Almost every player in my home game has started following my habit of keeping all session notes "in character" as journal entries written by their character, and we have started having one person each week read back their character's last journal entry as our preferred method of recap at the start of each session. One week we'll hear the last journal entry from my excitable goblin rogue, and the next we might get a peek at the diary of our very reserved duergar cleric. I love this because we all get small peeks inside the minds of the other characters, seeing events through the lens of their perspective. The DM loves it because it helps us invest in each others' characters, and it helps her to know what information from the last game actually stuck with us and what we have forgotten about.
I started doing this with my players as well, really helps you see what they're zoning in on. I also put a session summary on discord straight after the game.
Matt Colville taught us that when the players recap, it is a signal to us the DM what they thought was important as well as things we think should be important but that they might have missed and you can signal a little bit better.
@@odessawild7798how about a recap talk after the session. Really just ask your players what they thought about it. What they liked, what feelings they have etc
Best advice every by Matt Colvielle, it helps me so much, players miss key details you can than bring again or mention, also players mention things you forgot to note down. Letting them recap made it so muche easier for me. Also I try to find out on the end of each session where my players like to go from there next time, so I can prep that and we can start the next session without arguing what they like to do. Its that subtle control over your game, esepcially if you have a more sandbox game.
Problem is players don’t always want to recap and sometimes you get players who recap wild stuff that never happened and it causes a disconnect with the group because now they’re doubting what they remember happening or what that player is saying. I’m not saying it’s bad advice, I’m saying it’s a “read the room” advice because it doesn’t work for all groups.
So i've taken some improv classes. One of the best things was being told to NOT go for comedy. My favorite scenes are playing a character completely straight and reacting candidly.
Straightmen provide great counters to a bombastic party. A owner of a magic shop in my campaign is kind of snooty, upper crust, and very straight (Not sexually, as I later discovered). And he consistently provides the most fun to the group. While more loud and obnoxious characters, like an off his rocker war veteran and a goblin upselling rotting fruit as miracle cures made players uneasy. Its surprising just how much reacting normally to a group of weirdos brings laughs.
The funniest moments in all of my campaigns have arisen from stupid puns and simple expressions starting head canons in the players' minds. Like for example in one of the first episodes of our PF2E campaign, we were turned into necril monsters who can shaepshift at will at the expense of this curse taking over their minds. Our GM, when passing an occultism check to see what we know about these creatures, blurted out "Well, basically what you know is that they are... for a lack of a better word ... dead undead" (the word dead in the meaning of "extinct"). However, this choice of words led me down a chain of thoughts where I was basically going... "So...they were alive, then died, then were alive again, only to die again...what the f***???" And that led to me breaking down in laughter of the absurd situation of dead undead creatures, where we had to pause the session (mind you, this was an actual play session on Twitch) because my laughter virtually infected other players who couldn't keep it straight either. There were many more instances of pure unintentional comedy, like anytime in our main campaign, we use the word "varg" (which is one of the species in the system we play), someone is making a stupid pun because it is phonetically close to other words in our native language, German. Something like: "I have a varge (vague) recollection...." The best comedy moments, however, are the result of stupidly botched rolls, like our mage trying to shapeshift into a small mouse to sneak on board a ship to steal a parchment roll, only to fail her roll to use the spell, and instead tumbling, falling face first onto a gravel road and rolling down a steep hill leading to the harbor, losing 2/3 of her HP in the process. That was basically our version of the infamous "gold fish incident".
Lazy DM: 1) Review the PCs 2) Make a “Strong Start” to kick the game off with something fun. 3) Jot down some “Potential Scenes” 4) Jot down some “Secrets & Clues” 5) Important NPCs 6) Fantastic Locations (or a good map) 7) Encounters 8) Treasures & Loot Aaaaaaand you’re done.
Yeah. I've been using too. Works really well with more linear campaigns and homebrew adventures. You'll need a bit more prep with more sandboxy published adventures like Curse of Strahd. Sometimes is hard to predict where the group will decide to go in the middle of the next session, so I end up doing "the 8 steps" for two or three totally different scenarios.
@@AvengerYouT I get you. Although, a sandbox adventure usually becomes choosing between a couple available linear quests. A true sandbox is when the story unfolds at the table. The prep then becomes making a “Situation” in a location. Improv skills become your “prep” lol.
My way of "recapping" is slamming my hands down on the table and asking my players "okay, what the hell happened last session?" It gives the players who took notes more chance to shine, it helps me tell what parts of the previous session stick in the players' memories, and when i ask it forcefully it immediately starts the session and puts everyone in "player mode"
What I learned through the years: If you know your Game World/Campaign/Adventure and your rules well enough, as a DM you can B.S. your way through almost any situation that might happen during a session.
This is super true, I've been dming in my own setting for years and I rarely ever find myself needing to write intricate campaign outlines. Most of my campaign prep is just about setting the initial state of the world (Which NPCs are doing which things in which places) and then I improv everything that comes next based on the player's actions, which works because I run my games as weird sort-of "intrigue sandbox" where each campaign features multiple disparate intrigue stories that all connect to a larger metaplot at the heart of the campaign
@@lyianx not necessarily. If you don't know the game world but at least the most necessary mechanics you can try to world build on the go. Just take notes that actually make sense so that you have something to base future events on or places your players can revisit. I was DM for a 3 year campaign in the forgotten realms just using a map of the sword coast and what I remembered from the neverwinter nights and baldurs gate video games. The rest was stuff that I made up on the go based on the player's back stories
@@theninjaguy2 yes! I created a setting that I GM in Pathfinder 1e and i love coming up with stuff on the fly, including deciding whether or not some rolls are successful based off how great it would be in the story and as an experience for my players instead of if it actually hit the DC
I did take an improv class in college and I do think it has benefited my DMing as I am very improvisational as a DM as well. However, I think you can also get practice from watching improv shows like Who's Line or even Dropout's other shows besides Dimension 20, ESPECIALLY if you take the time to try doing the prompts yourself and with friends.
@@BonusAction you did all the research and collected the information, delivered it in an entertaining and easy to understand way. That deserves thanks!
I have watched countless videos on DM Tips, but this takes the cake as the one that reaps the most benefits. This compilation of takeaways from my favorite people has really informed many ways that I could upgrade my current session prep workflow. The length of the video also assures that I can easily watch this to get into the right headspace before I prep. Thank you!
So… I’m relatively new to DMing, I was regular player few years ago but then Covid happened and everything went to shit. In August of this year I started to run my own homebrew campaign for my friends who’ve never played D&D before. And your videos helped a ton. So, just wanted to say thank you for everything you do.
Improv classes absolutely help and honestly they are a ton of fun. Like another commenter said, you don't need to go for anything or prove yourself. If you're bad, no one will really judge you. I was an stage actor and done lots of improv stuff for years way before I started playing DnD, and I definitely rely on it because my sense of storytelling and improv skill is just that strong. It might take a little bit of work to get the hang of it but you absolutely should. Once you start, you're gonna love it, especially since you're a DM and probably doing it a lot already. Great video! Lots of great advice.
I was thinking you could also apply a recap hybrid approach by having your players mention one key moment of the last session (no repeats), then have them listen to your recap. If they named something in your recap, they get inspiration! I would love to see a video someday about how different DMs go about directing pacing in their games. Thank you for your content! It is fun, light, refined and right on point! I really have enjoyed your coverage of different professional DM styles and always look forward to your videos! Thank you for your hard work and have a great day! 😊
Something that im doing with my groups: players do recap, first player A , next week player B, etc. But after they do it I always ask: Does any one remember or want to add something? - after that I fill the blanks of things I know could be importatnt but i see they didnt notice. Sometimes I add extra question like "Anyone remembers this name xxxx?" and in most cases recap takes around 5 min? Sometimes they show one another what they didnt see or pay enought attention to. For me as DM best thing is to see that players interact, remember the world you gave them AND! it helps me understand their point of view. As DM we know what will go down, when, where, who etc. But they dont. Understanding what your players enjoyed most, notice, skip, had more fun with helps you to give them and yourself too best possible time at the table :)
We made the player recap a rotating job, They don't necessarily have to take notes themselves, They just need to make sure certain things are noted down during the session, So when they ask for notes on something during the recap next session. There's someone who can fill the gaps.
GetFlappy had a video called "Use flow charts to run BETTER D&D combats" which had similar ideas about making flowcharts out of monster stat blocks. I think it works really well in flights where you have multiple different types of enemies with different move sets.
I took improv classes for about six months until I had to move and there just weren't any classes near me. I absolutely recommend it. It does all the things you would expect in terms of helping you be better at thinking on your feet, embracing player input, and leaning into your strengths as a creative. However, the general principles behind improv have been actually fairly helpful and applicable outside of that context. It helped me start seeing obstacles in my daily life as platforms to launch off of rather than merely points of stress and tension. It helped me foster a more collaborative attitude in my work and social life. I do want to be cautious here and not try to imply that a good improv course is life-changing or that it will alleviate everything that ails you. However, for me, I was able to extract a lot of value out of the insights and principles discussed among my peers. I miss it quite a bit.
Best way to railroad without railroading. Illusion of choice. Create a detailed campaign, but make sure that enough of the important parts are "modular". In essence, regardless of the actions players take, they will end up in the same planned scenario. Tavern? Shady mercenary who gives quest. Castle? Shady guard who gives quest. Store? Shady stocker who gives quest. And the quest is always the same, and reroutes back to a higher up NPC who is responsible. Now this wont _always_ work. Sometimes the party just doesnt want a quest. But its a great way to kickstart a campaign and hook players into a narrative without seeming forced.
This is why overpreparing is actually not a real taboo. You provide them with the illusion of choice but to truly make it illusionary to where the players don't catch on is to over-prepare in this instance by providing several scenarios in those "choices" that will converge your players back on to the "rails" of the story before the adventure becomes out of hand. I've done this several times in my campaigns where they are not really certain whether what they're actually doing in their story is part of the actual campaign that I've planned or something that was improv'd.
What a great video with good advice from a wide range of different DMs. I really liked it :) As some others already mentioned, Sly Flourish's Lazy DM Prep is a great method to organize session prep. He also has a lot of other advice on certain aspects of RPGs.👍
My strategy is not to plan session-specific story beats beyond an opening scene, a couple of goals, and how I want to end that session. My goal isn't to plan every little detail of what's going to happen session-to-session, but to plan as many little details as I can of the world, including the motivations and personalities of the NPCs, around them. That way, when the players do what players do and go in a completely unexpected direction, I know how the world around them will shift to accommodate said direction.
