19 Tips I Wish I Knew When I Started GMing - Running RPGs

This is the best video of this kind I've ever seen, I've seen a lot of them.

I'm partial to pathfinder 2e handling of critical success

A nat 20 just increases success by one level. So a DC 50 with a nat 20 just bumps it to a normal failure instead of a critical failure

The “meaningless” rolls thing is easily overcome (in D&D at least) by taking 10

“…finish the guards shift, clock out as the guard, then go home to their new wife and new family..”.

That’s pretty funny...

Invisible walls you say? Gee reminds me a lot of playing Skyrim that game loves to block you with invisible walls.

Tip #1: don't be like the people in macon county NC; actually read the rules.

There's a 25-50% chance when my players open a door or just walk down a hallway that I'll call for a completely unnecessary Dexterity check or save just to mess with them.

excellent video thanks

They're an idiot?

That's a bit Dunning-Krueger; don't you think?

I’m a new GM. This is some great advice. I’ve already encountered many of these situations. It’s good to know my solutions are in line with more experienced GMs.

With all the rpg videos ive watched and this one in particular improvisation mentioned would a great piece of advice to budding gms is to try and get some improv training

I think there is an important omission, despite it being kinda-sorta mentioned along with other things, while it deserves a separate spot:
Keeping the game momentum.
And this goes on two different levels: the game at the table and the schedule for those games.
Momentum of the game is the most important thing ever. It dies - the game goes to hell, both short- and long-term. Overlong expositions; having a 1:1 conversation with a single player-as-character for 15 minutes, when everyone else just sits back and has to wait; doing shopping item-by-item, with all the haggling involved; never doing the "quick cut montage" (so events like talking with dozen of NPCs are punctuated, rather than players talking with each and every single one of them one by one)... the list really goes on. Those things kill momentum. Same goes with being bad at handling combat as a GM (and God forbid if the game you are running lacks mass combat rules, while you decided to use dozens of targets). Momentum is the key. Things have to roll and moving, or else you have a player that spends 2 hours sitting back, as you spend 1 hours of gaming time to handle shopping (do it by telling players to give you a list of things they need, and either before or after the session wraps up, not in the middle of it), half hour on pumping exposition and another half hour on various "quirky tidbits" that you did with other characters, but not his. Congrats, you have a player that wasted time on your game, because you were dragging your feet doing nothing in particular. Multiply that by 5 or 10 and he won't show up for the next game or will start looking for excuses to not show up. Not because your game is bad, but because it's moving like in molasses.
And keeping with momentum: scheduling is 2nd most important thing. Who cares if you run the most awesome session and the group had superb time, when the next game will be held in 2 months? Unless you are running one-shot, congrats, the campaign is officially dead in the water, because by those 2 months, people will barely remember important details. If you can't get a game at least once per two weeks (and in reliable, consistent fashion), consider one-shots instead. Long campaigns and spotty schedules along with long breaks between following sessions just don't mix. Plus one-shots allow you to explore different systems and different ideas, so they aren't bad or inferior - just completely different, while keeping your group always rolling and in the move when the schedules don't allow to play often enough to get regular campaign. I mean I'm with my regulars at the point where almost everyone is married, most have kids, one is a nurse, leaving her with really unpredictable schedule... so we simply moved to one-shots, after tormenting each other for half a year with a continuous campaign that offered us to play grand total of 4 times, making us all feel tired and bored, me, as a GM, included.

tl;dr momentum is the key of a healthy group that wants to play and has a reason to show up for more.

