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Hello everyone! I am starting a new campaign with some buds, and I am the DM. I wanted to know if anyone has DMed and can give me tips, or if they are long time players, and can give me some advice on what they expect on a DM. mrgreen

Thanks again!
IdSquid (the very best illithid)

1) Two Skill Encounters: These are creatures or obstacles that can be defeated by stealth or skill, such as guards, castle walls, cliffs, informants, or low-hp creatures that can fall to a single sneak attack.

2) Four Pure Combats: You need some no-negotiation, straight-up combats that play to the fighter classes. Think orcs, wolves, ogres, giants -- or dragons. Consider tactics first here: ambushes, charge, bull-rush, something to make it more than just attack rolls and damage rolls.

3) Two Magical Challenges: Include two magical challenges that require a knock, a fireball, or whatever other strengths your arcane spellcasters have. They might be lore-based challenges, such as knowing the weaknesses of an extraplanar creature, or they might require the use of Concentration or Spellcraft to manipulate a magical object or unravel a mysterious warding.

4) One Divine Challenge: The divine caster in the party is more than just a medic, so give him or her something to do with at least one undead turning, Knowledge (Religion), or nature-knowledge encounter (if your divine caster is a druid).

5) One Puzzle or Trap: This could be as simple as finding the key to a tough lock, deciphering an ancient script, or finding a secret door with Search, but you should include traps and puzzles for your party to solve. If the party doesn't have a rogue in it, use Knowledge skill checks as a substitute.

6) Two Roleplaying Encounters: Social skills play an important part of the game too, and bards don't like to just sit and do their stuff in the background. Provide at least two roleplaying encounters that can be defeated by the right social skills, bribes, exchange of services, or clever conversation. Examples include a scholar with a clue that the party needs to bypass some defenses or wardings, or a devil who will ally with them against a common foe.

7) One Mook Encounter: This should be against foes of at least 2 CR less than the party, and ideally 3 or 4 less. Think kobolds, bandits, skeletons, wild animals, or any other group of many foes that play to Cleave and area-effect spells. It's fun to see heroes cutting a swath through hordes of foes.

cool One Polder: "Polder" is a Dutch word describing land reclaimed from the sea, but here it's a more general term. As described in detail in Dungeon 135, polders are safe havens for adventurers, places where the party can regain strength. Think Rivendell in Lord of the Rings. Your polder could be a xenophobic elven tree city, a magical rope that generates rope trick spells as a charged item, a bound archon who wards a treasure, or a dwarven merchant caravan. If the party wishes, they can heal up to full strength and level up.

9) One Bigger Fish: To keep the blood flowing, you should have one overwhelming encounter that the party can't handle without serious risk of a total party kill. This could turn into a roleplaying bit of Diplomacy, a chase, or a stealth challenge, depending on how the party handles it -- but they should see that not every encounter in every adventure should be fought.

10) Big Finish: A grand finale encounter with all the trimmings: villain, minions, and a room or terrain that provides interesting combat options.

-all taken from the official dnd website. domokun

If you want a change of pace, DM. You'll learn a lot about how dependant the party is on your character if you remove him. You also can keep the story going as long as you want. It just depends on your DMing style.

Hmm, this seems to be the general DM thread now.

What works for me, is I have a general motivation for my NPCs and a few stat'd character sheets available for them to use should my players decide to stab the shopkeeper... and let my players figure out the rest. They're smart, they think a conspiracy's goin' on, listen to their evidence and BAM, all those inconsistencies I made due to my lack of planning suddenly are part of a bigger picture. Then I add some twists to the end so they don't think I stole their ideas completely.

But that's a bit extreme. The thing I would suggest you do if you aren't comfortable trying to keep what you've made up one step ahead of the players is just pay attention to what parts they like, and write more of those parts in. Some players like to kill kill kill so give them mobs of goons. Or if they've got cleave/area of effect attacks a mob of goons with a tough boss. Some love to hear themselves talk so give them a chance to negotiate with the people giving them jobs/intelligent enemies who may be persuaded to help, and get them to put ranks in diplomacy to reflect that.

I mean to say, let the players do some of the work of flavoring your game. For instance, have them decide how the party met during character creation. Listen in and take note of hooks to get the characters together.

Keep in mind that no matter how cool you make the NPCs, the players are the stars, so if the NPCs are holding off the horde while the casters are casting a huge ritual of plot, then don't bother rolling for NPCs, they just hold out long enough that the non-caster players don't feel useless. Some DMs, and some adventure modules I've been run through, are like that.

Keep the party close to the 'wealth by level' guidelines in the DMG, in 3rd Edition magic items are easy to unbalance the game with. And it's worse to give someone a toy and break it than to give them a lesser toy. There's alot of cool stuff, but there's alot of cool stuff at 10th level too. Would you level someone 10 levels all at once? On that note, don't give the party a Deck of Many Things in a serious campaign.

I can rant. See me rant. Rant me rant!

i think that good DMing only happends when the DM plays for the entertainment of his players and for the entertainment of himself. if the players like to be great heroes, but you like the party to be hoplessly outmatched, then compensate by giving them a taste of power and make it seem like their heroics have earned them the right to have the hoplessly powerful foe. if your players like to have to think really hard, and you don't, then make everything so freaking obvious that they overthink, then do your reaserch to really fool them when they finally take the easy road, so that they'll go back to overthinking and you can go back to being an idiot. or if your players don't like to think and you do, waste all that extra thought on places and NPCs so that they still think it is all simple but really you plotted out every detail (this often dosn't work when the players want to play without a campaign, but for players who want the game spelled out for them, this is essentially fun for all involved).