1: Begin by planning out several cool/fun/exciting specific scenes that YOU want to happen, this is how Matthew Mercer can pre-build battle maps with terrain and minis. This is also how you make sure that YOU as a DM has fun. The players will have fun trying to solve these specific situations. 2: Use both a world map and a small map, to orient the upcoming adventure. This is both for your own sake and for your players. This also helps you to build the right terrain setting for upcoming encounters. 3: When the players arrive: Do a recap, let the players do as much of the recap as possible. But it is my experience that the players don't remember more that maybe 20% at best, while i, the DM, remember basically 90%+. 4: Have 2-3 back-up plans if the players go in another direction. As in; ready made back up encounters (doesn't have to be combat). 5: Embrace improvisation, it's fun. But also pre-practice different types of NPCs. 6: Railroading is when the only thing that can open the door is the key they should have stolen from the guy they passed 30min ago, and nothing the players come up with can open the door - Don't do that. That is bad. 7: Keep lists of different races Names ready, preferably also a connection to a line of work. 8: As a DM; Make Monster-Flow-Charts! Rage-> Move Close -> Attack Twice -> Speak! 9: Copy and tweak cool happenings, scenes, characters, lines etc from any and every media. 10: Make sure you are invested in the story. YOU (DM) must have fun. Do NOT put the players fun before your own, that will burn you out fast. If you don't have fun, there will be no more games and everyone will suffer for it. If it's not fun, scrap the adventure and make a new one that you want to DM, this is important on an Alpha-Omega level. 11: DMing and Playing D&D is a skill. Play as much as you can to get better. If you want to take it to the next level: Take Improv-classes. Lastly, This is my advice to you: After session end = Take your time to Write down what happened, and Write it like a Novel. Runt it through a spell-checking program, and send it to your players in your group chat. Player absolutely LOVE that shit. After a year of doing this you will have a really nice adventure novel to look back on. This was a really good video. If you keep your content of this quality you're going to get big.
For my Candela Obscura arc, I have each scene listed as “arrival at location” and “big reveal”. This is how I intend to not railroad the players but keep the story flowing. I’ll have some notes on basic concepts to be used in between the arrival and reveal, but my intention is that they give me an interesting and entertaining reason to give the reveal (without being unreasonable). Granted, CO is more of an “investigation heavy” system so the rails need to exist, but they are more like the rails used for Bumper Bowling: they mark the absolute boundary of the scene/assignment, but the players can still take crazy paths to the end.
Love the flow-chart idea. Similar to giving monsters an algorithm to follow or rolling their actions in a chart. It forces you to put them on display as you initially intended
For the 'previously on' section, we get one of the players to do this, based on the notes they took in the session. Each player has a role - we have an official note taker, someone who handles the initiative board, someone who does the sound effects and controls the powerpoint deck that has all the maps, and the one who has the rulebooks to look up any questions. This leaves the DM more time to DM.
@2:50 ish... I have the players do the recap. Allows me as a GM to interject on facts versus memory and helps get all the players on board for actually accomplishing something. And it cements plans that help me run what scenes will progress plot and allows for focusing on what the players want to hit on, both metaphorically and literally.
I took a short (12 session) improv course and it definitely helped. However, I was also gratified that many of the other practised improvers told me I did well, which I fully accredit to having DM'd for years. I felt good about my skills, and I learned a bunch.
I don’t discredit what a lot of these “pro” DMs say, but when I first started I took a lot of these peoples advice and let me tell you session prepping was such a chore but I did it because it’s what the pros said I should do. Then I came across prep lite people and the thing that stood out to me the most was the phrase “prepping is just writing enough notes that you feel confident that you can improvise anything.” It wasn’t about page long scripts or scenes or flow charts or any of this other stuff. The most influential person in this was Sly Flourish and his book Return of the Lazy Dungeon master. I don’t follow his advice verbatim anymore, but it helped me realize I shouldn’t be spending moor than 1 hour writing my prep notes, most of my notes should fit on an index card, and it should be only enough to make me feel prepared to improvise, not a script to read from.
The flow charts for a creature's action economy is an incredible idea! I like to think about an NPC's motivation in combat, like will they fight to the death, do they care enough about the challenge posed by the players to take it seriously, will they try to get away at the first opportunity etc although a flow chat for their actions means you can really easily make a decision about what they do at each turn without having to think too much about it. Players might have the time to think on each turn but the DM often needs to think really fast to keep the action going and this means you have a really quick reference. Amazing idea!
Aabria's flowchart method has really taken the mental strain out of running villains for me, and I also use it for their overall decisions. Great video! I loved your breakdowns and examples for each tip
Honestly this was a wonderful video. The flow chart design for Npc actions is wonderful and I plan to adopt that in my own style. I hate forgetting things haha
I write a weekly recap after the sessions, usually the next day or two so it's fresh. They're fairly detailed, at least 1000 words. I've been doing this for many years, both as a way to remind myself of the adventures, and to keep PCs up to speed. Players tend to forget details between sessions, depending on what's going on, or they misremember something, so having it there verbatim for everyone to see really helps.
Funny you mention the red wedding, cause I pulled it off in one of my games like 2 months ago, which propelled the story arc that just ended past session. It was indeed a wedding, and the bad guys poisoned the wine with tear of the midnight, and then at midnight a lot of people died. The PCs took damage, but they are too high level to die from regular poison, but important and innocent npcs died by the dozens. The players could save, heal and even revive some of them, but not all, and damage was already done.
Building hooks that are linked *directly* to the characters' own backstories removes railroading completely. They *choose* to follow the crumbs "because it's what their character would do". Turn what can be an issue with players challenged at realistic roleplay into the hook they *cannot* shake off.
One of the biggest things that I have learned as a DM is that if I want a specific story thing to happen, I just create the required NPCs and necessary story elements and then just hold them and let my players do whatever. There is almost always an appropriate moment every session to then introduce those things organically as a response to something that my players have done. When I first started, I thought that I really needed to plan out every little contingency and if the players didn't go exactly where I wanted them to, I would fumble and be lost, because I needed the "perfect" scenario to introduce the storyline that I was trying to hook the players with. Instead of that now, I realize that I don't need the players to meet the NPC in a tavern - they can now be a prisoner kept in a bandit camp, or instead of getting the MacGuffin from the NPC, they find it in a phase spider nest along with a note asking one NPC to bring it to another. Basically, the story takes care of itself as long as you put the elements for it in front of the players.
I definitely do recaps. Doing so legitimately is the keystone of my prep. My chaos crew meets weekly for 2 hr sessions. So anticipating where they're going and facilitating that is mission critical. If I don't lay out the main options, they will absolutely make up their own path...which takes time for them to decide on it, and time for me to adjust. It ends up being a double-whammy on time and quality of the session. (though admittedly, I can't be too harsh when they convince their pet mimic to turn into a pile of shit for them to place in front of their rival's doorstep....only for them to panic-arson the place. That was the one session I didn't do a recap at the start) The recap is a great way to transition from intros to play, focuses them in one of 2-3 different directions, and gives me a limited number of encounters to plan for. Reminding them that Town A has a magic salesman, tavern B has good food, and person C has the mcguffin is an excellent way to let the players have agency in where they go, while making paths of least-resistance towards planned encounters instead of them forging their own path via committee actions.
My advice would be this: know your world. Know what would happen in your world if the players didn't exist, and then let that unfold. The rub of the game is where the players interact with it.
Something I do as a DM that helps especially new players is creating a list of their player abilities that is separated into Actions, Bonus Actions, etc so they know their options each turn.
The crew picks up the log from last time and check what happened. They form up today's patrol and decide where they want to push. At the end they file their own log and leave it for the next crew. It should be written so that players who were not present can figure out where the greater expedition stands. Procedure and routine helps.
Regarding not enjoying prepping/ the game, start with asking yourself why you're not enjoying the game. Sometimes we think we just aren't interested in what's happening when we really just need to take a break from DMing.
Hey mate. Great eye for the advice you pulled together. As a viewer who‘d like to see your channel grow, I would give you the advice for your future videos. This is purely based on this video. Maybe helps you. If not just ignore and keep going. 1. Focus more on key messages Make sure you narrow down to what you want to convey as if it where a list of „the X things of…“ could easily be written down as takeaways or timestamped in the comments. I personally like to bookmark some of those advice and come back to them from time to time or recommend to others. 2. Video editing techniques Maybe look at some editing techniques to better highlight key messages and help better structure the story of your key message. It‘s organised around the DMs now but core concepts are harder to grasp as mentioned above. I think you could easily improve your message by far with an improved editing. 3. Cut/Use side topics for new ideas I reckoned that in the end you drifted off a bit on DM is a player too and what to do as a DM when you don‘t have the same fun. IMHO this could have been left out from this video (sure it was not a big deal to have it). Instead when figuring out such content fragments in your post/review you could use them as a starting point for future videos. Hope you appreciate the advice as helpful.
Improv is so much fun, definitely jump into it, you won't regret it. I remember coming away from my first class thinking "This is basically just like playing a tabletop roleplaying game with no dice." I haven't done much GMing after taking improv, but I did play in my brother's campaign for his podcast, and he noted that he could tell how I'd improved as a result of the classes.
Why does the picture for this video say DON'T RECAP, but then there is immediately a piece of advice to do a recap? You then mention some times the players can be asked to summarize the recap, but it is STILL doing a recap (just a different person/group is doing it). So the picture is a bit incorrect/clickbait. Otherwise great video. The comments section is useful too.
Hey, the thumbnail is indeed referring to the point I was making that the DM does not have to recap (if you want your players to do it). This is a UA-cam video and it is the thumbnails job to entice you to click. Hence you will often find thumbnails that evoke mystery and curiosity and yes, often thumbnails will exaggerate or embellish. But I do apologise if you felt mislead!
If you’re nervous to take improv classes, try doing some improv games with your D & D group. It’s a fun thing to do between big adventures when you need a break.
I used to do improv in high school and it actually caused me a lot of anxiety. I basically do improv in my everyday life though cause I’m weird and have become a lot more comfortable with public speaking cause of years working in customer service, so I’m happy with my current capabilities!
