I want to try DM-ing, but am not so hot at improvising. How do I go about getting better?

I want to try DM-ing, but am not so hot at improvising. How do I go about getting better?

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Experience.

Take an improv class.

Experience.

No one is good at GMing their first few gos. Some are better than others, but there's tricks and tips you can really only find on your own through error.

Practice. Come up with a plotline, google some random plot twist or random event generators, practice adapting what they give you.

GMs usually make things easier on themselves by having a stash of generic stat templates and maps at hand, too. You can add them into a game on the fly, adding whatever details are needed on top to make them relevant.

Confidence is also a big part. If you think your first thought is bad, just commit to it regardless. When you start to doubt your choices and doubling back on them, things start collapsing on themselves.

The rest is just experience with the system, with pacing, and with storytelling. A lot of trial and error.

And remember that a callback almost always makes players think you know what you're doing.

>Confidence is also a big part. If you think your first thought is bad, just commit to it regardless. When you start to doubt your choices and doubling back on them, things start collapsing on themselves.

That's true if you end up in a doubt spiral, but having second thoughts and deciding to go another way isn't automatically bad. Especially if you're improvising anyway.

Practice. Or bring a list of semi-random ideas with you to look at behind the GM screen if something surprises you. Don't rely on it or else you'll ruin any """""""""realism""""""""' your game has.

...so a bad improvisation is better than no improvisation?

That really depends how bad the improvization is.

One thing I forgot: you can be vague as a GM and you'll be surprised at how many ideas the players give you while they're speculating about what's going on (assuming, that is, they're the kinds of players who are actually engaged, and not fatbeard mouthbreathers with netbuilt characters planned out to level 20 who show up to sessions purely to roll dice and fart).

Experience, but remember that you can take small steps on it.

Don't prepare -everything- for a session, and in the instant it comes up, try to tie it up with the plot as it comes. At first don't prepare a handful of characters, maybe how a monster will make an appearance, etc.

Soon enough you'll join the "I have nothing ready but let's play anyway and make shit on the fly lol" club.

Definitely
If you can go with the flow of the game, even a little bit, rather than rejecting it and following your set story the game will become much more enjoyable for everyone.

Some advice I can give is to plot an overarching story with a beginning, middle and end without much planning of the inbetweens. It can be as simple as...
Beginning: "Help, we are a mining village and our only source of income has been overrun by goblins, help us"
Middle: "Oh wow, we're deep in the mine and it turns out that the goblins we were fighting were mind controlled by an evil warlock guy"
End: Fight the warlock

It doesn't have to be grand and epic, and should only last a few sessions. Let the players fill in the blanks themselves, maybe they go back after discovering the existence of the warlock to ask for more help? As DM you need to go with the flow.

>Soon enough you'll join the "I have nothing ready but let's play anyway and make shit on the fly lol" club.

Shit, that's how I've run my first session DMing. Worked well so far, but I'm also known in my group for being good at making things up on the fly.

>fatbeard mouthbreathers with netbuilt characters planned out to level 20 who show up to sessions purely to roll dice and fart

I left a group because that was what most of the people were. Couldn't handle it.

Everything this guy said is probably the most important piece of this thread. Have a basic story. Hell, come up with a few possibilities and let your players pick the plot hook they want to latch onto hardest. Keeps them from feeling railroaded if you give several options from the beginning and let them come to a solution on their own.

Anyway, remember most of all: People are playing a game, and they want to have a good time. That includes you. Just do what both you and your players enjoy and, if they're good people, they'll understand that you're still new to this and work with you.

Simplify.

Think of it as a table with no more than 5 items that changes for every situation.

>Tavern
Innkeeper
Barmaid
Patrons
Traveler
Dog

>Shop/stall
Vendor
Customer
Thief
Guard
Messenger

>Dungeon
Stairs
Ladder
Chute
Drop
Crawlway

>Dragon's den
Coins
Gems
Jewels
Weapons
Amour

>Witch burning
Witch
Leader
Henchmen
Mob
Witch's family

>White House situation room
President
Chief of Staff
General
Guard
Soldier live on screen

This works for the same place...

>Museum (open to public)
Guard
Curator
Class trip
Senior couple
Janitor

>Museum (gala)
Mayor
Board of trustees
Curator
Debutante fatale
Reporter

>Museum (night)
Watchman
Rats
Loud trash can in the dark
Noises in the air ducts
Glowing red eyes of the thermostat

>Museum (on fire)
Panicked guard
Alarms too loud to understand much
Collapsing exhibition piece
Smoke getting more dense
Fire extinguisher (small)

Three things you need
Roll tables
Roll tables
Roll tables

Where does one find these mythical things?

Honestly roleplaying games are probably the best way to teach improv. I don't think there is any other activity in which you are required to coordinate a group of 3-5 people who are almost guaranteed to disregard 50%+ of your prep work every session

donjon.bin.sh

the new 5e DMG came out with a tone of non-edition specific roletables. There are rolltables for:
Multiple themes of dungeons and everything therein, campaign and world building ideas, encounters and complication events, twists to the plot, they even have rolltables for random bits of clutter to find in rooms. All of them nicely organized and categorized.

I recommend the book to anyone trying to learn how to GM, regardless of system.

Fucking amazing. Thanks to the both of you.

I had a DM that did a lot of really just generally stupid things that really didn't fit with the tone nor the setting. In the end we stopped caring about the world he was building. Bad improvising can also be really really bad for the game regardless.

Here's the question though. on a game to game basis, did you have fun? did you laugh? chuckle? bust out a retarded grin?

If the answer to any of those is yes, he may have sucked at improv but he did his job as a DM.

I love the guy don't get me wrong, but I would probably not participate in a campaign he's running. He's fine as a player though.

I'm assuming you don't want to be a shitty GM to be a passable GM, or take improv classes:

Get your hands on Dresden Files Fate books, their set up for GMs I find to be very instructive. The city building the faces, etc.

After that? Write and read stories. Actully head over to a web forum and read a quest. See GMing in action.

Write, build your world up. Shit doesn't just happen around the heroes, maybe the countries are going to war, how will that effect the price of tea in china?

Good advice

I'd recommend checking out some of these articles.

gnomestew.com/top-30-game-mastering-articles/

Check out the lazy dungeon master by sly flourish, he gives some good pointers on prepping for improv. Such as giving your npcs goals and knowing how they want to achieve them instead of a prewriting a script.

Also no one says you have to improvise the whole thing the first time around, just make a simple dungeon crawl, that way you don't have to improvise as much, since it's fairly straight forward. Give the players some decisions along the way and you're set.

This.