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And to explore this concept further:
I had a truly fantastic group in 2015. We had just great time together and due to favorable scheduling along with living close by to each other, we were able to squeeze as many as 3 games a week, despite not a single person was below 30 and everyone had day-jobs.
But came 2016, one of the members had to move, and two other changed jobs. The schedules suddenly became completely unworkable, but we insisted to play as if nothing changed... and suddenly our elaborate, long-going campaign went to a screeching halt. We spend entire YEAR to wrap up a single scenario, as we were playing in increasingly random pattern, with no way of telling when will be the next game. By Christmas 2016, we were just tired of this and decided to wrap things up after the current scenario ends. We are still in touch, two of them are my regulars, but we vowed to never play anything at all, due to the terrible experience from bad momentum and erratic scheduling
On the flip-side, in 2019 I've got a group with which I was only able to play (finally not running!) either: every third Saturday, with entire afternoon and evening for gaming OR play every week on Wednesday and Friday for exactly 150 minutes and THEN every third Saturday get that whole 2nd half of the day for gaming, along with also getting additional 150 minutes on Mondays in the same week. We quickly found out that the short-but-often sessions served us better, because there was a very consistent pattern and the game sessions were so close together, we had zero problems with keeping track of things. Sure, organizing it was a bitch, but again, we lived close enough that everyone could get there in 18-20 minutes, and the rhythm of the game allowed us to run the most elaborate campaigns, since everyone still could recall what was going last time, while the GM also found his rhythm to run it in such a way to not waste time on window dressings and just get things done.

Momentum makes or breaks groups.

There was an odd period when WotC released its first playtest packet for the next edition where people took great offense to test rules that prevented pointless rolls-- it was required that a 1 failed and 20 succeeded. They wanted no-op rolls for some variety of reasons.

The outcry was so huge that the rule disappeared from subsequent tests. But I've never run or participated in a game, D&D or otherwise, where having someone succeed on the lowest possible result or the flipped scenario didn't feel like a mistake. Like you say, the dice should mean something! Quality over quantity!

I've been running games in some shape or form since 1983. My advice is to have a good command of the system rules, have a good command of the setting and adventure, which allows the most important part, the ability to ad lib on the fly

I did come across a house rule that certain skills automatically allowed players to take ten on certain checks, unbeknownst to them. I play tested awhile back and it really streamlined portions of the game

I will say what I think is a corollary to the "avoid meaningless dice rolls" thing: meaningless dice rolls are perfectly fine when it's funny, especially if that's the tone your session or campaign is going for. I once rolled a Nat 20 on a guy bragging about how big he was, and in a oneshot I recently ran, in the opening scene that lead into the exposition (the party were all crew members underneath a commanding naval officer who was going to brief them over coffee, basically) I had someone's giant character roll a spot check for if he found the only huge-character-sized coffee mug before someone else swiped it up at breakfast after the player asked if there was one specially put aside for him. Player rolled low and it turned out that another PC had gotten to it first, had filled it with as much cream and sugar as possible when the giant always took it black. Got a laugh out of everyone.

My players haven't caught onto that one of the three daily travel rolls I make them do is just an extra roll, I have no table it's related to. It's the one completely pointless roll my players make

One of my favourite examples of the degrees of success/failure is Vampire the Masquerade, where you roll a pool of dice with any roll above x being a success. It's a great system that actively encourages that. For example, jumping across buildings, a la the Matrix. Making your roll, one success might mean you don't quite make the jump, and are hanging on to the ledge, vulnerable to gunfire or whatever. Two successes might mean you make it, but you're a little slow to recover, whilst three + gives you an advantage afterwards. It's why I love the system so much

Don’t look up the rules: Do you just make a ruling or consult the book if your not sure about the rule that could turn out to involve character death or even a TPK?

Every game I run, I have a rulings document where after each session I jot down 'how we handled a white phosphor grenade' or whatever to be sure I do it the same next time. If a ruling didn't give us the result I'd expected, I may even discuss that OOC with the players 'hey, WP should be a lot more burning, less exploding in my view, so I think next time one goes off, I think we'll instead mechanically do (this)."
I tend to let the players roll bad guys damage and stuff if their life looks like it's on the line. It adds a TON of tension and brings everyone at the table into the resolution. Of course, the result is the result, as you say. It's also a bit of a warning-track about their actions, which is slightly meta but I'm ok with that.
Advice number one: you're not their enemy/opponent. A TPK is generally a failure both by the party AND BY YOU as gm - I'm not saying you should protect them from dumb choices but IMO their deaths should ONLY be the result of THEIR bad choices. Luck-death is profoundly dissatisfying. If you arranged an encounter that is unwinnable (and winning MIGHT be fleeing, understand), that's on you.