I've been in a weird situation where I've had players join my campaign later on after watching my DM style and they preferred my approach over there own groups 😅 I was shocked to see that me a beginner DM with 1 and half years of training was winning people over.
I vibe with this... Often when I get new players in I'll play a short one-shot for session 0 (before the ACTUAL session 0) and I have on various occasions explained this to the people who asked why I do that as you need to see if it "vibes" between playstyles; escpecially if you're playing homebrew. It goes both ways after all... not only does you GM'ing style need to vibe with the player but the players playstyle needs to vibe with you (as GM) too.
Getting players to do the recap is good not only because it gets them into the game but because theyre the ones experiencing the game. You might think players memory can be flawed but GMs memory have even more flaws because so much is going on and you know whats planned so you it can give you bias. The best things you can do is ask you players to write a short recap, or potential journal entry at the end of your session and give them to you so 1, you know what stuck out and 2 if theres some time between sessions they can remember the exact mindset they had at the end of last session when you give it back to them.
I’m the party notetaker so I’m often asked for recap. I think it helps that I have a few friends who love to hear me recap my latest session like an epic story podcast (lol) for them. So I get practice between sessions to review what all went on. Also in my notes, I’ll make little side notes on who is in which scene so I know who knows which information. For the most part, we kinda try to keep everyone together just so dm doesn’t have a more difficult time of things but sometimes a scene is better being more one on one with the lack of information sharing making for interesting plot devices. But that’s carefully chosen by the individuals and we are pretty good at respecting that with each other. But yeah, my notes usually cover who knows what, not just over all plot. This usually leads to me recapping at times. However, one big problem that crops up is that I’m not always the best at giving an articulate rundown of last session unless I write down what I’m saying first. This leads to kind of an adhd way of recapping which is very tangent filled. More often than not, it’s preferred that I let dm give recap and fill in missing anecdotes and context, maybe minor correction on misremembered things (rarely needed but appreciated by my group for when it does, of which I’m relieved about). I really think my groups prefer a recap though. We do a lot of intrigue in most of the campaigns I play in and a larger than average gap in sessions can lead to key details and foreshadowing being overlooked or neglected. Plus, because of our focus on storytelling (some combat but isn’t the main focus) the recaps are always pleasant to start with because it sets the feel of that for us. We like storytelling and so does our dm. So we start with telling the story of last session. Hoping this didn’t ramble too much and made sense.
Don’t railroad your players. Road-trip them. You have an end goal… but you’re not opposed to stopping to look at something or do something and eventually get back on the road. Best way to do it. Gives structure but also let’s everyone’s imagination flow more.
Thinking of possible scenes is all fine and good as long as you don't get into the head space of expecting them to happen. For me thinking about scenes is all about familiarizing myself with the world, not planning for what is going to happen. This allows for much more flexible sandbox games
4:48 another big reason I love this method is you can actually see how the players percieve what just happened. You may percieve it different to your players and sometimes how they see things are better so you can steal that. Or you can play into what they are thinking and then throw them a curveball later revealing what was actually going on.
Regarding using some kind of cue to signal the formal start of play, I have an online-based game with some friends and we meet on Discord. I use a sound on our soundboard that is the beginning of the "NFL on FOX" song that means the game is officially beginning. It was originally just a joke, a play on "Fantasy Football", but it has now become a functional cue, like you said, to change gears in your mind and begin playing.
YES I have taken an improv class AND (joke for all my improv friends lol) it helps immensely with DMing. Lots of situations where I’ve been able to pull things out of thin air and kind of fly by the seat of my pants. Very helpful and I would recommend 100%
One thing I really like to do is write the inhabitants of a room on my DM prep map. I hate having to look away from the map to see what started in that room.
I worked at a rennfaire where we had mandatory improv classes. Was a good way to take them without having to pay a fee as well as we got paid to do improv moments with the patrons. You learn basic techniques and then get to practice them with people you may never see again, win win.
I realize hearing these tips that my biggest strong suit as a dm is having a super good memory for story and being able to make up a lot on the fly. Ive built whole guilds mid session
One thing I love is that as a PLAYER, I take notes of what happened in the session, a sort of "Last time on DnD". All my group at this point just relies on my notes. Sooooo when I end up DMing... Who's gonna do it now? Cuz -I- sure ain't gonna keep track of it, hahahaha! (I'll have my own notes, tbf, but I am a strong proponent of letting the players do the recap. Like stated, it gets us invested in the events that happens, creates stronger connections to them, and helps us realize 'okay, tabletalk is done, time for rpg.) They put all their eggs in one note-taking basket... Now it is time for THEM to take the notes, bwahahaha. Or not, maybe they'll just forget, buuuut here's hoping I'll keep them invested enough to WANT to.
I’ve only GMd a few gaming sessions, and I have a lot of experience in improv, but when it comes to improvising story, just remember that all writing is improvising story but you stop every once in a while and think about it. Or you take a little bit longer to do it. The truth of the matter is, the only thing preventing you from creating story on the fly is that you’re probably judging the story that you’re creating. Now there’s good and bad improvised story of course, but if you find yourself in a situation where you need to improvise parts of what’s happening, the easiest thing to do is just pretend that you’re writing, and don’t judge what you come up with. Also, unlike stage improv, RPG improv allows the opportunity to take a second and write something down. I ran two sessions of kuru for my friends who are very experienced in the system. The first one was a one on one. I had a whole thing planned out, a place where the player was ultimately supposed to go to find out what was happening. But for some reason, he ended up more interested in following a random NPC. I didn’t have a place for this character to go at that time, so I had the NPC end up at a warehouse where people were gambling on hog races. It was a totally random thing that I came up with, because I hadn’t come up with anything else interesting for this NPC to do. He wasn’t supposed to be noticed, but the player ended up looking to see if he was followed. so I made a on the fly system to determine which hogs were winning, and then I decided on the fly that there would be a race against the fastest hog by anyone who wanted to race against it. I have the MPC enter the race, and then the player bet on the race. All of this took the entire session. So we never actually got to any of the things I really planned for. We didn’t continue in the series, but had we, that would’ve eventually led the player to the thing I wanted them to find. In the meantime, on the separate session with the other players, the intention was for that first players actions to have some impact on their session, but because he didn’t get far enough I couldn’t do that. I have meticulously planned out an entire facility that they were going to have to escape from. We did manage to do that, I learned my lesson from the first session to keep things moving and not focus too much on small things. that being said, listening to my players, they started thinking that there was some additional aspect to where they were trapped that I hadn’t considered. I basically decided that I would let the dice tell me if the thing that they were looking for existed or not. I roll the dice and it turned out that they did, so on the fly I came up with some kind of a material that was magical that was keeping them inside the room there in. Once I decided this, they had to try to find it, and they did manage to do so. From there, I had a bunch of things potentially available to find in the facility, and I had a clock running where as time went by, things would happen in the facility unless they did something to change them. in the end the facility was going to explode for reasons that they would either discover or not depending on where they went. The bottom line though, is that you don’t need to be afraid of improvising. Yes taking improv class is actually in someways more challenging than improvising as a game master,but it doesn’t have to be intimidating. Just know that the key to it is not to judge what you improvise. Make a decision, check to make sure that it’s plausible for the world you’ve created, and then go with it.
For me, I’ve always liked creating scenarios around important decisions players need to make. Like one scenario would be the players are conscripts in a military for an empire and they are sent on a mission to deal with bandits who are raiding caravans. Now they go out and find the bandits only for the bandits to claim that they are rebellion against the tyrant emperor and they only raid imperial slavers, liberating slaves because they think every is morally wrong. Now players must decide whether to carry out their mission and kill the so-called “bandits” or turn against the empire and join the rebellion and these decisions lead to completely different paths with other branching paths from there. I’ve always liked the idea of a largely open world where each decision affects the story and the world at large. Maybe they side with the empire and that path leads them to becoming the emperor’s personal enforcers or maybe they side with the rebels and that ends with them overthrowing the empire. Or maybe they side with the empire, kill the rebels and latter realize how horrible that was and then decide to rebel against the empire. Or maybe they overthrow the emperor and take his place, becoming the tyrant
I'll say that my time spent improving in DnD actually improved on my acting and improv skills before I got into theater acting or in an improved troupe.
I started using mindmaps a while ago to prepare for sessions where I write down brief notes for locations, characters, possible quests and events that will definitely happen at a certain time, no matter if the players are there or not this has made it much easier for me to DM because I always have an accurate overview of what can happen in the session and I let the players do the rest I'm also lucky enough to have a player who meticulously writes down everything that happens down to the smallest of details I then have her send me the notes so i don't forget anything important lol
As a player, I started a journal as a part of my backstory. Now it is the most reliable source for the timeline and plot points for the campaign. Entries are made for logical places where we stop in town, not camping on the road. I would be up to date, but did not want to put anything in writing about adjacently supporting a successful assassination of a corrupt empire official.
I'm not going to lie, hearing you explain the flow chart thing really makes me realize I don't really want to run 5e again. Since the OGL drama, I have branched out to other games, and thinking of how finicky and specific you have to be with some of those monsters just feels exhausting.... I have been running games with Basic Fantasy and Tiny Dungeon lately, and I have had a lot more fun writing and running those games than I did with 5e. 5e really puts a lot of the onus on the DM, and there is a lot of work and juggling you have to do. Once you have played other systems, it really just doesn't seem as fun anymore and I would rather do other things. I actually started thinking about a flowchart for my rogue in the game that I play in, and it just really feels clunky and I understand why combat gets slowed down now. Even with a basic martial character, you can still have all of these options that you want to throw in there and you are looking for the best option in the conditions, and it just takes time. In Tiny Dungeon for example, you have 2 actions and you can use them to move between zones (zone combat really feels better now that I have tried it) and you can attack, evade to try to avoid damage in the next turn, and focus to improve your chance of success. You do have some other things that your character can do based on traits, but it will still fall into one of those actions, so the choices are easier and they don't bog you down. I really think there are better games out there, and/or things you can bring into your 5e game to make it feel a little better. Zones, for example, are really easy to bring into D&D as you just have to classify a zone as 25-30ft of movement. Sure it removes some of the specific racial stuff for how far one race can move vs another, but does that really add to the game and the experience? Personally, I don't think so. It just adds one more thing to count, measure, and consider. And then it sucks after you find out you can't do what you wanted because you can't move there, so now you have to consider other options, taking longer, and perpetuation the problem.
