In an earlier post, I talked about ways to be a good DM. This week, I'm going to talk about ways to be a great DM. Good DMs lead campaigns that make every meeting fun, but a great DM keeps the party chatting about their adventures between game nights. Here are five tricks that will bring any campaign to the next level.
Trick One: Build Around Your Characters
"You are confronted by your long-lost brother who still blames you for your father's death."
When your group first got together to build characters, you made sure that your players built their characters around your world (to some degree). Now, its time to return the favor. Make sure you know important facts of each player's back story: hometown, family, occupation, childhood rivals. You might even consider jotting some notes in your DM notebook (you do have one, right?).
Tricking Out: The next time the campaign train pulls into a small, unnamed town, you can pull out a hero's hometown. Will this character be welcomed or shunned? Will anyone even recognize them? Want to give your party a little "friendly" competition? Pull together a team of NPCs that have connections to each of your adventurers. Always be looking for ways to pull pieces of back story into the adventure.
Trick Two: Know Your World
"This valley has been conquered by thirteen different warlords and I can name all of them."
It's very easy (and perfectly acceptable) to simply drop your heroes in the generic DnD world and be done with it. If you want to make a bit more of your weekly adventures, take some time to customize the world. You can keep the rules and deities or go full blown home-brew. What's important is that you know how your world works and that your players are able to access the information they need to play.
Tricking Out: An easy way to customize your world is to limit class or race choices (personally, I don't suggest limiting classes). Take a look at how each class/race fits into your world and pick out ones that just don't jive. Make sure you can defend your choices as one of your players is guarantied to want to use a removed option. Know the way that your cities are governed and what place magic holds. This work will make quest building a breeze.
Trick Three: Don't Let the Books Hold You Down
"I said it's a wizard, not a Beholder."
The DnD source books hold a ton of useful information. You can find incredible monsters and detailed stories within them. Take as much from them as you want, but always remember that you are the final word. You are not limited to the words or pictures in your DnD books. If a creature doesn't quite have the abilities or appearance you need, just fudge it. No one can tell you you're wrong about your own world.
Tricking Out: If you need an epic final villain for a quest arch, but all the monsters of the party's level are beasties you aren't prepared to use, just go ahead and manipulate size and appearance to fit your needs. Its easy to claim a troll is a freakishly strong humanoid or a Beholder is a ray-firing wizard. The stats are meant to work for you, not against you. Make them do what you want.
Trick Four: Descriptions, Descriptions, Descriptions!
"The city's gates are flanked at each side by large statues of men covered in chains."
A good campaign gets the players to believe in the world their characters live in. If you want to achieve this level of play, you need to make sure you tell the players everything they would notice about their surroundings. Describing the clothing and decorations of a city can tell characters that they're in a slave state just as well as simply informing them of this fact as they enter.
Tricking Out: Good descriptions are important whenever your adventurers are encountering something you want them to remember. A vicious scar or a pair of gold-rimmed glasses will stick out in their mind each time they encounter a hated foe. A kingdom's national colors will help distinguish fellow countryman from ruthless invaders. Every little detail helps your world jump out of the game and feel real.
Trick Five: Plan Ahead
"The letter is initialed 'MG' and sealed with a small picture of a bird."
DMing by the seat of your pants and throwing together each encounter the day of your meetings is certainly a viable strategy if you don't have a lot of free time. To make your campaign great, keep a long term plan in mind. Your villain will make a much greater impact if you've been dropping hints about them for the past few meetings. When your party puts together the pieces you've been dropping, they will feel like they've accomplished something.
Tricking Out: Leaving written orders for the party to find is an easy way to lay groundwork for latter events. There are a ton of others ways, including cryptic warnings from the village soothsayer or identical methods in a series of crimes. You might consider an elaborate prophecy in which the players are important figures or just a series of enemies with identical tattoos. However you do it, this sort of planning ahead gives your players something to think about and look forward to as your adventure unfolds.
No comments:
Post a Comment