GM'ing is like herding cats...

While I know all of these, I've been out of the chair for a while and these are good reminders as I struggle to get back into it. Finding players is the hard part.

System neutral advice: don't give the PCs nukes.

Procrastinating because I think I'm going to suck or make too many mistakes... I can totally identify with that. Probably my greatest error as a GM.

Now I'm not a GM or even a TTRPG player but for that Too Much Of A Good Thing point:

They're all max stats: Let them be max stats. Let them be Napoleon, the scourge of the battlefield. Do you know how he got defeated though? He couldn't be everywhere at once. Your main hangout base is being attacked. Sure, you'll win, but also your storage warehouse is attacked at the same time. And you have to let your favolurite NPC Jimmy go defend it alone. And your mum's been taken hostage. Let them go all "WHERE IS SHE!!!??" all they want. Make them choose what they lose essentially. Or make them spend time and resources equipping and training Jimmy, or teaching your mum kung fu. They can still succeed, but it'll be a challenge.

They're constantly swimming in cash: they can buy out the whole shop, get any gun they want, etc. Let them have their fun for a bit. But pockets like that attract next level of trouble. Maybe someone approaches them with an offer to sell a place for a large amount of eddies. It's a BD scrolling studio. Maybe they find later out it's a shady BD scrolling studio. Maybe some shady clients are expecting regular output from it and now it's stopped and they're not happy about it. Or maybe a gang rocks up asking why the business hasn't been paying protection money. And they've kidnapped your mum as collateral. Luckily she already knows kung fu! As Notorious BIG once said - Mo Money Mo Problems. Make them have problems.

Your BFF God keeps resurrecting you on the regular: Oh no! My BFF God, my sky homie, just got shived! Elden Ring style! Now they're bleeding worse than Godwyn and we have to go and find The Holy Medpack Of Asclepius to help him out! Or I'm not getting any more resurrections! Guys? You'll help me out, Barbarian, right?

Another big tip is that not everything in your "dungeon" needs to be static and set in stone. If the players are rolling all ones and the next door they're going to open is full 16 orcs switch it out for a different part of your dungeon. If the players head north and a major plot point is south, just move the plot point in front of the players.

Seth you magnificent SOB
what a great video.
Loving your videos and tips about role playing man.

I just finished reading Damoren, book one of the Valducan series. It was a quality read. I immediately purchased book two, Hounacier. Have you ever thought about making this story into an adventure module for say Call of Cthulhu or some other system?

One thing was game master giving me a dice to roll, not explaining that what were the stakes with me completely misunderstanding what I was supposedly trying.

Then I failed the roll and the GM laughed at me how stupid I was as a player. Please don't do that.

"...or very often it's a stalling tactic...the game master isn't quite sure; they need a minute to think about it, so they blurt 'hey, roll the dice!'"

I feel personally attacked.

Best skill I picked up form GMing was learning to wing things off the cuff. I was that young GM that would have to plan everything out. But due to some things the group I was playing with suddenly lost their GM and no one wanted to run and I was pressed to run something in their place. I had nothing setup I only half knew the rules for the game at the time. But faced losing game night or at least trying I just winged it. It was the worst session half the time not knowing what to do the other half not knowing the rules I needed. At the end I packed up and was sure it was over. But the group was wanting us to get back and do it again next week. And that is when I realized really its not about what I had or had not planed or how well I knew the rules. As long as everyone was having fun that was what mattered. It was rough and I made a lot of mistakes early on but learning to wing stuff, listen to the players, and adapt as I go is what made my GM style work for me. Now 30 some years later it is a well practiced skill.

