Do you have any GM prep tips for a beginner GM?

This thread is full of solid advice, I'll add my two cents.

I try to keep prep time as low as possible, because I realized that my players give me more than enough to work with at the table. But it took me a long time to get there, so don't be afraid to start out with things a bit more codified.
I generally prepare a very basic outline of what I want to do, and sketch out the opening scene and maybe a couple more things down the road. The rest comes from the table. Most of my prep time is reading up stuff about the setting (I usually run modern-day stuff or alt-history), so that I have bases to improvise with, and preparing handouts like maps or letters and so on - but this is my personal way to do things and I didn't ever play with a GM who did the same.
Don't be afraid to steal. I often pick interesting premade scenarios, disassemble them and make them their own. Usually they are not for the game I am running. Other times I do the same with books or TV shows. Again, this is more to get a basic outline and a few key points, not to run them out of the book.
The game you play makes a lot of difference. If you're doing D&D, you can keep a very basic endpoint but you need some time to set up the stats for the fights. If you run an investigation game, you need to know a few more things about the plot but probably not so much for combat. So pay attention to that.
Talk a lot to your players. Debrief them after games, ask questions. Saying yes is a good advice, but if you need to put down your foot do so. Find a pace that suits you, but try experimenting with new approaches from time to time.

>How much to prepare, how much to leave vague?
The more you know the setting the less you need to prepare
Try to stay a few steps ahead
>Should I prepare "moments" or "elements"?
Plan what
Plan how
Do not plan when or where
>When's the right time to hook players into a linear thing, and when is it better to leave things open?
I mean any quest/mission will be inherently linear in that there's a goal, and a means of getting it. You really shouldn't go more linear than that. Never plan a single solution to an encounter. Don't go too open though. You'll want to establish some goal. You're new, don't try to run open world. You need time to learn how to improvise and literally the perfect group that are all on the same page for that to have any chance of working. Offer enough freedom just short of causing the pcs to bluescreen, then have a plan to jump start the action if they do
>What do I do if I'm not planning to do combat but players get into a combat scenario, but the appropriate manual isn't available?
In any system actually worth its salt stats are intuitive, so long as they aren't fighting something insane you should be able to just go "Ok system set's human average to X, so this guy has X+1" If fighting something insane and unable to be benchmarked shouldn't come out of left field
>What do I do when players rush into something I didn't prepare for, like say, I expected them to wait a few days before hitting the road but they hit it off immediately?
Throw a minor intermediary encounter there way. You should always have a few ideas for minor encounters floating around in your head, pick from the most easy to blend into the flow of the game
I'm talking everything from the bridge is out, to oh hey a traveling merchant's cart broke an axle, bandits if you're lazy, mix it up
>How much backstory involvement should there be at a time, per character?
However much makes sense, if you get good backstory hooks you'll just know when it's time

Yes.

A bump for posterity

>thread with actual decent GMing tips
>less than 20 replies
>babby's first troll -4 Str thread
>racing towards bump limit

Veeky Forums is hopeless.

>babby's first troll -4 Str thread
Literally a continuation of another thread, so clearly it's babby's second.

Thanks for the much needed specification.

I'm hear to help.

>check the catalog the other day
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>D&D/Pathfinder is bad and here's why #82407

Veeky Forums hasn't been the same lately

Learn to improvise. No matter how much you prepare there *will* be something you aren't prepared for.

Make a list of a couple dozen names if you're bad with coming up with them on the fly. I am. I have a couple of lists for individuals, one for bars or similar, and one for cities or towns.

The rest is all down to personal preference and style. You haven't learned yours yet or developed one. The only way to figure those things out is to study, not just ask questions of someone else, but study what they actually do and to try different things and find out what works for you. Then practice what works to get good at it.

...

youtube.com/watch?v=5PSsiSdnrys

I wouldn't say 99%, but this is a great GMing trick I use a lot. Toss out plot hooks and ideas with a vague idea of how they connect, but listen to your players. The theories they come up with will often be way better than your ideas. Of course, you twist them a bit to make them not be entirely right, which makes the discovery more fun and tense when it does happen.

I think the most important bit of advice is this:

No matter how well you write your "story", that won't be what the players remember.
The players talk about what they did, not what happened to them.

Avoid Railroading. Prepare the world, prepare characters, prepare a hook. Then let the players choose how to deal with everything.

