Newbie GM Mistakes to Avoid?

[Lea Plath]

So, I've started a game of the Dresden Files RPG, and we've had two sessions so far. I've been asking for feedback and got it so far (for example, having a list of names for random NPCs, playing at a table in my dining room instead of the sitting room, looking at people when I'm describing stuff to them) but I was wondering if anyone else can think of newbie GM mistakes and how to avoid them.

[Gnomish Wanderer]

There is only one mistake to look out for.
Make Sure Everyone Is Having Fun
It includes everything else. Make sure all the players get attention paid to them, make sure nothing gets bogged down or needlessly complicated, make sure that you're also having fun. It all applies under that first important rule. If at any time fun is not being had, make it more fun. That's all. :smallsmile:

[Wonton]

The best piece of advice I can give is: Don't think you can prepare for everything, but that doesn't mean you don't have to prepare.

I'm also a new DM but I have it easy since the PCs are on a (mostly) uninhabited island with no easy way off. This means that I can actually anticipate some of the things the PCs will do, i.e:

"If they go in direction 1, they will find area A. There, they will either do a, b, or c. If they go in direction 2, they will find area B. They will either do d or e." I form these kind of mental maps in my head and use them to decide what happens.

Of course, there's that saying that goes "No plan survives first contact with the enemy" and the PCs will always find ways to surprise you. This is what I mean by "you can't prepare for everything": You'll need to think on your feet. However, your mind can only have a limited number of things in it at once. Which means you can't just think up 2 events for the whole session and hope you'll improvise the rest. This is what I mean by "you can't underprepare".

Once you find that balance, sessions become a lot easier for you and better for the players.

Also, this guide is excellent: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76474

[Kaun]

1) Keep in simple.

Don't over complicate you session plans to begin with. Your players will often find just as much fun in a "retrieve the McGuffin" session as they will in a complex and well planed murder mystery. While your still finding your feet don't worry about trying to make with every session amazingly intricate.

2) If you are pitting your PC's against a problem, don't come up with a definite solution that is required before the game can move on.

for example;


Problem:PC's get trapped in a room that is quickly filling with sand.

Resolution: Once PC's find and activate hidden switch in the floor, sand drains and they can move on.

Don't do stuff like that. If your players come up with an interesting solution that sounds plausible. Let them use it, even if it isn't what you planned.
It rewards them for imaginative thinking and it stops them getting frustrated while they grope around in the dark looking for your solution.

[The Dark Fiddler]

No rule is absolute.

Yes, it's easier to stick to the rules, especially when you're learning, but once you know what you're doing it's really not that difficult to do something completely out there. If you do it right, it'll be your most memorable session.

At the same time, be willing to admit a mistake. If you try something, and it doesn't go well at all... try to salvage it, but be willing to just drop it.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

There is only one mistake to look out for.
Make Sure Everyone Is Having Fun
It includes everything else. Make sure all the players get attention paid to them, make sure nothing gets bogged down or needlessly complicated, make sure that you're also having fun. It all applies under that first important rule. If at any time fun is not being had, make it more fun. That's all. :smallsmile:This is generally true, but be careful not to take it too far. Not everyone enjoys everthing about a game. In my group, there are a few people who really like planning out strategies and one who just wants to run in and get the fight started. You can't eliminate the part that the one dislikes without taking away part of what others enjoy. The best you can hope to do is to balance things out and keep something that some people don't enjoy from taking over too much of the game.

Besides that, the best advice I could give is what Wonton already said. Absolutely plan for things you think are likely to happen (and maybe even for a few unlikely things) but don't be surprised if things don't go as you planned them. I routinely plan non-combat encounters only to have the PCs charge in guns blazing or spend hours coming up with the combat stats for NPCs only to haveth players talk their way out of any fighting. It happens and you just have to roll with it.

If you're creative and a little bit lucky, you can still use parts of your planning, just in ways you didn't originally expect. (The PCs took the train instead of getting on the boat like you expected? Ok, now the McGuffin you were going to have on the boat and the terrorists trying to steal it are actually on a train instead.) Be careful not to be too obvious that you're doing this as your players might accuse you of railroading. (No pun intended.) In the example above, don't try to shift the boat adventure onto a train if the players already know the McGuffin is travelling by boat and especially not if they took the train to avoid being too near it in case something did happen.

[ArcturusV]

Though as a counterpoint to The Dark Fiddler, NEVER give players a "Ignore the Rules" or "Do something outside the Rules" button at will, or allow them to circumvent the system in a freeform way. This is usually things like Wishes and The Deck of Many Things, etc, in a DnD base. It derails and breaks the campaign story so horribly when you give them a "Get out of the Rules Free" card.