OMG the Perception checks... I'm already blind and deaf to anything not described by the GM when I'm a player. Excessive perception checks just make me feel unreasonably hobbled. Tell me what's in front of my face!

There's also "at this distance you can't make it out" after a roll, which usually just reveals that the GM and players have a different idea of where they're standing but with the kicker of an unnecessary dice roll. It's the most common example of feeling like a gotcha where the player misses something that would be obvious to the character.

That redine what success and failure mean cost me a decade of DMing to pin down. We truly live in the golden era of rpgs with videos like this form beginner DM's.

One way to deal with ad hoc gm judgements is to award the players "Higher difficulty XP". Usually if the GM needs to make a call whether to allow or disallow something there is someone who benefits from the call (Players or Enemies). Usually its easier to say to "err on the players side, the game is about them after all!" but sometimes this doesn't work. Maybe the campaign is supposed to be gritty and "against all odds", maybe the players are too greedy afterwards and DEMAND they can exploit the GM call over and over again from now on, or whatever reason you can come up with.
Deciding always for the "enemy" side can hurt the players, of course - and feel unfair as well. So when you make a call that later turns out really hindered or hurt a player. (Or when you made a rules mistake that hurt them) give them a small bonus (usually experience) for actually overcoming the challenge that was "Harder than the Rulebook intended" - once the mistake was uncovered after the game, without interrupting the flow of the game. That way no-one feels cheated and getting higher rewards for tougher "encounters" is what most games see as standard anyway!

On rolling for something, short gaming story:

A friend of mine ran the whole campaign The Spawn of Azothoth over a long weekend. Truncated, yes, but he made it work and knew he'd never get the opportunity why other way. Our characters had a handwaved background that were investigators, and all had some experience with the mythos with small percentages of Cthulhu Mythos. This was basically to get intros out of the way, and we made up some stuff on the fly.

Anyway, day two or so, or characters had traveled to a place in the wilderness to a (ranger?) cabin in the woods. We found a dead body there with weird marks and no real sign of injury other than that. With the GM described it, with my character being one looking over the corpse, my character blanched, breath held in his throat, and started backing away in horror. All the other players were confused and started to ask "What?" Before I could explain, I realized suddenly that I was reacting to player knowledge, not character knowledge. I stammered a second, apologized, and asked if I should make a Cthulhu Mythos roll. The GM raised his hand and said that everyone just rolled Cthulhu Mythos, and they all failed, except my character. Please, go on.

I thought this was a brilliant way to deal with that, and remembered it all this time.

I once had a group literally bitch to me, about how it was hard to get to heavy weapons, how their grenade launcher only had few shots, why tedhy couldn't get a minigun.

Next mission they are invited into the armory, and just tell tehm what they need.

The players ask for thermal detonators... they got them
They ask foir missile launchers, then got them... The players eyes are lightning up.

How many missiles.,.. 30-60
mobile gun platform
Disruptor swords... SIX of them absolutely NO LIMIT

slowly the players light fade... they ask for a bunch more stuff, as to test if there really is no limit on what they can get. They are right.
Then they ask if we can retcon the scene, and not have all the stuff and go back to play like we used to,

Nat 20's aren't a guarantee of success. They are the best possible option. Your king example is best.

When it comes to searching around for something, if the player just accurately guesses where something isn't as you're going to go look for it, they probably don't even need to roll. Like if a player says that they're going to actually open up the computer tower to see if someone hid something inside of it and the secret diary was hidden literally inside of the computer, then they shouldn't need to roll for that.