If you did a decent job with the NPCs the story will come by itself. The NPCs will react to the player's actions accordingly and thus a story will develop.

Why is emaupm so comfy

fuck, you're new, you're asking something akin to "how hard do I push down the pedal on the bike" or "how much air should be in my lungs if I want to swim". In a way, these questions are really hard to answer because, even if we were all there, we overcame these questions personally and can't really give good advice here.

I warmly recommend just going straight in and getting stuck in with your boys, playing sub-par D&D/whatever system; slowly you'll learn and in a year (or 5 if you're slow) you'll be able to craft a good experience at the table.
Listen to too; filter out any advice that seems fucky. Then again, there might be good advice that just won't apply to you because your style and mine/someone else's style are very different.

What you will have to do is read a lot of GM books (other systems, all d&d editions, lazy DM, etc.) and run a lot of games (friends, strangers, family). You'll learn, just like you learned how to swim and bike (presumably).

Here's my attempt to answer your questions, it's very subjective and might not work for you at all.

>How much to prepare, how much to leave vague?
30/70 prep/vague if you've faith in yourself that you can bullshit well and have a good story in mind, 10/90 to vague if you're playing simple nostory games like pen-n-paper diablo, 80-20 to story if you've very story-heavy invested players that deserve your preptime.

>Should I prepare "moments" or "elements"?
No, moments come out naturally. What are elements to you?

>When's the right time to hook players into a linear thing, and when is it better to leave things open?
Whenever the players have no idea what to do, throw them a hook. If they bite, good, run that. If they don't, o well throw an another one. Be sure to react in a way that the setting/world realistically reacts. Slap a king? Jailtime and execution. Slap a guard? jailtime and other guards hate you. Slap a peasant? Get slapped back or threatened or asked to please stop. Slap a dragon? Instantly killed. Slap a dwarf? 300 years later he launches grandiose attacks on your grandchildren.
Know how your world works and you won't ever be caught with your pants down; the player characters can attempt to do anything you're here to dish out the consequences.

>What do I do if I'm not planning to do combat but players get into a combat scenario, but the appropriate manual isn't available?
Wing it. If you're new, there's a big statted NPC block in the GM's guide with "Guard, Thief, Judge, King, Peasant, Blacksmith"; in case the players attempt to attack any of these. If you have a monster on the field, know its stats in case the players wanna kill it. This will take experience, and until then, do not be ashamed to stop the game for a minute or two while you google the stats. Have the creature react in the most reasonable way to you.

>What do I do when players rush into something I didn't prepare for, like say, I expected them to wait a few days before hitting the road but they hit it off immediately?
This is a very open ended question that's hard to answer.
You can do 3 things.
1. You let them do it and quickly reorganize yourself. If you need some time, you can either take a bathroom/smoke break to do it over, or tell them you'll need 10 minutes "loading time" and they'll agree, they know you're human, not a video game.
2. You can tell them in real life, that you expected and made things that are interesting in the town. This might ruin their experience a bit (some people are really sensitive here and it's not a bad thing, they just have a different set of standards to me), but they'll generally listen to you and stay in town to experience what you've made. Players don't like missing content and they don't like not having you enjoy your time with them, so they'll almost always humor any your request.
3. Let them do it but wing it 100%; this is for experienced GMs only that can craft shit on the fly.

>How much backstory involvement should there be at a time, per character?
This is extremely subjective. In a dungeon crawl, 0.
Depends on what kind of game you run; if it's a story based shonen-kinda game where your boys go and tackle greater and greater beasts, there should be little backstory for cheap drama, like mentors getting killed or family kidnapped. If you have a story-heavy campaign that was made with the player characters in mind (every hometown they came from was included and made) you're going to be more careful and spring more "your long lost friend from Fuckville came over pleading that you help him hide" or "your parents need extra hands on the farm or they won't make it through the winter, have any friends?".

You should strive to give everyone an equal amount of spotlight, concerning backstory too.

