"There's a delicate balance that a Game Master needs to learn between challenging their players and trusting them to figure out the obstacles that have been placed in their way."
"Railroading is when the DM says no, you have to go through Moria. I don't care if going over the mountains is a good idea, it's not what I want you to do."
"There is nothing more that I prefer as a GM to be surprised and stunned in silence by my players, and Spire has that in spades."
"Never put the players in a situation where you're taking their agency away from them."
"Communicate to your players what kind of DM you're going to be."
"Be open to your players' complaints and speak openly about why things went the way they did."
"Game masters, you are not a bad person for having a favorite player. You're simply human beings. Congratulations."
"As a game master, sometimes the truth isn't as good as the legendary story. Choose the legend."
"The path needs to deviate, that is essential to improving your improvisational skills as a DM."
"As a DM you should be willing to budge a little bit."
"Listen to your players, and you will run the best game you will ever run."
"D&D relies on a Dungeon Master to make good judgments and use their reason to be the arbiter of the game world."
"It's up to you, the Dungeon Master, to describe to the players how their skill earns them a success," Matt Cole stressed. "The goal here is to get the players thinking creatively about how to use their skills."
"Flight is one of those abilities that DMs have very strong opinions on."
"Tieflings aren't like outcasts and seen as evil. You as the DM don't need to immediately be racist towards them the entire game."
"Running a published adventure showed me the ropes and let me focus on what was really important, which was running the adventure at the table. It saved me tons of time on campaign planning."
"Don't be afraid to make those mistakes. That is probably the best way to learn how to be a GM."
"How do you even come up with creative ideas when you're not pressed on the fly by your players, when you're just sitting trying to create your adventure?"
"Part of being a GM is coming up with cool ideas and we need as many tools as we can get our hands on to help us to come up with even better stories."
"Interparty roleplay takes the heat off of the DM."
"Game Masters need to know a lot of rules... stopping the game halts the momentum, sucking the fun right out."
"A Game Master's job is to have the adventure prepared... better to be more prepared than unprepared."
"The best way for a Game Master to get their players to role-play and enjoy role-playing is by setting an example."
"Being a game master can be difficult... You're at once an organizer, a storyteller, an actor, a game designer, a codex, and a player."
"Your GM is not gonna judge you. Hell, out of everyone in the room, they're the most sympathetic and understanding when it comes to doing the job."
"Run the game how you want to be Game Mastered."
"I'm incredibly grateful to Eisen for writing and game mastering this amazing scenario."
"Making mistakes does not make a game master bad. The key is to learn from those mistakes and correct that behavior in the future."
"A game master's highest priority according to the RPG social contract is to provide a fun and entertaining experience for all the players at the table."
"As a dungeon master, one of the greatest gifts a player can give you is freedom in their backstory."
"If you're a beginner DM or if you made mistakes in your encounter prep, it can be useful to know how to dial up the difficulty midway through the encounter in order to correct."
"Contextualizing it dramatically, that's the hard work."
"If your player is not engaging with the content I submit to you that it may be because you have failed to present it dramatically."
"The best news is, when you learn to let go of that rigid mindset, not only do you become a better game master, but running games gets easier, and playing gets more fun."
"Retraining, reflavoring, and retconning well requires very good judgment on the part of dungeon masters and players, as well as a healthy dose of moderation."
"Our DM is the most amazing storyteller I think I've ever met. All of the characters she creates for our campaign are so engaging and she can switch between them at the drop of a hat."
"Improvise encounters to keep the session engaging."
"A certain amount of railroading is necessary in order to create a cohesive narrative."
"I want to break the habit of the players asking me how their stuff works."
"What we need if D&D wants to be more is a proper dungeon master's toolkit with a focus on exploration social interaction and helping new DMs."
"How do you balance having a DM PC that feels like a rounded character and not just an extra robot weapon per round with keeping with, keeping your authority out of the parties decision-making process."
"The deadliest encounters I've ever run were deadly by accident." - Unpredictable outcomes.
"For once a common DND advice that I completely and utterly agree with... if you spend your time trying to thwart your players... you're a bad DM."
"Having the ability to run a really great random encounter will give you the ability to add unexpected twists and be able to build adventures on the fly at the game table."
"Homebrew is a very satisfying creative outlet for a DM."
"Being a dungeon master is incredibly rewarding. I love expanding and building my world."
"If you really want that experience of being a player character and as close as you can get as a DM, put all that energy into your villain."
"There's no amount of listening to DMing tips that will teach you more than actually doing it."