Allowing wiggle room for the Rule of Cool/Fun is one thing. Letting them do something the rules don't necessarily support just because it sounds neat and you can kinda fake it if necessary.

But you give them a blank check for anything? Well, to quote, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and in the case of players, instantly and irrevocably."

[JusticeZero]

Don't make things more complex than you can think through - and you aren't as good as that as you think you are. Lots of people are excited about smashing expectations and making exotic and wild places and things. Resist the urge! Stick to the familiar and be conservative with your wild creativity for now. The wondrous and exotic tend to look a bit silly when you overdo it.
Stick to the stereotypes to a certain extent, but expand or adjust it a little bit on each individual.
Even when I put a very exotic element into a game, I cut back on the complexity elsewhere - the campaign i'm planning for with that has a wierd physics element, therefore, is also "humans only" and with a heavily chopped down list of encounters and monstrous threats, only has three classes and no PRCs at this stage, and has much less proliferation of wildly powerful items.

Try to get characters to talk to or argue with each other in character as often as you can. The more they play their character, the more of their story they reveal; it's free content that you don't have to prepare for, and their subplots can be interesting things to get into.

Don't change the rules for the sake of 'realism' for standard cases. You aren't half as good at game design as you think you are, nobody is. If there's a rule, it's probably there for a good reason.

Don't insist on going by the book for edge cases. If you drop a pebble off of a very tall building, and the falling rules have an endless constant gradient of increasing falling damage, it does not mean that the pebble will shred a parked Abrams Tank when it hits the ground. It means that they didn't want high level characters to be able to hot drop from low earth orbit in a suit of chainmail without a parachute, stand up, toss off a heal and rush into battle.

Players cannot play insanity. Period. Don't let them get any sort of perk for trying, and definitely don't trust the guy who wants amazing abilities that he's too insane to access.

Never ever ever let an NPC accomplish anything, ever, if there is a player present who might be able to do it instead.

Saying "You're in interesting place X for.. 2 days, three hours and twenty two minutes, what are you doing while you're here?" at the end of a game session IS NOT roleplaying.

Since you are in a contemporary setting: If you, personally, do not know enough library science to know what exactly is and is not available in the public library or city hall records, or you have not worked out exactly what is available, do not let anyone tell you what they think they can find out with research.

When in doubt about what to do next, throw them a random red herring. Their wild speculations will last for a third of the session, and at least three of their crazy coocoolander ideas that they suggest to each other might make for valid and interesting game ideas that you hadn't thought of, and it'll make them feel clever for 'figuring it out'.

[ArcturusV]

Oh yes, seconding what JusticeZero said there. One of the greatest mistakes I see out of DM is trying to be "Clever" or "Great".

I usually use the baseball metaphor when I'm teaching this, because hey, it was a big thing in my generation. When you are up to the plate and going to be taking some cuts, you focus on making good contact with the pitch, you don't try to get a home run necessarily. If you DO... cool. But you want to make sure you get a base hit over anything else.

So just try to focus on making things that work on the base level. Don't get too fancy with it, don't get too clever.

Oh, and since it's a modern setting, it's FINE to pick normal names for stuff. It's a minor thing but when you're spitting out "Exotic" names they often get turned into jokes, or never used. Since you're running a game that's based on the modern world there's nothing wrong with having Joe Stanton the Police Officer NPC.

[Acanous]

Don't make a DMPC.

Also, try to have something cooked up for when they go off the rails. Maybe they hear about a rogue magician selling magical drugs or something. Give them something to go on when they start ignoring obvious clues, and gently reign them in from there :p

[Negativethac0]

It might sound blatantly simple, but never be afraid to ask for a timeout or a break. During my first sessions I had the impression I had to keep everything running at a constant, quick pace. As people have already suggested, that would likely require you over-prepare which will just lead to more confusion.

If things go out of hand or you need time to gather your thoughts, I’ve found it helpful to simply ask for a minute (or hey, my favorite tactic whenever they do something I didn’t prepare - go to the bathroom for a bit).

As Gnomish Wanderer correctly states, just make it remains fun. And embrace errors instead of fearing them, because they are often the best way to improve.

[kieza]

Also, try to have something cooked up for when they go off the rails. Maybe they hear about a rogue magician selling magical drugs or something. Give them something to go on when they start ignoring obvious clues, and gently reign them in from there :p

I can't second this enough.

Eventually, every DM has a session where the players do something completely unexpected and derail the adventure he had planned. It's always nice to have something to throw into the gap while you rework things. I keep a folder of impromptu encounters and sidequests that worked well in previous campaigns, so that I can reuse them in groups that haven't seen them before.