>How much to prepare, how much to leave vague?
It's not a matter how much, it's knowing what's worth preparing. The world absolutely is. NPCs can be, but make sure you introduce them in a way that makes them inherently and IMMEDIATELY interesting. Also recognize that players won't always find the same things interesting as you. Sometimes they'll become obsessed with minor throwaway details, sometimes they'll be totally uninterested in the central premise of the world. Throw things at the wall, and build the game around what sticks.
>Should I prepare "moments" or "elements"?
"Moments" can be good so long as they're not overused, don't feel forced or contrived, serve a greater purpose, and are actual moments instead of boring drawn out scenes. Which is to say, avoid them unless you're really sure it's a good idea. What do you mean by elements?
>When's the right time to hook players into a linear thing, and when is it better to leave things open?
People here complain way too much about linearity. Linear sections are fine, so long as the players don't feel like they're being forced into making the choices you want them to. Making the bandit hideout a series of sequential combat encounters is fine, so long as busting up the bandit hideout is what the players actually want. It's ok to force a situation on the party, but play fair. If they can give their kidnappers a compelling reason to let them go, let them go free. If they find a way to melt a hole in the stone wall of their cell, don't suddenly claim there's magic everything-proof metal underneath the stone.

Cont.

>What do I do if I'm not planning to do combat but players get into a combat scenario, but the appropriate manual isn't available?
>What do I do when players rush into something I didn't prepare for, like say, I expected them to wait a few days before hitting the road but they hit it off immediately?
Recognize that things like this are literally always a possibility. Prepare, don't plan. Think of possible outcomes to situations, not detailed
>How much backstory involvement should there be at a time, per character?
What do you mean by backstory involvement?

Bump, because this thread has been good so far and I'm hoping for more contributions.

DO plan when and where because if the players don't know where to go they'll just wander around. If they don't know that there's a deadline, they will just joke around for days on end and constantly rest for each little bit of HP that they lost.

Try not to put too much work in what you think is a good NPC; odds are the players won't give a shit about them and will instead try and befriend the tavern's chef and no one else

I know you did it on purpose, but god dammit, you got me, user. It's "here", not "hear", in this context.

For the general idea of story events no.
Make up where and when right before they're there.
Island style gming or whatever the kids are calling it now.

Well alright, but I had too many moments where I threw hints and hooks at the players and they were just clueless. So when I blatantly told them what to do, where, when it needs to be done, and why, they just did it. I don't care how they will solve it, as long as they fucking do something.

>How much to prepare, how much to leave vague?
Depends on your style. I prep broad strokes and characters, roughly what's going on in the world around the players; improvise the rest.

>Should I prepare "moments" or "elements"?
I'm not sure what those are, but they probably depend on your style.

>When's the right time to hook players into a linear thing, and when is it better to leave things open?
Depends on your style. And also your players. I'd say early on you want a more linear adventure for the players to get into the game/world/characters and figure out their motivations, then open up to whatever extent they're comfortable with.

>What do I do if I'm not planning to do combat but players get into a combat scenario, but the appropriate manual isn't available?
Improvise. Have a few probable encounters on hand and recycle the ones that you don't end up using. Have a general idea of what they may want to fight.

>What do I do when players rush into something I didn't prepare for, like say, I expected them to wait a few days before hitting the road but they hit it off immediately?
Improvise. If you have a general idea of the situation in the world rather than a fixed script and timeline, it shouldn't be too hard. Try to turn the attention towards party interaction, involve PCs background and so on to buy yourself some time. Having a few encounters prepared that can go anywhere in the campaign and may or may not be related to the central story is a good idea if you prefer this kind of preparation and hit a stall.

>How much backstory involvement should there be at a time, per character?
Not sure what you mean again. Can you clarify, please?

Now see you're looking at a lack of direction. Giving the pcs a goal is something I mention several times in my original post.

What I mean by when and where is the specific details. If you plan in your gm notes for there to be a plague outbreak on tuesday at 9pm, at these specific geographic coordinates, then you've restricted your game way to much. What if the players don't go there? What if they missed the prompts to find out about it in the first place?

Instead what you do is say whoops, you know town X that you just arrived at? Totally outbroken in plague like 5 days ago. The where is "wherever the players are going", and the when is "whenever makes sense.

By all means give pcs time constraints, and goals. That's a different thing entirely. (but seriously time constraints are one of the easiest forms of tension to throw into a game, always make use of them if you can).

well shit i've fucked up then

man everyone made up some crazy-ass shit but i never really corrected them, if only to then laugh later on, when i remembered all of that

Tell your players that you're new to GMing and ask them nicely to try and not do anything too strange that will throw you off. If they're not dicks, they'll understand and won't make things harder than they need to be.

First, find more experienced GMs and play in their games for a bit. Watch what they do, and try to get a feel for what it takes to run a game. If you've already done that, and feel like you're ready but just need a few pointers...

