Lets Talk Pen & Paper RPGs (All systems welcome!)

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I've been GMing 5e Out of the Abyss for local friends for about half a year now, and I'm starting to get a bit burned out, but there are probably a good 3 months left before things wrap up. Any advice from fellow GMs?

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I think the biggest source is just the amount of work it is to prep. That time has been constantly going up as the actions the players take cause more divergences within the campaign.

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That's not really possible, It would take me going in to way too much detail to explain why.

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Changes heavily session to session. They are still in the adventure campaign, it's just been heavily twisted, so step 1 is reading relevant chapter(s) a few times, just once to remember, and then the 2nd time, I try and consider how things will be changed from what the book says. Some times there is no relevant chapter. I've made 2 full custom dungeons, both were skipped (that was vexing). When prepping NPCs I don't stat them and tend to focus on things like motivations and try to have answers ready for things players are most likely to ask.

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I'm very possibly still doing less than a DM who has his own campaign world, It's just a lot more work than it used to be.

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I always feel guilty when that happens. Even if they brought it on themselves.

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Why do you want to kill dungeons? The most straightforward answer I can think of is that in this world they are some chaotic property of the world, that spawn monsters or the like, and can perhaps have some core that can be destroyed. Perhaps the Dragons are your dungeons in this world (because it seems hard for to me envision this working in a way in which the dungeon isn't still explored.)

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I've been dming for my rl group for about 9 months now and I'm starting to get the itch to play again. Is there any interest to get another MS group going? I assume fakegods is full. Especially any interest from a DM?

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That's not surprising, listening to the really good DM's online and even they come across as flawed humans still.

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So... I've decided to throw my hat into the GM'ing ring. I'll be doing

Iron Gods

, the pathfinder adventure path starting in March. I'm nervous, but also excited! If at all possible, I'd love some tips (and yes, I have heard "your PCs are stupid" already).

In about a month or so, I'd be more than willing to quasi-revive the thread with weekly updates if wanted.

I've been dming weekly for about 10 months now, but thats all of my experience more or less, so take everything with some grains of salt. But here are things I've picked up or gotten wrong.

1: Figure out what your players are looking for and deliver that. Some players will want different things, make sure they are all engaged.
2: Characters will tend to have a thing they are good at, make sure you give opportunities for the things their characters are good at to show up.
3: Don't allow non-good characters the first time you DM. It's too much extra work to deal with.
4: Try to never setup a situation where you need to talk to yourself (Ie multiple NPCs talking to each other)
5: If there are going to be long running NPCs, give them to the players to run with the caveat that you may step in for them at key moments if needed.
6: Everyone likes getting treasure, even if it's just gold.
7: Everyone -hates- having stuff stolen from them. They will go to the ends of the world to get shit back.
8: I find a lot of premade modules push random encounters. I think random encounters are shit. Combat takes a lot of time. Make everything count. If you want to establish a setting using an encounter, thats fine. If you want to advance the narrative with an encounter, thats fine. Even if you just want to pressure the party that's fine. But just having random encounters as a tax for traveling isn't imo.
9: make combat interesting. If they've just gotten access to new toys (likely by leveling) just using those toys can be interesting. However often it makes combats much more interesting and dynamic if they have some objective other than kill everyone. This can be as simple as having an enemy spell caster in the party that they may want to nuke down first. But is ideally more complicated for bigger set pieces (maybe something constantly spawning minions, maybe someone trying to run away etc).

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10: It's ok to bend the rules in the name of player fun (ie Rule of Cool).
11: But not if it makes one character step on the mechanical toes of another.
12: Try and follow improve rules (ie, don't say no flat out. instead use: yes, yes and, no but. Don't just shut them down if it can be avoided)

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I guess lawful neutral might be fine? Otherwise, in my experience, they will be soulless thieves or murderers whenever it benefits them. You then need to let them get away with this (which can be ok if its the intent of the campaign, but in that case you want them all to be thieves or etc) or you need to spend a lot of work coming up with consequences for their actions. Like them being wanted now. You need to actually stat shit you wouldn't otherwise because they might decide to try and kill it. You need to know the fully inventory of random PC's in case they try and steal from them.


13: Listen to the players theories, they might have better ideas than you had planned, you can use them on the fly.
14: if you get caught in a mistake/plot hole. Depending on it's nature, either come clean immediately and resolve it. Or come up with some justification the players don't know about after the fact (in which case you can just confirm that it's weird but intentional if pressed).

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I'm not the ideal person for this but I've been running a campaign in 5e for about a year now, so if no one else offers, shoot me a pm.