Also having players making recaps makes you hear and see what they have valued most and in which aspects of previous session was most important for them specifically. Did not know J.Crawford has this style, I've always asked my players from recap and indeed it's a good start point to properly get into roleplay and into session.
I also let my players recap. They don't take notes unfortunately, but it's still good hear how they experienced the last session, what they picked up from it. Maybe they missed something vital I need to remind them of, or maybe they've got a totally different perspective that's actually cooler than my own. Feedback is always good, and this is also a form of feedback.
Improve classes definitely help. I have always been a very outgoing person. And I gotta say doing drama and other performances really brings home the session for the players.
also dont be afraid to add your other hobbies and players hobbies in your games. examples if you are really into plants. add vivid description of plants during travel or have descriptions of flowers in an inn. food and drink in bars can have players ordering more than just beer.
I've taken a lot of improv classes as done lots of shows. It's an excellent tool for both DMs and players. Saying yes and will move an game further along than saying no. Just remember, as my old improv teacher used to say, "You're improvising all day long." Take a class, it's a lot of fun.
13:07 one of the best one shots I’ve ever played was just jumping between different universes (LOTR, GoT, Elder Scrolls) and playing out the most famous scenes. Incredible
Yesterday I got two new players for my campaign who has been another campaign that did not really have that good of a DM. The way I DM and enjoy to do things is that I play an already existing world like Sword Coast. I put my own story in that world that fits the setting. Then I usually make the main quest of the campaign as a side things and I make several smaller stories for each back story and treat that as the quote or quote main story. If that is not possible I usually integrate the backstories into the main stories. The players who joined my campaign was mind blown and amazed by this. They were super happy because apparently their backstory was never brought up with the other DM.
Something I always appreciated about D&D, since I was a teenager playing the AD&D (was that the original?) was how it so often leads a bunch of shy introverted nerds to do improv and come out of their shells and become better at social skills, then acting, then actually even public speaking. I have seen this happen so many times. D&D can actually be used as a means of therapy in an odd way.
About having a map: That's one thing I REALLY like about playing systems that are set in our actual world (like the World of Darkness games) or at least something adjacent like Cthulhu, etc.: You can simply use regular building floor plans, google maps, etc. to save you LOADS of time!
My pro DM tip : don't try to be like a professional DM. Prepare some encounter you like, have a couple of NPC you'd like to rp ready, and bring a 6 packs for the bois (and girls). DnD is a fun game, theres no need to be overly serious with it
My recap looks as follows: i recap the very beginning of the campaign and i talk a little about the 2nd and 3rd session before... when i reach the last session, i hand it over to my Players. Always gives very nice view on the players perspective. and ofter enough i found, at least 1 player missunderstood something or mixed something up. Its nice to have players tell each other "nah, i actually was meant like..." not not being full DM-Mode before we even play and be like "no! I have not said that."
Regarding the recap advice, the group I play with gives each campaign session a name based on events within that session. A funny example being "1+1=7 OH S&%T!", wherein an attempt to put out a burning building with time magic instead caused the fire to spread to six other buildings. Another funny example is "The Sea Sucks. Nothing Good Ever Happens In The Sea", where we had horrible luck rolling on our oceanic travel table - we kept losing ships, and thus having to return to port. Another funny: "How the F%&@ is a Tornado Anticlimactic??", which referred to a boss fight we were able to cheese.
I've been fortunate enough in my life to have friends that improv all the time, which has helped in my DMing. The biggest piece of advice I have is to just roll with what is going on. The funniest scenes I've had as a DM have been naturally reacting to. It's a little nerve-racking but your players will enjoy it.
preroll 3 initiative checks at the end of each session, at the start of the next roll a d3 so you know which one is the first. When combat starts the excitement isn't delayed by boring initiative rolling. Immersion: either before or after the recap tell the table something like: " you've sharpened your swords and your tongues and memorised your spells. Put on your helmet, form a shield wall and get ready to play D&D", this should be a strong cue for everyone to start the game, no more gossip, no more phones, let's play.
After many years of DMing 5th edition ive pretty much had my fill of "list of scenes" session prep. Ive found that running a more procedural game with Moldvay basic allows me to actually play the game by being surprised by what happens and creates an authenticity to the world that means the characters dont need to follow the clear series of beats i have planned. OSR games in general excell at this and have brought my love for the game as a gm back. 5e is aight, but its really more akin to a player centric experience similar to buidling a magic card deck than anything that is meant for GMs
I feel like "railroading" is an issue where the DM becomes too invested in his prepared encounters and everything to remember that the players are going to pursue things based on what their collective objectives and incentives are... If you REALLY want them to go somewhere, do not lay one set of rails or a single longer DM monologue that FORCES them into the area, but instead make their objectives converge within the particular castle where they'll all find a rumored key item or clue or prisoner of interest or something... maybe they hear rumors of a valuable item... something that aligns with their backstory.. or maybe they are intent on sticking with their best friend, and you draw the best friend in with THEIR story, and this gives you a two-for-one deal in drawing in the players, then if you get one or two more players going, you then give the whole party a good reason to go! Another interesting one is if you initially just get a few of the players to come, but they run into trouble on their way over, and it unveils something that's of interest to another member of the party AND it proves too overwhelming a challenge for the few who DID go to your challenge / encounter / castle, or whatever you have them heading towards!
I always have my players recap the last session. Specifically I always have one particular player recap the session because her recaps are unintentionally hilarious.
Exceedingly busy DM here (50+ hrs/wk work): I have a very strong visualisation ability, so where I haven't the time to generate maps for myself and my players tends to be far less of an issue, as I already have the places well in mind's eye beforehand. I always ask my players for a recap, because we only play every other week, and they tend to be very distractable, even at the table.
I have a decent memory so I can write a full session recap to share with my players. It works as a good debrief and everyone can see it at any time so before the session people are basically fresh
At every start of a session I ask my players "who wants to do the recap?" the one ho does it, gain a bonus for the session (if its gonna be a combat-oriented session, i give them a +1 to hit, or one success against a saving throw of his choice, stuff like that), better recaps get better bonuses, this makes the players pay more attention to details, take notes and get more involved with the game and try to do a good recap instead of "oh last seasson we had a fight with bandits, killed the bandits, got drunk in a tavern, and a NPC showed up"
I was a player for over 20 Years before trying to be a DM to my now first round. A mix of newbees and experienced players. The first session was planned by me in great detail. I noticed pretty quickly, that my preparation was to rigid for my chaos bunch. Next session was much looser prepared - it was great but I still felt like I don't give them enough freedom. In addition I had to give my new players time to get used to everything. It worked out, piece by piece. The World we play in is my own making. I know it inside out. So now I only plan certain things they CAN experience and the rest is going with the flow. Like ... My npc wanted to lead them to a secret passage into the palace. They had to get through the gardens first to get there. Ofcorse someone crit. failed their roll for stealth and was no "singing" Hi-Ho from the dwarfs of Snow white. As the guards now drew closer another failed his acrobatics check and was jumping besids a guard, instead of into hiding. The singing one just got into hiding and My 3. player decided suddenly: "I will step into the torchlight!" the first second I looked at them like "are you serious?" and then I rolled with it. That way "sister hildegard" was born. A not so bright sister of the Tempel in the city, who is nuts about mushrooms. They played it out that well, that everyone was rolling on the floor laughing. Just brilliant. I love my chaos bunch. Edit: I didn't have improv classes but I always had a kind of talent to just wip out stuff and I trained it since school. Yes I was the class clown, but in addition my dad trained me in rethorics from an early age on. He always said this is a valuble skill and rightfully so. I also have a very good memory and remember skids and stuff even if it was decades ago. That helps alot to put all I know together and make something unique out of it on the fly.
A couple of things I've learned over my years (far more than I would like to count) as a DM: First, I do a ton of prep prior to the campaign. I have tons of information about the setting that might never come up, but it gives me a foundation upon which I can draw. If I know where the wood elves come from, I can more easily recall information if a PC is a wood elf or if the group runs into wood elves at some point, even if I'm not expecting them to go looking. Second, I let my players do the recap. Not because I necessarily think that they should be forced to in order to pay attention, or even to find out what they found exciting or important, but to understand what they understood versus what I thought I described. Communication isn't perfect, so getting an idea of what my players thought happened versus what I thought happened can really help me work to clear up any confusion (especially if it is about a critical plot point.) Third, I like to let players make decisions about undefined setting details themselves. I find that players feel a greater connection to the setting if they have some stake in defining it. If I don't have a god of the harvest, but my player wants to be a farmer-turned-cleric that worships a harvest god, and they ask me if there is one, I'll just say "I don't know, is there? Do you want there to be one, or do you feel one of the existing pantheon might reflect that in some way and you want to expand their portfolio?" Players will feel a greater connection if you let them make some of these decisions along the way.
Almost every player in my home game has started following my habit of keeping all session notes "in character" as journal entries written by their character, and we have started having one person each week read back their character's last journal entry as our preferred method of recap at the start of each session. One week we'll hear the last journal entry from my excitable goblin rogue, and the next we might get a peek at the diary of our very reserved duergar cleric. I love this because we all get small peeks inside the minds of the other characters, seeing events through the lens of their perspective. The DM loves it because it helps us invest in each others' characters, and it helps her to know what information from the last game actually stuck with us and what we have forgotten about.
This is genius!
That's awesome. I am def. jealous as a DM.
I am stealing this for my next campaign. Thank you very much.
OH I LOVE THISS!!
I started doing this with my players as well, really helps you see what they're zoning in on. I also put a session summary on discord straight after the game.
Matt Colville taught us that when the players recap, it is a signal to us the DM what they thought was important as well as things we think should be important but that they might have missed and you can signal a little bit better.
This. We aren't pro DMs and our players aren't pro players, lol.
I had this thought process but my friend writes down and recaps everything no matter how minor so i'm a little lost
@@odessawild7798how about a recap talk after the session.
Really just ask your players what they thought about it. What they liked, what feelings they have etc
Best advice every by Matt Colvielle, it helps me so much, players miss key details you can than bring again or mention, also players mention things you forgot to note down. Letting them recap made it so muche easier for me.
Also I try to find out on the end of each session where my players like to go from there next time, so I can prep that and we can start the next session without arguing what they like to do. Its that subtle control over your game, esepcially if you have a more sandbox game.
