ing around. Within a week most of the party died by trying some foolish and ignorent action with a magical item that was key to the story while I shifted the last players alignment to evil because he was not doing anything to prevent their deaths, he actually ran away from the game table saying "How should I have known you were going to die!" I am not evil" And he was obviously pissed off big time. And trust me what he did was exceptionally evil and he was very aware that his party members where dying but (I guess) he was expecting me to save their asses out of that situation and just stood there laughing behind the table. Some whined that evening out of disbelief that they died while others understood what happened and laughed their "you know what" off but the end result next week was clear, they were all there and eager to start the next challenge like I have never seen before.

Share your experiance as DM for those starting to DM and do not let them walk the same plank as we did, give tips advise, how to create worlds and encounters and so forth.

Crashpilot 14:33, 22 February 2011 (MST)

Page is shaping up

The page is growing quickly, anyone with constructive input / criticism or wishes to share his or her tricks as a DM must feel free to either insert them directly or place a comment / story here and I will edit it in for you, Milo already has a nice example how certain items can make things go... unexpected. Do not forget to sign your work and claim your portion of the glory. As of the page it may seem that it will become a tutorial for beginning DM's (and it is) but I do not intend to include basic mechanics and the likes that are already written in the dungeon master manual unless they provide likely pittfals. I seek experienced remarks from other DM's or players on the mechanics and equivalent items. Also do not be afraid to place experiences that may conflict with what is already written. Every session is different, every party is different and every DM is different. The combination of that knowledge is what will make it gold. I will create conclusions after a while and adjust the text in already written areas, for now they are just there to form an example how the end result may look like.

Crashpilot 18:05, 25 February 2011 (MST)

The Deck

Once I gave my players a "Deck Of Many Things". For those who are familiar with it, they know thier is too much risk. This is what happened to my group:

- One had was given a Rod of Lordly Might

- One got a castle

- One had her soul trapped in the centre of the earth

- One had a balor attack them

- One caused the cataclysm. Drew another card, gained power to undo three cards. Undid the balor, and the soul trap.

- Then told the gods that he would undo the cataclysm for a favour from each.

- Then he became a Demi-Lich with-in two seconds, instantly became a level 40 Dread Necromancer, created his own plane of existance.

And he still hasn't used all his favours yet. --Milo High-Hill 23:23, 22 February 2011 (MST)

Hahaha that sounds like a total destruction of the campain yet a similar but less powerfull version may actually be quite fun to play, I think i'll give it a go some time :D.Crashpilot 06:17, 23 February 2011 (MST)

Another thing about what happened. The entry to the plane was on of his female companions skin. I made it a running gag that he comes out of his plane at very bad times.--Milo High-Hill 19:11, 25 February 2011 (MST)

Preparation

I wonder if a section about game session preparation would make sense (or maybe that is for a dungeon mastering which deals with other more complex issues). Thoughts? --Green Dragon 20:40, 6 March 2011 (MST)

Are you sugesting something similar to the Dungeon Masters guide as a section? If so it sounds like a great idea.--Milo High-Hill 22:43, 6 March 2011 (MST)

Collection & Compilation

A lot of the information I've been adding is paraphrased and remembered information from all different places and people. In most cases, I can't remember who told me about it. In some cases, I have seen the same idea from multiple people and the inventor has been lost to time. In a few cases, I cannot find the original source any more. In all cases, none of the information was officially published material- it is all freely available knowledge that I have happened to come across over the last 10 years and have chosen to dispense here. --Kydo (talk) 15:15, 8 August 2016 (MDT)

I feel bad just repeating stuff I just heard from other people without letting other people hear it straight from their mouths. So I've been trying to find everything I've ever used to learn as a DM. I'm surprised at how little was actually an original idea of my own. I don't think a massive heap of links to videos and blogs can displace a thorough discussion of a subject though. I want to use the videos in each section as a basis to start the topic off, and then write a detailed exploration of each topic in a more organized fashion. --Kydo (talk) 15:15, 8 August 2016 (MDT)

Oops

I went overboard. There's way too much in the article already- and it's mostly just links to years worth of videos and blogs- AND EVEN THAT IS THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG. It has to be split. This page will remain, but I'm going to take most of the technical/practical stuff out and put it in a page called "Dungeon Mastering, Basic", and all the super high-minded theoretical stuff will be split out from that page into "Dungeon Mastering: Advanced". --Kydo (talk) 02:02, 9 September 2016 (MDT)