[Crose87420]

I was thinking of all the little GM tips and tricks I've read, heard, learned, etc. but wanted to keep it simple, and the two that always first pop into my head are;

#1 Stay calm, breathe, and take you're time. You'll repeat yourself less, contradict yourself less, say "uh um" less, and buy yourself time for #2...

#2 Bull****. Make **** up all the time. Embrace it. Shuffle through your campaign notes to buy yourself time to think up BS, even if the pages are blank. If the players say something that sounds cooler than what you have, BS and steal it right then and there, "wow, you guys are smart, that's exactly what it is/what was going to happen/what you needed to do/etc."

So stay calm and bull****.

[Barsoom]

Don't have a plan. It will not survive contact with the PCs anyway. Just throw stuff at them, then sit back and enjoy as they come up with whatever cockamany plan to deal with it. Whatever they come up with, roll with it and make it cool.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

When they come up with something that knocks your thinking off its course, take a quick breather, write down how they shook stuff up, and then come back in and proceed. This is for those "You're doing what?" moments.

Also, live and love the story. You have to be pumped about the world, pumped about what they're doing, pumped about how the world is changing. They're going in, kicking down doors, and doing stuff, making stuff happen. That's awesome, and you have to remember that it's always awesome. Get pumped about what's going on, and they'll draw on that and feed it right back to you.

Make sure they know what's going on and what's at stake (visibly) in the scene. Furthermore, ask questions. This helps to move the story along. Remember that the players can easily be a repository of knowledge about the gameworld, especially about things which they're involved in. Have fun, and prompt them. "You're calling in Sergeant Rourke...is she more likely to be at the pub, or to be back at her apartment watching old sitcoms?"

[dps]

Worst mistake a new DM/GM can make: failure to provide good refreshments for your players. :smallbiggrin:

[Lorsa]

Dresden files the RPG? I've heard about it but never played it so; what's it like?

There are many many tips and tricks for a new GM, but as you have probably noticed it can get a bit overwhelming after a while so I'll be brief.

1. Admit to yourself (and your players if they don't understand it) that you can't be the best GM ever from the start. It's a skill like any other, it gets better with practice. You will make many mistakes, mess up campaigns, have things end up in ways you never wished. It's okay, it happened to us all (and still do). GMing is a learning experience that never stops so don't be discouraged, in a year or two you'll feel much more comfortable!

2. Try to pay equal attention to all players. Some players naturally try to steal the attention by always opening their mouth first or in other ways forcing attention to them. Don't let them, try to remember the others, put a pause to the one player and look to the others and ask them what they do. While this should in theory be the task of every player, the GM is (according to me) the last defense to make sure everyone gets equal attention.

[Gnoman]

ONe thing that's very important. Pay attention to your players. This doesn't mean simply trying ot give them all something to do, or making sure that each has a moment in the sun. I mean that you should not simply assume that an aspect of the game is desired or is found dull. In my current game, I was taking great pains to provide a least a few combats each session to keep my players from getting bored with NPC to NPC conversations, the discovery of forgotten lore, or monologues about prophecies and the dealings of gods. Until, that is, I realized that they were just phoning in most fights that weren't against some eldricht abomination or arc BBEG in order to get back to the talky plotty bits.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Dresden files the RPG? I've heard about it but never played it so; what's it like?

I haven't played it yet either, but the internet has lead me to believe that it's full of half-fae catboys.

[geeky_monkey]

Don't forget - the players don't know what the world looks like.

They may have missed the cool encounter you spent all night planning by turning left instead of right, but don't try to railroad them back to that junction. They don't know what was back there.

Next time they go through a door you don't have anything planned for that's where the cool encounter was. What a coincidence!

This way you don't waste anything you've planned, the players get the feeling that they can go anywhere, and there's always something interesting to do there.

[Lea Plath]

I haven't played it yet either, but the internet has lead me to believe that it's full of half-fae catboys.


Dresden files the RPG? I've heard about it but never played it so; what's it like?

I think that depends on your players :P I've got a goblin changling marketeer, a wizard with a necrotic spell powering his kidney, a lawyer who has his fingers in all the pies and is a neutral arbiter between supernatural powers and a hindu champion of god first responder.

Anyway, thanks for the advice all. I've been sending out a lot of emails for feedback to my players as well and trying to keep the story open.

[BlckDv]

Worst mistake a new DM/GM can make: failure to provide good refreshments for your players. :smallbiggrin:

Note to self, never play with dps.

Players are responsible for providing snacks for the party around here. (everyone, including DM, takes a turn being responsible for the meal)