Problem is players don’t always want to recap and sometimes you get players who recap wild stuff that never happened and it causes a disconnect with the group because now they’re doubting what they remember happening or what that player is saying.
I’m not saying it’s bad advice, I’m saying it’s a “read the room” advice because it doesn’t work for all groups.
So i've taken some improv classes. One of the best things was being told to NOT go for comedy. My favorite scenes are playing a character completely straight and reacting candidly.
Straightmen provide great counters to a bombastic party. A owner of a magic shop in my campaign is kind of snooty, upper crust, and very straight (Not sexually, as I later discovered). And he consistently provides the most fun to the group. While more loud and obnoxious characters, like an off his rocker war veteran and a goblin upselling rotting fruit as miracle cures made players uneasy. Its surprising just how much reacting normally to a group of weirdos brings laughs.
This is how I run games. Play the world straight, and the players will bring the goofs.
😊😅😅😊
Funny situations are very rarely “funny” Look at Leslie Neilsen style comedy - he doesn’t know in character that what he’s saying is funny.
The funniest moments in all of my campaigns have arisen from stupid puns and simple expressions starting head canons in the players' minds.
Like for example in one of the first episodes of our PF2E campaign, we were turned into necril monsters who can shaepshift at will at the expense of this curse taking over their minds.
Our GM, when passing an occultism check to see what we know about these creatures, blurted out "Well, basically what you know is that they are... for a lack of a better word ... dead undead" (the word dead in the meaning of "extinct").
However, this choice of words led me down a chain of thoughts where I was basically going... "So...they were alive, then died, then were alive again, only to die again...what the f***???" And that led to me breaking down in laughter of the absurd situation of dead undead creatures, where we had to pause the session (mind you, this was an actual play session on Twitch) because my laughter virtually infected other players who couldn't keep it straight either.
There were many more instances of pure unintentional comedy, like anytime in our main campaign, we use the word "varg" (which is one of the species in the system we play), someone is making a stupid pun because it is phonetically close to other words in our native language, German. Something like: "I have a varge (vague) recollection...."
The best comedy moments, however, are the result of stupidly botched rolls, like our mage trying to shapeshift into a small mouse to sneak on board a ship to steal a parchment roll, only to fail her roll to use the spell, and instead tumbling, falling face first onto a gravel road and rolling down a steep hill leading to the harbor, losing 2/3 of her HP in the process. That was basically our version of the infamous "gold fish incident".
Lazy DM:
1) Review the PCs
2) Make a “Strong Start” to kick the game off with something fun.
3) Jot down some “Potential Scenes”
4) Jot down some “Secrets & Clues”
5) Important NPCs
6) Fantastic Locations (or a good map)
7) Encounters
8) Treasures & Loot
Aaaaaaand you’re done.
The Lazy DM process has been a life saver for me. His Notion spreadsheet(?) is something I use everyday.
Yeah. I've been using too. Works really well with more linear campaigns and homebrew adventures. You'll need a bit more prep with more sandboxy published adventures like Curse of Strahd. Sometimes is hard to predict where the group will decide to go in the middle of the next session, so I end up doing "the 8 steps" for two or three totally different scenarios.
@@AvengerYouT I get you. Although, a sandbox adventure usually becomes choosing between a couple available linear quests. A true sandbox is when the story unfolds at the table. The prep then becomes making a “Situation” in a location. Improv skills become your “prep” lol.
This is better advice than the video provided.
@Tusitala1967 google "sly flourish lazy dm steps" for a full explanation
My way of "recapping" is slamming my hands down on the table and asking my players "okay, what the hell happened last session?" It gives the players who took notes more chance to shine, it helps me tell what parts of the previous session stick in the players' memories, and when i ask it forcefully it immediately starts the session and puts everyone in "player mode"
What I learned through the years:
If you know your Game World/Campaign/Adventure and your rules well enough, as a DM you can B.S. your way through almost any situation that might happen during a session.
This is super true, I've been dming in my own setting for years and I rarely ever find myself needing to write intricate campaign outlines.
Most of my campaign prep is just about setting the initial state of the world (Which NPCs are doing which things in which places) and then I improv everything that comes next based on the player's actions, which works because I run my games as weird sort-of "intrigue sandbox" where each campaign features multiple disparate intrigue stories that all connect to a larger metaplot at the heart of the campaign
The absolute truth, Been forever DM since '81 and this is the most important skill. Know your setting, let them roam!
and if you dont know your game world and wanting to DM a game you've not played.. your screwed!
@@lyianx not necessarily. If you don't know the game world but at least the most necessary mechanics you can try to world build on the go. Just take notes that actually make sense so that you have something to base future events on or places your players can revisit. I was DM for a 3 year campaign in the forgotten realms just using a map of the sword coast and what I remembered from the neverwinter nights and baldurs gate video games. The rest was stuff that I made up on the go based on the player's back stories
@@theninjaguy2 yes! I created a setting that I GM in Pathfinder 1e and i love coming up with stuff on the fly, including deciding whether or not some rolls are successful based off how great it would be in the story and as an experience for my players instead of if it actually hit the DC
I did take an improv class in college and I do think it has benefited my DMing as I am very improvisational as a DM as well. However, I think you can also get practice from watching improv shows like Who's Line or even Dropout's other shows besides Dimension 20, ESPECIALLY if you take the time to try doing the prompts yourself and with friends.
I'd highly recommend the upright citizens brigade book or audiobook, it's got some great tips for making characters on the fly too
THE FLOW CHART IS HUGE WOW, big tips thank you for your efforts!
No need to thank me, I stole it from Aabria! :P
@@BonusAction you did all the research and collected the information, delivered it in an entertaining and easy to understand way. That deserves thanks!
I have watched countless videos on DM Tips, but this takes the cake as the one that reaps the most benefits. This compilation of takeaways from my favorite people has really informed many ways that I could upgrade my current session prep workflow. The length of the video also assures that I can easily watch this to get into the right headspace before I prep. Thank you!
So… I’m relatively new to DMing, I was regular player few years ago but then Covid happened and everything went to shit. In August of this year I started to run my own homebrew campaign for my friends who’ve never played D&D before. And your videos helped a ton. So, just wanted to say thank you for everything you do.
Improv classes absolutely help and honestly they are a ton of fun. Like another commenter said, you don't need to go for anything or prove yourself. If you're bad, no one will really judge you. I was an stage actor and done lots of improv stuff for years way before I started playing DnD, and I definitely rely on it because my sense of storytelling and improv skill is just that strong. It might take a little bit of work to get the hang of it but you absolutely should. Once you start, you're gonna love it, especially since you're a DM and probably doing it a lot already. Great video! Lots of great advice.
I was thinking you could also apply a recap hybrid approach by having your players mention one key moment of the last session (no repeats), then have them listen to your recap. If they named something in your recap, they get inspiration!
I would love to see a video someday about how different DMs go about directing pacing in their games.
Thank you for your content! It is fun, light, refined and right on point! I really have enjoyed your coverage of different professional DM styles and always look forward to your videos! Thank you for your hard work and have a great day! 😊
Thankyou!
Something that im doing with my groups: players do recap, first player A , next week player B, etc. But after they do it I always ask: Does any one remember or want to add something? - after that I fill the blanks of things I know could be importatnt but i see they didnt notice. Sometimes I add extra question like "Anyone remembers this name xxxx?" and in most cases recap takes around 5 min? Sometimes they show one another what they didnt see or pay enought attention to. For me as DM best thing is to see that players interact, remember the world you gave them AND! it helps me understand their point of view. As DM we know what will go down, when, where, who etc. But they dont. Understanding what your players enjoyed most, notice, skip, had more fun with helps you to give them and yourself too best possible time at the table :)
We made the player recap a rotating job,
They don't necessarily have to take notes themselves,
They just need to make sure certain things are noted down during the session,
So when they ask for notes on something during the recap next session.
There's someone who can fill the gaps.
GetFlappy had a video called "Use flow charts to run BETTER D&D combats" which had similar ideas about making flowcharts out of monster stat blocks. I think it works really well in flights where you have multiple different types of enemies with different move sets.
Thanks for the video recommendation! :D
I took improv classes for about six months until I had to move and there just weren't any classes near me. I absolutely recommend it. It does all the things you would expect in terms of helping you be better at thinking on your feet, embracing player input, and leaning into your strengths as a creative. However, the general principles behind improv have been actually fairly helpful and applicable outside of that context. It helped me start seeing obstacles in my daily life as platforms to launch off of rather than merely points of stress and tension. It helped me foster a more collaborative attitude in my work and social life. I do want to be cautious here and not try to imply that a good improv course is life-changing or that it will alleviate everything that ails you. However, for me, I was able to extract a lot of value out of the insights and principles discussed among my peers. I miss it quite a bit.
Best way to railroad without railroading. Illusion of choice.
Create a detailed campaign, but make sure that enough of the important parts are "modular". In essence, regardless of the actions players take, they will end up in the same planned scenario.
Tavern? Shady mercenary who gives quest. Castle? Shady guard who gives quest. Store? Shady stocker who gives quest. And the quest is always the same, and reroutes back to a higher up NPC who is responsible.
Now this wont _always_ work. Sometimes the party just doesnt want a quest. But its a great way to kickstart a campaign and hook players into a narrative without seeming forced.
This is why overpreparing is actually not a real taboo. You provide them with the illusion of choice but to truly make it illusionary to where the players don't catch on is to over-prepare in this instance by providing several scenarios in those "choices" that will converge your players back on to the "rails" of the story before the adventure becomes out of hand. I've done this several times in my campaigns where they are not really certain whether what they're actually doing in their story is part of the actual campaign that I've planned or something that was improv'd.
You’re describing a closed matrix. Congrats 😀
What a great video with good advice from a wide range of different DMs. I really liked it :)
As some others already mentioned, Sly Flourish's Lazy DM Prep is a great method to organize session prep.
He also has a lot of other advice on certain aspects of RPGs.👍
Sly Flourish is tied with Matt Colville for my favorite pro DMs to get advice from!
My strategy is not to plan session-specific story beats beyond an opening scene, a couple of goals, and how I want to end that session. My goal isn't to plan every little detail of what's going to happen session-to-session, but to plan as many little details as I can of the world, including the motivations and personalities of the NPCs, around them. That way, when the players do what players do and go in a completely unexpected direction, I know how the world around them will shift to accommodate said direction.