I would say try not to have a single point of failure that, if it doesn't go your way, will not allow the game to move forward. I learned this early on. Don't count on them killing a beast in one room, in order to make it to the next room; you assume that they will kill it, so the key to the next room ends up being the blood of the beast, but they had instead banished it to another plane or whatever, and now they are screwed, or you are scrambling to come with another way that thematically makes sense in this blood-focused room. I find it is best to have multiple ways to get where you are going. I have a campaign where the PCs unknowing release a caged Vecna; it isn't that they have to complete certain tasks in a certain order without knowing that they are doing it, but instead that, whatever they end up doing was what they needed to do to release him. Kill the monster, releases Vecna. Banish the monster, releases Vecna. Put it to sleep, just run away, kill the rest of your party and commit suicide, pray to Vecna for your release from this, or curse him for bringing you into this... whatever you do, that is what was supposed to happen for Vecna to be released. You aren't railroading them into doing everything your way, and playing their characters for them, you are letting them do whatever they want, and having that be one of many ways to get them to where you want them going. There are numerous paths to any destination, and all of that... Don't force them down the one you planned on them taking, but let them do what they want, and have that still lead them to your overall desired outcome. And try to spend less time detailing any single pathway, and instead have several pathways roughed out to the target outcome; it is impossible to know which one they might choose, if any, but it doesn't hurt to have a general sense of numerous storyline possibilities, with a few possible details for each.

@Seth Nick Napo from Among the Damned here. You are an awesome narrator! You speak in a calm, intelligent, masculine voice that allows me to focus on the information being presented instead of being to annoying to listen to or learn from. I am a picky student slightly older than yourself, but I need the perfect tone to learn from, and I like learning from someone closer to my age.

Congrats on the 100k!

Hey seth congrats on 100k are you doing anything to celebrate?

yes I completely agree with all. the one I like most is "don't ask for a roll you can't accept" if the players need a clue to keep the adventure going be ready if they fail the roll. when this happens to me, players roll to find clue but roll low. they will still get the information but there will be a cost. Like time spent looking, getting in trouble with an organization. I let them roll as they seam to enjoy it but have a consequence if they fail or roll low.

This was a great video.

congrats on 100k seth!

Back in the day, I remember my friend's roommate spent hours and hours drafting his D&D city, fleshing out entire streets with NPCs and shops and historical monuments. He wanted to show it off to me and ask my advice.
I said, "It's really detailed. Some nice ideas here. But..." He raises a brow, "But what?"
"What if the player character never come here and decide to go to somewhere else?" From his shocked expression, you'd have thought I'd smacked him with a frozen tuna. That possibly had never occurred to him.

Such great advise! I love the, "caulking the cracks" imagery for improvisation. Congrats on the 100k subscribers. Well earned, sir.

I can't emphasize how important that last rule is. Don't be afraid to suck. I've been the GM/DM/Storyteller/etc. for my group for the past 15+ years as we move from system to system. I've gotten really good at improvisation, balancing my prep with freestyle, reading the players and anticipating needs and even mitigating player vs player conflict. Not to sound arrogant, but I'm a pretty damn good game master, and that certainly appears to be the consensus of my players. Sounds good. It sucks. The current campaign was designed to be a town bicycle; if Pete wants to run a 2 night story then cool, if Wally has plans for a 6 month mini campaign also cool. Unfortunately, no one has stepped forward. Early on, one player ran a simple one night mini mission and it went fine. Sure it was basic, fairly vanilla. But he ran it well, made it entertaining, all around a win. No one has stepped forth since. When I remind them of the standing invitation, the answer is always some variation of "it won't be as good as the main story". Which is probably true (I've got a massive amount of experience), but it's also a shame because the crew is pretty diverse personality-wise and we'd probably get a pretty awesome assortment of stories. I've got an engineer who is damn near a Vulcan with his regard for logic, and I've got an admin who's fondness for random chaos would make the Joker blush. I'd love to see where they would take the game.

I feel like overpreparing helps you to improvise for those times when you are underprepared. I might have prepared something for a different situation, but now when faced with this unexpected turn of event I can just change it up and adapt it to suit this situation.
There is never any damage in overpreparing unless it also comes with too much expections of how it will come into use.