>How much to prepare?

It's done when it's done. I've whipped up games in hours, days, or even weeks.

>When's the right time to hook players into a linear thing, and when is it better to leave things open?

You'll know it when you see it. They'll be focused on something and not trying to book passage to somewhere you have no material for.

>>What do I do if I'm not planning to do combat but players get into a combat scenario, but the appropriate manual isn't available?

I'm going to go against the grain of a lot of the advice you've gotten on this and say, "Don't even run that encounter". The players shouldn't run into anything you don't have material prepared for (manuals or otherwise). Stick to what you know.

Winging it is a valuable skill and the sooner you learn it the better. Your players will always find ways to make things go haywire and you won't have all night to think about it. You'll be lucky to have a piss-break long enough to think about it. But the more familiar you are with the rules and the setting, the easier winging it will be. That familiarity will only come with time. Until then, you can keep things simple.

>What do I do when players rush into something I didn't prepare for, like say, I expected them to wait a few days before hitting the road but they hit it off immediately?

Every GM has to deal with this sooner or later. Drop them into roughly the center of your prepared material, and spread it out in a circle, so they can't get too far without running into something you're ready for. If they push past that, make some adjustments: that village to the north is now that village to the south. That's why pencils have erasers.

Focus on getting as good at improv as possible. Learning to prep is good, but not as important. There's a point at which prep gets in the way of the game, not so for improv.

sauce?

What's a good way to improve improv skills, besides practice at the table?

What I like to do to hone my GMing skills from time to time is playing Everyone is John, but not always using the same context, to try out different scenarios, but the chance to play hardly ever shows up.

Try googling "improv practice"

Play a game of Fiasco.

>how much to prepare
I prefer to just make a world where there are many possibilities, then just let the party chase whatever they fancy. Some prefer a specific quest, and it's best to take "EXPECTATION" into consideration.
Prepare to be unprepared, no matter how much you've readied.

>should i prepare moments or elements
Possibly. If you do, then I'd say it's best to avoid forcing these moments. Don't jump the gun. Allow them to happen naturally within the context of the story.

>when's the right time to hook players into a linear thing
Have many hooks that don't even look like hooks. It could be simple as a book with stories, overhearing something subtle, or possibly just a picture on a "Wanted" poster. When they're ready, they'll hook themselves.

>what to do if i'm not planning combat but they do combat
>what do i do when players do something i dont expect
Improvise.
Prepare to be unprepared. Not to be confused with overpreparing yourself. Improvisation is a skill you'll learn only by doing, and it's the best skill a DM can have. You'll find that the best DMs don't have their campaigns carved in stone.

>how much backstory involvement should there be at a time
Read the room and assess it yourself based on who you're playing with.

I didn't need anything other than paper/pencil/dice once I discovered the key to interactive storytelling. Improvisation is your best ally, but it's not the key.

tl;dr:
I've DM'd for 9 years. If you wanna learn to swim, you have to get in the water first.

Great thread. My advice is to do what every DM does: bullshit and bluff about choice and freedom, then vomit out some hackneyed encounters so they can have their shiny dog treats and XP points.

Hide The Rails™ and Pretend It's A Rollercoaster™

He do me a favor bud. Take your trendy cynicism and hang it up in a motel bathroom around your neck.

Friend, don't you think we should be giving our new DM since advice he can actually use?

That's what we all did in this thread, before you came here to show off your edge.

Don't feed the troll

Okay I'll give the positive version.

Give your players unlimited freedom and choice. Present them with a wide world of possibility, knowing that you have certain vague notions of what you'll present them when it comes time. Never tip your hand early if you can help it! Don't get cornered into telling them exact information ahead of time, but rather, allow them to remain as ignorant as possible so that they cannot deny the veracity of whatever you present.

Try not to revisit locations, because this presents questions of logistics and development over time. Wrap up everything and give them a path forward so they aren't tempted to go back.

Use emotional appeals to focus them on whatever you would prefer. Have things just suddenly happen, escalate, and connect together to weave a web of causality. Lure them deeper into it with the prospect of treasure, insight, or greatness.

Create hints and prophecies so vague and ominous that you can enact them at any time, exciting them in moments of doubt when they may wonder what to do next.

I am an adlibber, this has served me well as time progresses, the chance that Players will throw you through a loop approaches 1.

It will always happen, eventually. The time span that eventually encompasses depends on the players.