"I find it to be eminently useful as a dungeon master."
"A good GM only follows so much, then they write their own."
"Dungeon Master's love when players involve them in the character creation process."
"It's often more important as a dungeon master to know where to find the rule that you're looking for, to clarify something, rather than having that perfectly memorized."
"Game Master moves usually aren't set. So when determining what Move to make, a Game Master's loyalty is more toward The Narrative of the fiction than with the Written Rules."
"The corebook offers us an assortment of Game Master Move suggestions, each with several examples under each as a way that they can be used and employed by GMs."
"You have to put the master back in Dungeon Master."
"Don't be a GM dick learn from your mistakes let things fly and make sure that everyone at your table is having fun and it's not just you who's at center stage."
"A big part of the Dungeon Master's job is to make it a fun experience for everyone."
"You will have bad game sessions and that's okay."
"Exploration in your game is going to have new ways to run travel, random encounters, downtime, and a brand new system for resting."
"There is no magic trick to being a better dungeon master."
"I'm just blown away by how much of my enjoyment of those adventures was what the Dungeon Master did. It wasn't in the text."
"Learn from your mistakes and strive to improve."
"That's the most important thing: can you run fun and enjoyable games that people are willing to pay for?"
"Improvisation is really the key to great DMing."
"I'm not saying this is what all players should do, this is what my players did do. I don't think of solutions, that's my player's job."
"I want to be just as surprised as the players."
"Of all the things we do as writers and dungeon masters, tone is the hardest to establish and the easiest to destroy."
"Creating a safe environment for your players is not easy to do."
"Create unique challenges. So in my recent 50k celebration, I ran a one-shot for 20th level characters."
"So you're saying I don't need to spend like 6 weeks coming up with ideas and ruining my social life to come up with a plan for my players? I can just open this book and something's ready to go, absolutely yeah."
"Trust the DM. D&D is fun if you're doing a one-off, but where D&D really starts to shine is the investment."
"I think the most important thing to nail was just showing DMs the range of genres that Spelljammer can kind of contain."
"I'm that one guy who volunteered to DM one day and has never actually played since."
"You are the dungeon master, find and refine a style of game that's unique to you."
"But to treat his style like textbook dming ignores the fact that not every game is live streamed played by professional entertainers and enjoyed by millions."
"No matter how you do it, after you're done World building, you now actually have to plan your next campaign."
"There's prospective Game Masters that are intimidated out of starting to become Game Masters because they first believe that they have to have some sort of giant, elaborate plot in order to do it."
"There’s a quote by novelist Stephen King when it comes to writing, and while this quote is in reference to writing, the same can be applied to Game Mastering."
"DM PCs are bad. Just don't. As the GM, you already play a bunch of characters. You play all the NPCs. But that is just mentally totally different from playing GM PCs. It takes focus away from NPCs, it takes focus away from the players, it takes focus away from the game."
"It's cool to be that DM who gives the players what they want, but it's your game too and sometimes giving them what they want can break the game."
"The DM was really insistent that we participate in RP, going so far as to even force it. He also had a rule that good RP moments would be rewarded with bonus XP."
"Pacing is the most important skill that a GM can master."
"Getting pacing right is very much an advanced GMing skill."
"Doing the homework on the city you're running pays off in the game."
"Emphasizing how awesome it is to play role-playing games is where the DM's guide should be positioned."
"I love when DMs use a character's backstory against them like this. Bravo!"
"The DM's job is to make the game challenging so that your victories feel earned."
"A good DM can make these events impactful and full of emotion."
"If your DM seems to take pleasure in killing your characters, that is a red flag, and it may be time to find a new table."
"...the DM or GM is supposed to be very crucial in facilitating and adapting the player choices into consequences which then lead to other choices which lead to other consequences."
"In tabletop, failing isn't the end of the world; the world is in the palm of the GM's hands."
"Welcome to Bandit's Keep. I'm Daniel, and in this video, we are going to create an adventure."
"The ultimate goal of Savage Worlds is flexibility and choice for the GM."
"Lazy DM's Companion is a book that helps people build adventures."
"What is the most high value thing I could work on if I only have 20 minutes to prep? That is a really valuable question to ask yourself."
"It's a very valuable exercise for GMs to look at the time they're spending on the different components of what they're doing and ask themselves, is this providing as high a value as possible to the enjoyment of the game?"
"And if I've done my job as a proper DM, a few tears as well."
"Go do your GM cleanup, easily read through it, go back, read through the chapter, add some little text here and there."