Instead of writing new DMstuff, why not link to interesting things other people have to say on the subject of DMing?
Danny (Bartoneous) from Critical-hits talks about how to end a gaming session. I agree that Cliffhangers are a great way to end a D&D gaming night. I’ll further add* that Cliffhangers are sometimes hard to pull off because you either
- End the evening too early (thank god for Magic the Gathering!)
- Overshoot the session passed the group’s fatigue threshold (Bleary eyes and lack of commentary while rolling dice are a sign).
The Dead stop (stopping a game after a Boss fight for example) is also a nice way of getting closure. While Bartoneous does’t imply his group does it, a dead stop is a great way to insert an indeterminate time between 2 adventures. This lets PCs do out of camera stuff (like training, leveling up, buying gear, reporting back to patrons, etc).
Martin Rayla, from Treasure Table, discusses campaign drift. That’s when a campaign moves significantly and often away from it’s intended themes and crashes. Like most of Martin’s posts, his points are always simple and concise. This one: If it happens, talk it out with players, even if the drift is your own doing. I feel that’s probably what happened with out Iron Heroes game. I went really overboard making the campaign themes too complex and trying to fit too many things together while making my preparation simpler that it blew up in my face and robbed me of my enthusiasm about the whole thing. I plan on fishing for more light feedback by the players in between games (don’t worry, no 2 hour long post game feedback sessions on Friday nights).
Finally, Dante from StupidRanger, has a no-brainer that’s simple and effective. Listen to your players. Not the Give-them-everything-they-ask-for listen, but the pick-up-the-clues-you-dense-block-of-ego-granite listening. DMing is all about juggling a tons of stuff at a table surrounded by good friends. While you can’t give everyone all the attention they deserve as friends (treating a RPG game as a uniform group instead of individuals is another Blog topic), making a little extra effort to pick up on passive feedback is a key skill a good DM should work at. And I will work at that 🙂
*I mean, I need to add some value to ripping other’s people work no?
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