To that end I suggest fleshing out the world they will be playing in.

Countries, terrain, major factions, cities.

Make a few towns; defences, local constablry, crime, leading families, dark secrets, problems, personalities.

Then take them apart for parts so you can string together 'original' towns at need.

Make a rough timeline (are they going to go to war? Famine? etc) Having this in mind will enable you to drop hints earlier along in subtle ways.

Personally, I have fun when all of my players are having fun. It may suck that the tone, plot, and theme of the adventure didn’t go your way, but if the whole party is having a blast and can’t wait for the next session then you’re doing it right.

I blame the faggots doing literally nothing but complaining about dnd

>tell the players you're fudging a combat encounter
DON'T do this. Just make shit up, they literally won't know the difference

I think that, in the end, the crucial piece of advice is to be ready for when things go sideways.

I pitched a Hunter the Vigil game to my players. The idea was to start the campaign with a short introductory mystery and then go on to exploring the city more freely.
For that I had adapted a few things from an Unknown Armies scenario, with a bunch of extra stuff to play the "regular folks gradually discovering the World of Darkness" angle.
I had planned two sessions for that. It took us a dozen, and close to six months in game time; then I wrapped up the game for "season 1".
I didn't have to do much more than putting forward an interesting NPC or bit of trivia. The players did all the rest.

Depending of course on the style of game you *and* your players want to play I would offer the following advice:

>>How much to prepare, how much to leave vague?
Geography: High degree of prep. You want to be able to tell your players what's in their vicinity with reliability, no matter which road they take while also remaining consistent. Of course, the further you get from their location the more vague you can be...
People/creatures: This can be more vague. A useful thing to do is have a list of stock NPC names and occupations that you can paste in on the fly. Obviously quest specific monsters/npcs should be prepped before hand, but it's best to not get bogged down in details until you know for sure your players are going to meet them. For monsters, I always like to have a brief reference of things in whatever area the NPCs have decided to investigate, of varying power levels, so that I can tweak things on the fly if encounters are proving too easy or hard

>>Should I prepare "moments" or "elements"?
I wouldn't, at least not to start.

>>When's the right time to hook players into a linear thing, and when is it better to leave things open?
Let the players hook themselves into linear things - For example if the players choose to investigate some caves, that's pretty linear once inside. If the players commit to doing something for an NPC, that can be made linear with a time limit. Just make sure the players know there is a time limit

>>What do I do if I'm not planning to do combat but players get into a combat scenario, but the appropriate manual isn't available?
While players will always do the unexpected, there shouldn't ever arise a situation where they fight something you don't have stats for. You don't have stats for it? They don't meet it

>>What do I do when players rush into something
Roll with it. If it's a dangerous situation, warn them that it might be perilous to rush in though.

Above all, remember it's your world, their story

>Only things that are 100% crucial to the plot
See this is what gets me. I'm writing up a setting for the first time I'm going to DM and I was under the impression you shouldn't have a plot.
What I'm doing is creating major characters, the factions they belong to, their goals/behaviors and then let the players decide what to do. Of course I'm going to take their backstory to provide some initial push.
But is it normal to have a plot planned for a campaign rather than just "whatever happens, happens. Go nuts!"

It's a balancing act that very much depends on your preferred playstyle and your group.

Personally, I'll always have some idea in mind for something significant occurring in the setting. Some chain of events that will unfold over time and affect the status quo. That doesn't necessarily mean the PC's have to interact with it, but they will be affected by it in one way or another.

Some groups prefer much more linear, focused stories, with the players mostly following the GM's lead, while others prefer pure sandboxes with no implicit direction. But there's a huge amount of space in between for blends of the two, focusing on particular aspects or downplaying others, etc etc.

I like this approach.

This is a way to do it, but "plot" is not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, it's a spectrum.
I run mostly investigative horror games, they necessarily need plot. My players have all the freedom they want, and I wouldn't make a fuss if they decided to follow a different direction, but there's at least a framework I set up before beginning.

Yes its pretty normal to have a plot. Look at plot point campaigns, and other pre-written material.
Though generally that plot should be adjusted to the players before they really interact with it so that it might better suit the game and it's players.

If you do "whatever happens happens" you'll get one of two things. A mediocre slow burner that nobody will talk about a year later because nothing really happened, or eventually a plot.

just be urself

Anyone got latest version of Tracks in sand?