How to be a Good DM
I discussed how to be a good player in 5e Dungeons & Dragons, well there is also the matter of how to be a good DM. All the issues at the table are not all of the players’ faults. Take time to work on being a better DM to take your adventures and campaigns to new heights. Here are my thoughts in no particular order.
Give Details
The players are limited in their view of the adventure that you are running to the information that you give them. Be prepared with descriptions of people, places, and things; use descriptions that have at least two of the five senses; have handouts ready to give out; draw or find pictures to show to the players; be generous with your answers to questions. Engage with your players to get the most out of NPC interactions. You don’t have to have great voice acting skills to give each of your NPCs interesting oddities to make them stand out. Give NPCs catchphrases or personality quirks to differentiate them. I had an NPC merchant who really liked one of the PC’s pets and kept offering to buy the animal, which was a small thing to make him distinctive.
Be flexible
Even the best-laid plans go awry. You can set up a plot hook that is spotlighted with signs saying “Fun Plot Hook” and your players will walk past it like there was nothing there. Have a plan for the next step or figure out a way to circle the characters back so that they end up on the path you’ve prepared.
Don’t Take it Personally
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your monsters are going to die. The players are going to sweep through your carefully crafted dungeon and wreck everything. The players are going to best your clever NPCs. Your puzzles with be solved and your intricate plots thwarted. This is not an attack on you. It is because your players are invested and are trying to complete the tasks laid before them. It is not a competition between you and the players, it is the players and you crafting a story that you will be talking about for years.
Say No
Don’t be afraid to say no to a player’s request. Not every monster in the Monster Manual can be made into a player character. The campaign you are running has certain limitations to what the players can design for their characters. Make sure that your players buy into your campaign before you force them into something that they do not want to play.
Say Yes
The request may break one of the rules, but the player has a good sound reason to want to make the change then say yes to them. Especially if the player is asking for something that makes sense with their character. In my Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign, the player that created Dwaine wanted their character to be hiding as a young boy despite being a nearly eight-foot-tall goliath. The player asked if they could use the Mask of Many Faces invocation to make this happen. I decided to have it work more like the Seeming spell, but Dwaine could only make himself look like the human boy version of himself. Sometimes rules are made to be broken
Listen to Your Players
You want your players to be engaged and interested in the story, then make sure to add elements that they ask for. If they want to fight a dragon, then craft a storyline that will have the characters confronting one (whether or not they regret the request is up to them).
Do Not Have the Adventure Hinge on the Party Finding a Secret Door
Your adventure will need several access points to let it progress. If a single failed search for a clue stalls the progress of your adventure, then you need to do some reworking. Something like a secret door should be a short-cut or give access to something extra for the characters to find not be the crux of the adventure. This applies to more than secret doors.
Be Prepared to be Disappointed
Sometimes adventures don’t go as planned and die rolls go the wrong way, be ready to be disappointed. I had a bad guy that, due to circumstances, was only going to get one chance to have a memorable moment in a fight and proceed to roll a 3, 4, and 5 on its multiple attacks. The monster never had a chance to knock the barbarian off the top floor of the lighthouse with its force beams. I have never been so disappointed in the roll of the dice as that one. I tried not to let that ruin the rest of the session, but it is a chance that I regret (that is the disadvantage to rolling your dice where the players can see them).
Be Prepared to Give Multiple Clues
I have had instances where the players solve the mystery based on the first clue that they find and other times where I have to keep providing clue after clue and the players still can’t figure out what to do.
Know the Rules (or at Least Know Where to Find the Answers)
You may not have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game (some of you do and I envy you), but know what you know you will need to know. If your adventure is going to be on the water then understand how underwater combat works, who has a swim speed, what a swim speed means, and the rules for drowning. Inevitably a player will ask to do something you are not prepared for then either make a quick ruling or look it up.
Connect Your Players’ Characters to the Campaign
Encounters are more interesting when you involve the characters’ backstories into them. I have run Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh as a one-off and as part of a campaign. The assault on the Sea Ghost was much more interesting in the campaign when it was discovered that one of the character’s brothers was part of the crew. The party had to figure out how to keep the brother alive while also taking over the ship.
Do Not Punish Your Players, but Do Not Let the Players Off the Hook
Players are going to make dumb decisions. Do not punish them for their mistake or let them off the hook. Let the situation play out as it would without making it easier or harder. If the players spread themselves out and engage too many enemies at once then let them figure out their mistake. Dumb decisions have their consequences without you as DM adding to the fallout. The players should learn from their failures. If you nerf the consequences then the players will keep making dumb mistakes. If you punish them beyond what the circumstances warrant then you will cow them and make them afraid to do anything. Keep your response balanced.
Do A Session Zero
Session Zero is especially good for new players. This gives you and veteran players a chance to help new players to create their characters. I tell every player that their character must have one connection to another player’s character. It is also good to break this rule every once and a while so that you can run a campaign that throws the characters together by chance rather than having them all connected.
Do the Work to Get Buy-In
If your players respond well to pictures then either draw like crazy or search the internet for pictures to use. Have maps of the area, details about NPCs, information about the pantheon, and details about the world. You cannot expect your players to get excited about a rough idea in your head, they need details. If you do the heavy lifting at the beginning then good players will respond in kind.
I have written Player’s Guides for some of the published campaigns, feel free to copy them verbatim or modify them for the campaign you want to run. Here are links to them:
What advice would you give how on to be a good DM? Leave a comment below.
