As the title. Suggestions, or just how you do it is welcome.
It's not really a skill I know how to develop, considering playing feels rare. Just write stories? Join an improv group? Cast a wide net and DM for anyone who is willing? Or do I just wait and let it develop slowly over time. I feel pretty stagnant.
Posted Jul 11, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC
u/GameKnight_ has the correct answer: there is no substitute for experience. Learn by doing.
That said, I have suggestions for things that you can do all by yourself that may help.
That is, get a short published adventure -- something written for Adventurer's League is ideal. Read it, then build a party of four PCs and run them through the adventure, all by yourself, no other players. This is, basically, a thought experiment.
The first benefit of this is: practice with mechanics. Pick classes that you're not familiar with, or that you find confusing. With no actual players around, you can take the time to consult rules, try things out multiple ways, and so on. By the time you're done, you'll have a better grasp on how things work that will help when you're running an actual game.
The second benefit of this is more subtle: practice being true to NPC motivations. If you're like me -- or most GMs, I hope -- you are basically rooting for the party. You want them, ultimately, to win. That's particularly true when the party is actually all you. They're your PCs. You made them. They're your darlings.
But the NPCs have motivations too. When you're acting as an NPC, they want what they want, and by $deity_of_choice they will do everything in their power to get it! Be ruthless against yourself! Murder your darlings!
And then you turn around and be a PC, and you want to stop that nefarious NPC. And so on.
The constant role-switching will help you learn to set up separate mental buckets for NPCs, allowing you to take actions that suit their characters even though you really want the party to win. It makes for much more vivid opposition in a real campaign.
I did this with Pathfinder 1e -- ran a party of 4 through the first three books of the Carrion Crown adventure path, actually. Then they (I) TPK'ed in the first encounter of Book 4. I may have been overly harsh on them (me).
Doing this once or twice is plenty. After that the returns start diminishing.
I mean that. Read. Read lots. You will get tons of ideas from reading; and it will help you learn more about character and story. When you find a cool character -- what makes them so cool? How could you borrow that, adapt it to an RPG context? When you see a neat plot, can you try it?
Fantasy is an obvious choice, but don't limit yourself by genre. Read broadly. Read science fiction, mystery, romance, literary fiction. Read non-fiction. One of the coolest adventures I ever ran came out of reading The Tale of Setne Khamwas and Naneferkaptah, an ancient Egyptian fable.
Watching shows and movies is good too -- but for my money, reading is better, because the more you read the more you internalize the rhythms and patterns of narration (which a GM is called on to do all the time).
Or watch twitch streams, etc. You can learn so much by watching other GMs at work. How do they handle it when the players do something bonkers? What do they do to establish and maintain immersion? How strict/lenient are they with rules, and why? How do the players react to that? How do they balance the plot with player agency?
Some good ones to listen to would be:
The Strand Gamers' Curse of Strahd, which runs 19 sessions. Spoilers for Curse of Strahd, obviously. Even if you don't listen to the full thing, listen to their session 0 where the GM walks the players through character creation. It was something of a revelation to me how easily he got his players to cough up interesting backstories. The whole thing is pretty good, though I think the GM was suffering from burnout towards the end.
Fate and the Fablemaidens. An all female group running a homebrew campaign in D&D 5e. The GM isn't terribly experienced at the start, but she has a solid grasp on story and how to keep it moving forward.
Sugar-Fuelled Gamers' Kingmaker. A Pathfinder adventure path, being run as a solo adventure for the GM's wife, backported to D&D 3.5e rules. But the mechanics aren't the point. The GM is a master of creating and portraying interesting characters, particularly the NPC "party members" who accompany the sole PC on his adventures. Spoilers for Kingmaker, obviously. At the time of this writing this is 91 episodes in (about 2.5-3 hours each) and on hiatus due to Real Life issues, but it's still worth listening to. I sincerely hope they can finish it.
They're a good source of inspiration, interesting mechanics, and so on.
Ironsworn is an RPG system that came out just last year. Although the basic concept is the same as D&D -- roll some dice and compare numbers to see if it worked -- the system puts a strong emphasis on fiction first. A lot of the time you simply decide what happens; whatever is logical or interesting or dramatic is the way to go, and then you choose the mechanics to fit the situation you've created. It was also designed to support solo play (no GM, one player), and it's 100% free to download, so there's a low bar if you want to give it a try. If you'd like to dip a toe in this one without reading a ton of rules, try reading Wayfarer Tales by u/Goldwhyn, which is a write-up of a solo play and enjoyable even if you don't really know the mechanics.
Microscope is an RPG system designed for creating campaign settings through play. You sit down with a group, decide roughly what kind of world you want to build, and by the end of the night you'll have a series of historical periods, a bunch of scenes you played out illustrating key moments in history, and so on. You'll have a world. Some groups use this system to collaboratively create worlds that they then go on to play more normal RPG campaigns in.
