Any tips and tricks for a beginner DM ?

I'm starting a small pen and paper with 4 other guys and i'm using a premade small campaign since both me and the players are new.

Problem is, i have never been a DM before.
I have played as a PC before though.

Does anyone have any general tips and tricks on how to be a good DM ?

How to keep the players on track of the main story.
How not to be too strict on their freedom.

Stuff like that

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reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/
draconick.com/
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>Does anyone have any general tips and tricks on how to be a good DM?
Give each NPC a simple motivation, just some simple (specific) thing they want but can't currently get, when they interact with the PCs they'll try and angle the situation towards getting that. Don't be afraid to ask players questions about stuff they'd like in the world.

Players generally do stay on track. Only the most obtuse of shitheads deliberately veer off track to do some other shit. Usually when players go off track it's because they've misidentified some irrelevant background thing as being really important and are wasting time investigating it, or are paranoid about something that's really a non-factor. When this happens you can rearrange your plans around what your players are doing, or give them hints that they're chasing a red herring (though players are notoriously bad and taking these hints).

There's a DMing concept called Quantum Ogres which is helpful, when used lightly. The basic idea is that a DM has designed an encounter of Ogres (it could be anything really, this time it's Ogres). The players are free to go where they want, but wherever they go, they'll run into those Ogres. It might be that the Ogre encounter will get modified a bit to fit the location, e.g it might be an Ogre street gang if the players went to a city, or if the players went into the desert instead of the city then it would be Ogre raiders wearing desert robes and headscarves. That's the simplest example of the concept. In practice it tends not to be whole encounters but key plot elements, like a herald coming to find the player party with a message from the monarch, or an ominous portent being seen by a local holy man, or news of some army of darkness gathering wherever, or some piece of evidence in a case the players are investigating turning up where the players are. Don't be afraid of doing this kind of thing even with premade campaigns.

Somewhat taboo here, but i'm going to link to a Reddit that's perfect for you. Lots of good advice here for newbie GM's.
reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/
>Also, i'll take this opportunity to shamelessly plug my blog, which might have some useful info as well, particularly on that "not being to strict on the freedom" thing
draconick.com/

Awesome feedback so far, thanks guys

1) Don't be an asshole
2) K.I.S.S.
3) Talk with your players

Literally nothing else is needed

Let each player have their "shining moment in the sun" something that only their character can do that has a big impact on the tide of the game. This shouldn't just come down to a die roll though, if one of them comes up with some wacky idea roleplay it out for them in a way that puts their character in the spotlight.

The absolute, most important thing you should do as a DM is know your party and know what they want and like. Whether you should stick to the rules or allow more freedom. If they want a serious campaign or something more humorous. If they want a brutal meatgrinder or a relaxed game.

Just keep in mind that everyone's supposed to be having fun and don't be afraid to call people out for disrupting the game in whatever way.

this. it's usually not that hard from when a player introduces their character to figure out what cool thing they're hoping that character gets to do, just give opportunities to do that

Wrong and stupid.

>reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/
Honestly, for all the shit Reddit gets from Veeky Forums, shit like this I love.

Your players are as nervous as you. Relax and don't panic if something doesn't goes as planned.

The best tool to "control" your players is to know their PC's personal goals. Use it as a carrot dangling in front their nose.

Some players don't like to be in the spotlight, don't push them. Sometimes people just like to listen to the story and roll a couple of dice. Nonetheless pay attention to these players.

End your sessions with a cliffhanger. People will comeback to you just to know how this cliffhanger resolves.

Some of these are going to be D&D-specific because a lot of my experience is with D&D.
>Keep a notebook. No, do it. Buy a spiral-bound notebook at staples or walmart, or even your FLGS (mine has some nicer ones for a dollar each and it's a nice way to support them). Keep it open during the session. Take notes. It's okay to pause the session for 60 seconds or so to scribble down notes.
>Keep track of in-game time. Note the date the campaign starts. When the characters do stuff or rest, keep track of the passage of time. Gygax may have been retarded on some stuff but he was right when he said that a campaign without accurate time records cannot hope to succeed.
>In D&D, don't have multiple deities. Have one major deity that almost everyone worships, and have a few niche deities (a god of death, a god of strength, a god of vengeance) but most people should worship the god of the sun, or the sky, or whatever the hell. Because it's stupid to have every city needing six different temples. If you want your clerics to be interesting and diverse, have them worship different saints that give access to different domains.
>Let the characters do stuff. Don't railroad them. Have a list of names ready to make up. Write down every NPC name on a sheet of paper (on the inside of your notebook cover is a nice place to keep track of them). Keep notes on all the shit you make up cause you won't remember it and you will be making up a lot of shit.
>Don't do "just world fallacy' shit. For example in a campaign I ran a character did something pretty fucked up to a captured NPC and some people advised me to have said NPC somehow become a revenant and attack them (this wasn't in D&D) or something of that sort, but I don't like the idea that just because you do something evil, you will have karmic justice come to you. It cheapens it for when it actually happens.