1: Begin by planning out several cool/fun/exciting specific scenes that YOU want to happen, this is how Matthew Mercer can pre-build battle maps with terrain and minis. This is also how you make sure that YOU as a DM has fun. The players will have fun trying to solve these specific situations.
2: Use both a world map and a small map, to orient the upcoming adventure. This is both for your own sake and for your players. This also helps you to build the right terrain setting for upcoming encounters.
3: When the players arrive: Do a recap, let the players do as much of the recap as possible. But it is my experience that the players don't remember more that maybe 20% at best, while i, the DM, remember basically 90%+.
4: Have 2-3 back-up plans if the players go in another direction. As in; ready made back up encounters (doesn't have to be combat).
5: Embrace improvisation, it's fun. But also pre-practice different types of NPCs.
6: Railroading is when the only thing that can open the door is the key they should have stolen from the guy they passed 30min ago, and nothing the players come up with can open the door - Don't do that. That is bad.
7: Keep lists of different races Names ready, preferably also a connection to a line of work.
8: As a DM; Make Monster-Flow-Charts! Rage-> Move Close -> Attack Twice -> Speak!
9: Copy and tweak cool happenings, scenes, characters, lines etc from any and every media.
10: Make sure you are invested in the story. YOU (DM) must have fun. Do NOT put the players fun before your own, that will burn you out fast. If you don't have fun, there will be no more games and everyone will suffer for it. If it's not fun, scrap the adventure and make a new one that you want to DM, this is important on an Alpha-Omega level.
11: DMing and Playing D&D is a skill. Play as much as you can to get better. If you want to take it to the next level: Take Improv-classes.
Lastly, This is my advice to you: After session end = Take your time to Write down what happened, and Write it like a Novel. Runt it through a spell-checking program, and send it to your players in your group chat. Player absolutely LOVE that shit. After a year of doing this you will have a really nice adventure novel to look back on.
This was a really good video. If you keep your content of this quality you're going to get big.
you articulated well what i try to ideally achieve in DM-ing and having this to come back to is golden. earned my sub brother.
For my Candela Obscura arc, I have each scene listed as “arrival at location” and “big reveal”. This is how I intend to not railroad the players but keep the story flowing. I’ll have some notes on basic concepts to be used in between the arrival and reveal, but my intention is that they give me an interesting and entertaining reason to give the reveal (without being unreasonable).
Granted, CO is more of an “investigation heavy” system so the rails need to exist, but they are more like the rails used for Bumper Bowling: they mark the absolute boundary of the scene/assignment, but the players can still take crazy paths to the end.
Love the flow-chart idea. Similar to giving monsters an algorithm to follow or rolling their actions in a chart. It forces you to put them on display as you initially intended
For the 'previously on' section, we get one of the players to do this, based on the notes they took in the session. Each player has a role - we have an official note taker, someone who handles the initiative board, someone who does the sound effects and controls the powerpoint deck that has all the maps, and the one who has the rulebooks to look up any questions. This leaves the DM more time to DM.
Wow how little actual interview this video has is astounding.
I’m literally researching improv classes rn, glad this is a tip recommended by the pros 😅 Loved this video! Thank you ✨
I made a goblin named Krunk. He had a thing for levers, cooking, and squirrels🤣
@2:50 ish... I have the players do the recap. Allows me as a GM to interject on facts versus memory and helps get all the players on board for actually accomplishing something. And it cements plans that help me run what scenes will progress plot and allows for focusing on what the players want to hit on, both metaphorically and literally.
I took a short (12 session) improv course and it definitely helped. However, I was also gratified that many of the other practised improvers told me I did well, which I fully accredit to having DM'd for years. I felt good about my skills, and I learned a bunch.
I don’t discredit what a lot of these “pro” DMs say, but when I first started I took a lot of these peoples advice and let me tell you session prepping was such a chore but I did it because it’s what the pros said I should do.
Then I came across prep lite people and the thing that stood out to me the most was the phrase “prepping is just writing enough notes that you feel confident that you can improvise anything.”
It wasn’t about page long scripts or scenes or flow charts or any of this other stuff.
The most influential person in this was Sly Flourish and his book Return of the Lazy Dungeon master.
I don’t follow his advice verbatim anymore, but it helped me realize I shouldn’t be spending moor than 1 hour writing my prep notes, most of my notes should fit on an index card, and it should be only enough to make me feel prepared to improvise, not a script to read from.
The flow charts for a creature's action economy is an incredible idea! I like to think about an NPC's motivation in combat, like will they fight to the death, do they care enough about the challenge posed by the players to take it seriously, will they try to get away at the first opportunity etc although a flow chat for their actions means you can really easily make a decision about what they do at each turn without having to think too much about it. Players might have the time to think on each turn but the DM often needs to think really fast to keep the action going and this means you have a really quick reference. Amazing idea!
Aabria's flowchart method has really taken the mental strain out of running villains for me, and I also use it for their overall decisions.
Great video! I loved your breakdowns and examples for each tip
Honestly this was a wonderful video. The flow chart design for Npc actions is wonderful and I plan to adopt that in my own style. I hate forgetting things haha
you can't have THE red wedding
you can have a red wedding
I write a weekly recap after the sessions, usually the next day or two so it's fresh. They're fairly detailed, at least 1000 words. I've been doing this for many years, both as a way to remind myself of the adventures, and to keep PCs up to speed. Players tend to forget details between sessions, depending on what's going on, or they misremember something, so having it there verbatim for everyone to see really helps.
Funny you mention the red wedding, cause I pulled it off in one of my games like 2 months ago, which propelled the story arc that just ended past session. It was indeed a wedding, and the bad guys poisoned the wine with tear of the midnight, and then at midnight a lot of people died. The PCs took damage, but they are too high level to die from regular poison, but important and innocent npcs died by the dozens. The players could save, heal and even revive some of them, but not all, and damage was already done.
Your highway metaphor for railroading is a fantastic visual representation of a game.
Building hooks that are linked *directly* to the characters' own backstories removes railroading completely. They *choose* to follow the crumbs "because it's what their character would do".
Turn what can be an issue with players challenged at realistic roleplay into the hook they *cannot* shake off.
_Me watching this as a new DM seeing Brennan Lee Mulligans advice_- now time to go with improv classes… I already have a ton of dnd games
Different DM styles are going to work for different people. I think the best thing to take from it is that it is okay to improv when needed.
One of the biggest things that I have learned as a DM is that if I want a specific story thing to happen, I just create the required NPCs and necessary story elements and then just hold them and let my players do whatever. There is almost always an appropriate moment every session to then introduce those things organically as a response to something that my players have done. When I first started, I thought that I really needed to plan out every little contingency and if the players didn't go exactly where I wanted them to, I would fumble and be lost, because I needed the "perfect" scenario to introduce the storyline that I was trying to hook the players with. Instead of that now, I realize that I don't need the players to meet the NPC in a tavern - they can now be a prisoner kept in a bandit camp, or instead of getting the MacGuffin from the NPC, they find it in a phase spider nest along with a note asking one NPC to bring it to another. Basically, the story takes care of itself as long as you put the elements for it in front of the players.
I definitely do recaps. Doing so legitimately is the keystone of my prep.
My chaos crew meets weekly for 2 hr sessions. So anticipating where they're going and facilitating that is mission critical. If I don't lay out the main options, they will absolutely make up their own path...which takes time for them to decide on it, and time for me to adjust. It ends up being a double-whammy on time and quality of the session. (though admittedly, I can't be too harsh when they convince their pet mimic to turn into a pile of shit for them to place in front of their rival's doorstep....only for them to panic-arson the place. That was the one session I didn't do a recap at the start)
The recap is a great way to transition from intros to play, focuses them in one of 2-3 different directions, and gives me a limited number of encounters to plan for. Reminding them that Town A has a magic salesman, tavern B has good food, and person C has the mcguffin is an excellent way to let the players have agency in where they go, while making paths of least-resistance towards planned encounters instead of them forging their own path via committee actions.
Really like the idea of highway vs railroad. Awesome video man!!
My advice would be this: know your world. Know what would happen in your world if the players didn't exist, and then let that unfold. The rub of the game is where the players interact with it.
Something I do as a DM that helps especially new players is creating a list of their player abilities that is separated into Actions, Bonus Actions, etc so they know their options each turn.
As someone about to start DM-ing for the first time--thank u for this video :)
The crew picks up the log from last time and check what happened. They form up today's patrol and decide where they want to push. At the end they file their own log and leave it for the next crew. It should be written so that players who were not present can figure out where the greater expedition stands.
Procedure and routine helps.
Regarding not enjoying prepping/ the game, start with asking yourself why you're not enjoying the game. Sometimes we think we just aren't interested in what's happening when we really just need to take a break from DMing.
Hey mate. Great eye for the advice you pulled together.
As a viewer who‘d like to see your channel grow, I would give you the advice for your future videos.
This is purely based on this video. Maybe helps you. If not just ignore and keep going.
1. Focus more on key messages
Make sure you narrow down to what you want to convey as if it where a list of „the X things of…“ could easily be written down as takeaways or timestamped in the comments. I personally like to bookmark some of those advice and come back to them from time to time or recommend to others.
2. Video editing techniques
Maybe look at some editing techniques to better highlight key messages and help better structure the story of your key message. It‘s organised around the DMs now but core concepts are harder to grasp as mentioned above. I think you could easily improve your message by far with an improved editing.
3. Cut/Use side topics for new ideas
I reckoned that in the end you drifted off a bit on DM is a player too and what to do as a DM when you don‘t have the same fun. IMHO this could have been left out from this video (sure it was not a big deal to have it). Instead when figuring out such content fragments in your post/review you could use them as a starting point for future videos.
Hope you appreciate the advice as helpful.
Improv is so much fun, definitely jump into it, you won't regret it.
I remember coming away from my first class thinking "This is basically just like playing a tabletop roleplaying game with no dice." I haven't done much GMing after taking improv, but I did play in my brother's campaign for his podcast, and he noted that he could tell how I'd improved as a result of the classes.
Why does the picture for this video say DON'T RECAP, but then there is immediately a piece of advice to do a recap? You then mention some times the players can be asked to summarize the recap, but it is STILL doing a recap (just a different person/group is doing it). So the picture is a bit incorrect/clickbait.
Otherwise great video. The comments section is useful too.