Fate Core, which lends itself well to zany out-there character and world concepts. Want to play anthropomorphic animals working as space mechanics? That'll work great. Want to play house wives slowly uncovering sinister occult powers at work in the neatly trimmed hedges of Suburbia? Fate Core has got your back. How about cat wizards? They literally have a published adventure for that one: The Secrets of Cats.
There are way more out there. Savage Worlds. Shadowrun. Dungeon World. Monster of the Week. The more RPG systems you try, the better you'll get at playing and running them.
I've never thought about doing the first thing, but that sounds super smart! Thanks for the idea!
I couldn't agree with this more, especially the 1st and 4th as they are fonts of inspiration versus 2 and 3's sources of inspiration. I've ran solo combat and actual modules for myself to first learn mechanics (as a player, I rarely stray from caster classes so I don't fully know martial classes yet), and so that I can learn to quickly switch between characters. The second and fourth ones are also really nice, though I myself focus more on world building things like Microscope and fantasy books. I've gotten many a game idea from Microscope and from reading.
By DMing, and watching/playing with other DMs. Actual practice makes perfect.
I do Adventurer's League, and have played with a side variety of DMs. I've picked up tricks from them that have helped me when I DM. I also watch/listen to DnD actual plays, and have picked up things from the DMs.
If I need tips on something in particular, I'll search the internet for guides for DMs. There are lots of resources out there.
I feel like I've learned a lot from various media. Harmonquest, Matt Mercer, The Adventure Zone, etc
I like to listen to podcasts and pay attention to how the DMs handle situations. For example in "Not Another D&D Podcast," at one point the DM threw a group of undead on flying horses at the party's airship. The druid found the strongest one and turned it's horse into a regular dolphin. So the DM had the boss just fall into the ocean below the airship. He later referenced it when they faced that undead's commander. You know you've gotta roll with it, but listening to other people's absurd situations helps prepare me.
I ran one shots. Then I ran battle rooms (it's like a one shot but is all combat. Like boss battles) to help me learn combat balance. I find one shots are super easy to fill and even battle rooms are easy to fill because players want to test builds.
Identify whatever you enjoy most and lean into it. Do you like improvising? Join an improv group. Worldbuilding? Write. Painting miniatures and scenery? Go nuts. If something isn’t fun, there are lots of resources you can lean on to focus on the parts you enjoy.
If you just enjoy the game experience, grab a published campaign and start a second group. Or a third.
Pay attention to what you're doing and how the table reacts. Alter what's not working.
I actively played DnD solo once. I made a couple characters and ran through one of the premade adventures using only rolls to determine things, like diplomacy, bluff, stuff for combat, and ran the entire way through the short module. It really helped me familiarize myself with the mechanics, and was a good early exercise.
To practice DMing is going to take time. It's all about how much you DM, finding your particular DM style and finding what works with some groups but not others.
What I do is look up DM videos on Youtube (Matthew Colville, How To Be A Great GM, GM Tips) find something that I find interesting or fun and try and implement it in my games. Some times it works some times it doesn't, and some times it may work better with a different group.
After the session I write myself a little summary of how things went.
Forgot to mention x, in combat let the boss get flanked too easily, players liked this npc because of yada.
In the moment so much gets lost that noting it all down while it's still fresh helps me learn better lessons from it.
I started doing this when I began playing wargames, analysing what I could of done better and what tactics worked. Got good real quick that way.
DMing is more trial and error than practice, tbh. You try, you learn what works and what doesn't, and you learn from it. Many DMs people look up to have more experience DMing than many baby DMs have years in their lives.
I run up to random groups of people on the street and yell “ROLL FOR INITIATIVE” before I throw handfuls of dice at them.
So I'm making the distinction between knowledge and experience.
Knowledge is knowing what to do in a situation
Experience is know WHEN to apply knowledge
Simply put, there is no replacement for experience or actual running of games.
There are shortcuts though, I personally love watching other games - I'll sit quietly at a table and take notes (playing only impedes my ability to remain impartial) while another DM runs. There's always things I can learn about how different DMs control and adjudicate mechanics, there's always lessons about things TO DO, or things NOT TO DO. Paying careful attention as to HOW DMs create or setup scenes, handle players and make rulings is super useful.
Herding cats is an easier version of it.
How do you practice your DMing?
Trial by fire, baby!
The best way to get better at DMing is more DMing. Try different modules, different groups, different settings, different themes... the more you get actual practice in the game, the more you’ll find your groove and understand the rule set. Cast a very wide net and take every opportunity that you can to get behind the screen.
Ditto. Writing campaign plots, adventures and stories is limited, because you don’t have an audience to play the game. If you want to get better at DMing is just DMing as much as you can. Online, face to face, pbp... everything you do will make you better