>Don't railroad. Don't be smug. Don't do that "lol I know the answers oh you did it the wrong way ok then fuck you". Don't try to teach your players shit, that isn't your job. Be impartial.
>Please for the love of god don't screech or try too hard to make monster noises. Especially if you are over the age of 20.
>Keep combat moving quickly. Give all monsters of the same kind the same initiative. Player summons monsters? They act on that players turn. End of story I don't give a fuck what the rules say. Same with any minions or any of that shit.
>Make sure to keep things on topic. Make sure you are focused. HOWEVER you can use off-topic banter in between scenes as a cover to scribble down some notes or maybe hurriedly come up with an NPC name / brief personality traits.
>don't let the players talk down to you on the lore, but also try to keep your world within the expectations of the game (if D&D). No one wants to join a game only to learn that "lol paladins don't exist they are all demon hunters from this homebrew class I made" or similar shit. Don't listen to faggots on Veeky Forums who call your world cliche. No one cares, and snowflake shit is honestly just as bad most of the time.
>Don't fudge dice. Just don't. It destroys the integrity of the game. Yes as the GM you are allowed to cheat. So are the players if you all agreed on it beforehand. In fact you didn't even need to use the rules if you didn't want to, so why is this even an argument? Just don't cheat or fudge unless you have a really, really good reason to do so.

>As the other user said, end every session with a cliffhanger. This doesn't mean "you are about to die lol roll for initiative" although that does work in a pinch. But a new adventure hook? A letter from an old friend? A big reveal? Don't always leave these to the end of the session, ESPECIALLY if you want players to really be caught off-guard (cause then they'll have a week to plan OOC, maybe more). But sometimes they are good. And you can also end on a soft even note sometimes, too.
That's all I have for now.

no u

Make sure you like your players and that all of your players are interested in the same kind of fun. If they have wildly different tastes and personalities then just don't play with them.

Some players just want to roleplay, some players just want to kill goblins and gain loot/xp and some players just want to mess around.
If everyone wants to roleplay, then you're tell a fun story.
If everyone wants to kill goblins, then you'll have fun killing goblins.
If everyone wants to goof around, then you'll have fun shenanigans.
If people's IRL goals conflict then they'll just be annoyed and bored.

Similarly, don't craft an epic story with interesting NPCs if your players don't care about them. Don't craft elaborate monsters with obscure rules if your players just want combat out of the way as quickly as possible. And don't make joke characters or silly scenarios if your players want to play seriously.

Never put salt in your eyes.

A quick bit of pasta I find helpful to keep in mind:

>Talk to your group about everything from etiquette (how much out-of-game banter and joking around is okay?) to tone (how silly is it okay to be?). Basically, just get everybody on the same page in an explicit fashion. Don't make assumptions, because other people will assume differently. Talk to folks about your vision for what kind of game you want it to be. Listen to any comments they may have and try to take their hopes and preferences into account when planning and running the adventure.

>Oh, and I'd recommend you stress that the game is a team sport and that you would appreciate it if they cooperated with one another (don't attack other party members) and with you (give the GM the benefit of the doubt when it comes to biting at plot hooks and try not to act in a way that would derail the adventure). That last bit is very important. Playing in character is great, but the welfare of the game is more important than the integrity of your character. It is a player's duty to create a character who will work well with the party and the adventure, and to compromise that character if that ever becomes impossible.

>You can decide your own approach, but if somebody leaves the party in one of my games, I'm not going to waste time trying to follow two different plots just because somebody couldn't play ball. You leave the party; you roll up a new character. And while I'm perfectly okay with PCs yelling and threatening each other, and maybe even getting in a fist fight, I flat out don't allow them to try to kill each other. Because that's unfair (the asshole who refuses to be a team player and who puts his own character before the welfare of the party and the game is the one who will take the opportunity to strike first, giving him an unfair advantage) and ruinous to the game (it creates bad feelings between the players, and suddenly everybody is paranoid and unwilling to expose their characters to danger).

Make sure there are invulnerable, omnipotent DMPCs. Make sure that one of the bbegs gives a 30 minute, uninterruptible monologue. Tell players what happens on an action and then roll the dice and never look at them.

>Make sure there are invulnerable, omnipotent DMPCs
I think if you're playing with a group of new, disorganised players then it's not a bad idea to have kind of a gandalf character to remind them what they're doing and potentially get them out of a tight spot once in a while.

They can be good sort of training-wheels characters.

I roll to stab your DMPC. Muh alignment.

(AC 30)