Hey, the thumbnail is indeed referring to the point I was making that the DM does not have to recap (if you want your players to do it). This is a UA-cam video and it is the thumbnails job to entice you to click. Hence you will often find thumbnails that evoke mystery and curiosity and yes, often thumbnails will exaggerate or embellish. But I do apologise if you felt mislead!
If you’re nervous to take improv classes, try doing some improv games with your D & D group. It’s a fun thing to do between big adventures when you need a break.
I used to do improv in high school and it actually caused me a lot of anxiety.
I basically do improv in my everyday life though cause I’m weird and have become a lot more comfortable with public speaking cause of years working in customer service, so I’m happy with my current capabilities!
I've been in a weird situation where I've had players join my campaign later on after watching my DM style and they preferred my approach over there own groups 😅 I was shocked to see that me a beginner DM with 1 and half years of training was winning people over.
Some players just click with different DM's! But sounds like you are doing a lot right!
I vibe with this... Often when I get new players in I'll play a short one-shot for session 0 (before the ACTUAL session 0) and I have on various occasions explained this to the people who asked why I do that as you need to see if it "vibes" between playstyles; escpecially if you're playing homebrew. It goes both ways after all... not only does you GM'ing style need to vibe with the player but the players playstyle needs to vibe with you (as GM) too.
Getting players to do the recap is good not only because it gets them into the game but because theyre the ones experiencing the game. You might think players memory can be flawed but GMs memory have even more flaws because so much is going on and you know whats planned so you it can give you bias.
The best things you can do is ask you players to write a short recap, or potential journal entry at the end of your session and give them to you so 1, you know what stuck out and 2 if theres some time between sessions they can remember the exact mindset they had at the end of last session when you give it back to them.
I’m the party notetaker so I’m often asked for recap. I think it helps that I have a few friends who love to hear me recap my latest session like an epic story podcast (lol) for them. So I get practice between sessions to review what all went on. Also in my notes, I’ll make little side notes on who is in which scene so I know who knows which information. For the most part, we kinda try to keep everyone together just so dm doesn’t have a more difficult time of things but sometimes a scene is better being more one on one with the lack of information sharing making for interesting plot devices. But that’s carefully chosen by the individuals and we are pretty good at respecting that with each other. But yeah, my notes usually cover who knows what, not just over all plot. This usually leads to me recapping at times.
However, one big problem that crops up is that I’m not always the best at giving an articulate rundown of last session unless I write down what I’m saying first. This leads to kind of an adhd way of recapping which is very tangent filled. More often than not, it’s preferred that I let dm give recap and fill in missing anecdotes and context, maybe minor correction on misremembered things (rarely needed but appreciated by my group for when it does, of which I’m relieved about).
I really think my groups prefer a recap though. We do a lot of intrigue in most of the campaigns I play in and a larger than average gap in sessions can lead to key details and foreshadowing being overlooked or neglected. Plus, because of our focus on storytelling (some combat but isn’t the main focus) the recaps are always pleasant to start with because it sets the feel of that for us. We like storytelling and so does our dm. So we start with telling the story of last session.
Hoping this didn’t ramble too much and made sense.
Don’t railroad your players. Road-trip them. You have an end goal… but you’re not opposed to stopping to look at something or do something and eventually get back on the road. Best way to do it. Gives structure but also let’s everyone’s imagination flow more.
Thinking of possible scenes is all fine and good as long as you don't get into the head space of expecting them to happen. For me thinking about scenes is all about familiarizing myself with the world, not planning for what is going to happen. This allows for much more flexible sandbox games
Improv classes definitely help! Find a small theater if you can and take a class. A lot fun and you get to meet some really great people
4:48 another big reason I love this method is you can actually see how the players percieve what just happened. You may percieve it different to your players and sometimes how they see things are better so you can steal that. Or you can play into what they are thinking and then throw them a curveball later revealing what was actually going on.
Regarding using some kind of cue to signal the formal start of play, I have an online-based game with some friends and we meet on Discord. I use a sound on our soundboard that is the beginning of the "NFL on FOX" song that means the game is officially beginning. It was originally just a joke, a play on "Fantasy Football", but it has now become a functional cue, like you said, to change gears in your mind and begin playing.
Matt is in the thumbnail and starts every session with a recap.
YES I have taken an improv class AND (joke for all my improv friends lol) it helps immensely with DMing. Lots of situations where I’ve been able to pull things out of thin air and kind of fly by the seat of my pants. Very helpful and I would recommend 100%
One thing I really like to do is write the inhabitants of a room on my DM prep map. I hate having to look away from the map to see what started in that room.
I worked at a rennfaire where we had mandatory improv classes. Was a good way to take them without having to pay a fee as well as we got paid to do improv moments with the patrons. You learn basic techniques and then get to practice them with people you may never see again, win win.
I realize hearing these tips that my biggest strong suit as a dm is having a super good memory for story and being able to make up a lot on the fly. Ive built whole guilds mid session
One thing I love is that as a PLAYER, I take notes of what happened in the session, a sort of "Last time on DnD". All my group at this point just relies on my notes.
Sooooo when I end up DMing... Who's gonna do it now? Cuz -I- sure ain't gonna keep track of it, hahahaha! (I'll have my own notes, tbf, but I am a strong proponent of letting the players do the recap. Like stated, it gets us invested in the events that happens, creates stronger connections to them, and helps us realize 'okay, tabletalk is done, time for rpg.) They put all their eggs in one note-taking basket... Now it is time for THEM to take the notes, bwahahaha. Or not, maybe they'll just forget, buuuut here's hoping I'll keep them invested enough to WANT to.
I’ve only GMd a few gaming sessions, and I have a lot of experience in improv, but when it comes to improvising story, just remember that all writing is improvising story but you stop every once in a while and think about it. Or you take a little bit longer to do it.
The truth of the matter is, the only thing preventing you from creating story on the fly is that you’re probably judging the story that you’re creating. Now there’s good and bad improvised story of course, but if you find yourself in a situation where you need to improvise parts of what’s happening, the easiest thing to do is just pretend that you’re writing, and don’t judge what you come up with. Also, unlike stage improv, RPG improv allows the opportunity to take a second and write something down.
I ran two sessions of kuru for my friends who are very experienced in the system. The first one was a one on one. I had a whole thing planned out, a place where the player was ultimately supposed to go to find out what was happening. But for some reason, he ended up more interested in following a random NPC. I didn’t have a place for this character to go at that time, so I had the NPC end up at a warehouse where people were gambling on hog races. It was a totally random thing that I came up with, because I hadn’t come up with anything else interesting for this NPC to do. He wasn’t supposed to be noticed, but the player ended up looking to see if he was followed. so I made a on the fly system to determine which hogs were winning, and then I decided on the fly that there would be a race against the fastest hog by anyone who wanted to race against it. I have the MPC enter the race, and then the player bet on the race. All of this took the entire session. So we never actually got to any of the things I really planned for. We didn’t continue in the series, but had we, that would’ve eventually led the player to the thing I wanted them to find.
In the meantime, on the separate session with the other players, the intention was for that first players actions to have some impact on their session, but because he didn’t get far enough I couldn’t do that. I have meticulously planned out an entire facility that they were going to have to escape from. We did manage to do that, I learned my lesson from the first session to keep things moving and not focus too much on small things. that being said, listening to my players, they started thinking that there was some additional aspect to where they were trapped that I hadn’t considered. I basically decided that I would let the dice tell me if the thing that they were looking for existed or not. I roll the dice and it turned out that they did, so on the fly I came up with some kind of a material that was magical that was keeping them inside the room there in. Once I decided this, they had to try to find it, and they did manage to do so. From there, I had a bunch of things potentially available to find in the facility, and I had a clock running where as time went by, things would happen in the facility unless they did something to change them. in the end the facility was going to explode for reasons that they would either discover or not depending on where they went.
The bottom line though, is that you don’t need to be afraid of improvising. Yes taking improv class is actually in someways more challenging than improvising as a game master,but it doesn’t have to be intimidating. Just know that the key to it is not to judge what you improvise. Make a decision, check to make sure that it’s plausible for the world you’ve created, and then go with it.
For me, I’ve always liked creating scenarios around important decisions players need to make. Like one scenario would be the players are conscripts in a military for an empire and they are sent on a mission to deal with bandits who are raiding caravans. Now they go out and find the bandits only for the bandits to claim that they are rebellion against the tyrant emperor and they only raid imperial slavers, liberating slaves because they think every is morally wrong. Now players must decide whether to carry out their mission and kill the so-called “bandits” or turn against the empire and join the rebellion and these decisions lead to completely different paths with other branching paths from there. I’ve always liked the idea of a largely open world where each decision affects the story and the world at large. Maybe they side with the empire and that path leads them to becoming the emperor’s personal enforcers or maybe they side with the rebels and that ends with them overthrowing the empire. Or maybe they side with the empire, kill the rebels and latter realize how horrible that was and then decide to rebel against the empire. Or maybe they overthrow the emperor and take his place, becoming the tyrant
I'll say that my time spent improving in DnD actually improved on my acting and improv skills before I got into theater acting or in an improved troupe.
I started using mindmaps a while ago to prepare for sessions where I write down brief notes for locations, characters, possible quests and events that will definitely happen at a certain time, no matter if the players are there or not this has made it much easier for me to DM because I always have an accurate overview of what can happen in the session and I let the players do the rest I'm also lucky enough to have a player who meticulously writes down everything that happens down to the smallest of details I then have her send me the notes so i don't forget anything important lol
The thumbnail says don't recap but then the video explicitly tells you the benefits of recapping.
As a player, I started a journal as a part of my backstory. Now it is the most reliable source for the timeline and plot points for the campaign. Entries are made for logical places where we stop in town, not camping on the road. I would be up to date, but did not want to put anything in writing about adjacently supporting a successful assassination of a corrupt empire official.
I'm not going to lie, hearing you explain the flow chart thing really makes me realize I don't really want to run 5e again. Since the OGL drama, I have branched out to other games, and thinking of how finicky and specific you have to be with some of those monsters just feels exhausting.... I have been running games with Basic Fantasy and Tiny Dungeon lately, and I have had a lot more fun writing and running those games than I did with 5e. 5e really puts a lot of the onus on the DM, and there is a lot of work and juggling you have to do. Once you have played other systems, it really just doesn't seem as fun anymore and I would rather do other things.
I actually started thinking about a flowchart for my rogue in the game that I play in, and it just really feels clunky and I understand why combat gets slowed down now. Even with a basic martial character, you can still have all of these options that you want to throw in there and you are looking for the best option in the conditions, and it just takes time. In Tiny Dungeon for example, you have 2 actions and you can use them to move between zones (zone combat really feels better now that I have tried it) and you can attack, evade to try to avoid damage in the next turn, and focus to improve your chance of success. You do have some other things that your character can do based on traits, but it will still fall into one of those actions, so the choices are easier and they don't bog you down. I really think there are better games out there, and/or things you can bring into your 5e game to make it feel a little better. Zones, for example, are really easy to bring into D&D as you just have to classify a zone as 25-30ft of movement. Sure it removes some of the specific racial stuff for how far one race can move vs another, but does that really add to the game and the experience? Personally, I don't think so. It just adds one more thing to count, measure, and consider. And then it sucks after you find out you can't do what you wanted because you can't move there, so now you have to consider other options, taking longer, and perpetuation the problem.
Really great advice. Thank you!
Also having players making recaps makes you hear and see what they have valued most and in which aspects of previous session was most important for them specifically.
Did not know J.Crawford has this style, I've always asked my players from recap and indeed it's a good start point to properly get into roleplay and into session.
I also let my players recap. They don't take notes unfortunately, but it's still good hear how they experienced the last session, what they picked up from it. Maybe they missed something vital I need to remind them of, or maybe they've got a totally different perspective that's actually cooler than my own. Feedback is always good, and this is also a form of feedback.
Improve classes definitely help. I have always been a very outgoing person. And I gotta say doing drama and other performances really brings home the session for the players.
also dont be afraid to add your other hobbies and players hobbies in your games. examples if you are really into plants. add vivid description of plants during travel or have descriptions of flowers in an inn. food and drink in bars can have players ordering more than just beer.
I've taken a lot of improv classes as done lots of shows. It's an excellent tool for both DMs and players. Saying yes and will move an game further along than saying no. Just remember, as my old improv teacher used to say, "You're improvising all day long." Take a class, it's a lot of fun.
13:07 one of the best one shots I’ve ever played was just jumping between different universes (LOTR, GoT, Elder Scrolls) and playing out the most famous scenes. Incredible
This sounds incredible!
Yesterday I got two new players for my campaign who has been another campaign that did not really have that good of a DM.
The way I DM and enjoy to do things is that I play an already existing world like Sword Coast. I put my own story in that world that fits the setting. Then I usually make the main quest of the campaign as a side things and I make several smaller stories for each back story and treat that as the quote or quote main story.
If that is not possible I usually integrate the backstories into the main stories.
The players who joined my campaign was mind blown and amazed by this. They were super happy because apparently their backstory was never brought up with the other DM.
Something I always appreciated about D&D, since I was a teenager playing the AD&D (was that the original?) was how it so often leads a bunch of shy introverted nerds to do improv and come out of their shells and become better at social skills, then acting, then actually even public speaking. I have seen this happen so many times. D&D can actually be used as a means of therapy in an odd way.
😂 too bad its like pulling teeth to get my fckin wife to come out of her shell.
The best way to use overprepping and not wasting any content, is having multiple groups.
About having a map: That's one thing I REALLY like about playing systems that are set in our actual world (like the World of Darkness games) or at least something adjacent like Cthulhu, etc.: You can simply use regular building floor plans, google maps, etc. to save you LOADS of time!
My pro DM tip : don't try to be like a professional DM. Prepare some encounter you like, have a couple of NPC you'd like to rp ready, and bring a 6 packs for the bois (and girls). DnD is a fun game, theres no need to be overly serious with it
My recap looks as follows: i recap the very beginning of the campaign and i talk a little about the 2nd and 3rd session before... when i reach the last session, i hand it over to my Players. Always gives very nice view on the players perspective. and ofter enough i found, at least 1 player missunderstood something or mixed something up. Its nice to have players tell each other "nah, i actually was meant like..." not not being full DM-Mode before we even play and be like "no! I have not said that."
Regarding the recap advice, the group I play with gives each campaign session a name based on events within that session.
A funny example being "1+1=7 OH S&%T!", wherein an attempt to put out a burning building with time magic instead caused the fire to spread to six other buildings.
Another funny example is "The Sea Sucks. Nothing Good Ever Happens In The Sea", where we had horrible luck rolling on our oceanic travel table - we kept losing ships, and thus having to return to port.
Another funny: "How the F%&@ is a Tornado Anticlimactic??", which referred to a boss fight we were able to cheese.
"That wedding from Game of Thrones"
*cries in Beowulf, Gilgamesch and Mabinogion*
I've been fortunate enough in my life to have friends that improv all the time, which has helped in my DMing. The biggest piece of advice I have is to just roll with what is going on. The funniest scenes I've had as a DM have been naturally reacting to. It's a little nerve-racking but your players will enjoy it.
preroll 3 initiative checks at the end of each session, at the start of the next roll a d3 so you know which one is the first. When combat starts the excitement isn't delayed by boring initiative rolling.
Immersion: either before or after the recap tell the table something like: " you've sharpened your swords and your tongues and memorised your spells. Put on your helmet, form a shield wall and get ready to play D&D", this should be a strong cue for everyone to start the game, no more gossip, no more phones, let's play.
After many years of DMing 5th edition ive pretty much had my fill of "list of scenes" session prep. Ive found that running a more procedural game with Moldvay basic allows me to actually play the game by being surprised by what happens and creates an authenticity to the world that means the characters dont need to follow the clear series of beats i have planned. OSR games in general excell at this and have brought my love for the game as a gm back. 5e is aight, but its really more akin to a player centric experience similar to buidling a magic card deck than anything that is meant for GMs
I feel like "railroading" is an issue where the DM becomes too invested in his prepared encounters and everything to remember that the players are going to pursue things based on what their collective objectives and incentives are... If you REALLY want them to go somewhere, do not lay one set of rails or a single longer DM monologue that FORCES them into the area, but instead make their objectives converge within the particular castle where they'll all find a rumored key item or clue or prisoner of interest or something... maybe they hear rumors of a valuable item... something that aligns with their backstory.. or maybe they are intent on sticking with their best friend, and you draw the best friend in with THEIR story, and this gives you a two-for-one deal in drawing in the players, then if you get one or two more players going, you then give the whole party a good reason to go!
Another interesting one is if you initially just get a few of the players to come, but they run into trouble on their way over, and it unveils something that's of interest to another member of the party AND it proves too overwhelming a challenge for the few who DID go to your challenge / encounter / castle, or whatever you have them heading towards!
"If you have a D20 nearby-"
Me, currently packing my dice: 0.0
I always have my players recap the last session. Specifically I always have one particular player recap the session because her recaps are unintentionally hilarious.
Exceedingly busy DM here (50+ hrs/wk work): I have a very strong visualisation ability, so where I haven't the time to generate maps for myself and my players tends to be far less of an issue, as I already have the places well in mind's eye beforehand.
I always ask my players for a recap, because we only play every other week, and they tend to be very distractable, even at the table.
I have a decent memory so I can write a full session recap to share with my players. It works as a good debrief and everyone can see it at any time so before the session people are basically fresh
At every start of a session I ask my players "who wants to do the recap?" the one ho does it, gain a bonus for the session (if its gonna be a combat-oriented session, i give them a +1 to hit, or one success against a saving throw of his choice, stuff like that), better recaps get better bonuses, this makes the players pay more attention to details, take notes and get more involved with the game and try to do a good recap instead of "oh last seasson we had a fight with bandits, killed the bandits, got drunk in a tavern, and a NPC showed up"
Where is video of chris perkins and hand puppet from
It is in episode 5 of their actual play on the Acquisitions Incorporated channel!
Speaking of taknig inspo from shows/movies, a couple sessions ago I definitely had a player say " Oh Crap, He's Highlandering us!"
I was a player for over 20 Years before trying to be a DM to my now first round. A mix of newbees and experienced players. The first session was planned by me in great detail. I noticed pretty quickly, that my preparation was to rigid for my chaos bunch. Next session was much looser prepared - it was great but I still felt like I don't give them enough freedom. In addition I had to give my new players time to get used to everything. It worked out, piece by piece. The World we play in is my own making. I know it inside out. So now I only plan certain things they CAN experience and the rest is going with the flow. Like ... My npc wanted to lead them to a secret passage into the palace. They had to get through the gardens first to get there. Ofcorse someone crit. failed their roll for stealth and was no "singing" Hi-Ho from the dwarfs of Snow white. As the guards now drew closer another failed his acrobatics check and was jumping besids a guard, instead of into hiding. The singing one just got into hiding and My 3. player decided suddenly: "I will step into the torchlight!" the first second I looked at them like "are you serious?" and then I rolled with it. That way "sister hildegard" was born. A not so bright sister of the Tempel in the city, who is nuts about mushrooms. They played it out that well, that everyone was rolling on the floor laughing. Just brilliant.
I love my chaos bunch.
Edit: I didn't have improv classes but I always had a kind of talent to just wip out stuff and I trained it since school. Yes I was the class clown, but in addition my dad trained me in rethorics from an early age on. He always said this is a valuble skill and rightfully so. I also have a very good memory and remember skids and stuff even if it was decades ago. That helps alot to put all I know together and make something unique out of it on the fly.
A couple of things I've learned over my years (far more than I would like to count) as a DM: First, I do a ton of prep prior to the campaign. I have tons of information about the setting that might never come up, but it gives me a foundation upon which I can draw. If I know where the wood elves come from, I can more easily recall information if a PC is a wood elf or if the group runs into wood elves at some point, even if I'm not expecting them to go looking. Second, I let my players do the recap. Not because I necessarily think that they should be forced to in order to pay attention, or even to find out what they found exciting or important, but to understand what they understood versus what I thought I described. Communication isn't perfect, so getting an idea of what my players thought happened versus what I thought happened can really help me work to clear up any confusion (especially if it is about a critical plot point.) Third, I like to let players make decisions about undefined setting details themselves. I find that players feel a greater connection to the setting if they have some stake in defining it. If I don't have a god of the harvest, but my player wants to be a farmer-turned-cleric that worships a harvest god, and they ask me if there is one, I'll just say "I don't know, is there? Do you want there to be one, or do you feel one of the existing pantheon might reflect that in some way and you want to expand their portfolio?" Players will feel a greater connection if you let them make some of these decisions along the way.